Who needs 'The Archers'?

There are some peculiar people in this world.  I realise this may come as a bit of a shock to you, for which I apologise.  I advise a cup of tea and a bit of cake to steady the nerves.  It is a panacea that cures pretty much all ills.  I have drunk a LOT of tea and eaten my bodyweight in cake over the last few days and now feel (and look) as stately as a galleon.

Loyal readers of my increasingly sporadic scribblings will be aware that I have an allotment.   I used to have one in the 1990s but gave it up after a couple of years because it was quite a way from my flat at the time, and I was working full time and had a social life.  Cue 20 years later, a different husband, a different town, no job and no social life, and I decided I wanted to revisit growing my own veggies and found there was a large 4-acre allotment site no more than 5 mins walk from my house.  So I put my name down for a plot and, within a few months, was allocated one.  I started a blog about it - From Weeds to Seeds - where I posted about starting the plot from scratch, what I planted, a bit of local history, interacting with the foxes and discovering a buried cache of weird religious photographs.

If you can be arsed to head on over there, you'll see that the last posting on that blog is in February this year, at the beginning of the season.  This was because I was beginning to fall out of  love with the allotment.  I'd been there since the beginning of 2008 so this year would be my fourth season.  I do it all myself which is both a blessing and a curse.  It's nice to have a space outside that is my own, where I can sit on my green plastic garden chair outside my little shed and watch the birds wheeling in the enormous sky while I think my inconsequential little thoughts.  But also because I'm female and naturally lack a great deal of physical strength, as well as having a bit of a rubbish back that will dislocate parts of itself if I, for instance, have the audacity to pull a shopping trolley behind me, I find the necessary heavy digging to be difficult.  I'm not whinging about it, it's just the way it is.

So, to be honest, I found myself last year doing less and less down there, and began to feel that the allotment was becoming more of a burden than a pleasure.  I started to give serious thought to giving it up, even though we have both hugely enjoyed eating the veggies and fruit that I've managed to produce over the years.  And when I remembered that, I started thinking that maybe I should hang on to the plot after all.  But then I thought of the back problems I'd suffered and how disheartening it is to spend hours working there only for it to look as if you've not even touched it and I wanted to give it up again.  And then I started thinking about the economic climate and how Western civilisation looks like it's about to crumble and that, perhaps, it might just be sensible to hold onto the plot after all so that, if necessary, we would have food to eat (we like to be prepared in our house!  And we do possess a fine sense of impending catastrophe....).  I was, as you can see, oscillating wildly from one perspective to another.  Wanting to give it up but not give it up.  A conundrum, if you will.

So, as of last week, I'd grudgingly decided that I might as well give the plot one more year and see how I felt after that.  I went down there - I'd not been for about a month or so - in order to tidy the plot a bit, dismantle the bamboo pole wigwams, pull up the sweetcorn plants and bolted lettuces, that sort of thing, and start planning where to lay the black weed-suppressant fabric that I bung down over the winter and which makes spring weeding that much easier.  I felt quite good about it, especially as I noticed that quite a few other plots on the site were just as overgrown and tatty as mine had got (they always get grotty at this time of year anyway).

Then, last Friday, I received a letter in the post, from the Allotment Committee, basically telling me to 'vacate or cultivate', as following a recent inspection mine wasn't up to standard and that I had a month to sort it out or they would take it away from me and give it to someone on the waiting list.

Blimey.

And then I thought about it and decided it was very odd.  The annual inspection of all the plots takes place in June or July and if anyone's plot is not up to standard, then a letter is sent out shortly afterwards.  I received no letter in the summer and had been quite confident at the time that the plot would be okay, as I had put a lot of hours into tarting it up for the inspection.  I don't like the fact that there's an inspection as I don't particularly like being judged, but do understand the need for it - if you're not actively cultivating your plot then it'll grow weeds that will set seed all over the rest of the site, onto others' plots, and if there's a waiting list it's unfair to those on it if you can't be bothered to do something with yours so you might as well free it up.  There's also the not inconsiderable point that the local council is always on the lookout for building development sites and we know for a fact that they'd love to get their hands on our site - they were fended off successfully a few years ago.  A 4 acre site in greenbelt Surrey would be worth an absolute fortune.  By not actively using your plot, you're playing into their hands and once the site has gone, it will never come back again.

But this letter read as if there had been a second, later, inspection, one that no-one had known about.  And I had been judged and found wanting.  I was pretty pissed off about this but grudgingly accepted that I had let the plot slip post-inspection, as I was thinking of giving it up anyway, so, obviously, I must have failed.  I decided, then, that I would give it up after all, especially now after receiving this damning letter.  Yes, I was feeling a bit flouncy about it.

The letter said that I could clear the plot of whatever plants I wanted to, and remove any structures, so I contacted my brother (who has a veg plot in his garden) and told him I was giving up the plot and did he want my fruit bushes and also my shed?  He most certainly did.

