Advent Calendar XIII

I know I am a day late, Thursday evening didn't work out well, in fact it turned out to be a bit of a disaster, indeed I have managed to come away with a broken rib and a severally stiff and sore neck.

I did manage to conduct last night's concert, but in honesty I am struggling to manage much else, hopefully I will start to feel better soon.

Advent Calendar XII

 

I have often made mention of my almost constant battle with my weight, well lets be honest it's not so much the weight as the fat round the middle! I know that it is the result of three weaknesses, lack of exercise, too much booze, and a love of food. I know we all like to eat (well nearly all) I also like to cook. I do sometimes find it difficult to get excited about cooking just for one, it can sometimes feel like a lot of faff then to just sit down and eat on my own. But, when I retired I told myself I should cut down on the processed food and cook more from scratch. I am also trying to buy my meat from a butcher, my fish from a fish monger etc. rather than just get everything from the supermarket. It certainly makes life more interesting.

This week I have made my own lentil soup, a Coq au Vin, and a couple of vegetable gratins. I find that I will still cook the same quantities as I would for more people, but then I will have the same thing a couple of times or freeze a few portions (I will always do this with a bolognaise sauce, and often with casseroles). All this does mean I am eating better, but I can only do it because I have the time, it simple wasn't possible most of the time when I was working full time. It's one of the things I am finding, that activities expand to fill the available time!

Tonight I am actually at home so I will clear the table, wrap some presents, open a bottle of minervoise (my favourite) and then tuck into some of the Coq au Vin with a couple of mince pies to follow.

I marinated the chicken for nearly two days, then cooked it yesterday, left it to rest and will warm a portion up for tonight. The rest will be reserved for Sunday evening to follow on from the afternoon CSB concert!

I know none of this has much to do with Christmas, or Advent, but one of the reasons I am so happy to be cooing up a storm now is the knowledge that I haven't got to do it for Christmas, somebody else will have all that to do as once again I will be going away for Christmas, just as soon as I get through the last of my five remaining Christmas performances!

Advent Calendar XI

 

I note that over on Femulate Stana has been writing about hem lines, now I'm not as tall as Stana, and of course now I am no longer cross dressing I have a rather different relationship with clothes, however I do still find I have the same problem with hemlines. At 5'10" I am no amazon but I am on the tall side, sufficiently so that dress and skirt hems are often higher on me than the designer intended. I hate having anything knee length, it feels neither one thing nor the other, just hanging there indecisively. So I will always go for something that is either short, or long ~ although in all honesty until I lose a few more kilos I will remain mostly in leggings!

My old blogging friend Meg commented that "Speeches should be like skirts, long enough to cover everything, but short enough to hold the audience's attention", this reminded me of an occasion many years ago when I was asked to make a short speech of welcome, I was pretty much out of ideas, and even on the day I didn't know what to say, so I ended standing up and just saying

"If "brevity is the soul of wit" then this may well be the funniest speech you will have ever heard. Welcome!" and then I sat down. They did make me do some more later but I suspect most people who were there will only remember that bit.

Advent Calendar X

 

As I so nearly observed yesterday "Three down Five to go!" ~ as a reference to my Christmas performances this year, I still have two with Croydon Brass, one with Croydon Symphonic Band and two with the Phoenix Concert Band. Friday night's concert with Phoenix will be very special for me, it will be only the second time this band has played a proper Christmas Concert, and proper "sit down" evening concerts are still a rarity in our annual programme. Last year we were rather feeling our way, this year we are a lot more confident and have a wonderful, varied programme, including three ~ count them! THREE WORLD PREMIERS!! one of them specially arranged for us, the other two will be on general publication after we have played them on Friday.

I think this will be the biggest band we will have put out as over the course of the last year we have acquired several new members, the band is very much about enjoying ourselves, and sharing the joy we have in communal music making with others. We are very much a community band with players of all ages and all abilities. As a proper community band we welcome all comers and seek to both reflect and serve the community as well as be drawn from it.

One of the things about being a community band is that we can always find space for someone, at the moment we would certainly welcome another couple of clarinets, a trombone, a bassoon, and another oboe. 

I always say that it isn't Christmas until I've played Leroy Anderson's A Christmas Festival, well, I played it last Saturday and between the three bands will be playing at least three more times! Each time it will be at a slightly different speed ~ and I'm conducting two of them!

