Good weather; yard work; Mechelen Cathedral; Het Anker

I managed to get in another run yesterday, after a couple of days off from the longer on with Lawrence.  I wasn't feeling very well; I've had an ache in my chest, and a cough, I think from the bad air quality, which continues here in Wavre.  But I took it easy at first and gradually speeded up over the 7km run with the dog, and again bettered my record for fastest 1km with a new personal record of 4:41/km.

Before the run we had a big yard work day, as it was t-shirt weather. It was largely spurred on by the discovery of what was left of Henrietta, who was found underneath an old hardwood pallet in the back yard that we had piled a bunch of old bramble, lilac, stinging nettle, and rosebush cuttings.  She was missing her head, and the body had been emptied out from the inside, leaving the wings, feet and feathers intact, so we are thinking it was probably a weasel.  There was no sign of a nest in our yard, but we cleared up a lot of the brush and burned most of it in the outdoor fireplace.  As well I got the chainsaw going and cut up a bunch of logs that were just that little bit too long or too large to fit in the woodstove.  That will make available quite a bit of wood that otherwise would be left lying around.  Malcolm was home for the weekend, which was nice, as he's spent the last two or three weekends in Wilrijk.

Saturday night we had our neighbours over for a dinner, with Chicken "Mandalay", a chicken curry with apricots from the family cookbook, Brazilian black bean soup from the Moosewood Cookbook, and some other complementary dishes.

This morning was even nicer weather than Saturday, so after resting up from our exertions of the day before we piled into the car for a day out in Mechelen.  The distinctive tower of Sint-Romboutskathedraal dominates the surrounding area, and is visible for many kilometers away; while I sang the Johannespassion there back in March of 2015, I hadn't explored the tower, and so we set ourselves the goal of climbing it.

The tower was begun around the year 1200, and was intended to reach 167 metres, which would have made it the tallest church spire ever constructed.  But for financial reasons the building of the upper part of the tower was abandoned in the 16th-century, and it stopped at the characteristic flat-topped profile that is visible today.  From Wikipedia:

Despite its incompleteness, this World Heritage monument is still 97.28 metres high and its 514 steps are climbed by thousands of people every year.  Some of the famous persons who have climbed the tower include Louis XV, Napoleon, King Albert I, and King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola in 1981.

We can now add the Rose-Zadows to that list!

On the way up we had several resting points, including a stop at the level of the winch used to hoist heavy objects up from the ground level into the interior of the cathedral.  There was a large hamster wheel - if the hamster was the size of a horse - that was used as the motive force of the crane elevator, and it was powered allegedly by the foot-power of children.  I can imagine that the threat of becoming one of these "crane children" would have been effective in getting the little ones to eat their cabbage back in the day.   

There was the "smithy" level of the tower, where a portable blacksmith's forge was set up to make all of the ironwork involved in construction (pulleys, wheels, anchors, etc), and an "ash" level, which was a storage place for mortar, and then we made it up to the old carillon.  Each one of these 49 massive bronze bells in the carillon has its own name. Some of the most notable are "Salvator", which weighs 8884 kg, "Jehsus", built in 1460, and "Liberation", added in 1947. 

Thirty-nine steps above the first carillon there is a second complete carillon which is in much better working condition, as it was added in 1978.  There are also 49 bells in this new carillon, and the carillonneur sits in a soundproof room and plays all of the bells on something that looks like a two-manual organ with a pedalboard (no Quasimodo-style bell-ringing in Mechelen).  The total weight of the two carillons is over 80 tonnes, and if you are in the tower when the bells start ringing, as we were, you will quickly plug your ears, because it is LOUD.  The whole tower rings with the vibrations, and the sustain afterwards goes on for what feels like several minutes.

From the observation catwalk at the top you can easily see the cooling tower of the Doel nuclear power plant in Antwerp, and to the south, the Atomium is clearly visible.

