Today was the recital for our oldest’s orchestra club. Unfortunately, it ended the way I’d hoped it had begun.

The recital involved 19 different combinations of club members playing different songs with different instruments. Our oldest performed as part of a flute quartet and, judging by the crowd reaction, they rocked.

Unfortunately, because our oldest is a first year, she only got to perform once.

Somehow I managed to stay awake and reasonably attentive throughout the remaining eleven performances.

At the end, all of the older girls came to the front and performed a medley of Christmas tunes. They did a good job and the crowd gave them appropriate praise. However, when it was all finished, the speech phase started. There’s always a speech phase.

What annoyed me about this one was it came at the end of the performance rather than at the start. We were late arriving which, in my mind, meant we’d missed the speeches. Instead that speech was five minutes long, as was the second speech (by a different person).

Then, just to troll me, they called up a third guy to give a speech. Luckily, as I was contemplating setting fire to something, the third speaker was unprepared and gave a very short “keep up the good work” speech that was more of a series of comments and lasted less than a minute, including the time it took him to walk tot he front.

After that, I finally got to escape. .