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Bear and ragged staff, Lord Leycester Hospital, March 2025 |
There was another large group of people at the retreat centre at the same time and we staged a performance for them, which added to the amount of stress and work involved. There was audience involvement in the form of singing rounds, and I accompanied a singer by playing a violin part on the clarinet for a strange setting of a folk song by Holst, which had bars of various lengths between 3 and 8 beats, very much at random as far as I could tell. And, somehow (and I'm still baffled as to how I let this happen) I ended up transposing my part even though the singer could easily have sung a tone lower.
I also featured in a quartet playing three Handel trios that were written for recorders but we played on two violins, flute and clarinet. This was the highlight of the evening for me, because while we began each piece together, very soon everything started to fall apart and as the person with the most experience of this type of ensemble playing I had to try and work out how to get us to end together. It still makes me smile when I think about it. The audience, needless to say, were very supportive.
So that was the retreat. In other news, UJ is back from a stint in Kyiv, I'm still avoiding all news media, the car passed its MOT, I'm still volunteering on Tuesdays at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, and I took a car load of garden waste and GRUHI boxes to the tip and to the recycling centres. But I suppose I'm avoiding the most significant event, which arose from a visit to my GP. Having reached an age with a zero at the end, I thought it would be a good idea to have a general check-up. She measured my blood pressure, which was good and low, and sent me off for routine blood tests.
I phoned up for the results because they didn't appear on the NHS app or my GP's online platform, and the receptionist was happy to send them through. I was expecting bad news on the cholesterol front, but while not perfect that was fine. What I wasn't expecting was a blood sugar result that put me in the pre-diabetic zone. Ironic, no? So I must finally take seriously the fact (which I have probably known for some months) that despite my badminton and Muscles the Personal Trainer the chocolate, Wotsits and cake have taken their toll. Now to attempt to follow the advice I would have given to my patients...