Tooth and Blood

My dog Milo attacked a cat the other day. There was a lot of blood. The cat escaped apparently unharmed and, as Milo was on the lead, I managed to pull him away. On closer examination the blood seemed to be coming from Milo's mouth. I looked at his teeth and one of his canines looked wobbly. That was the end of our walk for that day.

Instead I took him to the vet. Milo displayed no pain or discomfort. The vet told me that Milo had poor dental hygiene. He recommended that it was best just to leave the tooth be and let nature take its course. The tooth would fall out eventually. We agreed that I would come back after my holiday to book a tooth cleaning session. This will mean a full general anesthetic. Afterwards I shall have to clean his teeth on a regular basis. I did try to clean his teeth when he was younger but he protested every time and I didn't enjoy these sessions either but having seen him lose a tooth I feel bad.

The dog is not at all bothered. When I took him for a walk today he found one of those paper cases from a bun. Not content with licking the paper case he swallowed the whole piece of paper - crumbs and all. I feed my dog proper dog food but he just scavenges in the park and it is a habit which seems to have done him no favours but how do you stop a dog from scavenging save by keeping it on a lead the whole time and if you do that you'll only have the vet on at you for not giving the dog proper exercise.

Pygmalion

OK, OK, I've had my little rant. It is peace now.

The writing is going well. I seem to thrive in a fake Italian cafe. It is funny how work can take shape if you simply plug away at it for two hours a day. Initially all I seemed to produce was absent-minded reveries but gradually the words became more focused. It looks like I have characters and I have a plot. The action set in Scotland, the place where I grew up though I am not, I hasten to say, Scottish.

This all begs the question is it OK for an English person to imitate a Scottish accent? I can think of plenty of people in Scotland who'd object and who'd deride any attempt to do so but one of things I want to explore - from the safety of my Norfolk home - is the interplay between Scottish English and English English. I can well remember my school friends laughing at my London accent. I felt slightly hurt but I wouldn't say I was bullied. My friends used to give me elocution lessons to tame my southern vowels. I think they were inspired by My Fair Lady but I reckon they rather missed the point of it. After all what obscenity did the good lady yell at the races?

My speech may have been mocked in the playground but in the classroom I thrived. The kids with broad accents were pilloried by the teachers. The funny thing is when I got to university some of my public school peers used to long for regional and working class accents. I find it all very confusing.

Why cancer should not be in the closet

I've had some feedback from a friend who objected to my mentioning the illness of my cousin. He wasn't sure that it was appropriate material for a blog. For a while I felt guilty but when I went back and read what I'd written I think it was clear that I was shocked and concerned for my cousin. I wasn't trying to sensationalise a cruel illness just for the sake of having something to say in a here-today-gone-tomorrow blog. I haven't said anything in this blog which I regret and I doubt that Mark would take offence. The guy is computer-savvy. I don't know that he reads this blog. If he does then he is welcome.

I think public expressions of grief are ok. I don't know for certain but it looks like my cousin may die. That makes me very sad and it is not against the rules in my blogosphere to express compassion and sympathy towards a relative who has cancer.

Learning Fingerings

Bassoon fingerings in the lower two registers are reasonably sensible. Lift up a finger and you get a higher note because what you are doing is shortening the length of the tube. It is a bit like the fingering on a treble recorder. However once you get into the third octave the fingerings become all peculiar - one finger here, another there, one fingered half-holed one note, full holed the next. It is really difficult to remember. All I can do is play these new notes time and time again and hope that the fingering patterns sink in. I practice until my lip tires out.

Bassoon playing is an odd activity. It is not a solo instrument and it plays either the bass or tenor line - the foundation parts that orchestral music cannot be without but which probably rarely register with the average audience. Needless to say it is a classical instrument. You need a lot of patience to master it as it takes a lot of practice to play in tune. In physical terms it is an effort. The instrument itself is heavy. It consists of eight feet of tubing and it takes quite a lot of puff to play the notes.

So why bother playing? Well in amateur groups there are always too many top line players and not enough bass players so once I have mastered the basics I am always assured a warm welcome in amateur ensembles. It is just a matter of patiently plugging away at my practice and in time I will have lots of invitations to come and play with other people.

Chains versus Independents

I seem to have prompted a bit of debate from commentators on one of my recent entries. The gist of the comments boiled down to this. Are Starbucks and the like just the MacDonald of the coffee world? Are independents any better?

