Who knows where the time goes?

Happy 2015 dear reader.

I've had a very busy three weeks since my last post. Concert after concert, as well as the usual Christmas festivities etc. It’s now the second of January and with the exception of going to see Sixfold performing at the Hob in Forest Hill tonight, it’s back to normal.

I will do a quick review of the past year and where the blog goes next over the weekend, and once I have had a chance to think about it. The whole blog idea came out of a New Year’s resolution; in the last few weeks I have been so busy that I haven’t managed to come up with plans for 2015 yet.

But after ten pre-Christmas gigs ranging from opening a school fete to the Albert Hall the last week has been a chance to relax a little bit, catch up with a few people and indulge too much. Christmas day itself involved a quiet dinner with the kids; the time since has included big band jazz at the Hideaway, playing the New Year in on the ukulele, and quite a lot of festive spirit.

I didn't dare stand on the scales this morning, but I know a few pounds have crept on over Christmas. They will be leaving during January, I can assure you.

So, once again, Happy New Year one and all. I hope it’s a good one for all of us.

What ever happened to plate-spinning acts?

It's been a fairly quiet weekend, for which I am quite grateful. Not sure if 'burning the candle at both ends' is the appropriate phrase, but I've had quite a few late nights in the last couple of weeks - a mixture of rehearsals, evenings in the pub that have gone on just a bit longer than they should have etc. So I took the opportunity Saturday and Sunday to recharge and do nothing more than have a wander around and a trip to the gym etc, and make use of my extra hour to sleep in a bit.

From here on in, weekends are starting to hot up with more rehearsals - this year I am doing a good number of gigs at the Albert Hall with London Concert Chorus, plus Voxcetera's Christmas concert on 13th (only one gig but lots of music to learn, plus at least one Xmas gig with Balham Ukulele Society - which will be songs I know, but do not know on the Uke. So there is a lot of practising to do as well. This may come across as a moan - it really isn't - I love doing this sort of stuff (otherwise why would I...) but put it on top of the usual social whirl and it all gets quite busy.

Other than that, work continues on apace. We've had a number of people out over the last month - a mixture of conferences and holidays and the colds and 'flu that are always around at this time of year. I'm hoping that now everyone is back I will be able to move things forward rather than just feel like one of those circus plate-spinning acts. (What happened to them - as a kid you couldn't go a fortnight without seeing one on TV - presumably they are all working in call centres or stacking shelves?)

And it's my birthday next week - which really isn't a big deal - I've reached the age where even the ones ending in a '5' aren't a big deal (this one doesn't) - it's pretty much only the decades you want to commemorate. But it's an excuse for a bit of a celebration if I want one, and to buy a nice book or similar (I need *no* excuse for the latter of course).

Anyway, that's a quick 'no news' that his filed my lunch break. Will write a little more later in the week.

Kicking Our Way Through a Golden Gown

As I start to write this it is 6:30 am. I looking out on a morning that certainly looks very autumnal, and conducting an experiment into how much coffee it is going to take to wake me up. The "one-cup hypothesis" has failed but I have high hopes on the two.

This has been the first normal - five day working week for a while with a couple of late work ones thrown in. Plus a couple of late non-work ones. OK, it would be easier to say I haven't got to bed at a sensible hour since Sunday.

I've changed my morning routine a little. As anyone who goes anywhere in the morning will be aware, kids are back to school. And most of them seem to be getting my train. I've tended to get the same train for about the last 3 and a half years. At the beginning there were maybe four or five kids getting the train to the private schools out South of Croydon. Now it is maybe 30 from Balham, with another 30 or so already on the train from the stops before.

This shows something about the area - it's one that is impossible for normal people to buy a house in (if you can afford £18k per year out of taxed income for each of your kids to go to school - which is a salary cost of nearly £70k just on education if you are going to send both Oliver and Sophia, then you are not "normal people"). But this isn't (today) a moan about the increased bankerisation of Balham. It's simply a comment that I've changed to a slower train where I have my choice of seats, and a pleasant-enough ten minute to the office at the end of it.

And it looks like another busy week ahead. I'm doing the Verdi Requiem with Crouch End Festival Chorus and the gig is Saturday 13th. So a rehearsal for that first thing tomorrow. Ukulele to restore the balance Sunday, and then I am off to Guernsey (working) for a couple of days next week, back to host a work drinks party - deep joy - Thursday and then two days of Verdi before the gig. So I think tonight and Monday is it in terms of free time for a while. And obviously I need to go to the gym on those to counter the excesses of all the other things. It's good to be busy but right now (at 6:47am) with coffee number 2 failing to make much of an inroad yet) I'm thinking maybe not this busy.

