An honest day's work
30/7/2007
I spent today doing a real job, which will eventually involve real money - and it's doing something I enjoy and am (hopefully) quite good at, rather than sitting in tesco scanning beans. I'm recoding and extending a website, and so far things are going pretty well. It's taken me 3 years of being sure I should get a job for me to finally get round to it, and I should mention the slight caveat that my employer is my dad, and that the job wont last all that long, but I'm still pretty pleased to have finally got to this stage. As an added bonus, I'd been thinking about trying to get some sort of longer-term (or indeed a series of other short-term) web design jobs during this gap year, and having some sort of professional experience and what could be very loosely described as a "portfolio" of past work has got to help...
While I'm on the subject...
27/7/2007
...of things I've done today that suprise me, I've spent most of the afternoon with Funeral for a Friend's "Tales Don't Tell Themselves" album on repeat. I'll be honest, I expected them to be hideously screamo, and (screaming or not) there are certainly heavy emo themes: "I stare into oblivion and find my own reflection there"... But that's not important - what is, is that it's good music - not (for me) great music, but certainly not meritless.
Time and again it's been proved to me that you can't judge the music by the artist - or indeed by the reception that your chums might have given to the music. Usually you decide whether or not to give a band a chance from completely irrelevant things, because it does make life much easier... Who wants to be the only person in your circle of friends listening to a particular band - or worse the only one not listening to one. And yet that attitude treats music as simply a tool for easy social interaction, which is to greatly undervalue it.
As far as I'm concerned, music deserves every chance to make it into your life - there's nothing gained by disliking music, and you'll be a richer person if you find there's more stuff that you enjoy. So I try to coach myself to be open-minded, and perhaps I'm making a little progress: certainly a couple of years ago I wouldn't have had Insomnia (Faithless) or Love Hurts (Incubus) on my playlist. Unfortunately, I am still clearly suffering from some prejudice...
If anyone wants to teach me, or broaden my mind, please do ;-)
Never thought it'd come to this
27/7/2007
Although in a way I suppose it was just as innevitable as it was inconceivable. Regardless, I have succumbed to "social networking": I now exist on Facebook... Never fear, there's no way that anywhere other than this site'll ever be the main place for me on the wild, wild web - here I'm in control, and (perhaps more importantly, given my character) spending time here gives me an excuse to play around with lots of code :-).
So why am I posting this then? Not really sure - I suppose on one level it's a confession of my treachery to my ideals ;-) Also I guess it's worth saying hi to anyone who's seen me appear there and has followed the link here - Welcome to my true home ;-)
Of festivals on fields
24/7/2007
And, a we all know, when it looks too good to be true, it probably is... The theory was that only the most uncharacteristically extreme weather could threaten the stage, and there's no denying that we got that. I suppose if it was going to be abandoned, we might as well have done it properly. So the wettest day for 40 years probably applies. We got into school at 8:30, and for a while we were determindly battling the water, and refusing to consider the idea that things might be rained off. By about 11, though, it was clear that we were never going to be able to persuade anyone else to stand and watch us, and the roof of the stage wasn't going to hold much more water either. Decamping inside was hugely depressing - we didn't just lose capacity (that probably wasn't going to be a problem, given how many people simply couldn't get through the local roads), we lost the pro sound and light, and most importantly the atmosphere was never going to be quite the same.
That said, I think things came together remarkably well - we did get a hint of a festival mood in the hall, even if it left James (who does know exactly what he's doing) & me (who sometimes does) in charge of both light and sound, when we were going to be playing during the actual concert. So no live mixing, and we only finished setting up and soundchecking 20 minutes after most of the seats were filled (and 10 minutes before I needed to be changed and ready for my leaver's solo). But that was still just about on time - so far so good. And I played Dance of the Blesséd spirits about as well as I ever have, I think, so it's all looking pretty promising. While the "rock school" bands were playing I had some time off to discover that the pig roast and the strawberries and cream people had braved the downpour - another success.
The next section of the programme was a selection of solos from Les Mis. So I needed to sing "Bring Him Home" again, and (not having a voice for most of the preceding week) I hadn't practised it since March. Bad sign. To say it didn't go well is about the most polite way of putting it, tho in mitigation by the end of the night I was well into a cold as well. I suspect even without that it wouldn't have been as good as it should be, but still...
