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…