After a few minutes on the observation deck we walked back down the steps to the ground level, and had a 500 metre walk to Het Anker Brewery, which was having its open-door day.  We hadn't planned far enough in advance so there were no tickets for tours left, but we managed to find a table in the restaurant and had a small glass together.

Interestingly one of the beers brewed by Het Anker is called Manneblusser.  This means "Moon-Extinguisher", and since shortly after 27 January 1687 it has been the nickname for the residents of Mechelen.  It seems that the moon was particularly full and bright that evening, and as it flickered though some patchy clouds, some members of the town panicked as they saw flickering lights through the windows of the church.  Thinking that the tower was on fire, they rushed up the stairs with buckets of water, thinking to extinguish the fire, only to find that it was just the moonlight.  A happy ending, so of course the Belgians have made a beer about it.

Then we drove Malcolm to Wilrijk, less than 20 minutes away, and then came home for a quiet dinner, and an early night...

Nice weather continues; Maggie time off; run in Hélécine; bulk food store opens in Wavre; heritability of G.A.S.

Maggie is enjoying her time off, and has been doing some sorting and organising around the house.  As well she's loving the free time to work on her latest embroidery project, and since the holiday started on Saturday the 16th, she has managed to add 2,800 stitches to her current project.

Frequently Clyde has been the one who likes to play with the loose threads, but tonight Bonnie is captivated by the ligh reflected by her scissors bouncing across the ceiling, so she is sitting sentinel instead.

Yesterday Maggie and I drove out to the Jodoigne area for a morning run with Tiffany and Lawrence, and then a nice lunch together.  Yoshi was a bit difficult.  Lawrence is quite fast and runs at the front of the group, and I do my best to keep up with him, while Tiffany and Maggie tend to take a more relaxed pace and a shorter distance, but Yoshi seems to think that we are all supposed to stay in one group, so he gets a little stubborn if we get separated.  I finally gave up trying to drag him along with me, so handed off the leash, and he ended up running with Maggie and Tiffany on the shorter route, while I ran my first 12km in several weeks with Lawrence.  It's good to run with a training partner who will challenge you a bit, and I was well-rested and so felt pretty good.

The weather continues to be clear, with sunny days and temperatures in the teens, while at night there are usually frosts.  The one down side to such an extended stationary high-pressure system is that the air quality was noticeably bad today, as there hasn't been a strong wind or a good rainstorm to clean the air for several days, and the air pollution - I think from traffic mostly - tends to stick around.

This morning I had another physiotherapy appointment, and then Kiana came by to go with us to the opening of Macavrac, a new bulk food coöperative that has just opened up in Wavre, not far from our house. Like many of our friends we are concerned about unnecessary plastic packaging, and are also conscious about prices, so we wanted to go check it out.  Their focus is on organic, locally-grown, and bulk food.  For example, the "LLN" on the pointed red cabbage shown above indicates that it was grown in Louvain-la-neuve, only a few kilometres away.  We only bought a couple of things there but are considering becoming members of the coöperative.  A television crew was there and did a report; we are briefly visible around the 1:45 mark...

This afternoon was a long editing session with Evan to prepare the church video.  It's coming together slowly, but I'm thinking now that we might actually do a couple of versions, sort of like how movie distributors have teaser trailers, and then multiple versions of their trailers to promote films.  Evan is a really talented editor so it's not a hardship at all, but one does have to put in the time.

Malcolm called us up this week and we had a good conversation.  He has been working very hard on his mandolin and classical guitar, so much so that we haven't seen him for several week-ends.  But he's making great progress.  Here are some photos that he sent us recently...

I found something on Facebook marketplace that he was interested in, and after some discussion it looks like it will be his: a gently-used Dobro resonator guitar...

He is always noodling around with my 1934 resonator "Ophelia" whenever he is home, but would like a resonator of his own to play whenever he is at a Bluegrass or old-time jam session, and the price is very reasonably on these spider-cone resonators, especially on the one that we found.  The owner has reserved it for Malcolm but he won't get it until next week.  (* note: in case you were wondering what the acronym G.A.S. stands for in the title of this blog, it is "Gear Acquisition Syndrome", and I think that Malcolm has inherited it from me).