Today I was in a Starbucks in Cambridge and I won't describe the state of the toilets. The room was noisy. There was barely distinguishable piped music playing over the top of a hugely noisy air conditioning system. I had to kill an hour in that place prior to going to my bassoon lesson and I wondered if my hearing would suffer permanent damage from the cacophony around me. The coffee was fine. Didn't eat anything. Wasn't tempted.

The finest cafe I have been to has to be Franco's. Needless to say it is independent. There's only room to perch on stools but people do so for hours. This cafe is in Soho in central London. Behind the counter there are photos of Italian sportsmen and film stars. The place is just steeped in authentic Italian style.

We don't have anywhere like that in King's Lynn. Crofters is ok but I don't like the cakes and it feels a bit musty and it is not a place where I can sit and write for hours. I haven't tried Norberry's but for my purposes I'm happy with Caffe Nero. The place is clean - including the toilets - and the coffee is fine and they leave me undisturbed as I write. What more could I want?

I used to like the cafe at 3 Saturday Marketplace but that shut down because it wasn't making enough money. The same fate obviously met Downeys, another deceased cafe. These independents didn't have prime locations unlike the newcomers to town and they also lacked the seating capacity. The new chains clearly have the capital to buy prime locations and, to judge by the custom, they are providing a service that the King's Lynn customer wants.

If the independents are to survive they are going to have to up their game. I say that but at the same time I think the chains are going to have to avoid complacency. The filthy toilets of the Cambridge Starbucks are a testimony to corporate laziness.

Mixed new on cancer victim

My cousin Mark is feeling optimistic. He is on steroids to help with the inflammation following his brain surgery. The doctors have examined the brain tumour. One doctor thought that the cells bore resemblance to the cells of the gut. If he is right that is very bad news. It means the cancer has spread. However the other doctor disagreed. Mark has chosen to believe the more optimistic outcome and I don't blame him. His father, a retired GP, takes the opposite view. Time will tell.

Quoffing the Coffee

It is my custom to have a cappucino each day at Caffe Nero. I have just the one though I stay for two hours. They never ask me to leave. I use the time to write. I make it a rule to write ten pages a day. I used to use a small A6 notebook but W H Smiths stopped selling these so I now use a larger A5 notebook. Even though the page size has increased I still insist on writing ten pages a day so my output has more or less doubled. I find it much harder to write at home. There are too many distractions. At Caffe Nero I just blank out the piped music and conversation and the chuntering of coffee machines and I write, write, write.

Were I at home I would be distracted by the untidiness of my house or by the attentions of my dog. The coffee is dear but if I think of it as office rental it is not such a bad price after all. I have thought about going along to the library to see if the atmosphere there is conducive to work. I've not been there for ages but the library does have a drawback. It doesn't have a public loo. Caffe Nero does. These things matter if you are a long-stay client.

I can't stand the food in Caffe Nero. The muffins look unappetising, the sandwiches look tired and the paninis look processed to death. I miss the Italian sandwich shops in London where the fillings are all laid out in front of you so you choose what you want. The best of them kept fresh ingredients. I mean you can tell if avocado is fresh just by looking at it. However in King's Lynn there aren't the armies of well-paid office workers so this town is stuck with second-rate food outlets. Don't get me wrong. Caffe Nero does good coffee. The premises are nicely designed. They are kept clean. The ambiance is good and they don't mind me using it as a second office. Just don't eat there.

Scots Studies Continued

I have just spent an inordinate sum on books about Scottish dialects and accents. I aim to become fluent in the tongue. Why? Well sheer curiosity. As I've said before I grew up in Scotland so it is a part of my heritage. I always spoke with an English accent but I did used to have a good passive understanding of Scots. It will be interesting to see what comes back.

I'm intrigued by accents generally. Round hear I don't hear much broad Norfolk. Most of the people I know aren't from these parts. At the college most of my fellow students spoke Estuary English. However I did become totally foxed by a conversation between two labourers. I didn't understand a word from beginning to end so broad were their accents.

At university I did have the chance to study English Language but the professor who ran the course was so dull. I couldn't see then that I would have any interest in his subject but having left university I've read loads of books on language. Dunno that it has made me clever like.

