Very excited with today's discovery: The Musical Times website includes a concert listing and O what a tempting bunch of concerts are flying about at the moment!

I've also been looking forward to the London Musicians' Collective experimental music festival, but it's this week and I've just discovered that the concert I really really wanted to go to - the one with John Tilbury - is on Saturday, when we'll be in Chester. Ever so disappointing, but I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled to see if he's doing anything else in the near future. I've also just discovered that it's sold out too (like the rest of the festival), which is fabulous to see - at last I'm living in a cultured city!

Saturday is also the 400th anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot and the capture of Guy Fawkes. I'm hoping that Chester will be putting on a bit of a show. Sad not to be in London for it, but I have heard that apparently the government is going to be trying to play it down a bit, what with its connections to terrorism and so forth (although I'd have thought it a good thing - celebrating a terrorist act which was found out and stopped before it happened... but then I guess this is yet more proof that I don't think like Tony Blair... which is probably a good thing. hmm) - no doubt they're a bit concerned about large numbers of people gathering in one place to watch things go boom as well. Concern for safety I guess is a good thing...

It was brought home to me yet again tonight that I really need a new computer - my OS is too old to run podcasting software. Pretty much everything wants Windows XP and my poor little ME-machine just can't cut it. Poor struggling dear. Guess I'll have to bite the bullet and start investigating prices properly. There there dear - you'll be alright (*tucks computer up in a warm and cosy box with a stuffed rabbit*).

# posted by minim @ 10:58 PM 0 Comments

Sorry, but I am. I'm working from home today and the system is running soooo sloooow. Very very dull.

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Of course there are pockets of time when I can get things done (like just then), but overall I'm largely waiting for documents to open... documents to save... documents to submit. Heigh ho.

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But one thing that waiting about does for you is it makes you think about stuff. And one of the conclusions I've come to today is that I've listened to far too much pop music over the past month and it's making me feel dismal, depressed and uninspired. So I'm cutting it out - for the moment at any rate. I've been dosing up on Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Stravinsky for a couple of days now and feeling so so much better for it. My friend Chris says that Stravinsky makes her feel angry - I wonder why. He makes me feel all lighthearted and perky - especially things like Les Noces and Renard which are two of my current favourites.

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Feeling a need to go out and see if I can't track down some more John White and/or Wim Mertens though. We went to see James Thiérrée's latest show on Saturday night which used some of Wim Merten's fabulous music for Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect at the end and it got me all inspired to go out and hunt for new music. So I really should act on that. Just need to find out where the best place to go is...

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That's been one of the hardest things, I've found, about moving to a different country - no longer do I know what shops are best for what things. In Sydney - indeed, anywhere in Australia - if I needed a new overcoat, I would have at least a handful of good chain stores I could start with. Here, not really. And for specialist shops, it's really quite tricky. And often I find that I'm looking for the wrong type of store entirely!

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But I guess that's also one of the delights of travelling - to discover how people do things in different places, even if that's as small a thing as trying to find out where one buys prosciutto...

Maybe I'll stop thinking deep thoughts and instead bake a cake this afternoon...hmm.

# posted by minim @ 1:58 PM 0 Comments

Christchurch with cows

I am in love with Oxford. What a lovely lovely city. I want to move in RIGHT NOW! I had the day off today, so the boy and I decided to do a day trip - we hopped on a train at Paddington and off we trundled.

It was a lovely day for it - started off grey, but then the sun came out and it was lovely and cool but sunny. We signed ourselves up for a walking tour at the Tourist Information Centre, which turned out to be a marvellous thing. Our guide took us into St John's College, on to Jesus College and then got us into Exeter College to see the William Morris/Edward Burne-Jones tapestry in the chapel.

After the tour, we had huge coffees (never seen a cup so big - and that was only the medium size!) in Waterstone's bookshop and wandered down past Christchurch to the Isis River. There was a path leading up the river bank, so we found our way onto it and went for a stroll among the geese, then across Christchurch Meadow - admiring the cows - to the college and back up to town.

They have a nice selection of shops around but my absolute absolute favourite - the one I would make a special trip for - is the Blackwell's music-specialist bookshops. CDs and music magazines (Gramophone, The Musical Times, etc. - quality stuff!) on the ground floor; books, scores, a marvellous assortment of manuscript paper, and musical gifty things (musical dominoes!) on the 1st floor, and then sheet music on the top floor. Bliss! I was really quite restrained - I'm proud of myself - because I only came away with a manuscript book (which has nice small staves which should suit my anorexic notation well) and a copy of The Musical Times which tempted me with articles on Shostakovich and dissidence; 'Stanford and the gods of modern music' and 'The challenges of plurality within contemporary composition'. But I could have spent a vast deal more money there... and no doubt will in the future. Hopefully these purchases are symbolic of a good start to getting back into composition. It would be foolish to waste the opportunities here - especially as I should now be eligible to submit scores for calls and competitions for UK residents...

Guess I'd better shut up now and go and do something useful!

# posted by minim @ 10:08 PM 1 Comments