the year of global enshittification

In the year of the accelerating global enshittification of everything, I managed to find some joy in messing with musical instruments in one way or another.

The pirate luthier workshop has been busy throughout the year, with 12 violins, 2 guitars, 2 cellos coming in, as well as a small kora and a lute-like instrument made from a coconut shell yet to be identified. I've recently braved the challenge of opening up instruments, practicing the procedure on violin number 13:

and cello number 2 (a 3/4 from freegle in very poor condition) before applying it to more interesting instruments. Next step is to glue and patch up the cracks, oh and eventually I'll have to stick the instruments together again. Watch this space.

I'm especially excited when I discover old (from the 1960s or earlier) European instruments. Highlights this year include my new favourite violin, my new session violin, and a 19th century cello. The instruments list at the end of this entry is likely the last one where I include almost everything (give or take a kora and a coconut lute), and in the new year I will have to figure out a mechanism to archive the older entries and keep the length of the list to a manageable size.

In terms of music making, the holiday chamber groups have become a regular thing this year, covering nearly all of the Wednesdays that didn't have orchestral playing. The chamber music collection is growing more slowly these days, as I keep finding things that I own already, such as the Mozart and Haydn quartets. There has also been another FOFO orchestral playday with another Farrenc piece (the overture) and we borrowed last year's Farrenc symphony for a term to play it at Cowley at one of our feature evenings.

There have been a few EuroPlus sessions at the bandstand, but by the time autumn came around, the session merged into the Bal minuscule which now happens on the fourth Sunday of every month (except December). The Euro session has now moved to the Half Moon which is much more convenient for me, and I'm loving the new session at the Oxford Blue which is also within easy reach. I also love the Sunday sessions at the Lamb & Flag - this US based ethnographer studying British pubs on his summer holiday caught a second of me playing fiddle in his short video clip.

After hearing an inspiring oud recital in October, I've finally managed to get my head round the playing of the oud I bought a few years ago - it is basically an upside-down cello, with the four melody strings going ADGC and the bass strings just repeating the DG an octave below. As the string length is similar to the cello, the fingerings work, they are just mirrored.

I completed the second season of my lost cities blog series. Using the series as a travel guide for trips with Deutschlandticket, I have explored Idstein, Gütersloh and Hamborn this year, as well as revisiting Wuppertal (where I explored the old new town hall) and Münster.

During last year's November visit to Düsseldorf I invested in a Gildepass which gives you access to cheaper tickets in arthouse cinemas. During the one-year running time of the pass I have used it 12 times (making an effort to also attend the other local cinemas that accept it, not just the one in my street), and seen some amazing European movies of the sort that nowadays don't get shown in the UK any more. Including: Münter & Kandinsky, Oxana, La venue de l'avenir, Franz, as well as two that later actually did make it to the UK, namely From Hilde with Love and The Marching band.

A selfie from the fleamarket at Aachener Platz, Düsseldorf.

There has also been a full set of 24 features in Current Biology again, listed in this Mastodon thread. And I did get some really interesting books to review for C&I, while also making an effort to review on this blog most of the books I just read for fun.

I did not review Cory Doctorow's book "Enshittification" which I am sure is excellent (judging from the excerpt published in the Guardian), but I did manage to use his word in my review of the book How to think about AI, as AI has been the turbocharger that sent enshittification into overdrive this year. Ooops. looks like the word has been edited out at the last minute. Maybe by some enshittifying AI that didn't like being called out.

updated 2.1.2026 to add the Lamb & Flag sessions and the last sentence.

Previous year reviews (I don't always write one):
2024
2022
2021
2018
2017

bridges built and strings attached

Plenty of reasons to get depressed over the quarter century that humanity has now spent accelerating the destruction of our planet, and the outlook getting darker still, so here's to the small pleasures and tiny achievements attained on the sloping deck of a sinking ship.

My nascent pirate luthier workshop has been fairly busy this year. Essentially, I keep posting on Freegle that I aim to restore and rehome unloved violins that are essentially worthless because their value in good condition would be less than what a professional would charge to restore them. I also buy cheap violins when I find them on gumtree or fleamarkets for £ 30 or less. There have been 15 violins coming in this year (numbered 5-19 as there were 3 last year, and counting started with the one from my aunt in 2022), as well as a vintage guitar and a venerable old banjo. I managed to restore and give away eight violins this year, one returned to its family after restoration, another four play very nicely but still live under my roof, and four are still broken. The latest blog entry with a list of the violins restored is here. Funnily enough I just came across a short documentary on TV5monde about a woman who does a similar thing with umbrellas ...