After that, no real complaints - the rest of the singing passed off fairly uneventfully, if inexpertly (the music res massed choir is never a thing of great finesse). The last worry for me was when we realised a slight shortage of flutes - we'd expected to have 4 and a half firsts (4 and one who plays piccolo some of the time), but Sophie went home in the hope of getting changed and never returned, and our flute teacher (who I was relying on to play the couple of bits that we couldn't do) had never made it. I think I'm rapidly falling in love with the girls we'd brought in from t'other school - they stepped into the breach for the bits I needed help on, and I'm fairly confident we, again, played as well as we'd done all week. So overall, pretty happy with the major bits of the evening. This concert was always more about flute than singing to me - simply because of the shortage of male singers, I've had plenty of chances to sing, but I don't think I've ever played a flute solo for school before. So the important bits worked :-).
The only problem is, that was the very last bit of school. Every other little end has been less real to me, because I've always known the leavers concert was really the final thing for us musos. So that's it then...
Of music res
22/7/2007
It was everything it should have been, really. We worked hard, of course, and I think we were quite successful in that - by the end of the week I think we sounded pretty good... for us... This was aided by the fact that res was longer this year than before (by one day), and, as far as my parts were concerned, by the fact that I get the feeling I was a much worse flute player last year than I am now. This hasn't translated into better piccolo playing, but fortunately we were joined for the second year by a small and intrepid group of students from further afield, 3 of whom are flautists - and most importantly, one of whom is a piccolist. Thus I was free to play my flute, and cease worrying about other nonsense.
Of course the music wasn't all that it might have been - I never have agreed, and was never going to agree with the tastes of our head of music. There were some gems hidden, though. The best of these, to me, were the two pieces that we played as accompanists to a singer - even if the group that did this were given the rather jarring name of "Opera Band"... Essentially the ensemble was stripped down to strings and selected woodwind - for the first of the two just strings and two flutes, I think - which was certainly promising in terms of producing a nice sound. And indeed we did: since the pieces concerned (Orff's "In Trutina" and "O Mio Bambino Caro" by Puccini) are very slow and simply constructed, I felt we really had the chance to concentrate on tone quality, and certainly the short duet section in "In Trutina" (two flutes in thirds against very quiet strings) reminds you why you wanted to play the flute in the first place. Playing as an accompanist was also completely new to me (and I suspect many of us), and I hope I'm the better player for it.
But if we work hard at music res, cliche tho it is, we undoubtedly play hard, too. As much of a disappointment as it was to discover, on the first night, that the Bishop Blaize Inn has closed down (not simply because it was the only pub in walking distance of res, but also because it was a bloody good pub, too) we didn't let it slow us down. In fact, if anything we consumed more alcohol than ever (certainly the fridge door wouldn't close on sunday, but by wednesday between maybe 10-12 people it'd run out). To be honest I didn't really keep up with the imbibing, partly because I don't need to, and partly because, since I completely lost my voice a couple of days in, I decided with heavy heart that I'd have to take a few early nights. But still, many happy memories - and many great quotes - have escaped the week... Though I fear Gill Dando will never speak to us again ;-)
So by thursday evening it was all looking pretty promising for a great concert - and when we got back, and realised the scale of the thing, the excitement really shot up... We had a 12 square metre stage, made of the litedeck stuff you get at real festivals - it was probably even bigger than stage 2 at greenbelt. We had professional sound guys with the same set of speakers that the use at the milton keynes bowl. We had a massive searchlight that can be seen for 10km when projected straight into the air. We were to have the local fire engine standing in the carpark. We even had a big black security guard. It was all looking too good to be true...
Getting musical
13/7/2007
For the next week I'm going to be at the school music residential, preparing for our big end-of-year concert. Which this year, to coinside with the most excellent weather we're having, is outdoors... To be fair, last time was so unbearably hot this will probably still be better, but it is unlucky the way we seem to have picked our weather. What's weird, though, is that every year this is known as the leavers' concert - but this year it's our leavers' concert. Me, Rebs, Pops, Joe, Em and Ollie have been in the department for 7 years, so we've got kinda used to it...
We've been coming on residential every year, too, and it's about the last school thing we'll ever do (I certainly don't count results day...). I think there might be a couple of fairly melancholy moments down at the Bishop Blaize Inn (which we were allowed to discover last year, as lower sixth, and intend to utilise properly this year ;-)). Of course, that can't last too long - there's a performance to be made - and, with the obvious exception of the musicals, it's about the biggest show the school's put on in my time. I'm already getting a little bit of the wonderful performance buzz, just thinking about it.
