Just a random thought no.5

As I write, Berlioz's Sinfonie Fantastique is playing on the radio, the BBCNOW from Swansea. A relatively rare live relay: I must say I wish that there were more: they used to outnumber the recorded concerts in an evening by as great a ratio as recordings outnumber live concerts now. But the practice did mean that a couple of weeks ago I was able to listen again, without the new-fangled I-player, on Thursday, to the concert I had attended on Wednesday. Certainly for the new piece, Colin Matthews's Violin Concerto, the relay pointed up the soloist in a way that did not come over in Symphony Hall, where much of the time, you could only see what she was doing - her efforts being subsumed into the general wash of sound: whether that was intended by the composer, I do not know, but for this listener it made for a very unsatisfactory listening experience. Whether the highlighting by the recording engineer for the broadcast was approved of by Mr Matthews, I suppose we will never know. Whether other fiddlers will take it up, only time will tell. I suspect not!
Off to Marden in the morning to do a bit of bus restoration...

Just a random thought no. 4

More rambling in Birmingham today, with Ian Jelf and Spice on the Terra Cotta trail. But I'm not going to post pictures of it here, they can be found on my Flickr site via Facebook, or on my Picasa site. I'm very grateful to Ian, who has taught me a great deal about my great home city of Birmingham. To think that, when I was my nephew's age, thirty-odd years ago, I couldn't wait to get away, and not come back! Time, fate, providence, whatever, dictated otherwise, and now my present intention is to remain in my current house until they take me out horizontally in a box!
The image above is of the Grey Heron that I met as I walked in to town along the Birmingham Main Line Canal, as is my wont on these occasions, and the two at the top are of the queue for the "Staffordshire Hoard" - see last post, and of the Morris Ring gathering in Victoria Square.