Ely

Back from England, where I was playing in the Monteverdi Vespers in Ely Cathedral. The concert was in the Lady Chapel, shown on the left hand side of this picture. It was packed full and the audience was fantastic.









The choir Cambridge Voices was directed by Ian de Massini (otherwise known as one half of the Classic Buskers) and the orchestra was the Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet, here performing under the pseudonym of the Orchestra of the Age of Reason, on recorders and trumpet. In this picture at the rehearsal I am playing theorbo for soloist Katy Edgcombe in Audi coelum.





Remember the hungry creature from St. Pompont a week or two back? Here's an English cousin, above the door in the Lady Chapel. This is a Green Man, with sprays of leaves coming out of his mouth and winding around his head.







p.s. the theorbo got back home safely afterwards, despite having to go down the 'fragile' chute at Stansted and travelling in the hold.

Footsore

Since I don't expect to get much exercise in England over the next few days, I went for a long walk up and down hills in the Tarn yesterday. Fearnley accompanied me for the first couple of miles but after that I was on my own. France has a network of Grandes Randonnées or long distance footpaths. The GR653 passes about a mile from our house. It is one of the Chemins de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle, which starts at Arles and goes to Santiago de Compostela. So I went about 15 miles east and then struck northwards up the GR36. At 6.45 p.m., after 8 hours walking and facing another hill, I realised my legs wouldn't go any further. Lowri came to fetch me. I could hardly lift myself into the car. Long bath and early night. Fortunately I can move again today.

I have swathed my theorbo in bubblewrap and am hoping for the best for today's flight. This is turning out to be a monster problem for all travelling musicians, to judge from the reports on the BBC website 1, 2.

Fiddles and flies

Christian and Sue Urbita came round for dinner yesterday, and Christian brought four of his new violins with him for Malcolm to try out.

Here's Malcolm taking one of the instruments through the Sibelius concerto ....


... while Christian listens intently on the sofa. Lovely instruments, very special.

Today we went out fishing for trout with Malcolm on the Agout between Burlats and Roquecourbe, only about ten minutes drive from home but a beautiful setting, with a clear fast-flowing stream and impressive wooded cliffs above us. He'd brought along his second rod so we all learned how to cast a fly over the water. Like a super-long whip with a high-speed hook on the end - to be treated with respect. No fish were harmed during the day. Here's a fishing map of the Tarn.

Johnny English on the TV this evening. A little surreal to hear Pascal Sauvage, John Malkovich's camp French villain, speaking real French, but great fun nonetheless.

I have bought a 50-metre roll of bubble wrap for my theorbo.

Dordogne

Back last night from the Dordogne where Lowri was giving two concerts with Malcolm Layfield and friends.

Here's the Château de Croze where they played on Saturday night.




Applause at the end of the concert after an exhausting but triumphant performance of the Schubert C major quintet.







The anglo-french amitié barbecue the following day. There's Lowri on the left, in the hat, and Philomena standing up. Fantastic barbecued magret de canard followed by cabécou, the local goat's cheese.

Dangerous fun in the afternoon tearing round the field on a sparky little bike.

This hungry creature sits just above the door in the church at Saint-Pompont, where Friday night's concert took place. I am really not sure how the theology of this works. It's similar to the Green Man, common in medieval churches in England, France and beyond.



The boys had fun on the drums in the stables.

Hiss

Yesterday there was a small snake basking on the front steps. When confronted, it went and hid in the garage. Howard got it out in the end with a broomstick.



Inspired by this, the boys built a snake trap using the grass collecting box from the lawnmower, a funnel, some mosquito netting and a tasty fish finger as bait. The trap was strategically placed behind a logpile. Mercifully, this afternoon it still hadn't caught any snakes. We are not going to have a pet snake. They don't go well with hamsters.

Tomorrow and Saturday, Lowri is doing some concerts in the Dordogne so we are all going to go along too. The first one is in Saint-Pompont. Viamichelin.com says this takes 3 1/4 hours from Castres and Google Maps says it takes 4 1/4. We'll go with viamichelin.

Just been having a look at Google Spreadsheets. It looks as though it could be very useful because it allows different users to view and edit the same spreadsheet online, even at the same time. And it's free. Unfortunately at this stage they have tight limits on the size of sheet that can be imported, so it won't work yet for big fat databases.

Herne and Philomena are reading the collected adventures of Tintin at the moment.

Come in under the shadow of this red rock

To the east of Castres is the Sidobre, a region of massive granite boulders. It was raining so we sought shelter.

Photographers and photographees

Fearnley hasn't yet wanted to have his picture taken, so meanwhile here's a photo of a donkey that he took this morning. There are five of them and they live behind a fence in the woods a couple of hundred yards from our house.

Our friend Howard, who arrived to visit yesterday with his family (on schedule! thank you BA!), advises that all we need now is a million-selling album to pay for work on the house. He can imagine it as an atmospheric Tarkovsky film set in twenty years' time. All I can say is: come back and have another look next month after the first floor loo has been redecorated!

Painting the gates - what a slog. But we got it done.

