March 31st
Most listened to song by Cheryl in March: Look Back! which I have not thought about or mentioned during the entire month. So much for marketing, eh?! Good song though, composed for a year of leaving year 6 pupils as they looked back over their primary school careers. Could easily be adapted for your Year 6s. I’ll do that for you if you ask nicely!

March 30th
“Things that make you” of the day: chatting with a vocal therapist about upcoming choir workshops makes you sit up straight and relax your shoulders; emails from strangers about upcoming performances and recordings make you smile with delight; eating cake in the afternoon makes you slightly fatter; digging the garden in the afternoon makes you slightly thinner, so all is well. And finally, I said yesterday that there was a portaloo outside my composing window. This was indeed true, but during today it moved from the opposite side of the road to our side, so now it is even more directly outside my window. Workmen go in there regularly, which I guess is healthy, but I kept my window closed and it discouraged me from gazing out.

March 29th
Poem of the day: Digging by Seamus Heaney. This was my day today – both digging and writing. Weeds and window songs with a smidgeon of cake-making thrown in. When I was out the back digging, roadworks reappeared out the front with cones and traffic lights and a portaloo on the back of trailer. They’re all still there at the end of the day. There was digging there too. There’s a hole in the ground near the bus stop.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/poetheaney/diggingrev1.shtml

March 28th
Gruesome find of the day: a dead (and quite well-decayed, thank goodness) creature in the garden, into which I unknowingly plunged my fork, thereby releasing a sudden and spectacularly piercing odour which alerted me to the issue at my feet. I scooped it and a sizey clod of earth onto the end of my fork and carried it at fork’s length up to the compost heap where it will no doubt have a beneficial effect.

Thought-provoker of the day – as ever BBC Radio 3’s The Listening Service. Tom Service is very good indeed. I especially enjoyed this episode, although I don’t think that any episode is less than fascinating. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08k4s1g

March 27th
Laughter of the day: this evening’s rehearsal of The Bridge Singers. The music is Gary Steward’s song “Northumberland”, the laughter is only a fragment the merriment, the lyrics: “share the laughter of a busy day!”, the picture – some of the windows in a very chilly St. Michael’s Church where we had our rehearsal. These windows are at opposite ends of the church – it’s magical glass, that’s what.

March 26th
War song of the day: And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle. I’ve been printing music today for The Bridge Singers and tweaking this arrangement by Don Macdonald so that we might have a more satisfying soprano and alto contribution. We’ll be learning this song for our Magical Glass concert and singing it as we consider the War Memorial window.

March 25th
Ruin in the sunshine of the day: Tynemouth Priory. And I did an hour of weeding of the new weed before breakfast and perhaps I’ve nearly got rid of it. And we were the first visitors of the day at Tynemouth Priory, so we messed about good and properly noticing things with great delight until the others came. And we had rendang and chicken kebabs from the market whilst watching a big, big boat make its way up the Tyne, and a glorious hawk gliding and landing, gliding and landing. And we sang with The Bridge Singers in Longhirst this evening and it was very, very good indeed with much in the way of top singing and chat. And so I can safely say that this was a very excellent day all in all.

March 24th
Soundscape of the day: Pigeonscape. A new weed has bludgeoned its way into my conciousness today. Don’t know what it’s called yet – I’ll have to do some research. It’s created a dense thicket of roots, though, in Artichoke Corner. Pah! In better news, this flower (I can’t remember its name) started flowering today. Canny flowers, eh!?

March 23rd
New and Old Memories Of The Day: I went to the Royal Northern College Of Music in Manchester.

1.Golden oo when you arrive at Manchester Victoria
2.Tile Central. When I lived in Manchester in the 1980s I hardly ever went to Victoria Station. All the Sheffield trains went from Piccadilly.

3.Some magical glass: light and windows. I never even knew about this library (The John Rylands) when I was a somewhat insular student. I love it, and I love the windows especially, made up as they are of all these round swirly shapes of greenish hue and sparkle, casting shadows and reflections all about on a gloriously sunny Manchester day.
4.The hands of Handel.
5.Knobby card catalogue. So beautiful. I also found in this room “Antiquities of Scotland” by Francis Grose. Oh my, how I’d love to have a proper look inside that. Tam O’ Shanter’s in there, you know. That’s why Burns wrote it. I set it to music for my DMus. The Bridge Singers might do some of it next year, I feel!!
6.Angles sharp and soft. I’m hoping that whatever emerges from that cloak of scaffolding and plastic will add a shapely enhancement to all the others. It’s The John Rylands Library on the left.

