Hi,

I have just joined this forum - what an initiation, I spent two hours reading the posts on this thread before I had to admit defeat and go straight to the end, and now here I am adding to it - oh well.

I have an emergency technique which works with the occasional unpractised, tuneless and above all painfully SLOW rendition.

I maintain an appearance of perfect attentive politeness, and inside I am alternating between 'See, you aren't that bad after all, are you Julia? If they can do it, you certainly can!' and 'Restez zen!' (as they say at FranceTelecom). It is possible to get into an altered state of consciousness by focusing on the qualities of the sound without judgement.

On the other hand I wonder if it is possible to be too constrained by politeness when you get the same person time after time. If I haven't practised I don't want to perform and they should be the same - isn't there some way I can politely impose my view on them? The answer is 'no'.

Julia, Eastbourne