Today I played piano at a funeral. I didn’t know the family, I was asked to do it by a friend of a friend.
Before the service they requested Beethoven’s “Für Elise”, “Men Of Harlech” (the school song of the chap that died), Liszt’s “Liebestraum 3” and Chopin’s Nocturne in Eb Op9 No 2. I could play all those except the Liszt, I had to find a simplified version.
The Hymn was “Morning Has Broken”. I channelled Rick.
After the service they asked for “Song For Guy” (lovely), and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What A Wonderful World”. Nice.
During the service, as I was listening to this family tell stories about people I didn’t know, I of course thought about funerals in my family – my sister (34 years ago now), my Mum and Dad (in the last decade), and what my own funeral might be like, assuming I go before my wife. That got a bit upsetting I have to say.
Anyway, what was just a gig for me turned into a major think piece about all sorts of stuff.
How was your day??
>>>>>>>>
I only know the title ‘Men Of Harlech’ cos it’s the school song at the school in Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Decline and Fall’.
My day has only got as far as lunchtime, so far. It started with a long swim. I’ve been a mad keen swimmer for many years now and, having recently moved to a house by the sea, being able to get up and immediately stroll down for a swim is absolute heaven for me. Still pinching myself. (Not in a pervy way, but in a “this is so brilliant it’s surreal” way. )
No disrespect to the mourners but that sounded like a pretty twee set list. How did the sombre settng affect your olaying?
As to my day , after having some new shelving installed I spent the day arranging African statues and masjs tovthe accompaniment of sone Aussie jazz on the Jazzhead label – Ian Chaplin, Tinkler , Rex. Camilleri et al.
Good on you for playing at the funeral.
“No disrespect to the mourners but that sounded like a pretty twee set list. ”
Afterword T-shirt.
Can we PLEASE ONCE AGAIN ask everyone NOT to add videos to their OPs. This one took out several other posts until we had to remove it. No, we don’t know why this is happening and yes, we can see that the video remains in place once you click through to the actual post but adding them in the initial posts does sometimes screw up the forum page.
It was only yesterday that we removed the sticky notice about this but it gets ignored too many times.
Sorry that it’s you Mousey that it looks like we’re singling out but it’s a complete pain when we have to rectify this after the event
I was going to say…I wrote a long boring post about PCs because I thought I’d gone mad and forgotten to press send on the first one! 🙂
Wild guess: does the character limit of the ‘preview version’ of the post cut short the embed code for the video? So you lose a closing tag, and the HTML for the main page goes wild somehow. I dealt with that sort of thing all day long in my day job for a while.
Let’s say you can have 1000 characters in the post on the main page. 750 of those are text typed by the poster, and then they drop in a YouTube embed, which is maybe 300 characters. The last 50 of those get lost… causing havoc. I hope this somehow makes sense?
eh?
Damn, I was hoping someone would read my message and then explain it back to me. It’s hard to communicate something like this when I’m only partially sure of it myself!
I think I understand, it has a word count limit, the you tube clip takes it over the limit so the clip is truncated.
Is that it?
More or less, I think. Although it would be a character limit.
Sound reasoning but this doesn’t appear to be the problem.
Only certain videos produce the error (or it could be just a random fail of something) and they only take out, hide in reality, any posts made immediately before the offender. How many posts get hidden is also random.
We’ll track it down eventually
That’s really strange…
Can you take out the box for YouTube links?
Don’t use the box!
Arf!
@ModTeam But there is a box in the “Post To The Forum” place where you can add a video link, and I’m pretty sure I put my link in there. So are we supposed to not even use that? In which case maybe change the wording?
Celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary.
Congratulations! And celebrations!
Thank you @fitterstoke
Je vous en prie, Hubes!
Up until today I have done the physiotherapy for my knee injury at home, following instructions off an information sheet, with illustrations.
Today was my first visit to the actual rehab center where I will be going from now on, twice a week for as long as is needed. There I was told that I’m using the crutches wrong, my style of walking is bad for my knee, the way my feet are naturally directed is bad for my knees, and from now on I should think about my every move, do the opposite of what comes naturally for me, and keep doing that until that has become my natural way to move…
I must admit, I’m feeling utterly confused by this information. How can things that feel natural to do be bad for me, and what’s good for me are things that feel completely unnatural to my body?
I’m not saying that I distrust this information, I just feel a bit betrayed by my own body!
Oh well; at least I reached the medical expense cap today, so from now on, until March next year, everything will be absolutely free of charge.
A few years ago I saw a physio to sort out my posture in an attempt to “structurally realign” my guts.
I rang the doorbell, she opened it and said “You’ve got one leg shorter than the other. Hello, by the way.”
It’s piddling down with rain round my way, but I started off the day by erecting some motion triggered solar powered lights to keep badgers from wrecking the garden. Then depressed myself by reading the BBC News and Grauniad websites, followed by an old French crime flick (Quai des Orfevres, since you asked). A tomato / pasta concoction for lunch washed down with a bottle of Old Mout cider, then a snooze with a bit of Nick Lowe crooning in the background. I love this song and always feel compelled to belt it out at high volume every time Mrs B and I drive along the A30 through Cornwall, much to her despair.
