Friday 27 November 2009

At last, a day at home at my desk with no urgent performance deadline looming. I think this means I might be able to start on lots of long-awaited projects. But this is probably over-optimistic.

Yesterday became extremely sociable. I went over to Edinburgh for a quick meeting with Matthew at the festival, and his request for 'tea for two' in the Hub cafe was interpreted as 'afternoon tea for two', so that as we were happily  working our way down the pot of tea, suddenly an vast array of food arrived. Once we'd got to the end of the cakes and cream I wandered down the Royal Mile feeling like I'd had a particularly boozy lunch. 

There was just time to go to the library before giving my seminar in Alison House, and hanging around afterwards for intelligent conversation of various degrees of academic rigour with the Music Department history students and Simon Frith. I kept breaking out into involuntary grins on the train journey back west, as I was listening to bits of Tuesday's rehearsal and show, and finally hearing clearly some of the outrageous things that everyone was throwing in on stage. Let that Pamela Thorby off the leash and you never know what's going to happen: recorder players don't usually have such killer comic timing. And the backing vocals sound alright actually ...

Catherine Bott was in town last night in her BBC live broadcaster role, so after her gig we met for a natter in Babbity's and I inevitably missed the last train home by quite a large margin. Amongst other things, we could celebrate that the CD we made 15 years ago has just been pressed up again by those nice people at Hyperion.