A very very wet morning: the kind that presents two options. Either stay indoors and wait for it to stop, or clad yourself from head to toe in waterproof clothing and get on with what you were going to do anyway. I chose option 2. Being out in the pouring rain is no problem, it's great fun. But the transitions from inside to outside and vice versa are a little problematical. I managed to achieve a visit to my Iranian barber, the cheese shop and the greengrocers and still be back just after 11am on my trusty Dahon. But I was the only customer at each establishment.

While typing the above I've just managed to get Catherine Motuz picked up at Edinburgh airport by Andrew, who just happened to be there. Her bus was late and she missed her flight back to Switzerland ...

Anyway, Sunday gradually improved in outlook, even if my harpsichord obstinately refused to stay in tune (which may have been because it was sitting in a sunny window and had been near an electric heater all night) so that our planned rehearsal time was pretty much entirely taken up with me tuning the thing from scratch three times in a row.  I managed a short walk along the shore of the loch, which as you can see was glassy and still. The house is on the extreme right of the picture.

An expectant and welcoming audience is a great help to the making of music. An appropriate setting helps too. And somehow David Sumsion's Muir, Wood & Co. square piano was still in tune after my visit with DG here in April, so it got pressed into service in some Alexander Reinagle and a John Reid flute sonata.

Pictured above enjoying tea and cakes afterwards by the roaring log fire in the dining room with Chris are Maeve McMahon and Catherine Motuz, who both found novel ways of getting to the gig. Catherine had come from Basel but was playing in Shrewsbury the previous night: miraculously her flight to Glasgow got in on time less than 2 hours before we started, and Andrew picked her up from the airport. But the prize for sheer ingenuity goes to Maeve, just arrived in London from Ohio, who got the bus the whole way (from London, not Ohio). With about ten minutes to go I said to Andrew, 'Well, it doesn't look like Maeve made it after all', walked out into the hall and there she was.