h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, it's over. We're now in the no-man's-land between Christmas and New Year.

All the family came home and on the day before Christmas eve, we had dinner out with my eldest son's in-laws and exchanged presents with them. Back at home for post-dinner drinks and coffee, we also tried out a song which we'd been working on (Daughter-in-law is soprano, I sang alto and the two eldest sang bass and tenor) It worked out really really well and we shall certainly be doing that again!

We didn't get round to opening any presents until Christmas afternoon, what with various visits to church services (sone obligatory, some voluntary). I got a slow cooker, which is amazing, as I've not been able to find one in Germany despite looking at least on line and in some shops. The usual socks, CD's, books and joke articles

This is the song we sang - it's a comical song from the end of the 16th century about fleas. Not exactly a Christmas Carol, but we explained that away by saying there were very likely fleas in the straw in the manger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVFkqkIENys

Next highlight: Son and daughter-in-law left straight after Christmas for a 3-week holiday in Australia and I got a text this morning saying they'd landed and everything was great. Amazing this technology!

Another highlight: Second son is in Vienna practising for a New Year's Eve event where they hope to get a hundred dancing violinists to perform Morrison's jig. http://www.igudesmanandjoo.com/ ... scroll down for the description of the event in English. I've looked to see if it's being shown on TV - if only on the ORF in Austria - but it doesn't seem to be; we'll have to wait and see if it's on the news, at least.

And if you've never heard of them - look for a few Igudesman and Joo videos on Youtube - "Rachmaninov has big hands" for starters.

Morrison's Jig is one of our band's favourite tune.

Hope your change of year proves as good as your Christmas.

MMF

Nice piece of Widmann -- it does sound Christmassy, not unlike his contemporary Praetorius's 'Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen'. Nice singing group too.

So here's the performance in Vienna (youtube warning!). At 1 min 16 sec, you can see my son in the red t-shirt, on the right.

http://www.youtube.com/user/igudesmanandjoo

fantastic. Well done those violinists!