O-a-blog™ (DFOK, Darnley Estate, Compass Sport Cup SE)

Well (continuing from yesterday's blogological entity) I did indeed make it. It was a bit of a trek, out along the North Circular then the A13 then across (rather magnificently) the QEII Bridge and eventually down the A2 a bit till it nearly becomes the M2; but, as it turned out, well worth the journey.

I had had nice and encouraging email from a nice entry-sort-out person who advised me to get there early to grab an EOD (entry on the day) slot, as there were around ten left for most courses - so I did. I actually got the first available EOD time for Blue, which was 10.31: quite cool given that first starts were at 10.30. I was there embarrassingly early so I kicked my heels trying to look like a queue while the DFOK people were setting up. I felt a twit but the queuing did have the desired effect.

Having said that, I then nearly messed this bit up: I knew that they were using two starts, called Blue and White, and that White was twenty minutes from the car park and Blue was just five. My subconscious had decided that as I was doing a Blue course I must be going from the Blue start, so I took my time, and phoned Deb for a nice chat, and so on ... yep you guessed it: the start names were "upside down" compared to the course lengths, so the long courses went from White and the short from Blue. Duh, Vogel, silly man. I must add, though, that I am not sure that it's a great idea to use colours, like course names, for the starts, and I would have thought that, even if you did, it would make more sense if they were lined up so that White and Blue courses, and the ones similar to them, would be at the appropriately-named starts. But even better would be calling them North and South or Apple and Pear or Duck and Teal - really pretty much anything else, I'd have thought.

So having suddenly understood all this and realized that I was not quite ready to go and it was past 10.11 and I needed to be gone minutes ago, I went off in a tearing hurry for the two kilometre trek to the White start. 2K! That's longer than some courses I've done! Naturally, I was nearly dead before I got there. I ran much of the way and kept passing alarming signs saying "1000m to go: 10 minutes" and so on. And it doesn't help that my elderly, clockwork, much-loved watch is not actually ruthlessly accurate to the last nanosecond, so there's no real guarantee that the 10.31 for which I am aiming is the same 10.31 as other people know about. So of course I was in total sweaty-panic meltdown, something I do quite well. A nice starter person reassured me that I was OK to start anyway (I'd missed 10.31 by a short sneeze) and tried to encourage me to calm down and get my breath back, a kind approach though if she'd known that it would have really taken an armchair and a large Scotch she may have thought better of the project.

And so away I went. It may have been the rushed start but to cut a long story short I made AN UNBELIEVABLE HORLICKS of the first control, taking over 14 minutes to find it - some kind of personal worst ever, indeed probably a galactic worst ever come to think of it. I cannot think when I was last so panic-stricken, frustrated and angry on a run. I note that someone claiming to be me wrote this:

" – when it’s all going wrong I do sometimes have to make a conscious effort to fight off a depressed and defeatist attitude that can try to flood in but, you know what, I have always been glad, ten minutes later, that I managed to fight it off."

Well, yes, jolly good, but I'd say this was pretty close to the edge, in real danger of entering the non-fighting-it-off zone. If I'd sat down on a tree stump I don't think I'd have got up off it to go orienteering again, but just to give up and go home. Seriously. Real Slough of Despond stuff.

The annoying thing is that it is as if I forgot everything I ever knew about orienteering and maps and was just back to a totally unskilled, unthinking approach. Certainly, that panic-stricken pre-start period did not help, but I am quite disappointed in myself that I let it get so out of hand and let the self-pity nearly win. Once I get started it is powerful stuff: I'm too fat and old, I am no good at this, I am no good at anything, what do I think I am doing out here, I look like a fool, I should give up and go home, I should never do this sport again ... and so on. Not, in fact, a brilliantly good thing to have going on in your head. Do you remember in The NeverEnding Story, when Artax (the only horse that I know of named [almost] after a ceiling finish) "lets the sadness get to him" and sinks into the swamp? I imagine my kids still have nightmares about it - I know I pretty much do. Like that.

The silly thing is that I could and should have stopped and done almost anything and it would have been better than the aimless and depressed wandering that I actually did. For example I could very easily have got back to the path or even right back to the start and tried again, used different features, counted steps more carefully, and so on. (I think the initial problem may have been that I badly miscounted - 100m instead or 200 or something - and this put me in a clearing that seemed right but was actually far too early.) There was a line feature in front of the control that I might well have found, and that would quite likely have nailed it. I cannot offhand remember what the symbol means - I thought "a bit like a Twix" was close - but I am sure it would have been findable and then helpful. And so on.

Anyway, I eventually stumbled upon the control, partly through pure luck and partly through a tiny bit of proper thinking - some of which was navigation and some was where other orienteers seemed to be coming and going, though the latter approach is not that safe, especially as there was another control quite close by which I had already found and checked and established it was no help to me. The real Control 1 seemed a long way further out and north of my line compared to where I had thought, but it was a great relief to find it anyway.

Sadly I wasn't too bright in my approach to the next control either. (This is also on the map fragment at the top.) It was just after a fence junction where fences either side of me gradually came in, like a funnel, and met. The one close on my left (to the east) was just a boundary between the wood and the (out of bounds) fields beyond. The more distant (western) one on my right was an internal boundary within the wood, and had a path running up it - indeed it was the same path where the Start kite was, and the same one to which I should have relocated when Control 1 went all pear-shaped on me. Foolishly, I felt that I would be faster staying off the path and going straight up the eastern fence, whereas with 20/20 hindsight I can say that it would have been much, much faster to go quite directly out to the path at the western fence and run up that. This is so even though it would have been a roundabout route - the speed of progress once on the path would have overridden the directness of the other route. It is a foolish misconception - and I must remember this another time - that a linear feature is necessarily good to make fast progress along. Fences are not necessarily clear to the sides and neither are streams, in fact ditto earth banks and the like. They can be, sure, but there's no guarantee. So I set off up this fence confidently enough, taking insufficient notice of the darkening green on the map, and found myself really fighting my way through bracken, brambles, fallen logs and goodness knows what else, while only a short distance away other runners were blasting cheerfully up the path at full speed. Another silly error, but I was amused that two other runners made their own silly error and followed me through - they must have really been wishing they'd ignored me! This control took me over six minutes, which is around double the mean. So these first two controls took me over twenty minutes, where fast people were doing them in less than five and most people took around seven or eight: not a great start.

After that things started to look up a bit and I felt like I knew what I was doing a bit more. The initial panic had subsided and I had acknowledged that I was going to be well down the list, maybe last, so I thought I might as well just get on and enjoy it and try to be accurate.

It was a nice area. Parts of it were very very muddy - some places that on the map were shown as "rough open" were actually more "mudarama" because they had been cleared, or prepped for forestry, or something, so machines had been in and it was more like a ploughed field. Very very heavy going but quite an interesting challenge to try and make some progress. On the other hand, plenty of the rest of it was great - an interesting mix of parkland, woods and a really strange/interesting wet area that I'll come back to.

At one point in the park bit I found myself running near a big temple thing which was under restoration. As the course unfolded I saw more and more follies and other interesting odds and ends. It turns out that there's a heritage trust which looks after that side of Cobham Hall, the country house (now a school) through whose estate part of the course went. One thing that really caught my eye was the Pump House, a gorgeous building down by a lake. From its information board it appears that it was rescued in a Landmark-Trust-ish manner from the very brink of utter dereliction - walls really very ruined and so on - and now it looks splendid, so well done them. Oh and just before that I had passed another one, "Repton's Seat", which looked very inviting for a breather - but I resisted and kept going.

Some time after this I crossed back into Shorne Wood Country Park, where the course had started - or rather, the 2K shuffle to the White start had. When I say "crossed back" I mean that this course was seriously bisected, having the A2 and HS1 (the new Channel Tunnel high speed railway line) running together right through the middle, separating Cobham Hall and its park from the country park itself. This is I think why they had the long walk to the White start - the unusual layout of the area has required some ingenuity to get good courses, though I would certainly say that they managed very well.

Back in the country park it was very odd and very interesting. Much of it is ex-claypits, and you can really tell - it's glutinous, mossy, very bumpy and wet and generally odd. There are hummocks and hillocks and little pools and paths and interesting corners everywhere. One control was on a little mini-hilltop and it was really quite hairy up there - very slippery with bright green moss everywhere, and the "path" becoming quite dodgy from so many feet. I think it's almost the first time in orienteering that I've though, golly, I could actually fall off here. Then the next control was straight ahead over the top of this little hill and down a very steep slippery clay slope to a pretty pondside place and I wondered if it was actually too dangerous to go that way, but it was OK in the end and actually rather fun. The navigation in this part was quite intricate - not really very hard but certainly interesting and unusual.

