Tuesday 24 February 2009

It's been a preparation day here, trying to fix the handle on my harmonium case and failing (a job for a professional really), sterilising my melodica's breath tube (it gets smelly), and unblocking a harmonium reed (well, to be honest I haven't done that one yet). I also did some proper practice for next week, and fitted in a very interesting chat on matters of mutual interest with Charlie Gore, he of scandalously-out-of-print Scottish Fiddle Index fame.

For reasons best ignored I'm currently in the library - no sorry, the 'Learning Resource Centre' (pause for sardonic laugh) - in the freshly-opened-by-Princess-Anne-last-week new building of North Glasgow College. It would be a very congenial open light space to work in, if it weren't such an acoustic disaster. The 'LRC' is open plan, and it's basically the noisiest place in what's already a very noisy building, full of hard reflective surfaces and doors that bang. Even with sound-isolating headphones on, it's difficult to concentrate for the high-pitched whine of someone cleaning a room in another part of the building. I wonder what it's like when it's full of students.