Still Burning

I was out last night at the first performance of Dave Whyte's song cycle based on
Donny O'Rourke's book "One Light Burning".


Donny Reading Film Noir - which didn't become a song, exactly, but had lots of accompaniment, as pictured below:




Eddie McGuire playing some Chinese influenced tunes. I remember the percussionist (whose name I didn't manage to catch) playing the harp at a similar event last year, but this time she had lots of unusual percussion instruments. This one was a bit like a very tuneful bin lid...


Elizabeth, a fiddler from Orkney.


Donny and Dave sing about the river.


Birthday cakes and candle.


Larry Butler.



Donny watching Peter Nardini choose a harmonica (he had lots secreted about his person).

Eddie McGuire.


Siobhean McCloskey talking about her trip to the Himalayas to help build a village school.


Taking a bow.

Ranting

This seems to be the season for people to yell at me. On Wednesday I had some guy come up to me at the bus stop on Byres Road and start barking loudly at me about "those Asian guys over there". "Not that I'm racist or homophobic", he said (always a bad sign) then went on to complain bitterly about how they'd cut in on a conversation he was having with the woman "behind the bar...I mean counter in Oxfam" (a Freudian slip perhaps). When he finally paused to draw breath I asked him why on earth he was telling me all this, and I didn't see why I should be berated by random strangers while waiting for a bus. To which he replied that I was "as bad as them!" and stomped off in the huff.

Usually the folk who try to engage me in conversation at the bus stop are a bit puzzling for one reason or another, but perfectly friendly. Sometimes too friendly. Recently I've chatted to: an old lady who told me her life story; a disabled guy who seemed very nice, but I couldn't quite make out what he was saying; and a very drunk student who smoked intently at me for a few minutes then tried to kiss me as I got on the bus (which had arrived just in time).

However, today the piano tuner turned up and spent the first ten minutes or so yelling at me for having "killed this piano!" This always happens when I get someone to tune the poor thing. I tried to explain that it wasn't my fault, my parents - whose piano it actually is - had originally kept it next to a radiator, unloved, for about five years before I rescued it. As usual, this cut little ice. But also as usual, he managed to get it back to a perfectly reasonable state for a pianist of my limited abilities (they always do, being good at this kind of thing).

He did mutter darkly, though, that it wouldn't be at concert pitch. I suppose I'd better ring the RSNO and tell them not to bother coming round for that concerto we were going to play in the dining room...

The grass is riz

Smoke and mirrors

Multiple personality problem getting worse. Not done in Photoshop (for a change). Guess how...

Falling

1"3

Where are we now?

I hired a dual-control car from Arnold Clark in Paisley yesterday, accompanied by the very kind Michael as my "responsible, grown-up person with a real driving licence". Although the Byzantine traffic systems of Paisley probably hold few fears for a man who has driven through Athens at rush hour.

This is just as well, as immediately after leaving the hire-place I turned left instead of right and set us on a - seemingly inexorable - path towards either the dual carriageway to Greenock, or the motorway to Glasgow. Neither of which we fancied. However we managed to extricate ourselves by means of a tiny roundabout at the end of a side road that seemed to have been put there for that very purpose. Handy.

As we headed back towards the town centre, I worried that I couldn't remember what key I was in. After being informed that I was probably driving in C# minor (and definitely in third gear) things were going quite well until I did the whole left instead of right thing again and ended up heading towards Barrhead. I don't like Barrhead. It's difficult and involves something called "The Hurlet" which sounds alarming before you even get to it.

Luckily, by dint of actually executing a right turn for a change, Barrhead was successfully averted, and were were able to carry on getting lost for a bit before I managed to get us back on time by way of a three-point turn. And there are still a couple of strands of Michael's hair the same colour as when we started...;-)