Happy New Year, one and all! And how splendidly convenient that 1st January falls on a blog posting day. (And also that I drank very little last night, so there’s a relatively good chance that this will make sense – or at least, no less sense than it usually does.)
This week, for the first time since going freelance, I’ve been ill. Actually, properly, basically asleep or at best conscious and horizontal ill. It only involved two days off, in the end: one not to move at all, and one to manage a rehearsal at home, some emails, and a
It’s been a pretty busy time since the year began and the 2016 Adventure got underway. Or more precisely, it’s been a pretty busy time since Monday, when I returned from a week’s holiday by the sea. Since I got back, the new term has begun, teaching and marking have
’Tis the season (well, nearly – I still think the capitalist machine could ease up on the carols for at least another week or two) to be joyful and thankful and kind, and all that stuff. ’Tis also the season, for many musicians, when offers are made of ‘work’ for
One year to this very day, 5th July, I woke up to find myself unemployed, unaffiliated, and absolutely delighted about it. Last Independence Day (talk about appropriate), I celebrated my last day of working at the Royal College of Music, and stepped out into the unknown to try my hand
‘It’s impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly,’ Jerome K. Jerome wisely observed, ‘unless one has plenty of work to do.’ I don’t know about anyone else, but this week I seem mostly to have been Not Doing Enough, despite the feeble protestations of my subconscious (sufficiently feeble that I have watched
News and drama. The two are, in modern terms, basically inseparable: stories hit the headlines precisely because they are dramatic, that things are at crisis point, that heads may roll. This is what makes for column inches. And also, as it happens, stirring opera plots. Appropriately enough, then, the New
This last week, I’ve mostly been plotting. This is for two reasons: the first is that being a freelancer actually requires quite a lot of plotting, I now realise, in order to get your ducks in a row before you start trying to find the time to realise your next
