Saying "Hello!"

Someone said to me last week, "You really like computers, don't you?"

Well, how someone would get that idea I do not know. I have a computer. I use it. But then people have their own private way of understanding things sometimes. (Means: they are not following what is going on!).

Once I was walking along with some people quite happily and a girl said to me I suddenly looked really really depressed! She was a psychology student who was frightened of birds. Honestly, the world is full of strange and wonderful things, isn't it?

So, I only like computers in that they help people communicate. They don't work very well (yet) and our communication is not perfect (yet) but they do help, I believe. And I will take anything that helps keep the world together. So, OK, I like computers...a little!

*******

I was having a shave earlier (first time this has been mentioned here, so at least you know I was clean and washed on January 30th 2006 - make a note of that) and I happened to glance at the shampoo bottle. For some reason I don't use shampoo in the oceanic quantities that others appear to so I have had this one for a long time. I don't know how long, but if I told you you wouldn't believe me. I do not have long hair though...

I looked at the bottle and it says "To help prevent hair loss"! I had no idea it was for that, and I bought it with my own hands, brain and eyes. In my confusion I almost started to apply the shaving foam to my head (thinking about shampoo, you see). So it wasn't true what it said, was it? It nearly increased my hair loss by 100%!

*******

Did you see the picture at the top? How does it make you feel? I think it's good. GOOD!!! Let's try and get that feeling today, shall we? Please please please!

That's all for now. Hope it was good for you. Desk coming tomorrow (so I will stop going on about it). Will write to you from a better position. If I can connect our wires back again...I suppose the computer has to communicate with itself before I can speak to you. Like with us, a few little things have to get sorted out before we can communicate properly and say "Hello!". Before that there may be some disconnections and power problems. But keep going and we'll work it out in the end. Even if we all feel separate like a broken mirror, we are all in this world together trying to work it out. Together, not apart. Soon we can make it all like in the picture. Or do you have your own picture?

Love, Philip

Tết

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!

Happy New Year Vietnam and Vietnamese people!

Happy Chinese New Year also to others!

Sorry if I missed your own New Year out! If I did it's because I know very little about anything!

Listen, You

Now listen, you. I know you are eagerly awaiting the next exciting episode of "No Pun At All"! But think of the suspense! When in 1893 Arthur Conan Doyle left Sherlock Holmes's body wet and mangled somewhere in or around the Reichenbach Falls, people had to wait three years for his return:

"Well, sir, if it isn't too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you'll find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street, and very happy to see you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir. Here's British Birds, and Catullus, and The Holy War–a bargain, every one of them. With five volumes you could just fill that gap on that second shelf. It looks untidy, does it not, sir?"

I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again, Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life. Certainly a gray mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand.

Anyway...like Doyle I will very soon bow to public pressure and you will be able to read lots more, just like the old days, the rosy days of 2005 when precious jewel-like chapters of my thoughts awaited you on almost every visit to this page.

But the main thing is that I do not wish to bow to the pressure of sitting at this interim-desk any longer than I absolutely have to. Much more of this typing and I will end up a crab-pacing humpback like Richard III or poor deaf Quasimodo.

[There's a really funny scene in "Notre Dame de Paris" (Victor Hugo) where Quasimodo is taken before the Magistrate. They are both deaf!]

The purpose-built desk is near, so very near. It could be arriving any day now, along with other vital domestic furnishings. Until then you will have to be kept in suspense a little longer. Just one more dark unknowing moment of time as I keep you dangling on the sticky (one might almost say tacky) spider's thread of my masterly, thrilling, writing...

But lo, what is this? We have created a whole new chapter even in spite of all the obstacles we face!

Oh joy! Oh the thousand raptures of heaven!

You see, you were never forgotten, you always get your bit of typing from here.

Bye!

Cold Cream

Ah, the old days. It's eight years since I won my own weight in Ben and Jerry's ice cream. That was 155 tubs in those days. And I knew that, even though I might not be warm (ice cream isn't, you know), whatever happened, I would always have something to eat.

Today I still have about 30 of the vouchers left. They're out of date now, but if I get them changed for new ones the cool diet plan can begin again!

Juice consumption today: 10 oranges. Preparing the system for possible onslaught of sugar-rich frozen dairy dessert product?

Demanding

Do you know, I am playing a piece with someone that is so difficult...I have to practise it!

It is the Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata (piano part).

It has been a shock for everyone, I know. But maybe it is just a consequence of my new playing approach.

Sometimes the soloist has been more demanding (=interesting, or interested) and I have needed to practise - e.g. Liszt Totentanz, Brahms D minor Violin Sonata, can't think of more at the moment. Normally if somebody doesn't demand justice for the composer (they have different priorities, perhaps) it would just be strange to try to go further into the music, so we don't, and they are quite happy.

But this piece is too difficult to do that.

And anyway, I'm interested in Rachmaninoff.

I'd better get on with it!

Spineless

Ow, my spine!

Here is a temporary computer table which, when combined with a temporary piano stool, produces a temporary feeling of needing spinal surgery of some kind. But, it is not serious! My desk (which is serious) will cure this problem, you wait!

*****

Today's juice intake: 3 satsumas + 2 carrots + 1 orange, 1.5 satsumas + 0.5 carrots, 1.5 pink grapefruit + 0.5 limes. I think. I didn't make a note of the exact details.

There's a nice bag of pears waiting to go the same way!

*****
Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925)

Moszkowski is a lovely composer, genial, friendly and charming. The music is supposedly very light and of negligible quality, but, to me, it seems to be the perfect vehicle for conveying Moszkowski's ideas, perfectly conceived and perfectly executed.

That word, charming, is a bit of a dangerous one. Perhaps it is used so as to mean "nice, but with no substance or importance". But charming, enchanting, to me indicates something that can captivate you completely. I think that if you can open yourself to listening to Moszkowski (for example, Guitarre, Op. 45 No. 2, or Etincelles, Op. 36 No. 6 - and these are just two quite well-known works among many others) then you will find a world that you live in completely until the music is over, and maybe part of it lives in you afterward.

It is possible to hear performances which do not enchant in this way, so please pass over those and look for others. I suppose I could recommend pianists like Josef Hofmann and his contemporaries, but you would be hearing recordings of them, which is not the same as hearing them in real life, sadly. Pretty good though!

Why not play it yourself? People used to play the piano a lot, you know, once.

*****

A lot of fruit is being delivered tomorrow. And there is practising to be done. And you to think about!

Goodnight! UK Time!

Still alive!

OK, I am back.

It's hard work being ill - I won't be doing it again if I can help it.

Now there is lots to do, some of it even being connected to piano concerts! A lot of it is connected to buying tea towels and other domestic-focused activities.

I don't know if I will be dragging up much useful information for you, since I have all these things to do. I think, by the time I have my desk installed, it will be a lot better for that sort of thing. But then there may be lots to say even so, before that! I always say I will have nothing to write about - and when this blog has a readership of one, we will know why!

Fear not, my pretties! My fingers are back at the keyboard. And they haven't been on any kind of keyboard for nearly a month...

See you soon.