My how times have changed

A lifetime ago PM (that's pre-marriage and when I moved to this end of the state) I played in brass bands.  I spent a lifetime playing in brass bands.   The last 7 or so years PM I played A Grade with the amazing Footscray-Yarraville and each year we would play at the Nationals, at a different city in Australia.   Boy, did I get to travel!

Here I am years down the track and half the time I even forget that Easter and Nationals time go together.  It really does seem like a lifetime ago.  With this year's competition in Melbourne, I have some friends playing with Townsville and they sent me a text message that if I'm not doing anything to hook up to the website BrassBanned and I could catch them on a live stream.   Which I did.  How fabulous.

Now I'm taking such a trip down memory lane watching the rest of the A Grade.  Those big major pieces of work.  Wow.  I'm really enjoying it.  I have had it streaming here, listening to the greats, it's been wonderful.   And it's making me wistful, remembering the nerves, the excitement, the feeling in midst of a piece and the music is swirling around you and you just know you're acing it.  Lots of memories.

The way things happen

Earlier on today Mike and I went into town to visit National Tiles which was supposed to be opened but it wasn't, but that's another story.  We spent five minutes or so speaking to another disgruntled customer out the front before just heading straight home.  Half way home we were getting flashed by cars coming the other way so we just figured that there was a speed camera up ahead.

Not so.

We came around the bend and there were a number of cars, one of which had not taken the bend and had rolled off the road and was upside down and nothing much left of the car.  It is sending shivers up my arms just writing this.  I burst into tears, thankfully I wasn't driving, I just got so upset wondering what had happened, who had been hurt.  And the accident was very fresh, the police and ambulance had not arrived, there were other people from cars who had pulled up tending to the injured.  I've thought about it all afternoon.

If we hadn't talked to the disgruntled customer, we would have come onto the scene five minutes earlier, maybe the car would have careered into us on the bend.  Who knows.  I just kept thinking how life spins on the roll of a ten cent piece, you just never know what tomorrow will bring, where the next five minutes will take you.

A lot of life pondering thoughts today.

Last band is on the feed, so once that is over a wait (usually a long one) but they've promised it will be a short one for the results.  Then bed.   Then the dawn service for Easter Sunday, early start.