Penny

pennultimate snuck discreetly back into town after her travels in Spain and the Middle East - but I found her! She's had a wonderful time - as you see, she looks fabulous. I understand there will be a session or two of backblipping once she's back into the swing of things at home. Penn's a terrific photographer and I'm certainly looking forward to all those backblips - I confidently predict there will be some real crackers in there...

It was particularly nice to see Penny's cheerful, affectionate face today, after the news I'd received a few hours before.

It's tragic, so don't read on if you don't feel up to it. Stay with the pleasure of the lovely Penny...


I was expecting my sister and a colleague of hers at lunchtime, for a meeting to arrange a choral event up here. I got a call from the colleague saying she was coming on her own, because my sister suddenly had a million things to arrange, on account of this.
The people in the other car were essentially uninjured - according to my sister, who is more likely to have it right than News10. Really. (It happened about the same time of day (local times) - and on the same day - as I blipped this. Maybe that's a bit spooky. I don't know.)
Michael was my sister's brother-in-law. We haven't seen much of him since he left Australia in 1976, to pursue his brilliant career in Europe, the Middle East and, since 1981, the USA.
The concert he was to conduct on Saturday will go ahead, with a substitute conductor. I don't envy that person, whoever he or she is. To take over from an internationally acclaimed maestro on three days notice is a very tough gig. To conduct an orchestra of more than 70 people who are numb with shock seems an almost impossible undertaking - and yet, although it might easily be a disaster, it might just as easily be one of those performances to which circumstances lend an emotional edge that can't be manufactured, and which becomes legendary. You just never can tell, when emotion is involved, which way it will go. I hope, for the sake of so many people, that it's the latter.
His brother will be there, as will my sister. The funeral is the same day. They're flying to California tomorrow. Everything's arranged. Everything. I'm glad they can be there.
If you're anywhere near Sacramento California on Saturday morning and want to hear Michael's orchestra perform the last concert he'll ever direct, it's at 11.00 am, Placer High School, Auburn CA.
There's also an interview with him here (recorded June 2011). He sounds almost exactly like his brother, who I know so well. That brings it very close.

Two things keep hitting me in the face today:
1. You can be driving to rehearsal one minute and the next minute, vanish forever - and it's irretrievable.
2. Those statistics that everyone tut-tuts over and makes political and corporate capital out of are made of real people. Sometimes we know them.

The roads are wet here and the atmosphere misty, like they were for Michael. I don't think there's a single person I've spoken to today to whom I haven't said "Be careful..."

Sorry to offer such a downer of a narrative to go with such a happy photo, but this is a journal and that's been my (and countless other people's) day.
(Now go back and look at Penny and you'll feel better. I do. Thanks Penn.)