Always the sun!

When not lying prone on the Third Floor I have been revisiting the audio past.

The sun has been relatively well behaved today and allowed (sheltered) exposure to its rays.  I was only tempted away by the offer of lunch in Sitges.  Lunch was unimpressive but there was a moment of temptation.

At the corner of the square with the old church there is a small gallery with paintings, sculptures and drawings by somebody whose name I carefully omitted to discover.

The artist seems to have a predilection for horses and well-rounded women.  The painting I saw was of horses.  Sketchy and almost monochromatic.  But I liked it.  The only problem was it was €500 and unframed too.  But I liked it.  It will remain a nagging little desire at the back of my mind.

The forefront of my mind is taken up with thinking of a poem for my Aunt Bet to read at her funeral.  Given her knowledge of poetry in English I could choose virtually any one of the more famous poems and be sure that not only would she have liked it, but also that she would have been able to recite it from her formidable memory!

As my cousins are not going to have a religious service I will have to fit in with the tone that they use in their writing.  My personal favourite is John Donne’s “Death be not proud” but that might be a little heavy for a service that is going to have Glenn Miller and Moon River as the music! 

I had thought of “Warning” by Jenny Joseph where the light tone and the praise of unconventionality could fit with my aunt but people might wonder why on earth it had been chosen.  I think that Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” might be more appropriate.

Meanwhile the music in the background is the wildly inappropriate Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band on a disc which includes the two classics, “I’m the urban Spaceman” and the Introduction to a music piece that never happens.  God knows the last time I listened to that!  It’s the sort of disc where you have to say it’s a work of genius or an absolute load of rubbish.  Like Monty Python easy flowing imagination veers from inspiration to insipid and you have to take the greatness where you can find it.

The other music from the past has been Rattle’s interpretation of The Planets with the CBSO.  I was loath to listen to the music because I have heard it so often, but there was a lot to listen to in this version.  Some of the tempi were not quite what I would have expected and the texture in the orchestration were given different emphasises to those that I expected.  It was a re-reading which made me listen anew and gave the music a freshness that I didn’t expect.

I am now more inclined to listen with a freer attitude to the Elgar variations and The Dream of Gerontious: I hope he has been inventive with these as well!

My single day holiday is almost over and there is school tomorrow.  But school with a difference: only 9-1 and no kids.  There is, however a special course to integrate Project Based Learning and the Model United Nations on which a group of us is going to spend some six hours working out how to produce a “project” to enable some students to go to the General Assembly in Lisbon in November of the next academic year.

I am not sure that what is needed to make this a success can actually be achieved during lesson time – and I am fundamentally disinclined to offer any extra time; certainly not on my timetable and salary!  But I mustn’t (as I already have) pre-judge what is involved; it is going to be interesting, especially given the group of people who are scheduled to be together for these six hours.  I am prepared to bet that there will only be a core of people who are there for the whole time!

“The Ascent of Money” is proving to be more interesting and easier to read as I continue, I am also finding an overlap between some of the content of “1000 years of Annoying the French” – The Mississippi Bubble and Mr Law feature prominently in both!

Half day tomorrow!