November 30th
The highlight of my day was going to Cramlington Town Centre to do a spot of shopping – I was not in a hurry and I had no list, so I wandered up and down, up and down the aisles at the supermarket and in and out, in and out of shops as I fancied, and came home with everything that was required and more…bargains, that is. I find that when a supermarket is busy, and I see an aisle with no-one in it, I go down it regardless of what it offers provision-wise…just to have a few moments of not being polite to rogue trolley pushers and elderly or distracted shoppers who block aisles for quite lengthy periods of time while a tin of tomatoes is procured. Here are two more excerpts of The Bridge Singers, from their merry sheep selection (Phyllis has gone astray) and their rack of lamb selection (Taverner, at the end of his slow roast). Also one more flourish of barbed wire in the sunrise.

November 29th
I went for a long, long walk in the frost at sunrise today – such beautiful scenery and tiny details to spot. These delicate barbed wire sparkles caught my attention as they glistened in an early sunlight thicket. I like barbed wire as long as I’m not caught on it. Here are three more extracts from Monday’s concert rehearsal – it’s Purcell’s dancing shepherds and Bach’s safely grazing sheep from the Baroque sheep section, and today’s foreign sheep are being hypnotized by a rustler’s dog in New Zealand.

November 28th
Choir day – the last rehearsal before The Bridge Singers’ first concert of the season. I need to be jollier really…and not sing along with the altos, and then all will be well. Here are three snippets of our sheep music – from Berlioz (in the foreign sheep section), Handel (in the first flock section) and Worcestershire (in the merry sheep section). And here also are some actual sheep in the early morning glow – they didn’t seem very merry or foreign, but how can you tell, really?

November 27th
These fade-ins were initially intended as a record of all my composerly doings, and so I have selected from today’s Rock Festival Choir Advent Recital the end of our performance of my song “That First Christmas Night” and the resulting applause. After the concert, someone I don’t know, who also didn’t know who I was, said that this was their favourite piece in the concert, so I’m dwelling on that. The entire concert was sublime as ever and it really is a very great privilege to sing in this choir. Jamie is without voice at the moment so he took this photo from the audience of some altos and basses and the rather splendid scenery behind us.

November 26th
Early morning drive back from Worksop through fog and sunrise reminds you how beautiful it all is…northern England, I mean. Then practising at home and then the venue, for and with Rock Festival Choir, whose Advent recital is tomorrow. 3pm in St. Paul’s, Alnwick. I do a spot of tambourining amongst the alto-ing which is always fun. If you’re in the area do come along. Here’s a bit of Anon, Mendelssohn and Trad. to taste.

November 25th
Dad’s birthday so all the Camms assembled in Worksop for jollity, and we ate the cake… well some of it at any rate. My brother Michael obliged with the photo, my sister Frances provided the song as we reminisced about our childhoods, and my mother cheered on from the sidelines. Happy birthday Dad!

November 24th
It’s been all about the cake today – bus to Morpeth for ingredients, then baking and icing and chocolate and cream and strawberries and more chocolate, a bit of Lionheart Harmony practice then back for more cake preparation. No eating yet, though – that’s tomorrow.

November 23rd
Today’s been a mixture of plop and wheeeeh. Following yesterday’s rain rainy rain, I awoke in the middle of the night to find the power off. Anticipating problems with the knowing of the time for Jamie’s early getty up for Sheffield trains, I fretted, but was awake to smoothly facilitate that particular hurdle. Power was restored at 9.15 am after much heating of water for washes in the candlelight. I too had business to attend to today, so went out to catch the 11.30 bus to Newcastle, only to see it already disappearing up the hill, anticipating its scheduled departure by several minutes. An hour later I caught the next bus and arrived at this excellent stairwell in time to meet with these excellent new Lambton Worm Newcastle University co-workers. Then Jane and I headed home on another bus and now I’m awaiting the return of Jamie having mellowly rum-and-coked – midweek too – it’s a shocker.

November 22nd
Rain rainy rain rain sort of day with the river several metres higher than its usual benign level and swirling winds causing us to stay indoors, planning things about The Lambton Worm which is coming up in January, sorting readings for the sheep concert and generally pottering musically. Here’s a bit of MacKenzie – one of The Bridge Singers’ songs about foreign (in this instance, New Zealand) sheep and a photo of a jet with fire coming from its engines (I actually think that the fieriness is on account of the sunrise, but there you go, when I first saw it I thought it was fire).

November 21st
A day devoted to The Bridge Singers: arranging, marketing, researching, singing, rehearsing, conducting, recorders, guitars, keyboards, invoices, laughing, chatting, imbibing, dreaming. Here’s the poster for our upcoming concerts (in two halves!) and snippets of four of our sheep-related songs. We’d love it if you would come along to one or more of our recitals which promise to be merry and tuneful.