Dog-proof Bin

I love my dog dearly but sometimes despair of his habits. He has worked out how to tip my kitchen bin over and rifle through the contents. These he will distribute around the house. The other night I found a tub of cottage cheese on my bedroom floor. Fortunately he had not worked out how to lever off the lid. The problem lay in the design of the bin. It is a plastic one which can be easily tipped over and the swing lid no longer swings easily on its hinge. So I have just spent a huge amount on a large stainless steel bin with a lid that opens by touch. I hope that it is beyond my dog's ken.

Clearing the Jungle

One of the reasons why I chose my house was that the back garden can be accessed by a path. My house is in the middle of a terrace. I store my bike in a shed in the garden and take it out through the back gate. I used to be able to cycle along the path but this summer it has become so overgrown that I now have to push my bike along the path. When the path goes round the corner it is nicely kempt. The householder whose gates open out onto the path take care to keep the plants under control but when the path turns a right angle none of the householders bar me does anything to stop the undergrowth from taking over the path. It is viscous. There are brambles and nettles and there are buddleias which sprout all over the place. It hardly seems like any time since my gardener friend Angela helped me clear the path but it turned into a veritable jungle this year. So today I took out my loppers and savaged a shrub of indeterminate name. Twigs off this monster have sprouted right into the path at roundabout eye height ie just the right level to make you fall off your bicycle. With great pleasure I lopped off entire branches so the path at that point was clear. I didn't have any green bags to pack away the waste. I just piled it all up on a clear piece of ground but I felt good about it. Once I have cleared the path I am going to put a letter round the houses warning that the path was being used as a tip for builders' waste and gardening waste. I don't know that it will make any difference but it will make me feel better.

Party no Party

There is a party going on across the road. The volume is loud and there are lots of people but I'm not invited. It seems strange practicing the bassoon to the background strains of the Clash. One classical acoustic instrument playing a folk melody versus powerful loudspeakers pumping out the decibels. I could always gatecrash but I wouldn't know anybody. I only know the names of the two children - Fergus and Megan - but I don't know the names of the parents. I should do by now because I have spoken to them often enough. They know my name.

Sudden Fatal Illness

My cousin Mark has developed a fatal illness. He had a fit. The doctors operated and discovered a secondary tumor. Mark is a GP so he must have no illusions about his prospects. It looks like he is going to die. He was married a year ago. He and his wife have a son. Mark also has two step daughters from his wife's previous relationship. I am used to the deaths of people of my parents' generation but Mark is just a few years older than me. He is in his early forties. I just hope that there has been some kind of a mistake and that the doctors got it all wrong.

Relearning Scots

I want to relearn Scots. I'm not Scottish myself but I grew up there and I was educated there. My accent is modified RP, modified by some of the cadences and inflexions of West Coast Scotland. No Scottish person would say I sound Scottish but an English person would find my accent hard to place. I grew up not wanting to sound posh but my way of talking has all the hallmarks of an educated person.

The more education I got the more I was trained to talk in specific ways, first as a literary student and secondly as a journalist. The two modes of parlance conflicted but not half as much as they both conflicted with the vernaculars that I met when I was released from higher education. There I was with my shorthand speed of 120 words a minute, primed ready and waiting to take down verbatim quotes only more often than not my interviewees did not speak RP.

Some go on about sloppy English but I am one who delights in the sheer variety of language and I have company. There are linguists who like to describe the way languages and dialects are actually spoken. They do not prescribe rules about what is correct and what is not correct. So, in relearning my schoolday linguistic habits, it is to these non-prescriptive linguists that I turn in the first instance. I need to jog my memory. I didn't speak with a Scottish accent but I was a fluent understander of the tongue and, for various reasons, I would like to regain my fluency just in the same way as some folk like to learn Italian, French or Spanish prior to going on holiday in one of those countries. I revisit Scotland once a year. It would be nice to go back there with my ear reattuned to the Scottish language.

Kodaly Class

I wasn't going to go. I had any amount of excuses. I hadn't done my piano practice. I'd only done one bassoon practice. The house needed cleaning. You can tell when I am really desperate to avoid a task when I start to think of housework. However I persisted but when I got to the station I discovered yet another reason why I wasn't going to make it. There was a fatality on the line at Harringey and I wasn't sure that the trains were going to run but I gambled on there being a train to take me home and so I made it to my evening class in Kodaly musicianship and I'm glad.

For all my scepticism this class really did have something to offer. It involved a lot of singing using solfa. We sang in rounds and in canons. The others were very proficient and using hand signals. I knew none of that but I did know solfa having being taught it at school. I'm hoping that all this effort will help with my harmony studies.

So why all the doubts beforehand?

