I still blog, just not here.

And again...

Among other things, I went to Poland. And I'd like to talk about that.
I'm going to come back and fill in the gaps, I really am.

Honest.

Well, yes.

Hello.

Over a month, hm? Well, I'm still alive, and have been to yet another country in the meantime, but I still dont have time to update this. To add to the list, therefore is:

• Germany
• Back to the Albert Hall

I'll get round to it one day, I will.

Placeholder

Still here...

Following Dunx' example, I hereby create a placeholder, reminding me of the things I want to talk about:

• Proms,part 2


• New glasses


• EDIT: The something else was London Openhouse, of which more later


• Italy


• Returning to England

Back soon...

Time to catch up

It's got a bit silly, this not keeping up business. There are only so many times I can offer excuses, and to be honest, not keeping up with things other that daily life has been one of the themes of the summer. I've not even reviewed the record number of Proms I've been to, never mind everything else which has been going on. Well, I shall make a start on catching up - 7 Proms reviews, squeezed into the periods of the day when I'm waiting for various reports to compile and run. It will stop me trying to run other jobs in the system, thereby slowing myself down. If I don't reach the end, you can assume that I've had problems with the reports (or that they've run really quickly, which is less likely). Otherwise, here goes:

Prom 12: The Blue Peter Prom

I said we'd be back this time last year, and here we are, after a very pleasant day in the park with long-lost friends, all of us piled in excitedly to a box (all seats one price, so we go for the best). If we enjoyed it last year, I can say that we loved it this year. For a start, we're all here; no one's missing out this time, and there's something on the bill for everyone. I'm most pleased to have finally heard 'Short Ride in a Fast Machine'; there's Chinese lion dancing and Taiko drumming for those who want spectacle; there's 'Also Sprach Zarathustra', complete with organ rumble, there's jazz Beatles (personally, i could have lived without that, but it seemed to go down well), and then there was Ravel's Bolero.

Now, I was a little concerned about it; it's a well-known tune, of course, but somewhat repetetive for those who are not versed in the nuances of orchestral playing. I needn't have worried. The piece began with only three members of the orchestra on stage, and the slightly worried presenters wondering where everyone had gone. As things developed, the orchestra joined us one by one - some reading newspapers, some plainly direct from the pub, some via the audience, some being chased by the police, some in various kinds of fancy dress, one even dressed as a rabbit. There was much hilarity and excitement, yet through it all, the drummer continued his immaculate rhythm in spite of giant rabbits and people trying to reel him in on a fishing line. As we neared the end, I was beginning to be concerned by the lack of a percussion section, but eventually they appeared, being chased through the arena, and took up their positions with less than half a second to spare for the finale. It could not have been better timed, and my children still talk about it. That's how to get people involved in classical music...


Prom 35: Academy of Ancient Music

An unexpected Prom; I was in town anyway, and when my disaster recovery test finished on time (for once), I thought I'd give this a go. It was time - after an absence of several years - for a jaunt to the balcony; somehow it seemed appropriate for an evening of baroque music. The programme was unfamiliar: Biber, Muffat, and Bach (well, I must have heard Bach's Magnificat before now, but I'm not exactly familiar with it.) The gallery turned out to be an appropriate place for it, but for one small detail: the orchestra and choir in the Biber were arranged to give an approximation of how they sounded at the original presentation of the work, in Salzburg cathedral. This meant that the choir was split in three and interspersed with the string players, and that the brass was lined along the top row, where the choir would normally be. This meant that for those of us above the players, the sound was rather too brassy, and detracted a little from the three organs and three theorbos on stage. Excellent playing, though, and lovely singing, especially from some of the soloists. In the end, this one won't live as long in the memory as some of this year's Proms, but I'm very glad I went.

Prom 36: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Ilan Volkov

I wasn't going to miss this one, even if it did mean sore legs two days running. I saw Volkov conduct the BBCSO in Shostakovich 10 last year, and thought him astonishing for one so young; I wasn't about to pass up the same forces in Mahler, was I?

