September 30th
I’ve been to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park​ today with Mum, Dad and Frances​. We saw lots of things, but were particularly impressed with the Anthony Caro exhibition, a giant mosaic octopus, the turning of the leaves from green to red, some tuning forks mounted on metal pipes, some of the poppies from the Tower of London cascading into the lake, a man on a tree trunk by Anthony Gormley, and ten seated figures. Here’s Frances with Caro’s Double Tent, and you can hear us a-tapping on various bits of it with our knuckles as we scurried around it.

September 29th
Roast chicken and a gammon for a fiver while the sun sets over the rooftops of Worksop.

September 28th
I’ve spent my day with John Dowland. Top bloke. Here’s “His Golden Locks” or at least the beginning of it, which we’ll be starting to learn tonight at The Bridge Singers in Felton/West Thirston. The picture is another of yesterday’s serene moonrise (before the fisher lads started howling at it).

September 27th
After a day of working we went for a walk along the each to watch the moonrise. These lads were fishing in the moonlight and howling at it. It really was that orange when it rose. Bright, bright white now ready for the excitement of later on. The music is “Spring Moon 3”. Yes, I know, but one composer’s autumn is another’s spring. Oh and if you can believe it, I had another order for music while we were out – that’s four in four days.

September 26th
As you know, yesterday I went to Woodhorn Museum, and today I have used the photos I took to illustrate my very newest song, “Alleluia! Into The Light”. Also today, I have made and sent out learning tracks to choir members, browsed in Tynemouth Market, nabbed cheese bargains in Sainsbury’s Cramlington, and sorted out a nutty little problem with Outlook. Oh, and another American choral Director has purchased scores – that’s three in three days!

September 25th
This morning I went to Woodhorn Colliery Museum to take some pictures of mining things for the video of my new song. While I was there I recorded some of the sounds of mining life – the lift shaft, the farrier, some Ashington miners, and took a picture of a sign in the stables. Elsewhere, I’ve continued with my list from yesterday and have made good headway. Also two orders have come in from the USA for scores. Nice one, Cyril.

September 24th
Today I have been working to a list of tasks. Putting this arrangement on my webpage was one of them – it’s the trad. French carol Patapan for an assortment of instruments and voices. The picture is of some flags at Woodhorn Museum (Wales, USA and Northumberland for those of you unsure) on a sunny, breezy day as it has been. Tonight there’ll be merriment at Lionheart Harmony with a mixture of singing, snacks, rum (I gather) and rugby.

September 23rd
So sleepy today. I have done some choir arranging and organising in spite of that, but not up to recording anything. My search for a sleepy picture resulted in this! And with it, a sleepy verse of a non-sleepy song, Lupset Chase. It’s a round for children in 7/4 and it’s not the only one of those I’ve ever written that has been successfully performed, I can tell you. The lyrics are: Cubs wait hungry across the hills. Snuggling, snuggling as the wolf. Travellers take shelter on the moors. Snuggling as the wolf. Babes sleep warmly in huts in the woods. Snuggling as the wolf. Soft pelts protect against the winter sky. Snuggling, snuggling as the wolf.

September 22nd
Today I heard the very sad news that wonderful person and excellent bass trombonist Adrian Morris died yesterday. We were students together at the RNCM and he played several of my pieces for me. Today’s fade-in includes Benny along with John Challis, Dave Chambers, Stuart Watson, Ian Forgrieve, Jonathan Herbert and Martin Robson in part of my Kyrie Eleison in 1986. The photo is at sunrise this morning at Warkworth, Northumberland. In all my 365 sunrises in 2014, I never once saw a rainbow.

September 21st
A busy day of finishing off the opera tweaks, finishing off an arrangement for a choir in New Zealand, finishing off a new Christmas song, and preparing for choir practice tonight. We are now officially called The Bridge Singers, on account of the bridge which joins the two villages of Felton and West Thirston together over the River Coquet. This plaque is on that bridge (such a rainy day), and this is a bit of a mash-up of one of our songs from last night’s rehearsal (only the 2nd for this song) with the main problem being the conductor standing closer to the machine than anyone else and helping out the depleted 1st altos a little too energetically.

