So this happened today:

We have three grab lorries-worth of topsoil, mainly heavy London clay, being removed from our garden. I’m wondering what happens to all of this. It is, after all, our garden, that we’ve bought and paid to maintain and now it’s in landfill somewhere or in someone else’s garden. It doesn’t seem quite right to me.

You’ve probably seen through these quick Tuesday posts. Truth is that I go to pub quiz on Tuesday nights and I’m home after 11. On a Tuesday I try and go to the gym and then the dogs have to be walked. If it’s term time I usually have to pick up MsDD from school after orchestral, and sit in traffic for an hour with her which is a pain but quicker than her school late bus, so that she can get changed and have a drink before she has to go to ballet. Then I have to take her to ballet and pick her up and hour later, all while shopping for and making supper and being the late one in our team to quiz at 8.45.

Since we are now in the holidays, it wasn’t such a rush today but I spent the time doing a proper singing practice. Yes, I have a lesson tomorrow and I always feel woefully underprepared, no matter how prepared I am. This week’s neurosis is that I don’t sound sufficiently operatic to do justice to the Richard Strauss lieder or the opera I’m singing. You listen to recordings of opera singers and they sound, well, operatic. I can do it if I try, yes, but it sounds pretentious to me and silly. I think it’s because I didn’t really grow up with operatic singing and, if I’m honest, I find a lot of it quite tiring to listen to. I’ll discuss this with my teacher tomorrow. I suspect it’s a case of fostering my disinhibition.

Share