That was 2010...

As midnight starts chiming around the globe, here's a hastily flung together few lists dipping into the cultural life of 2010. They're highly subjective, not at all comprehensive and I may well scrub the lot tomorrow and start again. It's a mixture of new and old - what I've come across this year, rather than the best of what's new. It's a (blurred) snapshot rather than a scientific survey...

Top three books of 2010

- The Music Room by William Fiennes
- A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
- Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore
(Solar by Ian McEwan, too, if I'm stretching to four)

Top three films of 2010

- A Single Man
- Heartbreaker
- I Am Love

Top three concerts of 2010

- Valery Gergiev and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6
- Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri in Krakow
- Maria Joao-Pires's Chopin Nocturne Prom in the Royal Albert Hall

Top three CDs of 2010
- Schumann's Davidbundlertanze and Fantasy in C from Mitsuko Uchida
- Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony from the RLPO and Vasily Petrenko
- Mozart's Piano Concertos from Imogen Cooper and the Northern Sinfonia

A Simple Medium

Films, perhaps, show us who we want to be, and literature shows us who we actually are. Sitcoms, if they show us anything, show us people we might like to know.
Tom Bissell in The New Yorker, in his profile of sitcom writer Chuck Lorre

The Dragon of Kraków

Meet the Kraków Dragon. A cheery fellow when he's in luminous green garb; a monstrous devourer of cattle and young virgins if you believe the legendary account. I've just finished writing a feature on his home city. This photo didn't make the final cut (well, it is a classical music travel feature), but he's found a home here – along with his scarily identical family – on Becca's Blog.

Beautiful coincidences

I like coincidences. Two days ago a friend recommended to me a BBC Four documentary (‘I never thought I’d say I had a good night in watching BBC Four,’ was his selling line). ‘Beautiful Equations’ does exactly what it says – it takes a look at the role beauty plays in maths. Art critic and artist Matt Collings is an engaging presenter as he investigates Newton and Einstein, quizzes Stephen Hawking on his black hole equations and gets scientists to explain what all those squiggles and numbers are all about. (It's for the general viewer rather than those who know their electrons from their positrons.)

My favourite squiggles were those of the so-called English Einstein, a Bristol-born physicist called Paul Dirac. Working in the first half of the 20th century, and using his own symbolic language, Dirac predicated anti-matter, and was one of the founding father of quantum mechanics. The reason he appeared in this programme was his underlying belief that the pursuit of beautiful equations would reveal the laws of nature. Beauty would be, in the words of Keats, truth, truth beauty. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the 'Dirac Equation' describing wave motions of electrons.

I was intrigued, although baffled by the mathematics. Anonymity was another of Dirac's desires (he had an incredibly literal mind that made social interaction a minefield), but biographer Graham Farmelo has written an acclaimed volume on his life. Time for a quick trip to the shops. I found a copy, and headed to the counter, where a girl in a festive green sparkly dress served me. When she saw what I was buying, her face lit up. 'Dirac. He's my hero!' Slightly surprised, given that I hadn't heard his name until the day before, we got chatting. It turned out that she was a physics student and artist, hence the love of Dirac. But there was another surprise to come.

'The programme talked a lot about the beauty of his mathematics,' I added. The reply: 'Yes, I've got his equation tattooed on my arm!'

Crosby Beach

Staring out to sea, one of the Gormley statues who stands vigil on Crosby Beach. Or the Gormless, as one local walker would have it.

Winter chill

I like the way Sibelius is a seal, Mozart a polar bear and – best of all – Beethoven and Bach are a pair of penguins! Bound to be their real names. I'm sure of it. More on freezing conditions in Liverpool to follow... (though hopefully the conditions planned for a trip this weekend won't be quite so arctic. Polar bears in the Mersey?)

