Remote though they are, even the Outer Hebrides are not far enough away to escape the far reaching tentacles of European legislation. It seems the quirky, rhomboid shape of the passing place sign has offended the Keepeurs of the Livre de Standards (see Note 1), who have dictated that they must be replaced by square signs, an example of which below.

Locals remain phlegmatic.

Note 1 – No attempt is being made to single out the French for blame, I just can’t do any of the other European languages very well.

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Ubiquitous feature of travel in the Western Isles of Scotland. A transient meeting place of generosity, where people wait for oncoming vehicles to pass, or to allow people uninterested in photo opportunities to overtake. Invariably involves a smile, a wave, or a short, polite parp of the horn.

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Feels like months, but it’s only really been 2 weeks. Five ferry trips and one uninflatable inflatable bed later and I’m in the pretty little village of Port Ellen on the South West part of Islay, with a sun tan that rivals the one I had after two weeks cycling in Vietnam. The sun’s out and the landscape is dramatic in its intensity of blues, browns, greens, purples (that’ll be the thistles) and yellows. The skies are very picturesque with huge cloud formations which change every minute in the blustery wind. Arran was controlled wildness. Gigha was small and friendly with spectacular white beaches. Islay is so far magnificent in its big open moors stretching miles. I drove past some men hand-cutting the peat for the Laphroaig disillery today, then saw it stacked up in the distillery itself. The next island will be Jura. That’s another kettle of fish. Big jagged mountains and lots of dark looming clouds. Happily, unlike the bed, the tent has taken everything thrown at it so far. Have bought a new one which needs checking out later. Photos at a later date when I’ve got them off the card.

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It’s one o’clock in the morning and I’m sitting out on the decking with a nice little glass of wine. It’s completely still. No breeze, no traffic, no inner-city noise at all. Of course, the odd seagull is still at it. The worst is over on the seagull front, though, since Liam, my next-door neighbour, took this year’s abandoned fledgling to a rescue centre. It had found asylum in my driveway underneath the branches of the Chilean (or is it Argentinian ? – I can never remember) potato plant. I tried hard to give it water, and even opened a pack of smoked salmon for it. But it was too frightened and kept running away. Do seagulls like smoked salmon anyway ?? I’m glad it’s in safe hands. The noise the young ones make is horribly pathetic, and, what’s more, really piercing – and I can leave the house now without being mobbed by its parent. Anyway, the point of the story is that I have seen through midnight, the time at which I go from being on holiday, to being unemployed. It’s a lovely night. I’m comfortably warm in my shorts and T-shirt. The future is ahead of me and it’s going to be good.

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Walking through the alleyway on the way home from my photography class last night I heard someone coming up behind me suddenly bursting into song.

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature’s recipes
That brings the bare necessities of life

Whereupon I felt it incumbent on me to add “You better believe it”. He replied “Yeah” and trotted off into the darkness.

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The red van’s been parked there for as long as I can remember. It’s brand new – in the ‘never-been-used’ sense. The once-deep-red colour has faded over the years and is now approaching a dirty pink. All this time, through wind and rain, and the odd blizzard, the red van’s been left unattended. It’s supposed to be the emergency vehicle and has a load of medical equipment in it. At least, so I’m told. I’m sure the battery must be dead by now. Is anyone emergency testing the emergency vehicle ??

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There are eight lovely little blackbirds enjoying themselves in the sun on my small patch of meadow. It’s a very safe place for them. No one goes out there, and the landscape contractors are not due back for a while. They fly off every now and then towards the trees in the car park. They’re great, big trees; eleven of them, in a strip of grass left untarmacked. Someone once told me that the trees represent the eleven players of a cricket team, and that at one time the factory car park was the first cricket pitch in Wales. I think that’ll be a factory myth. A cursory google proves nothing. Looking through the trees I can see there’s not much activity across the road in the SPAR distribution centre; it’s all quiet. It’s quiet here too as most people have been bussed up to London for a company Barbeque to celebrate its centenary. So I’m having a quiet afternoon watching life go by outside. And I was right about the buttercups, they’re all starting to emerge again.

