Gig-a-Blog™ (Cardiff University Symphony Orchestra, Cardiff University Concert Hall)

Saturday, 3 November 2007
and bits of Friday and Sunday, to boot.

This weekend involved a massive mobhanded descent (well, six of us) on Cardiff due to this concert being led by our own dear Daughter of Middlestness. Naturally this will not bias in any way my fearless and highly critical reporting of this excellent event hem hem.

"Interesting" background information that you don't need but are being offered anyway includes:

• The big car wasn't well, so I had to take the little car, which is also not exactly in the first flush of youth. It is also not as nice, comfortable, fast, well-equipped etc, indeed I could happily condemn it as quite inferior were it not for it being significantly less likely to lose all its oil and water then blow up. Tsk.
• You couldn't get a hotel room for love nor money in Cardiff that night. I say Vogel, I hear you murmur, must have been a very popular concert huh? Well yes, and I bow to no man in my admiration for this fine orchestra, but actually there was also a boxing match of some colossal significance taking place at the Millennium Stadium (capacity: 74,500) and this may also have contributed to the problem in some minor way.

Erm right so on we go:

We had complex journeys. Becca drove down from Manchester, Eva and Deb came on the train, and I drove down from London but stayed the previous night in Chichester and then drove up from there with Mum.

Because of the Cardiff hotel situation we were staying way out of town, in fact, nearer Usk, at the very nice Cwrt Bleddyn Hotel.

Mum’s and my journey up was lovely. It was a very nice sunny late autumn day and the trees almost all the way up were an amazing display of colour. I seem to recall reading, earlier in the year, that it was forecast to be a good autumn for leaf colour, but I cannot remember why this was supposed to be so. Maybe I'll see if I can look it up (or not). Anyway, it did seem to be particularly spectacular.

Given the complex travel arrangements I was a little worried (i.e. gibbering) about punctuality and as we left in good time then had quite a pretty fast, clear run, we were well ahead of schedule by the time we were entering Wales. As we hadn't yet had lunch we left the M48 (the old M4 over the original Severn Bridge) at Chepstow and drove up the Wye Valley. On such a nice day and with the aforementioned autumn colours, this was a truly beautiful ride. We found ourselves in Tintern at the Abbey Hotel, right opposite the said abbey (photo at page top), and had very pleasant bar snacks there looking out over the lovely view. Pretty goshdarned near perfect. Then after a stroll down to look at the abbey and riverside (more fantastic red, green, orange, yellow, brown, gold - and the rest - catching the sun across the valley) we were off again.

In an area like this it's perhaps a mistake to entrust navigation to the GPS without checking its work. It certainly got us to Cwrt Bleddyn but along the most incredible filigree of tiny roads, such that you worry that meeting another vehicle would be a real problem; or else that the road is about to peter out in the middle of nowhere or, embarrassingly, in some farmer's front garden. In fact none of these things happened and the drive across was interesting and very pretty, as well as a bit disconcerting, so a net gain, really.

At the hotel we checked in and looked at access and so on, and had a cup of tea (but of course). It's a good place - some kind of manor-house-type building much added-to, but in a tactful enough way that it doesn't frighten the horses. The staff are very nice and helpful and the rooms were fine, though our particular corner was short on views. The public rooms that I saw - the lobby, dining room and bar - were pleasant and rather classy. Access was OK-ish: they'd given us clear warning that it's not yet fully accessible, but they helped in every possible way and it was all pretty cool, basically.

By the time tea was drunk my timetable anxieties were getting their claws in and we set off for Cardiff. It actually did get quite worrying as the traffic going in was appalling. As well as the boxing there was a firework display on (nearest Saturday to Guy Fawkes, innit) and the roads really couldn't take it all - we chugged slowly along at walking pace for what seemed like days. We did, however, make it and there met with Becca, who showed up at pretty much the same moment, and with Eva and Deb who were annoyingly calm and relaxed. Huh, train travellers.

The music department porters had kindly and helpfully carved out a wheelchair space. They had very nicely put it absolutely as close as possible to Lottie so that Bec would have been eye to eye with her from about a metre away, maybe a touch less. I don't know what this would do to you but I'll cheerfully admit that I don't think I could play a note like that, though fortunately I do not lead orchestras. No-one wanted to reject the porters' kindness but after a hurried consultation a polite delegation was sent to request a teeny shift and we ended up seated in a much more moderate position at the first crossways aisle.

While on the subject of the venue, I should just add that I rather liked the concert hall, which is actually in or at least attached to the music department. It has a nice atmosphere and feels like home but is big enough to get a decent-sized concert in.

The concert was (of course) wonderful. No, but it really was: the orchestra was great and Tim Taylor did a fine job conducting it with admirable clarity. I've seen him conduct before and he's struck me as someone who knows not only how he wants the music to sound, but also exactly how to communicate this to an orchestra. Seems obvious I know, but you'd be amazed how many conductors have one ability or the other but not both. And indeed I suppose a few have neither: but let us not start on that downward slope lest they start retaliatory blogging about bad trumpet players they know...

Chabrier's España was first, a flashy and exciting start to the concert. Next came the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major which was truly stunning. The soloist Christopher Andrews can really play. Oh and I know I should try not to be so parochial about the instrument I claim to play, but the extremely prominent and exciting trumpet part - no, seriously - was delivered with great style and verve by some talented young person, so well done them too. After the interval came a stormy, exciting and dramatic Franck Symphony in D minor. In this symphony, to misquote someone, I am never quite sure whether I like the actual music, or just the noise it makes, but the latter was more than impressive in any case. One way or another, it's quite a symphony and the orchestra certainly delivered on Franck's promises. I sort-of loved this symphony when we did it in CASO decades ago and I sort-of love it now. I probably ought (in a perfect world) to try to educate myself about Franck and his other music a bit. Finally, a Satie Gymnopédie (arranged by whom?) made for a very pleasant encore. Just as well, since the lengthy, warm and enthusiastic reception after the Franck clearly required another nice tunette to send the audience home (or indeed on to the boxing, I suppose) with the right amount of bounce in its collective step.

So all in all this was a fine and very enjoyable concert and I thought Lottie led well; and indeed looked nice, having I think invested in a new dress, er, an ting, for the event. We were very proud of her.

After the event I was pleased to meet, briefly, the famous Tim Taylor, having heard so much about him from Lottie. It's very odd doing Meet The Teacher when your child is a university student! But TT seems very nice. We've spoken and emailed in the past (a question of the Boehme Concerto in E or is it F minor, and where, pray, are the orchestral parts for F?) but we hadn't met. It's probably even more excruciating having your Dad talking to university staff than it is at a school function but we were both in a hurry so Lottie's pain was at least brief, and bravely borne.

Following that we went our separate ways, Lottie no doubt to party the night away and us oldies to stagger off back to Cwrt Bleddyn. Due to deficient planning we were hungry and had no accessible restaurant in mind, let alone booked: however we just went back to the hotel and let room service solve our problem, which it did very nicely. We had a sort of Sandwich Summit in Becca's room, and at some point I visited the rather swish bar for a (purely medicinal) whisky and, d'you know what, it was all perfectly pleasant.

In the morning I was delighted to find that Becca could get into the dining room by dint of a bit of an exterior tour and a steplet or two, but nothing to defeat the parental muscle (gnah! wagghh! ungghh!!) Having paid roughly a billion pounds for the hotel it's difficult (and indeed uneconomic) to resist when you're offered a cosmic megabreakfast: so I didn't. I had the full Welsh and, while I cannot now remember how this differs from a full English, I do remember that it was delicious. Erm, and indeed far from ungenerous. Yes.

I ran Eva into Newport to catch a train home. After that the rest of us had a shortish wander round the hotel's grounds, which are exquisite - all little streams and bridges and stuff, a very pretty setting.

I very much enjoyed Cwrt Bleddyn and would very happily spend more time there. If they spent a few bob changing the accessibility from Nearly to Actually, and kept the helpfulness they already display, it would be truly stunning. They are so close that it's quite tantalizing.

So goodbye, nice hotel, and off we set again back to Cardiff to meet Lottie and Jake and have an excellent lunch at the Grape and Olive, a trendy and very pleasant pub-restaurant not very far from Lottie's house. This place she had sussed out in advance, and had done a top job: it was really lovely - food, décor, access, staff, the lot - and I would very much like to go back one day, maybe in the evening after a walk or something, when I'd do it more justice. (Clue: can you say "hotel breakfast"? Good, good.)

