Shiver my timbers

The hot summer of 2003 was kind to capricornes (q.v.), which laid lots of eggs. Some of them in our attic. The larvae have been chomping at our beams and the wood treatment man came this morning to inspect the damage. Nothing too serious, thankfully, but we're going to get him to come in to cut back the flaky surface, insert injection nozzles, and then pump high-pressure poison in there to knock them out.

Every type of beam (poutre) has a different name in French, most of which I have immediately forgotten. The whole construction is the ossature, literally a skeleton. The main vertical beam is a poinçon, which confusingly is also the name for the metal tool which he used to poke at the holes in the wood.

We also went to look in our dépendance, where a little pile of sawdust regularly appears on the floor. His diagnosis was that this was caused not by insects but by loirs nesting in the roof. Dormice. Apparently they don't cause damage.

Dear diary

It's been a busy few days.

Saturday 10
Played as lute and theorbo soloist for La Saltarelle in their historic dance show at the Théâtre de Castres.

Sunday 11
Flew to England, rehearsed with Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet.

Monday 12
Filming with Granada at Sutton House in Hackney for University Challenge: The Professionals as part of the Lute Society team.

Tuesday 13
Fetched newly acquired oboe from restorers and visited the museum of archaeology and anthropology, the human-era sister museum of the Sedgwick earth sciences museum.

Wednesday 14
Flew back to France.

Thursday 15
Gaillac Primeur drinks hosted by mayor of Castres.

Friday 16
Reception for Accueil des Villes Françaises to welcome new arrivals to Castres (the same event that we ourselves were welcomed at two years ago).

Saturday 17
Dinner at chateâu

Sunday 18
Might go to piano recital at théâtre but might just stay at home instead...

An ancient university

In Cambridge earlier this week, I enjoyed a visit to the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, which I never actually went to while I was studying there. It's like a smaller version of the Natural History Museum but with the distinct advantage that I was the only visitor.

At the heart of the collection are 1.5 million fossils, mostly collected in the late Victorian period and still bearing Victorian labels. Chalk, clay and cliffs yielded huge numbers of fossils of every sort of life form: sea urchins, fish, sponges, molluscs, ferns. And bigger stuff: the hippopotamus skull shown here was excavated in the chalk pits at Barrington in Cambridge. This was the evidence that dramatically changed nineteenth-century minds about the origins and development of life and the earth itself, and which showed that climate change is nothing new.

There's also a very fine minerals gallery, with lucid and non-patronising labelling explaining the crystallography of the specimens.

Commercialisation has started to reach this part of the University in the form of a gift shop. But it hasn't got very far. They don't publish a guide book to the collection. Instead, for the grand total of £7.50, I bought some very pretty samples of:
Quartz
Amethyst
Iron Pyrites
Fossilised Nautiloid
Peacock Ore
Agate slice
Haematite
Obsidian
Fluorite

Fortunately Easyjet has a more generous luggage allowance than Ryanair.

I didn't know that

Who would have imagined that Arnold Schoenberg attended a dinner hosted by Harpo Marx in Hollywood? (or even that Harpo Marx hosted dinners, come to that?). This snippet from a review in this week's Economist, on the strength of which I've just ordered a copy of Alex Ross's new book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. Ross's aim is to provide a history of the 20th century through its music, not just a history of the music itself. An interesting distinction. And, according to the review, he succeeds magnificently. I look forward to finding out for myself once the slow boat from the US arrives (the book's not published in the UK until March 2008). Amazon US is probably cheaper anyway, even with shipping costs, because of the weak dollar.

Maybe Schoenberg composed Harpo's shipboard piano solo in A Night at the Opera (starting at 7:30 in this YouTube clip) ...

Stop Press

There's a nice long article, with pictures, about me and Lowri in the latest issue of Classical Music magazine. I used to work with journalist Andrew Stewart at Askonas Holt, and he decided that our French adventure would make an interesting piece. See what you think.
Page 1
Page 2

Not just witches and pumpkins

Half of the road outside the main city cemetery in Castres has been temporarily redesignated as a parking area. The reason? The strong French tradition of visiting family graves at Toussaint, All Saints' Day, on 1 November. Dozens of chysanthemum stalls have set up shop outside the cemetery gates. The town council has even set up a system of voiturettes, basically golf buggies, to transport visitors within the cemetery. (But only from 9-12 and 14-17 heures: even here, the two-hour lunch break must be respected). Halloween is present in France but rather more muted than in England, let alone the United States. And a good thing too.

Shameful

I notice that I haven't posted anything since 12 September. That's, er, more than a month ago. My fans (slight exaggeration here) have been clamouring for more. What happened? I think I'll just fall back on "Never apologise, never explain."

