Saturday. Sinning is permissible today and you won't go to Hell. Richard 21:16

No post from Peter this morning. Robert has written a post in a language close to English.

Well, fairly close. I think it's called Robrite.

I set a new goal for myself yesterday and did 1 3/4 hours of practice, 1 hour on the violin and 45 minutes on the bass. Yesterday was the 20th. I set a goal that lasts for five months and finishes on the 20th of that month. It will involve me playing a solo concert. Just me. I will play unaccompanied pieces on the violin and the double bass. The concert will be titled 'Playing with myself'. I haven't worked out a venue yet. However, the repertoire for both instruments is set. The concert will be about an hour long, probably presenting five pieces on each instrument, though I do have more violin pieces if needed. Obviously, I will be stepping up the amount of practice that I do. I'll aim for at least 2 hours a day, one hour on each instrument.

I'm having a coffee as I write.

[Stand by, toilet.]

It's a cold morning in the Nui. I wouldn't mind betting that people have their raccoons inside in Raccoontown.

I wonder what Peter did with his preferred hat?

I hope, for his own safety, that he's not wearing it anywhere near his home. Remember that raccoons are a preferred pet around there.

I've finished my coffee, so it's probably a good time for me to go. Well, I'm sure it will be soon.

[Coffee gone.]

Remember that it's Saturday and a bit of sinning is okay. I'm sure that Robert will agree.

Ciao tutti.

On the job early.

 We have a plumber coming sometime around 8am, so I've been out moving my car onto the road, delivering my elderly neighbour's paper and taking out some extra rubbish - the rubbish man often shows up at about 7am or slightly after. In about an hour I need to drive a car to Seaview for my daughter. She's selling her pink Barbie car because she is heading to Melbourne in a month or so. 

Hey, Peter, no need to start calling me Ken. The car is going.

I practised for 30 minutes on the double bass yesterday. I've decided that it's time to get my double bass going again. I have five unaccompanied solo pieces that I will concentrate on. They are all originals.

• Sii Gentile
• Almost Blues
• Gypsy Feet
• My Gentle Giant
• Shelley, My Dear

Sii Gentile translates to Be Kind and is dedicated to our past prime minister who really coined that phrase. Almost Blues is a 14 bar blues. Gypsy Feet is an up tempo swing tune in the Gypsy Jazz style. My Gentle Giant is a piece I wrote for my double bass. Well, next to my violin, he/she IS a giant. I often refer to the last piece as SMD so as not to embarrass the person who bears its name. It is a piece, in the Bluegrass tradition, that I have played for many years.

Hopefully I'll get some quality violin practice done today.

Well, that's all from me this morning. 

No time to quote from the bible. Brian 7:22

That's for sure. Andy 19:4

Ciao tutti. Guida con prudenza. Alberto 2:47

Just after 7.15pm.

 

It has been a very busy day, but I have got some double bass practice done. 

Peter wrote a post yesterday and Robert wrote one this morning that needs proofreading.

I still need to do some violin practice. 

At present I teach violin at two schools. One is a state school and one is a 'private' school. No problems with the state school, but the private school is mucking me around. The private school has Presbyterian affiliations. I might tell them to go and look for violin lessons in that hall that Robert used to clean that is owned by a Presbyterian. Do you, who read Robert's blog posts, remember the Presbyterian's hall?

Okay, I've decided to give the violin practice a miss tonight because time is getting on a bit.

I think I'll lay on the couch and waste time on my phone.

Ciao tutti.

St. Patrick's Day.

 Forget Hairy Bert's Birthday, that was yesterday. Today is St. Patrick's Day!

St. Paddy evidently drove snakes out of Ireland.

Our secondary school ('our' refers to all the old bloggers around here) was named after the snake remover. 

Okay, enough about Paddy.

I didn't get any practice done yesterday. It was one of those days when things kept popping up. We had a plumber here for quite a while. It turns that things are more complicated than I thought. Evidently, the guy who put in our bathroom hand basin plumbing got it all wrong. The plumber is evidently coming back today to put it all back together. Also, the toby that controls water going to our property is broken. This needs to be fixed by the council before the leaks in our two hose pipes can be fixed. I'm glad I didn't try to fix those things myself.

I've got to touch up a few spots on our house with paint but, apart from that, I intend to put a lot of time into music practice today.

I asked Peter who won the golf yesterday and he replied, "God."

I can only assume that he meant God helped Rob win. Well done, Rob. I guess Peter has a lot more practice to do, even more than me on my violin.

Okay, that's it from me this morning.

Vai ad allenarti a golf.

Ciao.

And now for something completely different.

 No coffee for me this morning.

No mention of raccoons.

No mention of Berhampore.

No mention of weathermen.

No mention of the one true god.

Okay, what does that leave to talk about?

This.