Duncan's bulletin came back, and it was an improvement over the last one, but still not spectacular.  We know that he can do much more, and are trying hard to encourage him to study, and to give him some pointers on effective exam preparation.  Apart from his schoolwork, karate, Japanese superhero comics, and hand-painted models, he seems very interested in the piano or the drums; two instruments that no one else really plays in our family.  I am going to cautiously support these interests and see about some drum lessons at a nearby school, and I've dug out some of my beginner piano music and left it lying around.  We'll have to wait and see what he does.

In the meantime we are just enjoying the wood fire with the furry beasts...

Concert for peace; perogies; Maggie on holiday

after the concert at BOZAR Saturday night

The concert at the BOZAR with the Brussels Choral Society and Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra was a big success.  The audience reaction was generous and we were all quite exhausted emotionally when it was all over.  Eric - the artistic director of the choral society - was very positive afterwards, congratulating me and saying that my singing was beautifully expressive.  He also said that he looks forward very much to the next collaboration, which may be simple politeness, but then again, this is the third time that I have sung with this ensemble, so who knows?  Eric is also the head of music at the International School of Brussels, and the person who has hired me to adjudicate there three times, so I think that we are on good terms.

I didn't stick around for a lot of celebrating but drove home immediately afterwards, as I had a early start the next morning...

Mike and Joyce Hill sing in the Choral Society, and are also long-time members of the Choir at St. Andrew's.  It made sense that many members of the congregation had been at the concert, as I found out the next morning.  It is nice to receive appreciation from friends and acquaintances on a performance, and I was pleasantly surprised, because I didn't realise that I would know anyone in the audience.

For the second week in a row this past Sunday, Duncan was interviewing people on camera, and I was filming some sequences and doing some audio recording before, after, and during the service.  All of this is for that short film that I am effectively producing, and it would seem that after last Sunday we have enough footage to make a good start.  I'm meeting on Wednesday with Evan Lamos, a videographer friend who will be doing the editing, so I will have a better idea of how the film will take shape after that meeting.

Duncan and I made a hasty exit after the interviews were completed, and we drove home to Wavre to get Maggie.  The weather has been absolutely gorgeous recently, and Bryan and I were eager to go our for a run with the dogs.  We took advantage of the 15-degree sunny weather and ran our 8km.  Meanwhile everyone else was back at the house getting ready for the perogi bee that we had planned...

Kiana had also invited Susan, a Canadian from Vancouver, to take part; her two kids go to the same school as the Hammer kids.  We had a great time making perogi, then boiling them and finishing them off for a few minutes in a fry pan on the wood cookstove.  Served with a little bit of bacon and some strained yoghurt... Delicious!

Today was pretty quiet; I had my physio in the early morning, and the rest of the day has been pretty relaxed, at home with Maggie.  She's off from school all this week, and today was getting some embroidery done and relaxing...  The rest of the week is pretty clear, and this weekend has nothing on the calendar.  That's nice because after this weekend, it's going to get busy for me, and I won't have another free weekend until mid-April...

Osso Buco Milanese; warmer weather; more gigs

It was a pretty busy weekend... On Saturday morning we tidied up the house in preparation for dinner guests.  Raoul and Luisa live just a few steps away from our old house in Watermael, and we hadn't seen them since before Christmas.  They were happy to meet Yoshi, and Clyde; Bonnie is still pretty skittish around new people and so she didn't make an appearance.

The dinner started out with some Scottish smoked salmon and Boursin cheese, with capers and red onions, on my homemade Swedish multi-seed crispbread, or Knäckebröd.  These crackers are delicious but quite expensive in the store, and I decided to make some myself.  As it happens, the recipe is dead easy, and you can substitute whatever seeds or flour you happen to have on hand.  We have several friends who are sensitive to wheat flour, or who need low-glycemic-index snacks because of diabetes, so I usually make mine with rye or spelt flour.