Actually life has been quite busy. First I was away teaching and playing a concert on the Lute Society's residential course in the Yorkshire Dales, then Lowri was away for 10 days playing chamber music at Prussia Cove in Cornwall (see pics on her blog), then I was off for nearly two weeks on Sambuca's grand concert tour of England and Wales, covering all the corners from East Grinstead to Huddersfield to Cardiff. A lot of driving. Back home now and practising for the next events - Monteverdi's Orfeo in the Aude and an early dance theatre production with La Saltarelle in Castres.

Out in the open air today with Fearnley, who hauled me along to a favourite VTT site (off-road biking...). My twenty-something-year-old three-speeder wasn't really up to the job but we had fun skidding down slopes and avoiding ruts. (Ah! that's the word for a 'rigolle'. Better than ditch or furrow).

I had a bit of fun last week doing the 'selection interviews' for University Challenge - The Professionals at the ITV Centre in London. Following which, our Lute Society Team has been chosen as one of the 10 teams to take part, fighting off stiff competition from The Antiques Roadshow and 78 other hopefuls. So I'm going to be on the telly! Filming is in Manchester on 1 and 2 December.

Éducation, éducation, éducation

For the rentrée last week, President Sarkozy has issued a thirty-page Lettre aux Éducateurs. Addressed to all teachers - and indeed parents - it sets out, in stirring and inspiring language, why everything is wrong with the current school system and how it all needs to change. Expect a winter of discontent and strikes.

More cute animals

Right now, what is a "tatou" in French?
It's not a tattoo - that's a 'tatouage'.
It's not the star of Amélie and of the da Vinci Code - she's Audrey Tautou.
Here's a clue.
Of course. It's an armadillo.

And a 'piano crapaud'? It's the less than respectful word for a baby grand piano like ours. A toad piano, indeed....

After being bitten by a radioactive spider, young Peter Parker...

Alright, I know it's not long since the last weird wildlife picture, but this one is truly scary. All your phobias rolled into one. And only ten feet away from the swimming pool.

Update: Thanks to the magic of the internet, I have identified this beast as a female - i.e. big - Argiope bruennichi. All the web :-) pages about it seem to be in French, so I guess it is a local resident.

3,000 years before Obélix

We all went yesterday for lunch with some friends who have a house in a very empty part of the Sidobre. In the afternoon we went walking to see a newly-discovered menhir, dug up by neighbours of theirs a few months ago. The carving is a simple stylised human representation, life-size, with belt, legs and collar. It was probably done about 5,000 years ago. These carved menhirs are a local feature in and around the Sidobre, and there is a museum in Rodez which has a fine collection of them.

Our friends think they may have found another buried menhir in the woods a couple of hundred yards from their house. The shape certainly looks promising. The children lent a hand with the excavation.

Fitou

Back yesterday from playing a solo recital in Fitou, which is near the Mediterranean coast between Narbonne and Perpignan. Fitou is wine country, and boasts four separate Appellations. The white wine harvest has just finished and the red is about to begin. It's rocky and dry around there, very different from the Tarn only 100 miles away. There were cactus growing wild outside the Chapelle where I was playing.

The Chapelle is a pretty little place, tiny in fact, whitewashed inside and now used for exhibitions and occasional concerts. I played a mixed concert for lute, baroque guitar and classical guitar, which I always enjoy doing, although practising three different instruments for one concert can be a challenge.

I took a bit of a risk programming Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal, a big work for classical guitar, at the end of what was otherwise an early music programme, and was pleased that it went down really well. Nocturnal is based on a song by John Dowland from 1597, Come Heavy Sleep, and I like that connection between old and new. I'm playing a mini-recital for the Lute Society later this month, at their residential weekend course in Yorkshire, so I'm planning to do the same for them and hope that they appreciate it!

I met some interesting characters there, including an American artist who divides his year between his places in France, New York and Hawaii. Lovely man, and very knowledgeable about music. My host was a friendly Scottish potter who ran a restaurant in Fitou for twenty years.

Tread carefully

I've had a request for more postings about weird wildlife. With pleasure. This splendid giant capricorn beetle (Cerambyx cerdo) appeared on our terrace last week. Its body length was 4.5 cm, not including the antennae. That's a big bug: think of a stag beetle and double it. They live on large oak trees, which makes sense because we have quite a few of those in the garden.

When one of them popped up in Wales last year, it was headline news in The Times. Apparently they have been extinct in Britain for 300 years.

The COQ blazes onto MySpace

Quel thrill! With a little help from Lowri's brother Ian, who is visiting at the moment, I have set up a MySpace page for the one and only Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet. Check out the audio, video, reviews and suchlike at www.myspace.com/chuckerbutty and become one of our first Friends.

Next project will be a page for Sambuca. Which is far from being the one and only, as I discover to my dismay when I search for Sambuca on MySpace music, but I don't think there's much risk of confusion between the real Sambuca (mine, of course) and the Hip Hop version in New York or the funk one in Sydney.

Star of wonder

We were sitting out on the terrace this evening when we saw a bright star moving through the sky. Surely not Christmas, we thought. It turned out to be the international space station. It'll be appearing again at around the same time for the next few evenings. Check the precise time, because it only appears for a couple of minutes.

