Volunteering and a weekend off

August 2023

I haven't written anything for ages, but I've got some unattractive tasks ahead of me so I thought I'd cushion the experience with some leisure writing first, even though it turns out there's not much to say.

After a lovely weekend with friends in Nottingham I drove on to Adhisthana, the retreat centre near Ledbury where I volunteer. This time I haven't been put in the kitchen or the office, but am helping in advance of their biggest event of the year, where all rooms are filled and the field is open for camping too. There are so many guests that a marquee is erected as a shrine room and the barn is used for meals. The barn accumulates junk through the year, so one job has been to clear it out and set it up ready for food service. Stocks of food are ordered, paper plates and cups have arrived, and there's all the usual cleaning to be done.

Surprisingly, the job I most enjoyed involved refilling all the cleaning product bottles and distributing them round the site - hand wash, surface cleaning spray, toilet cleaner and washing up liquid. But most of the time I was cleaning areas that already looked pretty clean to me, which I take to be a good reason why I have strongly resisted being put in charge of any cleaning operation. Given the numbers who are coming, if it were down to me I'd just wait to clean up afterwards - they're going to make it so much more dirty than it is now. Anyway, the housekeeper was very complimentary about how tidy the cleaning product refilling station was after I'd finished.

I've been given the weekend off and a half day next week, so came home to find UJ had already gone for a weekend away. I had a proper day off on Saturday, and finished watching the huge three-part series about the Beatles recording their penultimate album and performing on the roof of the Apple building in London in 1969, which I was vaguely aware of but didn't know any of the details. I found it hugely moving and have been affected by it for days now.

When I went out on Saturday Leamington was teeming with people. The bowling greens are hosting their annual national competition, then the Pump Room gardens were full of the Warwickshire Pride festival, with stalls offering everything in rainbow colours and a sound stage and a funfair. Moving on towards Jephson Gardens there was a wedding reception happening, and also a chap with a funny-looking horn was playing it through the railings into the Jephson memorial building to make the sound resonate more. I do love Leamington when it's busy.

Now I am 60

Then I was 8

My significant birthday has been and gone with very little fuss. It was hot, I went for a walk but spent the day mostly at home. The next day I went to visit mum to get some more of the admin done, but first we had to get her to a clinic appointment and then took advantage of the proximity to Lidl to give her the opportunity to do some shopping in person. As dad had acquired lactose intolerance in the last few years, mum has been enjoying the opportunity to indulge in dairy produce again and we came home with three kinds of cheese.

The admin seems to grow each time I look at it. Unfortunately, as I pick up the different strands we seem to uncover conflict each time - in addition to the fight with Thames Water about their overcharging for the period when we had a leak, we're in conflict with an investment company and now possibly also the Burial Society that arranged dad's funeral. Then there's the routine stuff that just comes around every year - household insurance, a new gas and electricity contract, broadband, servicing the stairlift, the Lifeline pendant for communicating in an emergency, and on and on. I am starting to recognise where I need to pass things over where before I imagined I would be doing it all.

After visiting mum I went on to pick up Lola II and Mr M and bring them to Leamington for a few days. Mr M had to work for some of the time, but he joined us for meals. Lola II and I went for a lovely walk with friends, and then an organ concert in the local church with a student organist who looked much too young to be out on his own. Then I had to get home for a couple of phone calls, one of which was with Mr MXF who has kindly passed on one of his old phones but needed to help me to unlock it.

I needed a newer phone because various apps had started telling me that they would no longer run on my old one. The transfer process wasn't too bad except that at one point I lost concentration and all of my past WhatsApp messages disappeared. Luckily this isn't a disaster, in fact it's barely an inconvenience. Given the state of the old phone's screen protector, an early priority is to get similar protection for the new one.

At the weekend, the Art in the Park festival was taking place in town. I'm sure this event has happened for many years, but somehow I've never been - it's huge, and full of all kinds of artistry from photography to an art-producing bicycle via jewellery, spray paint, oil, watercolour, collage and almost everything you can think of. We saw about half of it, and I was going to go back for the second day but had too much to do at home.

One of the reasons for Lola II's visit was to help me get some jobs done that are difficult to start on my own - they just need a bit of encouragement, or go easier with two of us working together. We started with my old iPod, which used to mean more to me than it does now - it has become redundant since Audible discontinued the app that allowed me to download podcasts onto it.* It will eventually go onto ebay but I need a period of 10 days when I'm at home so I can manage bids and postage and that isn't happening until September. While I was grappling with that, Lola II cleaned my windows!