Knackebrot (Swedish crackers)

Ingredients

• 220 g wholemeal flour (wheat, or spelt, or rye, or whatever you like)
• 220 g rolled oats
• 2 tsp salt
• 150 g sunflower seeds
• 75 g sesame seeds
• 75 g flax seeds, poppy seeds or chia seeds
• 40 g pumpkin seeds
• 700 ml water
• 2 Tbsp olive oil

Directions
Heat oven to 130C.  Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and add the water and oil. Oil a very large oven tray or two smaller ones and pour the mixture onto the trays. It should be the consistency of porridge.  Spread it as thinly as possible (the thinner the better) and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.  Remove and cut into pieces as desired - either cracker size or larger rectangles. Put back in the oven and bake for one to two hours until they are golden and crisp.

In the morning I went to the halal butcher to get some veal shanks, and made osso buco.  I am completely in love with this recipe from Fine Cooking Magazine...

I've made it once before but had forgotten how truly outstanding it is.  Like many stews it starts with salting and peppering the meat, then dredging it in flour, and browning the pieces.  Then any leftover oil is discarded and some fresh oil and a little butter is added to the pan.  Then comes the standard battuto of onions, carrots, and celery; in French this is called a mirepois.  After this trinity of vegetables have been fried, they are called a soffrito.  I begin ragu alla bolognese or carbonade flamande in the same manner, but while for bolognese I add red wine to the soffritto, and for carbonade, dark Belgian beer, for the veal it's a dry white wine instead.

Another interesting trick that intensifies the flavour of a tomato-based sauce is to add the tomato concentrate to the soffritto before you add the wine.  Stir the tomato paste and fry it in the hot oil with the softened vegetables until it changes colour, before you add the wine and any additional tomatoes; it carmelises some of the sugars in the paste, and sweetens and deepens the flavour.

Maggie produced an amazing risotto alla Milanese using a chicken stock that I made the day before, and added some mushrooms, and I made a huge amount of sautéed rapini with garlic.  We finished up with vanilla ice cream and my olive oil brownies with flaky Maldon salt, made with our own olive oil from Tuscany.  It was a truly monumental meal, and warmed us all up on a chilly weekend.

I say that chilly, but that is by Belgian standards, and compared to Ontario it is warm, and there are already signs of spring here.  We received a number of plants as presents from Andrew and Julia as they moved back to Scotland, and they have wintered over outside without any problems.  This one is a type of hydrangea I think, and it is blooming on our front step!

As well the crocuses are coming out in the front garden, and the snowdrops are out on the back lawn.

Sunday morning we all trouped into church early.  I am part of the Vacancy committee at St. Andrew's, that has been tasked with finding a new minister.  One of the projects is to make a short video showing the members of the congregation, that can be shown to prospective candidates, and also might be appropriate to post on the church's website.  Our friend Marjan and I have been taking the lead on the video project, and we decided that it should be in the form of a documentary.  Her daughters and Duncan are to be the hosts/interviewers of members of the congregation, and so we needed to get to church early to get some establishing video, and also to carry out some interviews.  It all went quite well, and we will film again next Sunday.  I'll be sure to share the video with you when it's ready.

Yesterday was another busy day; it started with my fourth 8h30 physiotherapy session, which I am pleased to report is going very well.  I happened to meet Kiana in the lobby of the medical centre; she was there for a consultation, and we had a cup of coffee and caught up a little.  They are renovating their house, and making good progress.  Maggie is getting lots of ideas, and she has already warned me that she wants to get going on some of them next week while she has a week's holidays for Carnaval.

It was very sunny yesterday morning, and I was a day overdue for my run, so I took Yoshi out for a fast 8km.  Then I got cleaned up and warmed up my voice, and rode the train into Brussels to meet with David Miller, my coach, to sing through the Vaughan Williams dona nobis pacem prior to the big rehearsal on Thursday evening.  It really was only a half session with David, as I have only three short interjections to sing in the piece, but I have learned from past experience that for important, highly exposed singing it is really important to make sure that you have the harmonies solidly planted in your memory.  As well it's an important safety check to have external ears listen for anything weird in the intonation, diction, phrasing, and to make sure that you have the rhythms completely internalised.  Solos like this one, with such a high-profile group, in the BOZAR, don't come along every day, and it is very important that I make the most of this opportunity and do a very effective job.

