I'm on my way back from a welcome day out in Cumbria. The sun shone, the hills looked great, the air was fresh etc.

 

I had a morning meeting in Keswick with Andrew and Gill from Splash Classics about our fiddle band gig in August, with a chance to look in the theatre and have a think about promotion. These days I rarely drive for longer than an hour at a time, so I was wary of making the journey (I like travelling by train), but it was really valuable to stand on the stage and get ideas for how the shows will go, and also to talk about how we might get some attention for them: a very useful meeting I think.

 

And while I was in Cumbria, where I haven't really spent much time since working for Pocket Theatre in the late 1980s, I had the chance to visit Ursula Leveaux for lunch, something I used to do a lot from the early 90s onwards, when she lived in Edinburgh and we would both be playing in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. No nostalgia necessary today, but we had time for a walk around Great Langdale in the sunshine, keeping company with the Herdwick sheep.

 

Oh yes, and our Purcell album comes out next week: you might have noticed that it has sneaked onto our albums page where you can sneakily buy your copy before the release date ...