284. Especially when the October wind

25th October. Here's Yuja Wang (a favourite of mine) with her interpretation of Rachmaninov's Prelude in G Minor, Op. 23, No. 5:

 

Here are some other great performances by her. I don't think I've ever heard a more beautiful interpretation of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus18 than hers (the second piece on the above link). 

21st October. This evening, President Macron delivered a moving homage to Samuel Paty in the courtyard of the Sorbonne. Samuel Paty was the teacher who was foully murdered outside his school a few days ago. The President's words are worth reading. 

14th October. We can usually still eat outside during October and sometimes on into November - but not this year. Threatening skies, intense showers that blow through, low temperatures - October feels more like mid-winter. On the plus side, The "vitrification"* work we had done on the stairs and the cellar has dried off - so we can sleep upstairs again. 

* I think this means something different in French.

11th October. I like the originality of Glen Baxter's quirky old style cartoons:

7th October. The diary is filling up quickly with dates for various events.. The wooden stairs and the joists in the cellar have both needed treatment against woodworm - the stairs needed sanding first before they and the joists were treated with a toxic-smelling product. One of the outcomes was that we had to sleep downstairs as the product was still soaking into the stairs. Then next Monday, the stairs will be treated to what they call here a vitrification process.. so another restless night sleeping on the floor downstairs looms! 

We're also looking at changing the car - and trying to find our way through the mass of information presented by the concessionaires. We have a few test drives awaiting us - the main aim being to assess whether there's enough leg room for me - and also to check on the compliance of the suspension over the sometimes bumpy roads here. Our current car seems to bump and jolt its way over the slightest deformations of the road surface. We're looking at a petrol-engined car as we don't do much driving. I'm more than happy to stay in this corner of France with only the occasional trip elsewhere!  

Then after 10 years or so of various treatments to my knees, the scope for further treatment has reduced to zero and so I'm booked in for a replacement right knee in early January. First, I have to have 15 sessions of physio (3 per week for 5 weeks) to prepare my muscles for the surgery (to improve my recovery time) - then the "op" - after which I'll spend 4-5 days in hospital - before going to a centre for "re-education" (ie, more physio!) for 2-3 weeks. Madame seems to think I'll need a tablet of some kind to keep on top of my emails (and a couple of my blogs) - French daytime TV being just as dire as that in the UK.

Something to look forward to then!

3rd October. Driving rain and thunderstorms this morning.. I went out briefly to buy some logs - and returned soaked. Meanwhile, Nutty is waiting patiently for a gap in the rain for his morning walk. He's checked the garden over a few times but it's not the same. 

2nd October. Never has Dylan Thomas' poem about October seemed more relevant.. Over the space of a handful of days, we moved from a "shorts and t-shirt" summer straight into mid-Autumn (and worse) without the respite usually offered by those golden days of September. 

Before September was out, I seriously thought about lighting our wood burner but I was talked out of it. Great leathery leaves (a foot across) from platanes have been swirling and drifting down the avenue for days now - and burnished conkers abound under the chestnut trees and beech nuts are all over the pavements (sidewalks).  

The wonderfully resonant sound of Gautier Capuçon's 300 year old cello that we heard during the concert at the Château de Baroja in August has been on my mind of late too. It was the first time I'd ever heard a solo cello live (so much more alive than a CD) and the clarity of that sound cut straight through all my mental baggage and registered directly with my emotions. It was something I'd not experienced before and I lost myself in the performance.  

Max Bruch's Kol Nidre is arguably the finest piece ever written for a cello - and it's played here by arguably the cello's greatest virtuoso - Jacqueline du Pré, who contracted MS (of all things) and from which she died tragically young at the age of 42.