on the way home from Edinburgh - I cadged a lift from Alison Green, my bike's in the boot
Today was marathon Israel in Egypt rehearsal day, with three sessions. In the third one I thought 'I'm really knackered now, could do with a break' and looked at my watch to see we'd only been going for 10 minutes. Oh. It's the first time for a while that Sarah B-B has played in an orchestra too - after the first session on Saturday she told me she'd been sitting thinking 'OK, time for a cup of tea' and then realised that she was in an orchestral rehearsal and would have to wait until the break rather than just getting up and making one.

Anyway, Emmanuelle is great fun as ever. At one point this morning we had differing opinions on what tonality a particular bit of Handel bassline was in, and she said 'Well, I think it's this way, but ... c'est ton claveçin, live your life!'  I played it her way; she was right of course.

The biggest challenge for me is the multitude of quick changes from organ to harpsichord and back again, necessitating some unusual playing postures while the score is still on the wrong instrument. This would be fine if I didn't still have a sore neck from four hours on Saturday spent copying figures into my score.  Balanced on the harpsichord beside the score today was a huge punnet of raspberries picked up from a Stockbridge fruit shop: the cello section helped me finish them off at the end of the night. I also picked up the makings of a picnic from Mellis's cheese shop at lunchtime, and headed for the Botanic Gardens in the teatime break. The arboretum reminded me unexpectedly of the Jardin Botanique in Montréal.

Heading north from Haymarket station this morning I nearly got knocked off my bike by a bus, as its back end veered across the bike lane. Meg was harpsichord tuning today, and she'd had a similar near miss coming in from Waverley. I get the feeling that Edinburgh motorists are more generally hostile to cyclists than in Glasgow. Is this true? As if the cobbles weren't enough of an obstacle.

In an idle moment at a piano before rehearsal I figured out a sketched arrangement of XTC's Burning With Optimism's Flames which I'd listened to on the train, starting my list of possible songs for Barb.