Friday 15th November 2019

Today was an extra day off for many people here, as the Presidential Election is being held tomorrow, so it was quite a relaxing day for me, as I was able to work from home before going out to do some shopping. It was a rather mundane day really, with not a lot to report!

I had a rather unusual evening though, as I was invited to sing at the Indian Restaurant at The Grand Hotel, which was quite a nerve-wracking thing to do. I have sung there on a casual basis two or three times when I have gone there on a Friday or a Saturday night to eat, and through that I have struck up a friendship with Dinuwan Amarakoon, the mandolin player who performs there regularly on a Friday and Saturday evening. He asked me if I would join him this Friday night to sing whilst he played. I was very hesitant to do this, as I really didn’t want to put people off their food, but he persuaded me to give it a go. I quite enjoyed it, but I did find it tricky, mainly because he is a semi-professional musician, who can play his mandolin in pretty much any key he needs to, whereas I am just an average, amateur singer with a limited range of voice that can certainly be well-overstretched if I am trying to sing in a key that is too high or too low for me! I was well able to sing all the songs he wanted me to, but not always in the key he was playing them in! However, I gave it a go, and all the diners finished their meal before leaving the restaurant, which I thought was a reasonable measure of success!

The attached photos are of Dinuwan Amarakoon playing his mandolin (which he does beautifully) and me with Dinuwan, but they were actually taken a while back when I had one of my casual sing-a-longs with him, not at this evening's 'performance'!





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