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Just booked tickets to a lecture at the British Museum in March by the wonderful Marina Frolova-Walker called 'Music of the Russian Avant Garde - A Revolution in Sound?'. This is part of the Saul Seminars, organized by the Sound Archive of the British Library, and the last one I went to was just brilliant. I'm in the middle of reading Marina Frolova-Walker's hot-off-the-press book Russia: Music & Nation from Glinka to Stalin, and loving every page. The idea that I will be able to go and hear her lecture at the BL for £6 is just astounding, and I can't wait. As great as the internet is, there's something about public lectures, especially when they're in surroundings like this, that have a much longer, more satisfying and meaningful effect.

Spare a thought for 75-year old David Johnson, a man with a leg ulcer who was so annoyed by the pop music inflicted on him and others in the waiting room of the NHS clinic at The Halliwell Jones Stadium in Warrington, that he pulled the plug on the portable stereo (not so portable, in fact, as it had been chained to a shelf).  Those nice people behind the counter turned it on again, so he pulled the plug a second time. 

It's for your own good, sir...
He was told - and oh how familiar this kind of crap sounds - that it was there "to ensure that conversations in treatment rooms could be kept private".  What kind of health centre is built with such disregard for patient privacy that they have to drown out the sound of conversations with pop music? And if it's necessary in a building with treatment rooms, why don't banks & post offices do the same, where privacy is important, yet no physical barriers exist between those waiting and those being served?

"Patient choice"
But I digress. Despite the murmurs of appreciation from his fellow sufferers, it was clear that the patients were going to continue to have to put up with music whether they liked it or not, so next week, Mr Johnson brings along some CDs of ballet music, which go down rather well.

Notice how the corporate story changes. A spokesman for Warrington Primary Care Trust now claims that the music was there to "enhance the ambiance, making the wait for patients more pleasant.The choice of music is varied and has been selected following discussions with patients about their preferred choice."

But wait, there's more. It now seems that they've decided to pull the plug on the music themselves, saying that they're 'reviewing the situation'.  The nameless spokesperson continues "If the outcome is to reinstate the music, then we would only do so following the purchase of the appropriate licence."  I'll return to that, but meanwhile, we now have three different stories from the NHS:

1) The music's there to protect patient confidentiality
2) The music's there to improve the patients' waiting experience
3) Oh, er, the music's not there any more, because we're reviewing the situation.

Pulling the biggest plug of all
So why the sudden turnaround in (c), given that Mr Johnson's efforts to turn the music off were so vehemently rebuffed at first?

Well, reading between the lines, my guess is that someone in the story must have familiarised themselves with music licensing regulations, and discovered that if the NHS want to inflict music on patients in the waiting room, they'll have to buy  an annual licence from the PRS & PPL, which, given the words "we would only do so following the purchase of the appropriate licence", they had probably neglected to do. It wouldn't cost them a whole lot of money, and if they really believed that it was so important for patient confidentiality and enjoyment, they would have just bought the darned licence and continued to ask the patients what they'd like to listen to.

I suspect that the 'review' consists of the practice manager deciding whether they can justify expenditure of NHS funds on a licence to play music that at least one patient has explicitly stated they don't want. Or whether the patient's confidentiality or fleeting musical enjoyment is worth the bundle of tenners the practice would have to throw at the requisite licences.  I admit, when doctors only earn on average £100,000 a year, it must be a difficult choice.

The moral of the story is, if you are being tormented by someone else's music in a public place, don't bother appealing to reason, or try to pull the plug from the wall. Just ask to see their PRS & PPL licence.

The story comes, by the way, from the aptly named This is Cheshire, so if any of it isn't true, blame them, not me.

To the Australian High Commission for the launch of Anthony Meredith & Paul Harris's biography of my late friend, composition tutor and mentor Malcolm Williamson, A Mischievous Muse.  From what I have read so far, it's a terrific book, and it's fascinating to get to know the person I knew so well in some ways, but so little in others.

