Age shall not whither her nor customer cloy her infinite variety

I don't know whether the above quote from Anthony and Cleopatra is completely accurate but the bit about whithering due to age is how I feel this morning.
I enjoyed a ride from Hackney to Chiswick and back yesterday morning with my younger son. It's about a twenty four or twenty five mile round trip. In fact I used to do it as a regular commute which is how the idea for riding to this otherwise random location was generated.
It was a beautiful morning. Most of the central London streets we used were completely or partially devoid of traffic. The sun was warm but there was a cooling breeze and the greatest danger was that of bumping into in inattentive early morning tourist.
Now it's Monday morning and I am back at my desk and my legs ache. Perhaps if I put it like this - MY LEGS ACHE - I might enable the reader to empathise a little more (if empathy is your thing). But then again I am having difficult getting together the enthusiasm to use even block capitals.

So lots of people on these blogs are telling us about how their studies are going. And I am doing a course , a masters in music with the Open University. Although a humble accountant, a bean counter, a book-keeper, I have decided to puruse the path of personal and professional self improvement. But there is a problem. I am undergoing what a former boss described as a ‘motivational crisis’ by which he meant of course that he could not be arsed. But given that he was President of Sales for a satellite corporation and earning over £250k year it was not appropriate for him to express himself using that sort of language. In the office.
Almost exactly half way through a 3 year course in musicology I find myself deep in a miasmatic fog lurching past musical concepts which loom ominous and large before me and then disappear giggling into the murk which surrounds me. Here is the ‘work concept’ described at poetic length by Lydia Goehr in her wonderful book. I manage to understand some of the basic elements but when I pause and turn I find that my understanding has left me and is laughing at me in the fog alongside the ‘work concept’ itself.
This detail illustrates my difficulty. The light which shone on my first early efforts and which I hope will shine when I am up the grassy uplands of the final year does not penetrate to the deep dark region of the middle year.

We are to be careful on 1st and 2nd of April.
Protestors will be in town, in my manor, intruding in my space.
I am told to dress down, perhaps work from home, don't make eye contact, avoid crowds etc.
I remember ten years ago Mayday 1999, being trapped in a building off Canon Street for a Friday afternoon as riot police tried to hold the line against somewhat violent protestors. Leaving the office later in the day the ground was thick with broken glass, there was no traffic and of course McDonalds was trashed.
Being a prudent individual I will withdraw from the space which I regard as mine - the City, and all the little side streets and cycle ways which lead me there. I will work from home but I will follow the news to see how all the visitors treat the streets I know and love.
I hope the protests will be like those on Saturday - peaceful and fun. But the presence of so many world leaders in our capital is , I am told , likely to draw in anarchists and facists from Germany and Italy and France whose approach to protest is one of violence.
For the next two days the City is yours. But on third it will be mine again.

Anger is a terrible thing. So I try not to go there too often.
But I was frightfully annoyed (much more English) on Saturday.
Having left the Mothers Day shop until the eve of the great day, I drove to Islington which provides a very pleasant shopping experience and a good array of emporia for the unfocused shopper to peruse whilst finding the appropriate gift.
Arriving at one of the backstreets near the Angel at around 12.50, I parked and scrutinised the parking regulations displayed on a board and on the pay and display machine.Parking had to be paid for until 1.30 pm after that point parking was free. The pay and display ticket machine is designed to take credit cards but that functionality was out of action. I pumped in all the coins I had in my pocket to find that this would only cover me until 1.19pm. A gap of eleven minutes.
I weighed up the pros and cons. Should I retrieve my coins, go to a petrol station or somewhere else where I could park without risk of punishment, get some change, return to the spot and pay and display? Or should I take a chance that for eleven minutes this street would be clear of parking enforcement officers?
I decided to risk it.
I went shopping , purchased some nice little gifts, and returned to the car.
And of course there was a parking ticket (£40) on the car issued at 1.21pm ie two minutes after my ticket expired.
Naturally I was wrong to break the clearly stated parking regulations.
But I do feel frightfully annoyed , perhaps even angry , that one little slip up for the little person can be very expensive, whilst others seem to do pretty well financially out of much bigger cock-ups.
As I would have said aged six "It's not fair."