How not to motivate

I'm going to do my piano grade 7 this autumn and my attention has already turned to what comes next. I happened to mention this to my teacher Aubrey and he was ever such a pessimist. He just told me that I should concentrate on passing my grade 7. That wasn't the answer I was looking for. I wanted to hear about new and exciting pieces that I would be able to play.

He was equally dismissive of my bassoon prospects. When I told him that my teacher thought I could go in for grade 5 he took it as meaning that grade 5 would be the summit of my achievements on that instrument. In other words he took it as meaning grade 5 was all I would ever be able to do. I don't think my teacher meant it that way. I think my teacher meant that grade 5 should be the immediate goal for me.

I just wanted to throw a bucket of cold water over the man for taking such a dim view of my prospects. I spend three hours a day practicing the piano and bassoon. I do it for pleasure first and foremost but I do expect to make steady progress and I don't pay a teacher to belittle my hopes.

Water Sold Out

Today has to be the hottest day of this year so far. All the shops in Cambridge station were sold out of water and I needed water. This was the day of my bassoon lesson and I needed an egg cupful of water to soak my reed. In the days of film the containers for cartridges for 35 mm film made great bassoon reed receptacles but the advent of digital cameras has scuppered that source. It is amazing. The bassoon is one eight-foot tube doubled back on itself but all that is well nigh useless if you don't have a reed and it has to be a soaked reed too. You can't play it dry and you certainly can't moisten it with anything other than water and water was nowhere to be had in Cambridge.

I did make it to my lesson. I managed to find Trinity's practice rooms without guidance. It all feels very fine walking round the great court but once I got into the room the temperature was a few degrees higher and I could feel sweat pouring down my back. It is a bit distracting trying to play when you can sense dribblets of sweat running down your spine. The lesson got even more anatomical when my teacher explained how to use your diaphragm. "It's like having a crap," she said. Now you know the secret of beautiful music.

Summer of 89

I've just watched the BBC's account of the summer of 1989. It brought back a few memories of what I was doing then. That was the year I finished my journalism course at City and I started work as a newspaper reporter. What I didn't do was go to raves. The crowd I knew didn't go to them though I did listen to pirate radio. I like dance music and I used to like annoying one of my flatmates - an obnoxious rockist bar student - by listening to Kiss FM. I was suspicious of ecstasy. I didn't believe that a drug that good could come without undesirable side effects. I reckon time has proved me right on that score but as I watched the footage of the raves tonight on television I rather miss the fact that I wasn't there to enjoy it all. I can't have been totally unhip. The inevitable soundtrack of hits that accompanied the narrative contained many tracks that are in my CD collection. I did feel a tug of nostalgia as I heard them but the music doesn't have the same resonance for me as the tracks from my younger days.

More gardening

Today I felt the urge to rid my lavender bed of weeds. You would never have known there were proper plants under all that foliage but with a little careful fork work I uncovered those lovely grey leaves. I've just watered them - at 10.50 at night - so I hope the poor things will recover from the trauma of me disturbing their roots. They all seemed to be alive. I am hoping that now I've got rid of the plants that were blocking their light they will be able to grow more strongly.

I think my next most pressing job is to clear the back path. That is more of a priority job than anything in my garden. That path is strewn with nettles and brambles and it is very hard to push a bike through that tangle of plants. I shall need lots of green bags to take the cuttings. As I go to the council offices tomorrow I shall buy 40.

Keeping up with the Neighbours

As I have said before gardening is not my strong point but today I clipped the errant shoots off my dwarf lilac. This shoots were bigger than the lilac, a 3-foot tall standard with a round ball, and the shoots from the rootstock were all but hiding the lilac flowers. Half the flowers have faded away but there are still some buds left and I want them to be on display to the street. I live in an Edwardian terrace so my front gardens are very public and I fear I have let mine grow weedy. I really needs some new plants in to stop the weeds from spreading so. I am considering planting some more rhododendrons as the two I planted earlier this year seem to be thriving. Ideally I would like lots of shrubs about a metre high. They would require minimal maintenance and they would look good the year round. The front garden has to have priority over the back garden because it visible from the street. The back garden can only be seen by me and my neighbor's on either side. It requires drastic action but I am putting that off until I have sorted the front garden out. One problem for me is that I do not have a car and so I can't go to the garden centre and drive home with lots of plants. My mother has offered to come and help me out so maybe I leave plant acquisition until she comes by car and pays me a visit.