Why was I doing Blue, you ask, when I more usually do Green? Well this was a "proper" event with club entries and things, and although I had neglectfully not entered through the club, I vaguely felt it was the right thing in some ill-defined way to enter in the class that I should for a club entry, and all entrants in the 45+ age bracket were supposed to do Blue, and that's me. I mean I could have done Green and no-one would really have known or cared but I would have felt like I was wimping out a little. Or something. And, comfortingly, I had a nice email from the club captain saying I had done the right thing in entering the correct class and that it could even help under certain circumstances: this is not because of the brilliance of my orienteering, I hasten to add, but just to do with occupying places and the way the tables work. I think this, the CompassSport Cup, is the first proper named event I've been in, even though it was a regional heat rather than the final. What a step in my magnificent career.

The results are out now (I'm writing this last bit on Wednesday) and HH were beaten into second place by David's club, Southdowns - I think this happens quite a lot! Sadly my personal score will not have had a huge impact, though fortunately it cannot harm the club's place either. In the What If event I did a bit better having been very efficient about Controls 1 and 2, but in the real world those two took quite a toll and I didn't quite scrape into the top 90% of all competitive starters this time, though I was not last! I do most seriously need to learn and apply the lessons of those first two controls.

Buskaid Soweto String Project

I'm just watching an excellent BBC4 documentary about this incredible project. I sort-of know about it - it is run by Deb's friend Rosemary Nalden; we've had people from the project working on Stringwise; Haringey musicians (including Deb, Becca and Lottie) visited the project on the Haringey SA tour in 2000; and so on.

It's incredibly moving. The work they do is fantastic, unbelievable, life-enhancing. If by any chance you happen to be reading this and are a millionaire or captain of industry or something, I would be most obliged if you would please arrange to send them a big bucket of money. Or several. Thank you so much.

If you know me (or even if you do not but are filthy rich and/or interested) and you want to see this programme, just yell. I have it on my gadget.

O-a-blog™ (SN, Ash South)

I was reflecting on the fact that 2008 is my fifth year of orienteering (though still my zeroth year of being any good at it, but hey).

I agonized over whether to go today - it seemed hard to fit in - but my word I am really pleased that I did. This was a local Southern Navigators event at Ash, down near Aldershot in Surrey. As you can see from the map this is a wooded area with army firing ranges next to it. The red flags were flying and there was indeed shooting going on, but not enough to spoil things. It's a lovely area with lots of interesting valleys and stuff. And it was yet another lovely sunny morning - very difficult to imagine a nicer day or place.

I did a course they called Light Blue. Not one I have encountered before but the only harder-than-Orange courses they had were Light Green and Light Blue. They reckoned their Light Blue was something like Green, indeed I am not quite sure why it wasn't. I orienteered quite well, but slowly. I hope I am not last but, as I have said before, the whole point is that even if it turns out I was, it will not detract even a touch from the enjoyment I've already had. This is one of the big features, for me, of this extraordinary sport.

When I say I did quite well - for example, I made one stupid navigational error of the Route Choice Oops variety. I took what looked like a sensible short route but forget about those little brown wiggly lines - contours I think they call them. Silly Vogel. So I went down a seriously steep descent into a pretty valley, along the bottom of the said valley for a hundred metres, then up out of its other side up another fairly nightmare climb. With just a few nanoseconds' thought I could have got to the same place going round the top end of the same valley with no change in level and maybe just a few metres further, arriving (almost) fresh as a daisy and minutes earlier. Oh well. (6 to 7 on the top map extract.)

At another control I overshot a fair bit, which was silly - I had been counting paces but must have just got a bit confused, and foolishly I did not use other cues which would have double-checked the pace-counting. I then backtracked to the control and found it gone - that is, it has been nicked. Rather annoying, and difficult to see the point - was it vandalism-for-fun, vandalism-to-make-a-point, theft in the hope of profit (do they sell a lot of these down the pub?) or what? Bizarre, and rather sad.

Update: Southern Navigators had three controls stolen that day - they lost a total of £200+ worth of equipment. As I say: bizarre.

On the other hand I was pleased that when the same route choice thing happened again I had wised up sufficiently to find a nice easy route along the contour rather than diving miles down and up again.

There was one control (13) that I found very hard - I got all mixed up coming out of 12 and although I thought I had a strategy it fell apart quite fast under pressure, leaving me quite disorientated. There was a fiddly little network of paths and I found it very hard to see where I was in it. I did then think of an approach which I felt sort of might work, and I ended up, well, not quite where I thought I should be, but in a recognizable and recoverable-from place (the open bit SE of 3) , and thus got it back together, in a way that I found quite pleasing given how clueless I often am in these sticky corners.

Tomorrow I may be going on some slightly more serious-sounding event in Kent. I should have registered for it ages ago but have been a bit out of things. It is possible that I will be able to EOD (enter on the day) if I get there early enough. Let's see if I make it.

Coffee note: I left in such a flap this morning that I had no time to make a flask of coffee, chiz. Afterwards I was gasping for one. I had already noted with some interest that I was driving along near the Basingstoke Canal so when I saw a sign to the Canal Authority's Visitor Centre I followed it hoping to find coffee there. No luck, in fact no luck two ways - it is open weekdays only in winter, plus the Tea Room is currently shut anyway! Oh well. It does, however, look a good place to drop in some time, and the little canal corner it occupies, accompanied by the railway, is very attractive. I drove on, but soon after that I followed a sign to The Quayside. This is a watersports place on an old gravel pit and has a very pleasant bar/restaurant/thing, so I had my coffee looking out over this lovely lake with birdies and what have you. Eleven out of ten.

Results note: I wasn't actually expecting to come first in this one so I find it quite acceptable that I came in the, er, top 90% of my course. Ahem. Yes.

Gig-a-Blog™ (LSSO/Armstrong, Barbican)

Tuesday, 8 January 2008

London Schools Symphony Orchestra, Sir Richard Armstrong, conductor; Stephen Stirling, horn: Janáček, Jealousy; Strauss, Horn Concerto No 1; Dvořák, Symphony No 6.

What a fabulous concert by the LSSO at the Barbican. Now yes OK I have a daughter in this orchestra (and two previously in it) so of course I am biased as h*ll. But let's just pretend for a moment that I do have any sort of integrity at all, and that I am trying to be no less fair to them than to anyone else about whom I write. And to be honest(ish) with you I do think I am quite a stern critic of youth orchestras and I do get cross when they do a ropey job - because it's letting the young people down if you do it badly, apart from anything else.

Having said all that, this was a really most impressive concert. I am ashamed to say that I did not know the Janáček but it really blew me away - I thought they did a great job on it, making a real ear-catching kickoff for this concert.

The Strauss was just sensational. Stirling - well, he's just a dream of a player, producing a truly exciting performance. And what is nice is that he takes risks - you could, of course, do a very very safe careful performance of this quite dangerous piece and it would be as boring as anything. Where it's needed Stirling charges straight at it, goes fast round the corners, leaves the braking till late, and so on. It is quite stunning. And I must mention the incredibly good balance in the first movement where they just didn't let it get loud and turn it into a huge noisy wallow - Stirling kept the volume tastefully and sensibly down and Armstrong and the orchestra stayed under him, accompanying beautifully and giving the whole thing a wonderfully light effect.

The Dvořák was superb - edgy in all the right places and beautiful and lyrical in others and - well, just generally rather good actually. I know this symphony a teeny bit but it was great to hear it given such a convincing performance. Well done LSSO.

It's not just me by the way. The Independent gave it a very good write-up, while having a slightly naughty sideswipe at NYO. All good clean fun.

Another yay and woo: the Iarlles Loötës storms Cambridge

It's always a matter of great shame to the von Neustadt family when our children have any form of academic success, as we would far rather that the most studying they did was "Cannon Trajectories, A Geometrical Approach", or perhaps "Infantry-Swathe-Cutting 101", at one of our better military schools.

However some children are clearly not really cut out to wear the Pickelhaube and so it is with Lottie who has been expressing an ambition, for many years, to become a secondary school music teacher. Personally I have little time for this disgraceful leftist profession but I must say I do admire their courage: faced with the choice between charging at a massed formation of blood-crazed Cossacks and trying to explain minims and crotchets to Year Seven on a Friday afternoon in February I would always call for my sabre and horse, feeling this the less hazardous option.