Advent Calendar IX

 

After last night's concert I was musing about the passage of time, and how it only feels like a few weeks ago that it was 2023 and now we are almost at the end of 2024, some sympathetic souls pointed out that I have had a busy and eventful year so it should be no surprise that time has passed quickly, other less sympathetic but more realist pointed out that it is a factor of age! We all experience aging differently, many of my contemporaries have varying health problems, many are grand parents, some are embracing retirement while others again are resisting any pressure to retire. Some will have a comfortable old age as their accumulated wealth (for many based on the outrageous increases in property value) while others will struggle to keep the wolf from the door. I'm not sure that I fall into any of these categories but I do know that I plan to grow old disgracefully! 

Punishing the tyres at the Lotus test track
in August this year 

A couple of years ago I bought myself a new tuba, my rational was that I have probably got up to another twenty playing years left, I wanted a decent instrument to spend that on, not an old one that I had to work around ~ and I had lusted after this particular instrument since it was first introduced. There comes an element of "If not Now, the When?". I am finally solvent and am in a position to buy myself these sorts of thing every now and then, what else am I going to use the money for? I have to accept that there are activities that I can do now that I won't be able to for much longer. This is very much the same rational that got me started in motor sport. Next Month after only my second season of sprint racing I will be collecting my second first in class trophy! This isn't as impressive as it sounds as there are only three of us in the class, and the chap who actually won the class, came third overall in the championship and is only allowed one trophy! 

I am looking forward to another season next year, we still have to decide if we will carry on with the same car in the same class, or buy a new (bigger engined, more powerful, faster) car and step up to a more populous class. We don't need to decide for a while yet. However I am thinking of replacing my current road car, I have an inoffensive SUV, it does everything I need a car to do, it is comfortable, has acceptable performance, and an enormous boot (trunk for my transatlantic readers), yet it has failed to endear itself to me, and it drinks petrol at an alarming rate, often slipping down to around 20 mpg. Now I no longer need something like this for work I think it is time for a change, yet I am struggling to make a decision ~ I have always wanted a sports car and have never had one, maybe this is another case of "If not Now, then When"

What I do know is that I still have plenty to look forward to, regardless of age we all have plenty to look forward to, and for me that is a large part of Advent as we look forward to Christmas, whether you are just looking forward to some time off, seeing family, sharing gifts and celebratory meals, or whether you are also looking forward to celebrating the birth of Christ and the message of hope that goes with it whatever our age we all have something to look forward to.

Advent Calendar VIII

The inside Christmas tree 

Today was very nearly another failure! After what ended up as a rather hectic morning I had to rush up to the City to arrive at St. Giles Cripplegate the best part of an hour late for the rehearsal for this evening's concert. Fortunately I have managed to be at all of the other rehearsals, but I hate being late, no matter how often I am. On this occasion I plead that it was not my fault! We have an interesting programme this evening, starting with the Rimsky-Korsakov Capriccio Espanol, Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty and Rachmaninov's first symphony. This rarely played so is quite a treat, and unusually for me I am in every piece and every movement of the symphony.

I am sat just in front of the Christmas tree, during last Sunday's rehearsal every now and then we would hear a small thud as one of the decorations would fall off. By the end of the evening there was a little huddle of baubles at the bottom of the tree, I was quite released to see that they have removed all of the balls before this evening's concert.

Today is the second Sunday of Advent so we are lighting our second candle, a bit like 2024 the last week seems to have flown past! I know I have been busy, but then so has 2024, so I am trying to tell myself that it's not just my age!

I have been out every evening since last Tuesday, while it's all be fun I am now seriously looking forward to an evening at home, indeed come Tuesday I may just stay in bed all day!

I have written this in the break between the rehearsal and the concert using my tablet, I mostly use it just as a kindle but it is useful, and reminds me how much I prefer using the laptop.

The outside Christmas tree

Advent Calendar VII

 

We had just started the second half of this evening's concert (my second of the day) when I realised that I had failed to post anything this morning, and as I'm not really set up to do such things on my phone I had to wait until I got home before I could do anything. I had thought about maybe expanding on my thoughts about how we are all different, and in a way that also makes us all the same, but quite frankly I'm not up to any such cerebral work at the moment.

My first gig was playing euphonium with Croydon Brass Band at the Carshalton Frost Fair, fortunately not so cold that we had a frost, but I was still glad that I wrapped up well! It certainly wasn't as cold as this historic picture of one of the London Frost Fairs. Back in the "mini Ice Age" in the 17th and 18th centuries from time to time the Thames would freeze over and the locals would hold a fair on the ice. Read more about them here. It was nice community event with some nice stalls and two stages, I would have liked to have been able to stay a bit longer, but I had other commitments!

