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The error mentioned in my last post has been put swiftly and efficiently to rights, the editor of the magazine emailing me back within a few hours of my message to let me know that I will be properly credited in their next issue. Every little helps so I think this kind of thing is worth chasing up, and I’m glad it has been sorted out so quickly.

The next thing to mention is that the recording of the first performance of Everyone Sang is now up on the St. Bride’s webpage, and you can be transported directly there by clicking this link. See whether you agree with my view of Sassoon’s text, and don’t forget that you can also download the score from my homepage.

It has been a busy week, on the hectic side, and I am looking forward to a return to normal procedure in the days to come. I played for a baptism on Saturday morning, then a wedding on Saturday afternoon (different churches), and then pointed my Avensis westwards to play a JEBO gig in Bradford-on-Avon, a particularly lovely part of the country. This gig had been on/off all week, but the strands all came together and we played two sets, totalling 17 songs. It was a decent workout, but it did mean a very late return home and reliance on St. Ginsters, the patron saint of motorway travellers. Life in a band is not conducive to healthy living.

Patron saint of the motorway traveller.

Sunday morning, by now very tired, I launched myself into some Langlais at Hampstead, enjoying the challenge of trying to hit as many notes as possible on really a rather compact instrument, and then followed that up with three hours of private tuition, harmony cum counterpoint cum examination technique. Home at last after a long, long weekend, I put my feet up and slept the sleep of the just.

To come this week are a lunchtime recital at St. Bride’s on Tuesday, Colin Campbell and I returning to some of the repertoire we performed at Lauderdale House the other week, bits of rehearsal here and there and, I hope, some writing. It has been a while.

St. Bride’s. Lunchtime recital here tomorrow.

I am keen to do some decent stints on Why Should We Not Sing? and try to get as much of the orchestration sorted out as possible. I also need to sort out my latest competition entry so that it is on its way by the end of the week, at which point I will be able to go text-hunting for my next commission, a work for soprano and instrumental ensemble. Not much more than that has been discussed as yet, so the canvas to be filled is fairly blank at the moment.  There’s also an interview to be done with a music magazine on Tuesday night, so things keep ticking along.

There are also some lovely crisp new board games sitting on my shelves waiting to be opened and played, the product of an open wallet and some successful hunting for special offers. They range from the serious, such as Washington’s War, to the more lightweight, such as the 2003 Spiel des Jahres winner Alhambra via Martin Wallace’s London and the intriguing K2, in which your meeples will actually keel over and die from frostbite or oxygen starvation or something similar.

Need to take care of my climbers.

Recently we have been playing Forbidden Island, a gem of a game, cooperative and of the perfect level of complexity to introduce newbies to the pastime. It’s cheap, portable and easy to find too, an idea for a gap on a forthcoming Christmas list, perhaps.

Off topic again, I was somewhat surprised to find out that a Grand Prix was taking place last weekend. So detached have I become from the whole thing now that I do not watch it, that I had no idea it was going on, and have only a passing interest in watching any of it. Maybe I am being obstinately pig-headed about making a point, but with Brundle gone, Humphrey going and the coverage flung to the four winds, I wonder how many others feel the same. Still, I’ve always got Rallyman to play between bouts of work and writing.  Who needs overpaid primadonnas?

Much more fun than funding F1 drivers’ egos.

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