To cut a long story short, Lottie got an offer from Cambridge yesterday, to do her PGCE there for 2008-9. This is fabulously excellent news and also a great release of tension: the outcome of this AND Marfs's Grade 8 have for some weeks been pretty much neck-and-neck in the Vogel's Blood Pressure Stakes and I really cannot express the delight I feel, not only in these fantastic outcomes but in not having to worry about them any more. Also, it's perhaps not been the easiest of times at Schloss Neustadt recently so a couple of good news items were more than welcome. As you know I don't really do deeply personal blogging (unless I think it might make you laugh, of course) so 'nuff said.

I am very very chuffed and excited about Lot and the PG. She had thought that the interview day went well and of course you never really know how seriously to take a perception like that: it may just be that they are skilled interviewers who have the gift of finding out what they want to know without making the candidate feel bad. But no, this was the real deal and she felt it went well because it did, dammit, and there is great delight at home over this.

So I shall just say WOOOOOOO WOOOOOOOO WOOOOOOOOOOO WOOOOOOOOOOOO WOOOOOOO WOOOOOO WOOOOOOOOO WOOOOOOOOO WOOOO well done Lottie, in the modest and restrained manner you have come to expect from me.

Note: I promise to get back soon to normal blogging about trains, trivia, rants about customer service and other crucial stuff. But just for now, this is all enormously cheering.

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Don't you just hate blog entries where snotty middle class parents witter on about how talented their kids are? Yeah, me too, I detest those vile people. Fortunately the von Neustadt family has always worn its (considerable) talents lightly and has never felt the need to celebrate some trivial achievement with anything much more than the torching of a few peasant cottages and the roasting of several dozen oxen, preferably someone else's. (Indeed the two celebratory methodologies may at times have been related, but I digress.)

As a result of my quality upbringing and that aristocratic detachment which marks out the officer classes and especially the better cavalry regiments, then, I shall just casually drop into this blogological entity the fact that the Infanta Marfs just rang me to say that

SHE
GOT
A
DISTINCTION
IN
HER
GRADE
EIGHT
CELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yay woooooo woooooooo woooooooooooooooo woooooooooooooo woo go Marfs!!!!

Woo!

Woo.

W- ahem yes indeed. Thank you for your attention: you may now go back to work. Mr Thompson, serve the tea if you please.

PS Woooo!

PPS With regard (woo) to this pleasing outcome I shall also respectfully remove my hat in the presence of Vicky, cello teacher (and possessor of saintly tolerance) extraordinaire, and Anna, accompanist (or "collaborative pianist"?) and emergency aural tests genius by appointment to the daughters of the aristocracy. I'm like nuff respeck ladeez yay woo.

Update: I should probably point out that, as you know, I've only been running this blog for eight months or whatever. Had I been running it for a few years, there would of course have been similarly calm announcements concerning similar, ah, decorations granted, to at least two of my large fleet of other daughters, by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. An Ting. Just thought I should say that before I get slapped around by some indignant young musician. Ahem. Yes.

Notes from a train journey: Euston-Piccadilly

Friday, 21 December 2007

North · Circular · Road - I know this place but not from this angle! The train crosses high up above the "new" road bit which was massively rebuilt maybe 10 or 15 years ago. That's just by where the canal also crosses. The very large dip was famously flooded, to greater than car-depth, some years back when a water main burst. (Oops, checked the 1999 news story - it was up to 25ft [7.6m] deep in places!)

Tilting spectacularly through Berkhamsted. You don't all that often notice the tilt very much but when you have a good reference close by, it's quite something. View of the castle - looks great. Must visit one day. At Berkhamsted I always think of my Jordanian friend Munir and his English Family Christmas there.

Big flock of swans in field near river. Really big.

Just N of Macclesfield - a nice-looking place with car park, wooded hill - maybe a site of a fort, castle etc? Or maybe just an interesting hill. Right by the line. Findable? Looks nice for a walk. Or orienteering.

Macclesfield makes me think of David, and his friend Stephen Robertson who moved there from Guisborough. David went to visit him there once and from his travellers' tales it became for me the most exotic and desirable place on Earth.

If I had the GPS I could mark where interesting places are then look them up. (Quite nerdy.)

I could also plan the Near-Shugborough Viewing for maximum efficiency. (Quite nerdy.)

Backward progress on the train's LED information display - it claims that we're going to Euston. I do hope not.

Quite suddenly, frosty fields, beautiful sun, winter scene. Wow, stunning. Looks like a calendar page or OS wallpaper.

Where is Stockport's soul? I don't mean this horribly. Travelling through it by train I get no sense of anything other than the station and a sort of hinterland of big out-of-town type shops. When I used to ride through on the bike it was just an interruption on the A6. Where can you stand and say, ah yes, I am here, look, there's the Town Hall, parish church, cinema, bookshop? ... I assume that it is there, but I have not seen it.

B of the Bang - Manchester - distant view but impressed that I can see it at all. It's huge!! I've still got Thomas's book on Norman castles - I wonder if he wants it back?

And here we are.

(On way back - leaving Manchester - fireworks; very pretty.

Home soon.)

Gig-a-Blog™ (Laura Isaacson and Masa Tayama, St Anne & St Agnes)

Laura Isaacson, cello; Masa Tayama, piano: Schumann, Fantasiestücke; Shostakovitch, Sonata in D minor.

Gorgeous playing from this precise, well-matched, well-balanced duo. The Schumann was of course lovely - beautiful singing lines, exciting explosive moments - but the Shosters was positively electrifying. This was an incredibly committed, intense performance which somehow made you feel as if they were taking real risks, really throwing themselves at it, but without any loss of accuracy. I loved it all but in particular I was very taken with the end of the first movement and with the slow movement which was seriously moving and beautiful.

I see that Laura Isaacson started with Wendy Max so I say woo yeah go Wendy.

A really stunning recital to start off the year (season, term, semester?) and hats off to Tayama and Isaacson both for a job more than well done.

Also, come to think of it, very handy to start the year off with a good 'un when you're asking Music Soc members to renew, as it somehow helps facilitate the smooth passage of my money into their coffers. Not, of course, that I mean to imply that such a worldly thought would ever have occurred to the gentle innocent folk in charge there hem hem indeed no.

Orienteering: yay, woo, etc... or, to put it another way: O-a-blog™ (HH, Nomansland Common; MV, Epsom and Ashtead Commons)

I was getting worried that I had de facto given up orienteering. I managed one event in September (LOK's rather fun Ally Pally event [should be in a frame, sorry] - just a little park-O yet irresistible because so close to home) but since then I have not been once. Work, health, the news job, family, music, stress etc have all somehow overcome my (usually quite strong) desire to go orienteering and with each event I missed I felt more concerned that it was getting harder to go back.

(Note to self: actually this last idea - 'harder to go back' - is dangerous b*ll*cks and you know it. Kindly recall this the next time the issue comes up. Thank you.)

Finally, though, I have fought back through the er er maelstrom of er er stuff and, greatly encouraged by my family (bless 'em), have done not one but two events this weekend. I am very, very pleased indeed. I am also wrecked and can hardly walk today but ho hum.

Naturally my performances were not good. I came quite near last (but not last!) in a short-green-ish sprint at the Happy Herts event on Saturday at Nomansland Common. Let's face it, something with a word like "sprint" in it is never really going to be my strong suit and I am currently amazingly fat and unfit even by my standards. However it was so good to be orienteering again, and the place is nice and it was a very pleasant sunny morning so I had a great time. It's a quite small area and the navigation needed was precise, even fiddly, and a good turn of speed would have been useful but hey. I even went to the social afterwards and had mince pies and so on. I felt a bit fish-out-of-water as most people were in family groups or long-established friendship groups, and I am a bit abnormally socialized for a situation like that, but some of the people there are really very nice and considerate and went out their way to include me in conversation. I take my hat off especially to Graham P who is either preternaturally nice, or ditto well-brought-up, or both, and who chatted happily to me for ages as if oblivious of the fact that I am a boring and ignorant old person, especially where orienteering is concerned.

Yesterday was a very nice Mole Valley event at Epsom and Ashtead Commons. I did Green, which is what I often aim for nowadays, and had a wonderful time. It was very muddy in places and very brambly in others but it was an absolutely upliftingly beautiful crisp cold sunny morning in a gorgeous location. Much of the course was in semi-open ground with bracken and occasional trees, mostly deciduous or (worryingly) dead so there was a fantastic green/brown/silver thing going on with a stunning blue sky overhead. I almost wished I had a camera, though I would not really want to slow myself down any more! I made some devastatingly stupid route choices and lumbered round on a lot less than full throttle, but came not too far down the bottom third out of sixty so I do not feel disgraced. One or two controls were really hard to find (note to self or to people looking at it on RouteGadget - 6 in particular) in a way that made me wonder if it was quite kosher but I know so little about procedure that I would not like to hazard a guess. I note, in fact, that I did find even the worrying ones, by dint of very careful navigation (and some luck), so maybe I shouldn't be griping as I've proved it works! Certainly one or two were a notch harder than usual, though, I would say. But I take my hat off to MVOC for the great course, organization etc - all really very good indeed.

