I’ve not been trying to do anything on the quintet the last few days – it was freaking me out a little and my brain was feeling fried with all the socialising I’ve had to do, so I just focused on enjoying my parents for a few days and the piece lie quietly. Yesterday, though, I sent the parental units off to the Isle of Wight for a few days, so today I really had no more excuses so I (eventually) made myself sit down and I seem to have come up with some notes – just a small figure, based on falling parallel 7ths, which I think must be in retaliation against all the counterpoint exercises I’ve done. Mr Fux would be aghast. It’s not much, but it feels like it could be a proper start. I do think I need to get away from the piano as soon as possible – it’s messing with my sound-world for this piece and the practicalities of working at the piano when there are people in the house (and a mother playing it every day) are… flawed, so I’m thinking I might take what I’ve got and go straight into Finale with it. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

And some news today – the London New Wind Festival are thinking of playing my piece Deconstruct: Point, line, plane again! And they want me to be on a composer panel before the performance, which should be… interesting. Haven’t done one of those before. As a musicologist, yes, but not as a composer. Eek!

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With parents gone to the Isle of Wight and Djeli home with man-flu, I decided to take a mental duvet-day myself. Watched TV (finally saw An American Werewolf in London), tended to Djeli’s needs for lemonade and Lemsip, went to my physio appointment and knitted a bit. The hat’s nearly complete now but, alas, I have run out of yarn with a mere 5 very short rows to go, so it’s on hold now till I can go out and buy a little more.

Oh! And I also made the Buttermilk Oaten Bread out of my new Teatime Baking cookbook. Verdict: Excellent flavour, but oven is totally mad. Before it burnt everything. This time it never even reached the temperature on the dial so the loaves didn’t cook through properly and ended up a little doughy. Flavour really good though, so they’re definitely worth another try.

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Low-achievement day today – I went to the dentist for a check-up and to see what’s going on with this tiny abcess I’ve had on my gum, coming and going in the same spot for about a year and a half. Last time she gave me antibiotics which didn’t really do anything, and this time *sigh* she did a full-mouth x-ray and discovered that a filling my Australian dentist did was drilled too close to the nerve, so it’s irritating the nerve which is causing the abcess. So I need root canal. *waaah!* On the plus side, there’s nothing actually wrong with my teeth, which is kind of comforting. Anyway, the whole experience kind of put me in a little grey hole. So I baked brownies for a lovely friend who my parents are meeting up with while they’re away. Hope they turned out OK. This oven’s really quite insane…

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And what’s more, accidentally bought his’n'hers cookbooks. WH Smith were having a sale, you see, so Djelibeybi bought John Torode’s Chicken book and I picked up the National Trust’s Teatime Baking Book, which I’ve had my eye on for some time. LOVE cookbooks. Just a little more than is healthy for shelf space.

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Having finished my great-aunt’s scarf, today I embarked upon a new knitting project – a quick blue beanie to go with my blue or purple scarf.

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But also a knitting day, a baking day, a piano-and-flute-playing day, a listening day and a composing day. Quite a productive day, I guess! My great-aunt’s scarf is about 6 rows off being finished. I am determined to complete it tonight – it looks lovely but I’m SO BORED of it. Really just excruciatingly dull. I have a re-moralising hat at the ready as my next knitting project. I baked a new recipe – oat biscuits from Tessa Kiros’s Apples for Jam – very easy, very tasty and while not strictly healthy, there’s a much more sensible fibre/sugar/fat ratio than other biscuits. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