In other string playing news, Cowley Orchestra's very own double bass, The Captain, also lives under my roof and has seen two exciting outings this year, each time accompanied by Jenny the cello who joined me in 2023. In April, both instruments (and me behind the cello) played in an orchestral workshop day culminating in a performance of Louise Farrenc's third symphony (op.36), organised by members of the Freeland Orchestra. In July, both instruments (without me) appeared in the international youth orchestra featuring musicians from Oxford's twin cities an performing Orff's Carmina Burana in Oxford Town Hall.

Me looking clueless at the orchestral playday preparing Louise Farrenc's third symphony.
Photo by the official photographer of the event, Phil Hargreaves.

New instrument acquisitions include two lovely bass recorders as well as a garklein, expanding my range to six recorder sizes. And by the end of the year I also found a bag to carry all six sizes at once. I also acquired two violas of different sizes. I like the sound of the bigger one better, as one would expect, but it is also more tiring to play, so I still haven't quite made up my mind about them.

Which means that I could now easily supply an entire string quartet with instruments. As it happens, some quartets have been played during the holidays when Cowley Orchestra was taking a break. There has been only one bandstand session due to weather and early closure times conspiring against us, but there were five indoors meetings in various constellations. Inspired by these, I have further expanded my music collection and recently reorganised the lists of quartets and trios.

I've paused my "Every picture" series after the 100th episode but revived my lost cities blog series about interesting places that pop up in my family tree. The series has also inspired my travels in Germany, using the flat-rate Deutschlandticket to get around practically for free from my base near the amazing new regional station Düsseldorf Bilk. This year, I have (re)visited Aachen, Bonn, Krefeld, Bad Nauheim, and Wuppertal. I am beginning to wonder if there is a travel memoir waiting to be written about these adventures - watch this space in the new year.

I've completed another year with a full set of 24 features in Current Biology, they are highlighted in this mastodon thread. That's always a very satisfying thought at the end of a given year. And the 24 features of 2023 are now all in the open archives.

One of my features was about the dodo and other extinct species. Only after sending it off I realised that I own a dodo hat.

Own photo

My latest book, Intertwined, has come out in October. I have yet to create a proper page for it on my crumbling old website, so in the meantime this blog entry will have to do.

Speaking of books, I have reviewed quite a few memoir-style books, hoping for inspiration for my musical family history memoir and similar endeavours. I've published chapter 1 of the musical memoir as 100 years of cellotude on this blog starting here.Chapters 1-3 in German are available here. All my reviews, including the scientific ones for C&I are tagged #bookreview.

What I didn't do. It just occurred to me after turning down a lift, that I haven't been inside a car of any kind (not even a taxi) since June 2023. Haven't been on a plane since flying to Bucharest in 2016.

Executive summary: ship still sinking, band still playing.

Previous year reviews (I don't always write one):
2022
2021
2018
2017

a light in the dark

Coming out of the Lamb and Flag this Sunday, I thought St. Giles looked rather pretty, so in lieu of xmas cards which I have given up many years ago, here's my festive offering with best wishes to all:

own photo

double bass revisited

I had double bass lessons with a rented instrument between age 16 and 20, but haven't had access to a bass since. When it emerged that Cowley Orchestra owns a bass in need of rehousing, I offered to look after it, so now, for the first time in nearly 40 years, I get the chance to play bass on a regular basis.

First impressions: this thing is bloody big and heavy - I must conclude that the instrument I played way back when was a small size version. I am told 3/4 basses are now quite commonly used even in serious orchestras, but they are only a few centimetres shorter. So it is quite possible that the music school rental instruments were 1/2 sized ones. There wasn't a choice of size, I remember they had a whole row of identical ones. The big one also takes some serious amounts of energy to play, so I'm only doing something like ten minutes a day right now.

I don't want to confuse my cello-sightreading brain by reading bass, so I am on the lookout for easy tunes that I know already and that sound nice in the bass register. A first example is the German carol Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, of which I have made a very rough video, just as a first impression of the sound of this bass:

inspired by the Berliner Blockflöten Orchester who do it much better, of course.