[* Since then I've started using Spotify for both podcasts and books and cancelled my Audible subscription altogether, so who's the loser?]

And finally I had a non-birthday treat which ended up feeling like a birthday treat because sisters and friends came with me for lunch at my favourite Café Soya in Birmingham followed by a performance of the musical 'Hamilton'. It was quite a spectacle, which was lucky because there are a lot of words and it was quite difficult to follow the plot. Some of our party had seen it before and others had done some homework, but I now feel the need to go and listen while reading the lyrics to catch up on the bits I might have missed.

What I've been reading

The Accidental Tourist
by Anne Tyler

narrated by Joe Barrett

"After the loss of his son and the departure of his wife, Macon neatly folds his anguish back into place and adapts the household on to more efficient lines. But with the arrival of Muriel, an eccentric and vulnerable dog trainer from the Meow-Bow dog clinic, his attempts at ordinary life are tragically and comically undone."

The sort of book I have been looking for on the Classics list - not 'clever', not 'original', but with a story that has some pace, characters that can be distinguished from one another, and a structure to the book that makes sense. In that regard I was very pleased to have read it; the only problem was that I didn't find the dilemma at the heart of the story plausible. Should he return to the wife who had left him or stay with the woman who had taken her place? I didn't warm to either of them so his eventual choice became arbitrary.

Nights at the Circus
by Angela Carter

"Fevvers is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, journalist Jack Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia."

What a ride this book took me on, alongside a menagerie of exotic and flamboyant characters led by the earthy Fevvers. When I was at university someone recommended reading Angela Carter's stories based on fairy tales, and I did, but didn't really understand the appeal back then. This book and the fact that I still remember the other one forty years later is tempting me to try reading that other book again, with forty years of life experience and love and loss and pain and joy. That's what this story has done, and it was a wild and wonderful ride.

Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee

"A club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then a Christian minister offers a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife."

I do like a family saga, and this was particularly interesting because of the setting in Korea and Japan from the first world war onwards. I didn't have any prior knowledge of the relationship between these two nations, and learned a little alongside the main story of the family's fortunes over this period. A good read, but not outstanding.

Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
by Stephen Batchelor

"What the Buddha taught was not something to believe in, but something to do. The book demystifies Buddhism by explaining, without jargon or obscure terminology, what awakening is and how to practise it. "

My enjoyment of this book was significantly diminished because the previous owner had added their own extensive notes to every page and almost every paragraph. I had no interest in their views, and it's hard to focus on the printed words with such distracting annotations. It's probably worth another look at a clean copy because the author had some useful things to say.

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
by Alexander McCall Smith

"As winter turns to spring across Botswana's red earth and slow green rivers, all is not well on Zebra Drive. Mma Ramotswe has plenty of work, ranging from thefts at the printing works to suspicious deaths at the Mochudi hospital. But when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni - trying to prove himself as a worthy husband - has to go at a little detective work, disaster looms."

I picked this up from a train station book swap shelf because I'd run out of my own reading material, otherwise I wouldn't have chosen to add another to my collection of Ladies Detective Agency books. It's OK though - you know what you're going to get, and he evokes the atmosphere of Botswana so well.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use it

by Oliver Burkeman

"We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks."

This book was given to me by the leader of the retreat I went on in July. He gave each of the team members a different book so some thought went into the choice. I am a perfect match for this book because it turns out (according to the author) that I, like him, am a 'productivity geek'. And during this very retreat, I had come to the same conclusion that the author proposes: it isn't helpful to imagine that everything one wishes to do can be done, and acknowledging this fact makes life much easier.

The Minnipins
by Carol Kendall

narrated by Lola II

"In an isolated valley, the Minnipins minded their jobs, dressed simply, and never questioned the leading family. Then five rebels are exiled to the mountains and find that the deadly Mushroom tribe is coming to attack their countrymen."

A children's book written in 1959, this has been my bedtime story whenever Lola II and I have been in the same place with the book and we haven't been too tired. So it's taken a considerable length of time (probably more than a year?) compounded by the fact that the early chapters contain a lot of detail and many names so at one point we had to start again because I'd forgotten who was who. After all that, I hate to have to say that I don't think it's a particularly good story, and character development is particularly poor. Of course the Minnipins survive, rifts are healed and there's a happy ending, but at the expense of too much violence - not fairy tale violence, but heaps of dead bodies of the Mushroom people graphically killed by the sword-wielding Minnipins.

