Neither Wind, nor Snow, nor Sleet…

(Confidential to those of you saying that Blogger won’t let you post comments… It does that sometimes! We can’t explain it, but never fear that it’s only you….)

As the saying goes, God protects fools and Englishmen — or Irishmen, in this case. D’s coworkers in Mumbai happily went out to dinner and a pub, even after being told there was unrest in the city. “Oh, there’s always something going on, it’s probably way on the other side of town” said they, and went out happily. They returned in the wee small hours, and got out of their taxi hearing popping… and went to bed… and woke up to find the hotel next door on fire and themselves unable to leave for awhile. I’m sure they simply ordered a second breakfast and went back to bed. Relief flows from all sides that they are safe, however.

Meanwhile, our concert this weekend went off with… many hitches, the largest one being that Glasgow congratulated itself on having the coldest temperatures for a November day since 1985. We experienced ice mist for the first time, and while indeed the air seems to sparkle and shimmer… it’s fine needles of ice, and when they land on something, they form spiky crystals which, while beautiful and eerie, are nonetheless… ice on every surface when you’re trying to walk out to rehearsal and come back in your good clothes. Even the buses are skidding on the roads, which is a little scary, with the way some of them drive anyway. The salt trucks are out at least four times a day, driving up on the sidewalks, spattering everything within reach with huge pellets of salt.

Regardless of snow, sleet and dark of night, we played to a full house Sunday night, and the many bodies in the great hall helped to raise the temperature a little. Unfortunately, it did nothing for the acoustics — it’s a shame that such a lavishly gilded hall has such horrible sound quality! And remember — real chamber music has no amplification, so there was some consternation as the singers couldn’t hear each other well and several times sections got somewhat lost, but apparently the audience didn’t notice our fumbling. We don’t see how they didn’t.

It might be that the audience was, like the choir, mesmerized by the trumpeters, who played their instruments with no valves — as they were played in the medieval times. Some serious lip-power went into the trills and fanfare there — no valves, no keys, nothing but an impressive display of embouchure. Some of the choir was so impressed that they stared longingly at the trumpeters instead of the conductor. (Did we mention that they were young and male, and seated in front of the soprano/alto section?) It caused our director some moments of deeply sarcastic facial expressions.

The audience might also have missed out on our general ineptitude by being entertained watching our director choking — he, who accidentally brought his 14-year old son’s tuxedo shirt discovered too late the difference in their neck sizes. We have no idea how he moved his arms, much less kept the buttons done up. At any rate, it did appear at times that the audience was enjoying the performance, possibly as much as we did.

Just in time for the cold snap, Scottish Gas assures us that it will be out on December 8th to tear out the wall in our living room, yank out the pipes and refit them. Though they claim that it is only an eight hour job, we will have workmen here for three days running. Scottish Gas will only be responsible for servicing the boiler; a plumber will probably come out to replace the pipes, and a contractor and an insulator will take care of opening the wall, and closing it with insulation in place. This weekend, we’ll be clearing out the entry way and throwing tarps over most of our possessions, as last time they knocked holes in the wall, we were cleaning plaster out of odd places for a week. Of course, they won’t do the work if someone is not in the house while they’re working, so we’re really hoping this truly is done and scheduled when they say it will be, so it doesn’t run into Christmas.

The sun rose this morning at 8:25 AM, and will set today at 3:48 PM. At the moment, we have seven hours and twenty-two minutes of daylight per day. By next Monday, that amount will have fallen to seven hours and nine minutes. So, pardon us if the urge to nap comes on quite strongly. We are slogging through the evenings, and while we’re able to waken at six, we’re not exactly motivated to get out of bed. However, we’re managing, though we’re looking forward to sleeping in a bit!

Happy December. Seems amazing that we’ve already come this far. It’ll be May before we know it…

– D & T

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