wee dug by Joe Davie

David McGuinness's blog (2000-2018)

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Wednesday 13 December 2000

This morning I mended the garden fence that had blown down in the night, and then went off to a meeting with our accountant, to sort out some tax problems to do with ConCal's incorporation as a limited company last year. It looks like we'll have to give the Revenue a sum of money, only for them to return it in another form some time later. This happens to me a lot - I get a whopping great bill, find a way to pay it, and then a few months later, they give me all the money back under a different name. A great way to keep lots of civil servants in work.

Marie and I stayed on in the convivial surroundings of the café to meet Alison McGillivray for lunch. She's up teaching in the RSAMD, and just got back from a month-long American tour as principal cellist in the Academy of Ancient Music. She said 'it's nice to be here, it reminds me I have a life'. 

I was in SCO rehearsals for the rest of the day, with Harry Bicket conducting Handel and Rameau. For all Harry's faults (he's not Mr Charisma, and is far better at working with singers than with instrumentalists), he has the rare talent of almost always picking perfect tempi. In Baroque and Classical music this is absolutely vital, as so many other things will just come right if you play the music at the right speed. But a conductor who can do this is all too rare. The orchestra quickly got bored, and were completely undisciplined by the end of the afternoon session (I spent a lot of time making unprintable anagrams of the names of players around me), but at the end of the day we played through the Rameau Les Boreades suite and it lifted everyone's spirits. 

At one stage in tonight's rehearsal, I heard the fateful words 'Oi! Slasher!' ring out across the cello section from Kevin McCrae. A few years ago the principal cellist, Ursula Smith gave me the nickname Slasher, but could never quite come up with a reason why. Answers on a postcard please ...

Had dinner with Robert McFall and Alison Green in a great little Thai carry out just up from the Queen's Hall, and Alison read Hello! magazine while we planned January's Mr McFall's Chamber recording sessions. It now looks like Linn Records might release the McFalls tango record I produced for them in September. Robert mentioned he'd found this diary on the internet last night, so if you go to his diary by clicking here, you may just find his account of our conversation. Or maybe not.

I spent the train journey to Edinburgh listening properly to the Prefab Sprout demos that Calum Malcolm sent me, and making some notes about possible orchestral arrangements. That job could just be easier than I'd thought. And now I'm on the train home with a nice bottle of beer, and I'm going to stop writing this and write a letter to another accountant.