Wednesday 21 October 2009

With the second (Stirling) leg of breakfast this morning, I had an excellent treacle scone for dessert from Baynes. Being a commuter for a week is tiring, but I am getting a lot of things done in transit: today's train task was editing a Schetky quartet score.

By day 3 everyone seems to have relaxed a bit, so rehearsals today were regularly punctuated with gales of laughter. We've worked on eight pieces so far, and they've all been very different from one another: it will be fascinating to see how it all fares in front of an audience on Friday. This afternoon I found a use for the cracked panes in my greenhouse, whose perspex replacements have now arrived: I will be donning gloves and safety goggles to smash them on Friday night in the service of art. Unless, of course, we decide in the next couple of days that it's a stupid idea, which it probably is. We mentioned it in passing to the excellent Alasdair Campbell at the Tolbooth and he knew exactly what was required in terms of technique, equipment and safety procedures, having personal experience of offstage glass-smashing. It's that kind of place.

Rick Standley generously annotated my notebook with the musicians' alphabet: where rehearsal letters appear in a score, the room will inevitably ring to the sound of 'ok, let's go from B [or whatever]' followed by 'B for ... [anything but Bravo]' for clarification. This provides an opportunity for some dreadful puns. My favourites were 'B for Risotto' (try with a cod Italian accent), 'I for The Engine' (that one was mine), 'S for Rantzen'. 'G for Police' (London accent), 'V for Espana', and the inevitable 'Q for hotel rooms'. Now go and make up your own.