Monday 8 March 2010

Fresh starts

I have been so busy this weekend, I hardly even know what the news is. World War III could have broken out (can we please, please, please fight against the French this time?) and I just wouldn't know.

But if I didn't blog, it was only because I've been walking about a million miles in my head for various reasons. Not a million miles ON my head, you understand. I think even I, gymnast that I am (ahem *blink*), would struggle with that. And not with my feet either. Am I being cryptic? I hope you're annoyed.

One thing that did emerge from my long-distance travels was the urgency of getting back to playing my guitar. I have hardly touched the beast over the last few years, mostly through boredom. There was a time, however, when I played around four hours a day. Well, I'm not going back there, but I do feel the need for a little creativity. Rubbing numb limbs is the ight way to bring back a bit of circulation, and it is amazing what inactivity can bring upon a soul.

Don't worry, I won't be breaking the instrument out in church, unless it is to charge at some charismatic and burst his balloons with my plectrum. But in the privacy of my own house of course.

There is only one thing more beautiful than the sound of one guitar, and that is the sound of two - so said Chopin. And he knew a thing or too about music, even if he was overly fond of the waltz.

Onwards and upwards, dear readers. Laetare Sunday is in sight. And if you strain your eyes a little, Passiontide is just on the horizon.

7 comments:

  1. One of the loveliest things I've heard is the psalms sung to to the plainchant tones accompanied by a rippling acoustic guitar.

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  2. While you're waiting for WWIII, have a read of the very, very, good "England's Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940-42" by Colin Smith. It provides wonderful context for Anglo-French relations in the second half of the twentieth century.

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  3. Is that the one that covers the cases of torture in London? There was a disturbing thing about that in one of the Sundays a little while ago.

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  4. 'Passiontide is just on the horizon'. Or, looked at slightly less spiritually, it's another four weeks without chocolate.

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  5. Torture in London? No. But Frenchmen killing British sailors in Portsmouth, internment camps for Frenchmen in Barmouth,the UK conquering Madagascar and Syria in the name of de Gaulle: a hyperreal segment of WWII, lucidly told; and an explanation of why dealing with the French at an official level can be so difficult.

    Mind you, going into a French Ministry just over a year ago and finding half the people there with mourning bands on their sleeves, and, asking for whom, to be told Louis XVI, told me as much as the book did.

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