So today I played in a Spires Music world premiere of Colin Touchin's Choose the Light. It was composed for the Coventry Mysteries and was inspired by the responses of many, many school children to the Doom paining in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry. It's a great piece, with material for school choirs, adult chorus and orchestra to all get their teeth into happily.

The interesting thing about Spires is they use professionals to lead the orchestral sections. This means the overall standard is impressively high. It also means I was sitting next to a very competent young man, and becoming all too aware of how incompetent I felt. Now that's not to say I played badly. I performed adequately, made very few slips (and none of them noticeable beyond my desk partner and myself) and generally acquitted myself professionally. No, what I noticed was how far my technical competence was from his. Ok, he's a professional. He's had high-quality tuition for many years (as did I, it has to be said) and he's clearly very talented and committed (the latter being something I always struggled with). But he had that ability to make it all seem soooooo easy.

It has to be noted at this point that I have been out of the playing game for several years. I've not played regularly with an orchestra since I moved to the Midlands in 2001, and I hardly touched my 'cello at all after I was ordained. Then, when I became ill, I fell out of love with it entirely and my 'cello sat in its case gathering dust. So it's only really been in the last few months that I have started to play or even practise again. It's not surprising then, that my fingers are a little rusty. But that's not entirely my point. I don't think that, even at my most capable, I was ever as comfortable with my instrument as this bloke. He had managed to eradicate all observable tension from his body, whereas I have a sore point on the tip of my thumb from gripping my bow, and I mean gripping. I'm fine in lyrical sections. My hands relax, my bow glides and all is well. But when the music becomes more impassioned, so do I. And as I've mused on this, I've realised there is a contradiction in performance. Musicians of every kind are trained to relax in order to perform at their best, just as an athlete needs to relax in order to compete well. But equally we have to express the emotional language of the music we are performing, and sometimes that music doesn't say "warm, fluffy clouds and marshmallow".

Clearly what I need to do is learn to disentangle my physical responses from my emotional ones. I need to be able to portray despair, anger, violence, melancholy, fear, surprise ... without it adversely effecting my playing technique. I understand the theory behind keeping relaxed. On a string instrument, as soon as you tense your bowing hand/arm/shoulder you effect the contact of the bow-hair with the string and it deadens the sound. The string is less able to ring freely, so you end up fighting against yourself to get enough volume. So I need to learn how to make a sound that is marcarto whilst having a right hand that's marshmallow.

Hopefully realisation is the first step ...

Pick 'n' Mix

People have often used the word eclectic about me and my life, and it's not often that I take a step back to see what they mean. But the last few days probably give a good snapshot of what I'm talking about.

Friday - book club: eating cake, drinking red wine and chatting (very occasionally about the book, which some of us may have read)
Saturday - 'cello practise; drawing practise; Rubyfruit Lesbian disco at Revolution in Leicester. The beauty of the lesbian disco is ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY DANCES ... regardless. It's an extraordinary thing to witness, and a really enjoyable atmosphere despite the occasional well-meaning friend trying to set me up!
Sunday - Rigging lights in Rugby Theatre which involved climbing a fully extended 3-section ladder up goodness knows how many feet holding a medium sized lantern (as those in the trade call them) and attaching it to a scaffolding pole; then went back to Leicester to see Avengers Assemble with friends. If you love your superheros, GO AND SEE THIS FILM. It was sooo funny and loads of great action.
Monday - Orthodontist trip with Meg, coffee and natter with a friend
Tuesday - Ryton Organic Gardens with my sketch book. If you're in the UK Midlands and haven't been, it's an absolute oasis of garden loveliness. Nothing too formal, but lots of great ideas for normal gardens and gardeners. Oh, and a fab restaurant and cafe too.
Wednesday - Jewellery making workshop for children, lunch date (!), Rubyfruit Pool Tournament - which nobody was expecting me to last beyond the first round (mostly because I'd told everyone how terrible I am at pool), and I ended up in the final and down to the last 2 balls! Now they're claiming I'm a hustler.
Thursday - Craft day with my best friend and her daughters.

In between all of this I have been practising the first movement of the Brahms E Minor 'cello sonata, Bruck Kol Nidrei, some Bach, Beethoven, Popper and other classical works.

And today, Friday, is my birthday. Both girls stayed last night so I was treated to presents in bed and a bacon and egg bap cooked by Rachel.

A creative day

For lots of people Saturday is the first day of the weekend and consists of supermarkets, shopping centres, ferrying children around to sport/music/dance etc.. But when you're unemployed, it's not that different from any other day of the week. Yet somehow it feels different. No idea why. Just that habitual imprint of "weekendness" I suppose.

So I've tried to make the most of this Saturday. I got my 'cello out and did some long-overdue practise: something technical, something unfamiliar and something familiar. I think it's a pattern I'll try and stick to. I remember I had a minus1 recording of Brahms' E minor Sonata, well the 1st movement, anyway. So I stuck it on the ipod dock and played my way through it. I'd forgotten how passionate this movement is. How deliberate every single note is. Even with my practise mute on I suspect most of my neighbours were "treated" to an impromptu concert!

Next I got my pencil and paper out again and resumed the Klein Studios drawing classes. I have progressed through lesson 8b now and have a technical still life composition thingy. Apparently I can't draw ovals level, but other than that I'm fairly happy with it for now, although the photograph could be clearer:

Free and single

Ok, just to clarify, that's "free" as in without cost because this Bank Holiday weekend got me thinking. What do you do when you're single and unemployed? Oh and the weather is determined to ruin any possibility of anything outdoors? It's a tricky one, but I figured I wasn't the only person on the planet to have pondered the question, so I turned to a good ol' Google search. It was quite an eye-opener! To start with there's a significant gender split.

No prizes for guessing the top male suggestion for having spare time on your *ahem* hands! Their lists seemed to be about earning money and not having to spend it on a date, hitting the gym, playing Xbox ... Whereas the female lists were about pampering yourself, meditating, turning your music up and dancing around your flat. Are we really so 2 dimensional?

But here is a list I've come up with:

• Do the C25K thing and actually feel fitter
• Get back in to my art journal
• learn to draw
• research world music for next September
• practise my 'cello
• find local art exhibitions (and actually go to them)
• play on the wii
• play WoW
• get making again.
• arrange craft days with friends
• go swimming (ok, not free but affordable)

There's probably more, but that'll do for now. Any suggestions always welcome :-)