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So what of the weekend? Saturday was calm by recent standards, although I needed to shift some work around in order to take poorly kitty back to the vet for a post-op check. All is going well, but he needs to go back in once more later this week, and it will be a while before his fur is restored to anything like his former glory. Poor thing, in his blue lampshade he does look like some kind of psychedelic komodo dragon, but watching him scamper up the stairs in that thing is a hoot.

When I wasn’t playing vet with the errant feline I went into town to do some teaching in the pouring rain, finding out the hard way that one of my shoes was letting in water. Add in tiredness, overwork and the cold and, hey presto, illness had descended by the time the evening was out, although I managed to fulfil all of my obligations on Sunday. There were no performances of O’Neill this weekend, which is, I am happy to say, quite unusual these days, but news continues to reach me of outings for my music in the Christmas season.

I have managed to get to the end of my first draft of the orchestral arrangement of We Three Kings, which took less time than I expected, so now it is time to focus on the new organ piece, which I think I will call a-while a-wandering. While it does not scream “It’s Christmas!”, Holder-style, I think it is a little more imaginative as a title than Fantasia upon a Yorkshire Wassail or something similar, so it will do for now.

This week the Occam Singers and the Parliament Choir will continue their work on We Three Kings, and it is not long now before the first performance of He Makes His Messengers Winds as well. In fact, there will be something of a rush in a few days time, along the lines of the following:

5th – We Three Kings, a-while a-wondering (Parliament Choir, St. John’s, Smith Square)

7th – Nunc Dimittis (Chapelle Du Roi, St. John’s, Smith Square)

10th – He Makes His Messengers Winds (St. Stephen with St. John)

15th – We Three Kings, Hark The Herald Angels Descant (Occam Singers, Guildford)

25th – Sweet Was The Song, a-while a-wandering (St. Mary Abbots); Sweet Was The Song (Anghiari)

30th – A Sad Carol For These Distracted Tymes (St. Mary Abbots)

With luck I will be able to assemble the various other performances into some kind of coherent form as well, but with four first performances in December and some older pieces being heard as well, it seems that Christmas has arrived a bit early for me this year.

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