Sunday 5 October 2003

First things first, the funniest news story of the year so far. So if you're one of the people I've waved to from that webcam, now you know what I was really doing there.

I'm on the train on the way home from the Usher Hall after a quick blast of the Saint-Saens organ symphony with the RSNO: not the whole thing, just the loud bit at the end as part of a kids concert. Given that I haven't really played the organ for the last 10 years or so, to be sat at the console of an instrument (Hill Norman & Beard 1914) that's just had a £400 000 renovation, in a large concert hall full of people determined to have a good time, by Edinburgh standards at least, and to then make a VERY LOUD NOISE INDEED, with a 78 piece orchestra, is quite good fun. I hope you can spot the understatement here.

There are lots of little technical things to overcome that I'd forgotten about. For example, on a large instrument like that one, the time lag between when you play and when the sound comes out is different for the various departments of the organ. Add to this the time lag between the bottom of the stage where the conductor is (who you can see on the helpfully provided video camera) and the top where you are, and the whole question of ensemble requires continual mental effort. Also, you're physically disconnected from where the sound comes out, which is disconcerting when you've got used to playing smaller instruments. Once the whole orchestra is playing with you, it's very hard to make the mental link between what your hands are feet are doing, and the enormous racket coming from all directions. The only way to be sure it's you playing is either to stop, or to cack it up. It's just as well I managed not to do either of those. The biggest musical adrenalin rush I've had for a while. I found a crucial 10 minutes for a quick pint of Deuchars IPA at the station: I'm not making that Fort William mistake again.

I've almost started having enough free time to read occasionally. I've been working my way through Catherine Carswell's Life of Robert Burns for most of the past year, after Janice Galloway recommended it to me. It's wonderful, but I'm content to amble through it while reading other things rather than to devour it voraciously. Also vying for my attention is Chris Ware's collection of early work Quimby the Mouse, a spectacular exercise in tirelessly intricate, relentlessly black humour, told in words, pictures and occasionally both. Not to be read when you're feeling a bit sour with life. If his masterwork Jimmy Corrigan is all melancholy and loneliness, this material before it is more like outright nihilism, drawn and printed in a beautifully precise antique style. At this rate, when his next book comes out it might be quite cheerful.