Yet my abiding memory of the evening won't be the cowbells of that most peculiar symphony. First up, a tiny Mozart symphony, no 32. It was pleasant enough, I suppose, but served as no more than an appetiser for what was to follow. If I have largely forgotten it, it is because what followed was so startlingly good. Janacek's Eternal Gospel has hardly ever been recorded; had never been seen at the Proms(or anywhere else in the UK) before now, and I am at a loss to explain wahy, for it was a wondrous thing, expertly played and truly magnificently sung by both the soloists and the London Philharmonic Choir, belting out those awkward Czech syllables as if they were native speakers. If only there were an easily available recording of this; it would be my unexpected discovery of the season. Perhaps after this, there will be.

Mahler 7 is a difficult beast. Written at a time of deep turmoil in his life, it reflects all his confusion and pain, and seems at times to have been assembled from scraps. It takes a skilled interpreter to make the final movement in particular hang together and make sense, but Volkov is already a master at such things, and we were in safe hands. There are two moments early on in this symphony which can cause giggling in UK audiences at any rate - the Castrol GTX moment, and the Star Trek moment - but both passed with supreme control, and Volkov scaled the alpine jaggedness of the final movement with real delicate skill, it all pulling together into a coherent whole (aside from the cowbells, which have wandered in from an enirely different piece of music, and which I still cannot get my head around. They just sound wrong whatever you do with them, and I cannot explain them) and surging magnificently to a spellbinding finale. Wonderful stuff, and very nearly my favourite concert of the season. Very nearly.


Prom 38: London Sinfonietta / Yo-Yo Ma / Silk Road Ensemble

I missed the Turangalîla last time it was played, and I missed Yo-Yo Ma last season due to work commitments, so this was something I was particularly looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. Ma is spending much of his time working with the Silk Road Ensemble, bringing eastern and western musical traditions together. This Prom featured a new work by Bright Sheng, "The Song and Dance of Tears", feauring solo parts for cello and piano alongside pipa and sheng. The sheng is a Chinese mouth organ, which is to say a tiny pipe organ powered by human breath, rather than a harmonica. It is a magical instrument, and I most definitely want to learn to play it. Like that's going to happen. The music was intriguing and in places thrilling, never straying into parody of either style, but walking the tightrope between them very well indeed, and thanks to the discreet amplification of the pipa, all the musical elements merged beautifully. Enjoyable and memorable.

Which can also be said for the second half. Pressed for a description of Turangalîla, I'd have to say that it sounds frankly bonkers, with the Ondes Martenot whooping and screeching all over this elemental cacophony. It takes a good number of listens to get into the structure of the thing, and work out what's going on, and needs patience and concentration even once you do know what's happening. There has been criticism elsewhere of Cynthia Millar's Ondes playing in this concert, but I felt it to be perfectly fine, altough not a patch on Paul Crossley's superb piano part. This performance for me illuminated a different side to the whole thing, emphasising the piano part, and allowing the Ondes to stay out of the limelight a little, letting it sing with the strings rather than dominate them. It may not have been perfect, but I still had a big grin plastered all over my face for several days.

Still here.

Things (like new kitchens, and trips to Scotland) have interfered, but I'm still here. I'd like to catch up with Proms if I can, but for now I'd like to share one of those odd things which seem to happen to me now and then.

Last Monday, I was in Kings Cross for reasons which need not detain us here. I decided to go by train, since the place I was going seemed to be just round the corner. What I didn't appreciate was that there is no such thing as just round the corner from Kings Cross station at the moment. While the Chanel Tunnel rail link is fed slowly into St Pancras, the entire area is in uproar. Indeed, St Pancras station itself has moved - the old train hall is empty, and a new, stainless steel station has been built above and to the north of it. This appears to be a temporary move, but in the meantime nothing is where it should be. It took me half an hour to walk what was around half a mile on the map; at one point I circumnavigated St Pancras' Hospital, finding out on the way that the one thing I knew about that institution - that it had a tropical medicines centre - is no longer true. Upon reaching my destination, I spotted that there was a way back signposted through what looked like a churchyard.

