A Rather Good Concert

Orkney is host to a major music festival every June; the St Magnus International Festival. It's very well attended, people come hundreds of miles to go to it, performers are drawn from far and wide, so it's rather a sad reflection on the OH and myself that until last week, in our 14 years of living here, we have been precisely once. (In this, it has to be said, the Music Festival is leading the equally famous and well attended Folk Festival 1-0, but that is rather beside the point.)

The reason we haven't been to the Music Festival is down to programming as they do very little where they have people singing. and to be honest we're not huge fans of just instruments. If no-one's singing we tend not to be interested, which is possibly a failing in us, or a sign of ignorance, but you know, these things are expensive to attend and if you go to a concert and your chances of enjoying it are 50-50 at best then perhaps you're better off keeping your money for something else that you know you will enjoy. 

The one time we went previously was in fact for a staging in the Cathedral of Peter Maxwell Davies' opera about St Magnus, and we probably wouldn't have gone to that had it not featured one of our favourite singers (Paul Whelan), sadly singing the bad guy, but you can't have everything. We enjoyed that, but there's never been anything remotely like it again. We did have tickets to a lute concert a couple of years ago but we couldn't go in the end; I can't remember why, possibly the OH had had to go south to sort out something for his mother. 

This year, like every year, I picked up the Festival Brochure and had a desultory flip through it, and saw that a major strand for 2019 was Scandinavian Choirs. That was interesting, so I looked at the various programs they were offering and then suggested to the OH that we might like the one by Ars Nova Copenhagen, an a capella group which specialises largely in the music of the 1500s. I neglected to tell him it was at 10 in the evening, largely I suspect because I hadn't really taken that on board myself. 

Anyway, to cut a long story short I bought the tickets and last Wednesday off we trotted to the Cathedral at ten o' clock at night for a concert and we enjoyed it very very much. The first half was modernish music, including some settings of poems by Orkney poets and the second half was largely Spanish from the latter half of the 16th Century. I have since googled Ars Nova Copenhagen and discover they are world renowned and we were therefore very lucky to have the chance to hear them. I have naturally added a few CDs, some by them, and some featuring their repertoire buy other people, to my Amazon wish list.

And who knows? maybe next year we'll go to the Festival twice! 

More Baking

Having got rather fed up with the 'over finished' products of the baking subscription, at the weekend I pulled out a rather beautiful baking book which a friend bought for me a few birthdays ago and which I had never used (partly because I didn't want to get greasy marks on it - the inevitable sign of a cookery book that is used, rather than decorates a shelf. Or is that just me? ) Anyway, there's nothing like starting at Page 1, helped by the fact that Section One in the book is Cakes, and I produced this

a summer fruit sponge. It had buttermilk in it, which I've never used in a cake before and it certainly brought a certain something. The cake was delicious and the only finishing off was a sprinkle of demerara sugar before baking. And that was quite sufficient. 

To go with it the book had an (optional)  recipe for a fruit sauce which was really easy to make. I did strain mine as the OH has a horror of raspberry pips, and we had some of the cake with it and some ice cream as a dessert one day.

Possibly the days of the baking subscription are numbered .... 

What A Frazzly Day!

I should have known it was coming as I was busy yesterday and got lots done, so today was always going to be  bit of a dead loss in comparison. I feel I have got nothing done today; it's not quite true, I have accomplished one or two bits and pieces, but not much. 

The fault actually lies largely with my printer. I need to print out a copy of my thesis, since I have a date and a time and a place for my viva, and I should be starting to prepare for it. I started printing it out last week but the printer ran out of ink, so it was on hold until we got some new; and given the price they charge in the local Tescos  I bought it from Mr Amazon.The OH loaded it up yesterday and today I thought I would be organised and print out the rest. 

I know of old that my printer is a sulky cow who doesn't like being asked to print out too many pages at once, so I thought we'd start gently and I asked her for five pages. She did three, then a half page, then she did them again and then she did them a third time while I panicked and tried to remember where the 'cancel print' thingy was on my laptop. (The printer icon is not on my tool bar, which in itself is a mistake). By the time I'd found the Cancel Print instruction it was too late for it to be effective. 

So then I tried to properly print off the half page which was 22. She printed me off another half page 22, then threw me in a random 26. Twice. Then she did 22-25 properly without being asked.

