Spring is in the air

Hurrah! It certainly lifts my spirits to have (a little) heat, sunlight and colour.

There are beds and tubs of gorgeous flowers all around uni. My favourite bed is outside the music building (Armstrong Building) and has flowers in hues of blue and purple (surprise surprise). This photo has part of the flower bed and looks towards The Arches and the Toon. The music building is to the right. Note the sunlight on the left!!!

And Jane, there are bluebells down the road. It makes me smile.

A Bad Day

Although it started quite well, today was not such a good day.
I had a meeting about poster designs for my final recital. The date has FINALLY been set for 5th September and Emily (a folk singer on the course) and I will be doing our recitals in Hall 2 at The Sage. This is very exciting. However, Christine Hanson, THE cellist who plays on EVERYONE's Scottish fiddle CDs here, the one person I had organised to play with me can't do it on that day!!!!!!! So now I need to rethink the whole thing.
This afternoon we had a masterclass. I played pretty badly. :(
So then I did my washing - a monumental task which takes 2 hours because I have to go over to Richardson Road undergrad Halls to use the laundry. Which only has 12 (horrible industrial) machines for approximately 1200 people, so there's always a wait. Then it's best to stay there while the washing machine is on because they sometimes stop and you have to restart them. And you really should be there when it's finished or someone waiting for a machine will take out your clothes - usually dropping your most intimate items on the filthy floor - and dump them somewhere.
So I stayed and did some reading about old-time fiddling in Georgia. And once I'd put my washing in the dryer I went home to start preparing dinner. Except when I got home Hamed was cleaning the cooker because we've got a kitchen inspection in 2 weeks. (He's keen.) And this was great except he needed my advice because I 'have the best idea of hygene'.
So I went back to get my laundry, stopping for a nice chat with Otis who's a first year folk student who lives in 'Ricky Road', who was supposed to be studying for his exam tomorrow, but was leaning out of his window instead.
When I got back to my place (again) something smelt burnt. This is not good because all the rooms are fitted with smoke detectors. So I'd just started preparing my dinner when lo, the fire alarm went off.
So we all trundled outside to wait for the firebrigade. Who came and used their nifty smoke-sucker machine to get the smoke out of next door's, where some twit had burned their dinner. And then they nicely suckered the smoke out of our house because somehow the two houses are connected. (Someone burns their dinner next door, our house fills with smoke and our fire alarm goes off. Good system.)
I think I finally got to have my dinner at 10:30pm - very Continental. And I've been sitting in my room with the bathroom exhaust fan on and my window open and the heater on. And trying to breathe. Tomorrow will be so much better.

The Very Busy Week

Tuesday evening I travelled down to Durham with friends to see Methera, an amazing folk string quartet. They were stunning. It was a lovely concert with beautiful sensitive playing and a range of traditional English and Swedish, and newly composed tunes. It was very inspiring.
Wednesday I travelled to Arwinton, about an hour and a quarter north-west of Newcastle, for a concert with the Stage 1 folk degree students. I've been singing in their vocal group all year (the same group I sang with at my concert in November). I also played in their large ensemble. It was a successful, well-attended concert in a lovely old church. The vicar (?) was very welcoming and supplied loads of sandwiches and cakes. Oh how English! :)
Thursday night I had a rehearsal of the film music I played in February because
Friday night we recorded aforementioned film music. It was a 4 hour session (which went well), but when I arrived home at 11pm I decided that hunger over-ruled tiredness and baked some biscuits! Cashew butter biscuits, just slightly gooey. Yum!
Then Saturday I trained it back to Durham for a day of seminars on music and meaning. They were mostly interesting, but the highlight may have been eating my packed lunch on the lawn of the Cathedral. The music department of Durham University is right next door to the Cathedral. And Spring has finally arrived!!!! It was lovely, although even after 5 rain-free days the ground was still damp. And we I got back to Newcastle I ran into Maeva and Luke on the lawn outside the campus theatre and joined them for a drink. You've got to love long evenings.
It seems that now it's a bit warmer everyone flops onto any patch of (damp) grass in the sun. Although, because of the numbers of people here, your personal patch tends to be quite small. (I never realised just how large an area my personal space was...)
AND the sun is quite special. After months of hideousness, it's hot (oh no - I'm turning English! I think 20 degrees is hot!) and light and there are gorgeous flowers everywhere. I even saw a number of sunburnt people on Saturday. I, on the other hand, look decidedly faded. I realised that I've had 12 months of winter!!!
On Sunday, Bridget's parents came to Newcastle to have lunch with me. They were travelling from Scotland to London. It was really great to see them and catch up on the news. Kinda nice to have someone's mum around on Mother's Day too, particularly as it wasn't Mother's Day here.