November 20th
Cheryl attacks her cousin Anne to the accompaniment of a sea shanty.

November 19th
Next weekend is our annual supremely excellent Advent concert with Rock Festival Choir. We had our first rehearsal in St. Paul’s Church, Alnwick today and Peter was a happy musical director, partly because everyone was there, and partly because we sounded pretty awesome. Here we are on a taster smorgasbord of Judith Weir, Will Todd, Medieval merriment (arranged by Margaret Watchorn), and Cheryl Camm. Elsewhere in the day there was Indian takeaway, more tidying and Dark Angel on the ITVplayer – oo-er, she was a nasty piece of work and no mistake.

November 18th
These days of few deadlines and autumn walks and time for thought are having an effect on the messiness of my office room – it is slowly but surely being tidied. Time for thought, though, has its downside – lots of big ideas and plans being added to my mental list of things to do and not much being ticked off the actual list of smaller things to do. Walked at the opposite end of the day today – more traffic, dark at the end, light not so inspiring. I prefer the early mornings. The music is the Suffolk folk song Reynold The Fox performed by The Bridge Singers, with the microphone accidentally positioned in such a place as to highlight the altos!

November 17th
As the rising sun sported playfully with the leafy undergrowth, a flock of sheep were in full bleaty voice on account of two luminously jacketed clipboard discussers in their paddock. I fumbled to get my recording machine out of my pocket, then waited as they were suddenly more reticent. A fidgeting wren came out of one of these bushes to say hello and as we grinned at each other, two military helicopters swung into view and passed overheard at an exceedingly low altitude, interfering with my recording machine’s levels, and stopping all fidgeting, bleating and clipboard discussing immediately. Some startled blackbirds let their feelings be know and we all moved on. This was an eventful couple of minutes on my beautiful two and a half hour around-dawn sun and moon walk.

November 16th
Bus rides to and from Newcastle today for errands and spotting intricate ceilings at the last minute as you’re heading out through a revolving door, so you revolve right back in there to have another look. When I used to catch buses to music college every day in Manchester in the 1980s I was always the person beside whom the passengers at the later stops came to sit when there were no completely free seats left. I have not lost this aura of sitbesidemeness it seems, as yesterday on the rush hour bus home, the lady with the novel and harumphing sitdown technique made a beeline for me even though I was upstairs and half way back – I was the first of the upstairs passengers to be thus honoured. I had just removed my camera from my pocket to take shots of the traffic lights in the rain, but her wedging in of my arms with her reading elbows prevented this. She remained there until after Morpeth when it dawned on her that the bus was now nearly empty so she could have more elbow room – by then there were no more traffic lights to be had. When I got home three things happened, one frustrating, one intriguing, one sobering – the file I’d been working on all morning with notes for next week’s lecturey chat was empty (no doubt some malfunction of my deleting finger) someone in Morocco had listened to Autumn Sea (I find this worthy of note, and therefore you must listen to this song today), and Jamie and I watched the excellent and distressing, Mandela: Long Road To Freedom on the iplayer. Having the elbow lady side beside me on the bus seems quite a treat after this last.

November 15th
Quiet day. Sheep with silvery ear. Old song. Commission for Northumberland Sport from 2012 – an anthem for their School Olympics – an event that was rained off, as it happens. But still – the anthem has been given a few outings around the county.

November 14th
Choir night – practising in the exceedingly reverberant acoustics of Longframlington Memorial Hall with my old friend Scott, who’s our cheery new pianist, and mostly getting to grips with Bach, Handel and Purcell and their sheep, but here doing a spot of 3-part Australian shearing as a warm-up. When we drove home the super moon was cavorting with the clouds so I scurried across to the other side of the bridge to catch it harmonising with the phone box.

November 13th
Remembrance Day: a circuitous 2 hour walk to the service across the bridge and a recital in Alnwick by the Choral Society. I took photos of remembrance on the walk and recorded the Last Post, played on a saxophone – very haunting. Before this, Neale told us some sobering facts about this day in The Battle Of The Somme – I spliced them together for this fade-in with one of my photos – someone’s front garden tribute to the day and all it represents. One of the best things about The Bridge Singers is that I now know a lot of the people I meet at these village events.

November 12th
One choir had a committee meeting today and another had a rehearsal. I’m allowed to go to these committee meetings for The Bridge Singers, even though I’m not a trustee because I am the Musical Director. I have my say. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been to committee meetings and have had lots to say that makes sense and people listen to me. Top committee and choir. Rock Festival Choir are learning one of my pieces – That First Christmas Night. Much mirth was had on account of Peter H’s caving lamp and Peter B took a photo of it – we altos were in the way of this photo, but at least it proves that we all had our choir pencils ready for action!

