Dancing the Night Away

I am sitting in a hotel in Leith, on a day when the title of the song and film can only be presumed to be ironic. If I stand on the table and peer out to the right I can just see the former-Royal Yacht Britannia sitting there attracting tourists.

Yesterday Voxcetera (the chamber choir I sing with) did a concert in Edinburgh with a local choir - Rudsambee (it's based on the Gaelic for 'anything at all'). They did the first half, with a programme ranging wildly in language - Welsh, Irish, Hungarian, Polish, and even a little English. And we debuted our  new Poulenc 8 French Folk songs, and ran some Britten too.

The audience seemed to love what we did; the Poulenc will be honed to perfection by the time we do it in London in October. And as for Britten's AMDG - which sets the poetry of Manley Hopkins to a range of accompaniments? It gets better and better I think. There were definitely a couple of moments last night where it took life beyond anything it has done before. In a good way, too.

A contrast. Two pretty accomplished choirs, but with a very different schtick. I think we blend better, and do stuff that is musically braver than them, but they interact better with the audience. Food for thought on where we might go next.

Of course, where I went next, post gig, was clubbing. Until 3:30 this morning. In a very pleasant establishment (no irony at all here) called the Jam House, with a live band and a good set of tunes - ancient and modern. But writing a blog at 9:30 (breakfast already done) reminds me of the benefits of not drinking. It is easy to have fun and dance the night away sober. Today, despite being from Edinburgh, I shall be doing the tourist thing

Some of you will be expecting comments on the election. Full thoughts can await the outcome of the Euro poll. In terms of the locals, Labour did well in London, but not nearly as well as they should have. Wandsworth remains Tory, but a little less so, with my ward having not split two Lab and one Tory. The greens have done well and UKIP has not, in London anyway - where in their own words the population is young, educated and culturally diverse. Spin that statement round and see what you could get as a UKIP strapline.

Elsewhere UKIP has done quite well, but I don't think it is all at the Tories expense, and you wonder how that will translate to a general election. One surefire prediction though. We are destined for an autumn of speculation about the Labour leadership. For me, Miliband looks finished. He doesn't attract outside the core, and doesn't seem to do well in it either. I'm imagining hushed discussions in corridors by friends of Yvette C and Andy Burnham.

Oh, and another prediction. Journalists everywhere will have been dispatched to dig up dirt on every councillor elected under the UKIP banner. They have a tough life, do journalists in these straitened times, so help them out. If you have taken coke with a new UKIP councillor, or helped him catalogue his Nazi memorabilia, do give The Mirror a ring and point them in the right direction.

Oh Well

The dog ate it. I was ill. The wi-fi was down.

None of those are true. I must admit I thought it had been two weeks since I wrote a blog. It's been four. That is really slack. And I don't have a great excuse, I just haven't got around to it. Sorry!

What have I missed? Well, some of you may have missed my Voxcetera concert which played to a packed St Sepulchre in London last week. It was fabulous to do, and I think those attending enjoyed it too. For the first time we really took ownership of some tricky Britten and, having now heard a recording, made it sound really good. Plus of course there are those spine-tingling moments - like the way the D minor fortissimo chord towards the end of the Esenvalds piece just hung in the air and never seemed to die away.

Back to earth with a bump, I watched "Mr Toad and the Sell-Out" on BBC last night (aka the Lib Dem and UKIP debate). Clegg is Mister Political Expediency - and has been so often that he's probably retained the trophy by now. But Farage - dear God help us. In the same way as creationism got clever by evolving (maybe a bad choice of word there) into intelligent design, UKIP is just a more respectable "we hate Jonny-foreigner" party isn't it.

Watching the debate over a grotty internet link and Twitter makes one smugly complacent that no-one's falling for that old shit again. But I fear that's not the case. UKIP is generally picking up support across the spectrum, from those who are disenchanted with the political class and with, generally "Them". It's Farage's affable pub-bore facade that makes him so credible with so many. They are going to do well in the Euro elections - it's not a question of whether they beat the Lib Dems for 3rd place. I'm afraid they will do a lot better than that. That is just so embarrassing. Farage is a French M. Le Ros-bif  caricature. And Stew Lee's brilliant dissection of UKIP a couple of weeks ago doesn't counter it - UKIP voter's aren't watching stuff like that.

