My Posts are packaged by intellectual weight, and some settling of contents may have occurred in transit
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Review of 2008
Looking back at the review of 2007 I posted a year ago, I can see there have been some changes to my life in the past year. Almost exclusively these have been changes for the better.
The year 2007 ended with me having rejoined Glasgow Chamber Choir, and continuing to enjoy the experience. This coincided with me coming to the end of a difficult and sometimes turbulent relationship which had been going on for a bit over a year. I pride myself on being easy going and hopefully pretty calm much of the time, but my stress levels were through the roof for a significant chunk of the latter part of 2007. I didn't really Blog about this much at the time, it wouldn't have been right, but I can say now with the clarity of hindsight that this was a relationship I shouldn't have been in, and having been in it, it shouldn't have dragged on as long as it did. It did neither of us any good. And in fact it affected my friendship with other, better, friends too. Another pride I take is that I am still on good speaking terms with everyone (there are not all that many!) with whom I have had a significant relationship, whatever form that took, but this particular relationship having finished part way through the year and changed into a tentative, or possibly even tenuous, friendship, in January something happened which caused the other person to cut off all contact with me, despite my efforts to try to remain friends. I gave it a few weeks though, and after all calls had gone unanswered, including calls being rejected, I gave up and haven't thought about contacting her again. So another dark chapter passes!
The thing that happened in January was that I started a new relationship with RE, a member of Glasgow Chamber Choir. She had joined in September 2007 on the same evening I had rejoined, and over the next weeks and months we seemed to hit it off and seemed to enjoy one another's company, albeit always in a larger group, and so we eventually started dating. And we are still doing so, I'm very glad to say! It wouldn't be right for me to describe RE, or our relationship, or how I felt, or anything like that. So I won't. But she knows, I hope, and that's what matters.
In January, sadly, my gran died after a short illness but a long life. Needless to say I miss her. It was largely for her that I started tracing my family tree a few years ago (I currently have it traced back to the late 17th century in one of the strands) and since her death I haven't put any real effort into researching anything further. I fully intend getting back into it in the new year though.
Also in January I sat and passed my Institute of Advanced Motorists Advanced Driving test, adding that qualification to the Advanced Motorcycling one I passed the previous month. Since then I haven't felt the urge to become a Qualified Car Observer, but I persevered with the motorcycling training and in September 2008 I successfully passed the written and practical tests which make me a Qualified Motorcycle Observer, able to accompany and assist associates who are undertaking training to pass their own Advanced test. The season's finished just now of course, but I'm looking forward to carrying on with helping associates next year.
In March I spent a tremendously enjoyable long weekend in Marseilles with Glasgow Chamber Choir, where we sang in a couple of concerts (pretty stress free) and ate, drank and socialised a lot. I think part of the reason I enjoyed it was that it was my first trip abroad for ages, apart from the trip to Belgium in 2007 when I was in a plaster cast, and the first time away with RE. In fact up to that point our relationship was known only to a very small handful of people, but we had to come out the closet, so to speak, for the trip away so it was nice not to have to hide it from our friends any longer!
I've made my personal peace with St Mary's Cathedral. For a while I had no intention of ever going back, but I have and I'm very happy to have done so. My absence from the choir, and from the building generally, started with my achilles tendon injury when I couldn't walk or even stand without crutches, but it then developed into a wider problem connected with the relationship I was in. I should never have let that happen, but I did, but I'm glad to say that I'm back. I'm not singing in the choir full time at the moment, because they rehearse on the same evening as Glasgow Chamber Choir does, but I am for the moment one of the "occasional extra" singers drafted in when they need tenors. The other side of that coin is that if I see anything coming up on the music list which I'd like to sing, then I just contact FW, the director of music, and he's happy for me to come and join in, even if that means the choir has a boatload of tenors that evening! And in fact the choir is well blessed for tenors at the moment, there are I think about five of them, so I'm not really needed just now. But RE and I do attend Evensong most weeks, which is very enjoyable only not quite so enjoyable as actually singing in it!
