When I got home this afternoon, a cylindrical package which had come in the mail was waiting on my desk, marked 'FAO Chris Norman', from David and Hamish Moore. If my hunch is correct, then what's in it is the first Scottish smallpipes chanter to be built in modern times (if ever) at pitch a'=415Hz: for The Gentle Shepherd of course.  Our afternoon performance has now sold out completely, and there's only restricted view seating left for the evening one.  I wish this happened every time we played.

Over the weekend I was too tired to do any serious work, so in what idle moments I had, I replaced all the audio clips on the website with better quality mp3s. It reminded me that I was going to make a little montage of out-takes from each record and put them up as well - maybe in September I might have time to do this.  I wanted to put a secret track before the beginning of track 1 on 'Colin's Kisses' with a load of out-takes and messing around on it, but the mastering software couldn't do it.  Or perhaps that was Linn's kind way of telling me it was just a dumb idea.

A friend asked me yesterday if I ever had to escape and listen to other stuff in those periods when I'm working in classical music all the time - 'Constantly' was my reply.  As risk of sounding like one of those people who posts their entire record collection on the net, currently at the top of the CD piles around the house are ...

Lene Lovich 'Stateless' - I finally bought this in LA, only 23 years late.  It features a couple of Jimme O'Neill songs with gloriously simple and to-the-point lyrics.  My favourite is probably 'Telepathy', which starts: "I know what ya done/I saw ya in my crystal/I saw you making love/I'm gonna get my pistol/Telepathy's/gonna be the death of me" which pretty much tells you all you need to know in about 10 seconds.  And I bought the new Super Furry Animals CD today - on a cursory listen, it sounds like some dull songs brightened up with a stunning production job, but I haven't really given it the time of day properly yet. [I have now, and like it a lot] Then there's the last two Abba albums which I never got around to listening to in the 1980s, and the Naxos recording of Muffat concerti grossi that's just come out.  The playing on that is really pretty rough, which would explain why the recording has sat on a shelf for 8 years before release.  And I listened to most of XTC's 'Nonsuch' on the train this afternoon.  'Bungalow' and 'Books are Burning' on that record still get me excited even after hundreds of listens: I tried not to let it show on my face too much in case the people sitting opposite me thought I was thinking of something quite different.  Keep hands in view at all times when listening to music on headphones in a public place, just to be on the safe side ...