A little amble

I love Pie Jesu by Gabriel Fauré from his Requiem but am a bit fed up of hearing the boy soprano version by Aled Jones. I have at last got around to playing some of the music I recorded at Helen’s a couple of years ago. One of these is a Sarah Brightman CD and her version of Pie Jesu is exquisite. The CD also has a great version of one of my favourite songs - Whiter Shade of Pale - which I have only previously heard in the original by Procul Harem.

I’ve also discovered – thanks again to Helen – Madeleine Peyroux. I’m not sure what the technical term for her brand of music is but I think of it as night club jazz. ‘Dance me to the end of love’ is truly wonderful. OK, I know I’m a bit behind the times in discovering these folk but you’ll have to forgive me – the Sixties was really my era. The year 1974 constitutes modern for me!!

I’m pleased to have sold another photo. This time of a seaweed. It’s not so much the money (though pennies are always welcome) but the fact that someone out there has thought my photo of an adequate quality to be reproduced in their book. The book is Danish so I can’t read the text of the draft but the layout and the quality of the other photos make me especially contented to be in it.

My laptop is dying. The keyboard died a year or so ago and now the USB ports have packed up so I can’t transfer anything onto a memory stick or portable hard drive. Nor can I download the camera on to it. I’m sure computers were invented by aliens in order to reduce humans to such a state of stress that it will be easy to wrest the world from us. While the aliens are landing their craft and, at the same time, blocking our wireless broadband signals we shall all be sitting in darkened rooms trying to find out on Google what the strange symbols on our screens mean. Eventually we will succeed in translating them… “You are sucked – love your Martian Masters and go back to quill pens!”

It is rarely that I allow my love of books to spread outside my book blog but I’ve just read Muriel BARBERY – “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” (Translated Alison Anderson) and must recommend it to everyone. It is humorous, clever and deeply moving. So far it is my book of the year.