The Paragon, Bristol

The Swallows of Kabul

Harrowing, thought-provoking, unexpected. Kabul, as conjured up by Yasmina Khadra* is, in the words of JM Coetzee 'hell on earth, a place of hunger, tedium and stifling fear.' A slim volume, this book transports you in few, but choice, words to the Afghanistan capital under the regime of the Taliban, where women are stoned to death, hide their faces and bodies under burqhas, and in which no one is allowed to sing, smile or dance. Freedom, responsibility, fate, death and love are a few of the book's themes, explored through the relationships of two couples who lives are crumbling. Day-to-day life in this hopeless place has shrunk their expectations, dimmed an appetite for life. So the choice of a Kabul prison as one of the novel's settings is meaningful. Who are the real prisoners? Those locked up by jailers for crimes real and false, most likely sentenced to death? Or those, nominally free, who are driven to violence, words and acts that would have been anathema to their younger, freer selves? People trapped in a living hell?

*Yasmina Khadra is a pseudonym of Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer now living in France. The name is that of his wife's.

Rotterdam

Er, note to self. Make sure to press publish.

These photos are from Rotterdam, back in September. The Do Doelen concert hall, the Erasmus Bridge and the Cube Houses (which, I'm assured, people do actually live in).

Just Another Autumn Day

In Parliament, the Minister for Mists
and Mellow Fruitfulness announces,
that owing to inflation and rising costs
there will be no Autumn next year.
September, October and November
are to be cancelled,
and the Government to bring in
the nine-month year instead.
Thus we will all live longer.

Emergency measures are to be introduced
to combat outbreaks of well-being
and feelings of elation inspired by the season.
Breathtaking sunsets will be restricted
to alternate Fridays, and gentle dusks
prohibited. Fallen leaves will be outlawed,
and persons found in possession of conkers,
imprisoned without trial.
Thus we will all work harder.

The announcement caused little reaction.
People either way don't really care
No time have they to stand and stare
Looking for work or slaving away
Just another Autumn day.

Roger McGough

Take-home message: Make the most of Autumn, kick leaves, splash in puddles, smash conkers, admire trees of every awe-inspiring hue, pause a moment to watch the magical morning mist, savour sunsets – and enjoy huddling in for long evenings, telling stories and reading poems in praise of Autumn.

Unsuitable attachments

I've always had a bit of a problem with books. The best sort of problem, I'd argue. The sort that makes one incapable of walking past a secondhand bookshop without going in, that allows one to justify buying new books with the 'I'm supporting the author' argument, and that makes one borderline obsessive compulsive in the alphabetical organisation of the resulting library. I used to spend many happy hours taking all my books off the shelves, building a fortress piles of pages high, and making sure the order ran Joan Aiken to Sylvia Waugh with no hitches.

Sorting through childhood belongings recently, I discovered some notebooks in which I used to keep lists of all the books I read. I thought I might resurrect this as an occasional thread on this blog. The book, plus a best line and worst line. That sort of thing. I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes.

First up: Barbara Pym's An Unsuitable Attachment.

Set in a North London suburb, this glimpse into the suitable and not-so-suitable attachments formed by the parishioners of St Basil's is gently amusing. Will librarian Ianthe Broom marry John Challow, five years her junior? Or will the eligible anthropologist Rupert Stonebird catch her eye? Or perhaps the catty Mervyn Cantrell is most suitable suitor? It's not vintage Pym though, the characters being a little lacklustre, but well worth a read.

There's lots of lovely observation, but to continue the theme, here's part of a library scene:

Ianthe never knew how to talk to Mervyn when he was in this sort of [sour] mood. She felt she could have done better than she did with her next remark.

'Balham,' she said, thoughtful, yet desperate,' that's on the Northern Line, isn't it.'

'Yes, my dear. It's black on the Underground map, so very suitable, I always think. Picture us arriving there on Boxing Day in time for tea by public transport, of course.'

Encouragement

Success is going from failure to failure with enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

Manifestations

Bristol town centre. This evening, the backdrop to protests against the government spending cuts just announced. Orderly and respectful, these students and workers aired their opinions in a so terribly English manner. Meanwhile, over in France, events are more, erm, active. Lyon, where this blog started, is the scene of riots, violence and fires, making the protests there some of the most violent in the country.

