Catching up, part I

Marcus left on Monday afternoon, by which stage I was coming down with tonsillitis. I managed to get an appointment at the doctor's for that very same day and the penicillin I'm taking is fast getting the upper hand, so now it's sheer laziness that prevents me from blogging, not to mention how much I've to say about the last five or so days.

Incredible though it may seem, Marcus and I had never met face-to-face until Thursday; we've been chatting online and over the phone for a good two-and-a-half years but until now had never managed to be in the same place at the same time. It was hearing how bored he was spending the summer months at home which led me to suggest he take part in Spem in alium, little realising that I'd've hit the jackpot by mentioning The death of Klinghoffer receiving its British première at the Festival. Luckily his internet surfing led him to find this out for himself and our plans to meet finally started taking shape.

Thursday itself didn't leave us much time to get properly acquainted: he came to the shop just as I was about to finish my shift, with barely two hours to go until choir rehearsal, so we rushed home and I got cooking so our stomachs wouldn't rumble later on. Perhaps if this hadn't been our first time of meeting our conversation wouldn't have proved so distracting, but even so we were late arriving at the rehearsal.

We had a very brief look at the music for Sunday's eucharist and mattins, the latter including Gibbons' Hosanna to the Son of David, a favourite of mine since singing as a treble, so I was delighted to be asked to sing the second tenor solo with which the piece opens, despite some misgivings as I knew I was down to work on Sunday but still entertained hopes of getting out of it. Not surprisingly, the focus was to be on the evensong music, the infamous Tallis and canticles by Gabrieli and Palestrina, the latter two each being written for twelve voices.

We started off with Spem, our conductor pointing out it was best not to leave it till last, which first meant an enormous game of musical chairs as we all found the right place to sit (pretty well essential in a piece written for eight choirs). Then we were off ...

The notes themselves aren't especially challenging, as many of us had found looking over the music beforehand. It's more a matter of keeping track of the beat as there are loads of syncopations, and what with the number of voices, only at key points does everyone sing at once, so there was heaps of manic counting during the rests. It was something of a mess at first, not that surprisingly, but by the end of the rehearsal it felt as though we might have a chance of pulling it off. (The Gabrieli and Palestrina were much more evident and, to be honest, not half as interesting.)

As ever, a number of us repaired to the kitchen beneath the church for drinks afterwards, where conversation inevitably revolved around the music we'd just attempted, though it struck me for the first time how much medicine and health also came up - which was just as well, Marcus being a medical student and thus giving him something to contribute when we weren't all discussing church-related matters.

More discussion back home, and thence to bed. Heaps to get done on Friday, not least holding a small party in the evening so that Peter and Rob could meet Marcus and, perhaps more significantly, my date ...

Date update

We've just been on date no. 3 and everything continues to go swimmingly ...

A date

Tonight's concert (see previous post) was pretty good, but it being preceded by a date just made the evening all the more memorable.

If you're a regular reader you may have noticed the recent addition of an on/offline indicator for Kagoul, an online gay community with little tolerance of sexually-related content which I joined recently, being a little disappointed with OK Cupid. My profile mentions my sometime similarity to Niles Crane (only with an awareness of my ridiculousness), and towards the middle of last week I got a message from a guy who suggested we should talk as Niles was one of his favourite character on Frasier and he fancied the pants off him.

We got on very well online - let's face it, you can't tell me you're going through a Buxtehude phase and fail to rouse my interest - and it wasn't long before the possibility of meeting face to face came up. It turned out we both had tickets for the Monteverdi so we decided to meet for something to eat beforehand.

We had a lovely time, both of us a little nervous but thoroughly enjoying each other's company. Unfortunately we both had other commitments after the concert, but are going to see each other again tomorrow (as I'm busy every other night this week). I'm already looking forward to it.

(I'm not doing a very good job of conveying how much I enjoyed it. Fact is, the smile on my face is preventing me from thinking straight.)

Another visitor, another fridge magnet

"Alas! methinks I see the ghost of a vile lady here in my goblet."

My set of Shakespearean fridge magnets lends itself so easily to sexual innuendo - with words like "codpiece" and "bosom" among it, what d'you expect? - that it's actually quite refreshing to have something unrelated. (Okay, inebriation probably isn't much better, but at least it's different.) That said, considering I've known Isabelle since she was a baby, it would have been a bit disturbing if she'd come out with something sexual ...

