Light posting...

I'm afraid that posting is going to be light over the next few weeks - work is getting incredibly busy, and all of the various clubs and societies are now back again after the summer break. So, usual apologies in advance.

We've got our new pieces for the April orchestra concert - we are playing Schubert's 6th Symphony, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte and Mozart's Clarinet concerto. The oboes don't play anything in the Mozart, which is actually a good thing - both the Ravel and the Schubert are full of oboe solos, and the usual first oboe is going to be away for the concert, so I get to do them all by myself... I think I'm going to have to fit some time in for some heavy duty practice into the evening schedule! The pieces are lovely (or will be when we aren't sight-reading), so I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth into them.

I did get to take part in a fine Wellington custom this week - Wellington is known as the Windy city for a very good reason, and this week we had winds of over 100kph for a few days. Due to the way that the buildings are laid out, you can often find that the wind comes at you from multiple directions at once, which can be very interesting, to say the least. However, let someone who is not from the city, such as the Australian supplier who came over for a meeting last week, comment on the wind, and the response is usually along the lines, as both my colleague and myself said, at pretty much the same time, "This? It's just a light breeze..."