That's especially strong since, for the first and last time, I'm going to get the chance to play a flute solo. I've always thought of myself as more of a flautist than a singer, but simply because of the normal lack of male singers I've had that side of me displayed far more... But now I get to see if I can make people remember me as a flautist :-D I've decided to do "Dance of the Blesséd Spirits" by Gluck, because I decided I cared less about people thinking "my word, what a hard piece, he must be a really good player" than I did about them thinking "my word that's so beautiful, I think I'm going to cry"... If I can get a few tears (from people other than my mother, who's bound to cry anyway ;-)) I shall be most pleased, however odd that sounds. And there would be very few pieces that are more appropriate for their aching beauty than this. Since I'm not a string ensemble, I can't play Barber's Adagio, after all.
See you in a week - again
What a night :-D
12/7/2007
I know it was a few days ago now, but I've been sleeping off it's effects... If Thursday August 16th is going to be the culmination of the academic work of the last two years, then monday night, July 9th, was the moment we've been working towards on the less studious side of 6th form life - our leavers ball! And it was fantastic - tho not, I have to say, straightforward...
The problem was that, having been on DofE for the past week, I hadn't given much thought to getting some formal wear together. But there are at least half a dozen dinner jackets in the house, I'm sure one of them will fit. Apparently not - and the trousers are far, far worse. So off I go to Moss Bros, only for them to tell me I should've come 6-8 weeks earlier (which is odd, cos I'm sure they didn't say anything when we went a week before my year 11 ball). So at 4 o'clock on monday afternoon, about an hour before I needed to leave, I had no real idea what I was going to wear... In the end Luci and I worked something out, involving a DJ that used to belong to grandpa, a shirt from my dad, and my own suit trousers... it didn't really match, but I dont think too many people noticed. Unfortunately, I was now rather late, since I wanted to put a tent up at the field where the after-party was to be beforehand... it's difficult to remain dignified, even in such elegant atire, when you're running to catch a bus.
But there the troubles ended :-) Eynsham hall is an excellent place to make young scoundrels such as us appear a little genteel, once appropriately dressed up. The food was great, the company was great (tho I have to say some of the other tables were less well-mannered than ours ;-)). After dinner there were the obligatory speeches which, apart from the head boy/head girl ones, weren't too painful, and included the awarding of colours for extra-curricular stuff. Lots of people got the sports ones, of course, so they're meaningless (come on, humour me on this). But I was very proud of the exclusive tie that comes with full music colours... I shall treasure it forever ;-).
There was then an incredibly aweful disco - I know they're supposed to play crappy music, but this was beyond belief... Fortunately, it only lasted half an hour, before we got back on the bus to go to the after-party. There we had a similar DJ set-up, thanks to the ever-present DJ Sammy C, but now we could chose the music ourselves :-) I spent a good hour or so grooving away to toploader, faithless, underworld and the like with Toni and Danny bags (who I'm sure would make for excellent chums on a night clubbing). After trying flaming Sambucas, of course... Well, I couldn't miss an opportunity like that, could I? Once we'd successfully proved Bob's assertion that you cannot dance all day, I could just sit by a bonfire and be content with my friends... A simple, safe happiness.
By about 4 o'clock the sky began to get lighter, and I realised that I had a flute lesson in about 5 hours time, so I really ought to go to bed. It was a shame, because at that stage I didn't feel tired at all, but it had to be done... Still, good times.
Conwy to Harlech
8/7/2007
Give or take a few sqwiggles, and quite a lot of up and down between the two towns, that's the journey we made over the last week. It would probably take an hour in the car (barring the traffic lights), which makes it quite depressing that it was such a strain to do in four days on foot. Part of the problem was, of course, the terrain (both the steep bits that a car would probably avoid, and the ground itself - I've had far more than enough of falling over into bogs, with water up to my knees and therefore my boots full of it)... And the other side of the coin was what Mr Ev described as the worst weather he'd ever run a gold expedition in. All in all, it was not what I'd call an enjoyable week.
So much so, in fact, that I very nearly (and I do mean very nearly) quit after the first day. In many ways I'd be better off if I had, since the next day I celebrated staying on the hill by slicing my hand open in several places. And quite apart from that my body is now thoroughly ruined in the usual places - shoulders, back, legs, feet. Do you get the impression I'm a bit grumpy about the whole thing? At least I'll never have to do it again, since that was the assessment for the top level that DofE runs to. Which probably means I'll never do anything as physically demmanding again in my life, and while that might be a little depressing to some people, it's fine by me ;-)
One thing I should say is that my walking group are wonderful people. I've especially got to mention Dan, who was a new recruit to the Crazy Craigy Lovers this year, but was several times all that kept me going, I think (tho I doubt he'll have known). I owe a hell of a lot to all of them. However, now I'm going to move on from DofE, and lets never speak of it again...