For most of the day though, I’ve been reading and listening. I started out while the mother was practicing in my study by occupying the loungeroom, putting on the Bax Symphony No. 4 and indulging in more of The Rest Is Noise. Then I got a little distracted after which I moved into the study and put on Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass while alternately doing a little knitting and reading some more of the Morton Feldman writings. I was going to dive in to John Cage’s Silence while listening to Strauss’s Salome, but I started taking notes on the Feldman and that ended up taking the whole of the chunk of the opera I was able to listen to before Spotify went mad and then my iPod decided it had had enough and it was time for a nap. I was most delightfully surprised by the Strauss. My mother so dislikes him that I’ve sort of grown up with this ingrained “Strauss bad – Debussy good” approach, but I really liked it – really meaty harmonies. Would be pretty impressive live, I’d imagine. I’d settle for a recording without buffering gaps though…

In the late afternoon I emerged from my burrow to find that parents had vanished, so I took advantage of the silence and did some composing. Nothing fabulous, and nothing string-quintetty, but the notes I had from earlier were so determined to be a piano piece that I figured it would be a good thing to at least start seeing what sort of piano piece they wanted to be. Any composing is definitely better than no composing!

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I’ve been having trouble with this wretched quintet – I don’t really know where to start with it and my brain’s feeling rather fried from too much social interaction, so I figured I might throw some random stuff at it and see if anything sticks. I borrowed some books from Ealing Library on Wednesday, so I started reading one of those – a history of the string quartet in the morning, then went out to Victoria Library with parents in tow and borrowed a bunch of stuff from Westminster Music Library, so I started in on one of them – Give My Regards To Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman – on the way home and for a little after I got home. And then there was the obligatory next chapter of Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise which I’m having a lot of trouble keeping away from. I think it all did some good at any rate, because I started to form a nebulous sort of an idea which may or may not work as a way of generating base material, but I’m really at the point where any idea is a cause for celebration right now, so I’m chalking it up as a win.

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I don’t seem to have achieved a huge amount today. Between sleeping badly, getting up late, clonking myself on the head with the kitchen cupboard which resulted in intense wooziness, then accompanying my Da to the dentist and a long and lovely walk home, followed by a much needed nap, there wasn’t a lot of time left, but the walk was indeed lovely – the heavens decided to wait to open until we’d decided to hop on the bus for the last bit, the ankle stood up pretty well to it, I did 20 minutes on the Wii Fit in the morning (just the balance games – trying to do a little bit each day to see if it helps to strengthen the ankle), made my Da a chocolate ripple cake and have nearly finished (I’m pretty sure this time) the scarf for my Great-Aunt which now flows down off my lap and keeps my ankles warm while I’m knitting it.

And I’ve had a fresh stab at trying to generate some ideas for this quintet. Not terribly successful, although the opening idea might end up in it, but it’s more of a texture than a melodic germ. I know it’ll come eventually, but it’s just taking its own sweet time which always freaks me out a little. Contemplating heading into town and picking up the score of the Martinu Sextet that I didn’t bring home the other day – possibly a little score-reading will spark some ideas???? Sort of feel I’m clutching at straws though… Must remain calm…

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But with unfortunate, although at least conclusive results – the doodles I have don’t want to be a string quintet – I think they have aspirations of being a piano piece. So it’s back to the drawing board again.

I finished reading John Adams’ autobiography on Sunday so started in on Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise. Great stuff so far. It’s actually making me want to listen to Strauss… not Mahler though

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And good golly, it’s been a long time since we just hung out together on our own. Parents went off to see the London Wetlands Centre (and gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up – must get there sometime) and I did some doodling about trying to make the notes I have turn into a proper opening for the quintet (fail) then Djeli and I sauntered into town to inspect microwaves. We didn’t actually buy anything, but we came away with knowledge and a ball of wool for me to knit myself a therapeutic hat with (Auntie Madge’s Wisp scarf is driving me insane – the point at which I thought I’d nearly finished turned out to only be halfway there so I need something different to knit – a quick win – before I start in on my mother’s scarf which is a chunky-weight chenille version of the Wisp pattern). Then Djeli made his fantastic shepherd’s pie for us for dinner and we all watched My Family and Other Animals and then Slumdog Millionaire. All in all, a tip-top day

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