It was quite a trek to get down there but I was really delighted that I had made it. It was a great pleasure to be out in such a nice place with such classically fabulous English winter weather and I am very pleased that I did not miss it. I now need to resolve to keep this (and indeed me) going.

Update: I searched on terms like "Ashtead Epsom common dead trees" and it appears that I should not be concerned, but rather celebrating the biodiversity it brings. There's lots of interesting stuff online about the management of this area. I still do not (perhaps just because I haven't yet found the right document) understand why I was seeing so many dead trees - it seemed disproportionate compared with what you see elsewhere - but nowhere that I have seen are people talking about it as a problem so I assume that it's normal and that it's my expectations that are skewed. (It wouldn't be the first time.)

Update 2: oops the bracken is bad, it turns out, and I am not supposed to like it. It limits biodiversity and shades out other species. Or maybe it shades out other species and limits biodiversity. Or something. (Jabnaas.) I wish I had known that while I was enjoying charging around in it yesterday. Bad bracken, bad bad Vogel. Tsk.

Update 3: I was a bit miffed yesterday when another competitor, wearing a shirt which to me very clearly implied that she should have known better, told me the location of a control which I was approaching - number 7 on the map to which I linked earlier. This was a nice control, on a little hill by a path triangle, and I was maybe about 10m away from it when she came blasting out of it at impressive speed (she is, as they say, fit). I'd seen her on the way in and at other controls and knew she was good and probably right, and in any case I knew where I was going. I stood aside to let her through the gap we were approaching from opposite sides and as she went through she said "it's round to your left". I assume that this was meant kindly, in thanks for getting out of her way, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to say anything negative to her, but to be honest with you I wish she'd left it or just smiled at me. I had, after all, managed the rest of the course and even the half kilometre or so into that control from its predecessor, so it's not like I was necessarily in desperate and immediate need of help. No doubt I do look like a clueless old twit when orienteering, but even so. The whole point, or a very large part of it as it seems to me, is to find these things yourself, and the buzz you get when you do so is considerable. Having someone else help you when you're hopelessly lost and a beginner is perhaps one thing, though really I still think my pride (such little as it is) would require me to try to sort it out for myself; but to be told when you are almost on top of the control just seems a little silly. Like I say I am sure it was meant nicely and at worst was thoughtless (in a fairly pure and non-pejorative sense), but I'd still rather find it, yea unto the last metre of confusion and bramble scratches and tripping over and what have you. I am not furious nor deeply offended over this, just slightly engrumped and a touch bemused. Hmmm.

Update 4: let's end on a more positive note. Last night I got out my Orienteering Box - where I somewhat-OCD-ishly (or is it OCAD-ishly? - arf! - falls off chair laughing at own very bad joke) keep all my maps and results. I updated the three events I've done during this "orienteering year" which I suppose is (or feels to me) roughly coterminous with the academic year. This means that each map is marked with the date (it's not always on the map or obvious) the course I did (ditto, ish) and where I came (my place out of n starters). I have also attached the printout you get at the event (with your individual timings and maybe where you were placed at the time of printing), plus the control descriptions if they aren't on the map. The fact is that I deeply love doing this. I now have a collection going right back to that first Southdowns 3-in-1 event in (I think) 2003: it's reasonably complete: in fact to be truthful I am pretty sure it is complete; I just didn't want to sound that nerdy. It's in chronological order, newest on top, so as you burrow down you are going back in time through my orienteering, ah, career. I just sit there sometimes and browse through them, reminiscing about good or bad runs or lovely places, tricky controls, maybe even things that went well. From looking at the map I even just sometimes sit and remember stuff like how it was finding the place at all, were David or Mum or kids or other family there, or how wet I got, or did Daisy come, or whether I had coffee with me or was there a cafe, or what. I'm reconstructing the whole thing like a little personalized documentary film for an audience of one. Is this very very sad? Tell you what, I don't really mind if it is: I just love it anyway. It's like a treasure box. Large grin. Vogel out.

Ouch

Friday, 21 December 2007

A supplementary note from Euston Station.

Ouch. Aargh! My Wretched Young Persons' Portable Phonographic Device is on Random Pleyel. It was turned up quite loud as I was in a bit of a run of gentle classical and other quite calm music. Imagine then the, er, electrifying effect of Herbert Grönemeyer suddenly announcing, with great clarity and at truly excessive volume, the next song at some stadium concert somewhere. It was essentially as if he was actually there in the café and had snuck up very quietly right behind me during some nice Renaissance polyphony, then suddenly shouted "Land Unter!" directly at the back of my head from a distance of 20cm. Sheesh. I think I may have actually gone "Gah!" like a Dilbert character, executed a quite acceptable vertical takeoff, and hovered for a moment or two, in a twinkly cloud of croissant crumbs, before crashing back down to table height. Herbie. Mensch! Don't do that!

La Cage aux Folios

Friday, 21 December 2007

Euston Station has a sort of Depressed Café Area (DCA), though I am sure they have some nice corporate-approved name for it like Food Court. It is still, however, a DCA no matter what you call it.

Efforts to brighten it up and make it look cool have enjoyed, er, partial success. The decades-worth of DCA-ness is encoded into the walls, which breathe it back out over the grim-faced traveller, making his oh-so-2008 skinny mochafrappalattecino taste like the ghost of 1970s Nescafé clots in cold milk, cruelly Frankensteined into quasi-life with the steamer. Pssssssst (gnah! wagghh! ungghh!!) etc.

I was going to start this piece with "7.03am isn't a good time to be sitting in the café at Euston" and then I thought, "bl**dy idiot, when exactly is a good time to be sitting in the café at Euston?" Answer came there none. Some ideas just aren't worth pursuing. (Indeed, most of my ideas aren't worth pursuing, but that's another [non-]story.) And anyway, I am not sure that anyone has really written anything worthwhile about Euston since the blessed and brilliant Cassandra, and I don't have a strong feeling that my choice of opening sentence is about to change that. Ho, hum, and indeed ho hum.

Anyway, so here I am with my coffee and strikingly unFrench croissant, gazing dispritedly round the DCA and wondering what magic salve or herbal ointment might ward off an incoming depression. Then I see it - books! Lots of books! This is marvellous - what it is, is that the café is divided into a number of zones, perhaps to try to differentiate between the different food concessions or perhaps at the random choice of some design wonk. Who knows/cares? The important bit, you see, is the nature of the ah interzonal barrier: a quite pretty, lightish-wood fence-like thing supported between panels by little square "towers" which are panelled up to maybe a metre then finished off with a shelf at the top. This shelf has opposite pairs of sides solid and open so that in one direction you can see through.

And when you do look into or through this little shelf, this exquisite lovely little hidey-hole on top, what do you see? Books! Hurrah!! Lots and lots of books!

Reader, imagine my delight. A moment ago I was in a bit of a depressing dump of a caff: now I'm in a library! For a short while (but blissful) I am quite transported by the imaginative and enlightened approach. Sure there must be problems with theft, but presumably it's copable with: maybe they're buying in old stock cheap, or something. Whatever.

You see, it's not even that I'm desperate for something to read: it's the matter of principle, the statement about the value of books and reading, the way they've chosen to communicate all this. That's what thrills me.

You know where this is going, don't you? You've sussed it, right?

The books are locked in there.

THE

BOOKS

ARE

LOCKED

IN

THERE

Oh great. They're locked in. All of them. The shelves aren't really shelves, they are cages or prisons. Those books must have done something pretty bad because it doesn't look like they're getting out any time soon. You and me, sister, brother, we aren't going to be reading those books at 7.03 this morning nor any other morning. Nor at 8.03 or 9.03 nor some other time. Nor in the afternoon, nor the evening, nor the night, nor the strange nameless times that only stations and airports can access.

So, what were these books doing there? Difficult to say really. A book not for reading is a sad, enigmatic thing, its existence tenuous, its usefulness in terrible doubt. These book-shaped space-fillers are:

• Less useful than wallpaper
• Less useful than paper hankies
• Less useful than toilet paper
• Less useful than an origami crane
• Less useful than a paper aeroplane.

