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...
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It's been a turbulent week, and I have found some distraction in playing through a volume of Grieg's Lyric Pieces. I've always liked them, though I admit I knew only the more famous pieces, and only recently discovered that there are many more - all worth getting to...
I've been putting together a special performing score of my Haydn piano concerto for the Florestan Festival. I'm going to be directing the performance ‘from the keyboard', and I don't want to have too many pages to turn. There's so much else going on in the festival -...
We were walking through Richmond Park, discussing various members of the younger generation and their current dilemmas. Should they change their jobs, travel the world, leave this partner or get together with that one? Will the pursuit of their dreams enable them to...
Eat your heart out, pointlessly thin people, for this is a photo of the birthday cake Bob made for me yesterday. Two layers of chewy hazelnut meringue filled with double cream and fresh raspberries. A thing of beauty and a joy forever!
I spent a long tube journey today reading the newspaper articles and special supplements about tonight's Champions' League Final football match between Manchester United and Barcelona. I'm not much of a sports fan, but anything can become interesting once you take the...
Bob's new vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden is being sabotaged by slugs. They emerge at night to munch on his tender lettuces and fledgling bean plants. We know the slugs dislike crawling over certain things, so for a while we collected our coffee grounds...
I find that Piotr Anderszewski's views on chamber music have begun to prey on my mind. Yesterday I said it was no hardship that chamber music has to be performed in an upright position. Since then I have started to wonder if I was too hasty. Now I suddenly feel that...
Passing the time between a rehearsal and a concert, Bob and I walk along Wigmore Street. We spot a shop selling all kinds of accessories to do with wine drinking. We pop in for some vacuum corks. Inside the shop is a display of luxurious wine glasses: hand-blown,...
This morning my trio had a Coffee Concert at the Wigmore Hall. It meant being in central London at 9am for our rehearsal, so last night I went to bed quite early, in the hope of being well rested. But this strategy rarely works, and as well as sleeping badly, I had...
Bob and I stopped work a bit early and drove to Richmond Park to walk in the Isabella Plantation, a large enclosed garden within the park. The first time I ever saw the Isabella Plantation in springtime, someone had tipped me off that I shouldn't miss the sight of it...
The BBC's poetry season included a sweet programme last night about Wordsworth's poem ‘Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge'. Presenter and poet Owen Sheers shared his lovely insight that the poem has become more, not less resonant over the years. The surprise of...
A few days ago I wrote about our cat dragging her water bowl around the kitchen floor. It's a topic I never thought I would mention again. However, last night when we were giving the cat a bit of supper, we suddenly noticed that her pottery drinking bowl had gone. It...
Our tortoiseshell cat Tashi, now nearly 14 years old, has taken to dragging her water bowl around on the wooden floor of the kitchen. From a nearby room we'd occasionally hear a strange, effortful scraping sound from the direction of the kitchen, as though a small...
