Matthew Walton’s Blog

Yesterday I received word that my recorder teacher has sent to the ABRSM my entry for grade 5 treble recorder.

The exam’s not likely to be until the first week of December, but I’m already scared. What with NaNoWriMo and practising for the exam, I think November’s going to be a busy month.

Now to make a chart of scales I need to learn and start playing them all three times a day.

Well what do I write? I don’t really feel like much has happened to write about, but then again I do feel that I should write something, at least to prove to all the Livejournal people that it is worth sticking their heads out of that particular little world to look at the rest of the Web from time to time. If only free LJ accounts acted as RSS aggregators…

But such issues aside, I do seem to be finding a lot of people on LJ lately including Ciry and Chili from NWTSweS, a great pleasure. I should have tracked them down a long time ago.

Supposedly I have a concert on Friday with the Society of Recorder Players. This is find and dandy, and I can actually play the music for a change (it’s tenor stuff and none of the tenor parts are particularly complicated — especially the tenor part for Country Gardens which, save for the occurrance of one dotted quaver, one semiquaver and one triplet, is so dull as to be difficult to practise. Unfortunately it is, as with many tenor parts, fairly important when you look at the overall sound of the piece).

Although I do moan about boring tenor parts, I am fairly grateful I’m not playing descant. Not only are descant parts frequently more complicated, but if you get something wrong… let’s just say everybody notices.

Now I need to get hold of someone from the SRP and find out what they tend to wear to concerts.

Or in my case, my computers. They’re in the new flat, I’m in the new flat, my other stuff is in my new flat and the upshot of this all is that I’ve moved into my new flat. It’s not perfect. Some things need fixing. Some things utterly defy belief or logical explanation other than sheer negligence on the landlord’s part (although it also makes one wonder about the previous tenant). I get no phone line until the 25th when an engineer can come over and look at it, and ADSL’s likely to take a week or so after that. Fun fun. Quick overview of the kinds of things that are wrong with this place:

• TV aerial’s pointing at the wrong transmitter
• Bathroom light switch pullcord base is behaving like it wants to come out of the ceiling
• Curtain rail in the living room wants to fall out of the wall
• Oven is filthy and the elements appear to be damaged
• Windows are sometimes difficult to close fully, although they’re improving with use and judicious application of WD40

That’s the broad overview of course. Some of it I should have caught when I looked around — next time I will know to look in the oven, for example. Just because the top’s clean doesn’t mean the interior is.

However, this place is a good size — not too big, definitely not too small. It has a washer/dryer, it’s on the first floor, I’ve got my own front door, curtains, decent windows, a dining table, a sofa bed, lots of wardrobe space… it’s good. Just need to get internet and these things fixed up and it’ll be wonderful.

Although I would rather like to redecorate…