We got to spend most of Sunday together and had a great time. Things started off well when I managed to get out of singing mattins (I can't say I missed Rutter's canticles one little bit) to meet her at the bus station, so after an hour or so at my flat we set off back into town with a rough plan for the rest of the day: getting a bite to eat, seeing a Fringe show - see the previous post for my review - getting her train ticket for going home next morning and having a bit of a wander around town before my rehearsal back at the church, in time for evensong at six, all the while catching up on heaps of news from both sides of the family.

Six of us went for a couple of drinks after the service (all early Scottish music, not terribly interesting to sing), where the conversation got terribly anoraky, being mostly to do with choral singing. Just as well Isabelle is also a musician or she'd have felt really left out ... Back home, I made us both something to eat - mushroom and mangetout risotto, which seems to be turning into a speciality of mine - and we settled down to watch Finding Neverland, having been discussing the fine acting of Johnny Depp while queuing up for MacHomer.

The plumber called at eight this morning (Monday) - my shower's decided to give up the ghost and it's likely I'll have to get it replaced, at horrendous cost - so we were up early, in ample time for a little breakfast before leaving the house, she to catch her train and I to get to work, where it turned out I was meant to be on the very early shift only I'd not looked at the rota. Oops ...

Sick or hilarious? You decide ...

My friend Alex invited me round to his place for dinner last night, at which Graham, one of the other guests, told us the following story.

Back in the days before the EU got rid of all the borders between member countries, Graham was working in customs at Hull, where ferries would arrive from the European continent. On one occasion, they sent back a German man having inspected his luggage and found, shall we say, some rather disturbing material inside. (Any of you who ever saw the Channel 4 programme Eurotrash ... this is infinitely worse. In fact, the more sensitive, especially animal-lovers, may want to skip this post altogether. Don't say I didn't warn you!)

His suitcase contained, amongst other things, explicit photographs of him having sex. Not just any sex either: we're talking sex with ducks. (No, that's not the end of it.) What was even worse was what he actually did to them - presumably he found the passage through which they laid eggs insufficiently stimulating, because he would place their necks in some sort of guillotine-like contraption and, when on the point of orgasm, would close the trap, thus cutting off their heads and causing their muscles to contract.

(A pause while you recover your composture.)

I was the only vegetarian at the table. Would you care to guess what the other three were eating?

I'm coming out ... as an autograph whore

For the last ten years or so, I've been collecting autographs of classical musicians I see in concert - not, I should stress, absolutely every one I have seen perform (I'm a bit more selective than that), nor do I get them to sign the programme. For me, it's the autographed CD that does it.

Off the top of my head, I've had CDs signed by Barbara Hendricks, Daniel Barenboim, Joshua Bell (three times thus far), Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the Capuçon brothers, Leif Ove Andsnes, Ian Bostridge, Mark Padmore and Maxim Vengerov. There've been a couple of occasions when I've gone without: it was freezing the night I saw Yuri Bashmet and I didn't want to hang around, the first time I saw Leif Ove Andsnes he was on the phone as he left, and yesterday Magdalena Kožená had an armful of baby. That said, the sight of Simon Rattle following her with a pram made up for it nicely!

Friday was something of a bumper night, going round to the back of the Royal Lyceum Theatre after choir rehearsal in the hope of catching Neal Davies, Lawrence Power and Toby Spence as they left after performing Curlew river. The last of these was of particular importance to me as I'd tried to get him into work to do a signing session which ended up falling through (without going into extraneous detail, it was head office's fault), a great pity as he'd been keen to do it. From my perspective, it was the least I could do to go round and apologise, ensuring also that he didn't leave without signing at least one CD.

It's all good PR ...

Music meme

Maybe someone will tell me what "meme" actually means. Presumably it's an abbreviation of something ...

Anyhow, thanks to Brechi for this one. The instructions are as follows:

List ten songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're no good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the ten songs in your blog. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to.

