When I was a student, I had a friend whose mother was a keen gardener. She was a pianist too, so I felt she was a kindred spirit. In the holidays I sometimes went to stay with the family for a few days.
One day my friend said to me, ‘You know, my mother actually got [...]

The Author, the newsletter of the Society of Authors, has just dropped on to the doormat. It’s full of doom and gloom about the effects of the recession on writers, particularly freelance writers. Fewer reviews are being commissioned by newspapers. Rates of pay have been cut. Editors are looking to produce the material they need [...]

Our cat is having treatment, and needs a pill every day or two. She’s always hated us giving her pills, so we usually ask the vet to do it. But now that pill-giving has become so frequent, we have to do it ourselves – preferably without chasing the cat round the house and wrestling her [...]

It’s now a week since the Florestan Festival ended, and lots of people have been kind enough to write and say what they thought of it. One thing is very interesting: there’s enormous variety in what people enjoyed best. Some relished the things which were new for them, others treasured the old. Some liked things [...]

Bob has been writing about Art Tatum, the great American jazz pianist of the 1930s and 40s. Bob managed to find some transcriptions of Tatum’s piano solos in the library, and has been listening to Tatum’s recordings of those very pieces, comparing the recording with the transcription. I listened too because I’ve long been a fan [...]