Unexpected hitch

An invoice has arrived from Dell, claiming that the new memory was delivered on 3 August, but no sign of the memory itself. I phone Dell, who say they will chase the delivery company. Meanwhile I have an increasingly agitated end user to placate, who wants to get on with using his Expensive Software. I am going to England today for a week, which won't help.

We've had a houseful of people this week and actually used our disco for the first time. The strobe light with ultra violet background work extremely well, though only for a few seconds before someone howls for them to be turned off.

What the owl brought

Not one but two copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived last week, sent by some kind English friends who visited recently. A wise move to avoid serious conflict. All three children (me too) have now read it, and Fearnley is half way through for the second time. I can reveal that it ends happily ever after.

Meanwhile, I agreed to buy some Expensive Software for Fearnley's birthday. Imagine the dismay when we placed the order and the estimated delivery date came up as 25 October. In fact the package arrived two days ago. Imagine the dismay when it refused to install itself because our computer doesn't have enough memory. On to the Dell website to order some more. Imagine the dismay.... no, stop it. It WILL work once the new memory arrives.

Unaccompanied Minor

8 a.m. and I'm just finishing off my second breakfast. The first was at 4 a.m., since when I've been to Toulouse airport to drop off Philomena for her first ever solo flight as an Unaccompanied Minor. She should be in the air now, enjoying her second breakfast en route to Gatwick where she will be met by her friend Natalie and mother. The whole Unaccompanied Minor business is bristling with formalities, paperwork and identifications. Lowri got very frustrated during the long hours on the phone to BA setting up the booking, and more than once suspected that they were making up the procedure as they went along. Still. It's worked, and at least BA do offer an Unaccompanied Minor service, unlike Ryanair.

Lots of travelling at the moment. Fearnley's friend Simon (another Unaccompanied Minor) came out to visit us last week, Lowri is in Dartington this week, I came back from England a few days ago, going again in 10 days' time.

Fakebook

I'm having fun with Facebook. The Lute Society group that I set up on it about 10 days ago is already up to 27 members. (27 down, 700 to go ... but lute enthusiasts are not necessarily the standard Facebook demographic).

I do wonder about authenticity though. Comment on this issue has largely been about the risk of identity theft. Sharing your date and place of birth, pet's name, or first school with the world at large encourages the world at large to come swooping in and clean out your bank account. Possibly.

But are people who they say they are? The 12 people registered as J.S. Bach, the 16 Ludwig van Beethovens, and the lone Elvis Presley are easily denounced as impostors. More difficult are the semi-famous. The moderately famous tenor Ian Bostridge is up there, complete with photo and 36 friends. Is it really him, or has some crazed fan (they do exist) set up an Ian Bostridge homage account? So is the rather more famous conductor Simon Rattle (West Midlands). Among his 42 friends are Ludwig Beethoven, Leonard Bernstein, Johannes Brahms, Edward Elgar, and a few other illustrious but dead composers. Probably a fake, then.

It's tempting to set up an illustrious alter ego and see how far I could get with building that person's 'social network' for myself. And then empty their bank account, of course.

Fame and fortune beckon

The COQ sampler CD has been reviewed in Lute News issue 82, July 2007. They like it....


The Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet , www.seaviewmusic.co.uk

Just occasionally a reviewer is given something so weird it's wonderful. One of this lot is our own Peter Martin (who presumably reckoned if Lute News wouldn't review it then no-one would!). Another appears from the photograph to be Kenneth Clarke, but maybe that's wishful thinking. Authentic repertoire for such an ensemble being thin on the ground, the quartet have drawn widely, from 18th, 19th and traditional 20th century sources. We open with Offenbach's can-can, played as near to straight as it can be in the circumstances. An Andean piece has three ocarinas and a charango (vegetarians look away now: it's a sort of mandolin with an armadillo shell for a bowl) together with some odd shrieks. A fade-out extract of the finale to Beethoven's First Symphony might well have made the old boy glad he went deaf. The nearest we get to Lutesoc standard repertoire is 'Ungaresca' - the lowing sound of four fat cowhorns. A Bulgarian piece with guitar goes at a hell of a lick. 'Pizzicato Polka' offers 'the sound of the Viennese plucked ocarina' (meriting a Zen round of applause, everybody's one hand clapping?). The longest piece is the finale. The Hallelujah Chorus on crumhorn, melodica and ocarina.

What can I possibly say? The playing is highly virtuosic. Humour in music is notoriously hard to pull off - though the word means 'joke', when did you last giggle at a Brahms Scherzo? Here it works brilliantly, and doesn't go on too long. The whole disc takes less than 10 minutes. My only regret is that the sleeve photograph shows and text refers to them playing Schubert on four rubber trout, but that's not on the record. Get hold of it, and give a copy to someone you like very much.

Meic Goodyear