I'm deliberately trying to avoid going down the all-too-obvious (for me) classical route, so here goes:

1. Benjamin Biolay's Billy Bob a raison (Billy Bob is right), for no other reason than the next line is les gens, c'est tous des cons (people are fucking idiots). Sort of French countrified pop, if that's not a contradiction in terms.
2. Mozart's Sinfonia concertante in E flat for violin and viola, K. 364. It's one of my favourite pieces and I'm seeing a performance of it next week.
3. the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby - from a musical point of view, it's incredibly simple (there are only two chords to it), but the song speaks very movingly of loneliness.
4. In pursuit of happiness by the Divine Comedy, which runs over the closing credits of my favourite film, Shooting fish.
5. the Toy symphony (which is Leopold Mozart or Haydn, depending on your point of view); a colleague of mine had the CD on at work and I'd forgotten what fun it is.
6. the rather wonderful Das lila Lied (The lavender song) by Spoliansky - a German cabaret song from the early 1930s which is really a prototype gay anthem - as sung by Ute Lemper.
7. Toby Spence singing Britten which, on CD, means the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings. I spoke to him after Curlew river and he was a lovely chap, not to mention rather good-looking.
8. Dinah Washington singing Is you is or is you ain't my baby?, remixed by Rae&Christian. No idea who they are, but it's sheer genius.
9. Bach's cantata no. 26, Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig (it sounds horrible translated so I won't bother), from which comes a former (baritone) audition aria of mine, Auf irdische Schätze das Herze zu hängen - nice cheerful number all about the transitory nature of earthly treasures.
10. Monty Python's Sit on my face, or at least the French version (Jouis dans ma bouche, i.e. Come in my mouth - oo-er, missus!) has been going round my head pretty well ever since I saw the show, so I can't very well leave it out.

I could go on, but the instructions did say ten ... In the meantime, Andy, Kris (who's away all summer so probably won't read this for a while), Dan, Stephen and Richard, you may consider yourselves tagged.

Self-service check-outs

I had my first dealings with one of these at Tesco yesterday and found them to be an absolute nuisance. They may be convenient if you've only got a small amount of shopping to do but otherwise they're best avoided.

Firstly, you have to put every item you've scanned in the "bag area" (which is touch-sensitive) as the machine won't allow you to scan any other items until it senses some extra weight there. If you've brought a large bag of your own which won't fit in this bag area, you end up either not using it or having to pack everything twice.

Everything has to be scanned individually, even multipacks - very time-consuming when it comes to cans of drink bound together with those plastic hoops, which then won't fit back on.

And that's before you consider the old problem of barcodes which won't scan ...

What would you have done?

or, Another bizarre work story

We're open later at the moment, festival oblige, and today it was my turn to man the first floor once nearly everyone else had left. It was relatively quiet, and at one point this girl, maybe in her late teens, came up to the counter, indicated that she was dumb (possibly deaf as well) and could she have some paper and something to write with?

I promptly handed her a piece of till roll and a pen, whereupon she wrote the following:

Me can't find
DVD pron

My immediate thought was either she's dyslexic or there's a film called Pron which I've never heard of; on the spur of the moment I didn't know which one was less likely (before you ask, her P looked nothing like a T so Tron was out too). I'd already wondered, as she finished writing the first line, whether her use of the word "me" was a sign of poor education or a learning disability and with the best will in the world, I could not bring myself to ask the question uppermost in my mind. So I went to the computer and got it to search for any entries including the words pron and dvd. Nothing.

Result: I motioned her over to the computer, asked her to confirm I had spelled pron correctly (she nodded) and explained there was nothing coming up. It wasn't a satisfactory way to end things, but how do you set about asking someone (anyone) if they're looking for porn?

Tips

I was given a tip today, which is just about unheard-of in retail. Can't say I was very comfortable with it, but this customer was insistent - again, someone who was very impressed by the amount of work I put into his query, nothing beyond searching through the catalogue and ordering the CDs. Waiting staff in restaurants being tipped is one thing, but someone working in a shop?

There was actually one previous occasion when a customer brought me a little gift, sometime last autumn. A very polite middle-aged woman came in looking for a present for a friend, who'd been going on about a CD recently issued called "The ultimate" something-or-other - not very much information, to put it mildly. However, once we'd established it was very likely an easy listening release, I told her I'd see what the computer could come up with, warning her that it'd take a while.