Having consumed a light-yet-nutritious™ (thank you Ken) lunch I somehow managed to get back to the car (possibly on hands and knees, groaning piteously), and drive it (possibly from the back seat) back to Lottie's house. Have I learned a lesson here? Doubt it.

At Lottie's, farewells were said and we zoomed off to all - well, several - points of the compass. Bec was off north(ish)wards for Manchester; Mum and I dropped Deb at Cardiff station then set off for the motorway. Unfortunately there'd been a serious accident and everything was badly jammed up, with no chance of avoiding it for many miles, so we just crawled along. Eventually we were able to get off the motorway and divert round the rest of it, going round the edge of Newport. This was a bit tedious but rather enlivened by our being overflown, at low altitude, by the biggest flock of rooks I've ever seen. There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands, and it made a truly awe-inspiring sight.

I think poor Becca had a bit of a rubbish journey too, having been unable to completely avoid the effects of the same jam, and ended up taking quite a while to get home too. Ah - update - I had forgotten that after that Becca ran into the Worst Fog Ever while snurgling her way up through Wales, and that that was what made her seriously late back. It was really very bad indeed, thick and persistent, for many miles - she nearly got lost going round a roundabout at one point, because the exits and signage were so obscured. Nasty!

I can't remember much about the rest of our journey, which suggests that it was probably uneventful. So let's assume that I got Mum home safely, had some permutation of tea/snack/kip/chat - or indeed all of the above, then set the autopilot for Norf London and off I went. All in all, very very pleasant and well done that Leading Lottie. Woo.

Gig-a-Blog™ (capella vitalis berlin, St Anne & St Agnes)

Monday, 4 February 2008

capella vitalis berlin. Almut Schlicker & Ulrike Wildenhof violins, Martin Knizia organ/harpsichord. Trio sonatas by Handel, Purcell and others

Purcell, Sonata in E minor: Gorgeous. What is it about Purcell? Something about its sense of structure and purpose that shows through? I don't know. It's just wonderful.

Birckenstock, Sonata no. 6 in G major (1 violin & harpsichord). Short life - 1687-1733 so he was born close to Bach and Handel but died very much earlier. Rather lovely. Very busy, fun allegro. I wonder if I can get a CD? Pretty adagio with excellent pause-and-twiddle™ moments. In fact it's all rather fine. Giga - fantastic facile flurries of fast flying fingers. Silly echo cadenza thing - excellent, punters on edges of seats (well I was), very clever.

Leclair Sonata no. 1 in D minor: 2 violins & organ. Nice change of texture. Nice sonata but less exciting than the other two so far.

Handel Sonata no. 6 in G minor: Back to two violins & harpsichord. 1st allegro - intricate, clever, interesting. The arioso was quite beautiful and the final allegro light, dashing and played with precision and verve.

I loved the rich, warm, room-filling sound of this ensemble. Very very nice.

Gig-a-Blog™ (Mary Pells & Martin Knizia, St Anne & St Agnes)

Friday, 1 February 2008

Mary Pells, viola da gamba; Martin Knizia, harpsichord. Sonatas by G F Handel, G Finger and J Roman

Handel (attrib): poised, stately Adagio: incredible listenable purity and beauty of sound in this combination of instruments, or at any rate as it is played by these two people. The first Allegro is lively, tripping over itself in scalic runs then hovering for a moment over fast repeated notes in the gamba before it rushes off again. Most exciting. The second adagio is more song-like and emotional, and the second allegro is jolly, lilting, almost bucolic. Excellent fun, excellent performance. This work was great: full of life and clarity.

Roman. The "Handel of Sweden" says Martin. Allegro: light, lively, busy. Larghetto: rather squarely structured but enlivened by a couple of nice, plangent, harmonically interesting moments. Allegro: festive feeling, lilts along pleasantly, nice variety in the way the harpsichord's range is used.

Handel (the real one, not attrib!) Adagio: lovely, sinuous, flowing. I see what the programme note means, though, about the greater equality, in the maybe-fake-Handel, of the instruments. Here the gamba's getting nearly all the cool stuff and the poor harpsichord is mostly going chuggy chuggy chord-chord-chord with the odd moment of relief. Hmm I wonder if there's a big notational difference in the keyboard part between the Handel and the ersatz-Handel? I am too embarrassed to speculate in case I am so wrong as to look an even bigger nana than usual, but I might, if courage and time permit, ask someone. (Update: I asked. Yup. The real Handel is a figured bass whereas the perhaps-not-Handel specifies the right hand, at least to an extent.) Allegro: sounds like the Christmas Oratorio at the start - or is it just me? Largo: yes well he's better at lovely flowing lines than poor Roman. Very nice. Second Allegro: erm, is this a gigue or something? It's very jolly and gallops along at a fair old rollicking pace.

Finger: goodness me, this is a whole opera! Much drama in evidence and multiple changes of scene. Three movements but ten section/tempo indications. Certainly enough to get your average programme-reading Vogel quite lost. Actually I think we may have just hit the middle movement, Aria, though just now it seems to think it's a rather nice chorale. Ah, I see, now it's doing variations, how splendid. And now there's what may be the next movement beginning with a nice Adagio - or else I'm lost again. Another jolly tum-tee-tum bit - not unlike Handel's second Allegro - did Finger copy in the exam? Ah, excellent, it was the last section and I wasn't lost - makes a change!

What a lovely gig and well done Pells and Knizia.

On the way back to the office I was reflecting, with gratitude, how incredibly bl**dy lucky I am to have St Anne & St Agnes and its amazing concert series right on my doorstep. It is a crucial, sanity-saving part of my week and I cannot thank the church and all its people enough for what they have going on there. I'm like, yeah man, woo (high five) right on; yes, indeed I am. Mr Thompson, the tea for our guests if you please.

Gig-a-Blog™ (The Vaghoten Band, St Anne & St Agnes)

Monday, 21 January 2008

“Aux Armes, Citoyens!” The Vaghoten Band. Jane Booth & Louise Strickland, clarinets; Joe Walters & David Ransom, horns; Peter Whelan & Robert Percival, bassoons. Works by F J Gossec, de l'Isle and (arr.) Lussier.

A wonderful programme of revolutionary music with excellent, characterful sounds. Perhaps less smooth and homogeneous than the equivalent modern ensemble: bits of edge in the tone which add texture and interest. I'm thinking especially of the bassoons whose tone I felt had a distinct "wake up" quality compared to the modern instrument.

Similarly, there was a distinct difference in the clarinet tone, though I'm not sure I can specify for you what it was. Maybe that it was a little more direct and less rich? Definitely a bit of a tonal spectrum shift compared to the modern instrument but I fear I can't nail it down for you any better than that so you'd better try to hear this excellent ensemble and form your own view.

Fabulous horns. Mellow, brassy and downright fiery by turns. Nice one.

• First two pieces quite jolly and cheerful
• Third piece: excellent horn call thing
• Some music a bit more solemn e.g. (perhaps) O salutaris (aargh help I'm lost in the programme) - well that was very nice, whatever it was.
• Oops - it's too easy (for me) to lose track of one's location in the programme. There's not enough help from the printed programme nor the performers, though their occasional stage chat was very good and I'd have liked more.

Unusual show, great sounds, makes a fascinating and refreshing change. I left feeling distinctly inclined to go and storm the Bastille.

Update: I'm shocked that I was so unobservant (too busy ogling the horns?) but Martin told me that the fabulous bassoon sound which so excited me was, at times, being generated by a Baroque contra! Imagine - I didn't even know there was such a thing. It certainly explains the, er, deep (aha) impression they made on me, but I wish I'd seen it too. Next time I will not miss it!

Oops

On the Central Line today, on my way to a meeting at QM, I was in a happy electronic cocoon of PDA and MP3 and overshot Mile End without even noticing.

I was very surprised when the train emerged into sunlight. Quite disconcerting for a second or two. Er, hello Stratford and indeed goodbye Stratford.

Gig-a-Blog™ (Daniel-Ben Pienaar, St Anne & St Agnes)

Friday, 18 January 2008

Daniel-Ben Pienaar, Piano. Schubert Sonatas Cycle I (no. 15, D 840 and no. 19, D958)

This was a monster recital: it's only one and a half sonatas (D840 is just two movements) but it still filled every minute of lunchtime today.