The perils of secondhand books

Autumn

Hot water bottle weather has arrived. Yesterday a thick mist settled over Bristol. Walking in Ashton Court, one could imagine a place far more isolated... All is grey, and there's a fine spritz of rain. Illusory rain. Put out your hand and you can't feel it on your skin. But touch your hair and it's fluffing, curling, fed by a hazy damp. The view of Bristol between the trees is obscured, sound deadened. The only noises are conkers thudding on the grass as they quit the trees, and the brutal unexplained crack of twigs. Birds, all black of course, punctuate the cloud. A cyclist lurches up the hill, his flourescent yellow jacket a sudden jar on the landscape. He pants by and is subsumed by the gloom as soon as he appeared.

Language thoughts

The human mind's a funny old thing. Particularly when it comes to words and language. How can you be a different person in one language than another? I'm not sure, and it's probably overstating the case to say you become completely different, but I think you do find out other parts of yourself in another language. Even if you aren't fluent, you find unexpected turns of phrase that perfectly encapsulate an idea, a word that fascinates. Different parts of your character are drawn out. I read an article recently that suggested not learning another language is denying what it is to be human. Why should your life be defined by the first language you happened to speak? Sadly I've a long way to go before mastering French - ho-hum - and often feel put to shame by the multi-lingual talents of others, but still the sense of finding a part of yourself in another language is tantalising.

I've found a little corner of France in Bristol in the form of a French meet-up group. In the quasi-French surroundings of Café Rouge, sipping admittedly overpriced red wine, we started to chat about who dreams in what language. I remember proudly, and excitedly, noting in my diary the first time I had a dream in French when I was living there - it felt like some kind of milestone to Being French. Of course, English still won out, and once back in the UK all ze lovely French words faded. One French girl at the group, though, said she never had dialogues in her dreams, they were all very visual, so could happen in any language. The human mind - an intriguing thing.

19th-century Facebooks

Facebook's sticky tendrils have extended themselves around the globe in the past five years, enmeshing people in its web of photos, status updates, 'likes' and tags. But behind it all is a human desire to be remembered by others that's nothing new, especially if the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) exhibition of photographer Camille Silvy is any sort of evidence. The 19th-century Frenchman came up with all sorts of technical innovations in the field of photography - exposing several negatives onto one film to get London in twilight, fog and bright sun - but I found his day books most immediately fascinating. The NPG owns twelve of them, chronicling every sitter that came into his Bayswater studio. His subjects who ranged from actors to aristocracy were all caught up in the rage for cartes de visites - small photo calling cards that people handed around, collecting friends. The craze swept the UK. Meet someone? Hand them a card picturing yourself. Sound familiar?







Three cartes de visites of, respectively, Adeline Patti as Lucie from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, fellow Adeline, the actress Adeline Cottrell and fellow opera singer Caroline Marie Carvalho-Miolan.

By night...

... Clifton Suspension Bridge...

Mumbling on

Though of course, the Bristol Balloon Fiesta wasn't the place to be seen in 2010. Mumbles, Swansea was the hub of excitement this August weekend, with teams of intrepid, fancy-dressed Mumblers taking to the water for the annual raft race. After watching the homemade constructions jostle for a place on the startline for five minutes, and with a good 15 more to go before the race began, I left them bobbing merrily in Swansea Bay, budding Columbos ready to take on the lengthy paddle to Knab Rock. Who won? Who knows.

Sky drift

Balloons, hot air balloons. Drifting gently over Bristol on the breeze. Colour was so 2009; this year it's all about sepia.

Good penguin fact

... (of which you can never have too many, might I add) ...

Six-foot penguins used to live in Antarctica. Not really the icy continent that we'd recognise, though. Back then, say 50 million years ago, it had a sub-tropical climate; as it cooled, the penguins got smaller. I'm sure that's the scientific explanation. Definitely. It's a fact.

These girls are in haste!

