A big day today. And a bit messed up, as they have been lately. It started off with seeing the vicar next door strangling his rooster (Backstory: he bought 2 chickens and 2 roosters. Why, I don’t know – my theory is that he wanted to teach the kids about monogamy. Problem is, that doesn’t work for chickens, so the 2 roosters were apparently vying for territory and not just crowing in the morning, but having squawk-offs throughout the day and the noise was appalling – apparently most of the residents in our block have complained) and then watching his kids jump around like it was a holiday before plucking the carcass. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window! Really rather traumatising. Especially the bit where I saw the eldest girl come trotting back with the big tree-pruning shears… and felt I needed to stop watching at that point. Aaargh! The remaining rooster has been crowing mournfully at intervals for the rest of the day. May have to channel all this into a composition sometime.

Then there was a plumbing drama which I won’t go into but took the entire day to fix, nearly made me miss my physio appointment and had me very, very worried that we wouldn’t have a working shower in time for the concert (but our plumber came through just in time – legend!).

But with all the palaver we were a bit late for the concert. Did manage to hear the end of the first piece though, which was brilliant – for piano 6 hands by Kaja Bjorntvedt – and the concert overall was excellent and a really varied programme. Quite long, but most enjoyable. My piece went off pretty well – I was really pleased with how well it worked, actually, as I’ve been a little worried about the middle song of the three, in particular, basically since I wrote it, but Tamara and Luca did a beautiful job with conveying the style and shape of the work. Not a perfect performance, as Tamara – poor thing – woke up with laryngitis this morning and consequently there were a few little problems, but she and Luca did a great job under the circumstances and overall I’m really pleased with it.

AND I found a CD of songs for bass voice by Einojuhani Rautavaara at the interval CD table for only £2!!!! LOVE his stuff. More and more.

Now for the weekend. Words cannot express how happy I am to be able to write those words!