Now that Brexit has happened and the UK is out of the European Union, I have been reflecting on the fact that I have seen the whole arc of our membership of the EU from start to finish. I was a student when we joined what was then the European Economic Community and...
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I was half-listening to the radio this morning when they were talking about fishing rights. The concept of 'zonal attachment' was being explained. I learned that this was a new and scientific way of approaching the issue of fishing rights. Fish move around; from year...
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...
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...
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...
People sometimes ask where they can find my 1990 disc of piano music by Billy Mayerl, and I haven't been able to tell them. Since Virgin Classics was bought by EMI, and after parts of EMI were moved to Paris, it's become very hard to follow the fate of a record which...
Despite this week's rehearsals for the Florestan Festival I've managed to watch several rounds of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition on television (the Final is on Sunday). I've been following this bi-annual competition for many years and always find it...
Roses have started to bloom in the garden. There's an old rosebush which has been living here for longer than I have. Its roses are pale pink, but this year for the first time the petals are tinged with the faintest gold. Maybe the weather is different this year, or...
There's another press report on classical music being used to drive troublesome teenagers away from local shops, this time with a twist. The Co-op store in an Aberdeen suburb has been broadcasting a classical playlist at the front of its shop as a 'deterrent'. But...
Just back from a successful trip to the Echternach Festival in Luxembourg. We played in a very pretty but wildly over-resonant church whose acoustics were only somewhat subdued by the presence of the audience. During the rehearsal, when the church was empty, we...
Over breakfast this morning I heard the sports announcer say that footballer Roberto Kaka is to join Real Madrid for a record-breaking transfer fee of £56 million. This sum is quite apart from the player's own prospective earnings, reputed to be in the region of...
The new little convolvulus plant in our garden has just flowered for the first time. Its six delicate purple flowers will be gone by the end of the day. Bob says there should be new flowers tomorrow. We bought the convolvulus plant in homage to a wonderful sight in...
My whole day has been brightened by a lovely thing my daughter told me. She is studying Classics at university and has been reading the Greek historian Thucydides. Writing in the 5th century BC about ‘the ancients', Thucydides described some of their customs. When he...
A friend writes to say that she has been pondering my remarks on Nonfiction and Fiction because of something that recently happened when she was filling in a job application. On the form, she was asked to describe herself as either ‘disabled' or ‘non-disabled'....