September 20th
Today there’s been a lot of work going on from both of us, thinking, composing, sorting out of data, solving problems. Lots of furrowed brows, not like these freshed-faced young whipper-snappers from well over 20 years ago. We were in Indonesia at the time on a holiday, and this music, “Golden Rain Baby” was composed around then and is inspired by Indonesian Gamelan rhythms and harmonies. The choir is Vocarmony from Queen’s High School in Dunedin from a live performance they did in Sydney on a school choir tour, recorded surreptitiously be a parent in the audience.

September 19th
Steady progress today on things operatic and choral. But oh boy some things take longer than you expect, eh!? Here’s a bonny Newark shop front and some brass quintet while we wait.

September 18th
Another opera-fixing day. I sorted out the snap pizzicato issue. You may be interested to learn that you can’t drag a low F, but you can drag every other note. I know – it’s a crazy little foible and no mistake. Here’s the poster from the original performances of the operas in Wellington, and the “Light Aria.” Margaret Mahy’s lyrics are: “You will have all kinds of right-handed luck and you will always be able to tell one child from the other. Dream dexter, sleep right, you shall be the child of light.”

September 17th
A helpful volunteer tells a couple of visitors all about the train system in China, meanwhile the BBC highlights of Winston Churchill’s funeral are played out on a five-minute loop nearby. In other news, I had a lively meeting today about possible work coming up in Huddersfield, my throat blight has seemingly turned, and snap pizzicato is proving problematic in the opera updates.

September 16th
Cough splutter, cough splutter cough cough cough. Pah! A photo of Barbara Hepworth and me last week in London and some Magnificat by Rock Festival Choir from last year.

September 15th
I’ve been opera tinkering today. I was commissioned to compose a 15-minute opera in 1997 for Pocket Opera of Wellington – there were five of us in fact. I chose the Margaret Mahy story “The Two Sisters” as the basis for mine. Someone has expressed interest in it in the last week or so, so I’ve been retrieving it from its 18 year-old geriatric computer files, and remembered that there was a video of it. Jamie’s been grovelling around the back of the video machine and big, old telly, with the cables, so that I could record the sound of it on my digital thingamy. Here’s the “Dark Aria” and the cast taking a bow. The Mahy lyrics are: Sleep left, dream sinister: darkness be your king and minister.

September 14th
I’ve been hallelujah-ing my little heart out (for choir and wind quintet) in readiness for choir tonight. I love our new choir – it fills me back up with eagerness and delight after a day of energy-draining sniffling. Hallelujah indeed, or wheeeeh as we like to say.

September 13th
London; a bit of Tube; Sudoku-while-you-wait; a lot of train; ambling through Newcastle; bus home; running nose; happy holiday memories including a plane and the palm house at Kew; looking forward to new stuff including choir tomorrow with one of our Yorkshire carols; early sleep.

September 12th
Kew Gardens. What you have to do is imagine two things going on here. The music is from the “people and plants” exhibition where there is a clever device for demonstrating the sounds of several instruments made of plant material. I was mischievously pressing buttons and turning contraptions willy-nilly to get a variety for you – there was no-one else in the building though, so not annoying really. The photo was taken in the beauty of the water lily house with these stunning specimens amongst others. Serene you might imagine, but no. You must imagine a lady of advanced years with a loud, posh accent, yelling “Zander….Zander….Zander….Zander!” at her hapless grandson as she chased him round the pond and harried him to listen to her stories of lilies-she’s-known. Amusing for all but Zander, I suspect.