It has all felt rather easy in the nice summer weather. Easy to get out and about, just looking out the window makes you smile. I normally really like autumn, but I do wonder how that is going to be, when it gets cold and dark by the time I am home from work. Maybe I'm a little anxious about that right now.
_____

Right - two hours on, in the office and just posting this I saw the following story.

And in sad closing news, the BBC reported that the space sex geckos have died. I'm sure all our hearts go out to the plucky little fellows. I hope that, following their inevitable dissection and prodding about, that they will be given the send-off so deserved by such pioneers.

Guess Who's Back?

... back again.

You’ll have noted the three week gap, which has pretty much coincided with me being on holiday. I took the decision that, given my working life involves a lot of time looking at a computer screen, my holiday shouldn't. So I haven’t. Just checked the email each day, largely to control the inflow of stuff.

So, what to tell you?

I've had a wonderful break. I’ve caught up with a few friends, and also visited my parents. I've caught up with the kids – always it seems in ones and twos, but they are so busy doing their own stuff. And in my brief offspring-related detour, I was delighted by middle son’s frankly stellar GCSE results – he has learned a great lesson that hard work brings results. I learned that lesson at age 40.

Health? Well. I set myself what with my work head on I would call a stretch goal – if everything went well then one day I might get there. And I am now only 2.5Kg* off it. That means I have since Easter now lost 30 pounds^. Over the holiday, with the exception of two days at my parents, I have walked at least four miles every day (except today because of the rain) and gone to the gym every day except one. And I have eaten healthily. I am absolutely ecstatic with my achievement – my stretch goal looks possible for September.

Which meant I had to buy some new clothes. Not my favourite experience, but feels good to have reduced the size that much. Of course (up pops the negative part of Brain) it’s the keeping it off that is difficult. To which I say frankly “bollocks”, let’s see in six months’ time.

Music? I am loving my Ukulele playing with Balham Ukulele Society. It’s fun, and low pressure, but still something to work at. More seriously, I sang at the Proms on Monday 18^th – the Rachmaninov Choral Symphony – “The Bells”. Wow. What a choir, what an orchestra, what a conductor, what a reception. It was on Radio 3 and is still on IPlayer. The music may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was such an experience. Hard work. Really hard work, but certainly worth it.

So, that’s the catch-up download. Not a mention of Kate Bush (23 days and counting and the tickets have arrived) or Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who (though I want a coat like that). And no mention of the stuff I have read over the break – I’ll give you all that lot over the coming weeks.

It’s great to have been away, but it’s just as lovely to come back.

* I’ve decided to go metric

^ It didn’t last – I can only think in imperial measures

Don't do it

It’s been a slightly strange weekend. Gorgeous weather and a wedding on Friday meant a great start. And I think the choir did pretty well – one slightly hairy moment in ‘Oh Happy Day’, but the choral self-righting mechanism (known technically as ‘watching the conductor’ kicked in pretty quickly and all was well again. Lovely to be part of such a special occasion and I wish the happy couple well.

I did a lot of walking too. It’s ticked up to five or six miles a day in one go (that’s excluding the little trips to the shops which mount up too.) I've been finding in the last year or so that it is much harder to sleep in for the morning. I remember as I guess a teenager my parents always being up early and them saying that they just couldn't lie-in any more. And, unless I've been on a really late one the night before (which isn't then a lie-in, it’s just a time-shifted normal sleep) I tend to be awake by 7 even without an alarm. So on a non-work day I get up, have some breakfast and go out walking for an hour or so before it gets busy. There is definitely an endorphin release that comes from exercise, and this is magnified by being back home at maybe 9 / 9:30 and thinking I've done that already when a year ago I’d still be just getting up.

And I seem to have come off a plateau at the gym as well, in that I'm managing to use an exercise bike for longer and at more intensity than I had even a week ago. And I haven’t died of heart failure once. To illustrate what I mean, two weeks ago if I did 30 minutes on a bike which (according to the bike) burned about 330 calories, I was done in, and coasting for the last five minutes. I'm now doing 35 or 40 minute and pushing close to 500 calories, and maintaining the effort for the full time. And I had my first go on a cross trainer on Saturday. I don’t like it much because I have to think too much (bike just involves music on and subconscious brain takes over – not so the x-trainer (yet)).

I think this is quite easy to explain – since the end of May I've lost nearly twenty pounds in weight. I remember on various TV shows watching people who had lost weight being presented with the equivalent weight (usually in packets of lard or bags of sugar) and being told “this is what you were carrying around with you”. So that’s 9 bags of sugar or 36 packets of lard that I'm not dragging around on the bike.I may go and carry something like that around Sainsburys for ten minutes later, just to remind myself...