For something a bit more lively, Bella ciao would be an option, but watch this space. Might try an ironic rendition of Silent night too. And unless a real bass player steps up to use this instrument at orchestra, this month may well mark the beginning of a bass period in my zodiac of instrument obsessions introduced last month.

lost railways

some thoughts on

Last trains: Dr Beeching and the death of rural England
Charles Loft
Biteback Publishing 2023
(original hardback 2013)

For the last 30 years and a bit I’ve been living in Oxford and very happily too. The one thing that bugs me is the state the railways are in. Although Oxford is located centrally and in the middle between the two biggest cities, there are no electric trains here and overall fewer trains leaving the station than, for instance, the small regional station of Düsseldorf-Bilk (which is my base when I travel in Germany, see photo and caption here). As recent events have underlined, the country has spectacularly failed to invest in modern high-speed rail, meaning that people routinely take planes from London to Manchester, Edinburgh or Glasgow.

When I want to go to London, I take the coach, as the train is unaffordable and diesel-powered anyways, so not much greener. When I want to see some other cities for a change, I take the Eurostar from there – cheaper, faster, and more comfortable than travelling within the UK.

There are no railways connecting us to neighbouring Oxfordshire towns except Didcot and Banbury which happen to be on the main line (the recent reopening of the Chiltern line has added Bicester). Going to Witney, for instance, you spend an hour each way on a bus stuck in a permanent traffic queue. Buses go every ten minutes or so, so there would have been enough demand for a train that would only take ten minutes. No trains to Abingdon, Wallingford, etc either. The absence of regional lines corresponding to the German Regionalexpress directly affects our quality of life here as people from the wider region drive into Oxford by default and thus clog our streets and pollute our air.

It has dawned on me over the years that these regional rail connections existed once, but were cut in the 1960s, mostly in the wake of the infamous Beeching report, an attempt to cut costs by closing unprofitable lines, stations and services. In Last trains (a general reader book based on the author’s earlier academic monograph on the topic), Charles Loft examines the politics around these cuts – which has relevance beyond the railways as the politics is similar around today’s dismantling of the NHS.

Reading it both as the history of the railways we’re missing now and of the other public services we still have but may lose soon, this is quite painful but important. The author tries hard to present a balanced view between the social usefulness of railways and the political imperative to save taxpayers’ money, and it is kind of comforting that it could have become much worse, and one of the scenarios examined under tory governments featured no railways whatsoever.

I learned that we owe the survival of the wreckage we still have not so much to foresight but to the electoral fallout that further cuts would have had. Essentially, Tories feared losing their support in the shires cut off from civilisation, whereas Labour feared the unions falling away. Everybody feared that Scotland and Wales might resent being cut off from the railways entirely by Westminster.

It is also remarkable that different branches of the government involved in allegedly modernising the country didn’t talk to each other. Thus, a shiny new city, Milton Keynes, was built from scratch in a place that simultaneously lost its rail connection westwards to Oxford and eastwards to Cambridge.

What I still find puzzling is that planners and politicians in the 1960s didn’t think through the effect that a total switch to car ownership would have. Although climate change wasn’t in the news yet, the sheer surface area needed if 60 million people move 40million metal boxes to wherever they want to go, requiring a multiple of their sizes in car parks and road surface, would have destroyed not just the countryside but also the cities. Well it largely has, but if the misguided “modernisers” of the 60s had pulled through with these plans (famously including an inner ring road across Christ Church Meadow, vetoed by the University), it could have become even worse.

Blackwells (bought it from The Last Bookshop in Jericho, actually, but can't find it on their website)

Loving the cover. Seeing that I have four separate railway families in my immediate ancestry, I may well be epigenetically programmed to become a railway nostalgic.

PS I wasn't aware of this, but just the day I posted this a feasibility study for the rail connection to Witney was published. Funny how the press release doesn't mention this connection once existed. They keep stressing it's a new line. The BBC report, however, does discuss the historic line and its closure in the Beeching cuts.

the year of the fiddle

In the zodiac of my life, there are instrument obsessions that define certain time spans, so since last November this has definitely been the year of the fiddle. Which surprised me because I never had much interest in violins until I accidentally succeeded in repairing the old one that my aunt had (and didn't enjoy much) as a little girl back in the 1930s.

