Journal Entries
Düsseldorf meet - August 2008
Posted Aug 9, 2008
So it's 6.45 on the day. I've just logged in to see if anyone's sent any e-mails about meeting points, or if the meet thread has any additions - 
OMG - 32 new posts on the "Arrivals and Departures" thread!
OK - meeting point organised. Jolly good. I'm not taking any luggage except a large-ish handbag which I've been using for the past weeks. Just popping a pair of clean in that. If that's not TMI.
I've got all my Mendelssohn on the MP3 player and am taking the score along with me. That'll be my heaviest item. But I'm missing an important rehearsal today and shall be three hours on the train from Mannheim to Düsseldorf. The rest of the time on the train, when I'm not humming to myself, I shall catch up on some sleep.
Weather's a bit enigmatic. It was wet yesterday, as prophesied. It looks like it will be fine today, but, then, it's a 3 1/2 hour train ride northwards from here and storms at this time of year are violent and local.
See you tomorrow then, hootoo. I've got 30 mins to get showered and go 
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Latest reply: Aug 9, 2008
Hope they don't come in threes
Posted Jul 20, 2008
My father is now very old and weak and the doctor sent him to rehab recently to get a bit of strength up. We also suspect she (the doctor) wanted to give our mother a rest, as she's (my mother) attending to him 24/7.
He was due to come out of rehab this weekend and was gaining strength and confidence brilliantly. I had booked a flight to go and see them this week, together with my husband. We were due to go from Tuesday to Friday (yesterday). We would stay at my sister's, to relieve my mother of some of the burden of bed and breakast, and also to keep an eye on sis's house, as she was spending the week on holiday in Greece.
Well. It didn't work out like that. With his new-found confidence, my father was apparently convinced he could get from the bed to the loo in the night without a frame. He fell and bruised his eye on Friday night. On Saturday he tried again and broke his thigh bone, just below the hip.
I phoned my mother on Saturday morning and was told the news. My father was whisked into the hospital by lunchtime on Saturday. The hospital is further away and my mother doesn't trust herself to drive that far, so she has been getting lifts from her wonderful neighbours. The three days that we were there, I was able to drive her into visit him.
We changed our plans and stayed with my mother as she was alone in the house anyway, and my husband weeded the whole garden and I cleaned out her kitchen cupboards in the extra time we had there. On Wednesday evening we were having dinner together after having visited my father in hospital and my sister rang from Crete. We told her how things were going and asked how her holiday was. "Fine, until I broke my arm!" was her reply. So now my mother has a daughter with a broken arm the other side of Europe and a husband with a broken leg in a hospital just too far away for her to drive.
We returned home on Friday, leaving her with the neighbours again for the visits to hospital. My father's bed in the local rehab clinic (which is near enough for her to drive to) where he was before, is now taken up, so, although he is fit enough to go back there, we're going to have to wait.
Unfortunately, the two weeks (now extended) without him to look after haven't brought our mother as much respite as we had hoped. She discovered that the car was due for its MoT, and had to organise that, which she'd never done before, and lots of little things like dripping taps kept cropping up. The past nights she hasn't slept for worrying about how my sister will manage, living on her own with the use of only one arm.
It really is amazing that my father was repaired so easily, they just fitted a pin into the broken bone. He had no bone diseases or atrophy or arthritis, which would have meant a hip replacement. After a chest infection was beaten by strong antibiotics, he is actually perfectly healthy. He is just very emaciated and weak, and a pitiful sight really, considering he used to be the life and soul of the party and every inch the salesman, jokes and patter always at the ready. He recently said that he's sorry, he can't even summon up any interest in the conversation about my sister's garden in her new house, although gardening has always been my parents' passion. So, while we're glad he doesn't go on about politics any more (it was getting ridiculous, but that's another subject), the mental decline due to senility has been very rapid. The main problem is that he can't think of words and doesn't even bother now, so he'll drift off in the middle of a sentence, lose concentration, or leave such long gaps that you think he's gone to sleep.
(Both my parents are 88 this year.)
So I came back home from all that and logged into hootoo to find a very similar story on GB's journal. Both of us have found solace in the Proms having started, and, of course, we have both come here to bemoan our woes.
This was supposed to be my summer holiday this year. The first week I gave up my holiday, as a girl in my department was chucked out on her ear for doing something naughty, and I said I hadn't booked anything (although we had planned to go to Ireland), but I said I'd still take the second week off because I'd booked a flight to England to see my parents. That week was spent driving back and forth to hospital, so I can hardly say I've had a holiday yet. Maybe we'll be able to do something at Autumn half term.
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Latest reply: Jul 20, 2008
Summer Solstice - a perfect evening
Posted Jun 22, 2008
Last night, as Gnomon has just reminded us, was the Summer Solstice. And where were Mr and Mrs Trillian's Child?
As usual, I have to explain a lot before I can put you in the picture.
Firstly, the State of Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate) holds a series of loosely connected summer festivals. Our town, which is small but has a thriving Music School, takes part with a very high standard of concerts and extremely original ideas.
Secondly, the town has been a military base since Roman times, the last fortifications were built in the mid-19th century, but by the time the building work had finished, the wars were over and, anyway, technology had moved on and the system the structures were based on (in the style of defensive architecture first devised by Vauban) was outdated. There has not been an invasion or attack since. So the entire town is surrounded by large brick fortifications, which were never used for defence purposes. From the 1870s or so, right up till today, however, the town has been populated by the military, using it as an arsenal and training base. The fortifications, still largely intact, have been recovered from weeds and ruination and are being put to various administrative and cultural uses. The music school is in a magnificent horseshoe-shaped section of the fortress. The inside is an open courtyard – the parade ground – and the buildings surrounding the "horseshoe" are soundproof, cool, and austere in design. But …….. underneath them is a spooky and endless labyrinth of passages and ammunition storage spaces.
