On Friday off we all went to Kellie Castle.  Most of us were travelling together and stopped off in Colinsburgh, alerted by Mhairi's unexpected cry of 'Dougie's Pie Shop!' followed by a screeching of brakes. We were just about to set off for the last couple of miles when my phone rang and it was Steve Portnoi from the BBC at the castle to say 'erm, there's no harpsichord yet'.  It finally arrived 40 minutes late, so we all huddled round cups of tea and put on extra layers of clothing in preparation for a cold day's work.  Yet another carefully planned schedule bit the dust.

We got going eventually, for the third set of recording sessions this year for which I've been wearing a woolly hat.  I'm constantly amazed and relieved that in these situations everyone grits their teeth and gets on with it rather than moaning, which is the standard orchestral practice.  We were beginning to make up the delay when we all began to freeze up, so lunch was called and off we went for a memorable fish supper in Anstruther's famous fish bar.  My phone rang again, and it was Roy this time to say that the electricity had gone off at the castle and they weren't expecting it to come back until six or seven in the evening.  Power cuts have just followed us around this week.

There's nothing you can do in these situations really apart from try to prepare for all remaining eventualities, so we finished our fish and chips and went back to the castle to rehearse in readiness for the return of some mains.  It was fun to be playing Kellie's music by the light of the windows in his living room, where he must have done the same, watched by his portrait on the wall.  But before we got carried away with the authenticity of it all, we figured he would have had the wherewithal to light the fire in the fireplace.

The power re-appeared at about 4.30 and it was time to get back to work - a last-minute dash to get as much music down as possible, mostly in one take. Special mention in dispatches to Katy Bircher for playing the Johann Stamitz flute concerto in the freezing cold, seconds before dashing for Edinburgh Airport.  You can hear the results of all of this chaos in Music Restored on Radio 3 on the 13 March.

After a day like that a visit to the pub seemed essential, so we fitted in a quick pint at the harbour in Pittenweem, and introduced David to the concept of British bar snacks, before heading home to the accompaniment of Ivor Cutler's radio plays. 'Hey, you, is this your spoon?' 'I'm a bit on an ascetic myself' etc.

So now, once I've tidied up, instead of being surrounded by paper, I'm surrounded by CDs to listen to.  We're editing the Delphian CD in about four weeks' time, and I'll get to the duo one after that.   

Yesterday we joined the sunny and good-humoured Stop the War rally in Glasgow.  If you were wondering how the various disputed numbers reported are arrived at, I can tell you, because we bumped into my sister Meg whose job amongst other things to was count the first 10000 people into the rally so that they could shut one of the car parks.  It didn't take long.  At the time she reckoned between 110000 and 150000, the news reports said 30000.  But how anyone could guess is beyond me - the march was still going 3 hours after the first people arrived, and people were leaving as others came, like the morning shift giving way to the afternoon. 

At one point I found myself surrounded by 5 policemen, which you'd expect might be a bit worrying on a protest march, but they were all just trying to work out what to do: 'last orders we got were follow the crowd, done that.' 'Will we nip over this fence then?' Or to one older colleague: 'careful now, don't hurt yourself, you've only two days to go.' Some great banners though: a huge range of political and religious opinion and some Glasgow humour, my favourites were 'Jist gauny no' and the succinct 'Bush is a twat'.