pumpkinstrokemarrow

Anyway, it turns out that I have probably been making my dough far too dry. The wetter the better seems to be the the maxim for the bakers' training school. And one of the devices he suggests for keeping the dough wetter is to prove the loaves inside propagation trays.

Now as it happens I have two of these things and they have been sitting on the study window cill for a couple of years or more, waiting to see what happens. I did not put any seeds in them but the idea was to see what turned up under its own steam. Over the time there has been some interest - there were some liverworts at one point and a spider at another (see early April last year) - but most of the time grass and moss has been dominant. But neither have thrived. The grass I can understand as the containers are not very large and the ambience is damp. But I would of thought that that was just what the moss liked. But no, refused to thrive. So yesterday it was time to call time. The trays have been called to the higher calling of keeping my proving dough damp. Contents now in compost dustbin. As it turned out they were very damp, the compost in the trays was full of roots, roots which made the compost into a mat, and there was no smell. Which I would have thought there would have been. OK, so there were no animals to pong but some plants pong too.

Yesterday, back to London to hear Pollini do Book 1 of the 'Well Tempered Clavier'. A pianist for whom my brother had a lot of time but who did not do much for me because he always seemed to be playing what I call clever clogs pieces - show off pieces if you like - which I do not like. I go for simpler music. Well the 'Well Tempered Clavier' qualifies as far as that is concerned, and Pollini did well. Quite a performance - two slugs of an hour each - for someone who is six or seven years older than I am. Once again, I did not know the music as well as I thought I did, but I now know it a good deal better. I flagged a bit towards the end of the first half, but picked up again and paced myself better for the second. Even to the point where it is maybe time that I get myself a proper hi-fi on which to play the thing at home. My version being Richter, probably ex-Oxfam, Tavistock.

Enthusiastic audience, house more or less full. Lots of foreigners. I noticed several groups of French people and there were lots of people from the Far East, probably Japanese. They seem to be well into western classical music. But I noticed no-one who looked as if they came from the Middle East, North Africa or as if they might be Muslims. No-one who looked as if they or their parents came from the Indian sub-continent. And just one black. But the audience was probably OK on non-race aspects of diversity.

On the way home, got to pondering about the economics. The seats in the Festival Hall were maybe twice as much as those in the Wigmore Hall had been the previous evening. The Festival Hall had maybe four times as many people. So the Festival Hall had eight revenues for one artist while the Wigmore Hall had one revenue for ten. Dorking Halls charge maybe half what the Wigmore Hall charges and holds about the same number of people. The inference seems to be that the same arrangements about pay prevail as does in the world of professional football; that is to say there is a lot of difference between the top and the bottom of the heap.

There was one sign of primadonnishness in that Pollini did not quite seem to get his act together with his page turner, a gentleman of mature years but probably a bit younger than himself. The piece was broken into 48 smaller pieces, two for each of the 24 possible keys, and many of the pieces occupied exactly two pages of score. Pollini seemed to want to hold onto the page until the closing notes had completely died away, before the page was turned. A proceeding I entirely approve of: lay one thing to rest properly before moving onto the next. But sometimes the page turner left it too long and Pollini started to turn the page himself, glaring ferociously at the official page turner the while. Or at least, that is what it seemed like to me.

Almost home, at TB to be precise, heard a story about the top and bottom of another kind of heap. It seems that this chap had been working for the same builder for the whole of his working life, say forty years. Hard working sort of chap, fond of his drink and his grub. Let's call him A. The builder, a middling sort of concern I should imagine, rather into speciality work like mending bits of Windsor Castle, did well and wound up with a grand house in some leafy part of Surrey. He has now wound up his affairs and paid off his staff, managing to organise things so that he does not have to pay them any kind of redundancy. So he is now enjoying his well earned and well padded retirement, while A is reduced to his state pension, a considerable drop in his income. Well you may say, that is way of the world. Well I reply, well it might be. But it is a rough old world.