Royal Albert Hall. Between the early evening and late night Prom two friends sit in bar giggling over sandwiches and orange juice.

'What's the time?'
One checks phone. Replies.
'Oh. Oh dear. The Prom starts in six minutes. And we need to pick up the tickets.'
Action. Both get up, scoop up bags. Start to run. Through bar, up stairs. Up more stairs again. Which way is best? They're at door 6, the tickets are at door 12. Through door into inner corridor. Keep running. Halfway round the Royal Albert Hall. Arrive at door 12. Pull door handle. It's locked. Gesticulate frantically at steward in oh-so-smart red coat. Unlocked. 'Where are you going?' 'Tickets!' 'Well, go go.' Run to box office desk. The foyer is deserted. Hurry out name. Tickets. Two programmes. Check. 'It's door 3'. 'Door 3, where is door 3?' 'That way.' Run back to first steward. Hand over tickets. Other door... he points. Then runs with them to next steward, who has to scan the barcodes on the tickets, a la Sainsbury's. 'Hurry up, these girls are in haste!' Said girls crack up laughing. 'Don't laugh, the worst is to come!' Oh no? Where are our seats? The other side? He's just kidding. Unable to speak for laughter – 'these girls are in haste' – they arrive at the door which isn't so far away after all and are let through the red velvet curtain into the inner sanctum, ready for the concert.

Sunrise and skeletons

More Brendel this weekend, this time courtesy of the Cheltenham Music Festival. Possibly my favourite moment from the pianist's fascinating lecture-recital exploring character in Beethoven's piano sonatas came when he turned to the Waldstein Sonata. The piece is also known in French as 'L'aurore', meaning the dawn. One misguided German critic, Brendel recounted, misheard this nickname, calling it instead 'L'horror'. Cue Brendel's performance of the opening, with its pp repeated C major quavers, with his teeth bared, chattering in time with the repetitions like a clanky skeleton.

Here's Brendel playing the third movement of the Waldstein (I couldn't find the first, or the skeleton impression, I'm afraid).

Alfred Brendel

After a weekend spent in Plush, Dorset, to write about a festival set up by pianist Alfred Brendel's children, I've been having a bit of a Brendel moment.

Here's the master with Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major, Op. 90 No. 3.

A concert of sylphs or elves

French composer Erik Satie once wrote a piece called Vexations, in which it's suggested to the pianist that the theme might be played 840 times. Somehow that title hung over me as I headed to Bath for Joanna MacGregor's Chopin Mazurka-fest.

OK, time-wise, performing all 58 Chopin Mazurkas isn't such a herculean task, fitting into, ehem, a mere three hours. Performing them's one thing; how about listening to them? Surely wall-to-wall Polish-folk-dance-inspired piano miniatures on a Sunday morning would be too much of a good thing? Even, dare I suggest it, a bit boring? Coffee was needed.

Caffeine consumed, the Chopin-listening began. In an unbroken flow, with no room for applause, Joanna MacGregor launched into this consuming musical world. As her programme jottings noted, the pieces range from 'wittily joyful', to 'plangently melancholic', 'robustly merry' to 'wistfully delicate'. Played in chronological order, what was most telling was that, once Chopin had got over the initial teething period in this form, they were remarkably stylistically homogenous. Not much of a journey, but the whole was a refreshing experience.

Over to Berlioz: 'There are unbelievable details in his Mazurkas; and he has found how to render them doubly interesting by playing them with the utmost degree of softness, piano in the extreme, the hammers merely brushing the strings, so much so that one is tempted to go close to the instrument and put one's ear to it as if to a concert of sylphs or elves'

Canonic Chopin

'If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in the simple tunes of Chopin's mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers.' Robert Schumann

Off to hear the complete Chopin mazurkas in Bath – all 58 over three hours. Heaven or hell? I'll let you know later on…

A is for Arditti, B is for Beethoven…

… and C is for catastrophe.

