I got back from Durham yesterday and today was feeling a touch of withdrawal symptoms – home seems so empty and grey. It’s lovely to see Djelibeybi again of course, but no parents, no lovely new composer-friends, I just needed a little direction. So Djeli and I took ourselves off to the last day of the Diaghilev exhibition at the V&A. They really put together a great exhibition – as they so often do. We went to an exhibition of Ballets Russes costumes and so on in Canberra a number of years ago, so there was some stuff I’d already seen, but I was pretty impressed that most of the exhibition consisted of things I’d never seen before, including the Managers costumes from Erik Satie & Picasso’s Parade and footage of Nijinska’s choreography for Stravinsky’s Les Noces. An excellent antidote for the post-composition-indulgence blues.