7.Old glass. Next, I toddled off down Deansgate to a library I did used to spend a lot of time in: Manchester Central Library. Never used to notice things like this in those days though. Gorgeous textures in these windows.
8.Gesualdo and his madrigals. These very books are one of the principle reasons I spent a lot of time in this library. I used to analyse the madrigals for fun and for assignments. I’d sit with my Walkman playing them silently in my ears and pore over the scores with glee. Swotty Cheryl.
9.Golden pillars.

10.Enhanced Arches. St. Peter’s Square, Manchester. Enhanced by the sun, by pedestrians and by an iconic K6 phone box. There are in fact two of them as you’ll see soon, but this one’s about the arches!
11.Manchester goes about its business in the face of greatness. 2xK6.

12.Oxford Road is also shapely. I used to walk up and down here almost daily for four years. Still bustling, but now I’m one of the oldest people on the street.

13. 30 years since I sat here. I took this with my phone as I waited for the lunchtime concert to start. I was sitting on the Upper Concourse at The Royal Northern College of Music, which is where I often used to sit with my manuscript book. A few things have changed but mostly not. I found myself expecting people I know to walk by like they used to. Odd feelings….

14.The staircase to the grey corridor. I honed in on the staircase with my camera. I used this staircase most out of all of them in the old days, as it led up to the grey corridor upon which were the composition rooms. There were blue, purple and green corridors as I recall making up a square of teaching and practise rooms. Of course, I’m not allowed up there any more so I don’t know what colours the corridors are.

15.The stage is set. I went to Manchester today to see this lunchtime concert by the string orchestra and the wind band. There was string music by Telemann, and wind music by one of the postgraduate students and by my very wonderful NZ friend Chris Marshall. His piece was splendid – Rust Belt. Play it and enjoy it for yourselves. But what I want to say here is how stunning these ensembles were. They were this stunning when I studied there too, and I felt anew the pride I have of being a graduate of this place which fosters and develops such musical brilliance.

16.Manchester. Old. New. Industrial. Academic. Red. Sunny. Racing off to the station for my train home, I paused briefly when confronted by this scene which is what Manchester conjures up for me when I’m not there. Of course pausing briefly here meant I had to put on a spurt to catch up time.
17.I made it to Piccadilly Station for my return trip slightly early as it happened. Quite a different station to Victoria, and much improved since I used to use it in the 1980s. Platform 3 for the 14.59 to Middlesbrough, change at York for Alnmouth and Lionheart Harmony rehearsals.

March 22nd
Things that made me happy today: robins; pancakes for breakfast; refreshing rain; wine glasses ringing with the water and the fingers; people being kind, brave, tolerant; the BBC; Peter Maxwell Davies; my music; Jamie; happy news from NZ about my poorly friend.
Things that made me cross today: train ticket machines; traffic; people being harsh, violent, intolerant; people who speak a lot and loudly when they don’t know what they’re talking about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hprnz

March 21st
Spring song of the day: Spring Burst. It is happening outside…until I come along with my secateurs or fork, that is! Also, I had a musical burst of spring brainwaves today. Also, between spring bursts of gardening energy, I stood on top of the compost heap and surveyed the village scene over the top of the roof. Also I was watching a coal tit sport playfully in the blossoming plum tree that is growing over the top of the compost heaps and I observed fossicking up the trunk, a treecreeper hunting for spiders. Very thrilling.

March 20th
Fighting-back plant of the day: Pampas grass. In my daily garden routine of weeding, forking and pruning, I have reached, in the pruning element of this, the pampas grass, which was planted up at the very top in a dark and unloved corner of the garden where nothing else will grow. It likes it up there. I like it liking it up there. It likes it a bit too much and needs taming a little…well, a lot really so I’ve taken to it with the secateurs and my bare hands. I say bare hands, but they do have gloves on them because Pampas grass is ferocious at fighting back with severe paper cuts and searing grazes whenever it can. I am winning the battle, although it is not over yet. Musically, today has been about The Bridge Singers – composing their new song, and practising for our gig at Longhirst on Saturday. We practised this section of The Lamb which had my lovely tenors in a spin, but they have now reached a happy equilibrium with it. The picture is of a winsome flower clinging to a stone bridge over a waterfall At Studley Royal – it relates to nothing in particular, except that I like it. I walked across that bridge twice and did not notice it, but then when I was down with the grapplers, I spotted it in the distance, so went back for a third walk across the bridge, and leant over the edge.