So, on the way home, I duly detoured, discovering that this was St Pancras Gardens, the churchyard for St Pancras' Old Church, and that it contains the family tomb of Sir John Soane. The picture here is pre-renovation, and looks slightly sad - today, it is clean and tidy, with a large information plaque explaining the whole thing and pointing out that the tomb was the inspitration for one of this country's most recognisable objects, for it was from this design that Giles Gilbert Scott got the idea for the familiar red telephone kiosk.
This kind of serendipitous discovery keeps happening to me...
More soon, probably.

A pretty good Friday

Well, it was a half day off work, for one thing.  I went up early, not because I thought I might be late, but because I haven't had time for a potter for too long.  So I went to South Ken and I pottered.  I pottered about in the soon-to-be-no-more classical music shop, and I watched a woman spend £1138 on CDs.  Yes, over a thousand pounds.  Pity I'm too polite to ask, really...

I pottered in the Serpentine Gallery, but I wasn't all that inspired, I'm afraid.  I pottered in the Science Museum, but if they still have moon rocks, I couldn't find them. (Remind me to tell you about A Man in the Moon sometme soon).  And I pottered in the new South Foyer of the Albert Hall, where they have a proper shop, and a café and everything.

And then I went and queued up.  It was comforting to be back in the queue again - was it really 10 months?  I tried to blog from there - I managed it last year, but Blogger seems to have forgotten how to work with hand-held devices.  Then there was a deal of cnfusion about bag searches.  We have to have all bags larger than a briefcase searched now.  Fortunately, mine was deemed just small enough not to warrant it, but there was much muttering and mumbling, not least from the stewards, who are normally very cheerful and polite.  Still, it all sorted itself out in the end, and soon there was the familiar snaking, as the queue first contracts as everyone stands up, then expands as the recess in the steps gets ironed out.  The dry, if humid weather, and the general excitement of being back again seemed to produce a real buzz in the queue, and there was a real air of expectancy as we burst upward into the arena.  Now the Hall is finished, it is a truly spectacular place to be in an audience - what it must be like to play, I can only imagine.

The fountain was in place, but the inflatable snake, for some reason, was not.  Miraculously, there were no TV cameras in the arena, which made for a much less crowded experience, although the alternative, a precarious looking boom affair was a tad distracting at times, particularly when it seemed to be in imminent danger of decapitating the tuba player.  Anyway, a review is called for:

Prom 1 - 16 July 2004

The whole point of this evening is to hear the organ, but to be honest, just seeing it all cleaned, polished and properly opened up is quite enough treat for the senses.  The mirror is shining, the stops positively gleam, and for some reason, the surrounding area is trimmed with a kind of mottled blue instead of the traditional maroon.  This, it transpires, is Progress.

So, we wait with bated breath for the hissing and whooshing of the bellows, last heard drowning the old organ out entirely about 3 years ago.  But whooshing came there none.  Instead, crisp, clear, resonant sound issues forth, and it's rather a shame when the orchestra takes over for the fugue.  With most organ music, a little goes a long way, but Bach knew what he was about, and I'd have liked to have heard some of the more unusual settings.  Still, the final rumble was deeply impressive, arriving as it did simultaneously through the ears and the soles of the feet.

Even its best friend couldn't describe The Music Makers  as Elgar's finest work.  Rather too concerned with shoehorning in quotations from everything else he ever wrote, it seemed to me a patchy thing, which only really took off towards the end, when the soloist (who was superb) was soaring all over 'Nimrod'.  What kept it together, however, was some glorious singing.  The BBC Symphony Chorus are justly lauded - I've never seen them be anything other than impressive, and they really excelled in this.

As they did in the second half, albeit briefly, and slightly puzzlingly. The Planets is, I fear, rather on the verge of being hackneyed.  Which is a shame, for it's a splendid thing, with much to enjoy.  Therefore it was slightly worrying that the orchestra got off to a bit of a shaky start - Mars was a touch ragged to begin with, but all fears were misplaced.  As it progressed, the playing got better and better; Jupiter sounded fresh and new; Saturn sublime, and Neptune could not have been bettered.  At the end, the ethereal chorus drifted in - not sung by any of the singers on the stage, and I didn't look around for them, because it would have broken the spell.  I don't know how well it would have come across on TV, but the control as the voices faded and faded and faded was superb, and for once a Proms audience kept quiet until every last breath was done.