Love a bit of Nick Lowe .
I used to live a couple of miles from Indian Queens. You can imagine how bored Mrs thep got with that song.
I saw him play this live and he explained that he used to drive past Indian Queens on the way to Cornwall quite regularly and one day decided to go and have a look at it. He then wrote a song about it and he said Indian Queens is nothing like as beautiful as you might think it was. It makes Perivale look like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Got up two cups of tea to start the day then me and GLW took our neighbours dogs ( 5 of them ) for there morning walk around Sudeley castle . During Covid my wife wasn’t get out much and needs an excuse to walk anywhere so our neighbours kindly let us do the morning walk. Once back another quick cup of tea before my weekly walk with the Winchcombe Wanderers walking group 8 miles up and around Cleeve hill. Knackered now so time for my afternoon nap . 😳
I woke up two hours before my alarm went off, so I used this extra time to record a 50th birthday message for my friend who lives in Australia. It was far to early in the morning to make anything too silly, so I went with a bit of sincerity and said the sort of stuff you only say to your mates if you’re both drunk or if the other one is dying. After that I cycled to work (trying to be healthy in the summer when I don’t have to do the school run) and had a middling day at work. Came to a conclusion that I should stop being annoyed by what I see as bad management decisions in our team and just be happy that I have a job.
Watched the Ballater Highland Games. One of our party did the 2.5 mile, 600 metre ascent round trip race and came about halfway down the pack. I was exhausted just watching it.
15 drum and pipe bands played in unison. My ears are still ringing. Someone really needs to write some more tunes for bagpipes as I heard the same two over and over again.
Ya philistine, ya bas!
I wonder if the 15 bands pooled their set lists and only had Scotland the Brave and the Skye Boat Song in common. It was a tremendous racket but a bit repetitive after a few hours.
The main Public Address system was provided by 10 Bose 802 speakers. I haven’t seen any of them since about 1990. Old PA gear never dies, it just retires to the Scottish highlands.
On a Bill Cosby trip.
(Silence)
(Complete silence)
OK, let me explain… Cosby, someone I never much cared for as a stand-up, or via those Cosby Shows (so sentimental) on Channel 4, was, in the Golden Age, a regular at the top of the U.S. R&B L.P. charts, and those charts are absolutely my go-to reference point.
So… hmm… really, really enjoying ‘I Spy’ (5 episodes – out of 82 – in)… it’s brilliant. Saw it in the dire at crazy times in the morning, and remember loving it.
That, and track and field at the Olympics, which has been superb, and, oh, a bit of local stuff.
Actually, I think I’ve got another funeral to go to next week. I like funerals, thought-provoking.
A couple of days ago I was in Winton towards the western edge of Queensland at my Father-In-Law’s funeral. It was like a waking dream being suddenly lifted from the lush sensory overload of the sub-tropics out to a stark environment defined by the absence of anything. He was an interesting man, a typical stern grazier but with an artistic streak that ran from heading the district brass band to hosting photographic exhibitions. He was a very well-known member of the community and the funeral (and wake) was packed.
Anyway, I was asked to provide musical content in keeping with what I knew of his musical tastes (big-band jazz and brass bands, mostly). Given the audience, I played a pretty straight bat with brass versions of Pachelbel’s Canon, Danny Boy etc, but for the closing of the funeral service I went out on a limb with this. Given the setting-an old wooden church-it was perfect.
Oscar Peterson Hymn To Freedom
Well. I play backgammon once a week in our local arts centre with a few like-minded chums and today I lost all seven games I played. One of them was to a woman who stopped and asked to play, claiming she was all rusty and so on. She thrashed me. Her name was Ava (‘after Gardner’) and turned out to be married to the bloke I sold my Yamaha keyboard to last weekend. One of those strange little coincidences that make you feel that the stars are aligning for some event.
Possibly my birthday, which is tomorrow. So I took myself off for a birthday treat to Dan Murphy’s (British chums: it’s booze central) and came home with a litre of Johnny Walker Double Black, which is my new favourite thing. Single malt? Tchah.
Then lunch at one of my favourite cafes, watching the river flow. And home. And Mrs thep? At work. Somebody has to.
I’m a big fan of backgammon, play a ‘best of three’ every day after lunch before snooze. I find it very relaxing and “zen”.
Mrs Wells and I play prob 4 out of 7 nights a week Evening drinks and a couple of vinlys is a very relaxing way to set up the evening. She is better and plays online too, but I win enough times to keep it interesting. We don’t do doubling as it could/would get a bit nasty.
We don’t do doubling either as could never be bothered to read what it is and how it works.
I just deleted the app I was using because, despite the protestations of the developer, I couldn’t convince myself that I was getting a fair shake of the dice. Low first throw 9 times out of 10? Pfffft.
We don’t double either, nobody cares except the guy who keeps score. I’m just happy to win a game now and again.
3 and 1 is a good low first throw to get though.
Also 4 and 2 or 6 and 4. But I meant right at the beginning when you throw one dice.
Ah right, I’m with you.
After 3 and 1, 6 and 1 is my other favourite start.
I’ve no idea why they don’t have backgammon in the olympics.