After my coaching I met up with Roy Dickinson, a former choruster and amateur singer who works for the European Commission.  He founded an international choir at the Commission a couple of years ago, and has asked me to conduct a workshop for the choir, to give them some help with the basics of singing technique, diction, breathing, posture, etc. as well as some performance technique things like how to mark your scores, stage comportment, etc.  I wanted to have a little face-to-face meeting with Roy in advance of the workshop so that we could get to know each other.  All went well, and it looks like that workshop will happen on March 3rd, a Sunday afternoon.

I seem to have been pretty lucky recently to have a number of things come to me this season; along with the choral workshop, I also wrote last blog post about a Matthäuspassion... I replied to the conductor but haven't yet heard back from him with all the details.  I do hope that is confirmed soon...

I also had another lead bear some fruit recently.  Back in 2015 I had a long trip to Canada, to perform and to audition, and part of my itinerary included visiting Bruce in Quebec City, where he was singing in Tosca.  I took a detour to Montreal to visit Penni Clarke, shortly after she and Damien moved the family there, leaving Brussels.  While visiting Penni I auditioned for Marc David, who conducts several orchestras, including the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra.  At the time he suggested we do a Messiah together in St. John's, but it never panned out.  There were issues with the singing agency, and in the end there was no need for my services as a bass soloist that year.

However this past September I happened across a video clip of Marc conducting something, and sent him a quick note of congratulations.  I heard nothing back from him at the time, but then on Sunday evening I received an email offering me Messiah in early December 2019.  That's great news, as I love Newfoundland, and have never sung there.  I am hoping to couple those performances with something else; there is an annual Messiah that my friend Donald Fraser conducts in Charlottetown, so that's a possibility, and of course there are other productions in Ontario around that time as well.  I currently have a Christmas Oratorio on December 22nd here in Brussels, so probably would want to come back for that, unless something really big came in that would keep me in Canada and require that I withdraw from the Brussels concert.

I see outside that it's sunny again, so I am going to get the kitchen cleaned up, call the insurance company about some minor car repairs, take the dog for a walk, and do some more singing!

Happiness is a warm egg

It's been a bit warmer these last few days and I think the chickens are liking it; today they laid three eggs, and two of them were still warm when I took them out of the chicken coop!  The other reason that they may be laying better is that we bought the more expensive feed for laying hens, rather than the cheaper one that we had been using before.  I think the new food has more protein and also more calcium.  They have access to the compost pile which is frequently replenished with dried eggshells and lots of kitchen vegetable waste as well.

The physiotherapy is going well, although the added movement with progressively heavier weights is making me feel a bit sore.  I went running two days in a row this week, which is a very rare occurance for me; usually I wait two days in between.  Wednesday was an 8km at 6:11/km with Yoshi here at home, and then yesterday morning a similar 8km with Lawrence, who was visiting, at a faster 5:53/km.  In both cases I never broke into the high heart rate zone, so that's a good sign.  We're getting to the time of thinking about signing up for trail races again, so I'm happy to log some kilometers.

I said that it has been a bit warmer, but we are all still loving the fire, especially in the evenings.

I have received the flight tickets and the Airbnb reservations for Maggie and I to go to the Canary Islands in April; that's a happy thought.  As well, I've had a couple of new things come in... the first is a request from a relatively new choir, mostly made up of expats who work at the European Commission, to come and do a half-day workshop for them on posture, breathing technique, singing diction, etc.  I haven't done much work with choirs but have had some tips from Bruce on how to help a group, rather than an individual singer, so I am looking forward to that very much.  It will happen on one of my increasingly rare free weekends, on Sunday March 3rd.

