Spidermen

I was u and about earlier than usual, thanks to one of the guys from the music group. He'd got an invitation to attend an open rehearsal by the National Symphony Orchestra, and the invitation covered himself and a guest. We had to be at the Concert Hall by 9.45, and we'd arranged to meet there at 9.30. It's so long since I've had such an early appointment in town that I had no idea what to expect in terms of traffic, so I left home shortly after 8.45 just to be on the safe side. Timing was just right. I parked near the Gaiety theatre and walked through Stephen's Green to the Concert Hall.

It was a fascinating experience. The rehearsal was for tomorrow evening's concert, the programme for which includes works by Haydn and Mendelssohn, two of the composers with significant anniversaries this year. What we sat in on was a rehearsal for Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, with principal conductor Gerhard Markson in charge. He's coming to the end of his tenure (after eight highly successful years with the orchestra), and will be very difficult indeed to replace. We'd hoped to have a coffee in the NCH restaurant afterwards, but there was no sign of anybody behind the counter, so we went to Bewleys in Grafton Street instead (glad we did: it's re-opened after an interruption, and has been restored to its former glory, with waiter service reinstated and real fires blazing.

I rescued my car from one car park and drove across the city to another because I had some urgent shopping to do. With that successfully out of the way I then had to drive across over to the Southside. My route took me by this office building near Ringsend, at Grand Canal Dock. I spotted the window cleaners precariously perched on the top floor, and grabbed a quick blip through the car's windscreen. Back home now, that's uploaded as today's blip and I've also back-blipped yesterday while I was at it. Now I'm off to read the email which has just come in from Blip Central about membership.