My next port of call was to drop an email to the steward of my half of the site and let her know that I'd received the letter and was confirming that I would be giving up the plot, and that the site would be cleared as soon as possible, but bearing in mind that my subs were paid up until February 2012, could it be confirmed that I would have until then to do the work, rather than the 28 days as stated in the letter?

This is where this long rambling blog post starts to get interesting.

The steward I contacted replied by email a few days later to all the plot-holders saying that several people had received the same letter, including - bizarrely - herself.  She said that even though the letter had come out on official notepaper, it had not been officially sanctioned by the committee who had, in fact, known nothing about it at all!  There had been no second  inspection (the reason it's done in the summer is because that's when the plots will naturally look their best and most productive - everyone knows they look rubbish at this time of year) and there currently isn't a waiting list for a plot.  And my plot had passed the summer inspection, as I thought it had.  It transpires that someone else - we'll call him H - on the site had taken it upon himself to perform his own, personal, inspection of everyone's plot and then managed to get the letters sent out.

The poor steward that I had emailed had been contacted by a load of extremely pissed-off people who had, rightly, got the hump about the letters and now she'd been burdened with having to do a lot of fire-fighting that was not of her - or the committee's - making!  I've been informed that I can ignore the letter completely.

How bizarre.  And just how power-crazed do you have to be to do that sort of thing?  And to what purpose?  If everyone that he wrote to decided to leave their plot, and there's no waiting list, then the site's just going to get more and more overgrown.  Is there some kind of vendetta going on here?  I have no idea.  I've only spoken to him a couple of times - a brief chat, nothing more, and he seemed perfectly affable at the time.  But obviously something about me has annoyed him - could it be my pink hair?  Who knows?

But I've now swung my decision completely the other way.  I'm most definitely NOT giving up my plot now, I refuse to give some would-be tin-pot dictator the satisfaction!  I've had to apologise to my brother, though, as I'm keeping my shed and plants now, but I'll get some fruit bushes for them next spring instead, some new ones, as part of their christmas present.

Who needs The Archers for agricultural-based soap opera?  Just get yourself an allotment in a middle-class, affluent Surrey town!

Oh, get a grip, willya?

Warning - this is a female post, about female problems.

The average age for menopause in the UK is apparently either 51 or 52 depending on who you read.  I am 48 1/2.  I've had an 'interesting' relationship with all things reproductive since the age of 12 when it all kicked off.  My cycles have varied in length wildly over the years.  I only managed to get pregnant 'normally' (although accidentally) once but it didn't stick.  And then, when I actually did want to get pregnant, I couldn't do it without medical intervention and they also didn't want to stick.  Hey ho.

A few years ago, my rather wonderful chiropractor/Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor that I've seen for 20 years suggested that I start using progesterone cream.  I think I'd probably told him that I was starting to get some mild hot flushes and my periods were getting painful, as painful as they'd been when I was in my 20s.  The cream has given me cycles as regular as clockwork, which is astonishing.  I can mark 26 days on my calendar now and know that Aunt Flo will arrive exactly within a 24 hour period.  I still get the odd hot flush but they've always been pretty mild, I'm certainly not getting dreadful night sweats or anything like that, for which I'm grateful as they sound awful.  So the cream has helped, but Aunt Flo is still visiting regularly, every month.  Some months a bit heavier than others, but she always arrives.  I wonder how long it will be before she stops because, frankly, I can't wait.

All this I have, of course, expected but the one symptom that has caught me out is the emotional one.  I'm not a cryer. Never have been.  I can vividly remember waaaay back when I was 11 or 12, maybe 13, deciding that only weak people cried, it was girly and pathetic and I was not going to do it.  Ever.  No-one would ever see me cry.  And I've stuck to that astonishingly well over the decades since.  I rarely feel the need to cry, I hardly ever get that emotionally upset and, if I do, then I'll do my crying in the shower or the bath where I can be left in peace and no-one can witness it.

I'm not really sure what this says about me.  I'm sure some psychiatrist will see me as being too in control of my emotions, and that it's a sign of me building a big protective wall around me.  I'm sure there's more than an element of truth in that.  You let people in emotionally, you usually get hurt, and that's painful.  This might explain why I have very few friends in real life - people I would call 'proper' friends, not just acquaintances - and only a handful of boyfriends over the years.  The less people you get really close to, the less likely they are to fuck you over.

The side effect of this is, of course, loneliness.  Which is a whole other post in itself and not what I wanted to talk about.

What I wanted to talk about was the unexpected emotional upheaval of the menopause.  Boy, has that ever caught me out.  I remember when I was going through my IVF cycles in the late 90s that, in each cycle, there was always at least one day when I would find myself utterly bereft and prostrate with sadness and grief.  I would dehydrate myself with crying.  The emotional pain was overwhelming and, needless to say, deeply unwelcome.  I can even remember being unable to go into work on one of these days because I literally could not control myself and stop sobbing.  It was dreadful.  The next day, though, I'd wake up, feel fine and think to myself 'what the fuck was that all about, then?'  When we stopped doing the IVFs, those weird emotional days stopped.

