Time to start raking!

Saturday
A big drop in temperature today - the last three days we have been in the mid to upper 70s F for a high, whereas today we only reached the low 50s under largely cloudy skies. Roger wanted to start raking leaves today, but he figured I might want a photograph before he did, so at one moment when there was a glimmer of sunshine, I popped outside and took a photo. We had booked ourselves a slot for a swim at the fitness centre at 11 am, where we swam 50 laps, a good step up from the 36 we had managed earlier in the week! At 2 pm we had a zoom chat with Roger’s family - his Dad, Janet and John, Pam and Mike, their son Matt, (all in England) and our daughters Jen in Salt Lake City and Laura in Kuwait! It was great to see everyone altogether again, if only by Zoom! Roger’s Dad Bernard particularly enjoyed it, as at 92 he is hardly leaving the house. After that, Roger got busy raking leaves and I did a few jobs and some reading and knitting. In the evening we enjoyed watching a recorded concert by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with a talk afterwards including Louis Langrais, the Symphony conductor, the concertmaster and the oboist who’d played quite a leading role in one of the pieces - each person speaking from their home, or in Louis’ case, the Music Hall. The pieces were chosen to suit a small, well spaced orchestra. All except the winds and brass wore masks, and the winds and brass were separated by Perspex screens. They also found that playing widely separated like that and playing out to an empty hall, they couldn’t hear each other very well, so the players reversed themselves and faced the conductor at the back of the stage, so the sound was going into a more enclosed space. It also had the added benefit of providing a beautiful backdrop of the concert hall, with the lights dimmed, but the balconies and pillars lit up - it was very effective.