So it’s Sunday evening and I’m at choir again – the eighth time this week. I know, I know, obviously the experience is amazing and inspires the students etc etc and yes I suppose I am choirmaster, but frankly this is getting ridiculous.

I’ve been choirmaster for twenty years and I simply don’t care anymore. I can’t be arsed with arpeggios. I need to scale back the scales, cool off from the warm-ups. If I hear ‘a proper copper coffee pot’ one more time I’ll scream.

Oh, performance is fine – gesticulate a lot, look ponderous, throw in a few Hungarian numbers to look deep – the time-old tricks of choirmasters. But the endless practices. Know what I like to do on a Sunday evening? Kick back with a bottle of red and Abba’s greatest hits. I generally do the sprinkler to ‘Does Your Mother Know’, but if in a sombre mood ‘The Winner Takes It All’ gets me every time.

Instead I’m stuck in some chapel (not even King’s, fyi), shivering my nuts off and going through yet another heartbreakingly moving medieval hymn.

This ends now. I cannot go on. A dinner is fast approaching and I will find a new direction for my talents! I stop the music with a mad gesture and glare at the organist until he scuttles out. Never could stand the organ. Two thousand years of churches and all we come up with is an instrument that sounds like a flatulent whale?

I look at the faces before me, expressing a mixture of surprise and dismay. ‘Right!’ I bark, in a voice that brooks no argument. ‘This is what we’re going to do…’

It’s two weeks later. We’re at some donators’ dinner arranged by the Dean. I’m sat next to one, actually. Some guy called Schmidt, said he worked in computers but I wasn’t really listening. I’ve been forced to consume a considerable quantity of port just to pluck up the courage for what we’re about to do. I keep glaring at the choir so they keep drinking too.  

It’s time. Plates are removed, coffee is poured, cheeses are cheesed. We line up. I smile encouragingly, though blood is pulsating through my ears. I raise my hands: the music begins, filling the silent hall –

Friday night and the lights are low…

There is a murmur through the room. The Dean looks confused.

Looking out for a place to go…

Now the Master pricks up his ears. There is a brief conversation. Both men rise and start shouting, the donors are laughing, the fellows are aghast – but I close my eyes and sing along.

You are my DANCING QUEEEEEEN, I bellow. Tears spring to my eyes.  I feel young again. And sweet. And only seventeen. 

Read Freya's last tale here: http://www.varsity.co.uk/culture/5575