Day Off Week 46 2019

A fairly typical day off this week. I read the new Private Eye and the newspaper over coffee. There was some transferring of files from one computer to another and some blog work. I also finished two books I might have mentioned, Michael Messenger on Elgar and Laurence Binet's novel come reportage - very interesting style (a bit of a pain in places) - on Reinhard Heydrich and his assassins. Also some TV later.

Day off week 44 2019

One of the tasks of most days off is to put away the clothes that magically appear washed and ironed every few days. My wife is a hard woman who expects me to actually put them away. Alo this week I spent a little while putting the hundred and more books that seem to have accumulated around and under my bed over the months into a rickety booksheld brought in from elsewhere. Otherwise I had a ood long chat with a friiend in North Wales by phone and read Private Eye and most of a little biography of Elgar that I picked up in acharity shop recently. There was alos time for blossing and trawling through my computer archives sorting things. I added several pieces to my pulished articles blog. See here.

10 Great English Classical Composers

1. John Dowland
2. William Byrd
3. Henry Purcell
4. George Frederic Handel (actually a German, but resided in England for a large portion of his life)
5. Edward Elgar
6. Frederick Delius
7. Gustav Holst
8. Ralph Vaughan Williams
9. Benjamin Britten
10. Malcolm Arnold

Elgar Museum

On Saturday I took two of my sons and four others to a camp reunion in Worcester. I quite enjoyed last year's trip but the constant rain this year combined with one or two other things to make it not quite so hot a trip. The best thing perhaps was stumbling across the very impressive Elgar Birthplace Museum in Lower Broadheath. I'm not well up on my Elgar (1857-1934) and the following things struck me.

1. Though very much a Worcesterhsire man his parents had moved there from elsewhere

2. His dad was a piano tuner but Elgar was largely self-taught

3. He was not really famous until he was in his forties

4. He lived in 25 different places including Hampstead (Severn House has now been demolished)

5. His wife was 9 years older than he and not a Catholic by birth

6. She was in fact the grand daughter of Sunday School founder Robert Raikes (no wonder the family refuused to attend the wedding)

7. he had an excelent sense of humour evidenced in various visual jokes on display

8. He was one for fads including bicycling and chemistry at different times

9. He was very interested in gramophone records and made several recordings; he opened Abbey Road Studios in 1931

10. Despite many honours including a Lordship he thought of hismelf as an outsider (as I have remarked before this is just the way some of us feel - it was not due to his being RC, etc, I'm sure).

Nimrod

Heard this on the radio the other day. I don't think we've had calssical music on here before. Shows I'm no snob. Just love the way it builds.