Young Voices 2018 at the O2

This week Harry and a group of children from his school travelled up to the O2 in London to take part in the Young Voices choir concert. Along with over 8000 other primary aged children from across the country he sang his heart out to a mixture of different songs - ones written specially for the show, and a mixture of classics and modern music.

Harry travelled up to London in the coach with the rest of the children. We debated taking Mia along to the show in the evening, but we decided that she was a bit too young for the late night, so we arranged for my ever helpful and accommodating parents to collect her from school and take her back to theirs so that we could pick her up on her way home. This meant that Ram and I could get up to London early and spend a few hours together enjoying some child free time.

We first visited the Tower Bridge Exhibition which was somewhere we'd not been before. You go up to the top of one of the towers by lift, then you can walk across the two walkways for some views across the river and over London. Each walkway is fitted with a section of glass floor where you can test your courage by walking across, and one of them even has a mirror on the ceiling for that perfect selfie! There are also some fascinating videos and photographs of the bridge throughout history.

Then we went for a chilly walk along the river to the Tate Modern, stopping for a hot chocolate on the way there and an early dinner on the way back, before we headed to the O2. I must admit that I'd been a bit anxious about Harry going along - the O2 is so big and he's so little, and it was such a long day for him. So it was with relief that when we arrived to take our seats on the main floor of the arena we spotted the school banner and saw that they were in the bottom tier.

This meant that Harry could come down to see us for a quick hug beforehand, and we were able to see him (albeit tiny, and mainly the top of his head!) throughout the show. I was so glad that he wasn't right up at the top, it's so steep up there and we would have had no chance of spotting him. I really did admire the teachers with all these over excited children shrieking away, it was so noisy!

I wasn't sure what the show was going to be like. Harry has been practicing the songs for a few months now, and most of them I knew anyway, so I think I was just expecting to sit there while all the children sang their way through the list. Instead we were treated to an amazing show with dancers and a variety of  musicians, and it was brilliant to see how much the children were enjoying themselves. They all had little torches which they were waving around, along with jumping and dancing. It's the first time that Harry has been to any kind of music concert and he absolutely loved it, such an amazing experience for him. I was really proud of him, he has a lovely little voice but had always been reluctant to join the school choir until now, I'm hoping this will inspire him to keep going with it.

The school don't take part every year but I'm really hoping that he will have the chance to go again, and of course for Mia to get to go as well!