Exactly 1 week ago, I was at my friends house, waiting for another friend to arrive. We had the eisteddfod that night, to perform with the clarinet group, which we are in! We were having a lot of fun, sitting at her kitchen table, eating Tim Tams, and talking.
The clocks began to strike. 4 O'Clock. These clocks were entertaining, there's a lot of clocks in that house, and they all seemed to be set to go off approximately 30 seconds after one another.
At 4.30, our other friend arrived. After grabbing our clarinets, we all headed out to the car. We were about to go! But first, we had to pick up the sister of the friend who had picked us up. Off to the netball courts we went! By the time she was finished her game, it was nearly 5 O'clock. On the way down, we were hoping we weren't on first, since it's an hour's drive, and the session started at 6.
We were nearly there, it was around 5:45pm, when one of my friends received a text. It was from another girl in our clarinet group. "Where are you?", the text said.
Because my friend had no credit, I pulled out my phone to reply. "We'll be there in about ten minutes," I typed. Around five minutes later, I received a reply. "Okay, we're on first." At this point, we all started worrying. We had to get there, set up, warm up (if we had time!), and tune before we could start, and it was nearly 6!
We arrived at the Eisteddfod at 5:58pm. We hurried up the stairs, and headed over to our group. They had rehearsed the piece earlier, since the three of them (and our teacher) had arrived with plenty of time.
We set up our clarinets, but had no time to warm up. After jumping right up on the stage, we tuned. We started a few minutes after 6pm, but we couldn't help that. Fortunately, all of our clarinets were pretty much in tune right from the start!
Our teacher was conducting us. We began to play the piece we had prepared. It is called 'Evil Doctor Craw' by John Barrett.
After we finished, we hopped down. I know I made a couple of mistakes that made me cringe slightly, but nobody else seemed to notice. Or, if they did notice, they didn't mind. I didn't notice many mistakes in the other 4 parts, which was comforting. Our teacher gave us a big thumbs up after we left the stage, and, at that point, I knew we had done well. We won our section.
Three of the members of our group went up later to play a Rondo Trio. And, I must add, they did extremely well.
All in all, it was a brilliant night, full of music and smiles. I wasn't nervous that day, because our previous rehearsal had gone fairly well.
Have you ever entered an Eisteddfod? Were you nervous? How did it go for you?