Oh dear. The Arditti Quartet did not come through triumphant with its recent performance of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue at the Bath Music Festival. The scrappy first note set the tone; the poor ensemble and tuning scuppered the piece. So much for hearing a performance bringing out the modernity of Beethoven's testing, puzzling string masterpiece. This just brought out the under-rehearsal. Seemed they'd saved their bowing hours for the Birtwistle, Dausapin and Schnittke that followed.

Bristol by boat

Gender equality

French fact. (Best look away now unless you like details about grammar.) As you probably know, French has masculine and feminine nouns. You have to make all your adjectives (and for other reasons sometimes your verb endings) agree in order to create sentences with harmony of the sexes. There is rhyme and reason to how you go about doing this, but not always. Why, for example, do you write 'la petite fille' for granddaughter, with an 'e' added to 'petit' to make everything agree, but do you leave 'la grand mere' without an 'e'? In fact, grande-mere means 'tall mother' not grandmother. Turns out 'grandmere' is a verbal relic, a hangover from the candlelit days of medieval French, when words stuck close to their Latin ancestors. And in Latin there was a group of adjectives (in the third declension if you must know) that don't make all the genders match up. Grand's great-great-great-[repeat as necessary] grandmother's etymological ancestor came from this set of nonconformist adjectives. So there you go. Spread the word. Go on, do.

Conundrum

Oh Beethoven. A crescendo through a tied note on the piano? How am I meant to play that?

Vincent in London

Vincent Van Gogh. Something of a magical charm, those three words, judging from the hordes at the latest exhibition of his work in London. It's ended now; I just managed to sneak in on the penultimate day. Thick skin and pointy elbows were needed, and tactics, especially if you're impatient (like me) and believe the worst way to look at a picture is as one of a four-deep crowd (guilty again). A quick scout round, and then I made a beeline for the three or four paintings that stood out for some reason. Here's the first, one of my favourites. Fishing boats at sea has a Japanese flavour that becomes even more apparent in the four ink versions he drew for friends. Face to face with this tableaux, the sea looks wild, the wind strains in the sails. 'The Mediterranean sea is a mackerel colour: in other words, changeable,' wrote Van Gogh, 'You do not always know whether it is green or purple, you do not always know if it is blue, as the next moment the ever-changing sheen has assumed a pink or a gray tint.’

New recipe

So, we've got Cameron flapjack combined with Clegg carrot cake. I've never tasted a carrot flapjack. Have you?

Winning an election? It's a piece of cake

... and we made The Times! With a group of friends, at Bristol's Tobacco Factory last night, watching the General Election debate, I realised (as did everyone else) that we'd been infiltrated by reporters and photographers. My clue? A card handed round saying 'Guys, I'm from The Times, if you mind me taking a photo of you, put your hands up now'. Not exactly Sherlock Holmes stuff. The Bristol Evening Post was there too.

Martin Fletcher of The Times tapped away at his laptop throughout the debate, looking up whenever a cheer or laugh burst forth, smiling when the newspaper-sponsored cakes – carrot cake Clegg, Gordon Brownies and Cameron flapjacks – were passed round (all the carrot cake had gone by the time it got to our corner. Shame), and rushing to the front of the room to do a straw poll at the end of the debate. Little did he know that some of the laughs related to leadership bingo – three cards with the words most likely to pop out of the contenders' mouths. My team got all of our phrases – no problem with 'hardworking families', 'deficit', 'billions' – apart from 'a future fair for all', surprisingly hard to come by.

Enjoy Martin Fletcher's words here:

Never mind the opinion polls. The customers in the café-bar at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory had no doubt who the tastiest candidate was in last night’s debate: Nick Clegg.

Asked to make their choice based on the leaders’ performances, ten of them selected a piece of the café-bar’s carrot cake bearing Mr Clegg’s picture. Four opted for a “Gordon Brownie”, and only one chose a ginger and orange flapjack adorned with David Cameron’s likeness.