In case you hadn't noticed, alongside getting fit, my 'don't get political' and 'don't get sweary' New Year's resolutions have gone by the board. If you keep coming back to the blog for its gentle humour and flights of fancy, you may be disappointed (though I've not written for four weeks, so on reflection probably no more than you have been already).

Anyway, back to work... more soon

Family and Friends

Well, I said at the beginning of this I was going to avoid politics. I failed last time - miserably. And you lot reward me with the biggest readership figures I've had all year, and lots of positive messages. Thank you for this. Your feedback is important to us. And having caught a little wave of popularity, I'm going to ignore it and write about something completely different. But I will get back on the political hobby horse, you'll just have to wait.

Half Term begins - and an extended weekend break - I am off Monday, and will be spending time learning stuff for the next Voxcetera gig, catching up on admin and some reading (and writing) and attempting to play "Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear" on the piano. I suspect the last of these will prove the least successful, and the least entertaining for the neighbours (though the Britten I'm learning could run it close on that one).

I managed to catch up with a couple of friends today - one over lunch and one for a quick coffee later on. I don't do this kind of thing often enough - just catching up without it being at a rehearsal or seeing a band or watching a movie. I never really thought why this was*, until it came up over lunch.

My parents grew up in the small town of Coatbridge, close to Glasgow. They met at church I think when very young - but my father did the music for shows and my mother did the choreography (not much doubt which side I inherited). Everyone stayed local, met future spouses locally, and that was it. Everyone was always in and out of each other's houses - not just family, but neighbours too. And my parents were the first of the family to  move away - first to Edinburgh, and then to England. Now, or course, I moved too, as did many of my friends - growing up in Lytham St Annes there wasn't a lot of career choice if you stayed. But they did it in a much less connected world, and were the first. That takes courage. But it also meant of course that we didn't have that family support system.

In the first few years, I know my two grandfathers (both widowed) would come down regularly, but I suspect this was to have someone to look after them rather than to support my parents. By the time I was eight, they were dead too (life expectancy in Glasgow was as bad then as it is now). And there must have been a different friends dynamic too. If all your mates from school and college disappear to the ends of the earth, then you accept the need to travel to stay in touch. My parents' friends stayed put. Many in Scotland - one couple in Lancashire - with a young family. They were never going to stay close.

So we were on our own  The classic nuclear family. And the just dropping in and small talking didn't happen. I had a great upbringing - I wanted for nothing within reason and didn't miss other family because I never had any, but perhaps it does explain my tendency for self-reliance.


* to be honest, I assumed it was because that was just how I am - small talk is awkward, people, indeed, are awkward so why on earth put yourself through that when you can be reading a book or listening to some music.

The Christmas cake is no more

Not sure if doing something twice, other than perhaps crystal meth, could be deemed a habit, but two lunchtimes back at work and two blogs written. Although Blogger does have an IPad App, I’m not confident in getting everything right with it, so I type the text into email, mail it to myself and then correct /format, tag and post on the desktop machine. At the weekend I shall be away from a computer for 48 hours so will be forced into posting direct – let’s see how it goes.

Yesterday I was both quasi-jet lagged (going from getting up about 9am and going to bed past midnight to having to be up at 6:30) and on day one of my 5:2 eating plan (not using the ‘D’ word). Result was that by about 7:30 I was really lacking in energy. This may need a rethink – how am I going to manage the gym and not eating? Obvious answer is to shift the two days to non-gym, so likely Tuesday and Thursday. But that feels unbalanced. My immediate concern with the 5:2 would be that I'd just go crazy on the next day and eat twice as much. It's early, but at the moment the desire to get a benefit in return for yesterday's hunger is holding sway.

Still, hot bath, in bed by 10, asleep not to long after, and a good night’s rest, followed by the last (small) piece of Christmas cake for breakfast, and I feel much brighter today. And that’s just as well, because I have my first Voxcetera rehearsal of the year tonight. We are starting to work for our March concert – the Mozart Requiem, Britten’s AMDG, Purcell and Essenvalds (no – I haven’t either). Can’t wait.