D840: Starts innocently enough - pastoral calm then impassioned fireworks with some great juicy chromatic moments

D958: Fiery start then settles down to a symphonic-length marathon. Some fantastic playing here. These sonatas weren't entirely my thing despite many beautiful moments, but I can't tell you exactly why: maybe it's a product of my unfamiliarity with them, and the seriousness of the listening requirement being quite a tall order for lunchtime. Must try harder Vogel! Meanwhile, hats off to Daniel-Ben Pienaar for fabulous playing on an epic scale.

Gig-a-Blog™ (Sweelinck Ensemble, St Anne & St Agnes)

Thursday, 20 December 2007

This Christmas Oratorio (cantatas 1-3) at my favourite church was simply stunning. However, as it heralded (aha) an outrageously complex and busy period for us, starting at 5.32 a.m. on the Friday, this is just a few impressions recorded long afterwards.

• Great singing, playing and direction
• Excellent clarity of diction and orchestral texture so you could sort of hear through the music more.
• Pretty fast tempo at take-off. At first I thought ooer blimey but actually it was rather good, and arguably more festive and less pompous than at slower speeds.
• I loved the trumpets! They (Chris Bunn, Dominic Cotton, Steve Bailey) were generally good but Großer Herr, o starker König was really scintillating.
• Nice atmosphere; mince pies and mulled wine afterwards. Woo.
• I was delighted to have finally got Deb to a gig there to try and show her why I love this place so much.
• Oh and afterwards we went to the middle restaurant - the Balcony Bistro - at the Barbican, and had an excellent dinner. It always amuses me how the physical arrangement of the restaurants there is a perfect map of their poshness and prices. Not that the bottom one really represents slumming it on the cheap, you understand, but you're left in no doubt that each move upstairs is a move upmarket too. So the middle one is pretty J. Gooders if you ask me. A very fine end to a musically terrific evening.

Notes from another train journey: Euston-Piccadilly again

Monday, 14 January 2008

There's the Roundhouse, looking splendid. Why on earth did they put a concert venue right by the railway? Cuh. Tsk. Eh?

Tube train at Kilburn High Road. Interesting tube-ness generally.

Trains in new "London Overground" livery, that is, er, a sticker on the side. How good could this bold project be, if it works out? Could we have some more interchanges, please? (Answers: jolly good; probably not, no.)

Massive railway lands going for miles. Much dereliction but much activity too.

About 30 minutes out - lovely area, distant nice-looking hills to the right, orchard on the left. Where are we? Chilterns or something?

We seem to be going quite slowly. Ah that's better. Woosh. Ooh, and now even more so, wooshity woosh. How very stimulating. Yeah baby.

As we rocket northwards, those pretty and now-distant hills are outlined in silver under a dramatic painterly sky. It even has God-chutes. Wow, it's fantastic: if you saw a photograph you'd go yeah right, fake for sure.

I'd partly-forgotten what an amazingly canaloid run this is. You don't seem to be far from the canal for most of the journey: there's often some fascinating glimpse, right by the track or maybe a field or two away. Obviously there are good reasons for this frequent proximity, apart from just keeping me entertained: but I love it anyway. Have I told you how much I love canals? Yeah, probably. Well, just to be clear: I really really love canals. OK?

There's still a lot of railway engineering work going on. The line is subject to massive improvements, not least doubling some of it up to four tracks. It's major enough when you contemplate just the rails and the power but then you have to take into account all the stuff which no longer fits around the line: cuttings, embankments, bridges, stations ... It is a truly humongous project, and of course poor Network Rail caught it right in the neck for over-running with their work at Rugby over New Year so that it was days before services ran normally again. I think it's fair to say that Thomas was not happy, Percy was not happy, Annie and Clarabel and their would-be passengers were very much more than miffed, and the Fat Controller was seen around Sordor bearing a grim expression and a baseball bat. This problem, and another overrun at Liverpool Street, made Network Rail so spectacularly unpopular that you'd think it would have been a really good idea to avoid it. Obviously they somehow could not: when the investigations are done and the reports all written it will be interesting to know why, assuming that we ever do.

I had a very interesting neighbour on the way up. He's a semi- or mostly-retired marine electronics engineer who'd worked for Decca, Racal, Northrop Grumman and many others. Despite this list, he'd never actually changed jobs: the company or bits of companies had been bought and sold around him. I think he said he'd worked for nine different companies, and moved offices plenty of times, but always kept the same desk! He worked on radar as well as monitoring systems like engine temperature warnings and the like.

He was fascinating on the subject of his work. One amazing story concerned a monitoring system from a ferry: following a collision, part of the electronics were immersed, then marinaded in stinking diesel/silt gunk for months. Eventually the company was asked to restore them: this was very costly but still much cheaper than replacing all the kit and rewiring half (or more) of the ship. So they cleaned it all up, fixed or replaced some of it, and handed it back, working and fully tested, two days early. That's what I call Proper Engineering!

This nice gentleman also told me a lot about his in-laws in Yorkshire and a beautiful 16th century farmhouse with which he'd helped them on electrics, plumbing and so on. I was struck by how often he mentioned "my late wife", not in a mawkish way but just as a routine part of how he told stories and fitted things together: even down to where her ashes are buried. So she was being neither constantly sobbed over nor forgotten. but something somewhere between the extremes, in what seemed a sensible and comforting accommodation with the inconvenient fact of death.

My neighbour also shared with me his theory about the engineering overrun at Rugby. According to him they could and should have got much of the electrical installation done in advance of the major mechanical work, but chose instead to do it all at the same time, thereby making the whole thing double the hostage to fortune. We'll see - I hope.

And that's another train ride. I'm finishing writing this on the way home There's less to blog about in the dark! Night night.

In making better use of the space

This is from a rather interesting historical display at a church where I sometimes rehearse (no names, no pack-drill). There's a panel about what took place during the incumbency of each vicar, with little blocks of writing scattered among illustrations.

We've just reached the 1970s, when a lot of modernization took place. Interspersed with old black and white photos of the church before the work, we find this rather poignant text:

St Andrew's was re-ordered in 1977 to provide space for community activities.

In making better use of the space not needed for a late 20th century congregation, our lectern, font, and altar rail were lost;

also the choir stalls

and the rare Caen stone pulpit.

What a depth of feeling must lie behind those few very carefully-chosen words!

Do you scoff, scarf or what?

Lynneguist's always excellent "Separated by a Common Language" blog (American and British uses of English, geddit?) has a good piece on "Scoff and Scarf". Given the known demographics of my colossal readership (hem hem) I would love to know if you use "scoff" for the stuffing of the face with food, or words to that effect. My guess is that you are more likely to use it if you are 100 years old like what I am, or if you think you are Molesworth (chiz) or Billy Bunter (yaroo) or someone. Or both. But I would be interested to know - or maybe you should just go to Lynne's article and comment there ... whatever.

To enter, read notice on right ...

... that's what it says on the front door of our building.
I have tried and tried and, believe me, it does not work.

A visit up North last Autumn

Wednesday, 26 - Saturday, 29 September 2007

Last autumn I was on a tiny trip oop t'North to retrieve my Dearest Muvver, the Dowager Duchess von Neustadt, from her annual long holiday in the frozen wastes of Northumberland.

Only at that time of year does the ice retreat far enough for us to send in the first, elite squadrons of Jäger to clear the larger concentrations of wolves and permit the repossession of our beloved Bastle Nordgrenze, and certain of its estates and buildings, for the few brief months the watery Arctic sun will allow...

What? Oh yes, sorry. Right.

Mum had been on holiday, as she is most years, for several weeks in the non-large village of Embleton in Northumberland. I greatly admire and envy this personal tradition of hers. We have family connections there going way back; my uncle still owns a cottage there, as he has done since the 1960s. I knew that cottage even before then, when its owner was Auntie Norah, a distant cousin. My grandmother holidayed there, owned property there and indeed lived there for a while during the war and some time afterwards. My great grandfather and his brother are buried there. Mum's pretty much lost count of how many houses round there she's lived in or stayed in and can always surprise me with one I didn't know about. I cannot remember seeing Embleton for the first time: it's always been quite central in my life. It's almost as if it's the place where I should have been born: that's what it feels like to me. It is in my blood. I should perhaps write more about this place some other time.