This year, and I actually can't remember when it was apart from early summer or before, St Mary's Cathedral played host to a big Evensong service for the organist emeritus, Bernard Porter, who was celebrating a significant birthday. Lots of former choir members, including me, joined the current choir and made a spectacular sound. Some travelled from as far afield as the south of England, the north of Scotland, and New York to join the singing! And the socialising, funnily enough, was great!
In the summer, together with various friends including RE, I joined the newly formed Royal School of Church Music Scottish Voices choir. The initial meeting was a residential weekend at Strathallan School in Perthshire, which seemed to go well, not least because FW, from St Mary's Cathedral, is also the conductor of RSCM Scottish Voices. I should explain that the RSCM choir is not to be confused with Scottish Voices, which is a different choir. Apparently RSCM Scottish Voices is the equivalent of the RSCM Cathedral Singers in England, but they decided not to use that name in Scotland lest it offended Presbyterians and others who have no cathedrals! Political correctness strikes again! So they chose the name RSCM Scottish Voices instead, and presumably either didn't realise there is already a choir called Scottish Voices, or didn't care. Superb!
Anyway, next year's dates have recently been circulated, and it looks like it'll be a busy and enjoyable year.
In September my little cat Ernie fell ill, and after a short illness sadly died. I Blogged about that extensively at the time and have no intentions of reliving it here, since it was an intensely painful experience. I miss him greatly, as does Elmo, his wee pal.
One of the high spots of the year undoubtedly was my visit to San Diego, Califonia to visit my brother and his family. Made even better by RE joining me for the last few days when she was enroute back to Glasgow from New Zealand and made a stopover. I've Blogged a fair bit about the holiday, but I'm conscious that I still haven't told the full story yet and I owe this Blog the final installment, so I'll try to get to that as soon as possible!
I discovered in 2008, or it might have been late 2007, that my blood pressure had climbed alarmingly. It's now down to a better level, and I'm trying to get my act together to get to my local gym regularly in an effort to keep it down, lose a bit of weight, and get fit enough to do the things I want to do, which are many and varied! I've decided against taking up badminton again though, as I don't relish the idea of fucking up my achilles tendon again! Watch this space for details of my progress, if indeed I make any progress!
As ever, I make it my rule not to Blog about work. Suffice to say I'm still enjoying being in the particular department I'm in, doing the things I do, and tempting as it is to go looking for more money elsewhere, and it IS available, I'd rather stay where I am. For the moment anyway!
So, to sum up, 2008 has been a good year for me, not only on the relationship front but also as regards St Mary's Cathedral and trips abroad to sunny places. On the extreme down side, I lost both my gran and my faithful companion Ernie, but such is the way of life.
I've just re-read all of the above and realised it's a bit more of a random stream of consciousness than usual, so apologies for that. If I could be arsed I'd edit it into some better chronological, or at least logical, order, but I can't!
Anyway, Happy Christmas and a successful 2009 to you all, and I refuse to go down the political correctness route and use weasel words detracting from Christmas. If you are offended by my wishing you a Happy Christmas rather than Happy Holidays or similar, then perhaps you're reading the wrong Blog and I invite you never to darken my URL again!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Stuff your friend
I realise that it's been a while now since I was in San Diego, and it seems almost like a distant memory, but I haven't forgotten that I still have a few days of travel log to catch up with (or should that be "up with which to catch"?). I have the bare bones of it saved as a draft post and I'll get to it as soon as I can.
In the meantime, the image above is of a small billboard in San Diego Zoo. I think it's connected with a teddy bear manufacturing retail outlet.
Or is it?
On a slightly related note, but only slightly, earlier in the year I was in Marseilles for a very enjoyable long weekend of socialising and singing with Glasgow Chamber Choir, while we were visiting our twin choir La Maîtrise Gabriel Fauré and during the early part of the weekend we were treated to a reception by the French choir.
