'My Son, the Rockstar'

Preparations are afoot for the first gig of SecondBorn & mates' band.  Tomorrow.  Four highly excited nine year old boys, bouncing, leaping, colliding off each othe like popcorn in a pan.

We're not talking Hammersmith Apollo or Brixton Academy here. The setting is the more sedate, more pressganged conscript audience of the Year Five teatime concert for parents.  And amidst the measured, blazer-wearing, rehearsed grade four piano pieces of those kids whose parents manage to oversee daily reacquaintaince with the pieces, one off-the-leash rebellious mini-boyband, - electric guitar, piano, drums, rock cello, - with unbrushed hair.

The signs are not that auspicious I'd say.
'How's it going with your singers?' (Two girls from his year, recruited after auditions of 19 wannabees.)
'Oh they left. They said they wanted their break times instead of rehearsals. (Plaintively) But we HAD asked them that in the interviews, and they said it would be fine.'
Ah well SecondBorn, another of Life's Hard Lessons learnt early. What people say in interview isn't necessarily what they want to be held to.

'How are the rehearsals going?'
[Grumpily] 'We aren't allowed to rehearse this week because of the exams in the school hall. We SAID we'd do it quietly. We still can't get all the timings together.'

It's hard to assess their prowess from the breakfast-time croonings of one quarter of the instrumentalists.  It brings back memories of FirstBorn & friends' Plays, aged around four, when the accompanying mums at a playdate would have to break off their cosy gossip-fuelled conversations to sit through interminable plays, with forgotten lines and tender performers departing to giggle behind the sofa.  Pleasant memories for fond mothers, but as I thought then too,
'Not really a performance.  Pass the rich tea biscuits would you.'

But alongside SecondBorn's naked excitement and enjoyment whatever his level, I have a glow of maternal pride too, however it turns out. In 1970s South Wales the cocks of the roost, the kings of the valleys, were the rugby players and the surfers.  My joy was unconfined when, last summer, SecondBorn stood on a surfboard in Swansea Leisure Centre and rode his first wave.
'Are you out there, my teenage peers.  I may have been a geek, but LOOK at my son!'
As he put on a rugby shirt, made it to the B team. Just.  A maternal wound of not-having-been-good-enough, - then, in the 1970s, having been the wrong gender to be acceptable anyhow - part healing.

And gratitude too that, unlike his mother then, SecondBorn doesn't really care how good his band is.  Just enjoys busking with his mates.  Seems happily uncoupled from the fact that his peers are performing well toned pieces, and that that might set a standard for the band too. Is just happily in the moment, entirely appropriately for a nine year old boy.

So here's an apology in advance to my fellow parental conscripts at tomorrow's concert. I get they might not be performance ready yet. I get your time is tight. As the music teacher said yesterday:
'By the time you're in Year Seven, you'll be a pretty good band.'
But they're currently in Year Five.