The Cursed Job....

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Every second year for the last ten or so years... I've taken this job in Germany that is organised by a friend. It is a simple weekend job where we travel to accompany a choir in a nice little town nearish to the Dutch-German border... and it is often in this end of Autumn moving almost into Winter time of the year.

However, ever since the very first time I have come here... I've been sick each time I start the project here.... and I don't mean sniffle-nosed man-flu type of sick (yes... I do get a fair few of those, and those are really terrible events!) but really the feverish, hacking my lungs out sick...

Well, the first year was even a bit more dramatic than that... after the concert, I was starving, cold, sick and sleep-deprived (I was a new father....). So, in the post concert gathering... I actually keeled over and fainted! I had never fainted in my life before! All I knew was that I was standing, started to feel a bit dizzy (and the sounds and sights got pretty sharp and with lots of contrast....) and then the next thing I remember, I woke with everyone looking down at me looking pretty damn worried (apparently I was a really weird shade of greenish...)! It's definitely an experience that I hope never to have again... although, odds are likely that at some point in the far off future... it may be waiting again for me!

Anyway, that was my introduction to the choir... and some of my colleagues... and that sort of thing tends to stick in people's memory! So, every two years... when I come here... people still remind me about it! Plus, there are other colleagues that see me in other settings and jobs... and this is how the remember me, if that was the first time that we had met!

Thankfully, the following years have been kinder to me... relatively... I would definitely take a couple of nights of fever and coughing fits over the complete loss of function that that first year had in store for me! That said, the first year could have been much much worse... at least I still retained some subconscious control of my poop and pee functions! So, it wasn't a complete embarrassment which is a definite plus!

So, coming into this year's repeat of the cursed job... I started to come down with a flu... of course... and the night before leaving, I started to get a little bit of a fever. Last night, at the first night on the job... I was pretty out of it! ... and so the prophecy of the cursed job continues to fulfill itself! However, it does seem more tame than other years (knock on wood...)... so, I think the curse might be running itself dry... perhaps it spent too much energy on that first event... and it is now losing power over me!

This job also has us stay with choir members as host families... which is really quite nice (it does give my understanding of German a very big workout... I can understand to an extent... but I can not speak...).... however, it does mean that you have a lot less privacy than a hotel room. Personally, I do prefer hotel rooms... it is anti-social... but that describes me pretty well... I really like my private space! This year, I'm staying with the conductor of the project... which means I should probably behave myself in the rehearsals and concerts... otherwise I could find myself sleeping on the street outside the house!

Now, those among you who are less entranced by the idea of curses (myself included...) might point out that the fact that this job always occurs at the colder turn of the seasons might have something to do with the sickness... you might have a point... we'll see, in a couple of decades, we will have shifted the seasonal variation enough to test that theory... and I realise there is a healthy dose (ha ha...) of confirmation bias in my cursed job hypothesis... but, I'm sticking with that story... My little irrational part of my brain can have this little victory... as long as it stays out of other more important parts of my life!