We often walk up past a farm in the Braid Hills where swallows gather each year to make their nests and raise their young. Usually the birds arrive in early May, and until they leave in August for their journey to Africa, we visit the farm regularly to see how they're...
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I go to quite a lot of concerts given by amateur musicians - partly because there's a big amateur music scene in the city where I live, and partly because I often have friends and neighbours playing in the concerts. Of course my particular interest is piano. It dawned...
The other day when I was a little early for a meeting I climbed the steps to the Old Calton Burial Ground (see photo) to go and look at the monument to the philosopher David Hume. It's a kind of empty stone cylinder into which the sunlight shines, and is always...
I have a new pair of glasses with varifocal lenses. How can glasses have become so expensive! Every few years, one seems to need new glasses, and economising on the choice of frame is neither here nor there when the lenses themselves cost hundreds of pounds. Since my...
The other day the Guardian published a front-page article about the startling number of people of all ages who suffer from mental health problems, such as depression, without receiving any treatment. It was suggested that the cost of drug treatments and cognitive...
I've just been alerted to the fact that on Saturday 19 July, from 2-4pm, Radio 3 is repeating my episode of 'Saturday Classics', in which I choose music of personal significance and talk about the reasons for my selections before they're played. I seem to remember...
I went to a wine and cheese tasting session the other night in an atmospheric old building in Edinburgh. All the cheeses were made in Scotland. The evening was fun, but over rather quickly. One wine followed hard on the heels of another and I rather wished there had...
I've been quiet lately because I've been busy moving house (see scary picture of my grand piano being hauled through the window). After living in London since leaving university, Bob and I have moved to my home town of Edinburgh. To my surprise my return was mentioned...
I've just been in Italy, where as usual I tried to discover if there were any churches where one could hear some live sacred music on a Sunday, and once again was told that there is no longer any real tradition of church music performance in Italy, except for the...
A young musician friend has been telling me about a fully-funded chamber music group based in Denmark. Each member of the group, which is supported by the Danish Government to expand the reach of chamber music across the country, is paid a full salary and has...
I've been clearing out old boxes of letters dating from student days. In these days of email and texts, when most messages are brief and casual, it's amazing to sort through these handwritten letters. I'm struck by what a passion for communication we had. Whenever my...
I've been taking sneaky breaks from other tasks to watch the Winter Olympics from Sochi. This is partly in homage to my Dad, a keen skater, who imparted to the wider family a love of figure skating and ice dancing which still gets us gathering round televisions...
Went to see the new Coen Brothers' film, Inside Llewyn Davis, the tale of a moderately successful American folk singer in 1961, on the cusp of the Bob Dylan era. After the death of his duo partner, Llewyn is trying to make it in Greenwich Village as a solo artist. The...
Here I am, lecturing to the British Comparative Literature Association yesterday. At Deptford Town Hall! Who would have expected such a grand Victorian building, with a beautifully ornate staircase, and an excellent Steinway concert grand piano in the Council Chamber?...
Friends in America have alerted me to an interesting article in the New York Times of 31 December 2013: 'Maestro at Work: Hold That Cough'. Written by NY Times music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, it's about the tickly - sorry, tricky - issue of coughing in...