And now they're bloody back.  Over about the last year, in each month, I've had at least one day when I've felt unbearably sad, and have ended up going through half a box of tissues with crying so much.  I hate it.  And then it dawned on me that it was a symptom of the menopause.  I remembered those days during the IVFs and realised they came during the part of the cycle when the doctors put you into an artificial menopause.  So that was obviously what was going to happen to me when I hit menopause for real.  And it has come to pass.  And I wish it would carrying on passing and go by me completely.

This time round, though, it's not actually as bad as the IVF crying days but it's equally as unwelcome.  And my trigger is anything to do with animals.  I can watch any number of starving kids in Africa adverts and they do nothing, but the cruelty to animals ones?  Woah.  Also those videos where humans are reunited with lost pets, or animals they used to care for years ago (like the lion one - you know the one I mean - or the one I saw this morning which started this off, where a grown gorilla meets up again with the guy who looked after him when he was little and he remembers him and hugs him so hard he won't let him go and oh god, where are the tissues....?)

Jesus.  See what I mean.  I can't see the screen through the haze of tears. Bloody hell.  And don't get me started on what it's going to be like when we have to say goodbye to Sylvester, our cat and  my constant companion for the last 13 years or so.  See, I start to think about all this, my fingers and hands do this bizarre tingling thing, and the tears start pouring down my face in some sort of pre-emptive grief.  It's utterly, utterly ridiculous and I feel so foolish.  Plus I know I'll wake up tomorrow and will feel perfectly stable again and wonder what the hell that was all about.

Yes, as you might have guessed, today is one of 'those' days.  I need to find something distracting to do, rather than just sit here and wallow in my misery, and I will in a minute or so.  There's washing needs to be done but, more likely, a piano that also needs playing.  But I was wondering, does anyone know how long this will go on for?  Have any of my lovely readers (if I still have any) been through this and, if so, how did they cope?

Quick catch up

Wotcha all.  How's tricks?  We're all well at Jones Towers, October has been rolling on apace and the weather has been gorgeous, hasn't it?  It's been a fantastic autumn so far, lots of blue, blue skies, warm sunshine and crunchy yellow leaves on the ground.

I harvested the half dozen or so Butternut Squashes that I managed to grow this year at the allotment.  I grew 13 last year and lost the lot to an early frost so this year I was determined not to make the same mistake.  A ground frost was predicted last Wednesday so I decided to pick them.  And now, of course, it's sunny and warm again but, you know what?  if I'd left them, we would most likely be sitting in snow drifts 30 feet deep!  Oh well, never mind.  They were mostly ripe - although varying in size from acceptable to pretty bloody small - and are finishing off sitting in the sunshine on my kitchen windowsill.

I'm giving serious consideration to jacking in the allotment.  There's a few reasons really.  One is that it's bloody hard work but I knew that going in.  Another is that every year we all get judged by the committee.  I hate this.  It's probably not as drastic as I make out, in that all the committee members need to see is that you're actually working the plot and that it hasn't gone entirely to seed and become weed-bound, but I can't help getting quite stressed out about it in the weeks leading up to the end of June.  And I'm quite a lazy person - actually, that's not strictly true.  I'm not good at being consistent in how much I do - I'll put in vast amounts of effort and then not do anything for ages, then I'll do vast amounts again.  It's also the way I do my housework.  I can literally not see the piles of clutter and dustbunnies for weeks, then suddenly I'll have a day when I go mental and CLEAN ALL THE THINGS, then don't touch them again for weeks and am genuinely surprised that they haven't stayed clean on their own in the interim.  I really like the idea of just doing 15 minutes a day but that would mean I'd have to be consistent.  I'd be very good at doing it for a few days on the trot then, one morning, I'd wake up and think 'fuck that, I'll do it later' and that would be it.  I know my natural inability to do housework and keep surfaces clear drives TLH potty but, you know, I've always been like that.  There's some stuff in this life that I'm pretty good at but housework is not one of them.  Sorry.

But I've digressed, haven't I?  Back to the allotment.  I don't get any help doing the work at the allotment.  That's okay.  I don't like doing housework, my significant other doesn't like doing gardening.  But the allotment is big and I could really do with a hand every few weeks.  Frankly it's too big for me but I really don't want to give up half of it - I want it all to myself.  So, a conundrum.  Suggesting asking friends to help would be greeted with hollow laughter - I don't have that many real-life friends and those that I do all work full-time and have large families to look after.  And they hate gardening too. 

Finally, the allotment isn't in my back garden.  It's 5 minutes walk down the road.  And even that's too far sometimes.  If it was in my garden then I'd potter around in it on and off during the day - 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there.  If I wanted to I could go out to water in my dressing gown.  And no-one would get all judgy about it.

But I do like the actual act of growing things, planting the seeds and (hopefully) eating the produce.  *sigh*.  I've got until February to decide what to do.