All the above, it seems to me, have some integrity of purpose whereas these display-only non-book bookoids have none. Once you realize what you're seeing, the best bit of the display is the few places where a shelf is left empty: you have a clear view right through because no books are there, indeed no anything at all is there. At last, an honest proposition: you can't read from this shelf, because there's no books here: an indisputable truth.

What a lousy, miserable apology for a design.

You see, it's not even that I'm desperate for something to read: it's the matter of principle, the statement about the value of books and reading, the way they've chosen to communicate all this. That's what chills me.

Lucky Vogel grabs a weekend in Paris: III

Sunday, 25 November 2007

I checked out early: the hotel's timings are actually amazingly generous but I wouldn't be back later anyway, so thank you and goodbye.

After breakfast we all went off to the Oratoire du Louvre, the venue for this afternoon's concert at 4.00. We dumped stuff there - including my bag - and crossed the road to visit the Louvre itself. As its name implies, the church is pretty much as close to the Louvre as you can get without actually being inside it. The organist there is a splendid, elderly lady who's an old friend of Ibrahim's family and has thus known Ibrahim since he was tiny.

Having reached the impressive courtyards inside the Louvre we paused for group photos before going to see the galleries. I've never been before and was completely knocked out, both by the art and by the grandeur of its surroundings. I saw so many paintings that I feel I know quite well, and so many that I felt I should.

I also loved the pyramids: it's hard to believe that they were once contentious when they now seem to be pretty much viewed as a design classic in their own right, and an almost-integral, and certainly important, part of the experience of seeing the whole Louvre. They do work exceedingly well, and you can only guess at how it would be there now, with these swarms of visitors, had they adopted some less imaginative solution.

I was a bit shocked at the rudeness of the ticket sales man, who shooed Ibrahim away from where he was standing by the counter, ever-conscientious, ready to help any of the group with language or money. Ibrahim, bless 'im, just laughed it off as an example of French bureaucratic behaviour at its finest, which was noble of him but I really did wonder how the guy could flip out and be so threatened by such a small thing. I suspect he didn't get his croissant nicely curved or his beans thoroughly ground that morning. Or maybe he's just a miserable espece de whatever. Tsk.

Like a zillion other people I also felt I should go and see the Mona Lisa. I'm glad that I've seen it: I even quite liked it, I think, but it wasn't, in general, a great experience. Let me try to share it with you a little:

Although FLASH!! they have FLASH!! clearly stated FLASH!! policies (no flash anywhere FLASH!! , no photography FLASH!! in the galleries FLASH!! FLASH!! of the most important paintings FLASH!! ), the useless, demoralized-looking FLASH!! FLASH!! FLASH!! staff in the FLASH!! room with the FLASH!! FLASH!! FLASH!! FLASH!! Mona FLASH!! FLASH!! Lisa were doing nothing, but nothing FLASH!! FLASH!! to enforce policy, so FLASH!! FLASH!! a complete FLASH!! free-for-all FLASH!! FLASH!! was taking place. Pressing down on FLASH!! the barrier, a massive, FLASH!! FLASH!! near-hysterical FLASH!! crush of FLASH!! FLASH!! FLASH!! people was busily FLASH!! engaged upon taking photos FLASH!! FLASH!! of itself, FLASH!! with the FLASH!! FLASH!! Mona FLASH!! Lisa in the background. FLASH!! FLASH!! FLASH!! FLASH!! Rugger scrum. FLASH!! Cattle market. FLASH!! FLASH!! Oh dear.

I hope, with all due respect, that you found that paragraph quite irritating to read. Now multiply that irritation by some number or other - I don't know, 6, 37 maybe, or 5442, who knows? - and you're starting to see what a profoundly dreadful experience this was. We're all there for the same reason or variants thereof, I assume, but the way in which many of the visitors seem to want (need?) to enjoy it is guaranteed to interfere, perhaps fatally, with my enjoyment of it. I like to think that I'm a nice democratic, open-minded sort of chap (considering my aristocratic background) but there's really something terribly wrong here. It was like the morning after the revolution: the state is overthrown, the palaces and galleries forcibly opened to the will of the people: here, you may do as you please. You couldn't get any more democratic without giving out chinagraph pencils and letting people scribble moustaches and funny messages on her armoured glass. I cannot even imagine how I'd try to fix it, but I do know that the Louvre, in letting this painting become so thorough a victim of her own success, is failing horribly in its duty. On that morning they were simply bowing to a form of bullying: please tell me that something better than this is possible.

Right, gripe over. That was a few gruesome minutes' worth and yet I was there for hours, and we must not let the tail wag the dog: I loved every other square metre of the Louvre and now I've seen the Mona Lisa once, I won't be needing to hurry back, not under the current arrangements anyway.

Even in that same room, all you need to do is turn through 180° and there's the Wedding Feast at Cana, massive and wonderful, being looked at by maybe a tenth of the people in there.

Similar joys were round every corner: some humongous epics on massive scale, some little pieces meant for a drawing room. When I suddenly saw Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa for the first time I actually had to sit down – no kidding - I was so shocked by the size and impact. I previously knew it as a colour plate in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters where I was much taken with Julian Barnes’s account of it, but to see it erupt from a little paperback-sized thing into the effortless domination of an entire wall: that was really something else. And the thing is, the Louvre just goes on and on: I can't imagine how many visits it would take for me to feel I'd got even slightly to grips with this place.

After some time I really didn't feel I could walk any further or see any more paintings so, leaving the Mortensons to press on, I took a break in a very pleasant café on a landing, with nice views inside the Louvre and down galleries, and outside it, over to the west so you can see the Tuilleries gardens and other delights. Refreshed by all this I set off again for the last forty-five minutes before the rendezvous, going down through fantastic displays of Etruscan pottery, till I eventually hit the "medieval Louvre" which I'd seen intriguingly signposted. I only had time for the quickest of looks but it confirmed that I wanted to see more.

The whole group met back in the courtyard and walked along past the church and the metro to find lunch in a pleasant café (Massena I think) which seemed to specialize in the croque monsieur and its myriad variants. Mine, a "Super Croque Madame au Pain de Campagne”, was very nice. The waiter was also quite nice, right up to the moment when Ibrahim made sure that we knew the price of the drinks, at which point the waiter suddenly became a lot less cheerful. Strangely, these prices were not clearly visible in the menu or anywhere you could see from the table - it's almost as if they wanted you to accidentally order a coke that costs double the price of your meal! Surely not. Ah well.

It by now being twoish it was also rehearsalish, so the KSU group went back to the church and I went back to the Louvre, the ticket being, splendidly, of the use-all-day variety. This time I started with French painting, which was wonderful. I did get slightly bored with heroic hussars. What I didn't get at all bored with is those wonderful paintings of moments from Classical or Biblical stories with tiny figures set in magnificent, vast city- or harbour- or whatever-scapes. I wish I knew enough to describe this better. Years ago Muswell Hill School did a project based on a painting of the Queen of Sheba arriving ... er, somewhere or other. It was that sort of thing, an incredibly detailed painting of the harbour and ships and everything. Like that. I could look at this stuff all day: in fact I nearly did.

My next stop was the English paintings room. It didn't take too long. There were quite remarkably few of them, none on a very large scale, and what there was hung in the shade of the massive French paintings which completely dominated the upper parts of the walls. The lighting was oddly unhelpful and the whole room felt like a bit of an afterthought. I wondered which if any of the following might be true or applicable:

• They think our paintings are rubbish;
• Our paintings are rubbish;
• Napoleon never invaded Britain, hence missing out on some great art-plundering opportunities;
• There's some complex art-management or cultural or financial or diplomatic reason which I am probably too dim to grasp, and/or
• There's a gentleman's agreement between the Louvre and the London galleries and museums, and there's a similar shortage of French art in London;
• They just hate us!

Having said all that I really rather loved the very sweet Sand Quarries on Hampstead Heath by John Linell. OK it's partly because I know the place - indeed, I've orienteered there! - but even so it was rather gorgeous. I was also rather taken with John Martin’s Pandemonium, a highly dramatic rivers-of-lava job, illustrating a bit of Paradise Lost, which looks straight out of the climactic moments of the latest Christmas blockbuster. I do realize that comparing paintings to film, with little knowledge of either, probably brands me as the biggest philistine on the planet. Oh well, if the cap fits, an ting. In any case I bet all those famous nineteenth century painters liked the cinema too. Ahem. Yeah!