Quite wonderful, and an excellent omen for the rest of the season.

 

First Night nerves...

It's here at last.  My first First Night - I just had to hear the renovated organ, with its 9,999 pipes, and since it feels like an eternity since I was last in the queue, I'm kind of looking forward to it. There will, I'm sure, be a review afterwards; in the meantime, if you can get BBC2, look out for me in the Arena, won't you?

*exits, humming Bach...*

20 years? More like two or three, surely...

Friday, July 13th, 1984. Several hundred of us, dressed up as if we were real academics, parade around the McEwan Hall in Edinburgh, are invested with academic magic, and emerge, sheepishly, clutching our little red cardboard tubes. We had, I recall, a rather splendid evening the night before, we saw each other briefly on the day, and then we were gone, newly-qualified graduates (honours graduates!) all, off to be linguists or something else.

Something Else, mostly, I suspect. I remembered this anniversary about a week ago, but there has been no time to do anything about it since. Tonight, in a rare bout of peace, I tried to contact some of them. It's been a bit of a struggle, and so this is my final resort. Here is the roll of honour, in the hope that one or two of them might Google their name someday, and find us that way. Well, it worked for Ranoch Donald.

• Stephanie Markman


• G. M Anderson (Graeme)


• Laura Barnett


• Jacqueline C. Gulland


• R. Lickley (Robin)


• Janice Parkin


• Susan E. Sentance


• Catherine A. Urquhart


• Jaqueline M. Young


• Janet P. Hawkins


• Kirsty V. Jeffery


• Fiona Kennedy


• Fiona A. Lawrence


• Margaret Purcell


• R. M. Watt (who he?)



Also:
Linguistics with AI:

• H.I.Tobermann (Harald)


English Lang and Linguistics:

• Gillian Lindsay


• Valerie M Wilkie



Italian and Linguistics:

• Melissa M. Cudmore


• Marietta di Ciacca

Well, you never know. I raise a virtual glass to you all - wherever you may be. Maybe someone else is out there, remembering that day...

Elvish:

I've tried to read Lord of the Rings three times now. First as a teenager, when I got through it but it seemed to make no impression on me; then about 15 years ago, when a copy liberated from my former employer found its way on to my bookshelf. On that occasion, I read most of it, and the broad outlines of the story stayed with me, along with all those evocative names, some only half remembered.

Then I watched the first two films, and I know people who were much exercised by some of the liberties taken with the text. Fair enough, I thought, it's a film - you can't just put every word on the page into a film, no one would watch it. But I was intrigued. There were things I didn't remember, and I wondered how the dialogue of the books squared with the language of the films. So I rooted around in the roof, and I found my extraordinarily large copy, and I set out to read it properly this time.

There's no point in reviewing it, really, but here are a few passing thoughts:

• There is far too much poetry. Yes, I know most of them are songs, but we can't hear the music, so it's poetry. I'm not saying it's bad poetry, but there's too much of it.


• There's a difference between letting the reader flesh out the characters and not telling us anything about their physical appearance at all.


• Everyone has at least two names; some of them four or five. This is confusing when you are tired.


• I think I gave up before because the structure of the thing required me to keep too much information in my head at one time. Concurrent action really shouldn't be happening several hundred pages apart.


• I found the bookmark from the last time just past page 1000 - there was hardly any of it left, but I still gave up.


• The language is - well, interesting. I could survive a long time without reading about anything else which is carven, for instance.


• The maps are way, way too small. Headache-inducingly small. for the first time in my life, I seriously considered getting a magnifying glass to help me with my reading.


• But.


• But it's still an amazing experience.


• Having seen the films helped fix certain things in my mind, but Frodo doesn't look like that (although I think Bilbo does).


• Do I recommend it? Unhesitatingly. Is it the greatest book in the English language, or whatever? Nope. But I think it ought to be read nevertheless. It might help to take notes, though.

