Exciting month ahead
To-day, it is - perhaps remarkably - my first full 90-minute football commentary, covering a match between teams from Surge (Southampton Uni radio) and Sin (Southampton Poly radio). The footage will be edited into a highlights package placed online.

I'm honestly terribly nervous about this; I've been thinking in recent weeks that my voice isn't all that suited to commentary, and then it struck me. Something that perhaps ties into my confusion over my singing voice, too.

I tend to speak higher in my range than most people. Implication; if I'm naturally speaking quite high as it is, I have far less room to go up in pitch, and my expression suffers, especially in commentary where deviations in pitch (and volume) from normal speech will consistently skew upwards.

Tricky. But I do have the lower range, I just need to speak more consistently in it. Terribly unsure here, and I suspect my lesson with Helen in two hours will be quite illuminating. I could really do with speaking to one of my friends in musical theatre, to be honest...

...which links into the next event (other than the already-mentioned Circle Line Challenge). The Mennyms starts a four-night run on May 7. I will be either at the first night, or operating the lighting desk for part or all of the run; I have been assured that the Wrong Kind of Shiny is not an issue.

(It is, however, for the light opera group's production of Cox and Box next week, which contains a lightning effect; however, I have been told that as this is an entirely isolated scene, it will be possible to usher me away for that scene, allowing me to watch the rest. As Cox and Box is in one act, a revue of Gilbert and Sullivan songs forms a second act, and there's potential Shiny issues there too. I shall delay my ticket-purchasing until I have heard from someone at the technical run-through; there will be someone I know there.)

Couldn't ask for better timing to end my jealousy; the new writing showcase is the very next week, and my piece has been confirmed as in it. The show's format is single-player Greed with three correct answers for each high-value question - the intention is that it's recognisable as a fairly generic quiz without being any specific show (it's a bit more subtle than Gold Rush, anyway). Yes, that does mean a financial decision before the question, which is what makes the gamble clearly attributable to the Edmondsesque host and the player's inability to ignore him. There's also a deliberately steep prize tree - £100-£300-£1k-£3k-£9k-£25k-£75k-£250k, although values 1-3 and 5 are not mentioned, and 6 is only alluded to in the closing monologue - the show cuts straight to the decision before Q8, which is placed at the start of a new show. Spot the unintentional irony; if Steve Devlin had had an Edmondsesque host to prod him, he'd have had a million, as if memory serves he had a very good idea of the correct answer to Q15 but was put off by the drop to £32,000.

But we can't understand quite what it's like to be in that situation. An unexpected commenter can. Note his second comment, in which the contrast between Celador and Endemol is made all too clear.

And that, of course, leads us back to where we were. The closing monologue sees the contestant refer to the producers showing clear disdain for the lack of top-prize winners, and generally asserting a toxic studio atmosphere. In a somewhat more subtle reference, I've been writing some incidental music for the show, and the music at the point of financial decision is quite deliberately a piano-and-vibraphone loop. The question think loop is primarily a cello drone with the obligatory heartbeat thrown in, and a harp thrown in every eight bars. If you think that's my way of mourning the lost Q11-Q14 music from the original Strachan score, you'd be correct. The introductory music, all annoying strings and beats, is nearly complete, and I just have a few short stabs to finish.

The auditions for the show are next Tuesday, I shall be auditioning as an actor for other roles as well. I don't expect to get in, but it's a good opportunity to practice using my voice.

Then there's our choral concert. Amazing experience - we'll be in the campus concert hall that looks a bit like the Bad Shirt Casino with an organ, less neon and no manipulative floor manager, we'll be performing a choir-and-orchestra piece written by a music student here whom I actually approached for a collaboration last year that never happened, and then there's the small matter of one of my pieces being performed in public for the first time, and the whole thing will be recorded and put on CD too! - and it should be an absolutely wonderful night.

It'll have to be. The date... Saturday... May... 24.

Oh, how frustrating! It starts at 7:30pm, so that's basically the whole of the show missed, though not the voting. I'll at least be able to tell others about what we've all missed, because I shall watch both semi-finals and probably join gizensha in the Commentariat. Oh, there's a nice way to loop back to where we begun.