My ears are bleeding. Bleeding, I tell you!
Saturday was Rhiannon's 10th birthday party. She wanted a karaoke party. As I will do anything to avoid having a party at home I agreed to this request.
Now this was easy to organise last year in Japan; basically because someone else organised it for me... but also because Japan is, of course, the home of karaoke. This year it wasn't so easy.
Somehow I managed to do it though. From extensive Google searches I discovered a venue called Green Mango. Heartened by an English language website I entered into email discussions with them.
There was an initial major panic when they told me they couldn't confirm until two weeks before the event, but it all went ahead as planned.
Green Mango is an excellent venue that I can highly recommend. I can imagine an adults night out would be an absolute scream. It's very large and there is plenty of seating around tables, a good sized stage, many thousands of songs to choose from and the event is led by a DJ / compere. For kid's parties they lay on food and a cake too. Everything was taken care of; all Tim and I had to do was welcome the guests and sit back.
It only dawned on me on Saturday morning that we were to be there for four hours. Four whole hours of listening to children attempt to sing along to songs they don't really know. I know this from last year's party.
Four hours!
But we survived. However, I'm only just returning to 'normal' today after a weekend of drifting around in a daze.
And if I ever hear certain songs again I shall not be responsible for my actions.
I often joke that my sole reason for becoming a 'stay at home mum' was so I could influence Rhiannon's taste in music. All these years have been utterly wasted though. I'm devastated. Rather than a penchant for rock, punk, and other good music, Rhiannon is showing a scary tendency towards candy pop. Where she has picked this up I do not know. I suspect school and the bus journey where they listen to Kiss FM (Berlin's version, not the UK).
Her taste now is so middle of the road she's in danger of being run down. JLo, and, god help me, those freaks Jedward, feature in her musical life. It's so depressing.
The karaoke was the backing track only with lyrics, which makes it hard for anyone to sing - without the accompanying vocals to sing along to. Add nine and ten year olds with little rhythm and tone to the mix and the result is frankly dreadful. Caterwauling doesn't quite cover the pain we had to endure.
And the hysterics when they realised what they were singing! They're at an age when they're beginning to understand about relationships and so on. Some of the lyrics were fairly explicit. And some even had swear words in! Oh, the horror on their faces when they saw "f***" or "s*x" appear on the screen. Yes, the words were starred out, but they knew what they meant.
It was funny. For a while.
But the thing with kids is that they do like to repeat themselves. This meant the same song was tortured again and again. And again. And the songs were bad enough to start with.
I never, ever want to hear this again:
Bruno Mars - "The Lazy Song". Rather worryingly, it seems to be the school "song"...
There are more, but my ears are rebelling due to having to look for this one. I am aurally exhausted.
The kids had a great time though, and that's what it's all about.
And it's all over now. Until next year.