She has obviously gone mad. Equally obviously I am going to have to print this thing off a page at a time and check every sheet to ensure she has given me the full text and not just half of it. Today I got to page 41 (end of a chapter). Out of 257. Plus the citation list and bibliography. It's going to take a wee while ....

Things were not helped by a bit of an ill-health family situation which is going to be on-going for a while and which is making us both a bit twitchy. This is the last thing I need just now,but that's a selfish attitude and I must get over it, since the ill health is not mine. 

We're supposed to be going for a walk and I suspect we're gong to have a bit of a tetchy conversation about where to go. Prompted by the fact that every time (and not just today) I say 'where shall we go for our walk?' I get the response 'we can go wherever you would like to go'. If I knew where I'd like to go, I wouldn't be asking in the first place. 

Oh dear. Maybe I'll be in a more positive mood tomorrow. 

Baking Subscription June

Crumble topped cherry muffins

What can I say? There was nothing wrong with the 'bake' of these; they were fine, turned out as muffins are supposed to. They were however underwhelming, and again with the too fussy finishing. The crumble topping brought absolutely nothing to the party, bar an irritating tendency to fall off when  you pick up a muffin to eat it. And I'm never convinced about cherry and cinnamon together. All in all my feeling was that this was a bit of a waste of 200g of fresh cherries and I'd rather have just eaten them out of a bowl, or with some good vanilla ice cream. 

I'm beginning to think that when my next six month subscription comes to an end I might call it a day. We'll see what the next five boxes hold before making any rash decisions though.

And no, I have still not made up April's box. Must get around to that soon!

Tolkien

We stumbled across the program for the local cinema in the Post Office last week;  just in time to see that the Tolkien biopic (imaginatively named, presumably by a Viking, Tolkien) was showing over the next two days. . I had previously assumed that this was such a niche film it would never make it to Orkney at all, and I had wanted to see it, so this was serendipitous. 

We went, and we both enjoyed it very much. Some of it is a bit mawkish, but then the Edwardians were a bit mawkish, so it wasn't that the film  was untrue to its time. Not everyone's cup of tea, but ours, anyway. Not the mawkishness, that was toe curling! but the subject. 

When we got home I went to the bookshelves to dig out y copies of the Humphrey Carpenter biography and also the Collected Letters, neither of which were anywhere to be seen. I find this odd, as I would never have given them away and I didn't think there were any  books in the loft. Anyway I will replace the biography with a Kindle version and read it very soon; sadly it appears that the edition I had of the Letters is no longer available.

And in order not to miss things lie this again, I have signed up for weekly emails form the cinema!

Not How We Normally Live ...

... and not how we normally holiday either, but here are a few pictures from the only room that was available for the extra night we had to stay in Tavistock. The credit card bill for this is about to drop through the door any day now ..

Bedroom

I know this chair look like the most comfortable thing ever to sit in. It's not. 

Bathroom

I was too scared to try the bath. Apart from looking as though getting in and out of it would be a short cut to slipping and breaking something, I was convinced that all those pipes would emit would be scalding steam. 

Personally, although it was a nice place to stay, I thought it probably had ideas a bit above its station. 

Saxifrage

Thanks to the (loose) discipline that is the WIP Knitalong on The Archers Ravelry board I have finished off one of my oldest unfinished projects - a pair of socks. I knitted the first one waaaaaaaay back and was exhausted by the heavy patterning so put it to one side to make the other one 'sometime soon'. Two and a half years later it's finally done. I'm quite pleased with them, but not enough to say they were worth the effort of knitting them to be honest. 

Further evidence

of the OH's green fingers.

Here are pictures taken two days ago of his coffee plant, which is in flower and also producing a few beans. 

He's very proud of the fact that it flowered last year at only four, when they generally don't do that until their fifth year. Of course it may have been a year old plant when he bought it. Even so, to get a coffee plant to flower and fruit in Orkney is no mean feat. Not sure what we will do with the beans!

The poinsettia also continues to thrive and put on more red bracts. 

On the other hand, the apricot tree, which he grew over several years from a stone, has died a death, and is scheduled for disposal at the weekend when we are planning to 'bottom'* the sunroom, where it is currently lurking as a memento mori.

*An old Yorkshire phrase meaning to give a good sorting out to.