This thoroughly unscientific survey, generously sponsored by The Times, marked a significant swing to the Liberal Democrats. Before the debate the café-bar had sold seven Gordon Brownies, four Tory flapjacks and only two Lib-Dem carrot cakes.

“It’s obviously Nick Clegg,” said Anna Barclay, 30, a photographer, when asked who she thought had won. “He comes across so well on telly. He’s a natural.”

“Clegg was the most reasonable and credible,” agreed Charles Mitton, 34, a Mencap trainer. “Brown didn’t do too badly, but Cameron seemed to be trying to get out a lot of party slogans. I just thought he was bland.”

Just across the Avon from the studio, the Tobacco Factory seemed as good a place as any from which to watch the politicians spar. Imperial Tobacco used to manufacture cigarettes in the huge old red-brick building. It now contains a theatre, restaurant, studios and small businesses. No chains are allowed — even the bar spurns big-name beers in favour of a local micro-brewery. Its watchword is independence, albeit of an arty, alternative, leftish sort. As Shakespeare’s The Tempest played in the theatre upstairs, customers packed into the room below to watch — intently — the political drama unfold.

Unlike the studio audience, they could make their views clear — laughing when Mr Clegg accused the Tories of joining a bunch of “nutters” in the European Peoples Party, cheering when a questioner asked about sustainable transport, snorting when Mr Brown cited his use of trains to campaign to underscore his green credentials.

“Yeah,” someone shouted when Mr Brown urged less dependence on oil. They nodded their heads in approval as Mr Clegg suggested that British support for America should be more critical. They “oooh-ed” sarcastically as Mr Cameron denounced Labour “lies”.

This was the first time that the café-bar had advertised a political debate on its pavement blackboard, rather than Six Nations rugby or Wimbledon. It proved just as gripping. Not a person left before the end.

Mr Clegg did not have it all his own way, however. Paul Anning, 38, a project manager with a bank, backed the Prime Minister. “I think Gordon Brown is more believable and has depth to his answers because he’s been at the front end of it,” he said. “I think Cameron has no substance. He’s just trying to grab headlines. There’s no meat on his bone.”

Wendy Brandl, 65, a retired therapist previously leaning towards the Liberal Democrats, thought that there was no clear-cut winner, just an obvious loser: Mr Cameron.

The debate over, The Times did a rather more scientific straw poll. Mr Clegg got 21 votes, Mr Brown five, Mr Cameron three. For the Lib-Dem leader it was a piece of cake.

General Election debate in Bristol!

Clegg, Cameron and Brown are heading to Bristol. The Arnolfini, to be precise, home of contemporary art. Last time I was there, I saw a man icing a chair, another going up and down the stairs – two steps forward, one step back, a shoe connected to a fan representing the artist's travels in India, and a box of popcorn, on top of a table, hiding a hand... Pictures are below, for proof. Will the political trio make anymore sense? Let's hope so! Oh, and the General Election debate is definitely happening there tomorrow, although when I wandered over there at lunchtime today, a charming Sky security guy wouldn't tell me whereabouts in the gallery exactly. No TV screens to broadcast it either; but, he assured me, there'll be a stunning illumination of the Arnolfini tonight.

Thought

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
St. Augustine of Hippo

Found!

When I started my job two and half years ago, I inherited a desk, a few folders of assorted papers, a couple of biros, an opera trivia quiz book and the remains of an iTunes music collection. Dipping in and out of the tracks revealed a few horrors and a few gems. One of my favourite finds was a short song, beautiful and hypnotic. All I had to identify it was the composer: Monteverdi. Since then I've played it to everyone at work in an attempt to pin it down, listened to Monteverdi CDs, but, alack, no luck. I didn't know who was singing it, who was accompanying, what it was called. Until today. Success! Found while hunting for something completely different – details of an intriguing concert in the Wieliczka salt mine near the city of Krakow, Poland, performed by the early music ensemble L'Arpeggiata and countertenor Phillippe Jaroussky. It's a programme of Monteverdi, they've already recorded it as a CD and it includes my song!!!! And, more on this to follow, I'm off to Poland for a few days tomorrow and will hear it live. It's not the same performance as on my computer, it's better. Here it is:

Cooling down in Antarctica

What would you do in Antarctica? Herbert Ponting, who made it near the end of the world as part of Scott's 1910 Antarctic Expedition, decided to cool his head (his words, not mine). Because, clearly, it gets pretty hot at the South Pole.