After playing it rather too enthusiastically at the folk weekend (in April) I've begun to notice some joint pains in the fingers of the left hand, so I'm not putting in massive amounts of practice but I do make sure to play a few folk tunes and a bit of Mozart (K525 or K304) every day, progressing very slowly.

For the anniversary, I've recorded the Äppelbo Gånglåt again (only to realise later that I already shared a version of that at the six-month milestone. Comparison of both videos shows that I play it a bit faster now (by around 10%) and a bit less out of tune. So all indicators going in the right direction.

Family reunion: All three instruments have been in the family for more than half a century: Heinrich the cello, Blue the guitar and Christa the violin.

PS Previous instruments on the zodiac were:

• tenor sax 8/21-10/22 (the ergonomically designed instrument that works even with a frozen shoulder, also suited to keep people at a distance during plague times)
• cello 3/20 - 9/22 (Plague Year Bach Project brought to a halt by shoulder problems)
• alto recorder 1/19 - 2/20 (both my altos appear in this year review, the black Triebert is the one I play regularly)

30 years

as of today, I have lived in Oxford for 30 years, which also means more than half my life. Slightly scary thought, but I always thought if I have to get stuck somewhere, Oxford is a good place to get stuck. May 21 1993 was the day when our furniture (and Heinrich the cello) was delivered to our rented house in Derwent Avenue, so I count that as the arrival date, even though the rest of the family arrived the day before and I had spent a few more days at the youth hostel* in Jack Straws Lane before that. Here's one of the first two Oxford photos in our album, dated June 1993:

A bit of family perspective: Neither of my parents and none of my grandparents have lived in the same place as long as half their lifetime. Of my great-grandparents, Heinrich the cellist and his wife Maria did (after settling at Elberfeld/Wuppertal), Adam the baker and Anna Barbara did (at Lorsch), Heinrich the station master of Minden Stadt and Luise did, but adventurous Julius and wife Helene very emphatically didn't. For Julius, his years growing up in Krefeld were easily the longest stay, whereas for Helene her final 27 years in Bad Nauheim were. She lived to age 87, so that's not even a third.

Obviously, I could still tip the balance by moving somewhere else, but as even the Brexiteers haven't quite managed to kick me out, I guess I'll just hang on.

*Note re the youth hostel - a couple of years later, the building became a nursery and the new hostel behind the railway station was built which has now disappeared. So at least one major buildings has been built and knocked down in the time I've lived here. Now that is a scary thought.

buds and blossoms

It is getting harder to retain any sense of optimism, but here I'll round up some very tiny personal pleasures and successes from the year that was, just to remind myself that good things still happen sometimes.

In January and February, as my shoulder injury was still limiting the cello playing, I had lots of fun with my tenor sax. (In the course of the year, my shoulder got better, the sax got worse, and the saxophone shop down the road from us closed down, so I very much reverted to string-playing mode.)

In March I signed the contract for a new science book, watch this space!

In May, fleeing the jubilee hysteria, I spent a week in France, first time after 8 years I think, see my flickr album. First thing I missed in the streets was newspaper stalls. And people smoking. Both being replaced by people glued to their phones.

In June, I launched an effort to lose the fear of flats, mainly by learning bits of the fourth cello suite which is in Eb major (3b).

In July, I used up a random bag of seeds flying around and grew six dwarf sunflowers which lit up my windowsill for a long time, see photo below (and more on flickr). And learned some botany - after the first flowers faded, I noticed other buds forming, so cut the faded flowers and got smaller secondary flowers as well. Which kept them going into September.

In August I used the famous 9-Euro ticket to visit 9 cities in 9 days. I also had a ticket in June, when I passed through Germany on the return from France, but then I didn't have much time to use it thoroughly.

Back at Oxford, I had the privilege to meet Caroline the Musical Saw Lady at Elder Stubbs Festival and try her Stradivarius saw. Soon after I found a 26" saw on ebay which works very nicely both for playing and for actual woodwork.

Later in August, I was very surprised to discover an origins story for my Wolff ancestry.

On Sept first, I launched the second season of my blog series Every picture tells a story where I share one (or several) family photo every week.

In late September, I made a surprise discovery that very nearly knocked me off my feet: 160 poems written by my great-grandfather Heinrich the cellist after meeting and falling in love with my great-grandmother. Like more famous writers before him, the budding poet used lots of botanical metaphors, too.