It did, absolutely ages. Luckily the shop wasn't very busy at the time, but after leaving with a couple of CDs she thought might do the trick she returned with a bottle of wine for me - quite unexpected, a lovely surprise. Unfortunately I never did find out her name (I make a point of addressing customers who pay by card by their name, but she paid cash), so some time later Peter, Rob and I were toasting the health of Mrs Ultimate.

Singing solos

Last week the mass setting at the eucharist was Mendelssohn's deutsche Liturgie for unaccompanied double choir. There's a brief passage in the Gloria where four soloists sing against the rest of the choir, with yours truly taking care of the solo tenor, something I was asked to do back in late June.

Fast forward to last Thursday's rehearsal, when for some reason I was asked to sing the tenor solo in Stanford's Te Deum, an even shorter passage. I didn't mind really, but you'd have thought someone else could have done it. Then I ended up leading the responses as well, which was a bit of a challenge as we'd not rehearsed them and I'd barely had a glimpse at the collect, so it was all a bit off the cuff.

That said, I could do with a rest from solo work. Next Sunday we're doing Mozart's Coronation mass with full orchestra and someone else is doing the tenor part - but I'm still a little concerned, as the tenor in question dropped out of doing the same in Schubert's Mass in G major last year and I stepped in, so you never know ...

On avoiding reality TV

I was living in Switzerland at the time of the first two British series of Big brother. Somewhat bemused by the popularity of the concept, it was all too easy to be sucked in by the third series (helped by the memorably thick Jade). That said, I was so ashamed at how absorbed I was, rushing home from work to catch the latest installment, that I deliberately avoided series four, leaving the room as soon as it came on. From what I gather, it wasn't particularly interesting anyway, though it didn't stop my work colleagues from talking endlessly about it.

I planned not to watch series five either, but my flatmate of the time was heavily into it and I did end up watching it with him. Again, there was much talk about it at work, and to be honest it was memorable, despite the obvious bias of the producers towards the transsexual Nadia, who ended up the winner.

This year, it's been a joy to be almost completely unaware of the going-on in the Big brother house - living on my own, returning home nearly every lunchtime (it helps that home is only a ten minute walk from work), taking a perverse pleasure in changing the channel as soon as a trailer comes on.

It finished last night. Hooray!

One word: bugger

Got a rejection letter in the post this morning. No interview, no nothing.

Thank heavens for Frasier DVDs and Beautiful thing tonight: good comedy and a touching gay love story, sure to keep me cheerful.

Visitors: an update

The one thing I require from anyone who spends the night at my flat is that they create a new fridge magnet message for me, using either the German or shakespearian sets I have. When Rod and Dan were staying, two weekends ago, I realised I should be keeping a record of these, so before they got going I copied the old ones down. Chances are I'll share the best of them in due course.

So that's Rod and Dan been and gone, not to mention Tristan (who was here on Sunday). Marcus' visit is slowly taking shape: his participation in the Tallis at the end of this month is looking more certain now he's found out there's the first British performance of Adams' The death of Klinghoffer at the Festival that week. We spoke tonight and I suggested he come here on Thursday 25th, in time for the choir rehearsal that evening, my day off the next day, Klinghoffer on the Saturday and heaps of singing on the Sunday.

Before my trip to London last month, I spoke to my friend Tom - the intention being to meet him and his girlfriend while I was there, only they were going to Ireland - and suggested, as they're also singers, that they join us too. I don't know if that's going to come off, but it could be a full house!

In the meantime, my eldest cousin is up the previous weekend (she's been invited to a wedding) and we hope to meet up at some stage during her stay. It'll be the first time we'll have seen each other for three years, I think, so it's high time we caught up with each other face to face, even if I am off to visit her side of the family in the autumn.

I think that's everyone accounted for. Enough to be getting on with, at any rate.

The most influential piece of 19th century music?

I played the LSO Live recording of Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique at work recently and had one customer tell me that visitors to the Naxos website had voted it the most influential piece of 19th century music. I've been unable to find any reference to this on the website, but who cares? It's food for thought.

