Still At The Low End

It occurred to me this morning that much as I was enjoying the bassoon sounding rather jolly, if not downright mellifluous in various baroque goodies, I was neglecting its exploitation by the great moderns, especially Dimitri Shostakovich - always a man for unsettling rumblings in the lower winds. So I put on his Symphony No 13 'Babi Yar' with Bernard Haitink at the helm in a recording I acquired back in 1988 when I was beginning to understand just how deeply serious music could be.

It was a bit of a mistake, I must say, to play the symphony at a good volume. The loud bits are more than just loud. They are panicky loud in a way that gets under the skin, even when you might expect the composer to be essaying a bit of triumph. Actually he just doesn't. I still have got no idea what the final movement is supposed to be doing, except for being weirdly sarcastic about the cowardice of those who put their heads down to survive.

And the slow movement Fears, featuring the most uncomfortable tuba introduction imaginable, takes the notion of the unsettling to the edge. The aural equivalent of an anxiety attack.

At The Bottom End

The music for yesterday's gym session was Walter Becker's Circus Money, an album I've come to regard as up there at the pinnacle of Steely Dan related material. For some reason I was particularly struck this time round by the low wind sounds on a couple of the later cuts - God's Eye View and Three Picture Deal. I think these emanate from Roger Rosenberg's bass clarinet, but wherever they're from they wind wonderfully through the songs in question, giving them a kind of whimsical weight.

After the session I was inspired to seek out a bit more of the low stuff and hit upon the notion of searching for bassoon-based music on YouTube. Happily there's a lot, which means I've got a considerable play-list of such for the long weekend.

My two favourites so far both involve female players of remarkable talent. Marlene Ngalissamy plays a Vivaldi Concerto with consummate taste, blending in rather than dominating, and Katharina Matzler does something similar in a splendid piece by Mozart. The sheer youth of the orchestra playing the latter is a bit startling but even more gratifying.

I don't suppose the bassoon has much glamour about it. Perhaps that accounts for the purity of the musicality of these performances?

Running On Empty

At the end of what felt like a long working week I am tired. Very. Felt sleepy in the late afternoon despite having slept well for the last few nights. Didn't feel like going to the gym, but went. Got a decent session in, which has left me drained. Half enjoyably so; half just plain empty. And in need of a bed. Which is where I am now going. 

A Bit Of A Treat

Just finished a more than generous helping of shepherd's pie. The variety patented by The Missus. I'd stored it in the refrigerator after she'd cooked an abundant supply yesterday evening. It was cold and utterly delicious. And, let's face it, Gentle Reader, no matter how good a day you've had, you haven't been able to enjoy a treat of such epic proportions.

Don't mean to show off, but that's what I'm doing. And I have the emojis to prove it: 😁😁😁.

Hard Thinking

Spent an hour early in the day in a sort of meeting-cum-briefing on AI in education. I'm guessing that similar sorts of meetings are taking place in schools and colleges all around the world. Felt sorry for those poor souls in various organisations dedicated to learning who have to develop some sort of policy or strategy or whatever to cope with what seems to me a genuinely radical moment in world history or world culture or the history of education or whatever. This thing is big and I can't wrap my brain around it as things stand and things are not going to stand still.

It's all very exciting and very destabilising and very frightening if you allow yourself to think those kind of thoughts. As a younger colleague perspicaciously said to me, You're lucky to be retiring soon. Yes, I am.

In Employment

Relieved to get notification today that the Ministry of Manpower has decided to give me a pass to continue working here in 2026.

After celebrating with a cuppa in SAC I got to thinking about my employment history and its attendant good fortune since 1971. Remarkably I've never not been able to work and earn a wage when necessary since I was 15. I got my first paid job working on a production line in the summer holidays of that year, when the school-leaving age in the UK was 15, making me eligible for factory work, and easily got jobs over weekends and vacations from that time onwards. Oddly enough the only period in which I struggled to get a job was in the summer of 1978 when I was applying for a teaching job, my first, and no school seemed to want me. Lots of failures in interviews and lucky to get taken on at Rawmarsh Comprehensive just ahead of the beginning of the school year in September. Which was a particular relief since without that first month's salary I would have been not just stony broke but worryingly in the red. 