In November, I managed to fix my aunt's old violin which had spent more than half a century in different attics. Turns out I really enjoy playing it too, I wasn't expecting that. Having started the year playing mainly alto recorder and tenor sax, I'm now closing it playing mainly violin and cello. Also, it's handy to be able to switch instruments in response to which strains this old body is still willing to tolerate.

Also in November, when the situation at the bird site got out of hand, I came prepared, as I had already set up a mastodon account back in 2018 (when tumblr banned the infamous female-presenting nipples). I also rejoined tumblr, but that isn't working nearly as well as Mastodon these days.

In December, we had a lovely cold snap and I managed to fit two afternoons of wild skating at Port Meadow.

Professionally, I have managed to publish my complete set of 24 features in Current Biology this year, one in every issue, which is always a very satisfying thought.

Oh, and thanks to a generous Santa, my Lost Cities series is now also taking the shape of a collection of matching books full of old postcards. Will do a separate blog post about these in the new year.

Executive summary: ship still sinking, band still playing.

Previous year reviews (I don't always write one):
2021
2018
2017

20 ... 21 ... 22

As we continue to live in interesting times, here are some of my highlights of 2021. Most of them I have raved about already, so I'll just do a list with links.

• The third edition of Astrobiology came out in August, it is no longer a brief introduction, just an introduction. This reflects the fact that the book now has more than 400 pages.
• I've completed a 60k words draft of the biography of Heinrich our family cello, which is also a family history of sorts, and a memoir, and a rant about various issues from education through to plague policies.
• In the course of my research for the musical memoir, I have had a closer look at some of the old photos I have and started turning them into a blog series called "Every picture tells a story." The 18th instalment went live yesterday, another seven are currently in the queue for publication. This twitter thread offers a table of contents for quick access to specific episodes. I was amazed to discover how much more I can find out about these pictures if I don't just look at the faces and go "ok, this is Aunt Such and Uncle So", but think about what makes it special and why it might be interesting for people who don't even know the persons in the picture. Some of the stories the pictures tell were new to me even though I had known the photos for many years. For the time being, I am limiting the series to photos that are older than me - maybe in its second year it will move on to those taken in my lifetime.
• My Plague Year Bach Project (trying to play the cello suites) started in March 2020 carried on until June this year (interim report). Then I paused it for the summer, because there were now many opportunities to play with other people outside, and by the autumn I was struggling with a frozen shoulder, meaning I could just about maintain orchestra participation, but wouldn't be able to keep up the one hour daily practices for the Bach. Maybe next year.
• Playing outside at the Florence Park bandstand has been a major success. In addition to the monthly slow sessions, we also played lots of informal sessions on the Sundays in between. On Wednesday evenings, members of Cowley Orchestra played chamber music (see my lists of duets, trios, quartets).
• A major revelation on one of those Wednedays in the park was playing Dvorak's American quartet with a mixed bag of instruments including clarinet, oboe, flute, violin and cello, making it sound a lot more like the New World symphony. Afterwards, I discovered that the idea wasn't completely new, there is a brilliant arrangement for wind quintet. YouTube has live videos from the Amsterdam Wind Quintet (fourth and first movement) as well as sound-only recordings from the Royal Flemish Philharmonic (complete) and Meliora Winds.
• As the weather turned autumnal and the orchestral and folkie activities moved back indoors (although Covid stats remained high), two of us carried on playing at the bandstand. Smaller ensembles need louder instruments to get heard, so it's mostly saxophone duos you can hear on a Sunday afternoon these days. Nothing like blasting out an ironic version of Sound of silence on the saxes. Seriously, though, a playlist of tunes that I am playing or trying to play is here. Note also that the tenor sax is ergonomically compatible with my shoulder problem, so for the time being, it is taking up much of the time I dedicated to the cello until the summer.
• Plague Year Day Trips this year led us to Romsey, Bournemouth and Winchester (again).
• Just one trip abroad this year, visiting Düsseldorf, Minden and Tangermünde. The latter two for reasons linked to the Heinrich biography. Photos from this trip are in this flickr album.
• I completed the Lost cities series I started in late 2020. And managed to visit two of the lost cities, see the point above.
• I managed to read a few interesting books.
• After the blissful time without haircuts ended, I grew some more around my chin, enjoying the fact that I now have a fur pattern.

