About time

I haven't time to write about time; that's too big a subject. What I mean is, it's about time I added something. So much for the Buenos Propósitos De Año Nuevo that we were talking about in Spanish yesterday. What's the point in making resolutions when you can't keep them, most of us felt.

All in all, not a very promising start to the New Year, failing to write my blog for three weeks in succession, but I must admit the month so far has been full of other preoccupations. I have a pile of hats to wear, both literally and figuratively.

We've had many friends round, the usual ones plus Greta and Gareth, Carola, Simon, Jean, and last weekend hosted a party for Bill, Jenny, Frank, Carmen, Rolf, Vija and Barbara who sang a few madrigals with us. Tomorrow I'm off to Kanata to visit Sue.

At the nearby Bytowne Cinema I've watched two films with Liz and Carola, first The Young Victoria, for which the theme music was jarringly achronistic (though the others liked it), and tonight A Single Man, set in 1960s California, in which the characters seemed very unconcerned about chain smoking, although that wasn't the point of the story at all. Tremendous acting from Colin Firth. I also attended a public dress rehearsal of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children put on by the English Theatre company of the NAC. I came home in the "intermission", not finding the performance gripping enough to want to stay till the end (circa midnight). Met Beryl there (an ex-German teacher like me) and we agreed we'd both seen better school productions. As the director Peter Hinton told us, the play's the thing ("like Shakespeare," he said) and it did spring into to life at one point when the actress playing the Yvette, the prostitute, sang the song Surabaya Johnny in its original, Kurt Weill setting. Some song, that!

Too much carping criticism in that paragraph. Actually I quite enjoyed all of the above.

Chris and I unequivocally enjoyed a chamber concert at John R's house last Friday evening. This was the performance by a young 'cellist, Brian Yoon, in his 4th year at the university, with Fréderic Lacroix accompanying the last item, Shostakovitch's first Cello Concerto (the orchestral parts arranged for piano), a real virtuoso piece! The other two items on the programme were both solo works: Bach's 4th Cello Suite and a striking sonata by George Crumb. All played from memory. The young man had been at an orchestra practice an hour before the concert started with no time to rehearse for our concert and hadn't had any supper either. That was impressive too.

I have spent hours on the flying club's newsletter, writing to the contributors and conferring with my four fellow editors about the content and layout of our next edition which has to headline the two big changes at Rockcliffe Airport: new hangar, replacement clubhouse. We've been working on the construction of the hangar ourselves, from time to time. Carol and I joined the diplomats snow-shoeing by the river last Friday morning and said to each other how pleasant it was simply to go for a walk in the fresh air rather than scrape shovelfuls of ice and snow off a concrete floor all morning. There seems to be no end to it, but the stalwarts of the club are still coming out to volunteer every weekend. The leaders, Don and Laurie, haven't really had a break from this effort since November.

And any day now, workmen (when I manage to get them organised) are going to start demolishing my kitchen.