There’s been quite a lot written lately about the need for musicians to ‘be their own promoters’ and organise their own concerts. In the face of declining opportunities for classical music, many musicians have embraced the idea of putting on their own concerts and starting their own festivals. My own professional work has always been a […]

Lots of people have asked for news of our rescue cat Daisy (surely her adventures can’t be more interesting than my ruminations on phrasing and pedalling?). Daisy’s getting on beautifully, but can’t understand how to use the cat flap which would let her out into the garden. Although she’s four years old, she seems not […]

I wrote a while ago about the memoirs of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, ‘the Highland Lady’, whose memoirs of life in Scotland in the early 19th century were so popular. Now I’m reading her later volume of memoirs, written when she was married and helping to run an estate in Ireland. In her Scottish memoirs, she recalls with […]

We have a new cat, Daisy, adopted from a cat rescue shelter. After a wobbly start, she’s settling down beautifully. Daisy is a very quiet cat who seems not to find it necessary to say anything. One of her few utterances was a moment after her arrival when she shot out of her cat box, leapt onto the fridge, gave a […]

The current series of ‘Masterchef Professionals’ has provoked quite a lot of interaction between musicians (mostly on Twitter) commenting on how unprepared the competitors seem to be for the cookery challenges which await them. Time after time, in the ‘technical challenge’ section, chefs are asked to do a standard restaurant task like de-bone a piece of meat, prepare a […]