March 19th
Table volcano of the day: the 11am group. I have facilitated the on-the-hoof composing of four table volcano musical sculptures compositions at The Hepworth Wakefield today by over 100 participants – it could well be a musical sculptures record number for one day of workshops. The gallery was buzzing and so were we in the auditorium. I love it when my workshops are transferred to the auditorium – such a splendid view of the weir and gentler acoustics with carpet and soft walls! This was the most successful of the four I think, probably because the children in this group were older and brimming with ideas, and we had incredibly positive and proactive adults too including one very creative Grandma who features here on the whirly whistler, and one very enthusiastic Dad who declared on his evaluation form that “Cheryl was fantastic”. The image here is of Anthea Hamilton’s Table Volcano with a pair of her cement and rosy glass spectacles in the foreground.

March 18th
Buzzing trumpet of the day.

March 17th
Grapple of the day: these wrestlers at Studley Royal Water Gardens in North Yorkshire.

March 16th
Thing ‘you can see over the roof when you stand on top of the compost heaps for the purposes of compacting the overflowing clippings and moss’ of the day: the entirety of Alison’s telephone box.

March 15th
Garden tool envy of the day: I saw through the kitchen window the owner of the holiday let next door, getting moss from his lean-to roof with a contraption which had an extendable handle. An extendable handle! I was doing a similar thing a couple of weeks ago risking life and limb on a step-ladder with a normal-handled, stiff-bristled broom and was having a devil of a job getting the furthest bits – indeed some still remain. I got a better work out though than the neighbour yesterday with his laconic, barely-raising-his-one-arm technique, and I have to say that my roof is clearer of moss than his, but still – that extendable handle in my energetic hands would have cleared many a roof. Meanwhile, up in the garden itself, the white aubrieta is flowering as of today and very bonny it is too.

March 14th
Choir of the day: The Bridge Singers who performed with such enjoyment and musicality this evening at the Acklington WI’s 95th birthday party. Here they are singing the end of our final number, The Parting Glass, arranged by me as it happens, so a pleasing note to end on! We also performed, amongst other things, two of my pieces (The Lamb and Magical Glass) and a couple more of my arrangements – all with apparent enthusiasm from choristers and audience, so I think I’ll persevere with this composing mularky.

March 13th
Thomas of the day: Thomas Tallis. We practised this tonight at The Bridge Singers because we’re performing it tomorrow, amongst other things, for the Acklington WI’s birthday party. I like this rendition of If Ye Love Me, just as I like ours, because it’s got a bit of spirit while maintaining the sublime qualities of Thomas Tallis’ music that we all enjoy, and also it’s by one of those excellent New Zealand choirs that I personally love seeing and hearing very much.

March 11th-12th
Birthday highlights of the days.
1. Up for some more dawn weeding, then singing with Alison at the Village Hall and lots of happy chatting with village and choiry friends. A robin drops by to say hello.

2. Driving to Temple Sowerby to meet up with Michael for cake and cheer at Acorn Bank. The K6 at Temple Sowerby needs a drip to survive.

3. We meet up with Frances during her work break for evening pie and laughter. She goes back to work (she’s on the 3pm-midnight shift), we carry on laughing and drinking and after three pints each for them and two rum and cokes and a pineapple juice for me we head to our separate digs for sleep. The moss on the stones in The Lake District makes me appreciate moss again after my recent grapplings with it.

4. Next day. Happy birthday. Pre-breakfast stroll to Derwentwater for me and Jamie, B&B fill-’em-up cooked breakfast, then celebratory merriment, cards and gifts and flowers and a raspberry, coconut and chocolate cake made by Frances and Michael for later. No photos of the cake. I think the others took some. But flowers for me by Frances!

5. Off to Ambleside for the day. We saw mill mechanisms near the carpark. There was also a (normal-sized) car parked in a slovenly and selfish manner across three parking bays. We watched as it got a ticket. Ha!

