A bit on the ick side, but all things considered, quite an acceptable session. Tone quality still seems OK, but I have trouble with low and very high notes. Low range used to be my best. Middle range doing well. By the end of 15 minutes though (some scales and arpeggios, a few of the easier Kohler studies) my double-jointed little finger got stuck. Need to work on breath control too. Wish I had my Louis Moyse books with me, but I suspect they’re buried in the storage place in Sydney. Might see if Ealing Library can help…

Feels good to be playing again though. Feeling a glimmer of real-musician-ship there.

Tagged with: music | Add a comment

Set up automated workflows for connecting to the music server on login (don’t know why it won’t make an alias to a Samba connection) and for resizing an image, then setting it as the desktop image – maybe this way I’ll update my desktop a little more often if I don’t have to bother opening Photoshop!

Tagged with: experimenting, gtd, learning, organisation | Add a comment

What, sleeping’s not creative??!

Tagged with: relaxing | Add a comment

Celebrating his cousin Alex’s 40th birthday, and the birth of Alex’s 3rd daughter along with rels from Australia and other bits of UK family. We had dinner at The Grange pub in Ealing – VERY good food. I had the lamb burger, which was excellent – tasty and tender. And far too much wine. Whoops.

Tagged with: friends, relaxing | Add a comment

And actually – miraculously – managed to fit everything in the car. Where we’ll put it in the London house is quite another matter.

Tagged with: organisation | Add a comment

Went to the Shakespeare pub in Coalport with a couple of djeli’s work friends. AMAZING goat’s cheese & tomato tartlet for entree, followed by a very nice chicken in plum sauce. Afterwards, we staggered over the Severn for a little taste of the Irish music night at the Boat and a drink.

Tagged with: friends, music, travel | Add a comment

Went to the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre to see their mammoth, then to the Museum of the Gorge. Both pretty good. I think the Shropshire Hills one was probably a bit more interesting. It had a fair bit on the geology and earlier history of the area. And, of course, a mammoth!

Tagged with: exhibition, exploration, travel | Add a comment

We didn’t actually intend to go to the top – we sort of expected that at some point the track would do a sharp turn straight up the hill at which point we’d say in unison “bugger that, I’m not a mountain goat!” and turn around, but it didn’t, it just kept winding and climbing, but a good track and while tiring and not many moments of relenting, it wasn’t a hard path to follow, so by the time we’d got halfway it seemed downright wussy to turn around, so to the top we went… where we found an absolute gale blowing, plus two work friends of djelibeybi’s who we promptly invited to dine with us at the Shakespeare pub tomorrow night. The view would have been spectacular… if the entire country hadn’t been covered in mist. The wind truly was spectacular. At one point I had to cling to the trig marker while djeli told me all about how it worked.

Tagged with: travel, walking | Add a comment

Today we visited Boscobel House and the Royal Oak (yes, the one Charles II hid in from the Parliamentarian troops, although what’s there now is actually a descendent of the original tree. You can even buy your own Royal Oak sapling! Ah, the initiative of English Heritage ) and then went on to Moseley Old Hall in Staffordshire, which is where he went after leaving Boscobel. Both were totally fascinating. And wonderful to see proper priest’s holes!

Tagged with: exploration, learning, travel | Add a comment

We’d been meaning to go to Wales but couldn’t work out where we wanted to go, so in the end we went to Stokesay Castle, an impressive early fortified manor in fabulous condition, and then sort of made things up as we went along – Clun Castle, Dolforwyn Castle, and then to Powis Castle which unfortunately was closed, but we’ve made a note that we definitely want to go back there. At Powis, a large herd of red deer watched us drive slowly up the driveway, and then a herd of smaller (possibly fallow) deer were on the hillside as we walked back to the car. I stalked them gently with my camera, and when djeli got bored and started to drive down towards me, the sound of the car evidently startled a great red stag. Absolutely stunningly gorgeous. So beautiful. We almost ran over a pheasant leaving the grounds, but fortunately he flopped out of the way in time. Came home and played Carcassonne The Castle in the evening, just to continue the theme. I thrashed djeli soundly, both times

Tagged with: photography, travel | Add a comment