The Ten Pillars of Buddhism
by Sangharakshita

"In a world marked by rapid changes, shifting lifestyles and values, how can we be sure that we are making the best choices for ourselves, others and the world? This small book explores ten basic Buddhist ethical principles and the liberating view of ourselves contained within them."

Lectures given in 1984 have been transcribed and edited into this book, which I've been going through with my Buddhist friends who have also asked for ordination. We've looked at one principle at a time so it's taken a while. As an 'ordinary' Buddhist there are five guiding precepts, and this adds an extra five which are mostly around communication, building on the idea of truthful speech and advocating the avoidance of harsh, frivolous and slanderous speech and the cultivation of tranquillity and compassion as well as wisdom. Of course there's much more to it than these headlines or the lectures or the book can convey, but it gives a flavour that we've been discussing very fruitfully.

Folk Festival

June 2023

The main event for the last week has been the Warwick Folk Festival, where I have volunteered in the Comms team for the last two years. This year I also offered glamping services to two friends - they would have had to borrow or hire a car to bring their tent, so I set up my tent complete with bed, table, chairs, stove and tea and coffee so they could just bring themselves by train.

The festival runs from Thursday evening to Sunday evening, but I volunteered for an extra shift on the gate on Tuesday when contractors and team members started to turn up, and I was also in the Comms room on Wednesday when we were getting ready. The team leadership has been shared between two people for the last ten years or so, but both of them have been planning to retire from the role. I've been quite clear that I'm not prepared to take it on, but have been persuaded to share the leadership with another chap.

My tactic, if it could be called that, is to take an interest but to avoid direct responsibility for things. Luckily the other chap has not been so reticent, taking notes and photographing the Comms room so as to record what will come in handy next year. He even read the Health and Safety folder and provided feedback to the management team. One of the retiring team leaders wisely kept out of the way for most of the time, but the other was obviously finding it difficult to give up a role that he clearly loves, so he essentially continued to do it without really handing over anything in any organised fashion, we just had to pick it up as we went along. I'm sure it will be fine.

UJ returned from another trip home to Kyiv just before the festival and has settled in again in the usual way where I barely see her. As ever there's plenty of other business to keep me occupied. I have called upon a couple of roofing companies to have a look at three roofing issues: staining on the ceiling near the front door, the leaking roof lantern in the kitchen, and the disintegrating veranda roof outside. My hurty arm continues to hurt but very much less, and I have added massage to the treatment which not only helps (temporarily) but is very enjoyable. And board games, badminton and Buddhism continue to fill my life with satisfaction and fun.

The aftermath

July 2024

The administrative processes around death and burial will be familiar to all who have experienced a loss, so I shouldn't imagine that what we experienced was unique. We made it harder for ourselves by wishing to conduct the funeral as quickly as possible. If we'd agreed a date the following week then I wouldn't have had to get quite so familiar with people at the GP practice, the Register Office, the medical examiner and the coroner's office, and we wouldn't have been at the cemetery 30 minutes before the funeral started still not knowing whether the burial would form part of it. But it worked out fine in the end, even giving us a few opportunities to smile.

Dad was a medical doctor through and through, and although his body could not be donated for medical science because he died at home, he managed to donate his non-Parkinson's brain for research into Parkinson's disease. He was strongly anti-religion, and we reflected this in our choices at the funeral. There were a couple of readings, an 'appreciation' of his life constructed by the remaining four of us and read by Lola II. The coffin went into the grave with another reading, and mum recited the Kaddish prayer for the dead, either because she wished to or for the Jewish people in attendance, I couldn't work out which. Maybe both. Then we went off for tea.

I was away staying with mum for very nearly a week, sometimes with Lola II and Sister D and their husbands there too. On the day after the funeral we'd long been planning to take mum over to Lola II and Mr M's for the day, and there seemed no reason not to go ahead with the plan, and we even persuaded her to stay overnight. Mum reviewed and gave her seal of approval to all changes that had taken place in their house since she was last there, and Lola II arranged to borrow her regular adoptive dog as a treat - for him and for us.

