Public Spirit

Tomorrow I resign from the local cycle forum. I've been minutes secretary for two or three years and, since starting my web course at Anglia I've found it hard to find the time to do the minutes and I also will find it hard to attend the meetings of the forum itself. I did find that the meetings went on for far too long - two hours or so - and the agenda items became rather repetitive. I've served my due.

Reaching auto pilot stage

I have reached a satisfactory stage with my music exam pieces. The first piece I have memorised and can play on auto pilot. I can watch my fingers find the notes without any conscious intervention. It is a very satisfactory feeling. I can't quite play it note perfect yet. It could go a little faster and, in musical terms, there is a lot I could do with this piece if I were to want to take it up to perfection. The danger is that, because I can play it pretty well, I will fall into the trap of complacency and I will neglect to practice it properly. The second piece is by Grieg. It is a flighty fast piece called Butterfly with loads of broken chords spanning more than an octave and lots of leaps about the keyboard. I thought it was impossible on first look but I am now part way to giving an acceptable rendition. Grieg actually makes a little go a long way. There is a lot of repetition and variation so it is not as hard as all that. It still takes a leap of faith to imagine that I will be able to play it in the exam room come June. The final piece I began work on in my piano lesson today. It is Le Petit Ane Blanc by Jacques Ibert. This is quite a famous piece. I am sure it got used as a signature tune some time or another. Right now it just looks hard but I think I am going to have a lot of fun with it as the music really appeals to me.

Replanning Najaf

I had to do a double take when watching Channel Four News this evening for I had met one of the interviewees. I couldn't think when. The name of his firm rang a bell. It was Llewellyn Davies. Then suddenly the penny dropped. Llewelyn Davies ran a planning consultation in King's Lynn and Martin Crookston, director of Llewelyn Davies, the guy on tv, was the lead presenter. He had us all working our way round a "carousel" of tables, complete with large scale maps and coloured markers. The invitees came from a cross section of local interest groups. My job was to represent the interests of cyclists but there were people from business and public sector employers. It was a fun day and the venue was good. We were in King's Lynn Town Hall, a splendid building with a chequered flint stone frontage. Now it is one thing to replan King's Lynn but now Llewelyn Davies have run a contract to redesign the Holy city of Najaf in Iraq. Quite how are the boys from Llewelyn Davies going to run their public consultation? They will be working in the middle of a war zone and if they found King's Lynn difficult to reconcile - the town's medieval street plans caused the Llewelyn Davis's transport expert particular grief - Najaf will be a whole new challenge. Najaf attracts millions of pilgrims each year and the city has been bombed to smithereens by the Americans. I can only wish Mr Crookston the best of luck.

Coveting Sibelius

I can't afford it but I want it. I want Sibelius, a music sequencer so as I can play around for hours on end. I did used to have Cubase many years ago but I couldn't afford to pay for the upgrades and I have long since chucked out the hardware. That's a pity because the keyboard would probably still function but it is in a landfill site somewhere. My house isn't big enough to keep everything and at the time of the disposal of all that kit I didn't think I would want to play around with music technology again. That was then. This is now and now I want to play again. There is an outside chance that I might be able to beg some time on one of the music technology machines at uni. If I make out that I know what I want to do and that I won't take up much time then the lecturers and technicians might take pity on me.

Missionary work

Today I got a letter from my aunt together with a family tree and a couple of short biographies of my paternal grandparents. They were missionaries in China. I really know very little about their lives as they died when I was eight or nine and they were too frail to say much to me as a child but I think they must have lead exciting lives. I grew up disapproving of their missionary work as I did not see why China needed westerners to tell them what to do and what they should believe in. I am no less an atheist today but I am perhaps a bit more prepared to accept them on their own terms and learn about what they did. Grandpa built schools and hospitals, institutions which have survived until this day despite all the political changes that have taken place. I did used to feel embarrassed by the fact that my grandparents were missionaries and that embarrassment stopped me from finding out about their lives but now the elder generation of my family has started to die off the sources of information are becoming fewer so I feel it is perhaps best if I write up the family history while there are still enough live sources to tap.

Lightweight

I thought until today that this course of mine would be lightweight and that it would not cover much more than I knew already - a rubber stamping exercise - but today one of the lecturers unveiled his course website and that contains a lot of new material so I am pleased - pleased that I don't know it all and pleased that this course will give me a chance to learn new tricks.

I am looking forward to producing my first official website. It is going to be on musical form. I want to include a whole load of scores of folk songs together with accompanying mp3 files. The idea is to show how the songs are constructed - binary and ternary room and all that. I am jumping the gun a bit here because I have no way of producing the music files nor the musical scores but that is a detail I will overcome. Basically the web site is an excuse to go out and buy the musical software I have been coveting already. I want to stick to folk songs because they are all out of copyright and, since I will record the music myself, there is no problem about paying performance fees. I can see it is all going to get horribly complicated but that's half the fun of it.

Stripping

I used to strip down a lot of PCs back in the days when I worked for Recycle IT. These were all second hand machines that were due to be refurbished. Some would work. Others wouldn't. Anyhow that got rid of my inhibitions about getting the case off and pulling out RAM cards and all the rest of it. So today's class wasn't too bad. I had a computer to strip down and reassemble. My partner disappeared struck down by flu. I drew diagrams of the gubbins so I would know how to put it all back together again but there is no guarantee that I will get back the same machine next week. I was told to leave a piece of paper with my name on it but loads of classes use that lab so I can't see that a flimsy paper label will stay attached to that machine for long. In any case the technician told me that it wouldn't matter if the computers did get mixed up as most of them did not work. Maybe some of them can be fixed by cannibalising other machines. All part of the learning process.