Anyway, ramblings apart, there I am in Embleton - or, rather, about to be - picking up Mum. The usual deal is that either my brother or I will drive her up there at the start of her holiday, and the other will collect her at the end. It is, obviously, a chance to catch a couple of days there: some minimum stay is certainly required as it's almost a thousand miles for the round trip, and if other factors permit then it's great to do a couple of touristy things and revisit some old haunts. This time I had a couple of days so I drove up on Wednesday night and stayed till Saturday morning when we left for Chichester.

Leaving London was the usual horrible flap. I'd arranged to come home early but was delayed, so my plan of being well en route by five was thwarted, though I was, at least, on the move (just) by then.

Traumatized by recent M1 experiences I decided to stick to the A1. I'd forgotten how much of it is not (yet) motorway so there were tedious, busy, roundaboutoid bits to get through. Eventually it gave up being so annoying and became Easy Driving Road, which is more like it, thank you. Somewhere or other I stopped for a coffee and a break: very necessary but very uninspired, a somewhat depressing place whose name I wish I'd noted in order to avoid it another time.

I got the usual massive uplift from seeing the Angel of the North. I love the Angel. As you may have noticed from this blog I am perhaps not a deeply deeply religious person: but indeed, to be fair, we don't really know whether he/she/it/they are or is a deeply religious angel either. What I do know is that when I catch that first glimpse it's as if someone has gently opened a valve in my skull releasing about 40psi of excess pressure, then poured in some kind of honeyed herbal infusion of pleasure, joy and peace. I know the Angel's just a big metal thing, but hey. The effect doesn't need to be anything much more than associations, the fact that it's telling me I'm very nearly in Northumberland, that I was born a few miles east of here and so on: who cares, if it works anyway.

Just before I get too carried away with this I should perhaps add that the rhapsody ends, and you come down to earth with a bump pretty darned fast, if the Western Bypass is a horrible traffic-jammed mess. This is all too often the case and when it is, it's quite hard to keep any delighted feelings going too long.

On this occasion, however, I was through there quite late at night and it was wonderfully quiet and I just kind of wooshed through and was headed out towards Morpeth in no time flat. Bliss.

It's odd the way the A1 has over the years flickered across the Newcastle area like a faulty connection. When I was younger it went through the city centre, then for a while it did the same but used a few chunks of motorway (can you say "T. Dan Smith"?) Then they built the Tyne Tunnel and suddenly that, miles east, was the A1. Finally (for the moment) there came the Western Bypass and the A1 flickered again and became that.

The trouble is, that can't last either. It gets horrendously jammed up, is too narrow, and is doing too many different jobs. So a second Tyne Tunnel is to be built and when it is (2011) I suppose that it will be the A1 once more...

Anyway, so there I am chugging steadily northwards. Amusingly enough I am also falling off the map, because I forgot that my GPS isn't loaded with all the data for that far north. So now we're on the built-in "base map" which is, well, basic: for example the only road it shows up here is the A1. This is not conducive to fine navigation, but fortunately I do know where Embleton is. Owners of TomToms do not suffer from this 'forgotten the maps" issue, or not without some major between-countries movement, and sometimes not even then. But my GPS is more fun, for nerds at least: and now that the price of memory's down to 1p a zekkobyte I've bought it an even more monster-capacity micro-SD card so actually I probably could now fit in maps for most of the known universe.

So, despite the tragic lack of instructions from anything electronic there I was rolling up in Embleton, hurrah and again hurrah. Despite it being quite late Mum had some delicious food for me and I soon felt as if I'd never left. She actually wasn't in my uncle's cottage, not least because he was, but a couple of doors down in the rather lovely Anvil Cottage which we've rented many times from the Skipper family. George has recently had a lot of work done so it's even better - and it was pretty good to start with! So if Des's cottage is a sort of home-from-home then I suppose Anvil is like a home-from-home-from-home.

One really fascinating thing Mum showed me that first night was a consultants' report, commissioned by the local council, into Embleton becoming a conservation area. This threw me a bit. I suppose I had always thought, in a perhaps rather seven-year-old way, of Embleton as perfect, eternally unchanging and unchangeable. To me it was, in effect, already a conservation area because I couldn't admit or conceive of any change.

This is, of course, hogwash and dangerous hogwash at that. Sure, the report helped make it explicit for me but the fact is that there's massive change there for all to see, right in front of your nose; and indeed there always has been. If I think back to when I first explicitly knew of Embleton, in the early 1960s, lots of stuff is new or altered or gone since then. For example there's a house that ever since I was first aware of it I've wanted to buy so I could demolish it (and no I will not be specifying which one it is). The area opposite Josie's garage has also changed hugely. We once had a holiday at 7 Sunny Brae, but what was once a row of tiny cottages there is now a row of around half the number of mostly larger cottages: and so on.

This isn't going to turn into a treatise on planning and conservation, subjects about which I know nothing. I don't think that all change is bad but I do think that in a place like this it needs managing sensibly, so maybe that's what the conservation area will bring. We'll see.

So. Let me rattle through a few points about my weekend before this turns into too long a haul.

• On the Thursday morning, going and looking down Sea Lane then catching my first glimpse of Dunstanburgh. Always a great moment. That's when I really know I'm in Embleton.
• There are new houses, indeed there's (golly) a new road, near the church, off the Christon Bank road. Also, the old police station has been extended (or somethinged).
• The playground is gone! This is very sad for me: I've spent countless hours there as a child and with my own children. I'm not sure if it is to be reinstated there or reestablished elsewhere.
• Which brings up a point well made by the conservation area report: most of Embleton isn't really where I think Embleton is. It is in the newer housing north and west. "My" Embleton (ha!) is the old village-green, central bit but most people don't live there and many of its properties are second homes and holiday cottages. Great, now I have middle-class townie-southerner-incomer angst too.
• Rock Midstead Farm is no longer open to the public! This is a disaster - it had a nice tea-room and did marvellous frozen meals to take away. I don't remember it from my childhood, so I'm not sure when it opened - 80s or 90s maybe? It was a place we went to on many of our more recent holidays and I'll really miss it.
• We tried another farm-with-tea-shop not a million miles away. It hasn't yet filled the gap left in my affections by Rock Midstead.
• The nice outdoor shop in Alnwick has gone. This was up behind George's shop and the bloke was incredibly helpful to us over new boots and other kit. On the other hand, there's a nice new (to me) outdoor shop up above the market square, where you go through the building with the clock to reach the next road (Fenkle Street I think). This seemed like a good and clued-up place and did a perfectly reasonable job of selling me a new Berghaus jacket.
• And what kind of fool visits Northumberland in late September without an adequate jacket? Yep.
• Still in Alnwick, an excellent visit to the eponymous Garden. I love this place...
• Since we were last there the maze - officially the Bamboo Labyrinth - has grown into something really challenging, especially if you obey its rule. Actually I couldn't, this time, see the notice with the rule on so I wonder whether they're still suggesting it. But I remember what it was: no sharp turns. In other words you behave as if you're a train and have points to get you through junctions: you can only take a path that meets yours at a gentle angle, probably 45° or less. If you'd need go through, say, 90° to get onto the next path segment, then it's not allowed. I don't know if you can see it well enough but in this photo I could not turn left at the junction - I could only get into that path if I were coming in the opposite direction, when I could choose either fork. Similarly, someone who was already in that path to the left could only go straight on, not turn sharp right to where I am standing. Oh dear, I'm explaining it very badly but it's very obvious in operation. Basically what it does is to add length and complexity to the maze and thus get more fun out of quite a small site. The ferny earth banks and tall bamboo also make this a visually and aurally attractive spot.
• I am delighted to report that the maze defeated me. I was trying to hurry to get back to Mum and I could not get the hang of it. Eventually I gave up observing the junctions rule and then it was a lot easier. But what a great puzzle! It's by the genius Adrian Fisher by the way.
• To the sides of the Grand Cascade those beech tunnel things over metal frames are growing up nicely. I wonder how long it'll be before they're complete? They are already a fine sight.
• The Grand Cascade itself is just wonderful. It really is spectacular and beautiful, but fun too, as witness the surprising number of soaked-to-the-skin schoolkids - big schoolkids - trooping past us on their way to a rather soggy coach-ride home. This was really quite a chilly day but northeastern kids are well 'ard.
• A hilarious touch at the Grand Cascade is the fleet of plastic pedal diggers round its foot, a democratizing influence in a generally posh gardenscape. The Duchess is very entertaining on this topic in the DVD I bought. She was offered these diggers in some sponsorship deal and was worried they looked cheesy (which they do a little but hey). However, once they were deployed she realized that the instinctive reaction of almost every child was to fill the bucket with water then try to pour it over their parents' feet. So the tractors stayed. Classy!
• We also visited the entirely wonderful walled garden up at the top ...
• ... and the unbelievable, superb water'n'chrome garden by William Pye. Ah yes, it's called the Serpent Garden, it says here. It's amazing.
• All the entrance buildings and café, shop and so on are now complete, a huge improvement over the temporary arrangements. We had a very nice lunch in the caff.

