Sing For The Lord

At the Spiritualist church service, an elderly lady with an electric keyboard leads the hymns, singing in a quavering soprano, rich with vibrato, and a little sharp in the upper reaches of her impressive range. It is hard to follow the tune because she adds little flourishes to all the scales, so I am relieved when the guest medium starts singing in a loud baritone that is much easier to sing along with. I wonder where and how and why the soprano learned to sing, what secrets lie in her past, was she a piano teacher, rapping unwilling boys across the knuckles at their after-school lessons, or perhaps she was a chorus girl, high-kicking her way across a West End stage. The thought makes me giggle and lose my place in the hymn.