During the socialising I noticed a poster advertising some sort of ice lolly, for licking, obviously, which I couldn't resist photographing, and which is reproduced on the right.
I make no further comment apart from the observation that it might sell well if it were available in the UK!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
My favourite syndrome
It was taken in Marseilles the other week, and I couldn't resist it. I promise I'll grow up one of these days. Maybe when I turn 50. Or maybe not.
On an unrelated topic, good luck to all of those running this morning in the Glasgow women's 10k road race, particularly those raising money for charity, and particularly to RE and her colleagues who can be sponsored (it isn't too late folks) by following the link on my previous post about it.
It's turned out to be a nice morning, and although it's a bit chilly it is dry and bright, so conditions look good. He said, never having run competitively (or otherwise, really) since leaving school some several years ago. Or it might have been slightly more than several.
Incidentally, what do you think about the new widgit I've installed on the left giving real time details of who's visiting the Blog? Intrusive eh? I like it! It just utilises what your browser already reveals to the world and looks up a database to work out the city you're in, nothing more. If there's a big wodge of negative comments about it I'll consider removing it again.
On a related topic, take a look at the Centralops Website to see what your browser really reveals! In particular look for the link to the browser mirror, but before you do so, try copying some text to your clipboard, such as your name or something, and then look at the browser mirror and scroll to near the bottom. You might find a surprise because often Internet Explorer is set up to reveal what's on your clipboard to any Website that asks for it. Think about that next time you're copying and pasting private information around Word documents, online banking etc!
It's easy to fix so that it isn't accessible, and if anyone wants the instructions posted, just leave a comment. You can find out how to do it by searching on the Microsoft Windows Website, like I did a few years ago, but I think I've still got them to hand so could post them easily enough. And as far as I know, if you're using Firefox, like wot I am, you're safe, but if for some obscure reason you're still using Internet Explorer, then you may be vulnerable.
Every day's a school day.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Marseilles 1
For the uninitiated, TW3 stands for That Was The Week That Was, a satirical UK TV programme from a long time ago.
OK, so it wasn't quite a week, but I've recently spent five days in the sunny, and I mean very sunny, south of France. In Marseilles in fact. What a city. What fun. What a (nearly) week!
The occasion was the Glasgow Chamber Choir trip, when we visited our twin choir, La Maîtrise Gabriel Fauré, who are from the city of Glasgow's twin city, Marseilles. Or one of Glasgow's twin cities anyway, the others being Turin (Italy), Nuremberg (Germany), Rostov-on-Don (Russia), Dalian (China), Havana (Cuba), Bethlehem (Jerusalem) and Lahore (Pakistan). Perhaps a few of them hark back to Glasgow's traditional left leaning political tendencies, but they're valid connections nonetheless. I have to confess that with the possible exception of Turin, which I've never visited, I can't imagine any of the other cities will be as beautiful or welcoming as Marseilles, the oldest city in France, and the second largest. But I'm prepared to give them a try if anyone wants to fund (and organise) future choir trips!
I started to create this posting on Wednesday 7th May 2008, knowing that it was going to take me a while to finish it because I've got a lot to say on this occasion. It's taken me so long to get round to typing what I've done so far, that I suspect that if I don't start publishing it in smaller chunks I'll never publish any of it! I have in fact two full pages in a notebook of bullet points relating to things I saw, experienced, felt, smelt, touched, heard, and thought on the trip, and quite how I'm going to take them from the notebook, pad them out, change their order, and turn them into something which might be of some interest to anyone except me (in an online diary sort of way) remains to be seen!
Last year, before I rejoined Glasgow Chamber Choir (to which I will refer as GCC from now on), the choir somehow managed to be twinned with La Maîtrise Gabriel Fauré, who are an all female choir based in Marseilles, and to which I will hereafter refer as MGF. I don't know for sure, but I think MGF were looking to exploit the twinning arrangement of their city with Glasgow and make a trip, which I believe they do regularly, so they contacted GCC and the rest is history.