Thirdly, back in 1972, some enterprising local lads organised a festival, Woodstock-style, on an island in the Rhine. The 50+-year-olds of today still remember this event and their eyes glaze over as they remember……… http://www.germersheim.de/kultur/popfestival/inselgruen.html (link in German – no translation available, as far as I could find) Just a glance at the poster and the big names listed will make you gasp. All that for 22 DM in a gnat-infested one-horse-town in an area that is to this day practically unknown to the rest of Europe.
Fourthly : Each year, as part of the summer festival, the music school holds a series of events in its catacombs, called "Walk – don't Walk". This originally actually used a New York pedestrian traffic light, but there must have been technical difficulties, and after about the second year, it just stood there, unlit. Now it's disappeared completely and just the name "Walk – don't Walk" (yes: in English) remains. The audience is divided into 5 groups and each starts at a different location (usually one of the ammo storage spaces, which are larger openings at intervals along the narrow passages) . The groups remain at each station for 10-15 minutes, and listens to music of all sorts – chamber music, jazz, recorder ensembles….or some other performance art (dance, poetry, literature, improvisation) The performers stay in their stations and repeat their little 10 minute act five times (some vary them). The evening continues with a gathering in the horseshoe or outside in the old trench – now a grassy slope with a Mediterranean atmosphere. Food and drink are provided. This is followed by a single event of about 45 mins in the main courtyard.
Now to get to what went on last night.
The "Walk don't Walk" was a "special". There was an extra station, and there were also performances by larger groups before and after the event. The music school puts no little emphasis on jazz and big band music, and the evening started with their Tango Ensemble (with strings and brass, double bass, piano) playing three tangos – the best-known one being Piazolla's Libertango (think Grace Jones singing "Strange, I've seen that face before, seen him hanging round my door).
The performers are always a mixture of teachers, pupils, and a few professional musicians who are friends of the school.
Walk don't walk offered a mixture of
- a saxophone quintet, playing really lively music,
- some piano pupils (11-year-olds performing excellent 
renderings of Chopin Nocturnes)
- an artist who did some painting accompanied by one of the music school piano teachers playing Gymnopedie by Erik Satie.
- Some friends of my youngest son were also performing some 70's guitar music by torchlight. The audience didn't want them to stop (probably mostly glazed-eye 50+-year-olds!)
- a recorder ensemble playing some jolly pieces on a fairground theme
After the break (this is a small town, everyone knows everyone else, so plenty of conversation!), we came to the highlight of the evening. The stage filled with all the musicians present that evening and, as it got dark, we were given a performance of four Pink Floyd songs, in memory of that festival all those years ago, complete with big screen effects. The brass players all got to play solos, the string players came really into their own in "Money", and the guitar teacher (Sören who taught my son to play the blues) had worked really hard to get the sound right. The lead vocalist was a local hero in the gospel and pop music scene. Even the gnats must have been in awe - I hardly got stung at all. Right up till the end, it was warm and dry. All round, an amazing experience, especially when they brought out miniature paper hot air balloons, about 2ft in diameter, open at the bottom, with little candles attached, which members of the audience could hold until they rose up into the clear, starry night sky.
To all my friends on h2g2: Wish you were there.
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Latest reply: Jun 22, 2008
So much to say?
Posted May 26, 2008
I was just looking for an old thread that I remember being around not long after Rupert. (No I don't like the name Rupert either, but at least everyone knows what I mean if I call it that).
Anyway, I didn't find the thread, so I gave up eventually, and just kept going back through the conversations in my list. I can't believe that I have been in 6400 conversations. And that was only with my present persona - before that I had another account for a couple of months. Thanks to everyone for enriching my life with your knowledge, criticism and comments over the years.
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Latest reply: May 26, 2008
Home again
Posted May 15, 2008
I'm off to see my parents again this weekend. I don't really go often enough; my father is getting really old now and is so pleased when I come and visit them. I can't stay longer than 3 days at a time, though, as it tires them.
My mother at 88 is still amazingly fit. She's always doing crosswords and watching quiz shows on the telly, and shouts out the answers - she gets loads right, and is always pleased when she beats the boffs on University Challenge.
My father left school aged 13 but has made great efforts to educate himself and always managed very well. My mother stayed on until she was 17, leaving with a glowing report and the comment from the headmistress: "Iris will make a very good shorthand typist". Oh, the heights that women could aspire to in those days. Quite vertiginous. She retired as a very successful Personal Assistant, and only learned to use a computer long after covering her typewriter in the office for the very last time.
She is still in contact with her boss, who is now retired himself, too, and he and his wife visit them occasionally. My mother cooks them a lovely lunch and they get along very amiably. Her boss, by the way, is a minor celebrity in his own right. In the racing world, needless to say.
Anyway, 
I've done my online check-in for the journey out. The train will cost me 16 pounds return to Newmarket from Stansted. I get the ticket at the airport. only got to pack now, Only a little bag, as R*ana*r want30 euros for checking a bag in. Shampoo andstuff I keep at my parents', to avoid havingtoo many liquids in my bag. and set my alarm for very early on Saturday morning.
I return on Tuesday. Funnily enough, last night I got an e-mail from a school friend who has just started as a professor at a University in the Midlands, inviting me to his inaugural lecture on Wednesday evening. I was quite tempted to change my flight booking and go. I wouldn't have understood a word of the lecture, but, hey - if there's free drinks.........! 
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Latest reply: May 15, 2008
You can call me TC
Researcher U154942
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