6. Also near the carpark is Bridge House, a teensy little 17th century dwelling on a bridge and near another – an exceedingly cute triangle of beck crossings indeed. While the rest of Ambleside’s visitors took photos of it, I spotted a stalactite under the other bridge. Frances and I chortled heartily at this.

7. Frances had a notion that there was a waterfall to walk to. There was: Stock Ghyll Force. It had a lot of water in it and provided a splendid backdrop to these full-of-leaf-promise twigs.

8. At the main lookout the railings had tiny patched of rust on them…..

9. …..and the tree they were adjoining, had decided to grow around them.

10. We made attempts at three simultaneous family photos using the timer. I think the others managed better than me, but I did make it back down slopes, over rocks and through mud to Jamie (who was our sighter) before the 10 seconds were up, but I set my camera going too soon, you see. Befuddled I was by the joy of it all.

11. A nearby artist took pity on us and offered to do a better job without the timer. She succeeded.

12. I found the “sports action” button on my camera and captured a moment of waterfall dare-devilry.

13. Back in Ambleside we booked our Early Bird Movie and Meal deal for later, then found some snap for Frances and Michael who had not had a B&B fill-’em-up breakfast. Jamie and I shared a banana split with is “just a drink really”. On the way back down from Stock Ghyll Force there was a olde worlde turnstile I took a fancy to.

14. We went to find the cinema so that we would not get lost later and spotted the impressively be-spired St. Mary’s Church which was open for nosy-parkers, so we went in. Michael spotted that was to be a crumpet service on Monday, and I spotted a window just for me.

15. Then we wandered down to Lake Windermere and had a look at the remains of a Roman Fort there. Well, you know that I like these historic sites enormously, but my interest was not sustained for long by two rocks in a muddy patch, labelled “Guard Tower”. There were more substantial stoney rectangles on the ground at a place called “Barracks”, and we tried really hard by imagining that they might be seen to greater effect by climbing up a nearby knoll to view from above. But no. We climbed said knoll and were still unimpressed. However, down by the lake we were more impressed by a helicopter that circled around us several times before landing somewhere nearby (we did think that they perhaps had a better view of the ruins) and also by an Edward 7th pillar box with this thingamy on the top.

16. Back in town and after teatime drinks at The White Lion (who are after kitchen and bar staff if you’re interested) we hied it to Zeffirelli’s for our vegetarian Italian pre-movie yumminess, and then on to Hidden Figures which is a most excellent film. Inspiring, in fact. Clever women beating the odds to change the world with their brainpower, wit and determination. On the way back to the car we were dazzled by both the orangeness displayed inside this colourful eatery and by the full moon.

17. Back at the car we attempted to catch the moon which had an orange aura about it.

18. Driving back to Keswick Michael kindly stopped at the AA phone box and shone his headlights at it for me. Then we had some of the very delicious cake. Did I mention before that it had glitter on it? Never before have I had a glittery cake.
Now it’s the next morning and we’re home after early morning cross-country hightailing. The rest of the glittery cake has been eaten, Jamie is away at his graphs and I must practise the accompaniment to Jerusalem for tomorrow’s WI gig.

March 10th
Things I already knew but was reminded of today: weeding and forking at and just before dawn is the best because you can do it to the accompaniment of this amazing chorus of birdsong; driving to Morpeth on a Friday afternoon is silly because everyone else is out there too, there are roadworks, there are impatient people getting cross; driving to Morpeth on a Friday afternoon for weekend treat-groceries is clever because once you’ve finally arrived and parked your car, there are reduced-for-quick-sale bargains abounding; distinguishing between lumps of clay and rocks covered in soil when weeding at dawn becomes easier as the light increases; lumps of clay are a frequent but minor irritant which I rub into the rest of the soil rather like butter into flour in pastry-making. This is the sound of me weeding and forking with the dawn chorus and a picture of some stained glass – St. Michael’s leg, I believe.

Strangler Ivy

Cemetery crocuses

Inspirational window

Double date

Blue cobwebs.

Cemetery berries

Sun. Old glass

Sparkling lichen

Sundial. Moon

Pillar. Stained Glass

Crack crack crack

Cool f with big fringe. Strong F

Chain Mail

On the way, a forest of trees was being used by the ivy to reach the sun. Earlier I had been clearing ivy from the soon-to-be vegetable patch. I prefer the ivy worming its way up other people’s trees, thank you.

