Musical extremes

Last week was the Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet, recording a new CD in advance of our Japan tour in March 2009. Our usual bizarre mix of repertoire, ranging from renaissance pieces on super-large bass ocarinas (which feels like playing a set of weights) through to a new addition to our repertoire, Michael Murray singing the serenade from Don Giovanni to the accompaniment of ocarinas and charango. His new English words are nicely lascivious yet in keeping with the spirit of the original (we persuade ourselves). The CD will be called 'I love my Ocarina' or, for the Japanese market, Okarina ga dai suki desu. I'm sure they'll like it....

Then next weekend I am playing a solo concert in Córdoba for the annual meeting of the Sociedad de la Vihuela. The Sociedad has put together a fine programme for the weekend. I'm going to play more or less the same programme that I played last year for the Lute Society in England, with renaissance lute music by Dowland, Holborne and Spinacino followed by Britten's Nocturnal for classical guitar. I hope it'll be warmer than it is here - it was below freezing this morning. I'm looking forward to seeing Córdoba, especially the Mezquita , the old Moorish mosque which was converted into a Christian cathedral. Meanwhile, lots of practice.

Home from home

There are relics of France's colonial past scattered around the world. Commonly known as "les DOM-TOM" (département / territoire d'outre-mer), they have their own government ministry to look after them.

Some of them - Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, Réunion - are treated as départements equivalent to those on the mainland. This apparently means that they are part of the European Union, despite being thousands of miles away. Then there's a whole bunch of lesser island territories in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, plus a chunk of the Antarctic. The journalist Matthew Parris once wrote about his voyage to the Kergeulen Islands in the Southern (i.e. cold) Indian ocean. It was pure whimsy - he just liked the name. There wasn't much to see when he got there.

Possibly the strangest is Clipperton. No, I'd never heard of it either. Clipperton was discovered in 1705, taken over by France in 1858, and confirmed as French in an arbitration by the King of Italy in 1931. It is a tiny uninhabited island 1,300 km off the west coast of Mexico. Even though it is only two square kilometers in area, this gives France sufficent grounds to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone of 425,000 sq. km. around it, and the right to catch lots of Pacific tuna. It boasts some coconut trees, lots of crabs, about 300 rats, thousands of seabirds and a pervasive smell of guano. See the pictures here.