Halfway to Malvern

January 4th, 2013, 14:30
Maggie and the boys have stopped to rest their legs and I'm staying with the car for a bit.

We had a lovely dinner with Rob, Viki, Katie and Honor yesterday evening, of a baked brie, then steak and oven roasted potatoes, a great salad and a chocolate layer cake to celebrate Rob's birthday. Malcolm and I also managed to have a nice pizza lunch with him at Zizzi's - a name that made Malcolm laugh - at the Oceanfront centre. We also had a chance to try out a nice cherry red telecaster and the new superchamp amp head at the music store there.

Rob was very nice to let us hang out with him and do guy stuff on his birthday. He was also good enough to go with Malcolm and I to Kinloch Anderson to pick up my new kilt. Yee haw!

Apart from the four beautiful waistcoats that Maggie made for me in the 1990s, and a few shirts that I had made in Hong Kong about ten years ago I've never ordered bespoke anything, so it was really quite exciting to make the call. Macpherson ancient colours tartan isn't readily available, and so the order must be placed with enough advance time to have it woven, and of the three examples I saw, this one is definitely my favorite, with lots of lighter blue in it to complement the red base colour, and a few less pronounced accents of green, black and yellow as well.

We did a little fashion show, and Rob got on his Ancient Cameron, so we were well matched and well dressed for dinner. Kilts aren't cheap, but through our many trips to visit Rob and Viki, Maggie's ancestry, the Gillespie connection to Macpherson and of course our St. Andrew's Church of Scotland connection in Brussels, I've been waiting to get a kilt for a while. English Canada was absolutely dominated by Scots immigration in the first half of our country's history; I plan to speak about many of these Scottish-Canadian influences during my speech at the Burns Supper coming up later this month.

Now we are starting to get close to our destination, and have stopped once for a picnic lunch (thanks to Viki) gas and jelly babies, and another time now for a restroom stop. We followed Viki's recommendation for the westward route, and enjoyed the countryside very much. As we had bypassed the southwestern route on our last toad trip eighteen months ago due to uncertainty about the youth riots in Liverpool and Manchester, much of the drive was new to us, and we enjoyed having a look about at beautiful scenery. Some of the road signs seem to us to be rather funny in an unintentional way, such as "Heavy Plant Crossing" (I didn't know that the plants walked around, but maybe things are different in Scotland... are they farming triffids up north?).  Malcolm's favorite was what he called an "existential road sign": it said, "Changed Priorities Ahead".

We have been sharing the driving and I am feeling okay vocally after a long time with a sore throat. I finally caved in and took a Dayquil yesterday and the results were remarkable enough that I took another today, so hopefully I can sing tonight and of course tomorrow. It will be great to sing Britten, Cornelius, Warlock, John Stevens 15th-century 'There is No Rose of Such Virtue' along with some of Piers's own compositions, including a extensive unaccompanied plainsong trio from the 12th-century Play of Herod, from the Fleury play-book which Piers has transcribed and arranged. I haven't sung this kind of music in a long time, and performing it in the Great Malvern Priory which dates from just after the Norman Conquest will be kind of shivery, or 'goose-bumpy'. I'm also really happy to get a crack at the Britten 'Magi' again, and hope that we can better our performance of last year in the Chapelle Royal in Brussels.