November 11th
There was a short list of tasks at the beginning of the day. The trouble with it was that each task was a monster, so the list still exists in its entirety but with elements within each completed. I’m told by The List Master himself that I should have sub-lists – I’ve a lot to learn when it comes to lists of tasks. One of the part-tasks was transposing the Pastoral Symphony from The Messiah into D. Here’s a photo of a distant stonechat on the bracken with a yonder tree.

November 10th
More Worksop merriment in the morning followed by a variety of trains to Alnmouth. The one over the Tyne came to a stop in the perfect place to capture all the things that go across it and sit on either side of it as the rain on the window interfered with the focussing. Later we were at Nether Grange in Alnmouth for the last of our Lionheart Harmony summer season gigs. The guests were musicians and appreciated us cheeringly, except that one of their phones received much incoming news and interfered with most of the recording, so here are just a few snippets to give you a flavour.

November 9th
Early, early, early (even for me) start what with election news, recording the next verse of Berlioz’ Shepherd’s Farewell for The Bridge Singers, and trains to catch south to Worksop for a day of merriment with Mum and Dad. You’ve all been very interested in the “new bathroom” saga over the past few months and so here it is completed with us and the left-behind monkeys.

November 8th
I went for a long walk today and took photos of pink things. These sheep have been pinked. I’ve also been practising my French and writing an article for The Bridge about The Bridge Singers – same bridge.

November 7th
Berlioz’s “L’Adieu des Bergers” has been my music of choice today, but we didn’t actually get around to it at The Bridge Singers tonight due principally to me not getting the scores organised in time. However, there’s always next week for that. I came across this photo of me today from my days of working at St. John Vianney’s Primary School in Brisbane. It’s the Zebra ZigZag with some Year 3s in my messy computer suite/arts room – you’ll notice that I was sporting my tropical shirt and sandals and that little fellow to my left was gazing happily at me.

November 6th
It’s the final version of While Shepherds Watched to find its way into The Bridge Singers’ “There Were Shepherds….” festive recital and the tune’s called Winchester Old. A couple of years ago we went to Winchester to see Barbara Hepworth’s Crucifixion in the grounds of the cathedral, so I rummaged through the very many photos of that occasion to find a suitable one and look what my eyes alighted upon – even then, before the telephone box obsession days I found a K6 in a picturesque alleyway with the cathedral in the background.

November 5th
Weather. Singing. Fish and Chips. One was wild and busy, another was edgy and energising, and the other was overpowering and sleep-inducing. In between another and the other was a sunset affected dramatically by the one, in Amble while the other was being purchased by one’s other half. The music is a fourth version of While Shepherds Watched, performed last December by The Bridge Singers and their audience.

November 4th
Bothered by world and British politics, and bigoted vitriol in the UK press yesterday and with too much “dwelling on things” time, I was determined to be more chirpy today with much music and less thought. This is the next instalment of the While-shepherds-watched bonanza. This one by John Foster of Yorkshire performed with extreme gusto by us last year – it’s the last two verses accompanied by extraneous photographer noise – he was rummaging very close by. The photo is the sun shining through the stained glass windows at St. Mary and Holy Trinity Church in Berwick-Upon-Tweed onto the excellently decorative organ pipes.

November 3rd
Fast start with list items ticked off. Slow middle with procrastinating and too much thinking. Picking up later middle with phone calls from journalists, bookings for concerts and more shepherds watching by night (this one is verses 3 & 4 of Cranbrook). A lively end with Lionheart Harmony getting to grips with new Christmas repertoire, much jollity, and a discourse on all the aircraft that have ever been used by the world’s military outfits by Simon, who is very impressive indeed. I do like someone with enthusiasm. It was a dull day and I forgot to seek out a photo opportunity so this one’s from Tuesday – horse chestnut leaves in the glorious sun I mentioned yesterday.

November 2nd
Another morning walk with Michael up to the obelisk near Swarland in the glorious autumn sunshine was followed by my stated aim of sorting out Christmas music once and for all. This is one of The Bridge Singers’ five versions of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night (the tune is Lyngham) and a picture of me and Michael from yesterday on Berwick Pier.

November 1st
Cheryl and Michael go on a day trip to Berwick-Upon-Tweed: upstairs front seat merriment on the double decker from outside the house; tropical Skittles as “spice for t’trip”; walking along the ramparts, pier, pavements, through leaves; stopping for photos with Monkey, burgers with black pudding, admiring the play of the sun on the waves, roofs and windows; back with much laughter, chat and sunset jollity to the bus-stop outside our house. Here’s Michael’s hand attending to Monkey’s pose on the end of Berwick Pier, and the Monkey-adapted ending of my lullaby “Golden Rain Baby”.