Choir expenses, tra-la

 

  

Let me say at the outset that the RSCM has pretty severe guidelines on expenses for backbench choristers.  Second homes nearer the church, moat clearing and 59-inch digital dog biscuits are definitely out, and so is that odd tin of Brillo for the medals, polishing of, that frontbenchers manage to wangle out of the Organ Fund.  Not even throat sweets or nard for the tonsils can we claim.  In fact, if you read the very fine print in our Articles of Affiliation to the RSCM, you will find that not only can we not claim a penny for anything at all, but we are expected to contribute generously towards repairs to the fabric of our 1923 cassocks and that of our local 1123 cathedral, not to mention the RSCM officials' annual jaunt to New Brighton (which we're not supposed to know about.)

 

Now this is clearly all wrong.  All that guff about stewardship and lay ministry is all very well, but do they realise that lay clerks at Llandaff in the 16thC were paid a groat per service (albeit a Welsh groat), and half-pay for choir practices, which equates to about £1500 a week today?  So, in the absence of a decent incremental salary scale, I thought I'd better go on the PCC and, you know, nudge nudge, get the inside dope on how to work the expenses system, so as not actually to have to write a whole new hymnal of heavily copyrighted doggerel and geetar choons like  everybody else does.

 

Well, what a waste of time.  I learnt absolutely nothing that I could pass on to a few old friends in Another Place in return for a few favours.  They are already moaning that the good old days are over and are anxiously seeking new employment, usually with foreign companies who want to store surplus land mines up people's chimneys.

 

And then it dawned on me.  The National Federation of Organ Bashers! That's the answer.  Way back in the 1980s Arthur Scargill gave them a pep talk, and ever since then every luxury liner and cruise-ship has been stuffed with church organists, all taking one or another of their six months' paid holidays a year and thoroughly enjoying themselves vamping out Gracie Fields' hits on those theatre organs that go up and down, and merrily proclaiming "Forsooth! This is indeed the life!"

It's a bit of a closed shop, but, and just between you and me, I think I've got my foot in the door.  Though you do have to be subtle, and I think I might have put my foot in the wrong door - the one labelled "it", actually.  I asked the Treasurer, you see, what the rate for the job for a union member was, and she replied - with quite unnecessary malice, I thought, while waving at me most aggressively a photocopy of the cheque for last quarter's parish share and the bill for the repair of the Sunday School ceiling after last Sunday's Messy Church paintball session for the under-5s - that it was a bit less than my choir pay was being docked for failure to turn up to sing on the back benches, and I therefore owed the church £25.50.

 

So I have every intention of continuing my training for the Golden Job - organ-bashing.  I have my eye on the cruises, and my feet on the pedals (actually, I'm sorry about that, if it woke you up during the sermon last week.  I though it was just a lumpy floor, but apparently those pedals are big notes that you play with your feet.  I didn't know that.  It seems you have to be a member of the Union before they tell you these things.)

 

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We will be recruiting for the choir at St Oswald's over the next few months, using every dirty trick in the book - blackmail arising from that little indiscretion of Auntie Aggie's in 1943 or the missing Gift Aid envelopes early in January - you name it, it's on file.  And potential recruits should not be put off by reports in the tabloid press (the Church Times, for instance) that the vibrations from singing can turn parts of your brain into rice pudding.  Some people are just jealous because they haven't been asked to write a Choirstalls column.

 

I'm just off to work up the job spec -  "incomparable rates of pay ... frequent opportunities to learn a real musical instrument with lots of pipes and pedals and things ... six days holiday a week ... no Latin, unlike some of our competitors ... free medals ... stylish protective clothing provided..."

 

They'll be absolutely flocking in.