So, while I've been ignoring the allotment, what else has occupied my time?  Playing the piano!!!  I'm having a ball and have, frankly, astonished myself with what I actually remember, having not played the damn thing for 35-odd years.

One of the really lovely things about it is that I seem to have managed to impress TLH and, believe me, when you've been together for 17 years, there's not much that impresses anymore. I know he'd like to learn as well but, as is the way with human nature, doesn't really fancy doing it the hard way and having lessons to learn from scratch - he'd much rather just sit at the keyboard and be able to play (wouldn't we all?) but, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.  Still, I'm starting to teach him how to play Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 1, little by little, and he's picked up the first few bars of the right hand melody quickly enough so it shouldn't be long before I teach him the left hand bass line and he has a go at putting them together.

For those that don't know, this is Gnossienne No. 1 - it's a fairly easy piece to learn, there's a lot of repetition of the same chords and the right hand only plays the melody line with no chords at all - it's a very pleasing piece to both listen to and play and only took me a couple of weeks to get to grips with:

I'm now learning Gymnopedie no. 1, which is the famous one that everyone knows, and also another Gnossienne, no. 3 this time, which I think sounds even more mysterious, ethereal and somehow melancholy but also uplifting.  I think I like it even more than Gnossienne No. 1:

Also, I'm relearning a piece I was starting to learn back when I was 14 when I decided I didn't want to play anymore.  It's a fairly standard Grade 5 piece called 'To a Wild Rose' by Edward MacDowell and it's really quite cheesily sentimental and nostalgic but rather satisfying:

The piano is set up in the dining room bit of our living room so it's easy for me to walk past it and 'just sit down for 10 minutes' which turns into 2 hours and means the washing's still not done and the dishwasher's still not loaded but, hey, I can now play that bit that was foxing me yesterday! Win!   So, yeah, a massive time-sponge at the moment but I'm loving it so much that I don't care.

We also went to the Guildford Civic again last night to catch another orchestra on tour.  This time it was the Czech National Symphony Orchestra playing some Dvorak and Brahms.  Soloists were Nicola Benedetti on violin and Leonard Elschenbroich on cello. 

I'll be honest, both TLH and I were a little disappointed.  I think we were spoiled by the superb Moscow Philharmonic earlier this month with their spectacular violin soloist.  This orchestra was smaller and seemed a little - how to describe it? - lacklustre?  Just short of sparkling?  Dunno.  The Dvorak they played was fine and lovely, a couple of Slavonic dances to start with, and they finished with the New World Symphony which you would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by, but it was the middle thing that let it down a bit, which is a shame, because it was a Concerto for Violin and Cello by Brahms.

I don't think I care all that much for Brahms, and I didn't particularly care for this piece after nearly falling asleep in it.  Admittedly the hall was very hot and I'd been awake quite early, but there didn't seem to be much going on to hold my attention.  It was like a wave of warm, lush strings were washing over me which was all very nice, I suppose, but not terribly exciting.  Some of the entrances by the woodwind section were a bit ragged as well.  And I've no doubt that Ms Benedetti on her violin and Mr Elschenbroich on his cello were virtuosi, but they were both kind of lost in the piece.  It didn't really do either of them any favours and didn't make either of them stand out.  A crying shame really.  I think a better piece could have been chosen if they absolutely had to play together.  Even better would have been to have them play a showy-offy piece each, something that could have showcased their individual talents.  Oh well, never mind.  It was very interesting to be able to compare orchestras though.  And there were more people in the audience this time, which was good to see although I did notice that they didn't give a standing ovation this time (unlike the ovation and 3 encores for the Moscow lot), so perhaps we weren't the only ones who thought 'hmm, 8 out of 10.  Must do better'.

The next orchestra we'll be seeing in this season is the Russian State Philharmonic on 8 February who'll be playing the wonderful 'Masquerade Suite' by Khachaturian, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2.  Let's hope they bring their A game.

Last night's gig

Guildford, the nearest big town to where I live, has a new civic hall.  The old civic hall was closed ages ago now and eventually knocked down and rebuilt.  I spent a lot of time in my youth in the old civic hall.  It was on the gig circuit so in the 70s and 80s everyone came to play there.  I saw (in no particular order) Dr Feelgood, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, Lene Lovich, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cramps, The Police, Bauhaus, Toyah, The Jam, The Stranglers, The Vapors - I'm sure there are others but I can't remember.  The Civic was a 40 minute bus ride from where I lived then, and it meant I got to see all these great bands without having the bother and expense of getting on a train up to London and then trying to get home again when the last bus had already left.

 The old Civic Hall

But the building was getting on a bit and so needed to be replaced.  This was never going to be a quick and easy thing, not when the Good Burghers of Guildford are involved.  There would be wranglings over funding and size and parking, and so it came to pass. I think it's been at least 10 years since it was last open.

