Heathrow airport
It must be tough being a slightly myopic air stewardess. Having to work in confined spaces, and deal with recalcitrant passengers in subdued lighting. Anyway, this might explain the fact that between JFK and Heathrow last night I had dropped on my person at various points in the journey an ice cube, the detritus from someone else's breakfast, and the entire rotting contents of a catering box of those cheesy savouries that you only ever get on planes, and which probably are laced with valium to keep you docile. OK, I made the last one up (can you tell I've been reading Charlie Brooker again?) but after all this and being driven round a rainy building site (Heathrow terminal 3) in an overcrowded bus, the relative comfort of a bmi lounge was just about within my reach, when the fire alarm went off in terminal 1. So I started typing this sitting on the carpet amongst a tired crowd in an interminable corridor, having already stood in two queues just for the dubious pleasure of passing my possessions through a scanner and letting someone laugh at my passport photo.

Anyway ... this is all at the end of a very enjoyable three days in New York so I'm going to stop moaning and recount some of that.

Matt and I had our Met Museum gig on Friday in the Patrons Lounge. Despite feeling a bit under-prepared (though it went very well in the end) my main memories of the morning before the concert don't include frantic practising, but rather getting my first ever vielle lesson from Paul Krieger, in front of a mirror so that I could keep my bow horizontal, and drinking tea on the roof, looking down on the UN and the East River and across to the Chrysler building. Bracing New York sunshine - great.

Matt eventually showed up with Sandra-Lynne and we rehearsed for a bit, ate well and completely failed to find a cab big enough to take Matt's theorbo, so Paul came to the rescue and gave us a lift. The Met patrons seemed more animated and sociable than I remembered them from last year's gig with Chris and Jamie. What's more, they laughed at all our jokes and listened with real attentiveness. And there were lots of people with informed questions at the end: my favourite was the slightly awed 'How many years have you been working together?' 'Um, a few hours in total actually, we've probably spent more time in the pub than we have playing music.' Matt and I only ever shared a stage once before and that was about 7 years ago I think, playing Muffat in a band that Katherine put together for a viola festival. What comes across as rhythmic symbiosis is probably the sound of us trying to put one another off, or make each other laugh.

A wonderful meal in the Museum itself, and an encounter with a Suzuki bass melodica (you can bend low notes by almost a semitone and it feels a bit like playing a tenor sax) rounded off the day. 

On Saturday it took me about 4 hours to get up, but that time included a phone conversation with the dancer and choreographer Megan Williams, the first time we've spoken in about 10 years. When she was dancing in Mark Morris's group, we once spent a week going into Edinburgh schools of varying degrees of roughness getting kids to dance, while I played the piano and occasionally joined in the warmups or discussions of Ice-T and the relevance of the LA riots to Craigmillar.

When I finally made it outside on Saturday I wasn't fit for much other than wandering down 5th Avenue in a 'Hey, I'm in New York City in the spring sunshine' kind of a way, so it was just as well that Matt rang and persuaded me to join them to eat on the sidewalk on the West Side. Perfect weather for it.  

Later on I dropped in on Renee Barrick in the organ loft at St Jean Baptiste, and we went across to the Museum so that I could renew my acquaintance with the 1720 Cristofori piano, an incredible instrument with a huge personality that imposes itself on every note you play. Music by Bach that I thought I knew, came out completely different, and Scarlatti sonatas worked a treat.  Some other music it would simply refuse to cooperate with: Rameau was definitely a no-go area, for one. We agreed that the Cristofori was definitely female and probably a cat. Then we had a post-concert beer, 24 hours late, in a strangely deserted bar (Saturday night, where was everyone?). 

Yesterday morning Chris came over to try out some sonatas by Barsanti (with a 50% success rate) and some by General John Reid, who sounds like he should be a country singer but actually founded the music department at Edinburgh University (25%). If you played his music on oboes in the concert hall in Edinburgh University, the concert programme would be a Reed Reid Read at the Reid. But Chris wants to start a group to play early classical music, and serve hot chocolate in the interval. The caterers would be the Rococo Co. Cocoa Co. And the guy who answers the phone at the office would have to be called Rocco Coe of course. So when he picked up the phone he'd have to say - oh you work it out.

We had lunch at Kelley and Ping in Soho with Jody and Evangeline, and I went round the corner to the Apple Center and finally joined the 21st century by buying an iPod mini. The sound quality isn't a patch on CD but as gadgets go it's pretty good really - changes my whole view of downloading music. And the headphone amp is nice and powerful. Didn't even think of trying the dodgy white earbuds that come with it though. 

Already loaded there are the first edits of Alison's Geminiani CD which somehow sprouted 20 minutes of harpsichord solos. For most of those my reaction was 'why did I play it like that?' but I'm sure there were perfectly good reasons at the time. That's the thing about recording - it's not easily updated. It's a very nice record though, there's something very welcoming about it: I think I'd listened to the cello sonatas three times over before I even got to New York on Thursday night. 

One more thing: Dick and Dom's Ask the Family - what a disaster. How dare they take my TV heroes and put them in front of this shambolic inept embarrassing mess. Grim.