Perfect Pitch

Courtney Pine, wowsers! I've just seen him at Snape, heard him rather, and he is awesome. What he can do with a bass clarinet has to be witnessed to be believed. He hit the sweetest, highest notes and the deepest, richest lower notes. I'm in awe of the man. And he was accompanied by an amazing jazz pianist, Zoe Rahman, who reminded me of Oscar Peterson but was better. She did more than just support him as he gave her space to do her own thing and man, did she do it. It was a great night, the hall full of yet another different kind of audience. I've been a bit worried about this week as I have a virus, the result of exposing myself to the sun and ending up looking like a horror story. The virus must have crept in when I was weakened, and it's got a hold now. It's not too bad, but I feel generally unwell and have a permanent headache. I'm working three nights at Snape and I want to do them all, so fingers crossed it won't get worse. How I HATE being ill. It wastes so much time.

Yesterday evening I looked up suddenly from my book to see that the rain had stopped and the sky was looking fresh and clear. Immediately I donned shoes and went outside, and it was lovely, as if the earth was as surprised as me to see itself drying after the deluge and had put on an extra bit of sparkle and polish. I've been reading, or re-reading, another Sebastian Barry, this one set in the Wicklow of the 1950s, and so deeply involved in it have I been that I expected to see beyond my cottage the old mud cabins that still housed the poor in those days, and long muddy lanes untouched as yet by tarmac. A passing pony and trap wouldn't have surprised me, and though they are not uncommon in these Suffolk byways, none came past me. It's a very beguiling book, Annie Dunne, full of poetry and embroidered descriptions of the Wicklow hills, and I find myself longing to be there, a romantic wish that would only reveal a harsh world of deprivation and hard work were it to be granted. I soon adjusted to my own world, and halfway down the hill I stopped and gazed and gazed and gazed at the fawny tawny gold fields sweeping in every direction, bereft now of their crops but still unploughed, and I marvelled anew that this is where I live.