Monday, 15 February 2010

1395 A Piano Concert at the Custom's House Dimitry Rachmanov

The mood of boyish excitement generated at the cricket yesterday evening has continued throughout and long and early morning and then evaporated in to sadness and serious thought, and then into the kind of conflict between what I wanted to do, should do and could do from which it is difficult to find rest.

The previous evening I received a notice advising that Travel Lodge Summer rooms for July and August, costing only £19, would be available to book on line from 6am. The plan was to find somewhere in the London areas coinciding with the Lords Final of the cricket trophy which I had planned to attend last year but was prevented with admission of my birth mother to hospital. Although there is the hurdle of the semi final to overcome and given what happened at Wednesday's match it could be argued for and against a win through, I decided to try and book up, and if the semi final is lost then to enjoy a few days in the capital city. I had great difficulty over the next hour but eventually managed to get the full concession for two nights and reduced rates for another two although this involved booking four separate but consecutive nights. However a phone call afterwards reassured that I would be allocated one room for the stay but would have to obtain a room entry key card each day. This meant I could travel by public transport rather than take the car and obtained a concession return coach ticket for a mere £15.50 The cost of travel and accommodation covering six days and four nights is about half of that for a single occupancy reasonable standard room on the cruise ship fleet of the Freedom of the Seas line!

I then discovered that Benny Goodman tribute band is playing at the Sage Main concert theatre during the Whitley Bay Jazz Festival in July( which I must find out more). It was not all satisfactory as I failed to catch up with Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday which failed to upload after several attempts.

I then had an olive salad lunch having earlier eaten two toasts as breakfast and then some rice crispies for elevens and then decided that I would go to the lunchtime concert at the Customs House where the Russian/US pianist Dimitry Rachmanov was giving a concert for £5. Given that there were only 60 to 70 in the audience and that many had season tickets which reduced the price to £4, the takings, would have been around £300 which is just as well that the concert was financially supported by the Arts Council. The pianist was then going to catch a plane to Paris from Newcastle airport having also performed in Durham City yesterday. He played seven pieces, variations by Beethoven, two pieces by Brahms, two pieces by Tchaikovsky, three pieces by Rachmaninoff, two Fairy tales by Meitner, three pieces by Scriabin, and then a sonata by the same composer. The concert lasted over an hour and was exceptional value. The last time I had been to attend a performance at the Custom's house was the U2 Tribute band and I had promised to attend more frequently. Tomorrow there is Geordie Comedian Bobby Thompson who once did a show in an elderly persons homes for me. He is funny but only if you understand the dialect. On Saturday there is a night at Opera on and Sunday Asda Staff raise money for their the Army Benevolent Fund and then there is a gap of a week.

It was a pleasant walk back and found that the Flying Angel Club at Mill Dam is part of the Mission for Seamen hostel and centre. I once assessed a National lottery Charities application for the centre, one of the few I did for South Shields. The pavement works appears to have finished and I enjoyed a pleasant walk through the tree covered gardens church yard at St Hilda's. yesterday I had seen a giant cargo vessel enter the Tyne for the port and today across the riverside there were two passenger ferries. I mention this because the route to Norway is being a axed because of lack of demand. Having got some cash and a statement from the bank on the way to the concert, I bought strawberries and cherries at the metro bridge greengrocers on return. I am not impressed with the new paving bricks replacing the previous work at the junction between the shopping streets and the nightlife street, although the work is far from complete.

During the afternoon I watched a film whose title or particular I am unable to confirm despite looking at schedules. The title was something like Marble in the name and is an Estonian film about their civil war struggle for independence after world war one and which they gained until the second world war. A quick view about a country I have known nothing about is that the population is only 1,3 million about the size of Tyne and War with a population a mixture of those with Finish Nordic backgrounds, with a German influence on the middle classes and also Russia. The area was controlled by Sweden from 1500 until the early 1700's when it was ceded to Russia, but the in the immediate post war upheavals, led by the education middle classes there was an attempt at independence, and when conscription failed the army resorted to seeking volunteers among the boys of high school, and film concerned one class at one school in the town of Tartu which was divided between those supporting nationalism and the independence move led by the middle classes, those who identified with the communist Russian interest and those who did not want war or to fight. The film then focuses on one family of two brothers with older joining the communists the reds and the other the whites. The film has an emotionally moving climax in which the reality of fighting is one of the most moving I have experienced because the characters of a small group of classmates their relationships has been established and we are shown how they individually react to a situation where there are on perimeter guard and where because of their inexperience and immaturity they open fire on an enemy column which is crossing in front of them, oblivious to their presence and therefore could have continued without the classmates intervening before they are reinforced with the main body of their forces. Consequently some die, some are injured but four survive to treated as hero's and sent home back to school and one meets up with a girl he has rescued and believes she has been blown up while they make their escape. The train returning home with the wounded is stopped by a small group of remaining Estonian communist's with the consequence that three of the four hero's perish but the young man and his girl friend survive to become part of the new Estonia which managed to achieve independence until the second world war when it was incorporated into the Russian empire without a shot being fired. In 1992 it gained its independence again and while forecasting ahead is a dubious pastime it can be said that it is likely the country will now continue as an independent nation for a longer period that at anytime in the past 1000 years. It is a lesson for those who take the view that big is always best and that small communities and nation cannot survive on their own.

I had a quickly made sweet and sour chicken with rice for an evening meal before going out to a local political meeting, the consequence of which is that I will be spending the few days in writing letters and memo's after pulling all together my prior and subsequent thoughts.

A great deal of time during the evening was spent trying to find my new membership card as a Friend of the Tyne Cinema without success.

I watched the new Big Brother House and the arrival of the new 16 housemates with some incredulity and gave myself a serious talking to about priorities and not getting engaged with the programme again in the way that I did last summer, especially as it will last three months 91 days to be precise.

I watched the last part of Question Time in which my local Member of Parliament and Foreign Secretary tried to defend the Prime Minister's determination to exert his authority over increasing the power for detention from 28 to 42 days. It is likely the tactics will win the vote and seal the end of Labour as a Government for the next election as it will unite the opposition parties and create a significant body of resentful backbench labour members who will find other ways to bring to an end his leadership.

I wanted to stay up and rite this Blog; I wanted to wrote about local and national political matters; I wanted the find my new Film Theatre membership card, but I was too tired to do anything but go to bed but also too tired to sleep.

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