What else did we cram into this brief pre-weekend of tourism?

Howick. Ah yes. Howick Hall Gardens, perhaps in response to Alnwick's success (but perhaps not), have really raised their game in recent years. Maybe this garden always was good, but hid its light a bit - I'm really not sure. What you see now is good publicity, documentation, signage, access - the works, really, so it comes over as a serious, well-managed, high-quality visitor attraction. It's not that it's competition for Alnwick, but rather a complement. Hardly anyone is going to feel that, having seen one, they need not see the other, but I reckon that lots of sensible and interested people are going to see both and have two excellent and highly contrasting garden experiences. Oh and Howick has a superb tea-room situated in a wing of the main house, in one of the most beautiful and interesting rooms you could imagine, a real gem. Being allowed to sit in there is worth a lot more than the price of your cuppa or meal.

After Howick we had a little side-trip to admire the strange pretend-ruined folly at Ratcheugh Crag, a building that has always fascinated me. You can't get that close but we did manage a better view of it than usual. I wish I knew who to bribe to be allowed to see round it! It must have amazing views as it's right on the crest of the crag and looks both ways, out to the coast and back towards Alnwick. The linked site tells me that it was designed by Robert Adam and is a Grade I listed building. Woo: hats off if you please.

We went over to Cragside - it's such a nice drive over the moors from Alnwick. Once there:

• We didn't go in the house this time. Nor indeed the café, which was uncharacteristic of us.
• We did the nice long drive round the estate. It's wonderful.
• We stopped in a pleasant, rocky carpark to look at (or for) The Labyrinth.
• This always drives me nuts. It's marked on the maps and mentioned in texts as The Labyrinth but there's no definition of precisely what and where it is. There's a fancy entrance and a slightly less fancy exit, and there's a very nice complicated woven wood mini-maze epis. Though these are nice, it is entirely unclear whether they are the whole Labyrinth or just parts of it, so it's really not a very satisfying experience as you're never quite sure whether or not you have seen it and whether you're currently inside or outside it. I keep meaning to write to them and ask for some clarification, but in the meantime it still drives me nuts.
• After we'd been round the estate we drove up the slope to the Formal Garden. Mum car-sat while I had a quick wander. It was looking very fine and in particular there was a really stunning border full of dahlias, a truly amazing display. That's where the Red Admiral photo posted in October came from. Oh and I had a look around the lovely little clock tower and its interesting-looking and presumably old clock.

One night we had dinner at the new (?ish) restaurant in Alnwick, Louis Steak House, which belongs to Mark Turnbull, he of Turnbull's the butcher and indeed the travelling shop which so usefully visits Embleton. You might expect that a restaurant run by a proper local butcher would know its meat: well, you wouldn't be disappointed. This was without doubt the best restaurant steak I have ever had: absolutely delicious in every way. The only thing which prevents it being the best steak ever is the fact that My Dear Wife (Bless Her) always cooks steak on my birthday. But for a restaurant steak beyond compare, Alnwick's where it's at. Des joined Mum and me for this evening of advanced gastronomy and we were all in agreement that the food and service were impeccable.

I'd love to write something about the music there - its programming and volume - but I am unwilling to besmirch the memory of a cosmically delicious meal. Tell you what, in the purest interests of research I'll go there again as soon as possible and, if the music's still annoying, give it both barrels irrespective of the wonderfulness of m'dinner. Fair enough? I think so.

Back in Embleton, it was very nice to pop into Grieves' garage for petrol - as I must have done a million times before - and be recognized and spoken to very kindly by Josie and her son. The sad fact is that, Skippers and Grieveses apart, there are very few other people there nowadays who know me. A few more - mostly older, I guess - would understand who I was if I explained: Mum, Des, Kathleen, Neva, Auntie Norah, Granny ... but really my sense of belonging there is mostly an illusion, albeit a very pleasant one. It doesn't cut the other way, and indeed I cannot imagine how it could, for the ties I feel are pretty much one-way: in other words Embleton's in my blood, but I am not in its. From the village's point of view I'm just another fat middle-aged bloke renting a cottage: not exactly rare, then. Tsk.

What else can I tell you? Not much really: just another routine visit though no less pleasant for it. Mum gave me an absolutely fascinating book on - well OK this might not fascinate you - wartime air crashes in the Cheviots; which few words, face it, contain enough slightly nerdy box-ticking to keep me rivetted (aha) for more than an evening or two. And I know you won't believe me, but it really is good, interesting, historical, human storytelling: it is exciting, moving and at times scary, and reminds you that things were amazingly more complex before we all had mobile phones, indeed landline phones, let alone helicopters and infra-red imaging and all that cool stuff. For some odd, middle-aged, midlife-crisis-type reason I am at the moment having a bit of a bee in my bonnet about my Dad and his war service and of course this book feeds perfectly into that.

Our journey down was uneventful: it was made much less pleasant by dark and rain, and much more pleasant by a stop at the excellent Tavern Inn in Walcote, Leicestershire, just a sneeze from J20 on the M1. If you ever find yourself hungry in this part of your journey don't mess around with service stations and chains: go straight here for its fabulous home-cooked deliciousnesses. Off at J20, A4304, head east (towards Market Harborough) for no more than a minute or two, and it's on your left as you enter the village. Yum.

Eventually we made it back to Chichester and I had a kip and a lovely snack (thanks Mum) and set off home, this latter trip being just two more hours. It was more than tempting to stay over but I didn't want to miss the orienteering at Ally Pally in the morning, and I had a Salomon rehearsal in the afternoon too, so I really needed to get back.

Thus ends an all-too-brief yet highly satisfactory trip to a very precious corner of the world. I am, as ever, deeply indebted to my Dearest Muvver for permitting me to be her chauffeur for this jolly jaunt.

O-a-blog™ (HH, Ashridge South)

Saturday, 2 February 2008

Yesterday I went to a very nice Happy Herts event at the National Trust's very fine Ashridge Estate. It's always a pleasure to orienteer here in these beautiful, amazingly English woods. Great course and organization too.

I did Green. I had a couple of stupid moments and of course was not fast (I really need to do some work on my fitness), but in general I thought I navigated quite well - I was pleased with the number of times I did something slightly the shorter-but-harder way and it actually worked. Possibly my pace-counting and compass work is improving a little with practice - or maybe I just got lucky. But it was certainly nice to be occasionally able to follow it ought to be here somewhere with ah yes, here it is. I think it helped that the woods are so open - your chances of being able to follow a bearing are so much better when you are not getting pushed offline by undergrowth the whole time and you can just choose a point and follow it.

Control 4 on the map extract is an example of this - it's from RouteGadget so the red line is me. I didn't really know what to do other than just take a bearing from the path then count paces, and to my amazement it worked. Woohoo.

It was a beautiful day, and having finished the course I went and had coffee at the very nice snack bar by the NT carpark. This was a lovely place to sit for a few minutes and I chatted to Oscar, a miniature Schnauzer, and his family.

Results: pleasingly, I came not much further than half way down the order, which makes a change at the moment. Onwards and upwards! (Or not.)

Oopsie-Beebs-a-Blog™ (refute) (fixed)

I get unreasonably and unhealthily irate over the lazy misuse of words like "refute". The Beeb's own very fine Styleguide (275k PDF) says, on p. 72:

Refute has a particular meaning.To refute a
statement means to prove it wrong. So do not write
The Chancellor refuted opposition claims that he had
mishandled the economy, because it is very unlikely
that he did so. Refute is not a synonym for deny,
disagree or contradict.

