Oh, the irony

Bear and ragged staff, Lord Leycester Hospital, March 2025

I've been away on retreat for a week, a different sort of retreat that involved classical musicians. It was quite hard work, because aside from the scheduled times that we met and talked there were other times when we played to each other or practised, alone or in groups. There were eight of us, although one person had managed to sign up and join the retreat despite not being a musician at all. This started off as a bit of an issue, but she served as our audience for much of the time. The instruments included two violins, classical guitar, flute, clarinet, a singer, and two pianists, one of whom is a real live composer and performer, so that was quite exciting.

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...

Downs and ups and downs

Lord Leycester Hospital, Warwick, March 2025

At mum's house she has discovered that water is leaking under the kitchen floor. We've noticed for some time that the paint on one of the walls kept mysteriously bubbling, and various other leaks have come about and been addressed over the years. This may be a new leak or a continuation of a previous one, but now we have started the process of investigation. It is proceeding much more slowly than is ideal, but there's a lot of waiting for people to respond.

My concert went off with the impossible saxophone part and the clarinet solo going as well as can be hoped for. It's been a while since I've needed to try particularly hard on the clarinet, and it really reminded me of the joy of making it sound as good as possible. I have added another item to one of my lists - I'd like to raise my game and play music at a higher standard than I can in the current group. This cannot happen until I give up something else, and given everything that's going on this may be some way off...

...because I'm still doing too much, and this week it caught up with me and started to actually make me feel unwell, to the extent that I took a Covid test just in case. It was negative, but that just confirmed that this situation isn't arising from external factors but from my own choices. I talked this over with two different groups of close friends, and thankfully one of these discussions allowed me to give away one of my commitments: someone else volunteered to support our introductory course on Meditation and Buddhism in my place. The following morning my head felt fresher and my aches and pains had disappeared. Perhaps I have learned my lesson. Until the next time.

My recovery in mood was short-lived because the people who rent us the hall for our group notified us that not only had we managed to leave the back door wide open, but also the key was now missing. At the time of writing it has not yet been found.

June under way

Stoke-on-Trent, October 2024

I'm still in this period of over-commitment, which is likely to last until the end of June. My week's retreat in July has been cancelled because of low bookings, the retirement of our cook (who collapsed and has received a replacement heart valve), and the retreat centre team needing a break. This is a great shame because it's a retreat that I love, but will give me back some much needed free time in July.

The week of volunteering at the end of May went very well. There were two new volunteers, one of whom reminded me a little of myself at the start of my volunteering career, in that I have now become much more self-aware and, I think, more patient. It's only taken five decades for me to fully take on board that sometimes other people know better than I do.

From there I went to York to stay with a friend for the weekend, where among other treats we ate a wonderful Thai lunch and walked quite a lot. There's very little parking available near my friend's flat, so I booked a parking spot which advertised itself as being 11 minutes away. What I didn't notice was that it was 11 minutes away by car, so about 40 minutes walking, which was through a nature reserve on a beautiful evening so I didn't mind. Except that the owner of the parking spot phoned at about 11.30pm to say that I'd parked in the wrong place, so I had to move the car next morning. I'm definitely going by train next time.

At the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, where I'm volunteering on Tuesdays, my efforts to rationalise storage has been much appreciated. I've cleared out the fridge, two food storage cupboards, a cupboard that was completely overrun with plastic tubs without matching lids, and most recently, the freezer, where there were a couple of drawers containing nothing but old bread. Looking at 'Use by' and 'Best before' dates I've encouraged the team to use up items that are past their dates but probably still OK, like unopened jars of pickled beetroot, a whole bag of porridge oats, and a half-finished bag of dried apricots. In the freezer there are four large tubs of unlabelled leftovers, which (unless someone else wants them) I will take home to play Lucky Dip Dinner.

There's been more action on the periodontal surgery, which is uncomfortable and horrible at the time but remarkably pain-free afterwards, needing paracetamol for only 24 hours. Review at three months will give an idea about prognosis, but as this review will be done by the periodontal surgeon I doubt that he will consider it unsuccessful.

Lola II and I attended mum's cousin's wife's funeral at the Crematorium and the service was really good - the tributes paid by the celebrant, widower and friend were wonderful. I was glad to have Lola II with me otherwise I'd have had to talk to a lot more people I didn't know. I was asked to take some photographs, and now I'd better sort them out and send them over.

What I've been reading

Everything is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer

narrated by Scott Shina and Jeff Woodman

"A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and a dog named Sammy Davis, Jr, Jr."

There was a slight hitch in the reading of this book, because the audiobook service offered by the library was being upgraded and led to the app shutting down while I was actually listening to the book while driving. Much frustration ensued until I could stop and follow various links and I discovered what was going on, and then had to wait until I could get to the library to sort it out. But despite this difficulty it was a fascinating book, although harrowing at times. I think I untangled the different stories and time periods, and very much enjoyed the mangling of the English language by the Ukrainian 'translator'.

Hard Times
by Charles Dickens

narrated by Bertie Carvel

"Father to Tom and Louisa, Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, utilitarian school board superintendent, shapes the minds of all the young children, including his own, with the exception of only one: the circus-born Sissy Jupe."

Mildly interesting facts: this is Dickens' only book that doesn't include any scenes set in London, and is Jeremy Paxman's favourite book by Charles Dickens. What can I say - it's Dickens, he writes rather well, it entertained me during several long car journeys and the narration was excellent.

Mistress of the Art of Death
by Ariana Franklin

"In Cambridge a child has been murdered, others are disappearing, and King Henry has called upon a renowned Italian investigator to find the killer - fast. What the king gets is Adelia, his very own Mistress of the Art of Death."

A book off my shelves for a change, and it's a really good murder mystery set in the 10th century. Now I have to decide: is it good enough to go back on the shelf of books to keep?

Passing
by Nella Larsen

narrated by Tessa Thompson

"Clare - light-skinned, beautiful, and charming - tells Irene how, after her father's death, she left behind the black neighbourhood of her adolescence and began passing for white, hiding her true identity from everyone, including her racist husband."

Quite a short book, this occupied just a couple of car journeys and was very good in that situation. Though I can't claim to know much about black people passing for white in racist America of the 1920's, it was clearly a big deal with all sorts of social consequences, so informing as well as entertaining.

Noughts and Crosses
by Malorie Blackman

narrated by Paul Chequer and Syan Blake

"Sephy is a Cross – a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a nought – a ‘colourless’ member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity by Noughts, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum."

This is a book for young adults, and narrated by voices that sound appropriate to that age. The content is pretty strong, particularly the ending. I certainly found it compelling but I'm not entirely sure that I liked it - the narrative voices put me off a little but I don't think that was the only reason. And I'm definitely not the target audience.

Lolly Willowes
by Sylvia Townsend Warner

narrated by Olivia Darnley

"Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. She rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favour of freedom and the most unexpected of alliances."

This is another from the Classics list, and was frankly disappointing. Two thirds of it was bland and the final third just nonsensical, consisting of the lead character's interactions with Satan. The author is named as a 'leading feminist writer', but I wouldn't say she is a good feminist writer, at least based on this work.