Having spent some time in the beautiful, airy galleries on the upper floors of the eastern part of the Louvre, I decided it was time to head back down to the basement levels and properly explore the Medieval Louvre.

This is truly amazing. It's as if you popped down to the cellar in, say, Somerset House, and found half of Windsor Castle down there. Just after you leave, heading east, the main entrance hall under the big pyramid, there's a rather good exhibition about the Louvre's history which shows you, in a succession of beautifully detailed models (first thought: "d*mn! Where are my Dinky cars?") how the site developed. In particular, you can see the medieval castle which formerly occupied the central part of the site. It's a proper French/Scottish looking castle with slopey sides, turrets and other castle-ish features: real damsel-rescuing stuff. (There's a huge model of just this castle - looking most impressive - at the entrance to the Medieval Louvre bit.)

What seems to have happened is that when they built the newer Louvre they only demolished the old castle down to ground level: everything below was just left. So now it's all been dug out and exquisitely sorted out and presented, you get to wander along ditches between these towering medieval walls. It's all massive and the size of the void you're in is incredible: the ceiling, presumably around current ground level, is way over your head.

Initially you get to walk along what would've been some sort of exterior ditch or moat, but then you rather thrillingly plunge into a modern tunnel through the masonry, and when you emerge you're in the moat right round the keep itself. You go maybe 235° round it before leaving through another exit. It's wonderfully done with walkways and lighting, and feels like a really exciting experience. It doesn't take much imagination to feel the castle still there, rising into the darkness and through the courtyard above you.

Once you've left there's a bit more historical display and some kind of nice medieval undercroft, which peters out a bit as it meets (I guess) the foundations of the present Louvre. Then you're quite suddenly back to the twenty-first century, or at least the eighteenth, and that's your Medieval Louvre visit done. A really fantastic place to see. Just amazing that on top of it is this unbelievable world treasure-house of beauty and then the old castle still lurking there underground. If there's a French equivalent of King Arthur it is perhaps here that you'd expect to find him and his knights sleeping till they're next needed.

Enough romance, mon vieux, and on with the show!

As already noted, the concert venue wasn't exactly a major trek from the Louvre so I was over there in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Well alright, several shakes of the tatty manky tail of a somewhat muttonoidal old ram with a bit of a case of the staggers. But you get the general idea, right?

The concert was great. One highlight was Ibrahim's new piece Klezmarab for solo trumpet (Ibrahim), violin (Kristin) and trumpet ensemble. This fine piece does exactly what it says on the tin and is thoroughly enjoyable with it. Ibrahim's USP is that as well as being a highly accomplished classical player (check the CV!) he does interesting Arabic folk/jazz sounds on a specially-adapted trumpet, this having four valves. This fourth valve (do stop me if I'm boring you) does quarter-tones, which you need if you are going to play authentic Arabic scales: so there you go. Basically he's pretty wonderful, is the point, and so was his piece.

There was also a good Fanfare for St Edmundsbury, a piece I especially love, and some excellent Hammerschmidt, and the concert ended with Cityscapes, an interesting and rather gorgeous piece by Erik Morales, who I think Gary said was a student of his, many years ago.

In between all these moments trompettistiques was an excellent choir. I fell slightly out of love with them while they were doing works with the organ, because they had to go up behind us into the organ loft high in the west end, and this led to a bit of a loss of communications between choir and audience. But when they were down in front of us, singing unaccompanied - just fantastic! As I write this I don't have the programme with me, but if I find it I'll back-fill some more details of this most splendid gig.

Afterwards we crossed the road and went upstairs in what I think was some kind of parish hall/house/epis for a very nice, friendly reception with drinks and nibbles. Marie-Louise Girod-Parrot, the splendid, elderly organist, made a very nice speech in which her affection and high regard for Ibrahim were movingly evident. I met Ibrahim's mum and stepdad here and thought them very nice indeed.

Once the reception had run its course people were setting off to go and eat - in Montmartre again I think - so I left with them but got off at Gare du Nord, where I'm now writing this. It was sad to say goodbye to this extremely nice group of people. The metro was pretty crowded - even by London standards - so it was also quite difficult to say goodbye!

Why did I like the KSU group so much? Difficult to say exactly, but, for a kick-off, any friend of Gary's is a friend of mine, and this lot were a pretty good group who clearly value Gary highly, which is right and proper. I also liked the composition of the group as it felt like a bit of a family, with a couple of extras besides the trumpet students: I'm a touch hazy on the details but I think I'm right to say that one student was travelling with his girlfriend, nay fiancée, and that another had brought along her mum (or mom if you insist) and sister. These were all, students and family alike, thoroughly nice people: and of course it was brilliant to see all the Mortensons again. Finally, I guess I liked them because they were so kindly inclusive to me, so I really felt part of the group and not just some visiting twit from London.

Gare du Nord is the usual drag. I love this station because it's the gateway to Paris for us, but I do not at all love it for itself, as a place to be.

There's a slightly annoying conflict that feeds into the age-old debate about checking in earlier or later. If you stay "out" you have more choice of cafés and stuff but you're also pretty much in the casual-theft-capital of Europe, surrounded by skilled professionals keen to demonstrate, in a nicely understated way, their prowess. (Remember Jeremy Jackman's bag? Voosh! Gorn.) If you "go through" then I imagine you're a bit safer from the luggage-lifters but then it really is as boring as h*ll and there aren't enough seats.

Amusingly enough I did stop at the nice-looking balcony café and try for a cup of tea before checking in, but the waitress said "I'll be back" then vanished for ever, having perhaps joined a circus or the Foreign Legion. I hope she is very happy.

So I gave up on that part of the plan and checked in, which was all very quick and painless, but - at the risk of repeating myself, there aren't enough seats. Not enough. No way nohow. Like, insufficient, man. Funny that: given that they control the time of check-in, they must know the exact number of seats required but they have failed to provide them. No doubt they'd claim shortage of space but funnily enough they had plenty of space for a load of duty-free shops. So people - lots of them - are sitting around on the floor and it all looks a bit airport-ish and resigned. Very very poor show for a railway setup which is otherwise so cool and businesslike, and quite unnecessary.

Anyway after a while the train before mine left and suddenly there was room to sit: one reluctant and unrousing cheer. But I was swiftly degrouched once we were - er - entrained(?) and a pleasant waitorial person brought me a small bottle of something rather nice and rouge. Things really looked up rapidly from this point on and the rest of the journey was relaxing and generally rather lovely. Oh and delicious too (remember I'm in Upper-Middle Class - or whatever). Nowadays it seems amazingly fast: the only chunk of journey which seems even remotely significant is that from Paris to the tunnel in, what, 80 minutes or something. Then it's 20 minutes through the tunnel, then once you're on the English side it seems that you're practically in London - I think it's another 40 minutes or something but the time just flies by. All really very impressive.

By a neat coincidence Deb was arriving at Euston just twenty minutes after my train reached St Pancras, as she'd been visiting Becca in the Manchester Royal Infirmary as I mentioned in the Friday blogological occurrence. So we met and got a cab home, which was quite civilized. And, with the cruel reality of Monday morning coming up fast in the rear-view mirror, that was the end of my busy and rather excellent couple of days swanning around in Paris.

Lucky Vogel grabs a weekend in Paris: II

Saturday, 24 November 2007

Highly adequate hotel breakfast then off to the Marche aux Puces, near Porte de Vanves. This is the same rather wonderful antiques (and junk!) street market that we visited last year and about which Gary was quite enthusiastic. It's quite a long way but all on the same metro line so nicely uncomplicated. I had an excellent wander round, coffee and chat with Gary, and the young people seemed to enjoy themselves. One of the lads bought quite a stack of jazz LPs, whose price Ibrahim had helped him to negotiate.

Guided as ever by the indefatigable and incredibly conscientious Ibrahim we went for lunch at a very nice "Paul" near (I think) Odeon metro. This is I think a café or restaurant chain with patisseries attached - or maybe it's the other way round. The patisserie looked terrific (I later saw one at Gare du Nord) and the café was great - nice lunchy-snacky food and excellent cheerful service.

From there we strolled through the Luxembourg gardens, which were very pretty, and were enlivened and ornamented by fleets of donkeys doing very short trips for some very short people. Big pond, majestic palace, all sunny and cheerful.

In the garden we met a nice student of Ibrahim's; sadly, I've misfiled his name. He came for the rest of the afternoon with us and was very pleasant additional company. The next interlude was in a massive book/CD/video/everything shop of Oxford Street proportions where some of the students wanted to buy CDs, - possibly Ibrahim's new album Diasporas? (I've since ordered it from amazon.fr.) The shop looked pretty good but I was starting to lose the will to live (or at least to walk) a bit by then, so I was probably one of their less animated - and profitable! - visitors that day.