So while it is perhaps unfair to pick holes in particular stories, I couldn't help but feel the familiar surge of wrath at this story's use of it thus:

The ambulance service was accused of missing details about the victim but a spokesman refuted this and said getting to the scene quickly was the priority.

No, Beeb, the spokesman did not refute it. He denied it. To refute it he would have to provide proof that it is wrong, not just claim that it is. Did he prove it? I doubt it: he probably said "no, that's wrong". It's not the same thing.

Is this a minor and unimportant point? Maybe, yes. But if you don't defend the meaning of any words you will end up with a very strange language indeed. I do know that language changes and so on, yadda yadda yadda, I am always coming out with this chorus: but not all change is good, and this is, in the purest sense of the word, just ignorant. I honestly think the BBC, which I love, can and should do better, and it sometimes bothers me - even if it should not - how often you see bad writing on their News site.

PS: No, I have not gone mad and decided to seek dismissal by blogging in work time. I am on annual leave today. Ahem ... admittedly this is because I am having a voluntary work deadline crisis - the last ever of this sort I hope - so I shouldn't be doing this anyway right now. But at least they don't pay me and can't sack me ... and I am leaving in 71 days ... and I promise I will get on with it in a moment!

Update: it's now 1334 and they've already fixed it: it's now denied, not refuted. That was quick! Nice one Auntie.

This is Bounds Gremlin

The LED display on the Tube seemed to have a hangover this morning:

This is Bounds Gree!!n
This is a Piccadill#!y Line service to Heat#!hrow Terminals 1, 2 an##d 3

On the other hand the next-station announcements all had the station name correct but with an added touch of drama thus:

The next station is!! Turnpike Lane

Gosh. I'm, like, woo.

Once you recognized the pattern it was less amusing:

This is Wood Green
This is Turnpike La!!ne
This is Manor House!!
This is Finsbury Pa!!rk
This is Arsenal
This is Holloway Ro!!ad
This is Caledonian !!Road
This is King's Cros!!s St. Pancras

- although it was funnier again when there was more text: in this regard King's Cross was particularly fine since it lists all the connections, which gave the Mad Punctuation Disorder an excellent opportunity to run amok. Had I tried to copy all of that one down I'd just be reaching Uxbridge about now.

Lost-o-mis-o-MP3-a-blog™

I've lost my lovely MP3 player and I am extremely annoyed - mainly with myself. It has made me disproportionately miserable in a way that has quite surprised me.

• I had it up to about 21st December.
• By the time I went back to work on 4th January I didn't know where it was any more.
• It's absolutely unclear whether it's still in the house or if I really dropped it on the tube or left it on a car roof or something.
• This was a somewhat chaotic period with lots of nonstandard things going on.
  
• This whole saga is a complete drag and I am furious.
  
• It's too nice to lose and I feel I cannot do without it. It was a birthday present from Deb with major advisory input from Lottie. It was perfect: indeed it was a real "flapping owl" of a gift.
  
• I've ordered a new one. Bits have started turning up (remote, screen protectors etc) but not the player itself yet.
  
• If the old one turns up Deb and I will have one each.
• It's going to be a big drag setting up the new one, but we will get there in the end.
  

Gah!!!

Lessons learned (if I only had a brain):

• Act immediately you suspect it's missing: don't let it ride for days while you're vaguely thinking I wonder where it is, I hope it turns up, I need it next week.
  
• Put a label on the back. I've had various things returned to me because of this simple measure.
  
• Try to control the chaos!

Update (3rd February): the new one came and is now in and working. Huzzah! I had some pain with getting it synchronized: it turned out it was only one track that was sabotaging it, but that was one out of 4000 so identifying it was a bit of a drag - but doable. Interestingly, this faulty track caused Windows Media Player to crash gracelessly, which I thought was a bit poor. Even Creative's own software also crashed, which was even more surprising: ho hum. And, of course, some tracks that I paid good money for are now no longer mine, because I have copied them too many times and some bunch of business creeps wants more money. Gah! But I can restore these from backup audio CDs (duh) and anyway most of the device is back to where it was, and I am well pleased. I must try not to lose this one. For about half a day I seemed to have lost the new remote, though it was really only my faulty memory about where I'd put it "safely". But this did not make me feel good.

I wonder if the other one will ever turn up, or if it really has gone for good?

More Backlog-a-Blog™

Hello again. I am sorry that blogological enterprise round here has slowed down a bit recently. I have a deadline coming up - the last ever of this exact type; I have Other Stuff™ going on, plenty of it: I just don't at the moment have the time I need to finish and post things. But I will.

For the time being, I was wondering if by any chance you were just thinking "I do wish Vogel would post a photo of a rather lovely great big black bee on a passion flower in Laroque des Albères a couple of years ago"? If so, imagine, your luck is in, because I just happen to have sorted one out for you. I do hope you enjoy it.

Normal, if it could ever be termed that, service will be resumed as soon as possible. Thank you for your tolerance. And indeed for the loan of your garlic crusher and slippers.

Oopsie-Beebs (fixed)

I know it's childish of me but I just wanted to share these gems from two BBC News stories today. They may well be fixed by the time you look at them, so here are the all-important web-archive versions:

In Education, Call for ban on catchment areas contains this:

This means that pupils at failing schools will remain their for a considerable period of time, the report argued.

... and in the (often excellent) Magazine, in the story What happens to a 143-tonne plane wreck? we find, with delight, this rather wonderful statement:

After spending about $100m repairing the damage the aircraft returned to service.

(It's probably a Dangling Participle or something, and I really ought to look it up so I can at least be childish and snotty about it accurately ... but I feel an attack of jabnaas coming on ...)

It's not that I think anyone should be shot over this and I know they do eight billion pages a day and so on and so forth. I just think it's unfortunate, and occasionally funny, when they get it wrong. Is there an editor who decides what happens to a journalist's text before posting, or is that the same person, I wonder? Oh well, no harm done.

Instant Update: and two seconds - really - after posting that, I had this excellent response from the education editor - who therefore clearly does exist! - saying "two people worked on that. I've fired them both ;-)" which I must admit made me laugh immoderately. I do love the BBC.

Almost Instant Update: they fixed the other one too (but sadly did not send me another witty email). I do, still, seriously, love the Beeb. I can't imagine another organization of that size and importance being so responsive.

Dangling Update: Yep, a number of websites (including Ask Oxford) confirmed that the thing I mentioned in the 777 story is a Dangling Participle. It's a special case of the more general Dangling Modifier, but you knew that. I tried to write this update's first sentence as a deliberate example of one, but I couldn't get it right. It's harder than it looks!

Pardon me for pointing it out but in actual fact he is, indeed, behind you. Or: Gig-a-Blog™ (Dick Whittington, Hackney Empire)

Wednesday, 19 December 2007

I have sworn a solemn oath not to do any silly pantomime jokes in this piece. And it is no use, Tamsin, you shouting out "oh no you haven't" like that: you will not get me started.

Right then: here's the background.

• The Hackney Empire's MD (and composer) for this panto and quite a few before it is the rather eminent Steven Edis. He knows Lottie through Haringey music, because his kids have been through that splendid setup too.
• Steve also knows Stephen Bentley-Klein, a gentleman who among many other talents plays both violin and trumpet, a not-entirely-common combination. As a consequence the panto - which runs on a very small band - is written for a violinist/trumpeter who swaps between the instruments.
• Unlikely though it may seem, Steve B-K has a regular deputy: someone else who also doubles thus. However you clearly don't want too many eggs in too few baskets here and indeed the dep was unavailable for this winter's panto season of Dick Whittington at the Empire.
• Hence the requirement for Lottie to step in and deputize for Steve B-K, she apparently being next on the list.
• In fact it was more than just a touch of depping - Lottie did a total of (I think) ten shows which, while it's nowhere near half, must be a reasonably substantial chunk. Indeed, she was listed in the programme alongside Steve B-K which I thought was very civilized of them.

Naturally as proud parents we trooped along. (Aside: the online booking system was having a very bad night when I tried to book and I pretty much ended up throwing my teddy in the corner. In the end Deb got through on something called the "telephone".) And that's how we ended up sitting in the stalls, within worryingly close audience-participation range, on this particular Wednesday night. There were actually a fair few other family and friends there so Lottie was well supported.

