Getting caught snacking by the glockenspiels was the luckiest break

Choosing choir practice over detention instilled Christine Manby with a lifelong love of singing and all the health benefits that come with it

What’s your favourite Christmas song? What gets you singing along? Are you a traditionalist, going with a carol like “Once in Royal David’s City” or “Ding Dong Merrily on High”? Or are you the type of sociopath who plays “Mistletoe and Wine” on a loop from 3 November? It’s fair to say that I am not in the least bit musical (though I do hate that Carey cover with a passion). When, after three years of weekly torture, I was allowed to give up lessons, my piano teacher told me: “You’ve not done badly for someone with no musical talent whatsoever.”

Needless to say, having heard that I didn’t expect to be sought out for the school choir. But that’s exactly what happened after I was caught in the music cupboard among the glockenspiels with a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps when I should have been in French. The music teacher offered me a stark choice: detention or choir? I chose choir, accepting that my lunchtimes were no longer my own in either case. At least I wouldn’t also be grounded by Mum and Dad.

I rocked up to my first choir practice a couple of days later full of seething resentment. My place in the school hierarchy was complicated. I was academic enough to be labelled a geek. I was socially aware enough to know that to avoid the tribulations that came with being a geek, I needed to ally myself with the mean girls (mostly by doing their homework). Being in the choir did not fit the image I was after. I took a chair at the back and resolved to mumble every note. I found it hard to believe that there were people in that room who had actively decided to be there.