I did, however, perk up considerably at the prospect of our next bit of cultural visiting, the utterly utterly wonderful Musée d'Orsay. I have a bit of a bee in't'bonnet about this place which I shall explain some day when ink is cheaper. Suffice it to say that I was really quite blissful to be back there, ten years after my only previous visit.

Gary was also suffering from a touch of Demicentarian Fatigue Syndrome so we just sat on a bench, down near the bottom of that glorious slope, and chatted for a while. Thinking about it now it does occur to me to wonder if he was just being kind, as he's actually incredibly fit and dynamic: maybe he was just making sure that I got a break. I was by now quite grey-faced and griping on about how I felt roughly 143 years old so I must have been an utter joy to be with. Anyway, we got to sit in a wonderful place, and watch the world go by, and talk for a bit, all of which constitutes a Good Thing by any current scientific measurement.

Eventually we leapt, revitalized, to our feet and set off at a brisk maximum-art-appreciation-in-minimum-time pace (hem hem you liar Vogel) round the galleries. There's no avoiding the fact that I'm a terrible, terrible ignoramus about the visual arts but it was just wonderful. After a while of mooching around the lower levels, and admiring in passing a massive, fantastic cutaway model of the Opera, we set off upwards. I'd hoped to get out onto the balcony overlooking the Seine but it's not open in winter.

However, the climb to the upper floors positioned us perfectly for our last assault on the top few galleries which we took, with few casualties, in the face of light resistance. A skilful flanking maneouvre through the Monets, a diversionary skirmish towards Van Gogh and there we were passing That Café Scene You Had A Poster Of before wheeling for the final charge through Bloke With Ballerina Fixation and into the sunny uplands beyond. (Metaphor Control Officer please report urgently to HQ.) At some point after all this wonderment you pop out in a place where you're high up above the main floor, almost into the ceiling, and you can get to a platform on top of a modern tower which contains staircases. Great moment, terrific view.

Just before we go go, there's another (I think) very famous painting there which much impressed me. An army is camped out, their rifles stacked in threes, making a hedge or fence. Most of the soldiers are asleep, a few are talking; there are a couple of fires burning. A dog is lying down; one group of rifles has trumpets or bugles hanging there also. And then above it all the cloudy sky is filled with a massive depiction of a battle, perhaps tomorrow’s. It’s very very powerful. Ah yes, here we are: Le Rêve, Edouard Detaille (1888). Stunning.

Then we were pretty much through with the Orsay - for this visit anyway - and back down the metro. Lots of the young people wanted to press on and do more shopping, but the Mortensons and I returned to the hotel where I did some very urgent and serious kipping for ninety minutes, which set me up marvellously for the rigours of the evening.

I also phoned Henri, the extremely nice daddy of the extremely nice family I stayed with on the Haringey 2005 trip to our twin town of Livry-Gargan. We'd been discussing my visit for weeks and I was very much hoping to see them, but it was difficult with the weekend being both short and busy, and sure enough the one time Henri could have seen me turned out to be during Sunday's concert, which would have rather kiboshed one of my principal objectives. So it'll have to be another time - or maybe I can coax them to come to London some day. But it was good to have a chat anyway and to learn that next weekend they're hosting more people from Haringey - two guitarists this time, which is nice, as one of their three kids plays the guitar. It would be lovely to see them again when the opportunity arises: Henri is a sort of French Gary Mortenson, and his wife and kids correspondingly so. If you know me at all you'll know that there's no higher accolade!

Refreshed by my very skilled high-speed kipping (it's more a sort of long-course cross-country power-nap really) I was back down in the lobby at seven something, all ready to rock'n'roll or at least to limp'n'lurch. Have I mentioned that my hip was giving me trouble? Well very boringly it was and we shall discuss it no further, unless I feel like droning on endlessly about it. I did just want to say, though:

• I was greatly tempted to write "hip was giving me gyp" (sp?) for obvious reasons. I am not, however, sure about this word's etymology and in particular I'm worried that it might have racist overtones, so, till I find out, it's left out.
• I must emphasize that it's my hip that is giving trouble, not my hipness, which is of course impeccable.
• Yes, I do know that I need to lose about five stone, and that it might not be 100% unconnected, thanks.

Our next stop was Anvers metro, where we met Ibrahim and a clutch of KSU people. From the metro it's a straight blast up the hill to Sacre Coeur: we (mostly/all?) took the steps as there was a bit of a queue for the funiculaire. Amusingly, the info booth at the latter's bottom station was staffed by a huge woofy great dog who stood up behind the counter, all the better to communicate with his public. Although, to be frank, his information-giving priorities were a touch unclear, he certainly made an impression and was much-photographed as a result.

Having reached Sacré Coeur (somewhat wheezingly in my case) we had a look inside. I don't think I've done this before and I was very impressed by the atmosphere and architecture. Also impressive were the guardians of the reverent atmosphere, who from time to time would call "silence!" in stern and sepulchral tones, with instant results. The views from the church, as well as of it, are beautiful too, of course. It's a truly wonderful spot and, if 600 other people and a band doing Pink Floyd covers (quite well actually) think so too, well, what the h*ll.

From there it was just a stroll round a couple of corners into the heart of Montmartre. I'd forgotten how lovely and village-like it is up there. Much touristified too, of course, but hey. I do really adore the little village square bit, tourism or none.

We found a nice, friendly restaurant where the menu was non-poshed-up but well-delivered, so I had onion soup (but of course!), roast chicken, and a lovely light apple cake. Nice wine (a 2006 Cabernet). Excellent waitress. Nice company. Amazing "Ancient Hits" collection on the muzak, including crucial trumpet moments in Ai No Corrida and Let's All Chant. My cup ranneth over, frankly. Staggered back down those eight million steps, back to the metro, back to the hotel, clunk, zzzzz.

Lucky Vogel grabs a weekend in Paris: I

Friday, 23 November 2007

St Pancras International (I love writing that) Station: the Champagne Bar. Not such a bad way to start a journey.

I'm on my way to Paris - also a nice thing to write - because I am going to see my dear friend and editorial boss, the trumpet professor, music department chair, and All Round Good Egg, Dr Gary M.

Explanatory aside: Something similar happened last year when Gary was there for the Maurice André Competition. On that occasion our party was Deb, Martha, Martha's lovely friend Ruth, and me. Gary was travelling alone but had met his Paris-resident friend Ibrahim Maalouf, an interesting and extremely nice Lebanese/French trumpet player, back to whom I'll come. We did various nice things that weekend, about which I should write sometime. Anyway anyway ...

Meanwhile back in 2007 I'm on my way and this time I have no family with me, but Gary has all of his, plus a gaggle of his students from Kansas State University and some friends and family of theirs. They're over there doing concerts and workshops and stuff; Ibrahim was out there with them in Kansas just a week or two back doing workshops; it all sounds rather jolly. My role in all this is just to turn up and smile at people: I do have a mouthpiece with me but I'm hoping that I will not be called upon to interface it with any trumpetlike instrument. But I am very much looking forward to seeing everyone and hearing what's been going on: Gary, Ibrahim and students have done some fantastic, interesting stuff in the past.

I should add that I was by no means certain, by the end of the week, that I was actually going. The Crown Princess Rebecca von und zu (etc) has had an unfortunate and close encounter with - well, with gravity ultimately - which inauspicious moment has led to her spending more time in the Manchester Royal Infirmary than you'd normally choose to. I mean unless you were a flower seller or brain surgeon or whoever. So there's clearly a Parental Visiting Issue and I naturally felt just a touch concerned about all this but both Becca and her Dear Muvver were very kind about the fact that Paris (via the Champagne Bar) was where I was going, and no argument was to be brooked ... so it wasn't, and I did.

(This is all extra-exciting because the Eurostar services only moved to the beautifully rebuilt and refurbished St Pancras on 14th November, so it’s all new and wonderful. Having said that, so much has been written about it elsewhere that I am going to leave it to cleverer authors and concentrate on my own trip. Now back to your scheduled programme …)

So: St Pancras is simply brilliant. The Champagne Bar was indeed nice - a thoroughly pleasant spot to hang out. The whole getting-on-the-train bit was the usual Eurostar low-stress performance. The train itself was exquisite - I had coughed up a few extra quid to travel "Leisure Select" and it was well worth it. I wondered whether this is just a way of using up excess capacity in business class and making some money out of it: whatever it is it's very nice: just three seats across, a meal (a rather nice meal, actually) brought to you, endless drink top-ups, and so on. I fear it has ruined me for ever travelling standard class.