It was good to come back home afterwards, and I tried to recall the effort I'd put into reflection while I was on retreat, and my determination to change my lifestyle, but it all felt a little remote. I'm trying to take the steps I worked out then to make positive and constructive changes, particularly around food, exercise, Internet access and meditation. 

We had planned a day for the Buddhist group team to come together on Sunday at my house, and it couldn't have been a better time to meet. Since then I've done pretty well with my resolutions - there's been no chocolate or snacks, I've enquired at the local leisure centre about what I might do for exercise, I've meditated every day (which absolutely wasn't the case before I went on retreat) and I have set an alarm so I don't spend more than 60 minutes at a time sitting at the computer. Which is one reason why this blog post has taken so long to put together.

I also went to the doctor with my hurty arm, which (as so often happens) started to hurt a lot less as soon as I made the appointment, but I've got some heavy duty anti-inflammatory drugs to take for two weeks anyway, and a self-referral to a physiotherapist. I also joined an online meeting of the Comms team for the Warwick Folk Festival and I'm still pretty confident that they won't try to put me in charge. Then I went back to mum's for a couple more days to continue with the admin, and here we are, two weeks on. Apart from mum not being tied to the house any longer, everything feels very much the same as before.

Coming home

1987

I wrote the following paragraphs on Friday when I got home from the retreat:

"It was a very good retreat, partly because it wasn't part of the ordination process like the last two I've attended. Ordination retreats are hard work for me, and I've had to think about why this is, because on the surface they contain nearly the same elements - meditation, ritual, time for reflection - and the additional element of group discussion is something I welcome. This was an introductory retreat (so participants didn't even have to know about or practise Buddhism) which means that the common foundation of knowledge and practice is missing and retreatants can be quite challenging. It also included more of the outdoors and quite a lot of poetry, and I had a role as organiser so I had to do a bit of extra work to make sure the week ran smoothly.

"But despite the organising and poetry I found it much more nourishing and relaxing than the previous two retreats, and maybe it's because I was camping, but there's also something about not having to achieve a standard. I did a lot of thinking about why I'm dissatisfied about a few things, and came up with a few answers, and I have even put together a tentative plan. We'll see.

"My journey to the retreat was in stages - first a visit to mum and dad, then on to a friend in Dartford, then to Mr MXF and BL2 (their daughter was there too), and finally to the retreat centre in East Sussex. On the way back I stopped for lunch with a friend near Tunbridge Wells before the long drive home.

"The best part of coming home from a retreat is my own shower. Retreat centres are perfectly warm and comfortable but the showers are definitely only just good enough. The worst part of coming home from a retreat is all the routine stuff that awaits - shopping, cooking, cleaning, admin and tidying up."

It turns out that wasn't the worst part of coming home from this retreat. On Saturday morning mum phoned to say she'd had to call the paramedics because dad was unwell. On Sunday morning, holding my hand, he died, and we buried him on Wednesday.

2009

What I've been reading

The Human Mind
by Robert Winston

"It is the most complex and mysterious object in the universe. Covered by a dull grey membrane, it resembles a gigantic, convoluted fungus. Its inscrutability has captivated scientists, philosophers and artists for centuries. It is, of course, the human brain."

Another one from my bookshelves - I'm sure this was great the first time I read it, but it was published 20 years ago and I imagine quite a bit has changed in the world of neuroscience. The writing now seems pedestrian and I quickly lost interest in the technical terms for the different areas of the brain. I've read quite a few books now about the mind and the brain, and I'm not keeping this one - I've passed it on to a friend already.

Joseph Andrews: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams

by Henry Fielding

narrated by Rufus Sewell

"Joseph Andrews refuses Lady Booby's advances, she discharges him, and Joseph and his old tutor Parson Adams set off to visit his sweetheart, Fanny. Along the way, they meet with a series of adventures in which, through their own innocence and honesty, they expose the hypocrisy and affectation of others."

Very good narration, and a road trip like no other, the main theme of which seemed to be that they kept staying at inns and alehouses and forgetting that they had no money, then being surprised when payment was required. It's true that a couple of times they did have money but it was stolen before the time came to pay, but that isn't what I'd call 'innocence and honesty'. A secondary and more distressing theme was that more than once Fanny really seemed to be at serious risk of rape; solo travel was clearly very perilous in the 18th century. Then a classic twist in the last two chapters when they'd finally got home, and all's well and a happy ending.