I was thrilled to be back at the Hackney Empire. I was there in the 1980s when it reopened after a long period dark, and I was there again in the 1990s with the Grand Union Orchestra in If Music Could, so it was nice to be back for my scheduled visit for the 2000s. It's such a great place: I really ought to go there more often. You really ought to go there more often. It is an essential London experience.

It was a wonderful show. One of their policies is that they get proper panto experts, the pros, rather than doing that horrible cheesy thing of just using whoever just won some dreadful TV show or something. This policy reaches its magnificent peak in the Dame, Clive Rowe, whose indescribable brilliance defeats the feeble scribblings of this blog: you simply have to see him. He's really quite something; and the hats, my dears, the hats. Oh yes. It seems invidious to mention Clive when I'm not doing the whole cast in detail but let me just briefly say:

1. You can't not mention Clive. He is a force of nature, an elemental being, not just some quite big bloke in a very big dress and mindboggling hats (though he is indeed that too);
2. The rest of the cast were extremely strong. There literally was no weak link on stage - everyone sang, danced, acted, and were heroic or glamorous or evil or naive or magical or maritime or pretty or witty or feline or ratlike or simian or merpersonoidal in full measure, and really belted it out in a most satisfactory way.

Production, technicals etc were excellent and it all ran smoothly. There's a great piece of set, a sailing ship which gets shoved around a bit and has a rather excellent, Polly-Pockets-like interior. Oh, and a giant ape, the mode of whose operation gets you guessing a bit.

Edis is a very clever composer. The music is just right in so many ways, and he chucks in lots of quotes so that most people, I guess, will recognize something they like.

The band were great. Well, you knew I was going to say that, but they were. It's just a five-piece but it makes a proper pit orchestra contribution and has other doublings which add versatility: sax and keyboards, guitar and bass guitar. Steve directs and plays keyboards and the drummer drums and it's all very fine. And of course I was immensely proud of Lottie who played well and looked infinitely cool and professional. Most of the paid work I did early in my, er, "career" (aha) was in pit orchestras so I felt quite sentimental about this. (This isn't to say that it's the first time I've seen a von Neustadt kid doing well in the band for a show, of course: but I do think it probably is the first time I've seen one operating there as a professional trumpet [inter alia] player. Which was quite cool.)

And now I'd better try to slow down before this gets overlong: I'm not going to attempt to explain the whole plot or whatever. (Believe me, you wouldn't want me to.) Suffice it to say that the show had all the proper elements, that it was executed with consummate skill, and that it absolutely brought the house down. I was hoarse with laughing, shouting and singing and believe me I was a model of restraint compared to some of my fellow-audienceers.

One thing that I rather appreciated about this show was how it celebrated its neighbourhood and culture: London and Hackney in particular, ethnic diversity: all clearly on the agenda. I liked this. In the 80s when I came to the re-opening it was because I was an arts officer at Islington Council and this kind of thing was pretty much our stock-in-trade but I was delighted to hear it still emphasized right up here in the cynical, hard-bitten 2000s where I sometimes feel that people have lost the plot a little: but I must not preach.

In passing let me add that it wasn't just proud parents and that night's audience who thought the show was great. Others included Time Out, The Times and Sunday Times, Hackney Gazette and others - for more see the Empire's complete list assuming the page is still there.

Lottie very much enjoyed her time at the panto and when she'd finished it was clear that she suffered a little from the post-show blues that we all get - well those of us with hearts do - when this very intense time is over and you're back to being a civilian.

So just imagine how chuffed Lottie was when Steve B-K texted her, asking her to do one more performance - the very last of 2007 in fact, the matinee on New Year's Eve. And as if by magic, seemingly within minutes of her joyously texting him back (yes please lovely jubbly etc) Lottie started to get really quite unwell with all this dreadful cough/cold/flu business. As it progressed this took up and pretty much trashed the rest of Lottie's Christmas vacation, required a couple of trips to the doctor, acquired the tag "bronchitis", and so on. Not at all good.

So then you have a potentially awkward situation if you've agreed to dep but then are ill: and in the specific case of the job requiring such an unusual doubling you may be in real trouble. Possibilities were discussed, including Deb and me going in or Lottie doing the violin and me the trumpet. None of this filled me with delight as I'd seen the part and the complexity of the swapping and cueing and I felt it would be difficult to go in cold and do a really good job. I should add that this was all speculative and hadn't yet been discussed with either of the Steves, but I certainly agreed with Lottie's feeling that it was better to have something up your sleeve, rather than just have the dep turn round and say, "sorry, can't play" and leave everyone else with a problem.

To my huge relief, Lottie deemed herself well enough to do the show and Deb and I were off the hook. Phew. She drugged herself up to the eyeballs and somehow got through it (a small medal is being cast) and a couple more friends went along to see it. All very nice, and well done Lot (and thanks!)

Just before we stop I should mention that I was interested to learn that "pantomime", in the sense of this type of Christmas/New Year show, is not universally understood. Apparently it is largely a British and Commonwealth usage and doesn't work like this in the USA, where you're more likely to be (mis)understood as meaning, er, mime. This is or was covered well by the Wikipedia article on pantomime, so if you do not know what I'm attempting to describe I do recommend that you have a look and that we both hope that the article has not been ruined by Year 10 since I saw it.

So, the joys of Dames and Boys and shouting "he's be'ind yer" and hissing the awful wicked villain are seemingly not widely known in the USA. They're missing out: it was a wonderful evening.

PS Have I mentioned the hats?

PPS The public domain photo of the Empire is by Fin Fahey, thanks.

PPPS The show photo and text logo are lifted from the Empire website by kind permission, thanks.

PPPPS The hats were pretty amazing.

IP Address.09 – a week at Ingestre Pavilion: Part the Ninth and Last

Friday, 31 August 2007

A new study, Porticology, is recommended as an aristocratic pastime; we have a Bit Of A Grumble (though its Heart is in the Right Place); we discuss Access, though not to Excess, and Ha-Has, though not amusingly. We are Nice about a Housekeeper and a Foodiepub. Finally, we return to the Clamour of the City Streets.

Yes, it's time to go home (cue music, cue Andy and Teddy). Just the usual sorting out and packing and a last look round, really, so this presents me with an opportunity to mention a couple of other things that I've not yet fitted in. All somewhat random but hey.

The Housekeeper: Anne Andrews is, as mentioned elsewhere, a star. I think I'm right in saying that she's been with the Pavilion (or maybe the Pavilion has been with her) since it was "new" in 1990. She clearly cares and knows a great deal about the place. It's kept in great shape and she presides over the widest-ranging and best-organized collection of information that I've ever seen in a Landmark. To discover more about this area you should visit Anne's local history and information site which is full of good things.

Harry Moaners: I've said in detail how excellent and clever I think the building is. I don't want to detract from this but in honesty I should also mention some other things that struck us about the place, some slight reservations. This is all very much imho and jabnaas of course.

• The house feels slightly uneasy in its surroundings. It's quite a dark spot, somewhat hemmed in by trees. Of course it's nice that there's the openness of the ride in front, organized to show off the best view of the portico; this is a broad grassy swathe through the wood, around 150m long, down to where it meets a pretty, sheepy field, or rather parkland. Then the back garden is very pleasant, especially when it's sunny: a nice lawn with lovely banks. Nevertheless the close, dense covering of mostly uninteresting trees gives a slightly Twin Peaks feel to its surroundings.

• There's an officially permitted walk in the wood for Landmarkers. Down the ride, turn right into the wood. There you'll find trees blazed with white paint: follow them till you're back on the track near the Pavilion. Turn right again. You're back. It's probably six hundred metres including the ride and track. Now it's a perfectly pleasant enough little stroll, sure, but it's not exactly the keys to the countryside. I'm not sure if it's pheasants, forestry or what that's of such importance here but it's certainly not you. And why should it be, you ask? Well, no good reason really, as long as your attitude to the outdoors is more about ownership than stewardship and you're not concerned with opportunities for a bit of education and/or PR.

• The above may be unfair. The wood's owners may feel that they've made a huge concession and the Landmark may feel that this walk is the best they could negotiate: in either case I apologize but I have to say that it feels like a grudging welcome at best. Please feel free to comment.

