Archive for the ‘Daily Life’ Category

Channel 4’s ‘The Piano’

Posted by Susan Tomes on 27 February 2023 under Daily Life, Inspirations, Teaching  •  1 Comment

I’ve been watching Channel 4’s new series, ‘The Piano’, in which amateur piano-playing members of the public put themselves forward to come and play an upright piano in the foyer of one of Britain’s main railway stations. Unknown to them, watching behind the scenes are two judges, the Chinese virtuoso Lang Lang and the singer-songwriter […]

Christmas cake decorations

Posted by Susan Tomes on 27 December 2022 under Daily Life, Inspirations  •  1 Comment

We generally try to make our own decorations for our home-made Christmas cake. We used to attempt traditional scenes of snowmen, sledging, fir trees, snowballs etc. In recent years, after icing the cake, we’ve switched to making animals out of the leftover icing. Each year furnishes its own themes.  During lockdown, an otter appeared on […]

The fieldfares are back

Posted by Susan Tomes on 14 December 2022 under Daily Life  •  1 Comment

Every winter at around this time, we see a kind of bird we never see at any other time of the year. Fieldfares, which are large thrushes, arrive from Scandinavia and eat the last of the berries on the rowan tree outside our kitchen window. First we notice that the tallest trees in the area […]

A reunion dinner and some old neighbours

Posted by Susan Tomes on 28 September 2022 under Daily Life, Musings  •  1 Comment

In our student days, those of us studying music (and in fact anyone who wanted to continue their piano studies) were allowed to hire upright pianos and put them in our rooms. Not infrequently there were two or more people on the staircase with pianos in their rooms – I remember one year when I […]

Traditions of music-making can’t be allowed to fade away

Posted by Susan Tomes on 20 September 2022 under Concerts, Daily Life, Musings  •  2 Comments

I often tweet about music and related matters. Usually the response is small – I’m thrilled if my tweets reach a couple of hundred people. So my experience yesterday was exceptional. I was watching The Queen’s funeral which, as you’ll know, had a variety of music in it – pipe bands, regimental bands, organ music, […]

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