... djembe drumming ...

See the concentration on some of these faces: this is what we - Irene, Margaret, Christine and I - do for an hour and a half every Tuesday evening. Tonight was lesson 3 of 8. I guess there are about a dozen of us, led by the "facilitator" Beau and a "facilitator-in-learning", Kimberley who run the Bondi Junction circle for In Rhythm. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline and self control to maintain a rhythm when there are three or four competing rhythms going at the same time. Beau will also stop the pattern and then count it in again. Sometimes, we have to swap over the pattern on the count of four. It is very exhausting and I for one, get immensely hot. Sometimes my head just gives out after three minutes of the same pattern and I cannot remember it, so I have to concentrate on the pattern Beau is beating out and come back in again.

At the end of the eight weeks, all the drum circles around Sydney who have been learning the same pattern, come together for a Drum-Fest. Such a good way to spend an evening. My motto at the moment: Not going gentle into any good night.