City of Light

It is half past twelve on a week day in Newgate Street. The March sun is unusually warm and those employed in the numerous offices which dominate the locality are perambulating under its benevolent gaze some with the deliberate intent which comes from a clear sense of purpose and importance in life; others are more relaxed realising that the sooner they achieve the objective of their journey, the sooner they will have to return to the sunless office building where they spend the best days and years of their lives.
A large part of life is timing. And a key dimension to timing is contrasts. In these few days of March we experience the upside of a change from cold,grey, dreary, demoralising weather to warm, inspiring, sunny weather. Without changing our daily routines or getting on an aeroplane we are transformed from the bleakness of Hamburg on the Baltic sea with it’s Artic winds and infinite variety of greyness, to Milan or Barcelona, where the sun shines through arches and temporarily blinds those emerging from office bunkers and people chat in pavement cafes. That London can never really imbibe pavement café culture, because the pavements are the wrong size and shape, and attempts to put tables outside look (and are) a contrived attempt to ape our Continental cousins, and that men shiver in their shirtsleeves as they feed they tobacco addiction on street corners, is somehow not the point.
There are no spaces on the benches which face the sun: co-workers get better acquainted as they eat their sandwiches outside. Dedicated runners jog round the City streets. Those handing out free-newspapers smile inwardly as they prepare for the afternoons work, knowing that today at least frostbite is not a concern.
And the splendour of the City is enhanced by Nature. The huge glass towers reflect shimmering light into the street, so that the walker is confused as to where the sun is in the sky. The clear blue sky provides a perfect backdrop to church spires and especially the dome of St Pauls. The many, well maintained green spaces, mainly churchyards, provide an oasis of nature with aged trees thrusting upwards, chasing the towers created by man.
It’s a pain having to be at work on a day like today.

6th Symphony of Tchaikovsky

Is this work full of emotional depth or just a lot of sentimentality?
Or is it both?
Is it neither?
The first movement is around 20 minutes long. It has some tremendous melodies and some real drama. It is the sort of music I can lose myself in. I could imagine myself in a snow covered palace in St Petersburg, or beside a beautiful river on a sunny day.
It's not serious like Beethoven or Brahms. It's not solemn like a lot of Bach. It's not elegant like Mozart or Haydn.
But at this time of year it fits my mood exactly. Which begs the question whether the purpose of music is to fit your mood. Or to alter it. Or to enhance it.
Or none of the above.
In the meantime I look forward to listening to the 6th again.

Chopin - the Etudes

The 24 Etudes of Chopin – Opus 10 and Opus 25. (I've never tackled the 3 little ones at the end of the book.) I keep coming back to them. Even now over 30 years since I first played them, they exercise an endless fascination. I wonder if I shall ever master them. Certainly I have got to a reasonable level of competence on one or two of them. There is my favourite Op 10 number 4 with its rapid tempo , rabid chords and thundering ending. There is the languid elegance of Op 10 no 1 , the meandering difficulty of Op10 no2, not to mention the melodic beauty of Op10 no3. At the other end of the book I always like the challenge of the octaves of the B minor etude in Op 25 – I think it’s no 10. Number 11 I have never tackled frightened by its difficulty. And then of course there is the one for the left hand – Op 10 no 12 in C minor with is rolling ocean for the left hand and the stormy chords of the right hand.
I wonder why I keep coming back to them….
They are like old friends. Despite all of lifes vissicitudes – and there have been a few – they sit their and await my too infrequent attentions. I wonder what Chopin was thinking, feeling, hoping for when he wrote them. One day I must find out, but for now I will enjoy the music.
When I get the chance.