Anyway, last year MGF visited Glasgow and by all accounts the visit was a great success and enjoyed by members of both choirs. Time this year then to return the compliment, and after enormous work by our choir administrator KK, who is stepping down from that position at the end of this season, the trip was arranged and almost 20 choir members committed themselves to going.
Several of us from the start had independently thought that if we were going to travel that far then it'd be a shame just to go for the two nights on which we had concerts planned so had planned on extending the trip a day or two either side. So the outcome was that me, RE, AD, FCC, JG, JB, PH and AD all piled onto a Ryanair flight which left Prestwick at the rather ungodly hour of 0830hrs last Thursday morning, and after a completely straightforward journey lasting less than two and a half hours which left and arrived on time with all baggage intact, we were in the south of France. The photo is from the aircraft (as if that wasn't obvious) on the approach to Marseilles.
PH and AD had booked their rooms earlier and therefore separately from the rest of us, so having arrived at the Gare de St Charles by coach from the airport, we split into two groups and went our respective ways to our respective hotels.
In the case of the 6 of us who had booked kind of at the same time, and who therefore stuck mostly together for the trip, we quickly became the usual suspects who at home tend to often be the ones, sometimes the only ones, socialising. Well, OK, drinking. So the gang of 6 headed to the local Ibis hotel, pretty well next door to the station, and checked into our rooms. Another pain free operation. This whole thing was going far too well!
We met downstairs in the foyer shortly after and set out into the big bad streets of Marseilles, and I had in the back of my mind the undeniable fact that it has been 30 years, yes, count them, 30, since I studied French at school, and it's not entirely inaccurate to say I've not really said a word of it since. In fact I studied O Grade (Ordinary Grade) French (the exam for which I scraped through) in about 1977, and then in 1978 I decided to go on to study it at Higher Grade.
Now I'm going to let you into a little secret here. The way the Scottish exams worked at that time, and it may be the same now but I don't know, is that if you sat a Higher Grade exam but didn't hit the mark then you could be awarded a "comp O" Grade, which although I don't remember exactly what this stood for (perhaps compensatory?) meant that they'd mark it as if it were an O Grade rather than the more difficult Higher Grade. I didn't get a mention when the results were published. In other words, my Higher Grade French wasn't even O Grade standard! Soon after leaving school I had occasion to attend at school show, and as I walked into the venue I saw my French teacher, so being a smartass I said to her "Bonjour Madame Hamilton", at which point she fixed me with a slightly withering look and replied "Bonsoir!". Merde!
Roll on 30 years and yours truly is for the first time in the country of France, walking into the streets of Marseilles, and wondering not whether I'd be embarrassed by my lack of linguistic skills, but just how deeply and how often I was about to be embarrassed! And embarrassed not only by my lack of French, but by the firm grasp of English I was sure would be held by the French themselves. Typical Brit, I am, just speak English slowly and loudly and you'll get by.
Or that's kind of what I was thinking as I walked into the midday sunshine with the rest of the gang of 6.
The reality is that despite the cruel passage of time I had remembered enough of the basics to get me by with an occasional and wholly unintentional mix of languages known colloquially as Franglais, as popularised by the late and lamented Miles Kington in Punch magazine. That said, I understood more than I could speak and the main difficulty was usually the construction of sentences. But I was very happy with the way it all went, linguistically speaking, and by the Monday at the official reception I even managed to tell Jeanine Imbert, Conseillère Municipale Déléguée au Conservatoire National De Région Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts et Festival de Musique Sacrée, that her English was better than my French, by constructing the sentence in French as I went along (i.e. without planning in advance exactly what I was going to say) just like one does when one actually speaks the language. OK, I know it's not brilliant, but it made me happy!
To be continued .........