Secondly a conductor whom I admire but have never worked with before just asked if I am free to do a Matthäuspassion with him in Bruges on April 14th, with the rehearsal the weekend before.  Fortunately that doesn't conflict with the Canary Islands departure, which is on the 15th April, so of course I said yes.  That means four Johannespassions and two Matthäuspassions this year.  Thank you, JSB!

Good progress on the Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle

"Forest Light" by Killian Shoenberger

I wrote on Sunday about La Chandeleur; this time of year is always an easy one for remembering special days.  Groundhog Day isn't significant, except that it coincides with the birthday of my paternal grandmother Rita, who passed away in 2012.  I can't believe that it's already been almost seven years since she left us.  The special birthdays continue in February: the 4th of September is the birthday of my youngest sister, Emily... and that is followed by the birthday of our middle sister, Heather, on the 5th (Happy Birthday, H!) which also coincides with the birthday of our late paternal grandfather Delbert, who passed away in 2005.  There are more extended family birthdays around this time: My aunt Barb Gillespie has hers on January 29th, and on the 23rd of February both my cousin David Hudson and my Aunt Lorraine Costello share a birthday as well.

It's interesting but as I get older the patterns of the year get more and more deeply grooved into my behaviour.  Of course some of that is being a singer, especially one who does a lot of Passion singing, so that my busiest time of the year is usually the month or so leading up to Easter, and I now habitually travel to Canada just after Easter to perform.  Having a wife who is a teacher, and two kids who are in school means that holidays are also nearly always spent together, so that also imposes a kind of pattern on the year.  We aren't rigorously faithful in our church attendance either, but the liturgical year is also a source of patterns.  And of course the changing seasons are things that I find myself more and more attuned to as I get older: having a garden again makes me think more about the passage of the year.

Yesterday I left Osa in Bousval, and took Yoshi with me in the car to go to my early physiotherapy appointment on my right shoulder.  They started with about five-ten minutes of ultrasound, followed by maybe ten-twenty minutes of microwave therapy.  These are similar treatments to those I had on my ankle injury a few months ago, and I understand that they are used to stimulate blood flow, loosen up cold muscles, improve fluid drainage, and soften tissues up for subsequent movement exercises.

Then I held a handle attached by a rope and pulley system to a 2kg weight, and made a repetitive movement to extend my oustretched arm upwards to reach for the sky, and then do a pull-up movement.  The weight allowed me to raise my arm much higher than I have been able to since early October, and then the pull up movement strengthens the shoulder and allows it to fall downwards again.  This lasted maybe 25 minutes, and by the end of it a lot of the tension and muscle guarding that has been plaguing me for months started to subside.  It really felt marvellous!  So I am looking forward to the next session tomorrow morning.  If all goes well I should manage to finish the treatment in three weeks, and hopefully won't need a cortisone shot.

After my physiotherapy I went home to feed the chickens and check in on the cats, then went back out to Bousval to throw the ball for the dogs, feed the fires, check the furnace for fuel and then warm up and sing.

I didn't start with the Vaughan Williams yesterday but thought I'd revisit something that is coming up on the 9th of March: the Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle.  I last sang this in 2016, and as I recall I coached it quite heavily with an Italian Rossini specialist that I had met at La Monnaie.  I was all alone in Bousval and so warmed up and let it rip.  Surprisingly a lot of it is all still there in my muscle memory, and some of the sections that I remembered being quite difficult to sing have now somehow become a bit easier, probably because my technique is continuing to evolve.

It is interesting to think about repeating patterns: I looked up a blog entry from the last time I sang Rossini.  I also talk in that post about the Passion Season, and there is a large section about staying and house-sitting in Bousval!  It's fun to look at the photos from less than three years ago, especially those of the boys, and realise how quickly they have grown over the last three years.  Also I realise that I was just at the beginning of my practice of running at that time, and had just run my first 8km.  I confess that in the cold weather I am back down to that distance on normal days, and only occasionally get in a longer 15km run.  But I hope that there will be opportunities to run longer distances when the weather gets warmer.