I was momentarily distracted from the inspirational window by St. Michael’s codpiece nearby. Stunning stained glass in this church. Concert-worthy

March 8th
First of the day: the first daffodil in the garden for 2017. Nodded a lot too in the mighty wind – in and out of my photos. See March 4th for a baby picture.

March 7th
Merriment of the day: surprise choiry excursion up the Ingram Valley with Anne and Dawn where we found Jacqui and Penny and Penny-made cake, and then proceeded to laugh lots, learn some more about each other, laugh a lot more, eat what was a deliciously creamy, strawberry-y, golden-with-home-made-eggs cake, laugh one final time, then home we came. I didn’t know any of these friends until I started conducting choirs – what a sociable business this choir mularky is. I have no photos of this merriment of the day, but instead I will share this video which features us all at some point.

March 6th
40-part choral music of the day: Striggio’s 40 part mass. My favourite music on a Monday is always that produced by The Bridge Singers at their rehearsals, and they were indeed excellent again this evening. However, earlier in the day I had been listening to Il Fagiolini’s Musical Director Robert Hollingworth talking on Sunday’s Early Music Show and was very taken with this music which I’d never heard of before. I particularly like the combination of instruments with the voices. I found an intro to it on their YouTube Channel. I think Robert Hollingworth is right: surround sound would be excellent for listening to this.

March 5th
Shiny half hour of the day: 9.51 to 10.21, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, noticing things we’ve not noticed before en route from the car park to the cinema.

21 past 10 Tyneside Cinema

9 minutes to 10, Westgate Hall

Shiny Shiny Sikh Sunday

Shiny Shiny Anglican Sunday

Bird Quartet

New Build

Sleeping Sunday Blues

Geometric roofline

Wobbly stadium

Fruity window

March 4th
Spring Concerto of the day: Song Thrush accompanied by orchestra of river and small garden birds, with chorus of jackdaw, and wood pigeon obbligato. Also, this is the still-scrunched-up trumpet of what will probably be the first daffodil in our garden. I pruned to this music for about an hour this afternoon – that bird has stamina. The jacks were building nests and the wood pigeons were all in twosomes.

March 3rd
Bells of the day: those by William Byrd. I heard this piece on the podcast of BBC Radio 3’s Words and Music from last Sunday. Thrillingly trilly.

March 2nd
Moss of the day: Common Feather Moss. I have contemplated moss today as I’ve toiled away in the garden. We have a lot of moss all the time but especially this year with the neglect and the not too icy winter and the no-sun aspect and the water that falls from the sky, all of which provide perfect conditions. In between bouts of forking and weeding, I like to do a more sedentary task and it fell to me today to tidy up the saxifrage in the rockery. Moss is everywhere in between the plants and on the rocks, but I found little fronds of what I later identified as some sort of feather moss (it looks like the “Common” sort and I can hardly imagine that we should have anything other than a common sort of moss seeing as it is so very, very common) growing up through the soft cushions of saxifrage. I weedled them out one by one, and considered that if you were to settle down in a garden this would be a very comfy place indeed for a feather of moss. Another moss phenomenon I noticed is in the mint barrel near the kitchen window. I was pruning off last year’s dead stalks and extracting a monster dock root from it, taking care not to uproot the sprouting daffodils and tulips which also dwell therein. There is, naturally, moss in large quantities across the entire surface of the soil, and the sprouting bulbs had raised it all to about 2 inches away from the surface. Self weeding daffodils!

March 1st
Mum and Cake Combo of the day: My Mum and her coffee birthday cake. These photos document the day of cake delivery from Northumberland to Worksop, with lunch and a stroll at Rufford with all the Camms.
1.Heading south with cake. Tyne.
2.Sunrise. Tyne.
3.Still heading south. Still with cake. Durham
4.To let the steam out. Darlington.
5.Decorative, not quite parallel lines. York.
6.Nottinghamshire. Still with cake. Retford.
7.Great Crested Grebe. Rufford.
8.Don’t look back in anger. Rufford.
9.Camms. Rufford.
10.Phone box shenanigans. Budby.
11.Three photos at the same time with cake. Worksop.
12.Lightly-flavoured coffee cake. Worksop.
13.Return journey without cake. In transit at Sheffield which has an orange stripe.
14.The station has an orange stripe. The trains have an orange stripe.
15.Curly bits. Sheffield.