Blooming

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, we rehearsed in a dimly lit auditorium with no natural light, crammed into seats intended for the audience. Today we were in a dance studio flooded with light from floor-to-ceiling windows. It made all the difference. The Ravel passed off (almost) without a hitch after only a couple of hours' work. Pity about the wrong notes from the inattentive sopranos.

We also had our first runthrough with the soloist for the Gershwin; her rich, powerful voice is just perfect for the piece. A thoroughly satisfying day, and we went home a lot happier than we were yesterday.

Incidentally, proving my point that it was hard to photograph the flashmob, even the official press photographer produced a very lame photo which just looks like a bunch of people standing around.

Again I had many photo opportunities and little chance to profit from them. Early in the morning, I drove S across to the other side of Alaric and dumped him in the middle of nowhere to walk home. I hasten to add that this is part of his training regime and entirely voluntary on his part. The garrigue was alive with spring flowers. This is not the garrigue however, it's a meadow deliberately planted with wild flowers, not far from the Conservatoire. I took a lot of photos, but I'm still finding my way around the Olympus and none of them was very satisfactory. I rescued this one by blurring it. I took more photos of the Conservatoire too, such a photogenic building, but I didn't want to blip it twice in succession.

And this evening we had a barbecue in the garden. But by that time, the camera battery had run out.