Today is going to be quite busy, but I need to find time to focus on my violin. It feels great to have the original chinrest on with no shoulder rest. For me no shoulder rest gives the violin a feeling of freedom. Just like someone about to play golf Just like someone going to a gym, I'll start with a warmup.

• Long bows.
• Bowing slightly to the bridge side of the centre of the space between the fingerboard and the bridge.
• Playing some chord progressions from those 10 unaccompanied tunes and the scales that go with them.
• Playing over the entire fingerboard.

Hey, a coffee would be nice right now.

Then I'll run some of those 10 unaccompanied tunes. 

Okay, I guess that's me for this morning.

Time to do some jobs. Hey, I've got my elder grandson to pick up later this afternoon too. Then I'll probably spend some time with my younger grandson.

Enjoy you're day. Unless you're losing at golf somewhere.

Ciao tutti.

Golf match of the century!

 

Monday 16th March - Peter Vs Robert at Berhampore Golf Course, 572 Adelaide Road.

Both golfers have been practising furiously for this match that will settle old scores that go back to the 1970s.

Peter (far right) with two other golfers
(Mike and Tony) in the 1970s.
Robert is not in this photo, but
was probably taking the photo.

The result of Monday's match will put a lot of questions to rest. 

• Who is the better golfer?
• Does God help Catholics win at golf?
• Do weathermen have any effect on golf results?
• Did Robert drive to Levin to buy butter or a putter? (You can never trust the spelling on Robert's blog.)
• Should golf be featured at a Catholic mass?
• Will Peter wear his raccoon hat to the match?
• Will the two old boys have enough golf balls, or will they have to search for more before the match?

This match is correctly referred to as the 'golf match of the century' because the last time these two old boys played against each other was in the twentieth century. Fifty years ago!

I'm not sure if this match will be televised. 

Possibly.

Saturday.

 In the beginning there was the weatherman. He couldn't really see everything that was happening in the future, but he could make intelligent guesses on what the weather might be like for any given day. 

The weatherman didn't create mankind, nor did he create angels. One can be fairly confident that no weatherman (in recent times anyway) was even nailed to a cross and later rose from the dead.

Chances are that this is not a weatherman.

Okay, moving right along.

I have nothing to tell you about the violin this morning. Except that I certainly will be doing some practice.

Okay, moving right along again.

I don't really know what my plans are for today. Maybe daddy will pop around with my good friend Harrison? I'll no doubt make a trip to the supermarket. I should make an effort and go for a walk, if the bell is being well behaved.

I see that Peter and Robert are planning a golf match. Do they call it a 'match'? Thankfully I wasn't invited. There might be a god! Robert has bought some clubs and is practising. We might get a post about the game, once it has been played. Robert will be thanking God, and quoting from the bible, if he wins. Peter's post, should he win, will be put up in about June. 

Well, that's it for today.

I have nothing more to say.

Ciao tutti.

Black Friday.

 Friday 13th is traditionally a very unlucky day.

It doesn't seem to get much attention these days. In fact, it now appears to be the name of a shopping day when things are discounted. Work that one out!

I haven't touched my violin yet this morning. Present me is wondering if changing my chinrest was a wise move. Well, I guess I'll find out soon enough!

I think I need a coffee.

Ah well, what's one more trip to the bathroom? I'll be back shortly.

Back.

There's nothing nicer than coffee,

When you're up but the sky's not blue.

It's good to sip the nice warm juice, but

Then it sends you to the loo.

It's a wet morning in the Nui. I bet it has been raining in Moera and Raccoontown too.

I decided to only drink half of my coffee.

For the ways of the Lord are straight and virtuous men walk in them; but sinners stumble and drink all their coffee. Hosea 14:10 & 14.11

In his latest post Rob tells us, "The more astute of you have noticed no quotation marks. The practice of using quotation marks for anything in the Bible has fullen out of fashion. Also it's likely that the writers of the Gospels didn't quote Jesus exactly. How could they? Mark, who wrote the first Gospel, did so early in the fifties. That's twenty years after Christ died and rose again. So it goes."

This is actually good news. Mark was obviously writing from memory, or what someone had told him. Imagine if he had 'fullen' into the trap of using some of the strange words that Rob uses. It wouldn't make Jesus look that smart. Better if the actual author takes the blame.

Hey, Good Friday is on April 3rd. That's a more positive name than Black Friday. Good Friday, if you're anywhere near a Catholic church, is a day when you should avoid expressions like, "Nailed it!" 

It's probably time to give that chinrest a run.

No! That's not the one!

Ah well, I'll leave you there for this morning.

Enjoy your Black Friday.

Ciao tutti.

AFTERNOON, after 3pm.

All back to where I started from. After 1 hour, 20 minutes of try out time. Right back to where I started.

Ah well, we live and we learn.

Give it a rest!

 My previous chin rest is back on.