Malcolm wrote wonderful letters, and lots of them, all of which I kept because they meant a lot to me, and because I hoped that one day someone would write a biography of Malcolm which would do him and his music justice, at which point I'd hand them over. This is definitely the book - Anthony & Paul have done a terrific job - and I'm glad I didn't hesitate to let them have the letters. The book launch was packed, and the affection & respect for Malcolm was palpable. He would have loved it. Wherever his spirit is now, I am sure it's rejoicing.

After that, I cycled down to the Tate Modern to experience Alvin Curran's Maritime Rites.
I would have run a mile from something like this normally, but the idea of a composition which involved the bells of St Pauls & passing foghorns is just the right kind of Weird for me, especially as I love that bit of the river almost more than anywhere in London. It was mindblowing. It was as if everything within a miles radius - me, the bells, birds, people, river, buildings & music from the barge in the river and the platform on the lawns outside the Tate - was suddenly just One Thing, whose nature I had never experienced before. And oddly, you can't take it away with you afterwards - the only place where you can experience that music is exactly where it was.  A great antidote to the world of scores and recordings, repeat performances and insular listening.

Malcolm Williamson in my 'Dance Inspirations Advent Calendar' 2005 and 2006

www.mobilecycleservice.co.uk
Picture it - two miles from work on the Friday morning before a bank holiday, and the back axle on my bike snapped. On the 50-minute trek from Wandsworth common to Battersea, I had plenty of time to consider the options - take the afternoon off to get it back to the shop in Earlsfield which I know will probably do it overnight. Spend the morning ringing round bike shops near Battersea, who - if they do repairs at all, probably won't touch it until at least Wednesday next week; cancelling my lunch date and walking the bike there won't be fun either. Leave the bike at work til Tuesday, and deal with it then - and be bikeless over the bank holiday and Tuesday morning. It all sucks, whichever way you look at it.

The day that started out so badly ended on a high, after I discovered a brilliant mobile bike repair service that solved all my problems in no time at all and restored my faith and wonder in human nature, bikes and Londoners. When I got to work I googled 'mobile bicycle repairs', found Mobile Cycle Service, got straight through to Dan (pictured here repairing my bike on site at work) who asked a few questions, arranged to fix it later in the afternoon for a very reasonable price, turned up with a car full of tools and parts, did the job quickly and expertly, and tuned up the gears while he was at it. Nice bloke, fantastic service. Here's my tip - put the numbers in your phone now!

Surely one of the saddest stories to hit the news: an inquest has recorded an open verdict on the death of the brilliant Ethiopian athlete Dejere Kebede-Tulu. He fled to England from Ethiopia following his father's murder, then endured three years of living on £53 a week because he wasn't allowed to work in the UK. Through all this, he continued to train, helped out by philanthropic sports scientist Ceri Diss. Finally, he gained citizenship last year, and was tipped to win a medal for Britain at the 2008 Olympics. No sooner than his citizenship problems had been solved, he died in poverty in his flat in Holloway in June last year aged just 25, discovered only days afterward by a friend, by which time his body had decomposed too much to determine the cause of death.

The story is told movingly in today's Telegraph, and also reported in The Independent, and last week's Islington Gazette.

See also: Helen Bamber Foundation, which cares for victims of gross human rights violations.

The Tessa Jowell story gets curiouser and curiouser: "Tony Blair said she had not been "in breach" of the ministers' code of conduct as her husband did not tell her about a £344,000 gift he had received." (see full story).

