Deceptive

Well that was a dreary day! ( I really want to add the very Glasgow "so it wiz" to that first sentence - a wee intensifying tag) Non-stop grey drizzle, with the odd burst of more serious rain, and a biting wind driving it onto the windows. Most unappealing, and a sad blow after yesterday. I didn't get up very briskly - sat in bed doing Italian and drinking tea till almost 9am. Then I remembered I had to make a loaf for lunch, so I had that on the go while the porridge was bubbling, and put on another washing after that. My only outing was to pick up another batch of talc-free pills as suggested by the diligent pharmacist last week, and some granary flour: today's loaf was heavy on rye flour because I hadn't had enough of the lighter granary.
Later, my only worthwhile activity was making up a list of all my places on Arran - walks, climbs and parking spots - for friends, younger than us, who are having their first ever visit there soon.

That being the case, I thought I'd say a few more words about school music-making and my take on it, after Saturday's concert. I suppose private schools sort of come into it as well, but not entirely. 

I attended Hillhead High School in the days when it was a grant-aided selective Glasgow Corporation school (we paid £1.19 in Primary school and £3.19 per term in secondary.) When I was in P6 a new principal teacher of music arrived in the secondary and started recruiting instrumentalists; I ended up being given a violin. I could already play the piano and read music, so it was a matter merely of mastering the fingering, and I soon bought my own instrument. I played in the orchestras for the next seven years, eventually leading the second violins in the Festival-winning secondary school orchestra as well as singing in the Madrigal Group, and my love affair with music (and, it turned out, musicians!) was well established. I've not played much after Himself came into my life; I discovered I was a better singer relatively speaking than I was a violinist, and there were more opportunities to work with small groups. I've been singing ever since. 

What made it happen was the drive of one man, that music teacher who arrived when I was 11, and the kind of school I attended - a strong ethos, pride in the school, an academic environment, supportive parents. People who didn't subscribe to these standards tended to vanish - a girl in my class was expelled for having unsuitable meetings with an older man in Kelvingrove park at lunchtime. 

My father wasn't keen on our attending a selective school; he, like me, taught all his life in the state system and didn't like the idea of creaming off the top academically speaking. (My mother won that one.) I only ever worked in ordinary schools - Woodside, both as a senior secondary and as a comprehensive, briefly in Hillhead before I stopped to have babies, and the rest of my life in Dunoon Grammar, very definitely a comprehensive despite its name, the alma mater of John Smith, Lord George Robertson and Brian Wilson as well as of the current editor of The Scotsman ...

This is going on too long. I shall get on to school concerts and their place in another entry. I think school music-making is too important to tag on here.

Today's photo is of a wonderful bunch of flowers that a daughter-in-law sent for Himself's 80th. Yes, they still bloom as freshly as the day they arrived because they're mainly paper and cloth - but if you look very carefully you may notice that there's a pair of socks in there, as well as several bars of chocolate, all on sticks among the flowers. The idea is you seek solace among the flowers when you're feeling low ...

And my extra, because they made me smile, is a wee gang of dunnocks meeting on the hedge in which they live, just outside my kitchen window.
Night night!