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It’s a beautiful, still, sunny day outside. The hot air is trying to move the branches of the trees, but without much success. It’s the sort of day that when you’re indoors you want to be outside in the sun, and when you’re outside, you want to be indoors because it’s too hot.

The landscape contractors are back, and have obligingly parked their white van by the ‘Contractors Parking’ sign. There’s a man driving a lawn mower around my patch of meadow. He’s sporting a yellow, sleeve-less, high-viz top. I feel like asking him whether he’s got any suntan lotion on. We used to make it here, and there’s plenty in the staff shop. But I won’t disturb him. He doesn’t look particularly friendly. The daisies and the buttercups are gone, which is a shame as I was enjoying them. But they’ll be back very soon – the irrepressible force of nature will keep the contractors in employment all summer.

There’s a growing mound of freshly-mown grass in the back of the van. There are probably thousands of landscape contractors all around the country, right now, contributing to the nation’s freshly-mown grass mountain. Where does it all go ?

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The phone goes ping, ping. Someone’s poking me.
Oooh, a text. Who can this be ?
A thought, a plan, or maybe just a wave, which
I save, because it has enriched
My day. Then I send back my reply, and try
To be witty, and clever, but mostly it’s meant
To return their compliment.

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I’m looking out of the window. It’s a bright, blustery day. The branches of the trees are swaying, and the birds are being blown about. The scudding clouds are casting fleeting shadows over the landscaped lawns. The grass was cut last week, but the dandelions, buttercups, and daisies are already back and moving in waves with every gust of wind. The road beyond the car park is full of cars coming and going. Everything’s moving, big and small. Except me. I’m just sitting here watching.

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We’re on the Tesco stage at the Millennium Centre tomorrow.

Singing some songs that as yet I haven’t seen and don’t know.

I’ll be standing at the back doing my best as anyone would,

I really hope I don’t do an impression of John Redwood.

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 Ingredients

1 Large, crusty, unsliced white loaf

Butter

1 Jar pickled baby beets

Salt to taste

Equipment

1 x side plate (or larger depending on the size of your bread) for presentation

1 x bread knife

1 x knife, fork, teaspoon

Using your bread knife, take your large unsliced loaf and cut two thick doorstop slices.  If your bread is of the variety which tapers at each end (eg. a Bloomer), make sure you have two slices of the same size.  Butter your bread liberally across the whole face of the slice.

Next, open your jar of Baby Pickled Beets.  Note – it must be baby beetroot as the bigger variety can sometimes be too crunchy which detracts from the overall quality of the result.  Using your teaspoon, select your baby beet, removing it from the jar to the plate.  Take your knife and fork and cut the beetroot into generous, chunky slices.  Arrange on the buttered bread.  Apply seasoning as appropriate.  Place finished sandwich on the same plate that you used to cut the beetroot as this will give you the opportunity to soak up all that extra vinegary, beetrooty, loveliness.  Serve with large mug of steaming black filter coffee.

Variations

Some schools of thought state that the beetroot slicing should be on a separate plate.  They are wrong.  Others dictate that pre-sliced beetroot be used, and sometimes even the crinkle cut variety.  I can understand this approach as it does take a step out of the process, and avoids dying ones fingers purple, but it does mean you cannot express your individuality in the chunkiness of your beetroot slices.

Warning

Loading your sandwich with too many beetroot chunks can result in mid-bite overflow.  If you’re going to do this, make sure you’re wearing appropriate protective clothing.

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Approaching the last line of the page.  Big long trill on the C for 8 bars.  Here we go.  One two, two two, OK turn now. Three two, four t.  Come on, turn.  Five two, TURN THE PAGE.  Turn to look at desk partner.  Seven two. AARGH.  Too late !  It gets complicated on the new page with mixed bars of 2 and 3.  One two, one two three, one two three, one two, one two , one two three.  Is this bar a two or a three one, and precisely which one is it ?  It’s nearly half a page before I find the way back in.  Note to self.  Write TURN HERE six bars earlier and in bigger letters.