Bike replacement

I have good news. My new bike, according to the bike shop manager, is now winging its way to the shop. I did point out that I hadn't specified wings - just mud guards and rack - but I was wrong to be pinickerty about language when in fact I felt super excited about my new set of wheels. It takes so long to walk everywhere and it is going to feel so nice to ride a brand new, well-adjusted bike. I love the way bike mechanics make the brakes so responsive on new machines. The gear changes are smooth and the handling is perfect. I take delivery of this machine on Monday. My one worry is how I am going to get it home. The afternoon trains are always packed and there is never enough room for people, never mind bikes. I'll probably have to wait until after the rush hour. That's a bit of a pain but I could kill some time in the library.

Settling in

It is my second week at Anglia Ruskin. Today I succeeded in joining the library and I even borrowed a book - Foundation Maths. That course is going to be a doddle as it is really aimed at people with GCSE Maths and I have an A Level, admittedly from 22 years ago. I have already covered much of the syllabus once before though my knowledge is rusty and besides there are new ways of teaching. The lecturer introduced us to Derive, a mathematical application that was not even thought of in my school days. This piece of software can draw equations in two and three dimensions. That simply wasn't possible when you had to plot out curves on paper. Being able to get the computer to plot accurately on screen brings new understandings and insights that would never have occurred to me before.

I'm a bit puzzled by my fellow students. I tried introducing myself to two young chaps but they ignored me totally as they were already have a good natter. Then there were two Greek girls who were very voluble but only with each other and the tutor. Finally there was a Chinese chap. I smiled at him. He looked the other way. I reckon the cliques have formed given it is half way through the academic year and so it is quite hard to build up a rapport with people if you join midway through the year as I have. Early days yet.

Hair perfumer

I have survived one week of university without mishap. On three days I managed to get up at 6 am and I was in Cambridge by 9 am. I did feel rather like a zombie and when I got home I fell asleep instantaneously. My piano practice schedule has taken a knock but once I'm used to it, once early rising has become a routine I should be ok. The classes are on the large side but there does seem to be a good range of equipment on offer. One of the first assignments involves formatting a hard disk and reinstalling server software and a network card. It is designed to remove your inhibitions about taking machines apart. That is a fine ambition but so far I don't have the necessary software. Microsoft have given Anglia Ruskin a whole load of licenses so cost isn't an object. Availability is the problem. I need to track down the right tutor and I need to find out which computers I can format without repercussions. Somehow I don't think I can do that to a library machine.

For diversion I have started investigating my family history. My parents' generation have started to die off and, if nobody in my generation starts to mug up on the family tree, the knowledge will just be lost. I am finding this an engrossing pursuit. One of my ancestors was a hair perfumer. Another was a beer seller. Loads of clerics and doctors in the more recent generations. I should be able to trace the family back to the eighteenth century. I've already found loads in the censuses and I am busy arranging to see my elderly relatives to see what they can tell me.

The dog

It is curious. Whenever I tell anyone that I am starting a new course in Cambridge their immediate reaction is how is my dog Milo going to cope? The hound is used to my every present presence. Sometimes he barks plaintively when I leave him and I guess I will be leaving him for longer than usual once I start my course tomorrow but I know the hound will cope.

Milo has great retention powers and he is very well house trained so I know he won't mess up the place. He also has a great capacity for sleeping. Don't most dogs? He will get his walk in the afternoon when I have morning classes and, when I have afternoon classes, I will walk him in the morning. So there is no need to fret on his account or call the RSPCA or anything.

Magazine Run

As is usual with me I like to spend my Saturday afternoons reading magazines - the New Statesman, Economist and Private Eye. I was interested to read an article by Peter Tatchell, a quite gracious response to the outing of Simon Hughes. Tatchell had reason to be bitter. Hughes beat him in a bitter election campaign in which Tatchell was vilified for his sexuality. The Lib Dems went along with the homophobic current of the time and Simon Hughes was a part of it. So it is ironic that Hughes has turned out to be bisexual. Had he not competed against a noted gay campaigner it would not have been so apposite. I can understand that Hughes did not to be candid about his private life until he was really given very little choice about the matter. Tatchell did himself credit by not crowing over the discomfiture of his one-time rival.

Early rising

I am having to reset my body clock. Next week I start commuting to Cambridge. That means I have to catch a train at around 7.30 am as I have to be at uni by 9. To do that I have to get up at 6 am. I am not accustomed to rising at that hour. All this week I have been setting two loud alarm clocks at 6 am. Once and once only I stopped the alarms and rolled back into bed but on the other days I have been good and I have got up even though it is still dark at that ungodly hour. I had an added reason for early rising today as I had an article to write. I finished it and emailed it to the editor two days before the due date. I have not got any particular expectations of my course in Cambridge other than I hope it opens up new horizons. The course is on internet management and web design. Should be good.

Languishing Musical Instruments

I always feel a bit sad when I walk past Cash Converters in town and I see a host of musical instruments displayed in the window. I wonder what money crises have forced the sale of these various instruments. I see flutes, trumpets, guitars and more. Did the owners give up because they had no talent, no time or was it just an urgent need for cash? Likewise when I flick through the CAB notes and I see that clients have got into problems with hire purchase agreements for instruments. Music is a beautiful thing and it is a shame that monetary considerations have to intrude.