• You can also walk almost three hundred metres along the track past the house, still in the wood, to the edge of a field. You can't go in the field, though, so once you've admired the view and the ha-ha (see below) you just retrace your steps.

• The lack of walks from the Pavilion itself does add somewhat to the slight feeling of being hemmed in. Any walk, even the most local, starts with the same process of walking back along where you drove to get in. It all feels like you're a bit out on a limb.

• This is all somewhat reinforced by the footpaths map displayed in the Pavilion. It's not really a map of where you can go: more a list of what is proscribed. You tend to look at it a minute or two then say "oh: welcome to Ingestre," in a rather small voice.

• Somewhere in the Pavilion's extensive documentation it mentions that it took two years or something to (unsuccessfully?) negotiate wayleaves for services to reach the house. I may well be misquoting or muddling the detail (jabnaas) but it was along those lines. My Dad used to do wayleaves for the behemoth now called BT and although I know he encountered some rather tricky people (for some reason the village of Priddy comes to mind) I don't think he ever had one that went on this long. It's probably wrong to over-interpret but knowing this certainly doesn't do anything (for me) in reinforcing the idea of the Landmark being welcomed here - or not back then in the late 80s anyway.

• In the log book someone says (in effect) "don't let Granny, little Tamsin, or Rover wander round to the front of the Pavilion unless you wish to risk having them frisbeed." I may be paraphrasing a touch but the basic idea is correct: the official traffic seems to almost make a point of not slowing down as it passes the house. Obviously it's in a hurry to get on with its duties in estate/farm management, forestry, pheasant plucking or whatever but I'd have thought it appropriate to ease off a touch here. There's no public traffic - the road is private from way back, so, fortunately, not that many vehicles use it. That's also why you need the Landmark Wooden Toblerone which I mentioned in the IP1 blogalogablog (Ben).

• There's actually a slight dip in the track in front of the building, which dip I think was created to help get the Pavilion's front view, with its three lovely steps, back to how it was intended. It seems almost a matter of honour that this too is taken at full speed. Clangitty bonk crash.

• I think I got a friendly smile or wave from one of the local drivers once or twice, but in general I didn't really Feel The Love all that much.

• I'm in danger of going too far, I know, with my townie leftie resentment and my not overly empathic approach to anything that seems to me to walk or quack even vaguely like a Tory landowner, and I should probably stop before I make an even bigger *rse of myself. Again, do please feel free to comment and especially if it's your land.

• And yes Tamsin I really do understand that if they put me in charge it would be all warm and cuddly and caring, and then bankrupt in a year because I don't got What It Takes and I don't got the Rural Smarts. I just wouldn't mind feeling a touch more accepted and welcomed, is all. We're always being told how we dreadful townies don't understand the countryside: if so, what a missed opportunity this was to educate us with something a bit more subtle than "Private - Keep Out".

• And that's enough bleating. I'm not saying I hated the place and I'm not saying that if you've booked a holiday there (hello Matt) you should at once cancel it and go to Butlins instead. Very far from it. Let's get it straight that I really really loved Ingestre Pavilion: if I didn't I wouldn't have bothered writing in such detail about its good points as well as what I see as its few limitations. Remember this is just my view and Your Mileage May, as they say, Vary. Indeed it probably will. As I keep pointing out, perhaps ad nauseam, this is Just A Blog, Not An Authoritative Source. If you were to let my comments put you off a holiday here, you'd be missing my point. Please go there and experience it for yourself!

So, what else?

Porticology: It's an essential part of the Ingestre Pavilion experience that you feel what it's like being in the portico. Don't just use it as a big porch and zip through it in three seconds en route for the front door - how often do you get glorious architecture like this to play with? Weather permitting, take your coffee and your crossword out and enjoy just being there. I think on one occasion I took a chair out for a few minutes and on another I just sat on the steps: very pleasant if it's warm. Indeed this portico-sitting is best accomplished when it's both warm and sunny, so check your time: it faces roughly northeast and doesn't get that much sun, or didn't when we were there in late August. But the feeling of being out there, just enjoying the pillars, arch and plasterwork, the symmetry, the light and shade, the view down the ride, is not something to miss. Ham it up. Be Lord Ingestre or Sir Norman d'Ingestre or Major General Montague Ingestre or the Rt Revd Archie Ingestre or whoever. Survey your domain. Admire from afar, down the ride, the parkland of your ancestral home; feel the weight of your heritage; Live your Portico Moment! Yeah baby.

Disability access is an interesting question at Ingestre Pavilion. You'll see it mentioned in the first of the IP blogs: basically, while it is not a fully accessible building, it represented a pretty good, very workable compromise for us and we had a fine old time there. The Landmark Trust is, however, looking at its access at the moment. They must, I guess, be aware that it's so close to being more fully accessible; and of course it is actually a property that might cope with more change, having after all mostly been built around 1990! Imagine having responsibility for this issue at, say, the Egyptian House or the Wardrobe? No thanks! But here at least you can see that there's some chance of progress. It must still be exceedingly difficult, and I presume (and fervently hope) that there'll always be some things that are sacrosanct: for example I wince to think of anything permanently affecting the appearance of the steps and front. But their architects' ingenuity is writ large all over this building and I suspect that it will ride to the rescue again.

I was very pleased that Anne Andrews encouraged Becca to write something about access at the Pavilion. Whilst I have no doubt that the Trust will have experts and consultants and rules and regs, there's a lot of value in recent, direct, personal experience. So I hope that whatever they decide will have been assisted in its development by Becca's views.

Ha-has. Ah yes, I meant to mention these. There's one in front of the Pavilion, some way down the ride: indeed it makes "ride" a particular misnomer as you really wouldn't want to risk riding anything much down it. For some reason I can't quite bring myself to call it an avenue, though, so ride it is until I find or am told a better term. (Ah yes, it is arguably a vista - thank you Lottie.) Anyway there it is and very pretty too. It's not functional these days: actually I found it hard to see how it had ever worked since nothing connects to its ends. Nowadays you can just walk round, but at one time it must have either gone further or been linked to some other barrier. (Unless of course it was never functional, only ornamental? Seems a little unlikely.)

The other ha-ha is rather more straightforward and comprehensible, largely because it is still doing its job of keeping the cattle in the field. This is the bit you get to see if you walk the 300m that I mentioned, along the track after the Pavilion. I strongly recommend you do this as it's a pleasant and picturesque spot, with a sort of bridge over the ha-ha's ditch, and nice old trees, and so on. All that the ha-ha protects now is some not-all-that-interesting woodland like that which borders the Pavilion, but one assumes that originally it was separating something more like gardens or parkland: its current role could really be performed - though less elegantly - by a fence. Whatever the original intention, it's a pleasant place to stand and speculate.

Architectural relics: while prowling round the Pavilion on our last morning I remembered to look for something mentioned in the documentation, which is, upstairs in the old part, the blocked doorways which would have led into the previous building. They didn't fit the new layout so they're just a reminder now, but it's nice to see them.

More pub food: I've already mentioned The Bear Inn at Alderwasley, where we had an excellent dinner after the delights of Chatsworth. Earlier in the week we'd had a different but also very pleasant evening at the Holly Bush Inn in Salt, a pretty village, much closer to the Pavilion. This seems to be a larger and slicker operation than The Bear but still does a good job and was welcoming, helpful and all that stuff. They were busy, we didn't have a reservation but did have a wheelchair, but after a short wait - eased by the time-passing magic they call "Beer" - we were seated in a cosy corner. The food was excellent but - and I know it seems like a crazy complaint - there was almost too much of it. Although I am not exactly the world's most restrained eater, I would honestly have been happier with maybe 3/4 of the portion I actually got. Sure, I know you don't have to eat it all - except that in some ways, perhaps embedded in your upbringing a bit, you do. I find it non-straightforward, at least.

Having said that, it was all very pleasant, service was good, and I enjoyed it. Definitely a superior, local, nosh-up destination for hungry Pavilionistas.

Meanwhile, back on Friday morning, we're packed and about to go. Anne and her husband turn up and we have a pleasant chat, then it's Start Engines and we're away. One of us is back home in Manchester pretty sharpish; the London party takes a while longer, and eventually Katerina is safely delivered to Finchley-Ost. Thank you everyone - the Landmark, Anne, Becca, and the people who commissioned and built this bizarre, fascinating edifice - for a fine and quirky holiday.

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