On Tuesday, I went to Hell

Dear [local government body],

Here is my idea of Hell: sitting trapped for four and a half hours in a large room full of strangers with no food, coffee or even water and nothing to do but listen to a succession of amateur musicians maim and torture perfectly innocent pieces of music.

You provided me with this experience on Tuesday evening.

Here are some thoughts around improving your Eisteddfod:

1. Call me over sensitive, but stationing a couple of surly old women on desk and door duty does not make for the warmest welcome one could envisage. Further, closing the door and having them guard it like rabid bulldogs during performances could be construed as slightly condescending, aggressive and offensive. Personally, I’d choose a committee of Rick Springfield and his clone in strategically torn jeans to greet and seat, but failing that, someone with half a smile and no God-complex would be an improvement.

2. Consider this: the success of your event is reliant on parents -
• allowing their children to participate
• giving up their regularly scheduled evening laundry/gaming/cardio sessions/television to ferry their children to and from your venue
• (often) staying to support the proceedings.

Bear in mind that these parents have only their mobile phone apps (on silent) to interrupt the tedium of shrieking piccolos and oom-pa-pa-ing euphoniums (not to mention scraping chairs, clanging music stands and the occasional collapsing drum kit).

Pop quiz:

Do you seat the parents at the front of the room where at least they can pick their children out from the sea of tubas and cymbals on stage or do you herd them like cattle to a designated area of rock hard plastic chairs at the rear of the room?

Think about it.

Hint: cushions are your friend.

3. Instead of soliciting prize donations from service clubs and charging fifty cents for a photocopied sheet of paper masquerading as a program to raise funds for your event, sell food and coffee. You have a captive (and largely desperate) audience of parents, rellies, friends (and other hangers on who couldn’t think of an excuse for non-attendance fast enough). By nine o’clock, they would pay almost any money for a dry ham and cheese sandwich and a piss weak instant coffee, if only to break the interminable monotony. This opportubnity is a fundraiser's wet dream.

4. It’s clear that you are music zealots. This is fine. I am a tolerant person, all for diversity and harmony. However, it would be preferable if you did not inflict your fervor on unsuspecting adult community members. Some people have a life outside music. They have dinners to cook, families to care for, sleep to be enjoyed. Is it really necessary to have 762 eisteddfod sections? Word of the day: downsize.

5. Further, do not infect impressionable children with your zeal. Music is not the centre of their universe. They also have sport, homework and chores to deal with. Occasionally, they need to eat and sleep.

6. I know it’s nice for the soloists to have an audience, but sandwiching – count ‘em – SEVEN of them between the band sections reeks of rent-a-crowd. It’s one thing to listen to my own child – listening to some stranger’s brat annihilate Debussy is a cruel and unusual punishment for an unsuspecting citizen. Without this musical detour, I could have been home with a chicken burger and a glass of sav blanc ninety minutes earlier.

7. Fact: many students who perform in one section, also perform in other sections. Sometimes, they perform in five or six sections. Short lesson in cause and effect: children who perform three nights running become tired. Tired children are cranky. Cranky children irritate their parents. Irritated parents swear up and down there will be no eisteddfod participation next year. Tip: rethink your scheduling.

8. Pointed question: does it really take the adjudicator 10 minutes to figure out whether a band comprises mainly gifted protégés or talentless dolts?

9. Begging audience members to stay when you are already running an hour and a half late and it is past most of the parents’ bedtimes is pitiful. Don’t do it.

10. Three hundred females. Two toilets. Do the math.

Yours,

The Monstress


Image: Pixomar