Culture Vultures

After a few days at home, making tea for builders and other similar housekeeping duties, a long weekend of culture was just what was needed.

My usual front of house duties for the Stuart Singers summer concerts began on Friday and continued on Saturday evening, when we basked in sunshine, shivered in the draught and dodged the shower of rain – no wonder that we haven’t a clue what to wear these days.  Still, the concerts went down well with rave reviews and enthusiastic audiences on both nights, too.

We’d met friends in Cheltenham with a view to visiting the Open Studios but it was such a glorious day that pottering about and lingering over lunch was a more relaxing option!  The Science Festival was going great guns in Imperial Gardens as you can see and Gustav Holst appeared to be in control.  

I was amused by this sign, though stumped as to how better to word it.  “Ladies Crossing” might be more apt?

I left my camera in my bag on Sunday, thinking throughout Tra’s recital at Park House in Cheltenham, that I ought to take a photograph of her elegant shoes working the pedals on the grand piano; but of course, it was inappropriate to do so during her performance and when the recital was over, the moment was gone.  It was great to see her and lovely to have chance to catch up over supper at Brasserie Blanc afterwards.

As if a weekend of culture wasn’t enough to be going on with, I topped it off by meeting good friends Paulene, Nita and Sue at Tate Modern yesterday.

Visiting a gallery with friends is so rewarding, especially when artworks such as this Cy Twombly (one of three similar works on adjacent walls) provoke an immediate reaction in all four of us.  Yet in just five minutes standing and looking, noticing, thinking and sharing those thoughts, a transformation takes place and by the time we leave the room, we can have switched opinions altogether!

Sadly, Sue had to leave sooner than we’d have liked, but she’d come a long way and is probably just about on her way home as I write this. Great to see her though, and a great shame we can’t meet up more often.

Anyone making much progress on a teleporter yet?

A little local difficulty

I’m having one or two problems with MS LiveWriter right now, so I'm not altogether sure how this will appear on my blog.

My Hero has a meeting in Stockholm on Tuesday, so this afternoon, I’m throwing a few bits into a bag and going with him! By way of recompense, I snagged us a couple of tickets for the new ABBA museum for Wednesday morning – all tickets for Tuesday, the opening day sold out long ago, sadly.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking of how to record the trip.

Previous trips have sometimes been fully journalled

On this occasion, I used all kind of ephemera for the pages and bound them together with my newly acquired bind-it-all.

Though, actually, the content is mostly my blog entries from the days we were away.

Other Swedish jaunts have been more hastily recorded, sometimes just in my everyday sketchbook, like this one.

There’s actually more on my blog than there is in my notebook, probably because, as you can tell from the stickers, we no sooner arrived home than we were off again ;-)

There ought to have been one more journal but search as I might, there was no trace. Just as I was about to give up, I spotted one last pink Moleskine sitting there and yes, it was the one from June 2009.

It records the Swedish visit we made with our pianist friend Tra and epitomises why I keep notes in a little book. As soon as I began to read through the pages, I remembered all kinds of details I’d forgotten.

She was recording a CD and I sat for a few hours, watching, listening, sketching, noting. I blogged a little about the session here but left out a few details which made me smile when I read them again just now.

I’d forgotten how every little noise is picked up by the sensitive recording equipment.

and how the recording engineer put his head round the door to announce that he could hear a regular noise – which turned out to be the conductor’s foot! I see the note I took about the adjustable chairs too, which did make it into the blog entry.

Of course, I was sitting there with plenty of time to scribble and sketch, there was no-one to look over my shoulder or to ask what I was doing. It was the perfect place to sit and draw and one which doesn’t come along very often.

So, what will I do this time? We’ll be away for just a couple of days and not really long enough to establish any kind of pattern or daily routine. I’ll post photos and stuff here as usual, which provides me with a great record of the day’s activities. But will I create any other, more conventional journal? I don’t know!

I’ve got a really tiny art kit in my bag and I guess we’ll all see how it develops during the next couple of days!

Super, wonderful, terrific

Well, our day didn’t quite get off to the best start.  We’d booked seats on the train to London to join friends celebrating a significant birthday, but as we walked between car park and platform, heard the news that all trains were cancelled due to a fatality a short way down the line.

A terrible tragedy for those concerned, our immediate need to get to London seemed trivial in comparison.  Nevertheless we couldn’t hang around waiting for replacement buses or anything and decided to drive to Swindon. Except, when we got there, there was not a single parking space to be found.  Since we were staying overnight, we needed a long stay place and having done the circuit once or twice (together with a couple of other cars), we left them to it and drove up instead.

Amazingly, we arrived earlier than we would have done had we caught the train as planned.  Hmm.  Not the best incentive for taking the train in future. 

At least a warm welcome awaited us at the hotel, where an upgrade to a suite  lifted the spirits no end, I can tell you (not to mention a few nostalgic photographs on the wall!)

The day got progressively better, because we met Edward for lunch (in Zedel, just off Piccadilly Circus which is a reliable, reasonably priced place in a very convenient location, btw) and after a bit of a mooch around, we put on our glad rags and met our friends at J Sheekey’s (Fish pie all round! hooray!) Our generous host, the Birthday Boy, had arranged a fine evening out, the highlight of which was The Mikado at ENO.

All ten of us had seen this production previously.  Some had seen the original with Eric Idle some 28 years ago and others – including ourselves – had seen it revived some years later.  Everyone remembered it vividly and couldn’t wait to see it again!