Overall, as getting things done, books read, and music played makes me happy, it's been a happy year for me in spite of all the rage at the death eaters, climate catastrophe, and all the rest of it.

Trying something new during lockdowns.

journey inside my guts

In January 2019, as I was 55 then, I was invited to a bowel scope screening. According to the brochure I was sent at the time, "The NHS offers bowel scope screening to all men and women aged 55." It sounded like a good idea, because "for every 300 people screened it stops 2 from getting bowel cancer and saves 1 life from bowel cancer."

While experiences may vary, I didn't find it terribly unpleasant and as a scientifically curious person I rather enjoyed the opportunity to follow the camera view on a large screen and travel through my own guts.

I just found out that the programme has since been scrapped, and its history, shall we say, adjusted to the situation. The relevant NHS website now says:

"Previously, some people aged 55 were invited for a one-off test where a healthcare professional uses a tube with a camera to look inside the bowel. This is called bowel scope screening. Bowel scope screening is no longer offered."

NB: some people were invited. When it was my turn, the official info said, as quoted above "all men and women aged 55."

For a competent analysis of the withdrawal of the screening programme, see this blog entry from a cancer charity.

Although I was lucky in getting the screening before it disappeared, I find it upsetting that there is very little interest around here in preventing disease before it happens. The NHS is brilliant because it's free at point of use as it should be and good at treating people when they get ill, but preventative measures aren't its strongest point and they are the first to suffer when things get difficult.

To me preventing disease is the most important job of the health system. I remember my grandparents being in and out of hospitals for bowel operations repeatedly, and I'm quite sure I prefer a camera up my bum to their experience.

Checking up the numbers:

There are 900,000 people in the UK aged 55 right now. We're talking about 3,000 lives that could be saved every year and 6,000 bowel cancer cases that could be prevented according to the NHS info I cited above. This may be small fry in comparison to the numbers currently killed by the mishandling of the Covid pandemic, but I am sure those 3,000 55-year-olds would have liked to live a bit longer ...

Cover of the brochure I received in 2019. Shows it's good to keep the paperwork, because online info gets adjusted to political convenience.

happy holidays

While I don't believe in Santa Claus, I am glad that the mad rush of trying to get everything done before xmas is over. I haven't managed to write any seasonal greetings or a legible end of year report, partially because I am changing my mind twice daily about whether to stick around or join the brexodus. One of several serious problems is that the death eaters are cropping up everywhere, so it's tricky to find a place where one might be safe from them.

Anyhow, my next hard deadline will be mid January, so plenty of time to catch up with various things that have fallen by the wayside ...

So have a good one of whatever you celebrate or don't. Personally, I am following way too many classicists on twitter, so I'm beginning to feel I should celebrate Saturnalia ...



Own photo - not our house but I love the concept of outlining the architectural details in lights. Seen somewhere in North Oxford on the way to Wolvercote.

last call for brexodus

Ever since the 2015 general election, living in the UK as a non-British EU citizen has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. I have (mentally) prepared to move out at various low points, including Cameron's re-election, the referendum, the Brexit Bill which set the Article 50 procedure rolling, and now the prorogation of parliament aiming to facilitate a no-deal brexit.

So, well, it's been rather lovely living here for the first 25 years or so, but the way things are going we can't really be sure it will be safe to stay. Under Theresa May's plans, non-British EU citizens who want to stay have to apply for settled status by the end of 2020. Which makes 2020 the crunch year. If on 1.1.2020 Johnson is still PM and/or the UK has left the EU without an agreement, I think it will be time to move on rather than applying to register. Funnily enough, the very preliminary exit plan I scribbled down after the 2015 election also leads up to a 2020 exodus date. My crystal ball wasn't lying back then.

Right now there's still hope the whole thing will go up in a puff of smoke, but if the sword above our heads is still there in January, let's get a move on. It is actually dangerous to gradually adjust to worsening political climate and think it will be ok. Bad people feel encouraged by the direction things are going, and they will make everyting worse, so there is a possible feedback loop that may already have passed the point of no return.

I'll welcome suggestions re. where in the EU27 might be a soft landing place for someone grown accustomed to the cultural life of Oxford and London.



Cover of the issue of Der Spiegel dated 7.9. Since this one, the following issues of the magazine have failed to arrive here. The Death Eaters wouldn't go as far as embargoing foreign news media, or would they? (Update: the issue of 14.9. arrived on the 28th. Normally they arrive after 3 days, i.e. on the Tuesday after the cover date.)