Today I'm meeting with a friend from church; we are brainstorming some ideas for a short video presentation on the St. Andrew's Church of Scotland in Brussels, to be used on the church website as an introductory document, and also to be shown to any prospective ministerial candidates...

Happy Tuesday (and again Happy birthdays to Emily and Heather)...

relaxed weekend

snowy drive from Bousval to Namur 

This last week or two has been very snowy and cold by Belgian standards; unlike Ontarians they don't have the plows or workforce to clear roads quickly as they so rarely get snowstorms. No one here has missed work or school yet because of the snow - much to Maggie's disappointment - but it's been chilly enough that we have kept the wood-stoves rolling.  I have managed to return to my routine of running every third day, and despite the cold and snow have lucked out with some really beautiful views of the forested countryside.  On Thursday I managed a quite fast 5:59 per km 8k, given that it was just below zero, and today in +3 weather I took both Yoshi and Osa out for the usual 8k Bousval circuit.  I can't swim because of my shoulder so running is pretty much all I have as a meditative exercise, so I'm glad that it can still happen.

Maggie and I were house-sitting in Bousval this weekend because Bryan and Kiana had a brief London trip, so we have been here most of the weekend, and also had Malcolm and Duncan here for a curry dinner this afternoon.  I'm the only one here at present as everyone else has to go back to school tomorrow morning, so I took Malcolm to the train right after an early dinner together, and Maggie and Duncan have gone home to Wavre.  The Hammer kids are farmed out with friends, so can take care of themselves, so it's just the dog, cats, and chickens to worry about.  K. gets back tomorrow afternoon so I will meet her at the station and then head home around dinner time.

Tomorrow morning I also have my first shoulder physiotherapy session... the MRI confirmed that there is a small tear in the supraspinal tendon in my shoulder, and the acromion bone pushes on the lesion when I try to lift my arm.  It's not something that requires surgery but rather intense anti-inflammatory meds, and nine sessions of physio, so that begins tomorrow morning at 8:30 in Wavre.  I should get a frequent-flyer card for the physio department!

Speaking about disabling non-crippling injuries, Yoshi was feeling a bit poorly this week as he scraped his paws pretty badly on Tuesday.  Lawrence and Tiffany have a tennis court at their place and the surface is so abrasive that if a larger dog runs on it, especially one that chases the ball as aggressively as he does, there is a good chance that that old pebbly court surface with act like sandpaper on his foot-pads.  That's what happened on Tuesday, to the point that he left bloody footprints on the tiles when he came inside, so "Doggles" has been benched from running all this week, which felt a bit weird.  To compound matters he also had a trio of vaccinations in his hindquarters at the veterinarian's on Wednesday, so he wasn't moving too nimbly for the remainder of the week.  I took him for a cautious 8km walk on Friday, and he seemed ok, so today I thought we'd try a run after I got back from church, and of course he was fine.

In music news, the Vaughan Williams is moving forward.  I really don't have that much to do in it but what I do have sits up in a high register, and VW often wants it sung piano, or softly, which means that one really has to have it in a good vocal place as there won't be an opportunity to just sing forcefully, which would actually be easier... it's hard but if one can manage it then the effect can be quite magical, so that's my task for this coming week.

As well I realise that Elijah also needs to get sung through soon.  Of course I've performed it before but that was some time ago, and when I start to look at what lies between now and May 5th, I don't actually have that much time to work on material, so I had better get cracking.  The good news is that after Dona nobis pacem and Elijah, the other material that I have to prepare is much more recently learned and performed, so it should already be in a decent place.  I'm still trying to figure out when I will go to Berlin to re-coach the Johannespassion.

Yesterday was La Chandeleur, or in North America, Groundhog Day.  I hope that wherever you are you noticed the return of the light... for us, it's been a dark winter so far.  December 2018 that was the darkest month since 1934, and in January we had 26 hours 59 minutes of visible sun, whereas the average is around 58 hours and 24 minutes.  I'm hoping that February will be brighter!