September 11th
Today: Westminster Cathedral with all the bling; Tate Britain with all the Hepworth; The Royal Courts of Justice with all the corridors; Covent Garden with all the cake. All this with our super-dooper pal Richard. This fade-in is at Tate Britain. I was recording the bird sounds for you in the entrance and admiring the new stairwell and the helpful man came and told us all about it.

September 10th
Today I have had three orders for music scores, walked underneath the Thames, discovered some stuff about longitude and clocks in Greenwich, and earned back a good chunk of our English Heritage subscription at Eltham Palace which is one of the most wonderful EH properties we’ve visited. We are staying in a place which in itself is well enough, but the people who run it are inefficient to put it very mildly (our booking was cancelled by them for no reason and without telling us, the room the they found for us “as a favour” hadn’t been cleaned since the previous occupant, they put us in another room but we can only stay for two nights, the shower overflows after two minutes of water, the receptionists all tell different stories, and now there is no internet or TV) and currently I am unable to post this even though I have made the fade-in with the clocks in good time. Lovely holiday, mind!

September 9th
London it is then. Today there was Hepworth on the side of John Lewis’s, exploring the Jewel Tower in Westminster (top windows, by the by), a bit of brass in St. Margaret’s Church, strolling through the park (one day, tra la la) and along The Mall, chats and other loveliness with Londoner/Kiwi pal Richard, excellent Buckingham Palace tour of some state room splendour, cream cakes in the Palace grounds, Oyster Card usage on the underground, curry for tea.

September 8th
We stopped en route in Newark-on-Trent so that Jamie could have a meeting with a professor and I wandered about aimfully. Once reunited at the station we espied a photo booth and as Jamie has an appointment at the Australian Embassy later in the week for passport renewal purposes, and we had 20 minutes to spare, he partook of it.

September 7th
Today I have grappled with an at-times-truculent printer, and tweaked with musical arrangements because tonight was the first rehearsal of the new Felton choir. There was a lot of new repertoire to be grappled with, and our success with all of that has made me cheery and optimistic. However, I find my fuddly head preoccupied in an unhelpful way with tea-making facilities, and double-booked venues and other things which really require no thought or fretting and should really be banished so that I can sleep. Anyway, here’s one of the songs we started learning and the building that inspired it: Chantry Chapel Carol (Wakefield) with The Holly and The Ivy (Yorkshire tune).

September 6th
A bonus working day out in Wakefield today filling in for a poorly colleague – Musical Sculptures at The Hepworth Wakefield. It meant that my Anthony On The Edge song got two more outings including this one from Esme, Lowrie and Toby’s families. As you can see, Esme was a fan.

September 5th
A bucket of broad beans, a Brobdingnagian beetroot, and a bumptious bumble bee constituted our afternoon. The bumble bee amongst the bean pods went for Jamie’s finger and promptly kicked said bucket, and is currently composting in the mint. A song about roots growing – there’s been a bit of that going on, obvs.

September 4th
Lots of people have listened to this today – one of my favourites. This is the light in our black and white living room with a seascape from Mick Oxley Gallery nearby. Magical Glass.

September 3rd
Today I have composed music, made cakes for and sung with Lionheart Harmony, completed niggling administrative tasks, and walked purposefully around Alnwick. Here are the cakes (Gwyn called them Black Copse Gateaux because they are so small – he’s very funny that there Gwyn) and some of the singing – it’s “Only You” in Alnmouth.

September 2nd
Today there was news that the new Felton choir is starting for real next week. With that in mind I was searching for my arrangement of Handel’s Their Sound Is Gone Out. I did it with the St. John Vianney School Choir in our Messiah extravaganza. I found it, but no picture. Instead here’s Denise’s class with their umbrellas in “For Unto Us A Child Is Born”. Those umbrellas were pop-open ones and they all popped them on “Wonderful, counsellor!” as they did formation marching on the steps whilst singing. A triumph!

September 1st
Today I made a video catalogue of my Christmas Choral Music. This is not it, but this is a squashed up version of it. How many have you sung? How many can you name? Can you hear yourself singing?