Update 2.10.2019: Now they're blocking my escape route - when I take the Eurostar to the continent, I normally travel on the X90 to Baker St (and enjoy the 35 mins walk from there to St. Pancras). The news today is that the X90 service will stop operating after January 4th (see also the report in the Oxford Mail). As it happens I would normally come back from my next trip a few days after that date. Feels like somebody doesn't want me to come back ... or like pub staff starting to wipe the tables and putting the chairs up. Speaking of which, the pub where we were having four different sessions each month since the beginning of the year has also kicked us out on Monday giving just 24h notice. Oh well. Maybe all of these things are signs that it really is time to move.

the dancers will fall over

As in 2017, most of the excitement and progress this year was to be had on the musical front. The ships of global and UK politics may be sinking fast, but the orchestra keeps playing.

Speaking of which, the orchestra where I play wrong notes on the cello hasn’t kicked me out yet, and I still crawl through the flute repertoire at a snail’s pace. And I continue to run the administrative side of the Galician Session Oxford, a role which I unexpectedly inherited in the summer of 2017. As some of the more experienced participants are leaving or have already left town, I will increasingly also be in charge of the musical leadership. Scary thought, I may have to put in some extra practice.

After six years and six months, the session lost its long-established home at the James Street Tavern at the end of November. We had one very lovely session at the Port Mahon in St. Clement’s, but are still waiting to hear if this will become a permanent solution.

Along with the Galician, the French and Scandinavian sessions also had to move in December. On the plus side, the move to a venue with a better dance floor attracted the attention of the local dance crowd which used each of the sessions to celebrate a “bal minuscule”. Videos of each of the miniature bals are here.

If I’m still a bit panicky about playing for dancers, it must be because I heard my children’s instrument teachers saying many times: “If you do this, the dancers will fall over.” I can’t quite remember what terrible mistake it was that led to this reaction, or maybe there were different kinds, and I’m sure I’m prone to make every conceivable rhythmic mistake, but luckily, so far, no dancer has fallen over.

Another opportunity to learn about playing for dancers was the very interesting workshop held in October by the ensemble Rigodons et Traditions from Grenoble who exchange visits with Oxford Fiddle Group every few years. Under their very professional leadership we even played for a whole village hall full of dancers. Imagine doing the wrong thing and 100+ people falling over. Now that would look very impressive.

Other new challenges this year included the arrival of a new but vintage (made in GDR) tenor sax, which is surprisingly easy in the fingerings – just a turbo charged flute with the exhaust sawn off, if you excuse a motor metaphor. I find it very satisfying in terms of energy efficiency as well – little effort gives a huge sound. Concern for my lips and the neighbours severely limits the practice times, however, so it will be a while before I can toot my horn in public.



Also new in the collection is an alto recorder – again very easy under the fingers, and I guess the transposition is something one gets used to. In cello terms, everything sounds one string down, so you have a C where you expect the G, and a G where you’d normally have a D. Just give me a few years and I'll get my head round that.

Other opportunities to play wrong notes in public included the first run of the “unusual instruments” class at the Oxford Music Festival (with our highly unusual home-built hammered dulcimer), my second theremin workshop and my second Misa Campesina, a few jam sessions with local band Mad Flamenco, as well as the amazing Folk Weekend Oxford. In July, the visit of the despicable Mr Drumpf to Blenheim Palace offered a welcome opportunity to improve my bugle skills, especially the fortissimo. Subtlety and nuance weren’t really required on that occasion. Previously I had tried the bugle at the London WNBR but cycling and tooting simultaneously doesn’t quite work yet.

So here's to more noise in 2019 ...

PS I forgot to mention: the Guardian asked readers what they do to escape / bypass / fight capitalism, so I sang the praise of folk sessions as free entertainment, pretty far down on this page.

beginning to see some improvement

While Brexit, the Trumpocalypse, and other disasters were unfolding, I had a surprisingly good year, so much so that I looked at the short biography on my website earlier this month and realised it needed a major overhaul (done now), as so many exciting things happened this year. While the writing business continued as normal (but no new books to brag about) and the children are have also finished growing up, the surprising new developments of 2017 were mostly of the musical sort.