The new Guildford Civic main entrance, seen from London Road

Side exits, York Road side

Foyer

The new Civic Hall finally opened last week.  I have to say, it is much nicer than the old one, but then that wouldn't be difficult.  They have, though, given it the god-awful name of 'GLive', which sounds like a boyband to me.  What's wrong with 'Guildford Civic Hall'? It's succinct and accurate, and anyone who's from around these parts knows exactly what you're talking about.  But 'GLive'?  Oh well.

So now they have to fill it with events that people actually want to go to.  The initial programme was released and I have to say that my heart sank a little when it appeared to be full of the same sort of things that every suburban hall has on these days - some 'psychic', 60s bands touring to up their pensions, military bands, yet another touring production of Blood Brothers, an evening with a couple of football pundits, bloody Jim bloody Davidson - stuff that you can see in Woking or Aldershot, should you so wish.  I'm sure this kind of stuff floats some folks' boats, but not mine.  They are, however, putting on some decent stand up comedians (and I'm not including bloody Jim bloody Davidson in that, obv.) - Stephen Merchant, Jimmy Carr, Mickey Flanagan, Ed Byrne - so that's good, but where were the rock/pop/alternative bands?  It seems I wasn't the only person with these questions and there was a bit of a correspondence about it in the letters pages of the local rag.  To be fair, the manager did reply and say that as the Civic had been off the circuit for so many years now, it was going to be a while before the rest of the world realised it was open for business again and it started being included as a tour venue.  Which I suppose is fair enough really.  At least they've now got the Kaiser Chiefs coming next year, which should be loud and energetic (God, I'm starting to sound like an "old person").

But what I have been thrilled about is the classical music offerings.  I've been wanting to go and see some big professional orchestras play for quite a while now, but for us we'd have to go up to That London.  And sometimes that just seems like a lot of faff, not to mention cost.  The South Bank is the nearest, most direct, decent classical venue for us but we'd still have to add at least 2 hours travelling time (hour there, hour back) plus the cost of the train tickets (best part of about £30) to the cost of the performance tickets, plus drinks and food when you get there and you're looking at little change back from a hundred quid.  I may not be on my uppers but even that's pricey to me.  The new Civic (I refuse to call it GLive - sorry) is 15 mins drive and tickets start at £19.50.  That's about as full of win as it can get, in my book.

So I've been booking tickets to go to their International Orchestral Concert Season, starting with last night's performance by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.  Inside the hall is as impressive as the outside:



We were sat right at the very back - where the cheapest seats are.  I figured that, as it was an orchestra rather than a play or a comedian, it wouldn't be essential to see the faces of the performers close up - it's the sound that's important, so we were in the second to back row.

As you can see, the MPO is a big orchestra.  I tried counting the players and there are at least 80, which is a hell of a lot of kit to organise and ship and insure.  The logistics must be incredible.  They played 3...um...things?  I don't know what you call them.  'Pieces by 3 different composers' I suppose is better. 

The first thing they played was Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet Suite, which you'll know.  Here, listen to this youtube video, carry on past the two big opening discordant bits, and you'll get to something you recognise:

There, see, you know it, didn't you?  I personally prefer the next bit after that, with the light, shimmering strings, it always makes me well up.  Interestingly, it wasn't until I was looking for a suitable YouTube vid to show you that I discovered that Prokofiev used to be the conductor for the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, so it's fitting they should play his stuff.

Then they played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major with Nikita Boriso-Glebsky as soloist.  He'd just started playing and after a few minutes I thought to myself "Wow, this sounds a bit like the theme to 'The Right Stuff'".  And it was!  'The Right Stuff' is one of my all time favourite films of all time, and the bit that always made me cry was when the Mercury Seven emerge from a hanger in their silver space suits, in a row, walking in slow motion, and the impossibly heroic music swells [it's the bit that starts at 6:49 in the video below, if you're interested] and I just crumble.  Every. Time.  And here was this huge orchestra playing it for me.  Right now.  And I hadn't known.  Blimey.

Plus the soloist was incredible.  Obviously, as it was a big solo piece, it's unbelievable showy-offy, but that's what being a soloist is all about.  And - feck me - he was good.  See for yourselves, I found a YouTube clip of him playing the exact same piece in a competition in 2007 (but with a smaller orchestra):

How bloody fab was that?  And how on earth do these people remember it all without the music?  Amazing.

They finished off with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.  Again, you'll know it.  I managed to find another YouTube video but this time it's of the actual orchestra we saw last night, with the actual conductor, playing the actual piece they played (the conductor is Yuri Botnari, hence the name of the website).  This is just the intro, but you'll know it:



The final 'picture' - The Great Gates of Kiev - ends with the boys on percussion banging hell out of tubular bells, a gong, timpani, cymbals and lord knows what else.  Check it out from about 4:30 on this vid:



The most astonishingly heart-soaring and uplifting piece of music.  TLH and I enjoyed it tremendously, which is, sadly, more than can be said for the rest of the population of Guildford, who seemingly preferred to spend the night in front of the telly watching X Factor or some other such bollocks instead of hearing properly talented performers.  Mindless fuckwits.