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“This is a further and final invitation for passengers Davies and Burton to proceed to gate sixty eight for flight T3 4386 Eastern Airways to the Isle of Man”.  I didn’t know who passenger Burton was, but passenger Davies was definitely, and inescapably me.  Pushing aside the immediate feeling of unfairness, I hastily polished off my well-earned glass of wine, gathered my belongings, and hurried off in the direction of the departure gates.

It had taken me three and a half hours to get to this point, and had started with the mid-morning decision to leave work at midday, a little earlier than planned.  A warning bell had been clanging all morning after Classic FM’s traffic and travel news at 8.30am.  The usual place.  The right turn at St Fagan’s.  After her usual introductory banter about bagels, or her evening out yesterday, Jay-Louise Knight had announced that there were serious problems on the M5 somewhere. I couldn’t remember where.  I decided to err on the side of caution and set off very early for Birmingham airport.  So when I hit traffic in a very unusual place I was initially quite confident.  I had plenty of time.  But an hour later and scarcely two miles further on, I was showing signs of stress, and was wondering whether my ticket was flexible enough for a free transfer to the evening flight.  But I needn’t have worried.  Although there were further threatening ‘Queue Caution’ signs, none of these came to pass and I arrived at Long Stay Car Park 1 with enough time and in a calm state of mind.

The screens in the main departure lounge had showed I had twenty minutes before boarding, and I had decided to relax with a glass of wine and look forward to the weekend ahead.  “This is a further and final invitation for passengers Davies and Burton to proceed to gate sixty eight for flight T3 4386 Eastern Airways to the Isle of Man”.  It certainly hadn’t been twenty minutes, and I definitely hadn’t heard a first call.  By the time I got to gate sixty eight, Passenger Burton had got there before me, and I was the last to step aboard the bus, taking in my stride the faintly accusatory glances from the eight other passengers.

As we soared over the Irish Sea I looked down on the water glinting in the sun, and found myself smiling.  A weekend at home in Peel ahead of me.

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It’s always an interesting moment seeing the CPO programme list for the next year.  There will always be some pieces I like balanced by some I’d rather not have to bother with.  This year was no different, and scanning the e-mail I took an involuntarily sharp intake of breath when I saw ‘Tchaikovsky Symphony #5’.  What a treat – fantastic.  I won’t say which pieces prompted a groan !

Tchaikovsky symphonies are packed full of delights and challenges for your average first violinist (and I am a very average first violinist).  Lovely tunes, fast passages, grunty bits for effect, subtleties that need a great deal of skill and refinement, and sections which, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what you play because you’re being drowned out by the brass anyway.  They like doing that.

Sitting waiting to start playing there won’t be much going through my mind, but the sense of anticipation will be powerful, boosted by doubts about all the personal little tricky corners which, in rehearsals, I haven’t quite managed to get to the bottom of.  At least this time we don’t play at the start – I can sit and compose myself a bit more until we join in with the rest of the strings. 

Once we get going the audience fades from my consciousness, and it’s just the music.  It sounds clichéd but it’s true.  There is so much to concentrate on that awareness of anything else would be wasteful.  Am I playing exactly with everyone else ?  Are the notes right ?  Am I counting the rests properly ?  Will I get that high note right this time ?  Am I playing loudly enough – am I playing too loudly ? Is my bow going in the right direction ?   And they’re just the basic technical details.  Am I managing to deliver what passes for music, let alone Michael’s interpretation of it ?  That’s the key question, and the one that time after time, brings us all back for more.

We move through the music, pumping adrenalin just as much in the really quiet bits as in the loud fast sections.  We get to relax and swing with the tunes.  Some sections are more difficult than others and need more focus and wide-eyed, unblinking concentration.  My favourite part ?  The horn solo in the second movement.  From my vantage point in a large section of violins I always think it must be a high-pressure moment for the horn player, and am silently urging him to relax, do his best, and enjoy it.

After all the false summits of the last movement, and past the bit where the brass drowns out the strings, we reach the end flourish.  The baton stops.  A short pause.  Then, we hope, the applause.  The audience’s appreciation is the icing on the cake.  If you’ve enjoyed it half as much as me, you’ll have had a great evening.

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