Sweet dreams

Illness. In the middle of the night, awake. The rest of the world slumbers. I put on the radio. Music. Sleep. A melody dives through the layers of dreams, casting its hook and bringing me back to the surface. Piano, strings. A solo violin. Restless melancholy, hints of repose. What was this music, at once familiar in feel and unknown in note? In the morning, with the curtains open, the light on and the memory now hours old, I tracked down those elusive sounds. Chausson's Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet, the second movement - a Sicilienne.

Around the world

The West has had a dose of the international recently. Sex-and-the-City actress Kim Catrall and one-time Mr Darcy Matthew Macfayden brought bubble and fizz to Noel Coward's Private Lives over in Bath – you can now see the classic whirl of love, coincidence and mishaps on stage in the Vaudeville Theatre in London, where it's getting pretty top-notch reviews. The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, joined by fellow writer Greg Milner, entertained an audience at St George's with a conversation about the history of recorded music - what exactly is a recording, and what do we think it should be? Ross followed up his Bristol appearance with a stint at the Wigmore Hall in London, where he delivered a talk about the future of the classical concert. That's an oh-so-lovely link to the third international figure being welcomed to the West: tomorrow night American composer John Adams will be conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Britten, Sibelius and his Dr Atomic Symphony, and one of the first handful of European performances of his 2009 City Noir. This 30-minute piece ends thus, in Adams's words. 'The music should have the slightly disorienting effect of a very crowded boulevard peopled with strange characters, like those of a David Lynch film—the kind who only come out very late on a very hot night.'

Is it art?

There's a darkened doorway in the Barbican that has the metal equivalent of a beaded curtain hanging across it. Intrigued? Behind the curtain there's a dark tunnel. Odd. In the tunnel is a wooden walkway, edged with stones and plants. You can hear the sounds of crickets. Curiouser and curiouser. I follow the path. At the other end, you emerge into a light-filled, cavernous room. And here's the strangest part, it's a space filled with Gibson guitars, cymbals and... zebra finches. These cute little birds, with tiny orange beaks, and looking (sorry for the cliche) as light as a feather are going about their daily lives, every peck of bird seed, flutter of wings or sideways hop transformed into sound by the instruments. The brainchild of Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, this installation creates an ever-changing soundscape. It might be random sound – though motifs emerge from the hubub – but composers from Vaughan Williams to Messiaen have been inspired by birdsong. Is it art? I don't know. It's certainly unexpectedly uplifting.

King of the pavement

Snow flakes twice the size of stamps followed by rain. Yesterday was the kind of day that made you want to own one of those huge anti-social umbrellas. You know, the ones that make you king of the pavement, a crusader with an umbrella-shaped shield, the power to repel the rain. The drops are kept at bay, falling so far on the other side of the umbrella that you can imagine you're inside. People have to chart their course along the pavement around you as you sail along in a smug bubble of dry. Selfish, I know, the Umbrella Dream.

Learning curve

Back from skiing. What did I learn? Skiing is like riding a bike, except if you haven't done it for years you will first fall down a mountain into an undignified snowy heap with back-to-front legs before you remember how to do it. Walkie talkies to communicate between groups of skiers may well use the same radio channel as (a) the resort funicular (bet they're missing Funicular FM now!) and (b) the ski-lift operators (cue random French noises). Donkeys can live up mountains. Mulled wine made with rum and energy tablets is a good drink. Button lifts have a life of their own and will hoik you up into the air and throw you back down. Raclette and fondue can induce cheese mania. Ski boots are never your friend. The second-fastest six-seater chairlift in France - an obscure accolade if I ever saw one - is in Isola2000, near Nice. That high up, you can blame anything on the altitude. Walking is hard work after a week strapped to skis.