I spent 45 minutes today fooling around with a shoulder rest and how comfortable my chin rest felt. I finished up putting my old chin rest back on and placing my shoulder rest back in my 'instrument parts' drawer. 

My old chin rest fits comfortably under my chin but doesn't contribute to holding the violin up without using my left hand. Violinists seem to like to do this as a sign of total control.

Hey, Niccolo' Paganini didn't use a shoulder rest OR a chin rest, so I know I'm following the best!

I'm going to go with that setup and play for 15 minutes more to settle that in. 

Sfortuna se la mia decisione non ti piace.

The Mission.

 

I want to get some pretty serious practice done this morning. That means that this post is going to be pretty short. I don't care about gigs anymore, though I will probably do any that come along. It's all about getting my violin playing where I want to get it to. That's the mission. I don't really care if people like my repertoire (and playing) or not. That's for them to worry about.

I'd better get on with it.

Più tardi.

It probably won't happen in our lifetime.

 Imagine waking up one morning to find that TC* has written a new post. Let's see if we can imagine a topic that might be more interesting than reading about new chairs in the computer room or golf and tennis clubs. Imagine a post like this:

I HAVE A NEW PET.

You don't see that many cats in Thorndon and dogs tend to be of the smaller varieties. Maybe it's because we all live quite close together and neighbours get tired of animals visiting their places? Hey, most of them have enough problems just finding a carpark. We have two schools near our residences, so non residentially specified parks (the ones we don't have to pay for) are always full. I went for a walk the other evening and it was quite cold, so I wore a hat.

I was quite surprised when, on my walk, three locals yelled out abuse at me. Things like, "You nasty bastard!" "That is very cruel!" "How could you do that?" and "Whose pet was that?"

After thinking about it, I wondered if they were talking about my hat. I decided that I'd have a look at the local newspaper that I tend to ignore. It's called The Thorndon Humorous Times. After reading an article titled 'The Best Thorndon Jokes', I came across an article titled 'Thordonites and their pets'. 

It appears that there is an animal that is becoming very popular with locals and it is not a native. It's the raccoon. Who would have thought it possible?

I immediately hid my raccoon hat at the back of one of the new shelves in our garage (I told you about those in a post). 

Hey, I really want to fit in around here. I'm sure that the jokes I am hearing are better than those in Wainuiomata and Moera. 

TOG wasn't keen but I went ahead anyway. I found the contact of a local man who imports raccoons as pets and now I have one. I was going to call him Davy but was advised against that, and my second choice, Daniel. I finished up calling him Brian, but not after Brian Tamaki. I think TOG is slowly getting used to having him around. When we do our Aussie trip, I'll have to try to get one of the old bloggers to look after him. Maybe someone at the tennis club could help? We'll see. Okay, I'm off to feed Brian some breakfast now.

Please be kind to raccoons.

Brian

* aka The Curmudgeon & Peter

Lawn Day.

 

Actually, it's not grass that is the problem,
it's hundreds of little yellow flowers.

In any case, it's time for a tidy up. I think it will be a busy day because I have other things to do too, including music practice.

I did fifteen minutes on the double bass yesterday. That may not sound like much, but it went well. I have to give the fingers a bit of time to toughen up. Tomorrow it looks like I'll be playing some background music at Robert's place. I'll be using the violin for that. It's an important day for Rob because he'll be celebrating his engagement to a lovely lady. All the best, Rob and L.

Well, I'd better be off.

No time for stations of the cross today.

Ciao.

Bach always tried to help his brother.

 He was always prepared to pop around if there was a problem.

When things got tough, he went to Allan Bach.

I reckon that this joke could really take off in Thorndon. Maybe at the tennis club?

I see that Robert is copying Peter's very short blog post format. Will he start wearing a raccoon hat?

You'd think that one goal of writing a short post might be to get your grammar correct. Well, after all, proofreading would not take long. 

For Rob?

Time's up.

I might do a 15 minute double bass warm up today. Just to get back into that instrument. Peter will probably throw in a Thorndon tennis club joke like, "How did Richard get inside his double bass?"

Then it'll be back to the violin. I'm playing a few tunes at an engagement party on Saturday. I like to be prepared for these playing opportunities.

I have my elder grandson coming around this afternoon. He is keen to spend time with his grandma. We're not allowed to give him ice cream because it will not be that long before his dinner time. We'd better stock up on nice biscuits. Harrison will turn 3 at the end of this month and, next month, Henry turns 1. Henry is very cute and seems to like my jokes. Hey, I am careful not to use Thorndon tennis club jokes. 

Well, that's it from me for this morning.

Robert tells us, "Have fun and go to the stations of the cross."

I think that 'stations of the cross' is a Catholic name for 'toilet'.

How did Rob know that I've just had a coffee?

Maybe Mary told him?

Cerca di goderti le tue visite al bagno.