Meet the family, part 1

Time for some family pics. So far we have only one willing volunteer, so here is Lowri, snapped last week in the back garden.

Meanwhile we're keeping close track of the airline news, following the not-9/11 drama. We have some friends who are due to fly out and visit tomorrow, so I hope they make it. On the 25th I'm flying back to England with my theorbo. I've bought a seat for it, but the list of permissible cabin items at the moment is so ridiculous (spectacles, without case...) that the chances of getting a 6-foot long instrument through the passenger door are vanishingly small. Maybe everyone will have forgotten about the crisis by then? Some hope.

(A little later)

More volunteers have been found. Here are Philomena and Herne on the front steps. This is after we cleaned the front gates together, which are now much whiter than before but have lost great patches of loose paint. Brushes and pots at the ready for tomorrow.

A quick flit to the Gers

Solo theorbo concert in Sarrant yesterday, which went off fine despite the intrusive sound check for the late evening flamenco concert just outside... Everyone comes crowding round afterwards to look at the instrument and ask questions, which is nice because it shows that they're really interested. The lady from the Dépêche du Midi arrived too late for the show but was very friendly nonetheless.

At supper afterwards I learn that Sarrant is the number 3 festival in the Gers, after the Marciac jazz and Mirande country music festivals. But the takings at Mirande are apparently down 70% this year because of anti-American feeling and Sarrant hopes to overtake them. The French haven't forgotten being called cheese-eating surrender monkeys. It seems that the Texas evening was a particular flop.

Half the village in Sarrant is pro-festival and half, led by the Mairie, is anti. The antis don't like the noise and the disruption to their car parking . The Maire doesn't like the fact that the president of the festival is the former Maire from the rival political party. Already the festival supporters are mobilising votes for the next elections to try and get their man back in. I have never read Clochemerle but I must, I must.

Packing up afterwards I found my digital camera, lost since March, in a secret pocket of my bag.

Sky

We saw two monstrous red kites (the bird sort) circling over the house yesterday. They were gone before I could fetch the camera, so you will have to take this on trust.

After the barbecue we sat on the terrace and tried to identify some stars with the help of the fine website at Heavens Above, which offers realtime sky maps from your choice of location. We found Jupiter (yes, not a star, I know) and Arcturus (Bootes).

Today the house is remarkably quiet because two of the children have gone off with our visitors to see the Cité at Carcassonne. I have been watching the final edit of the new Seaview demo DVD, complete with live video footage of Sambuca and the Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet, which is looking pretty good now.

Lengths

Everyone's swimming has been improving during the summer, and suddenly it's become competitive. Lowri announced that she'd done 40 lengths yesterday. Philomena has easily capped that with 76. Then our visitor Mark did 100 this morning. I'm pleased with 33.

We are being treated to a barbecue this evening.

The caravan moves in

Our friends from England arrived yesterday with their classy giant new caravan. Unfortunately it was pranged by a branch while turning into the drive, which punched a hole in the skin. So we've stuffed it full of mastic and hope that this will keep the rain out until they can get it fixed back home.

The caravan has everything in it - shower, satellite TV, cooker and oven, even gin and tonic. So we all crowded in for a welcome drink.

Two more sets of people arrive this evening...

No visitors today!

I have just put in a fat order for lutestrings and fretgut to Bridgewood and Neitzert and now I am keeping my eyes closed until the bill comes in. But when I do put on new strings and frets, I realise how much difference they make. The old ones gradually, insidiously, get slacker day by day, they start buzzing, I try to adjust my playing to accommodate them, it never really works.... So I look forward to the new life next week.

Still, strings are cheap compared to car repairs. Yesterday I finally, two years on, got round to changing the smashed driver's rearview mirror. €122 that cost, for the glass and the shell round the outside. Less than it would have cost in London, I console myself.

Also yesterday I took in the tronçonneuse (chain saw) for a service, only to discover that the shop is closed for 3 weeks summer holiday. August is going to be like this. The library has closed down for two weeks too. Even during the open season, shops all close down for a two-hour lunchbreak, and quite a few smaller ones are closed on Mondays too. I think it's to do with the 35 hour week. No-one told M.Ducat, the baker, though - he's open 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The computers are sweating today as we try to get things done before the next round of summer visitors arrives tomorrow. Lowri is writing her second article for Sheet Music Review (the first one went in yesterday and they like it, hurrah). I am busy writing out fresh theorbo continuo parts for the Monteverdi Vespers concert in Ely. And practising them.

According to the Classic FM website (don't know how long this link will last) Natalie Wheen is playing some music by my group The Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet this weekend. Hurrah again.

Three halves

Busy day today. Spent half the day working with Lowri on fine-tuning the reviews she's writing for Sheet Music Review, and the other half practising the theorbo for my solo concert next week at the Sarrant Festival and for the Monteverdi Vespers with Cambridge Voices in Ely Cathedral on 28 August (tickets selling fast!). Then in the evening Pierre Hudrisier and his family came for supper. We did a good concert in Albi with Pierre a few weeks ago - hope we'll manage to do some more.