Other good stuff – I'm really starting to get into learning the Rachmaninov for the Prom two weeks today. It’s so fast that I still have some way to go, but I do now for the first time thing it is doable. And I'm also loving the ukulele – it got a thousand times easier when I figured I should cut my nails on my left hand. I can be really slow some times!

The weird (arguably not so good) bits? Well, this was the first weekend when I was largely left to my own devices since I moved house. And I still feel that I really need to be “doing something” all the time – that a moment spent doing nothing is a moment wasted (and I have wasted enough of my life I feel). With no planned events (rehearsals, dinners, catch-ups etc.) this got me a little edgy by Sunday night, because I’d done most of the things I needed to do, and still had some time left. This worries me because, as of Thursday I am on holiday, so if I am like that after two days, how will it be after two weeks? I hope (and suspect) this is just a short-term adjustment thing. I need to learn to relax, and to accept that an hour spent doing very little is by no means a bad thing.

I'm likely to be very busy the next three days* tying off loose ends at work, but after that I’d like to think I will be blogging quite a bit over the next fortnight – and perhaps on slightly more meaningful stuff – particularly if I don’t manage to figure out where my own personal off switch is!

* To prove that, whilst I wrote this at 7 o'clock this morning, this is the first time I've had the chance at work to take the fully 30 seconds required to upload it!

Depending on Your Appetite

One of the consequences of my recent move has been a need to sort out my music collection – with the aim of being able to move away from physical CDs and to an electronic solution. Not because it's better – it really isn't – but simply for convenience and to save space.

Having successfully sync’d everything I have bought from Amazon and iTunes I set myself the task of uploading 10 CDs a day until I had finished the balance, and at the weekend I completed it.

One of the joys of this of course is that you get reminded of CDs that you hadn't played for ages, which has led to me revisiting Prefab Sprout in a big way over the last week. A band I had a lot of time for in the 90’s – at least musically (I still think that the lyrics can fall just the wrong side of clever-clever). And it’s still good – they have now been uploaded to the MP3 player as well. What is interesting is that my ranking of the albums has certainly changed over the years – and that Steve McQueen is now unquestionably my favourite. Great songs but a simpler set of production values that Jordan or Langley Park – which I now see as a bit overblown. (Swoon, the first album is simpler still, but for me the songs just aren't as good.)

And so, it was with my quest for simplicity in mind that I went for the first time to Balham Ukulele Society’s fortnightly Jam session on Sunday*. I’d never played a uke before – well maybe I’d strummed one once or twice – so getting thrown straight in with no concessions to beginners was a steep learning curve. I think I did OK though – enough of the hand shapes are familiar from the guitar that I could have a decent go anyway. And thank you to Rachel who leant me a uke to practice on between now and the next time.

Of course, the different tuning makes for some oddities for anyone thinking in guitar language. Not least that the E chord seems to be incredibly difficult. But most uke songs seem to be in G, so that’s OK. Until you come to sing them. Still, it’s another thing to keep my diary ridiculously full.

Other news, my beloved 5 year old iPhone 3GS finally bit the dust. Well, got to the point that I could only get a signal standing next to a phone tower anyway, which kind of renders the phrase “mobile phone” questionable. I have a new one and am still at the stage that I am amazed that I don’t have to charge it for three days at a time.

It has a ‘walking’ app on it. I should backtrack a bit here. In order to try and lose some weight I started using a free website thing called ‘My Fitness Pal’. It’s a diary really. You plug in goals, and the exercise you do and the food you eat (it has a huge database of these which makes that quite easy). And this is quite motivational – even though no-one else can see it - the thought of typing in “three bags of crisps and 17 bourbon biscuits” in the “Dinner” field is a deterrent. And I can use it on phone and I-Pad as well as PC. Anyway – it links to all sorts of applications, so on both Saturday and Sunday I used the pedometer thing and was pleasantly surprised how easy it is to burn calories without it seeming like it, simply by walking around. So that’s added to the routine now too.

Generally my fitness regime is going pretty well. I started it, in theory, around the middle of May, though in practice didn't get going until June. But in the eight weeks since I've eaten well, and exercised at least four times a week. I've lost a bit of weight and feel a lot happier with that sort of thing as a result. Of course, the progress will slow down now – the first few pounds are the easiest. But a huge benefit of living alone is that I can avoid treats and snacks very easily – by not buying them. So I am optimistic that the five weeks from now till end August will bring further progress.

Well, that’s enough – the train is pulling in and I’ll post this later. Off to rehearse for a wedding this evening – where we are singing on Friday. I don’t think they need ukuleles but I will ask.

___

As I come to post this, I thought I would share this from John Oliver – the UK satirist/ comedian who seems to be taking America by storm. When there is so much crap going on in the world, this made me smile - #gogetthosegeckos.

* of course, this isn't the reason at all – someone invited me, but it’s a nice narrative link!