Campety camp- the text bit!

The wonderful event of the year, to which I look forward to with alacrity, music camp. It was a wonderful week in many ways. Was lovely to be back there with CBC, it was very exciting to be back there with each other and reminisce about last year. I look forward to seeing friends there who I may only see once a year or even less if we end up at different camps from each other and there were many people there who I haven’t seen for a while.
Some wonderful one-off experiences which I may not get to repeat.
Major highlights include making my mandolin-playing debut in Mahler’s 7th symphony. I discovered, to my delight, that this was a symphony I played at my first ever summer music camp, which I subtitled ‘The star trek symphony’ as it has a wonderful moment in the 1st movement that sounds exactly like Star Trek (you know the bit at the beginning with the long quiet notes where the Enterprise captain says ‘Space, the final frontier’, which made me giggle last time, particularly when the trombone section continued by singing the rest of the Star Trek theme! There were also moments that sounded like Star Wars ‘Imperial March’, A Lloyd-Webber’s Coney Island waltz from Love never dies. To my delight, nobody had thought about the mandolin part, so I went in search and was rewarded with a dusty mandolin and bagged the mandolin part. For anyone not in the know about orchestral instruments, the mandolin is not usually found in Western Classical music, except that Mahler in this case, writes a part for guitar (also unconventional) and mandolin. Plus, 2 hilarious instances of comedy cow bells made for amusing moments!
In addition, I somehow managed to get a part of the musical, which was a great show called ‘The boys from Syracuse’ set in Ancient Greece, Ephesus to be precise playing the sister of the main female called Luciana. The musical is based on Shakespeare’s comedy of errors’, which involves 2 sets of twins. I had to fall in love with my sister’s husband’s identical twin-brother who had arrived in Ephesus to search for his long-lost father and ended up confusedly in her house. It was supposed to be one of those love at first sight instances and unrequited at that! It was a great part to play, although I had to spend a lot of time looking dreamy, sad or indignantly trying to stop myself from kissing him! I had 4 great songs to sing including a fabulous trio with Adriana, my sister and Luce, the cook, called ‘Sing for your supper’ which was a fun trio sounding in the Andrews-sisters ilk which we choreographed. Much hilarity ensued, and trying to craft our costumes from various pieces of material, leaves and some hideous gold accessories, courtesy of High Wycombe Primark was great fun! Was definitely the highlight of my week, marred only by having to go and wash up for 2 hours after it!
Other musical highlights included Janacek’s Eternal Gospel and Berg’s Lulu Symphonic suite, plus trying some delightful piano arrangements for wind quintet which CBC had created.
Non-musical highlights included a fantastic array of delicious meals and some great waterfights with CBC and a bunch of teenage boys who completely drowned me on my way to a rehearsal in which I had to then nonchalantly sit and try and play whilst dripping! We also had a great cricket match where I managed to, albeit chaotically, hit every ball that was thrown at me!
Surprisingly managed to make it to breakfast every morning- JUST.
2 close encounters of the eight-legged kind with two ferociously large arachnids. I am not talking normal proportions, but of epic monster scale!!!!!! Of course I didn’t embarrass myself in front of other people by hysterical female reactions to them*


* er, I lie.

Books

Here I have an update on books I have read over the last month or so. Not really had much time to update the list as my home laptop died and I have no internet connection! There are some great books here which I have enjoyed and some that are so so...
22. Henrik Ibsen Peer Gynt
Weird, weird, weird! I always wondered what the music was about. Wish I hadn't asked!
23. Oscar Wilde The Happy prince and other short stories.
Beautiful, heart-wrenching, well-written, shocking, imaginative.
24. Tom Cox Under the paw- confessions of a cat man.
Hilarious. Who, who has owned cats, cannot identify with this! Even if you haven't, hugely entertaining.
25. Jane Peart The secret of Octagon house
Bit Mills and Boonesque in the romance department but intriguing!
26. MACOMBER, Debbie Twenty wishes.
Lovely book, typical American feelgood stylie.
27. FLEMING, Ian The man with the golden gun.
Very different to 'The Spy who loved me' I enjoyed it. That Bond is a bit of a cad though!
28. MILLINGTON, Mil. Things my girlfriend and I have argued about.
Took a while to get into- you really wanted to bang his head against a wall and go "No, don't do it!"
29. JERRY B JENKINS & TIM LA HAYE Left Behind- facing the future.
Interesting read.
30. Lauren Weisenberger Everyone worth knowing.
In many ways, similar to "The Devil wears Prada"- interesting look into the life of New York party girl
31. Phillippa Pearce The Little Gentleman.
Lovely book as is to be expected from Ms Pearce. Lovely and magical like "Tom's midnight garden" I enjoyed it!
32. Enid Blyton Here’s the naughtiest girl!
I didn't know she wrote a 4th book, but I found a boxed set in Cogito Books in Hexham (Lovely bookstore!) and couldn't resist. Purely for the classroom of course...
33.Anne Digby The naughtiest girl keeps a secret
Obviously, someone else took up Ms Blyton's mantle. A good book!
34 Roald Dahl More tales of the unexpected.
Weird, crazy, slightly sick, funny and you don't see the twist coming!

Camp camp camp

I had a lovely time at Music camp as usual, having returned last night! Will write more in detail, but enjoyed a great time with friends.

The piccies are: 1) CBC incognito with help from moi.

2) the 2 Dromio twins

3) Antipholus of Ephesus rehearses.

4) Antiopholus of Syracuse reclines.

5) Adriana and Luciana enjoy an interval