Puff the magic bassoon

Today I had my first bassoon lesson with my new bassoon teacher. She set me an interesting exercise in breath control. Position a piece of A4 paper flat against the wall. Blow at the paper - hard enough to hold it in position - and see how long you can keep it there. I can see I will have to time it with my metronome - 60 bpm - to make sure I take accurate measurements. All this endeavour is aimed at improving one's respiratory control, a necessary skill for bassoonists.

She talked a lot about embouchures. To play the bassoon you need to hold the reed in your mouth the same way as you hold a straw in your mouth. If your lips are too tight you will sound sharp and if you are too relaxed you will sound flat. So it is a matter of aiming at that happy point imbetween the two and you don't find it without a lot of practice.

The favoured way of doing this is to play a lot of long notes. By listening to your playing you will come to make those micro adjustments that will result in more pleasing tone and intonation. As a kid I used to hate playing long notes. It was about as interesting as watching paint dry. I much preferred to play something fast but now I have returned to the bassoon I can see the merit of long notes. I have found that at the end of phrases my intonation tends to slip in an embarrassing way and the only way to cure myself of this habit is to isolate the fault and work at it repeatedly in a non-judgmental way.

However I think this teacher will have me playing a lot more than long notes. I had reckoned on going in for grade 3 perhaps, maybe grade 4 but she suggested going in for grade 5. I'm dead chuffed she suggested it. I've looked at the syllabus. It looks tough but she thinks I can do it so maybe I can.

Keeping up with the neighbours

As I have said before gardening is not my strong point but today I clipped the errant shoots off my dwarf lilac. This shoots were bigger than the lilac, a 3-foot tall standard with a round ball, and the shoots from the rootstock were all but hiding the lilac flowers. Half the flowers have faded away but there are still some buds left and I want them to be on display to the street. I live in an Edwardian terrace so my front gardens are very public and I fear I have let mine grow weedy. I really needs some new plants in to stop the weeds from spreading so. I am considering planting some more rhododendrons as the two I planted earlier this year seem to be thriving. Ideally I would like lots of shrubs about a metre high. They would require minimal maintenance and they would look good the year round. The front garden has to have priority over the back garden because it visible from the street. The back garden can only be seen by me and my neighbor's on either side. It requires drastic action but I am putting that off until I have sorted the front garden out. One problem for me is that I do not have a car and so I can't go to the garden centre and drive home with lots of plants. My mother has offered to come and help me out so maybe I leave plant acquisition until she comes by car and pays me a visit.

When the interviewee bites back

Today I read in the Guardian that one if the interviewees in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 has decided to sue the corpulent film-maker. This interviewee is a serviceman who was injured in Iraq. Despite his injuries he still does not condemn the war. Indeed he supports it and he objects to footage of him being included in the anti-war film Fahrenheit 9/11. At first I reckoned he had a point. If he was portrayed as being an anti-war protester then he is owed an apology and possibly a sum in damages. I had no quarrel with that but then I read on to discover that this serviceman was aiming to win millions of dollars. That made me gasp. It just seemed way out of proportion with the damage inflicted on this serviceman and the size of the award could damage media freedom in an adverse way. Some might say that is a good thing. Such people might argue that the media is irresponsible and proprietors will only listen if they face punitive damages. As a former journalist I would disagree. I think it absurd that in the UK you can win hundreds of thousands of pounds in libel damages whereas the compensation for criminal injuries is way below that. Sure a price ought to be paid for unprofessional media conduct but is it right to make litigants rich from the proceeds of litigation? Are words more damaging than, say, a bullet to the head?

Amateur and Proud

Is it cool to play a musical instrument or are amateur musicians an embarassment? That's the question which is being hotly debated on the forums of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.

In the teachers' forum there is a thread discussing whether adults learn musical instruments for theraputic reasons. Teachers have regaled the forum with accounts of how their pupils have unburdened their woes during lessons.

This contention is being loudly disputed in the adult learners' forum. Posters here insist they have lessons to learn music. Emotional dividends may be reaped through study but the primary purpose of music-making is not therapy.

I myself learn music because it is a challenging art to master. I get a huge kick out of mastering a new piece. The piano is a bit of a solitary pursuit but I hope to do some more social music-making by playing my bassoon. Playing in ensembles is a great way of meeting people. Do I apologise for this? Am I embarrssed on account of my musical activities? No way. I'm amateur and proud.