An introductory message

I can't be the only virgin blogger struggling to find the right way to begin. There's so much to cover, but I'm damned if I'm going to do another potted history. One of the worst questions you can ask me is "where are you from?": if I'm to answer it properly, it takes a good five-ten minutes, so you're getting a potted potted history.

I've lived in France, Switzerland, Austria, England and Scotland - not always in that order, and some of them more than once. I'm now in Scotland, and as I bought a flat back in November you can take it that I'm pretty serious about staying put for the foreseeable future. I talk a pretty haphazard mixture of English, French and German, both in terms of the vocabulary I employ and - unknowingly - my way of translating expressions from one of these languages into another. (It can get confusing.) More happily, I've picked up culinary influences from all of these and more, now with the added challenge of having turned vegetarian last November.

Music dominates many aspects of my life, be it singing, playing or composing. Despite many attempts, I've yet to warm to the Romantic era (at least as far as its Germanic and Italian representatives are concerned) but being a choral singer, my tastes are necessarily broad. I'm especially fond of composers with an interest in orchestral colour, from Telemann to Stravinsky.

Oh, and I'm also what I like to term a raving poofter.