A few exciting things have happened round here lately that have kept me busy and unable to update the site for a while. Firstly, Mark and Marnie have arrived in London (although as I write this they are preparing to fly to Switzerland to see the Tour de France), and they have joined the select …
Surprise visit
Well, Matt should be landing in Cairo right about now. I hope he packed some sunscreen. I checked the weather: 37C. Yuck. He was originally going to fly to Cairo from Algiers, but decided to swing by London when an earthquake changed his itinerary. Unbeknownst to me, he had been in contact with Kathryn and …
We're back!
After the server crashed it seemed as good a time as any to redesign the site. So after many long hours at the keyboard, this is the result; the all-singing, all-dancing, object-oriented, dynamically created website. I know you don’t care about all that. You just want to know why it took so long to get …
London Peace March
On Saturday London played host to the biggest public demonstration Britain has ever seen. About one million people converged on Hyde Park to protest against the probable war with Iraq. Being a tool of corporate greed I had to work, but Kathryn was there and she took some photographs. You can find them in the …
Snow chaos
So shouted the headline from the Evening Standard seller’s stand I could see through the window of HMV. Snow Chaos. Snow Chaos? This is indicative of the hyperbole employed by the tabloid press. And also the British pre-occupation with the weather. And also the inability of London to deal with any hint of snow. Or …
2003
I managed to survive the hell that is retail at Christmas time in London; working long hours while my wife was enjoying business class flights to the ridiculously warm Antipodes. My sister stopped by on her way to Zurich and seemed to bring a trace of the Aussie (well, Melbourne) weather with her. The Christmas …
We got married
Hi. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since last I updated the journal we have: Been to Australia Got married Moved house And before we left the UK my sister and nephew came to stay with us. Gosh that was a long time ago. First things first, in case you don’t know – maybe you …
The second Austral concert
What are we doing? Well, the recent past has been mostly taken up with organising the second Austral Sinfonietta concert. Held at the same venue, it was, by all accounts, an improvement on the first one last year. The orchestra played extremely well (after a scarily small number of rehearsals) and the audience was at …
Proposal
Kathryn and I are engaged. Here’s how it happened. Monday morning. Very, very morning. Approximately 3.20 AM. The kind of time when you really wish you had gone to bed at 9 PM like you were planning to. The plan was to catch the night bus from Sloane Square to Liverpool Street for the Stansted …
The first Austral concert
Well, well, well. Long time, no update. The last couple of months have been rather hectic for me. The last weeks doubly so. On Saturday night (21st) I conducted my first concert in London. Not a hugely important event for most people in London, but a rather big deal for me, as you can imagine. …