One of Ours
by Willa Cather

narrated by Kristen Underwood

"Claude Wheeler, the sensitive but aspiring protagonist, has ready access to his family's fortune but refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his uncaring father and pious mother, and rejected by a wife whose only love is missionary work, Claude is an idealist without ideals to cling to. Only when his country enters the Great War does he find the meaning of his life."

She won the Pulitzer Prize for this book, and she really does know how to write,. She describes beautifully the farming setting in the Mid-West and then the lives of American soldiers who went to Europe to fight in the Great War, as well as the French people living in the line of fire. The narrator has trouble with the French words in the book, which distracted me a little, but on the whole it was a fine read.

A Brief History of America
by Jeremy Black

"Discover the shaping forces of American identity, the journey to independence, the conflicts that fractured and made a nation and the rise of a global superpower."

I saw this in the library and thought it would be exactly what I'm after - a newly published overview of the key events in American history from the start of colonisation up to the present day. But it was probably the worst book I can ever remember reading, and I didn't get further than about three chapters before I took it back to the library. The text was so poorly written that I sometimes had to re-read a sentence two or three times to make sense of it, and it lacked any maps and diagrams for anyone not intimately familiar with North American geography. When I realised that we had reached the 1800's with hardly a mention of the American War of Independence, I knew this was not the book for me.

The Best of Me
by David Sedaris

"Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird."

The first contact I had with David Sedaris was when, long ago, Sister D gave me one of his books as a present, and I didn't like it because his writing and the topics he chose seemed so cruel. Years later I heard him on the radio reading some of his memoir and diary material and wondered at the difference. Had I been reacting to the gift? because now he seemed much more benign, and funny too. Subsequently I've read and enjoyed many of his books and I listen to his broadcasts whenever they are on, so when I saw it in the library I borrowed this anthology of his 'best work'. It  contains some short fiction as well as memoir, and it is that fiction which is so jarring.

Summer at last

Adhisthana, June 2024

UJ returned from her trip back home late in the evening and I was away to the retreat centre first thing next morning, so we didn't meet. Apart from her outstanding command of English degenerating a little to just being excellent, she seemed to be very well and made supper for me a few days later when I got back. Most of the time, however, we operate separately as she works during the day and barely emerges from her room until late evening and I am usually doing something else by then. We watch TV together by appointment.

I had just two days back home this time between stints at Adhisthana. One of my tasks within this period was to get the car through its MOT, which it managed on the second attempt after failing because of a seized rear brake calliper that also damaged the brake disk. That day also contained my board games group, which I continue to enjoy a great deal. 

The following day I spent with Lola II in Oxford - we had plans for several things to do as well as going to the Weston Library for its latest exhibitions, but we ought to know by now that after we've set aside time for talking there's often little time for anything else. We managed one exhibition, which was about Franz Kafka. I learned that he had a full-time job in insurance and only wrote in his spare time, he never married but was engaged three times (twice to the same woman), and he died in 1924 of consumption, outlived by his parents.

Then back to Adhisthana for my last week, and all of a sudden I had too much work to do, so there are a couple of threads dangling that I might have to deal with from home. Those last three days also included perfect weather, a summer solstice barbeque and a retreat for classical musicians, which led to me finding out that one of the women's community plays the flute. I managed to remember to take my clarinet and a book of duets, and we got together to play one evening.

The end of any service to the Adhisthana community is marked with modest celebration that includes snacks at the morning tea break and a round of 'rejoicing' -  many people gather and anybody can chip in and say something nice about you. I find it difficult to endure the attention, despite all the lovely things that are said. They also gave me presents - I asked for perishables only (nothing that I have to clean or dust), so I got a bar of chocolate, some incense, and a 'voucher' for any Adhisthana retreat in the next year.

So then it was home again in time to prepare for a visit by The Bursar and The Quiet Man. The Bursar was planning to run in the Leamington Spa Half Marathon on Sunday but hadn't done enough preparation, and The Quiet Man is having time off due to injury, so they didn't run but both came to visit anyway. The weather was probably too hot for comfortable running but perfect for showing them the beauty of the town, having an ice cream and sitting in the garden.

On stage again

Somewhere in Devon, June 2023

The excitement of the unexpected gig lessened after a week, and it was time for the summer concert for my clarinet and saxophone groups. The clarinet numbers were very depleted this term for some reason, and the performance was decidedly ropey but we got through it; the saxophones were somewhat better although I was partly liable for the poor performance of the difficult piece that I should have practised. 

