After recovering from the trip to Anghiari and then recovering from all the accounts of other travellers having their jaunts destroyed by cancelled flights, lost luggage and missing staff, I was back into the thick of things, playing for an opera gala in Oborne on Thursday evening. This is the kind of engagement I particularly like, with a short journey to get there, a rehearsal to put everything into place, the performance, and then a saunter home.

On Friday I was slightly further afield, staying the night in Solihull in preparation for spending the day at the UK Games Expo on the Saturday, which, for the first time, I did not only as a participant, hauling my acquisitions around the halls, but also as a panellist, part of an august quartet of gaming bloggers. Up to the burrow on Saturday evening, I was stopping at every service station in a desperate attempt to text all the sopranos in Christendom, trying to find one who would be able to sing on Sunday morning.

In the end, I found somebody at 7:33, and I have never known a weekend like it. Every singer seemed to be either booked, away, or, for some reason I cannot quite fathom, at a party or festival. Anyway, our choir of five managed to cover what had been chosen for eight, and they definitely earned their fees and plates of food from the church lunch afterwards.

Next week my Missa Clemens is on the musical menu, a piece written in 2020 as the pandemic began to take hold, commissioned by Simon Over for the church of St. Clement Danes. I think that I quite like this piece, and will be interested to hear it in the flesh again, for it is the music I heard last year, could not quite place, but thought was well written, so clearly I cannot be too displeased with it.

There is some arranging that needs to be sorted this week, and there are also rehearsals for RetroChic (gigging in a couple of weeks) and half of RetroChic (gigging at the weekend). I need also to keep the writing ticking over, so I think that I shall get on with the sketches for O Nata Lux, which I began some time back, as it would be good to get that fully finished before long. In comparison with this time last year, though, it is all go.

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