Forecast Thunder Didn’t

Just after I’d posted last night, I learned that I’m a Great Uncle for the second time. Emily Louise was welcomed to the world yesterday, sister to William who undertook the same journey a couple of years ago. Sandy got to see and hold William shortly after he was born. Sandy’s sister texted me last night with the news. I commented that her birthday is six months either way to Christmas. Her husband isn’t being allowed into the hospital today, but she may be able to come out tomorrow. It’ll be a bit of a recovery after the C-section.

Welcome to the world, Emily.

El Bandito went to Sainsburys, along the small Wat and was in and out without anyone noticing. Bit like the SAS.

Home, late elevenses that was also an early lunch, coffee and then working. Hot today. But more coffee to wake me up mid afternoon

Supper was a knighted loin of beef, along with some maize and some leftover spuds from last night.

This afternoon has been spent on our VLE enabling various requests. RTFM would have been a good response to one.

Sandy was a great one for lists. I could rely on her to find out what I had to do, like the complexities of preparing the caravan for holiday and what I’d have to put where. Now I’m going to have to do it and, more importantly, think about what I’ll need to take away and where I put it last year. It did just get dumped then, so a little bit of detective work will be necessary.

What Sandy used to do was to go through what we needed for the hols and wash and assemble it in stages. I just hope that I can remember what we used to take. I’m so glad she persuaded (read that how you will) to buy a caravan with a fixed bed. I know it’s a big van for one (it was a big van for two!) but it does mean that I can use the storage space, possibly with not needing to take the big external storage unit. We’ll see.

Photos and Secret Penwith will take up some of the time while I’m in Cornwall, as will the marking I’m going to have to do for resits. Fortunately the site has better Wifi now. A couple of years ago I was up the field waving my phone above a hedge to get a signal to transmit the results.

Sandy did Race for Life for years, twenty-two, we’d counted, maybe one more, maybe one less. She raised thousands for Cancer Research UK. In 2016, when she was sixty-three, she achieved a personal best of fifty minutes for 5k. 2017 was her last race, as it was exceptionally hot in 2018 and, unbeknown to us, the cancer was taking its toll so she was getting tired. This photo came up on my Facebook feed this morning as a memory.

Music:

Coincidentally, as I was driving El Bandito mission style this morning This came on Radio Three, something of RVW I’d never heard before, so today we have a pseudo theme of motion to go with Sandy’s efforts.

The Running Set is a brief composition for reduced, though not chamber-sized orchestra. The title of the work pertains to a dance that had disappeared from England by the time the work was written, but it could still be seen in certain parts of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. Vaughan Williams used the themes from four folk dance tunes in The Running Set: “Barrack Hill,” “The Blackthorn Stick,” “Irish Reel,” and “Cock o’ the North.”  Vaughan Williams wrote the work for the 1934 National Folk Dance Festival.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), The Running Set, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, James Judd

Apparently John  Adams said of this work – “You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?”

John  Adams (1947-), Short Ride in a Fast Machine, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Proms 2014

Vangelis (1943-), Chariots of Fire, Main Theme

Howard Shore (1946-), The road goes ever on, The London Oratory School Schola, The London Voices, The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Conductor Howard Shore

While I was collecting the information for the previous, this came on. I’d used it on the blog the Saturday before Sandy passed away. It had quite an effect on me this morning.

Howard Shore (1946-), May it be, Enya.

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