Jos' 21st

Still February and Dave was celebrating another birthday. Why did the smallest month of the year contain the most getting old days? Twas a puzzle.

Saturday 25th Feb saw Dave and Jean at Jos' 21st birthday party, in the middle of no where, miles away from cilvilization. It was a kareoke party, or a 'Terryoke' party as the guy in charge of it had called it. Dave assumed his name must be George.

The fact that Dave had once earned the title 'Kareoke Dave' for singing kareoke several times a week made people kind of expect a performance. This was worrying.

"Why are you nervous? Just get up and sing a song!" said Jean, repeatedly.

Well, he was nervous for several reasons.

1) The vast majority of the audience were Christian. This meant the choice of song had to be carefully screened so as not to offend. Such songs as "Losing my Religion" and "Like a Prayer" may not have gone down well. Even "Imagine" would have coursed Dave to choke when it came to "Imagine there's no heaven...".

2) Dave usually didn't care what random people thought of him. However the people in this room were not random. They were people he saw quite frequently in church. More importantly, they were people whose opinion seemed to matter a great deal to Jean. He could not joke around and do something stupid up there, he had to actually sing. He didn't know for certain if he could sing, he had always got pretty mixed feedback.

3) The last time he had been up in front of these people he had choked, he had said "Hi..." and then stared at them blankly for 20 minutes. They would ALL be watching him this time.

4) Jean believed he could sing. She had never seen him do kareoke before, but she believed in him.

5) He hadn't actually done kareoke by himself before, he had always had someone else as a safety net. Except one time, when he sung Barbie girl, though that was obviously a joke and could not have been taken otherwise.

"Why are you nervous? Just get up and sing a song!" said Jean, repeatedly.

"OK."

When Dave finally took centre stage his prediction had been spot on. The entire room fell silent before the song had began to play. All eyes were indeed on him. 'Gulp' sprang to mind. The song began suddenly, he missed the first few words. Then he began.

Can you Feel the Love tonight, Elton John.

The room disapeared, he had eyes only for Jean. He sung his heart out. He was starting to feel pretty good. It was going unbelieveably well.

When the song finished he returned to his wife's side.

"Yeah, I could tell you were nervous, you didn't do very well."

Dang.