This fantastic orchestra and performers were playing their hearts out to about 250 people.  The hall will seat 1700.  It was mostly empty.  A crying shame, literally.  But we 250 people gave them countless standing ovations and clapped until our hands were swollen.  We got 3 encores for our troubles.  It was brilliant.

I hope this lack of attendance can be put down to the fact that it was only the second classical gig in the new Hall and it just hasn't dawned on people yet that they now have this fantastic opportunity to hear some of the most extraordinary music and performers, right on their doorstep.   TLH and I enjoyed it so much that we decided to book tickets for the rest of the season, so in a couple of weeks we're seeing the fabulous Nicola Benedetti and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra playing, amongst others, Dvorak's New World Symphony (which  has particular resonance with me, being the first classical LP that my parents bought me); in February next year there's the Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra doing Khachaturian's Masquerade Suite and other stuff; March has Julian Lloyd Webber doing Elgar, Haydn, Barber and Mozart; April has the English Chamber Orchestra doing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and some Bach and Elgar and, finally, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra doing Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis & The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, and a couple of Beethovens.  I can't wait.

Plus, to top off a fantastic evening, TLH and I stopped off for a bag of chips on the way home!  Result!

"Rawl aht ver Barrel........"

I've been hanging on to do this post and it's taken a lot longer than I thought, hence the radio silence.  Actually there are a couple of things to tell you about but I think I'll split them into 2 posts.  Sorry, boring administrative detail there.  However, my blog = my internal monologue made manifest.

Remember my lovely new saxophone that I bought a little while ago, back in June?  When I was in the shop - Chamberlain Music in Haslemere, Surrey - my eye fell on all the digital pianos and I noticed how small and neat they were and, more importantly, that you could play them with headphones and they'd be silent!  I live in a small cul-de-sac that is packed with houses, we're all very close to each other, and the walls are not amazingly thick.  And, naturally, in the summer everyone has their windows open and you can hear what's going on.

Generally, though, we're a very civilised bunch and are considerate about noise - I mean, I've only had to call the police out a couple of times over the 16 years we've lived here and that was due to more than noise, there was violence involved but I won't go into that here.

About six or so years ago, our immediate neighbours (we shared an adjoining wall) installed a piano in their study on the ground floor.  It was a traditional, upright piano, and they started having lessons and then practising on it.  Neither of them were absolute beginners, but I still got hear every single note.  This didn't bother me, but it did underline to me how much noise travels through these houses.  Because of this, I try to restrict my sax playing to when the neighbours are out.  (The piano-playing ones moved out about 4 or 5 years ago, and the new ones don't seem to play any musical instruments at all). I am nothing if not considerate.

But seeing the digital pianos in Chamberlains got me thinking.  I used to play piano in my very early teens - I can't remember exactly when, something like between ages 11 and about 14, I think.  I had proper lessons and was studying for Grade V piano/Grade I theory when I got all teenage-flouncy about it and decided I'd rather spend my spare time hanging out down the park with boys than practising endless bloody scales.  So I stopped.

Now, of course, 35 years later, I rather regret it.  I didn't find it easy to play, it was not one of the instruments that came naturally to me (I'm better on wind instruments - recorder, clarinet, sax) but it taught me everything I know about the technicalities of music - how to read it, notation, theory, etc.  So I started thinking.  We don't have a lot of space in our house but these new digital pianos don't take up much room.  The keyboard itself is a standard 88-key size but there are no strings, so there's no upright bit.  The only space you need to find is for the width and depth of the keyboard.  And I managed to find about 3 places in our house where one could fit! 

I broached the subject with TLH and he seemed quite positive about it, so I said, as with my sax, I'd start saving up my earnings from jewellery sales and proof-reading, and I'd do some online research to find one that would suit my purposes.  I decided I could live quite happily with a Roland F-110 digital piano. 

I started saving but it was going a bit too slow for my liking so I negotiated with TLH and we decided that he'd chip in the rest of the money and I could have the piano as my Christmas present for this year.  A bit early, yes, but what the hell?  I never know what I want for Christmas so am, consequently, a bit tricky to buy for (unless it's books and CDs but they're a bit unimaginative), so this solves that problem!  Hooray!

We popped back into Chamberlains on the Saturday before August Bank Holiday.  TLH had not been there before and, like me the first time I went there, was entranced by all the different instruments in the showroom - everything from harmonicas to full size grand pianos.  He picked up a ukulele and immediately got ribbed by the staff for playing the opening chords to 'Stairway to Heaven'!

(pic from "Wayne's World" for those bemused by the reference)

He'd not seen any of the digital pianos before so I showed him the one I was interested in so he could get an idea of the size, and a very helpful saleschappy ran through its features and showed us comparable keyboards.  But my mind was made up, and so the order was placed.

