It was a bittersweet moment yesterday when I saw the family off on their trip back to Belgium. Fortunately my rehearsal schedule included a Thursday without any rehearsals, and Bruce left his car in our care while he is singing opera in Victoria, so it was a simple thing to drive up to Pearson International Airport.
We did a lot of visiting with extended family over the course of the trip, but it is also true that I spent many hours a day either in the studio preparing my music and dialogue, or in the rehearsal hall staging the operetta, so I wasn't as available as I would have liked. Yet Maggie and the kids had more free time, and we all still managed to spend time with Maggie's parents.
We also enjoyed a big extended family gathering at my aunt and uncle's home in Mississauga. Happily my parents and both sisters and my nephew Henry also were there, which makes the first time that my parents' extended family has been altogether in quite some time. Many of my cousins and aunts and uncles were also able to make it to Lorraine and David's. Growing up in a large family with many relatives that live within 100 km radius of each other means that you are lucky to spend a lot of time together as children, and you all become very close. These days, my extended family is much more dispersed geographically than when I was a child, so it makes these infrequent reunions all the more pleasurable.
It was really nice to have a day off yesterday, my first in what feels like many weeks. Prior to going to the airport we sorted through the last few large plastic boxes that we have been keeping in storage since 2007, and made some decisions about what we will ship, what we will sell, and what we will donate. We have already taken many bins full of old clothes and stuff animals and old linens to Value Village, and depending on what sells on eBay or any yard sale, there may be more donations. I am going to try to purchase space in a shipping container, and send over things like our wedding china and special small items, as well as my vintage tube amplifiers, and probably also my Fender Telecaster guitar. The Fender Stratocaster that I have here is a newer one that I don't have a big emotional connection with; I didn't gig with it very much, and it wasn't used on the Moses Gillespie record so there's no no real reason for me to keep it.
One thing we found was tons and tons of photographs. I was quite a prolific film photographer back in the days before high-quality digital cameras, and so it's great to find these prints, negatives and contact sheets waiting for us. Here's one interesting photograph taken in the Kingston guitar shop in the first few years of the 21st-century... I think that Malcolm was maybe four or five years old at the time… By the look on his face it would seem that he was interested in string instruments and amplifiers even at a young age.
After I got back from the airport yesterday and noticed that the air temperature was 12° C, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and go for a run... it turned out that there were many #12s that resulted from this decision: apart from it being 12° C, it was also the 12th of April. My last 10km run had an average pace of 5:15 seconds per kilometre, but this time I shaved 12 seconds off my pace (5:03) and ran 12km. So I'm feeling quite good and was only 35 seconds away from running 12 km in less than 60 minutes. It still was my fastest-ever 10K, though, so I'm feeling happy.
This morning I took advantage of the free lane swims at Jimmy Simpson pool, and did a kilometre in about 19 minutes. I've been doing that about three times a week since I got here, and it's nice to balance out the exercise so that my upper body get some work as well as my legs. Surprisingly there is no pool in Wavre, and if I go to the pool in Brussels it costs several euro each time, so I'm making use of the free admission here as much as I can.
The rehearsals are going well; we still have two weeks and before the play opens, so we should be fine. Don Tarnawski, my long-time Toronto coach helped me prepare the music, and Malcolm was generous enough to run lines with me many times, so I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I was one of the best prepared people. I have to be well prepared because while I don't have all that much solo singing to do, "Calchas" has a part in nearly every ensemble, and he is in almost every scene of the play... my most extended dialogue scene is the very first one, and it introduces everything, so it has to be super clear for the audience.
Maggie and the boys sent me some photographs from Brussels. It would seem that the weather there is very nice and the tulips and daffodils that Malcolm and I planted in the fall have come up!
One curious coincidence: the license plate for the scooter has arrived, and despite the fact that it is registered in my name, the gods who assigned random letters and numbers to licenses seem to think that the scooter belongs to Maggie...
Now it's time to warm up and review my music and lines prior to staging rehearsals this afternoon and evening...
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