Reliving another me

Today was another day of vivid blue sky and gleaming water, apart from a few hours in the early afternoon - so another day for hanging out a couple of washings and getting stuff done in the garden - the latter in the morning, as I wanted to weed the little bed beside the new front steps, left pretty much alone for the builders last summer. The sun only shines there till about 1030am and then it gets a bit chilly, so I went at it like a madwoman with hoe and rake and crazily bent back and knees...

After lunch we had a walk round the Bishop's Glen, which was very quiet - saw three dog-walkers, two of whom we know and chatted to. But we heard our first cuckoo in the Glen and took lots of photos of reflections in the glassy surface of the former reservoir, and felt glad that it was there, only 15 minutes up the road from home.

But I want to talk about the music we listened to during dinner. Himself had a rummage in the record cabinet of the Ladderax (iconic furniture from our early married life) and found my pre-marriage LPs, because I'd been talking about how obsessed I had been in my last two years at school by Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony. In these early days I could rarely afford to buy LPs, having only managed the singles of my pop years at 6/8d a throw, but by the age of 17 I'd discovered the music that has been such a thing in my life and would lie on the floor for hours listening, over and over, to the few records I possessed.

One of these was the record in the blip. The sharp-eyed will notice it's an Ace of Clubs, one the Decca series of low-priced re-releases from their catalogue. It must be at least 60 years old, if not 61. I was apprehensive about how it would sound after the quality of reproduction we're used to nowadays, whether streaming, broadcast or the CDs we still have hundreds of, but despite being mono it was amazingly clear and unblemished. I was a very careful owner, and there wasn't a scratch - which says something for the quality of the stylus on the Bush record player I used back in the 60s. 

It was fascinating. In my youth I tended to let the music take me to, for some reason, the Romans in Britain. I was fascinated by Roman history (and Latin... I know) and it spoke to me of Hadrian's Wall, the alien cultures coming together, the conquerors conquered ... and as I looked out of the window this evening, I suddenly realised that the last movement, which takes a very simple Russian folk tune "The little birch tree" and transforms it gradually, through a sort of decorated, more sophisticated orchestration, all the way to a thundering of repetition, hammering at the mind over and over ... and I thought of Russia, the vast country of peasants and farmers which became a global threat, then seemed to step back, bow to western culture - and then return, bigger and more brutal than before. 

Music has influenced my subconscious for so long, been such an important part of my life despite my never having been professionally involved in it, and tonight I realised that the hold is as strong as ever. 

Vaccination update: Apart from a tender bump on my arm and the slight sensation of aching all over, I'm fine. Himself woke in the night feeling flu-like; I just slept. And I did get that gardening done ...