At the other end it's nice and easy - straight off the Eurostar onto the metro, a couple of changes and I'm at the hotel. The area (you get off at Brochant metro and walk north towards Porte de Clichy) seems nice and felt instantly Parisian. I had a bizarre experience trying to find my way into the hotel because I couldn't discern which of two vehicle entrances - up or down a ramp - was the main pedestrian entrance, and backed the wrong one. (There is some signage but I missed it, oops.) So out of necessity I went in through what turned out to be the wrong entrance, that is, the one meant for bus parties, and thus eventually arrived in the hotel lobby in some style, surrounded by a large group of tiny Japanese ladies amongst whom I must have looked like a vast mutant.

I got checked in and sorted out OK: the room was somewhat capsuloid (walk along past the end of the bed and you're squeezed on both sides) but perfectly functional, comfortable, clean and warm. Compared with last autumn's Paris hotel, near the Gare du Nord, it felt safer and cleaner, a bit upmarket, with less atmosphere and character but also less smelly and weird. You pays your money, etc. This was the Porte de Clichy Ibis, by the way, and I would cheerfully recommend it. Other points that struck me were that the lobby, bar and restaurant were perfectly pleasant, and that the reception staff were very nice, friendly and helpful. In a perfect world there'd have been tea/coffee stuff in the room too, but hey. Do French hotels do this? Je ne sais pas.

My room was up on the eighth floor, so high enough to see out over nearby buildings, which meant I had a rather distant but still nice view of the Sacré Coeur. Lovely lovely.

I was hoping that the Kansas party, who'd been out doing a gig, would show up around 10.30. Had I been a bit earlier I'd have tried to get to the end of the concert but I'd already determined that this was a non-runner, so I lurked in the lobby with this portable writing device (with a wifi connection!) and a glass of something pleasant, which isn't such a bad way to pass time.

In fact they turned up just as I was giving up and going to bed: there'd been post-concert jollity and they'd tried to text me but there was great telecommunications silliness going on. (Come to think of it I don't think I ever got texting to work, despite their French SIM card. And we were both on Orange! Ho hum.) So it was of course great to see Gary and family again and to meet his party, an inordinately nice group of people. It was late so we said hello briefly then everyone zoomed off to bed. We all needed to make a reasonably good start but Leah even more so as she was taking an early TGV down to Lyons for the day to meet friends.

IP Address.08 – a week at Ingestre Pavilion: Part the Eighth

Thursday, 30 August 2007

In which Change of Personnel occurs, a Stately Home is revisited, a Peasant quizzed on Politics, and Tea is Taken.

This was our last full day at Ingestre Pavilion. It was a day of change and a day of sameness, a pleasing mixture.

The change was in staffing: the Infanta Marfs had to sign up for sixth form on the Friday so, being bad parents to the poor child, we just stuffed her callously on a train and left her to go back and suffer alone. She seems to still be at school now, so I guess it worked out. I try not to trouble myself with these matters.

Actually it was sad to see Martha go as it had been nice to be fully staffed on a holiday for a change. We hardly had time, however, to wipe away our tears when, railway stations being handy for this sort of thing, another train chugged up and delivered a new member of our group, albeit for a rather short stay, this being Lottie's (and indeed nowadays the family's) friend Katerina.

It was very nice that Kat's visit could be so well fitted in. She, a young person of the German variety, is quite into English history and culture (well someone has to be) so it was pretty irresistible to get her to visit us in a Landmark. Indeed the Landmark Trust has that effect on me generally: it makes me want to invite American/Canadian/French/German/Kiwi/Whatever friends to visit us in one 'cos I think they'd like it. On the other hand I have contradictory advice from Sprengel, Imp of the Left Shoulder, who points out that what you really want to do with this kind of holiday is to keep it to yourself and not share it with all those people. Hmm tricky. I feel that the obvious answer is to double the number, or length, of your Landmark holidays in order to accommodate both viewpoints. Yeah baby.

Anyway anyway there we were with five of us again and a day out to plan, so after returning to the Pavilion and impressing (I hope!) Kat with its, er, historicity and Englishness and eccentricity, we eventually fell upon the cunning plan of a return to Shugborough. It was close by (with a longish drive home tomorrow to bear in mind) and easy to reach and already known to be good, and those of us who'd seen it earlier were more than happy to go there again as there's plenty to do. So that's what we did.

I've waffled about this place at length so I'll only mention things that were a bit different:

• The dog needed a half-decent walk so Deb and I took her on a rather wonderful circuit out through the Essex Bridge end of the estate, along the Trent & Mersey canal to the junction then along the Staffs & Worcs through Tixall Wide and eventually back into Shugborough at the main entrance. It was then a surprisingly long, but rather nice, walk back through the estate to meet the others for tea at the very nice café. You get much more interesting views of the estate and its woods and follies this way.
• In the meantime the others had explored some buildings. The main house had been pretty much inaccessible for Becca: they have some terrifying stair-climbing tank thing which ruled itself out on several grounds, though apparently something easier is planned for next season.
• Becca, however, had found other places to visit which were accessible (cheese-grinding workshop? apple-vectoring bench? the loafhouse?) so had been wandering around in 1805-land being chatted to by rosy-cheeked tub-aligners and chaff-delineators.
• Apropos of whom, I did try asking one of the 1805 gardeners if they thought anyone would mind if they knew that one of our visitors was German. She was obviously not a student of history so she mainly fell back on "oo Oi wouldn't roightly know, that be Lunnon talk Zur" but I thought it was quite resourceful of her to point out that nothing could be quite so offensive as being French!
• Lottie and Katerina had also explored the main house, though my memory doesn't record their views. Perhaps the Iarlles will oblige with a tiny reminder?
• Tea was indeed pleasant. I could spend a lot of time - and money! - in this rather classy caff.

I think that's pretty much it for this visit. Again, this was an extremely good and interesting place to spend some time. Oddly, the timing of her arrival and departure meant that Martha missed both our visits there. This is a bit sad and should be put right one day. I've seen its signpost often enough from the motorway: it's not like it's hard to find!

Near-Shugborough Viewing: I'm also noting here in passing, mainly for my own benefit, that the 1035 Manchester Piccadilly train from Euston passes the near-Shugborough canal place at about 1157. For some reason I find it hugely exciting that you get a great view of it all, including the very pretty Essex Bridge - though it's brief and you do need to be prepared. Nerdy or what? Oh well. I am not yet sure whether you can see the house itself or just the tail end of the estate. But it's very nice anyway.

It remains for me only to thank Shugborough for another excellent day out. I'm like, yay, woo Shugborough, awright. Ahem, yes indeed I am.

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A GPS digression

Wednesday, 29 August 2007

I was rabbitting on elsewhere about GPS receivers now and in the future.

You may laugh (indeed, it'd be nice if you did from time to time) but I imagine that the satnav devices of, say, 2017 will make today's machines look embarrassingly primitive. Actually I can't believe I just wrote such a cliché but hey. I do love satnavs in general and mine in particular and I can't wait to see how they develop especially in areas such as communications, programmability, memory and intelligence. I feel that the current level of cleverness and adaptabilty, while fun, is going to be far surpassed on later devices. And of course if/when we get enhanced precision on the existing system then it's going to be even more betterer, and if/when - much later if ever - we get Galileo it sounds like it'll pretty much matter which hand you've got the receiver in - that is, if you've first chucked away your American-based GPS device and replaced it with a shiny new Galileo receiver. I don't think they are compatible, but what do I really know? (Er: nothing.)

I wonder:

• If they'll market dual-band receivers so that you might fill a gap in your view of one system by looking at the other?
• Could a dual-band receiver cleverly use one system to enhance its performance on the other on the grounds (aha) that 2n satellites are better than n? Or is Galileo so much better than the current US system that this is irrelevant?
• Talking of which, are there American plans to upgrade or replace the current system?
• Talking of talking of which, what happened to the Russian system? Will there be one? Will it have civilian access? Will I have to rephrase my dual-band questions as tri-band questions?

Ah reader, so many questions, so much jabnaas. I suppose that if I subscribed to GPS Technical Discussion Monthly, joined the International Satellite Navigation Guild of Enthusiasts, and spent a lot more time on the bulletin boards at www.gpsfuturespeculation.com then I'd know some of the answers. But, do you know what? It's quite exciting and interesting but just not that exciting and interesting, and I'll probably find out by 2017 anyway.