More Speed Cameras:

Apparently, these cameras are 'saving lives'. Not sure how you measure this, but I'm still highly sceptical.

Incidentally, I can't spell sceptical with a k, although I know a lot of people do. There's a psychological study to be done, I'm sure, on my spelling preferences (not that there are many of them). Anyway, that gives me a chance to mention Dr. Bob's Skeptical Quiz, which is always entertaining, frequently because Dr. Bob gets the questions wrong, or makes them slightly ambiguous.

There. That was like a proper weblog and everything, wasn't it?

WeatherPixie!

You might not have noticed, but if you ever want to know what the weather's like at Luton Airport, you can consult my WeatherPixie. Off to the left, and down a bit, if you can't see him.

Yes, Luton Airport is the closest I could get to where I live - about 15 miles or so, so it should be reasonably accurate. Tune in later today for some actual British summer, so I'm told.

Too fast...

I have a thing about speeding and speed limits, thanks to an accident I had many years ago, when I knocked down a schoolchild who ran out in front of me. Now, she was OK, and my car was repairable, but having duly noted the damage that was caused when I was travelling at around 25mph, I resolved always to obey speed limits in built up areas. Living in a village with narrow pavements has only reinforced that resolve, since I know exactly how dangerous it feels walking around with traffic zipping by two feet from your left ear.

However, I am much more ambivalent about speed limits on the open road. For instance, the speed limit on UK motorways is still what it was 40 years ago, and is roundly ignored. I actually have a sneaking feeling that if it was abolished, safety would improve, but no-one's going to take that particular risk. Nevertheless, in nearly 25 years of largely trouble-free driving, I like to think I have developed a pretty keen sense of what is safe and what is not, and I tend to drive a little faster than is legal if conditions allow. Take a week past Saturday, for example. I was running a little late, having been at the 'Tidy Tip' (it's the rubbish dump, really) and I needed to get to Luton to pick up some tiles, so I was probably trundling along a little faster than normal, southbound on the A5, just on the way in to Hockliffe. If you look at that link, you'll notice that the road is particularly straight, owing to it being the Roman Watling Street. It's also wide, and slopes gently downhill. The weather was perfect, and there was very little traffic. I could see probably getting on for 2 miles ahead, and there were no apparent dangers. I was driving at what I considered to be a safe speed. Unfortunately for me, there was a van with a camer in it at the bottom of the hill which took a slightly different view.

Yesterday I got home to discover I had been sent a Notice of Intention to Prosecute. Deep sigh. I can't really complain - I know the rules, and I was breaking them. It'll mean 3 points on my license and a small fine. After all these years, it is kind of annoying, though. And I wonder if all this technology mightn't be better employed somewhere where it might prevent accidents, rather than punish those driving safely in safe conditions. I know the police - sorry, the 'Safety Partnership' - would argue differently, but I see dangerous, often downright reckless, driving every day, and I don't ever see people getting 3 points for that. Oh well. You live and learn, I suppose.

Obsession:

I have a - deserved - reputation among certain of my online acquaintances for being obsessed with Mahler's Second Symphony. At times like this I plead guilty and point in mitigation to Gilbert Kaplan - he's way more obsessed with it than I am, although I must say that the idea of conducting it one day - perhaps not.

Recently, I found my old VHS copy of La Double Vie de Véronique, and it started this whole obsession thing off again. I have a copy of the soundtrack, because of the staggeringly brilliant 'concerto' by 'van den Budenmayr' which costs Weronika - no, I won't spoil it, it's a fabulous film. Anyway, I dug out the CD, and played the concerto track on repeat all the way to ework and all the way home again. It's fixed in my head, and if I had a piano to hand, I'd be picking out the spare, haunting melody every time I walked past. And I thought to myself that I hadn't had an obsession like that for a long time.

But I was wrong. Earlier this year, I bought myself the Randy Newman Songbook, and I thought I'd play it a few times, and then simply have it in the library for occasional inspiration. Wrong. Towards the end is one of the great achievements of this brilliant songwriter, The Great Nations of Europe (pardon the link, it's badly spelt, and probably full of pop-ups) and, having heard it once, I couldn't allow anything else to sully my ear for some time afterward. That, too, went on repeat until I'd learnt it by heart, and until it became part of my mental landscape - reading John Wilford's The Mapmakers was an exercise in hilarity thanks to Randy Newman.