Then it was a dash over to Worcester Park to join the Linden Wind Orchestra for their combined Christmas and 40th Anniversary Celebration. Not only did this mean a change of clothes, but also a change of instrument, this one was on Bass Trombone. Although I have never been a member of this band I have played with them on a number of occasions over those 40 years, and feel like I must be a "semi detached member of the family". On one occasion a few years back I even auditioned to conduct them, in hindsight at that time I was not ready for a band of this quality, now? ~ if the chance came again I would still try!

Anyway, I'm tired, I haven't got any photos of the day so here is another gratuitous Betty picture!

Advent Calendar VI

 

Last night I was stunned by the new Tuba Concerto "Dreaming Awake" by Lauri Porra, a fabulous piece played excellently by Lewis Chinn, this was the UK premier of a piece so new that I can't find any recordings of it to share or point you in the direction of. For now I'll just say that I think this will be a major addition to the repertoire for tuba, even if at the moment it is technically a bit beyond me. I never really completed my studies on tuba and to tackle a solo piece like this I would have to do a lot of practise. 

The Trombone will be featuring
this weekend

Indeed I have to do a fair bit of practise just to maintain the standard that I am playing at and with three performances on three different instruments this weekend I am having to do a fair bit of preparation. My musical weapon of choice is my Besson 984 EEb Tuba, but in the lead up to this Christmas I am playing my B&S CC tuba, my Yamaha Bass Trombone and my Besson New Standard Euphonium. It is nice to get out the less used instruments, but of course that does mean I need to make sure they work, oil the valves and grease the slides, and of course do some practise to make sure I can do the job!

This week has been pretty much all about preparation, getting ready for the weekend, preparing myself and my instruments, preparing food so that I can still eat properly amongst the rush, preparing the bands during rehearsals, and preparing myself physically as I continue my visits to gym. It will be nice tomorrow to actually start the performances.

And, that's what Advent is really, a time of preparation, in times gone by that might have been preparation through fasting, physical as well as spiritual preparation for Christmas. For those of us who are Christians this is the point of Advent. Today's reading (in the Anglican Lectionary) is from Luke 13;22-30 which is also all about being prepared.

Advent Calendar V

 

Like most Brass players this is a very busy time of years for me, I am already wondering how I used to have time to go to work, even though as a gardener December is not the busiest month. This week I have already had three rehearsals and I still have one more rehearsal and three performances to go, but tonight I am taking time out from playing and will be attending a concert I am not playing in!

Sometimes I find it easy to get so tied up in the hectic run of playing that I forget why I am doing this, I can forget that what is driving me is my love of music, well, tonight I hope to be reminded of that! A few years ago I arrived at a TransPALS meeting a bit late following a performance, the (adult) daughter of one of my friends was there and we started chatting, she asked me what type of music I liked? I started to explain about Russian Romantic and modern music, the emotion, the grandeur, and the energy, but she looked at me quizzically and said "NO, I meant what do you listen to for fun!?"

At that point I realised that I couldn't remember the last time I had listened to music for fun! I had been listening to what I was going to play or conduct, I listening to what I was arranging or copying, I had forgotten to listen just for fun. Ever since then I have been trying to go to more concerts that I'm not playing in, and so far I have never been disappointed.

In the mean time I still have to practise plenty as this weekend my three performances are on three different instrument.

Advent Calendar IV

 Advent Calendars come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, I note that increasingly few seem to have any sort of relationship with Christmas! I was quite pleased to find this picture of an advent calendar on line as it is very much the sort of thing that I grew up with in the 1960s. Of course my blog advent calendar is a bit different, although I do hope that there will be some small treats behind each day's "door" it is primarily about posting every day in the build up to Christmas.

This is largely about making some sort of commitment to writing, to you my readers, and to myself ~ as a form of self discipline, not one of my greater qualities!

1st obligatory Betty Boop picture

About a month ago I wrote about trying to get a bit fitter, well I have just got back from the gym, a phrase that is still uneasy on my lips, and I can report that there have been some improvements, I'm not going to share measurements as my vital statistics don't make particularly happy reading, but I will share that according to the scales in the ladies changing room I have now lost a whopping five kilograms! In the last few weeks as well as my excursions to the gym I have also been trying to drink a bit less and to eat a bit better, nothing too drastic, small adjustments rather than massive changes, and they appear to be paying off. As well as the story of the scales I must say I am feeling better for it as well.

So, as well as making a commitment to writing more, and more regularly I am also making a commitment to getting fitter and losing some of my still considerable excess weight.