But my performance at the unexpected gig had clearly been noted because the soul band were lacking a sax player again, and this time for the best gig of the year - the Kenilworth Lions Club's open air event in Abbey Fields. The soul band has been the closing act for the last two years, and there I was on stage again. I enjoyed it more this time, given that I was not quite sight reading and could pay a bit more attention to what everyone else was doing. And there were three people in the audience that I knew, and it went onto Facebook and more people commented.

A little less fun is the fight that I am having with Thames Water on behalf of mum and dad, who experienced a major water leak in the autumn last year. I have reached the end of the line with the normal helpdesk people and it's time to escalate up a level; I have the feeling that it may take some time to reach a satisfactory resolution.

Then I was back at Adhisthana, the retreat centre, for a five-day stint this time because they asked for an extra two days help in the kitchen. Another new cook to work with, a delightful young man who probably had the least tolerant attitude of anyone I've worked with so far to the aversions and allergies and intolerances and craziness of the people on restricted diets. On this retreat one or two people must have thought that we were professionals paid to cater to their whims rather than volunteers struggling to avoid serious illness in the retreatants.

I'm getting more used to living in the women's community, and joined them informally more than usual - I often have 'business' to do in the evenings catching up with emails and other things going on at home so don't tend to sit chatting in the lounge. It was also useful this week to be able to talk at greater length to a couple of the more experienced women about the path towards Buddhist ordination and also about the experience of living communally with all sorts of different women over the years. I'm very attracted to the simplicity of having few possessions and not being responsible for running a house, but the randomness of the other people I'd have to live with is probably more than I could take.

I'm third from the left!

Sight-reading on stage

Adhisthana, May 2024

I've done two weeks of all sorts of stuff, and I don't like this blog to turn into a diary, so here are just a few highlights. At the retreat centre - the schedule of work I've been given that relies on other people is about two weeks behind already and I don't know when I'll be able to start compiling the information for the print programme of retreats in 2025. Everything that doesn't rely on other people is on time and going well, as I'm sure you'd expect.

I went to the Birmingham Buddhist Centre for two days aimed at those of us who lead or support the teaching of meditation on introductory courses. Only Order Members lead the courses at the Birmingham Centre; in our little local group we don't have any Order Members so we all have to step up and chip in. Both were good days, and I learned a few things that will probably help in future. There are more sessions planned and I'm looking forward to them.

Order Members from Birmingham do sometimes come and lead our group for an evening, and we had such a visitor recently. I usually invite them and the team who support the group to supper beforehand - they get a meal and also less stress of being delayed by traffic. This one was a diagnosed and very sensitive coeliac - no problem, you'd think, to an ex-dietitian. I made a Thai salad with tofu and a potato salad, and it went down very well. We went out to the hall, did the introductions, started the meditation, and it was at that point that my mind suddenly reminded me that there is gluten in soy sauce... He was very gracious and texted me the next day to reassure me that he hadn't suffered. The amount was so small that I was lucky to get away with it.

One of my very oldest friends is someone I met on my first day at school when we were both five years old. His parents live about five minutes walk from mine, and we were in and out of each others' houses quite a bit during our school days when we both lived there. We've kept in touch, on and off, for 54 years, and last week his father died. I attended the funeral, which was held at the Jewish cemetery next door to the one mum took me to (where she wants to be buried, or scattered, or whatever). I discovered that the prayers are etched into my mind after all those years of synagogue attendance in my youth. And, as usual, someone at the event knew my mother.

My music group is still going, although this term for some reason the clarinet group barely has enough people to cover all the parts. The sax group is better attended, but still not as many people as usual. Anyway, I was recruited into this group by a friend from badminton who plays baritone sax with me, but he also plays trombone in a soul band. He recruited the chap who leads the music group into the soul band when they were running short in the horn section. And this week the band had a local gig but were short of a person to play trumpet or sax.

So with no notice at all I joined them on stage and sight-read the tenor sax part! It was tremendous fun but extremely tiring - I'd already played for 3 hours in the music group in the afternoon, and we were still playing encores at 11.30pm. I shouldn't complain, the audience was terrific, they even gave me some money, but then there was all the clearing up and I didn't get home until well after midnight. My sleep pattern was thoroughly messed up for the next two days, but it was worth it.