Maybe it all started when I attended Lydia Kavina’s theremin workshop in November 2016 – once you realise that you can play tunes by waving your hands around in thin air, anything becomes possible. Seriously though, it helped me to trust my unconscious mind, which appears to be a better musician than the conscious one.

With just a short introduction into the basics of the technique, I found I was able to play arpeggios and then tunes. Although the idea was that the teacher played the notes on the piano and the student was to find them on the theremin, I knew both the tunes she played and I realised that when I thought of the next note in my head the hand would do the correct move automatically.

With that in mind, and in preparation for further theremin adventures (and considering that I don't have a proper theremin yet), I picked up the family cello to learn some more interesting pieces, starting with The Swan. To my own surprise, I managed to learn the piece without getting arrested by the animal protection police, so I’m now expanding my cello repertoire, have recently joined an orchestra with the cello (also inspired by John Holt's memoir Never too late), and I’m signing up for the next theremin workshop. Meanwhile, my flute repertoire, supported by half-hour lessons twice a month, is also growing very slowly. I’ve started to mark progress with a still life photo for every piece.

In the very busy Oxford folk scene, I have continued attending many of the regular sessions that I had joined with the young musician during her gap year (2015/16). This was lesson 1 in “Trusting the Unconscious” – if I think about what I’m doing (or sight-read, or recall a tune from memory) I am already three bars behind, but if I just go with the flow, it works much better.

In March I played flute and about three bars worth of guitar in the very lovely Misa Campesina Nicaraguense, which is performed annually in celebration of Oxford’s partnership with León, Nicaragua. Preparations for the Misa Campesina 2018 are underway.

Shortly after the Oxford Folk Weekend, where I played in various sessions for something like 18 hours in three days, we had a special Galician session with Galician bagpiper Carlos Núñez, who is an amazing musician and a huge star in celtic folk and happened to be on holidays in the UK. Which was absolutely magical.



Folk Weekend Oxford 2017, taken by the official photographer.

After the June edition of the Galician session – which has always been my favourite one of the (at least) 10 different folk sessions I have joined or tried out since August 2015 – one of our pandeireteiras (tambourine players/singers) asked me if I was going to run the sessions after Mano’s departure, which was in fact the first time I heard that he was about to leave Oxford. And it was the last of his sessions I could attend, as he moved his final one to mid July, to a date when I was abroad. (Yes I do plan my travel around the Galician sessions and I do get mad when people move them!)

I reckoned that even without Mano’s musical genius and multiple bagpipes, we still had the unique combination of our very enthusiastic and talented Galician pandeireteiras, some seriously good international instrumentalists who can play the tunes much better than I can, and a faithful audience provided by the Intercambio Spanish language meetup, which routinely publicises the sessions as the Galician Music Night. And I reckoned it would be foolish not to do something with these assets.

So, without wanting to claim any musical merit, I agreed to take on the admin and make sure that some of the more experienced folkies would be at hand to keep the tunes flowing more smoothly than I might play them if I was left to my own devices. We had a small session with a core cast at the end of July, but numbers perked up in the following months, as London gaitero David Carril joined us on a regular basis, and after I got hold of the mailing list and set up the facebook group and WordPress blog to make sure that at least the information flows freely.

Simultaneously, our pandeireteiras carried on with their weekly tambourine classes, and we had a few lovely special events, including the Magosto (chestnut party, organised by the Galician Studies Centre), an excursion to David’s third session at London, and a special xmas session.

Oh, and the Galician Studies Centre has also spoilt us with cultural goodies this year. We had the UK premiere of the opera O arame, and the first screening in a new series of Galician movies. All of which is also a welcome opportunity for me to finally get to grips with the Galician language, building on the 2 terms course I attended in early 2016. If you know Spanish, it isn’t all that difficult. It’s essentially the same internal structure with a different set of decorations on the outside. Possibly even easier if you know Portuguese, but I don’t. A native speaker told me it’s just like Portuguese only with lots of xs. And knowing the language also makes it easier to join in the songs we sing at the sessions. So it’s all connected.

Watch this space for more linguistic and musical excitement happening in the new year, everything is possible! A back of the envelope calculation revealed I may have passed those magical 10,000 hours of practice some time in this crazy year, and sure enough, as Pablo Casals famously said (when asked why he still practiced the cello every day in his 90s), “I’m beginning to see some improvement.”