Cruise on the Ouse

I've been quite busy in the last couple of weeks (oh what a surprise).
On Saturday 3rd May, Chris and I went to York to play for a 50th birthday party. It was a boat cruise with a BBQ down the River Ouse. On a boat called 'James Cook'!
We left at 7pm, and as it's now light until about 9:30, we had more than half the trip in the dusk. It was so beautiful! York, of course, was lovely from the river, but we also travelled further along the Ouse. Imagine being in all those British movies where young persons are punting on full rivers or picnicing on the banks. Chris thought Jeeves and Wooster, while I thought Wind in the Willows.
AND I had a ball playing with Chris; lots of old favourites came out. There was even some dancing. I even came home and wrote a cute little jig to commemorate the wonderful evening (not even a drop of rain). It's called Cruise on the Ouse. It rhymes you know.

J&J go to Oz

The time had finally come for our ways to part. We said our goodbyes in Paris, as I headed back to Newcastle and J&J went on to Singapore, then Brisbane. They felt the heat, and I came back to rain, drizzle, greyness and cold. And uni. And lots of work.
The biggest commitment was the University Orchestra playing Mahler 8 with 3 choirs and 7 soloists at The Sage Gateshead. IT WAS HUGE. In every way. There were over 300 people on the stage, and the audience was full which was really exciting. Also, it was really hard, not only in the parts but also just co-ordinating that many people. The first section went really well, but there were a couple of 'moments' in the second section. But all in all it went pretty well. (Yes, there are only 2 sections and it was the whole concert; an hour and a half of constant playing. I was fairly tired afterwards!)
It was exciting to pull it off, and exciting to play in Hall 1 at The Sage. (This is special.)

Off to Paris

This post is dedicated to all my little violin players who played this tune...a lot.

Uni started back on 14th April, with recitals by some of the Masters students (not me) which were great. That afternoon J&J and I flew off to Paris! It was the first time there for mum and me.

Spring in Paris is lovely. It was still pretty cold (especially on the open-top bus!) but the skies were clear. We saw all the famous monuments and sights. We went up to the observation level of the Tour Cite (City Tower), which had fabulous views of the whole city.

We visited the Louvre ( yes, we saw the Mona Lisa) and Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur. These places seem almost unreal, and yet familar. It was almost overwhelming as Paris is SO huge and so full of people!

Despite not having used French for 20 years(!), I understood some of what was said to me and generally made myself understood in French. Although , it's a good thing most people spoke English too. :)

Scotland

After a day in York together, J&J spent a few days touring Scotland without me so that I could do some practice and study. I joined them afterwards in Edinburgh and then Glasgow. The more I see of these places the more I love them.
In York we did the (very cold) open top bus tour of the town. We also did Betty's. Actually, it was Big Betty's, and so yes, we did queue. But we had a lovely lunch. And dad also had the 'little rascal' specialty, a sultana-filled scone/ biscuit thing.
Edinburgh is such a beautiful city. We went to the Castle (of course) where we saw a bridal party descend the Lang Stairs (complete with umberella-carrying attendants) and the Scottish Honours and Crown Jewels. Nice.
Down the Royal Mile is Mary King's Close. Although there are many closes in Edinburgh, this one has been 'preserved', because the Royal Exchange was built over the top of it. We took a tour of the close, seeing the tiny houses, cellars and even a byre (like a barn). Conditions were quite cramped and unhygenic. Great tour though.
We found a Scottish restaurant for lunch where mum was introduced to Cullen Skink, a smoked haddock and potato soup. She took notes so she could replicate it at home. I was introduced to the local whisky, Glenkinchie. I, too, took notes.
We finished our Edinburgh day with a little trip to the Whisky Centre, next to the Castle. Lovely. The first time I visited Glasgow I really didn't like it. However, I am starting to appreciate its charm, which is quite different to Edinburgh's. We visited the gorgeous Macintosh House at the Hunterian Museum. I would like a house like that! I bought myself a cross-stitch kit of The Rose.

We then visited the Willow Tearooms (designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh) for lunch. Nothing like immersion when you've got a theme! It's such a beautiful place to take tea.

We spent the afternoon at The Tenement House, a National Trust run house in Buccleuch Street. After practising saying the street name for a while, we looked through the house, which had been owned by one lady for many years and had been unrenovated. It showed what life was like in a Glasgow tenement at the start of the 20th century.

I love discovering these little gems as well as the bigger tourist attractions of all these places.

More Snow!

After our trip to Belfast, we headed down to Hedon (near Hull) to stay with Linda and Allan. They took us to Lincoln, where we visited the street market, had lunch in a very nice vegetarian cafe and went to Evensong in the stunning cathedral. High Anglican is very ceremonial, but the beautifully articulated voices did bring to mind the Mr Bean episode in which he falls asleep, 'sings' hymns and eats a lolly during a service!
That evening back in Hedon it snowed. Again. In April. Mum was very excited and thought we should get photos of the 'frosted' church across the road. Of course, I was the photographer; nobody else was that excited...

Geneology Part 2

For mum's birthday we took her to Belfast to see where her father's family, the Coulters, were from. We found the two houses where he had lived before emigrating to Australia. They were quite near the beautiful Queens University in the city.

We also did a taxi political tour of the city, which was interesting but very sad. There is still a wall dividing the Falls and Shankill Roads. The checkpoints on the crossroads are still locked every night!

We also did a great day tour up to the Giant's Causeway and around the Antrim coast. It is such beautiful countryside! We loved it all.