I disagreed with this customer there and then, suggesting that Beethoven's 9th would be a better contender: never mind its influence on music (Wagner springs immediately to mind), its humanitarian message has extended far and wide. It's no coincidence that it's invariably performed after world-changing events, from the BBC Proms after 9/11 and in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall, complete with the word Freiheit (freedom) substituded for the original's Freude (joy) in the choral finale.

True, the Symphonie fantastique is the first piece of true programme music - the depictions of nature in The four seasons aren't quite in the same league, more like still life paintings than the evolving portrait of Berlioz' artist - which in itself makes it a key work in the history of music, but that's just it. Berlioz' influence doesn't extend beyond the purely musical.

Confused

Every day this week, I've been rushing home at lunchtime and after work to check for answerphone messages and emails, only to be disappointed by the lack of contact from the orchestra about my job application. Today I bit the bullet and rang them up to ask if I should take this as an indication of my application having been unsuccessful. Unfortunately the person I wanted to talk to was already on the phone, so I left a message asking her to leave me one likewise on my mobile.

That was a bit before 1pm. It's now past six and still no word, either on the phone or by email. It's possible the message wasn't passed on - I'd like to hope not as it wouldn't say much for their professionalism - but either way, I don't know what to make of it. It doesn't seem to make sense.

The day the world changed

Two extracts from the service commemorating the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at St John's, Edinburgh.

"I had no idea how long I had lain unconscious, but when I regained consciousness the bright sunny morning had turned into night. Takiko, who had stood next to me, had simply disappeared from my sight. I could see none of my friends nor any other students. Perhaps they had been blown away by the blast. I rose to my feet surprised. All that was left of my jacket was the upper part around my chest. And my baggy working trousers were gone, leaving only the waistband and a few patches of cloth. The only clothes left on me were dirty white underwear.

"Then I realised that my face, hands and legs and been burned, and were swollen with the skin peeled off and hanging down in shreds. I was bleeding and some areas had turned yellow. Terror struck me, and I felt that I had to go home. And the next moment, I frantically started running away from the scene forgetting all about the heat and pain.

"On my way home, i saw a lot of people. All of them were almost naked and looked like characters out of horror movies with their skin and flesh horribly burned and blistered. The place around the Tsurumi bridge was crowded with many injured people. They held their arms aloft in front of them. Their hair stood on end. They were groaning and cursing. With pain in their eyes and furious looks on their faces, they were crying out for their mothers to help them.

"I was feeling unbearably hot, so I went down to the river. There were a lot of people in the water crying and shouting for help. Countless dead bodies were being carried away by the water - some floating, some sinking. Some bodies had been badly hurt, and their intestines were exposed. It was a horrible sight, yet I had to jump in the water to save myself from heat I felt all over."

* * *
May fruitless strife and ruinous wars pass away and may the Great Peace come. Let us not glory in this, that we love our country; let us rather glory in this, that we love humankind.

The only thing Fantastic Four has going for it

Chris Evans repeatedly burning his clothes off. Hubba hubba!

Out of my hands (at least for the moment)

The deadline for applications has just passed, so hopefully I will get a phone call from the orchestra today. I imagine they'll wait for the post to arrive before contacting anyone, but it's still good to know the waiting will soon be at an end.

At the suggestion of one of my neighbours, I delivered my application personally, popping round to the orchestra's offices this morning; besides this being the only time I could do so before today, it also means that I'd only get one day's fidgeting, switching my mobile on and off to check for messages.

Anticipation of an event is an odd thing; I've been jumpy all day.

I'm not usually given to swearing, but the occasion calls for it.

Fuck.

My chances of taking part in Dido on Saturday are now very slim. They apparently can't spare me for the Saturday afternoon rehearsal this time round either, and I'd be uneasy about performing the work with only one rehearsal under my belt. I do enjoy a challenge, but the standard of performance required here is very high and I'm not sure I'm prepared to risk it.

Now admittedly I can't really blame the boss for not letting me go - two of the supervisors on my floor are on holiday until next week so numbers are a bit tight - but I can't let work interfere with my music like this much longer. I'm off to deliver my application for the new job tomorrow (by hand), after which it'll be up to them.

If the outcome is negative (it'd be presumptuous to assume otherwise), I'll be carrying on the search for other work. I can't allow myself to be in the same situation this time next year.