I wish I could sing, but I can’t. I had a go down the pub when everybody was singing Flower of Scotland before our first Euros fitba’ game. But it came out all wrong.
If I persevere, it sometimes comes good, as when my team won the Scottish Cup in 2016, and we all sang Sunshine on Leith. But that was a very emotional occasion.
The thing is, I’m far from alone in this inability. I felt sorry for footballers who were recently told to stop mumbling their national anthem but to belt it out when the camera pans along their line-up before the game.
The croaks get caught too
Mercilessly, the sound records the individual croaking, and you can hear some quailing fellows give it up as the camera nears.
It’s the same with people who record singing on their mobile phones at football matches then put it on yonder YouTube. Supposedly capturing the aural hullabaloo, all you hear is their own singing, always woefully out of tune.
At an actual match, no one around me ever sings, or if one person does, again it’s miles off-key.
And yet the overall effect of the crowd is magically in tune.
The whole thing about football singing is uncanny. I never know who’s doing it, who started it, and how it is collectively in tune, when all the individuals are out of tune, but that’s the way it works.
Perhaps we’re just not used to singing any more. Other than the football, we only do it at funerals now.
At school, we had to go through the exquisite agony of singing individually at the piano while the music teacher ascribed a category to us: tenor, baritone, soprano, rubbish.
We were all rubbish.
And no wonder. O for the wings of a blinking dove. I ask you! If I’d had the wings of a dove, I’d have flown right oot the windae and back tae the hoose.
But it would be nice to be able to sing. I guess that, theoretically, we can all do it. It’s a matter of confidence and breathing.
Of course I sing in the shower
Perhaps being wet helps. I’ve a tendency, like many people, to warble in the shower. And the more power in the shower the more warble.
I shouldn’t over-egg this. It’s usually just nonsense humming, in the same way that men of my Dad’s generation used to nonsense-whistle all the time. But at least it’s some kind of melodic racket emanating from my inner being.
Indeed, I’ve just read an article which suggests singing can be as good for your lungs as a brisk walk. It increases the heart rate and oxygen levels, and leads to deeper breathing.
Maybe singing should be compulsory
Researchers have also found that singing in a choir can reduce the risk of dementia and even improve the understanding of language. Gadzooks, the government should make it compulsory!
But is singing ability innate or can it be learned? My helpful answer is probably a bit of both: we all have it in us, but some folk have it in spades.
Anyway, as Reginald Perrin might have said, I didn’t get where I am today by singing. It would be a nice string to have to my bow. But, last time I looked, I didn’t even have a bow.
