Friday 15 May 2009

After a summery week when I've been moving the contents of my desk outside to work in the shade of a tree in the garden, today was wet, cold and miserable, so it's as well I was in Edinburgh for a Distil-related meeting with Simon T and Dave F. We successfully made some group decisions before Simon and I dropped into the RSA show at the National Gallery, and I managed (just) not to buy anything. After picking up my next few weeks' reading at the university library, I ate my lunchtime sandwich in front of Allan Ramsay's monument at Greyfriars Kirk and then found a wonderfully quirky keyboard manuscript in the NLS: I look forward to the photocopies of that one dropping through the letterbox soon.

I was back at the eye hospital yet again yesterday to be sentenced to another seven weeks of steroids: three months is a record for me I think. The experience was made less grim by the ophthalmologist telling me about her harmonium at home, and how she grew up with a harpsichord as part of her dad's keyboard collection ...

The black plastic on the turntable at the moment is an eBay-sourced copy of Dave Swarbrick's Smiddyburn album, which I loved when it came out and still sounds great. Beryl Marriott's piano playing on I have a Wife of my Ain and Lady Mary Haye's Scotch Measure is pretty much unsurpassed I think: I still get dizzy trying to work out what she's doing.