Handel from Racha Arodaky

One of my favourite pianists at the moment. There's a certain fragility within her sound that's ineffable, a purity that's rare and leaves you wanting to hear more. So to follow Handel, here's another video: the sound quality isn't top-notch (blame YouTube) but this recording made me see that Scarlatti's piano pieces have their own magical beauty; previously I had written them off. Unfairly, it's probably true, as I can't claim to have listened to all 666 of his piano sonatas... that's a project for a rainy day or two.

Green shoots

I'm growing an amaryllis. Not blessed with the world's greenest fingers – previous horticultural attempts include a tomato plant that shrivelled up in the cracked soil one hot summer, neglected and parched; and a bryophyllum grown for school biology that failed to divide and flourish. I'm pretty pleased and even more surprised, then, that the amaryllis has been alive for at least three weeks. At first it was a bulb in a pot – little visible interest. Next the oval-shaped tips of two stems appeared, looking a little like lobster pincers. Diligently, I remembered to water the amaryllis – don't overwater, the instructions firmly remind. The stems grew, coloured a young green, stretched like arms reaching up, hands together in prayer. To be fair, with my track record, I'd be praying too.

Elgar for Friday

Cellist Andreas Brantelid. With his refined, expressive, aristocratic playing, he makes the cello sing with cherry-hued tones. Remember his name.

Snow long

Left the wellies at work, no longer need to walk like a penguin… it can only mean one thing: the snow is melting.

Cold times

Contemplating the purchase of ice skates in order to get work tomorrow. Or a toboggan. Wellies just aren't cutting it on the Bristol Alps. Home is at the top of the hill, work at the bottom, it's downhill sheets of ice all the way. Bit of a no-brainer...

Natural habitat

One of the hazards – or highlights, depending on your point of view – of living in Bristol is inadvertently finding yourself on TV. It's not the world-famous BBC Natural History Unit, based on Whiteladies Road, and presumably where they keep David Attenborogh in deep freeze, ready for his next voiceover, that's behind this possibility of small-screen fame. Oh no. It's the nice people from the BBC filming the never-ending hospital drama Casualty, and Mistresses, the British answer to Sex and the City, that you've got to watch out for, not to mention the E4 crews behind the drug and sex-fuelled teen drama Skins. Round-about-M-list Celebrity spotting is, in fact, pretty normal in Brizzle. A friend swears she's being stalked by an actress from Skins; last year a Casualty actress turned up at a friend's party; and on a trip to the local supermarket last summer I spotted the ace of spades of Bristol actorati: Charlie Fairhead. Wearing a thick, dark coat and hat with ear flaps, despite the sweltering weather. Next time stick to the sunglasses like every other sleb, Charlie.

On my new route to work (oh yes, a new route. That's worth a post in itself. There's no escape), therefore, I wasn't overly surprised when I spotted a couple more Casualty actors loitering on a street corner. Granted, 9am on a weekday morning seems an odd time to loiter, but who's to judge? I continued to meander along. What beautiful houses, I thought. Gorgeous Georgian architecture. Who once lived here, I pondered. And what was that large crowd doing on the pavement on the other side of the road? Looks like they're waiting for something. But what? Odd they're not talking at all. I kept walking. More vaguely familiar people, this time being prepped by an animated individual.The penny dropped. Why hadn't they shut off the road? I felt the eyes of the crowd on me as I continued to walk by. The road panned out ahead. Did it even end? Better just keep going. As I turned the corner a man in a big waterproof jacket picked up his walkie-talkie. 'Girl's gone'.

Casualty might have shunned my acting ability, but apparently Raymond Blanc's Bristol-based The Restuarant, in which couples compete to go into business with the culinary Frenchie, thought otherwise. According to a reliable source, I've wasted a good minute of the meagre 15 minutes of fame we're all allocated in this lifetime walking down a road in a reality TV show. There's a tale to tell the grandchildren.