Of course, things never really go smoothly, do they?  It transpired that Chamberlains didn't have any in stock but they would contact Roland to deliver one to me directly.  After a few days, Chamberlains emailed to say that, unfortunately, Roland didn't have any in stock either and were waiting for a shipment which should arrive within a couple of weeks!!  I was peeved but, obviously, there's not a lot I could do and, in any case, I'd waited 35 years for a piano so what's a couple more weeks, huh?

2 weeks came and went, still no piano.  Chamberlains chased Roland down for me and, finally, FINALLY, it was delivered yesterday.  It arrived in a box the size of a coffin which took up most of our entrance hallway and weighed a bloody ton. Why, yes, that is my Bet Lynch leopardskin raincoat on the bannister...



There was no way I was going to be able to get that upstairs on my own, so I had to wait all day until TLH came home to nearly rupture himself getting it up the stairs.



We started to put it together:



And it fits exactly into the space I found for it in the dining room end of our sitting room:



My word it's a lovely thing.  Chamberlains gave me a free bench (which is very well made and obviously would cost a few quid) and a pair of free headphones.  Delivery was free too.



And this is the lid up:



Because it's a digital piano, it has all these 'voices' and settings so you can make it sound like a harpsichord or a honkytonk piano or even, should you so desire, a machine gun and a passing ambulance.  Not sure what Mozart would say to that but TLH had a fine old time last night plonking around on it and playing with all its features:



Me, I'm just happy for it to sound like a piano, be silent when I want it, and to not take up too much room.

So this morning I've spent about an hour familiarising myself with the "joys" of scales.  I bought myself a book of easy Grade 1 & 2 pieces and horrified myself finding out how difficult they are!  Still, got to start somewhere, I 'spose, and Minuet in F is as good a place as any, although perhaps I have to be a small child to be able to play it properly as I'm nowhere near this good:

Ten Years Ago

Like the lovely sas it hurts my heart to keep seeing pictures of planes hitting buildings but I can't stop watching.  There will be many millions of words written about the tenth anniversary of 11 September 2011 (forever to be known as 9/11), all of them far more eloquent than anything I can come up with so I won't try.

I will say, though, that this week, ten years ago, TLH and I were on holiday in New York.  He'd been a couple of times before on business, but I'd never been before.  The weather was stunning, we stayed in a fabulous boutique hotel (The Hudson Hotel, right next to Columbus Circle), we'd met up with some old friends from University who had moved out to the States some years before and we had a rare old time doing all the sights.

One day, towards the end of our week's stay, we decided to jump on a bus and go down to the Battery to do the obligatory Staten Island Ferry trip and stop off at Ellis Island Museum.  On returning to the southern tip of Manhattan,we wandered around a bit, and TLH stopped walking in a square with a metal statue of a man holding a large golden globe on his shoulders.  He asked me if I wanted to go up 'there'.  'Where?' I said, 'up there', he replied, pointing directly upwards.  I stared upwards and realised we were at the bottom of the World Trade Centre Towers.  I hadn't spotted them.  This may sound weird but there are so many tall buildings in NY that once they go above your eye-line, you don't tend to notice individual ones, unless you're specifically looking up.  They were SO tall I could barely lean back far enough to take them in.  They were intimidating and freaked me out a little.  I remember discussing with TLH about the car bomb placed in the underground car parks at the WTC in 1993 and how lucky it had been that the buildings hadn't collapsed then as, seeing how tall they are in real life, the amount of wreckage and damage that would have been caused would be unimaginable.  I also remember wondering if they'd ever caught the guy who had tried to blow them up.

It was very hot, I was tired, we'd been on the go all day and it was about 4pm, so I declined a trip to the observation deck.  We'd also been up the Empire State Building the day before and I wasn't entirely sure that the vista afforded from the top of the WTC would have been all that different.  I also clearly remember thinking 'I'll go up there next time we're here - after all, they're not going anywhere'.......

We left New York on, I think, 9 September 2011.

This was the photo I took from the Staten Island Ferry.  Within about 3 days of this picture being taken, the Towers were gone.

My Desk

Hello!  Been a while, hasn't it?

I'm not very good at keeping up a steady flow of writing.  I'll post something long-winded on the blog and then be quiet for weeks, then post a few shorter ramblings, then be quiet again.  It doesn't mean I'm not doing stuff that I could turn into a blog post, it's just I can't be arsed.  And I'm finding as I get older, I can't be arsed even more.

There are some 'ta-dah' posts in the offing, as I've recently started doing cross-stitch and am enjoying it very much.  But I'll post more about that later as, today, I want to introduce you to my desk.

I was reading Belgian Waffle's post about her newly-excavated desk and, at the end, she asked "What do you have on your desk?" and I thought "You don't wanna know" and then changed my mind because, well, someone might be interested plus it's a record of what I was doing at this time on this day, so this is a post about my desk(s).  With pictures.  Lots and lots of pictures.