Since when I 've never been out of work. Lucky, eh?

Entirely At Ease

Just before her arrival back at the ranch in the early evening, Noi texted me: I am entering the fate. For a moment I was taken aback by the foreboding tone of the message until I figured out the typo. A lifetime spent marking students' work is occasionally useful in broadening one's understanding of the world and its unexpected nuances.

Indeed, it's fair to say we have enjoyed the opposite of an ominous evening now that normality has been restored in the household. Just got back from a relaxing walk across the road to the supermarket, and about to tuck into the last of the quiche. The only fly in the ointment being that Noi is off on her travels again in the middle of the week as she is going with some sewing chums to Indonesia. No doubt it'll be a fruitful trip and in that sense a good thing, and she is already planning the supplies for my good self, which is another good thing. But whether the loudness of the music I'll be playing over the National Day weekend is compensation for the emptiness of our little home is a moot question.

In the meantime I'm just enjoying the moment. And the quiche.

No Real Comparison

Finished Normal People this morning. An engaging read, though I just couldn't connect with the concerns & lives of the young people at its centre. I suppose that's why I had no idea why it ended as it did. What exactly Connell and Marianne are looking for, other than each other, whom they reasonably easily find, I can't figure out. And don't really care, since they are doing pretty well in their lives, as far as I can see. Aside from their odd periods of depression and the like, which strike me as being just a bit non-essential.

On the other hand, the very real concerns of the characters in Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain (the last novel I read prior to Rooney's) made perfect sense and gripped me powerfully. I can think of more than one bit that was almost too sad to read, but I'll settle for naming two. The first, the sequence in which Shuggie's mum Agnes eats a pub dinner with her well-meaning boyfriend, Eugene, and he encourages her to drink again after a year of AA-assisted abstinence. You can see the relapse coming and the strange sense that's no one is really to blame makes it worse. The second, the bit in the taxi when Shuggie is off on a mission to find Agnes and the driver assaults him. Or nearly does. In that case the reader is allowed some temporary relief. 

Mind you, other than the fact that reading the novels back-to-back has precipitated these broad points differentiating the two I don't honestly see much of a reason to compare them. They're both well-crafted pieces of writing and it's good to see novelists of some depth achieving what appear to have been popular successes.

Domestic Concerns

Noi has travelled up to KL with Rozita to visit Sharifah, who's in hospital at the moment, and to check on the on-going saga of the new floor in our house there. So I'm left to cope manfully with the basics of feeding myself. Fortunately, more than ample supplies have been laid-in, including exquisite quiche and curry puffs to die for. So no need to be overly concerned about Yours Truly.

On her departure The Missus uttered a gnomic comment about the likelihood of my playing music at a reasonably loud volume. Which is what I'm doing now, so as not to let her down. And, sort of simultaneously, I'm getting on with some reading. Fafa lent me her copy of Sally Rooney's Normal People. Sort of engaging in its exploration of love & sexuality, but not exactly Proust. And not what I'd think of as normal. But each to his own, I suppose.

A Time Of Enchantment

Reading of the death of Allan Ahlberg this afternoon I reminded of that period in my career that was in some ways dominated, happily so, by the enchantment of a number of great writers for young readers. I never actually taught anything by the Ahlbergs but was bowled over by the brilliance of The Jolly Postman and that got me thinking of a series of drop-dead classics by Leon Garfield, Philippa Pearce, Robert Westall, Penelope Lively, Joan Aiken, Jan Mark and Jan Needle, to list a quick seven (which was my response to the obituary.)

Of course, you can't go back, can you? Except you can: through the magic of great story-telling.