A Quiet Night Out

Mid-January. The flattest time of the year. Cold and bleak, nothing just around the corner to look forward to. The kids are asking how long it is until their birthdays, the summer holidays seem a long way off and even then those very holidays will be blighted by the descent of eight thousand apricots in the back garden. Only eleven and a bit months until Christmas. And then Christmas will probably be crap...

I'm writing a book at the moment - Scottish author Douglas Lindsay, 43, has turned his hand to writing an explosive political thriller which meets the full force of the rising government police state head on - so not blogging much. It's not that the kids are not by turn cute, interesting, frustrating, unbelievably annoying etc., but time is short. For example, last week Two of Two asked us one of those questions which every parent dreads: Would you rather eat a live scorpion or lick peanut butter off Gordon Brown's naked butt?

Hmm....tricky. In the end I think we agreed on a compromise solution of licking the peanut butter off the scorpion's naked butt and taking your chances with the stinger.

I could write about much these last few weeks, but the thing I'm going to choose has nothing to do with the kids. Just need to get it off my chest.

The Harlem Gospel Choir...

The Harlem Gospel Choir have been in Poland every December since we got here, so that's three years running at least. Maybe they've been coming longer than that. Every year TPCKAM says she wants to go and see them, and I nod and say, yep that sounds good, and then leave it to inevitable lack of inertia knowing that it won't happen. This Christmas, unfortunately, her thought of going to see the Harlem Gospel Choir coincided with her being in the vicinity of the ticket booth. The show was on a Sunday evening, but since the New England Patriots weren't on tv that night, I agreed to go along.

Before the event, I got to thinking about the fact that the Harlem Gospel Choir seemed to be coming to Poland every year, and wasn't that a bit odd. You'd think they'd want to do, I don't know, Harlem for example, some Christmas. I wondered to TPCKAM if the Harlem Gospel Choir might be a franchise. Like McDonalds or Krispy Kreme. Checked on-line, and sure enough, while the Harlem Gospel Choir are not located on every street corner in the world, there were four different choirs under the same name, touring in December, albeit one of them has a permanent residence at Disneyland Florida, which isn't so much of a tour as, well, a residency. Clearly we weren't going to see the Harlem Gospel Choir, but a Harlem Gospel Choir. One of the Harlem Gospel Choirs.

And, as it turned out, one of the smaller ones. The runt of the litter. To me the word 'choir' says fifty strapping Welshmen, or several hundred pallid youths singing in Westminster Abbey. In the eastern European version of the Harlem Gospel Choir there were nine. If they'd been British they would probably have apologised when they walked on stage. 'I'm sorry, but our people keep dying and management are cutting back and have a policy of no replacement in the event of death.' Being American, however, they just sang more loudly and hoped no one would notice.

They could belt out a tune, no doubt about that. Sister Veronica and Brother Bob and Sister Sledge, or whatever they were called. However, generally each song consisted of one of the brothers/sisters taking centre stage and doing their thing, effectively with eight backing singers. That's not a choir. That's a singer with eight back singers, that is. They opened up with 'I Believe I can Fly...' It never got any better. After a duet, one of the brothers stepped forward and said, 'A big hand for Sister Veronica!' Cheers all round. 'And a big hand for Sister Agnes!' Cheering and whooping and the like. 'And a big hand for Jesus!'

I genuinely hope that if that had happened in Britian, that remark would have been greeted by a stony silence. You can believe, or not, that Jesus is the son of God. But seriously, he had not just been singing 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. The Polish audience duly applauded.

Later on we were exhorted to give 'handpraise' to God.

Last Saturday morning, Two of Two scored a wonder goal from twenty yards. First time shot, top corner, an absolute beaut. Unthinking, I just automatically got to my feet and let out a Homer Simpson-esque whoop. Which is exactly what I found myself doing when, after forty minutes of the Harlem Gospel Choir, Brother Shenanigan stepped up to the mike and announced a twenty minute recess. Two thousand people turned and looked at me. They all looked pissed off, but then they're Polish. The whole nation looks pissed off. I reckon most of them were probably thinking, I wish I'd done that.

The twenty minute break became half an hour, and there were murmurs of hope in the audience that maybe the Harlem Gospel Choir had remembered they had a dinner engagement at the corner of 135th and 7th. Sadly, however, they eventually reappeared, having been unable to rustle up any new members during the interval. At least none of them had died. The second half wore excruciatingly on. At one point they dragged a poor old woman out of the audience to get her on stage, so they could sing to her and give her a present. They built up and up to the announcement of the present, like it was going to be a big THING. Maybe this eighty-seven year-old Polish woman who spoke no English had been selected to be the newest member of the Harlem Gospel Collective? Instead, they presented her with a signed cd. And a signed cd of the Harlem Gospel Choir to boot, not, like a signed cd from Bruce Springsteen or someone worthwhile. As prizes go it was on a level with Bullseye. The Sister Veronica said something along the lines of, 'Now y'all, don't go beating her up and stealing this, you can buy your own copy in the foyer...'

Handpraise to God!

Later still - I think maybe the concert had been going for three or four hours by now - they dragged people form the audience up on stage to sing-a-long with Kool And The Gang's Celebrate. Dear Christ..., as Sister Veronica might have said. To be fair to the debacle of the old woman being dragged up on stage, it wasn't quite as toe-curlingly embarrassing as that, but by God it was up there.

Eventually they put us out of our misery, packed up their nine microphones and trouped happily off stage. The Harlem Gospel Choir were gone. The evening was over, and we all, the beleaguered audience, trooped out into a cold December evening in Warsaw, spiritual vacuums one and all. Perhaps they will be back next Christmas, although by then they might have been renamed The Harlem Gospel Trio or the Stevie Wonderettes. This time, however, I will employ someone to run ahead of TPCKAM wherever she goes, tearing down the bill posters before she can see them...