And then, before that, it was Bartók. Having experienced a dramatic version of the third Piano Concerto last summer, I had to own it, and having owned it, I allowed myself to become consumed by it. It takes a bit less time than my drive home to listen to, so I delay putting it on until I'm at the traffic lights at Hunton Bridge, then if I get held up on the way, I simply repeat the final movement, sitting in the car on my drive if necessary so as not to miss the astonishing finale.

Actually, that's another thing, now I come to think of it - I can't bear to leave a piece of music unfinished. If I have to get out of the car, or otherwise interrupt my listening before a natural break in the music, I get most uncomfortable. Which is a tad inconvenient if you listen to a lot of Mahler...

OK, I admit it, I'm an obsessive kind of guy.

The rusty cables... 

The famous cable hut 

Thanks to those nice people at Hello (no, not the magazine), the promised pictures: firstly, a big pile of rusty undersea cable alongside the channel down to Porthcurno beach - all that's left of the global network. Secondly, the famous cable hut - this is where it all came ashore. Thirdly, the rather magnificent scenery at the top of the cliffs. Minack Theatre is on the next headland, and the little white pyramid marks where some of the earliest wireless experiments took place. 

OK, wrong...

I don't have two sets of comments. I'm a) confused, and b) going to stick with what I've got.

What happened?

I go off sick for a few days, and Blogger morphs into... kind of Blogger on steroids. Which is kind of dull for you, the general reader, since you can't see any of the changes, but this is very strange for me.

It appears that Blogger now offers comments, which is going to get confusing, since I had already organised my own. Will I be able to merge them? Do I want to?

I was going to post something, but now I'm just going to potter about in here instead.

EDIT: A little tinkering, and I may now have two sets of comments. This has been done deliberately to confuse you.

*bounces onstage* I return!

Yes, well.

Something has been keeping the creative juices bottled up this past month or so;don't ask me what. Since I'd rather write nothing than post any old rubbish, this space has been left intentionally blank all this time. But in the last couple of days, I seem to have had an outpouring of determination to do something about the MC novel - I think I know how it should start now, given that the first version was never intended to be a full-length story.

Also, the Proms season is available for perusal, which means it's not winter any more, hurrah! No-one's told the weather yet, but never mind. (nat, if you're out there; it's a whole season of Czech music... *tempt, tempt*) More Prommery soon.

The only thing I've been meaning to blog for nearly a month was my zoom around Cornwall at Eastertime. Summary: cool grey day spent at Tate St Ives (every third shop in St Ives sells Cornish Pasties; yes I did, and very nice they were too), Cape Cornwall, Lands End (better than you'd think) and one other place; gloriously warm sunny day spent near Porthcurno traipsing the Coastal Path, clambering down into one or two coves and driving home via Launceston, which was as delightful as I remembered, but closed owing to it being Good Friday.

The one other place was a delightful surprise. On the way to Lands End, I saw a sign for 'Wartime Museum'. It was pointing down the road to Minack, where I had intended to go anyway, so I thought I'd give it a try. The road to Minack goes through Porthcurno, and if you follow the nice new blue signs, takes you to see 'The Victorian Internet'. I parked and wandered up, all the while dimly remembering something I'd seen on some television programme. Something about undersea telegraph cables. My dim rememberings turned out to be something extraordinary. Drilled directly into the granite cliff are two wartime tunnels, inside which is now the Telegraph Museum, detailing the history of cable (and later wireless) telegraphy. For it was here that the first ever undersea telegraph cable came ashore, and it was here until about 10 years ago that most of them still did. It's a fascinating place, evocative and informative at once. Post-museum, I took a stroll down to the beach, where the original cable hut is still in place. As you leave the environs of the museum, you pass a large pile of rusting cable. These are the last remnants of the mighty cables which ran all the way to New Zealand at one time. I have photos; perhaps my inspiration will stretch to posting a couple...