In our house there is a tiny third bedroom upstairs.  It will take a single bed and a chest of drawers and that's about it.  I use this as my 'study' although it's known as 'the Jewellery Room'.  Because this is where I make my jewellery.  My husband is Welsh and very literal and very logical, which, I'm sure you'll agree, are admirable traits to have, and which I am trying to emulate.  I do other things in the Jewellery Room apart from making jewellery - I keep my lovely saxophone in there so it doubles up as a music practice room.  We keep most of our DVDs in here too, as well as my wool stash, so it trebles up as a storage room.  We have yet another computer and printer in here so this is where I do my 'serious' typing, i.e., "proper" correspondence, blog posting, etc., and where I fiddle about with my photographs online as well, so it quadruples as, um, a room where that sort of thing happens.

Anyway, some pictures, I think:

This is the view from the doorway.  As you can see, I have two desks at my disposal.  The one to your left is my main desk, where I construct jewellery.  The one on your right is used for cutting and gluing glass.  It also has drawers that have collapsed as it is an old crappy desk that is falling apart (a bit like me, really).  The eagle-eyed amongst you will also notice my lovely sax sitting in its stand.  It's a lovely, lovely thing *wistful sigh*.

Behind the door is hanging pouchy thing that contains various stuff, such as old jars, a rolled up poster of a Dale Chihuly glass exhibition that I really must get round to framing sometime, my old Pentax ME Super SLR camera that I got from my mum for my 21st birthday and hanging on the wall is a framed poster of an album cover from one of my favourite bands of all time, Magazine:

Signed by the band, no less (this says 'Howard Devoto'):

Moving round, we have an Ikea spice rack that makes ideal shelving for small jars for beads, pearls, etc.  It's not terribly clear but tucked into the top is a postcard of Mnajdra Temple in Malta, built in 2800BC, which I visited a few years ago, and hanging from the shelf is a papier mache, black and white painted mask from Singapore, given to me by an old boyfriend.  Oh look!  There's the computer screen with Belgian Waffling's actual post about her desk!

Then we come to the actual work surface of my main desk.  Oh lordy. Yes, I know it's cluttered, clutter is what I do and I do it very well. There are two lamps, a bead design board, tools in pots and glasses, jars and pots full of pearls and semi-precious stones, and tucked in the far right is my mini hi-fi/DAB radio with my iPod perched atop.

On the wall above my main desk is a monthly calendar and various images that I like comprised of birthday cards, postcards (from the Royal Academy and Sedona) and photos that I've taken.

Above the photos are a couple of shelves that house my ring binders, magazines, speakers and other stuff.

The top shelf has a couple of my very favourite things, an Elvis Cow and my 50p stuffed Piranha:

This brings us round to the windowsill which, you'll be pleased to hear, I recently spent several hours tidying.  There's a money box in the shape of a lady's head that I've had since I was about 9 years old and is one of only two things I've still got from my early childhood (everything else someone either threw out or gave away), there's a Mexican votive candle in a tall jar with a Union Jack flag, a large flat curved bean thing from Hungary and another candle stuck into it, a small picture of an Andy Goldsworthy installation, four empty jars, a plastic dinosaur, some old business cards and a tape measure. All most useful, I think you'll agree.

In the middle of the windowsill is my badger skull:

And now we swing round to the other desk. This is where I cut little pieces of glass that will then go into my glass kiln down in the garage to be fused, so there's a cutting mat, metal ruler, glastac glue, various other glues, cutting implements, small sheets of glass in plastic containers.  When I took this picture I had also just been sorting out some necklaces in preparation for my next craft fair - these don't usually live on this table.  There's also a sort of black metal tree display unit thing which currently has some of my fused glass window jewellery hanging from it, and leaning against the wall is a photo I took at Avebury in the winter of 2009 of a standing stone viewed through wintry trees: 

In the picture above you can just make out my earring stand, here's a better picture, including some pieces that I'm gluing together, ready to go into my stock - earrings, rings and brooches:

Next to this desk there is a tall set of shelves that houses boxes of necklace/bracelet boxes on the top shelf, more pots and stacks of containers full of beads:

And then lower down are our DVDs and CDs, and on the floor in front is the bag that I cart all my jewellery around in, with a toolbox perched on the top.  And, no, I'm not going to explain the NSFW card of Gay Biker Jesus on the wall (I would just say, though, that you can double click on all the pictures in order to get a really good, close-up view...)

And finally, looking back through the door, on the left there is a large square wicker basket which I use to store my old hard copy photographic prints, on which is a framed photograph of my late father, a birthday calendar above that, and above the light switch is a painting I did.  On the door of the cupboard are photos (of TLH) and postcards (of engravings by Norman Atkinson).

Finally, and as if I haven't crammed enough stuff into this room as it is, there is often to be found a large, elderly, grumpy, arthritic cat, usually in the most awkward places possible, either behind the chair where he's in danger of being rolled over:

Or right under the desk where's he in danger of being trodden on:

So, then, that's a tour of my desk(s), I'll bet you're feeling a lot happier about your so-called 'clutter' now, aren't you?!?