I'm trying to imagine the breakfast table conversation:

Tessa Jowell: "I guess we'll have to tighten our belts a bit now that we've taken out that loan on the house"
David Mills: Humph
Tessa Jowell: Talking of which, here's our loan statement from the building society
David Mills: Humph
Tessa Jowell: How strange. A few weeks ago, we owed £408,000. Now it says we only owe 64,000.
David Mills: Humph
Tessa Jowell: Ah well, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. Don't forget to feed the dog. Byeee!
David Mills: Humph

I'm no longer bothered about whether she's actually innocent any more - what bothers me about this story is how any journalist can report a story like this and not ask questions on behalf of those of us normal people for whom the concept of being 'given' £344,000 overnight is the stuff of daydreams? If David Mills really didn't tell her, how come she didn't notice, and if she really didn't notice, what on earth can she understand about 'culture' in any form that might be meaningful to the people she represents? How can she understand the relationship between the cost of a ticket to see a show or a sports event, when her husband could become £344,000 pounds richer over night and not feel the need to celebrate it with her? The question in my mind is not whether she did anything wrong with regard to the facts of this case, but whether she is fit to represent you and me, when she - on the evidence available - seems to live the life of a lottery winner.

Together with the very much alive use of the vocative case in South East European languages, ablaut is one of those subjects that makes me go all tingly, so I was delighted to find It's Ablaut Time, the weblog of David Mortensen . Anyone who regards the agentive nominalization of verb-particle combinations as a 'relatively amusing construction', and something to chat about over coffee with friends, or who writes papers called "Chain-shift, schmain-shift: Anti-Identity and Tone Sandhi in Hmong, A-Hmao, and Jingpho" is a-ok in my book. Long may he prosper.

It's August Bank Holiday, so it's time for the wonderful Tooting Chariot Festival again. It starts at the Muththumari Amman Temple at the end of the street, and makes its way to Mitcham throughout the day.

This is now the third year that the weather has been exactly the same on August Bank Holiday - cold, windy and overcast, which makes me suspect that whoever runs the weather must also enjoy a statutory day off, and just flick a switch on Sunday night called 'August Bank Holiday'.

As always, I followed the procession with my trusty camera, and you can view the results in my Tooting Chariot Festival gallery.

Wir sind so weit, as the Germans would say - it's time to vote Nadia as the undisputed queen of Big Brother.

Before anyone calls me shallow for being a BB fan, I have very deep and meaningful reasons as to why Nadia should win. While Jason has consistently shown himself to be a complete wimp (even I can take a cold shower, for gawds sake), Nadia has shown moral courage. She has managed to keep her 'secret' out of the house all these weeks, and pursued her own dream of being accepted - that's determination, focus & willpower for you. But more than that, what I love about her is that she gets angry and upset, but within 5 minutes she knows that she is upset, and laughs about it. She is well sorted, and knows what's her problem, and what belongs to other people.

She also laughs a lot (and I'm a great believer in Deus Ludens).

May she win, and may you never visit this site again if you don't vote for her!

Please do your bit for humanity, and vote for Michelle to go from Big Brother on Friday. I couldn't bear to see the lovely Marco or Nadia removed by the other humourless lot. Shell may say it's all about chicken nuggets, but there are dark undertones in what's going on in there at the moment - when Ahmed said he hated Marco, you knew he meant it, and why; Jason's snipe at Marco over Nadia's smoking was scary. Don't let them get away with it, vote Michelle out!

The image is from www.thisisbigbrother.com

The more I hear Alastair Campbell whinge about the media, the more I want to bury my head in The Framley Examiner. There is an uncanny, though not surprising similarity between the Campbell story and the "Bush asks Congress for $30bn to help fight war on criticism" spoof in The Onion. See also Anti-war demo numbers exaggerated explains Blair from the wonderful Rockall Times.

If, like me, you haven't had a garden of your own until very recently, you'll understand why I had to rush out and take a picture of my very fragrant and flourishing sweet peas. It's also compensation for the fact that having planted everything that smells beautiful near the house, including lavender for the benefit of those who hate moths (you know who you are), I now find that everyone close to me has hay fever so badly that they look at me as if I was armed if I have a flower in my hand.

Not quite sure how I managed it, but I installed Movable Type on my server this morning, and this is my first entry with it.
Once I've sorted out how to make it all work, you should be able to find everything that used to be here, such as Dance Links and IT Skills pages . If you get really stuck and hate this page altogether, you can always get the old homepage back again