Plastic wind??

After spending hours whining in my last post about how panicky I was, I had a good rehearsal at the orchestra. Right at the beginning, they were tuning the instruments up and my clarinet was majorly flat. After about ten minutes of it being passed around and scrutinised, it was decided for definite that it was only a wood effect, plastic clarinet and I was given my cousin's real wood clarinet, obvs keeping my mouthpiece on, - and I'd like to take this chance to point out that my cousin was playing bass clarinet and didn't need his normal one - yet that was still flat. It was only after all this faffing around that Hannah - here's where I name the ex who deserves more than to be referred to as that :D - got her tuner out it was realised that she was sharp the entire time. She's the kind of person who can play out of tune and make everyone else seem in the wrong. I'm not jealous anymore, she's too nice for that.

But this rehearsal, I just kinda realised that I was panicking over nothing. I have known this all along but there's a lot of difference between knowing that a thought is irrational and dealing with it. I had two other people on the same part as me this time and I think the wood clarinet helped a lot; my sound was completely different with it and I (kinda, as much as my shy self will let me) wanted to be heard. I've had my wood-effect clarinet for about seven years now and it's done me a good service but I asked dad about getting a proper decent wooden one and he said he'd expected this for a while now, which sounded a lot like a yes.

We also sorted rooms out and got leaflets on the local area for when we go on this week-long course and I actually started to look forward to it a teensy bit. I'm going to borrow my cousin's clarinet for the course so I should sound good and provided I DON'T PANIC, all shall be well. Although there is a bari sax part which I have been asked to play and I glanced at itanditdidn'tlookparticularlyeasyandnobodyelsewillbeonmypiecewithmeandandand.... yeah, I'd feel sorry for Robbie if I were you. He deals with all this far more than he should do.

Speaking of Robbie, though, that's another thing I am looking forward to on the course. He went away with college to Australia a few weeks ago and four days after touching down in England, jetted off to Menorca with his family, where he shall remain until next Wednesday. Until his phone broke, I didn't miss him too much when he was in Aus; I had college to go to and my clarinet grade to practise/panic for. The missing thing upped a little when he suddenly stopped texting because the 4, 5, 6 keys broke on his phone (his unlock code starts with 6, haha.) but it's nothing compared to RIGHT NOW, when I'm on my summer holidays with NOTHING TO DO. Rachael's gone away and Jade's dying and I have absolutely no plans (otherthanseeHarryPotterin3DonSaturday) until he comes back. Which is quite sad. But yeah, once he does come back, we'll have three days until the orchestra course, after which I jet straight off to France for two weeks. Suffice to say, this has not been a summer of love. So I'm looking forward to spending that week with him and doing all sorts of fun things. Of course, it's not like we'll get any time together but it's better than just him being on the course as I sit around at home and die of boredom and then don't see him until the end of August because he's away again when I come back from France...

Bad timing on both our parts I think. Especially his.
But the moral of the story is: Stop whining, you're not going to die from learning how to be better at clarinet.
Yeah.