(Photo album from English National Opera)

This is the Jonathan Miller production which takes place in a seaside hotel of the 1930’s.  Wonderful, witty, stylish and exuberantly performed, the whole thing is an absolute joy from start to finish and was every bit as good – if not better – than the last time we all saw it. 

What was especially lovely, was that rather than bid everyone goodnight at the theatre door and each go our separate ways, we returned to J Sheekey’s for puds and coffee – and of course, to share our delight in The Mikado.  As a result, it was well past midnight when we reluctantly put on our coats and headed across Leicester Square, humming our favourite tunes as we went.

The softest and cosiest of beds  in the most elegant suite awaited us!

Monday, Monday

(can you read those words without humming ?)

Looking outside this morning, we feared there might be snow, but fortunately, it was still raining.  

My focus was a little closer, though; the last hotel breakfast for a while.  We sat planning our day over boiled eggs and Birchermuesli watching as the rain turned to a drizzly kind of sleet.  Fortunately, by the time we’d packed our bags, negotiated a late checkout (“What time would you like, Mr Thomas?”, “Well, we don’t need to leave until four”.  “Then four o’clock will be fine”), the rain/drizzle/sleet had stopped enough for me to take an umbrella out with me but not to put it up.

A rather different city greeted us this morning though.  The Christmas decorations in the Kärntner Straße were being taken down and there were several of these elevator platforms here and there making a pretty swift job of it, too.

It was delivery day, clean up day…back to work day. 

We were heading for the Haus Der Musik, in one of the side streets, where we planned to spend a couple of hours before doing a little light shopping and so on before our flight home.

It was an excellent choice!  As well as the usual museum-type collections of memorabilia (those are Brahms’ spectacles!), there was lots of interaction.

We composed waltzes which were played back to us and for which we could have ordered a partiture (but we didn’t).  We learned a great deal about the science of music and hearing and enjoyed fiddling with touchscreens and twiddling knobs (no children here on a weekday morning to get in the way!)

We even got to conduct the Wiener Philharmonic!  Not that they were taking a blind bit of notice of me…

I admired a display of little dance cards from one of the grand balls and enjoyed the morning very much indeed.  We left humming and with a spring in our step. It had been a good choice!

So, back into the city, past these gorgeous caryatids (there appear to be so many in Vienna!) in Josefplatz, where we meandered around, eyes gazing upwards at the lovely buildings and the rooftop figures too.

So this sight came as a little surprise!

The stables of the Spanish Riding School were just there to our right but we’d been so busy looking to our left, we failed to notice.  (A pantomime audience would have been screaming “behind you!” by now)   A handful of the grey Lipizzaner horses were taking the morning air and looking very graceful indeed.

We were more in need of some refreshment however, so “drei heisse Schokolade, zwei mit schlag und einmal ohne” in Julius Meinl was an excellent idea.

Making our way back to the hotel via Kärntner Straße again, instead of peering into shop windows, I glanced the other way and noticed a beautiful decoration on the wall opposite – how had we missed it before?

The young man and his camel were particularly cute!

(so was the warm coat I spotted in the Gerry Weber shop sale, too ;-)

With no  room for any more krapfen, apfelstrudel with or without schlag,  it was time for home.

The weather had dried, the sky was white and it was cold.  It threatened snow and we were happy to be moving right along before it came in and created any havoc.  The taxi whisked us to the airport in no time at all and after a very full flight home, our little jaunt was done.

Good to be home, as always!

The days fly

I began recording the days as a result of a suggestion from my Mum that by doing so, I’d somehow be able to keep these special times forever.   At this time of the year there is so much happening, so many lovely things to do and to see, I can’t help myself but simply make the most of it all. Of course, if I’m busy doing then that doesn’t leave much time for recording.  Hence the lengthy silence at this end.

Well, of course, I am recording it all, just not quite in the finished state.  I’ve got folders of photographs which tell the story of secret santas and party games.  I’ve got little piles of tickets and programmes from choir concerts and other bits of ephemera which will eventually find their way into my December Daily journal.

I’ve got records of meetings and rather more serious training events, to which I did my best to bring a little seasonal cheer.

Thankfully I have no battle scars from braving Oxford Street on the busiest shopping day of the year.  Well, we walked all of a hundred metres or so, keeping our little group of family and friends close together amidst the excitement of it all, on our way to an early supper and Tra’s recital. 

A huge surprise to find familiar faces on the front page of Vietnam+ then, but even greater amusement when Google Translate offers “Mark Thomas in a province west of the capital, near the coastal city of Bristol, and his wife train more than two hours to get to London.”   Most important, however, were the great reviews today!

Sadly, Diana had to return to Los Angeles yesterday but we brought Mary home with us and have settled into an easy week-before-Christmas routine of a little light mooching about local places and fiddling about in the studio and kitchen, talking twenty to the dozen, catching up and making plans.  Oh, and watching the last series of Downton again with Mary, ensuring she gets a head start before it’s shown in the USA after Christmas. Jane, you should be here too!

So for now, we’re savouring the days and leaving the recording of them till there’s more time, when the house is quiet and I can sit and recall how lovely it is to be home in all the twinkle.

The little “topiary” dog in the photo above made us smile, the more so when we walked a little further down Long Street in Tetbury to the flower shop and turned around.  The general opinion though, was that the joke has now worn thin, especially since other dogs have taken to using it as an example.

See what I mean?