I'm recovering from a very nasty bug here: I'll spare you the worst of the details but for most of Friday I was unable to get up off the sofa except for necessary dashes to the bog. Lovely. This meant that the world was spared the sight and sound of me playing the ukelele while two of my siblings joined me in song, at a family do on Friday night. Perhaps that's just as well because if we'd done it, it might have been on youtube by now.  By yesterday afternoon I could just about face drinking a cup of tea, which was a very comforting experience.

Anyway, I don't think I can blame my illness on the oysters at the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, where Alison and I repaired after trying out the pianos at Ardkinglas on Wednesday: the pianos included a remarkably clear-sounding square, and a beautiful little 1928 Steinway which sounds as different from a modern one as a lute does to a Telecaster. I think that the modern Steinway grand is responsible for some of the worst ills of modern classical music: in particular, singers and soloists whose dynamic never goes below huge. Even a really good 9-foot Steinway doesn't invite me to play it: it's too big and mechanical a beast to grapple with. It's been designed to do battle with a 70-piece orchestra; that people choose to use the same instrument to accompany a solitary singer, or to play chamber music, makes no sense at all.  Bring back smaller pianos, say I: then we might all learn to listen to one another instead of trying to drown each other out. 

I've made the most of my physical inertia today by getting lots of tiresome little jobs done, slowly, and writing Leo Baxendale a long-overdue fan letter. I have a nice stack of books awaiting my attention in the April holiday, but I couldn't resist making inroads into book 2 of American Elf - let's hear it for Skiz-Glotch.