I did a brief radio interview for the BBC yesterday to plug the concerts - it was one of those 'I just happened to be in the building' moments. If I hadn't been around, they'd probably have gone to the canteen and interviewed the third assistant vision mixer on 'What's my Sheepdog?'.

Can you detect the slightly weary tone? I'm not really, it's just that three months ago we had two violinists and two viola players booked for the 15 November concert, and now for a variety of reasons only one of them is a 100% certainty, and she wasn't even one of those booked originally (and will have to fly in on the morning of rehearsals from Montreux - let's hope the early morning flight from Geneva still exists by then).  Well, musicians' brains, diaries and fingers can get more addled than most people's I suppose, and none of this is insurmountable by any means, but I would like to know who's going to be playing.  Marie now has to do some frantic phone-chasing, while I bite my nails.  

Also, our bedroom curtains fell out of the 1920s plaster wall this morning, so tonight I've been refixing the rail to the wall while listening to an old Peter Blegvad album. I'm prepared to suspend my usual zero tolerance for singer-songwriters in his case as he's brilliant - I once took Loudon Wainwright III and his daughter swimming at Glasgow's Western Baths (at his request ...) and asked for news of Mr Blegvad, as they'd had dinner with him the previous evening. 'You know his problem', replied Loudon, 'he's too good'.  I think he's a visiting fellow at the University of Warwick at the mo - check out his peerless cartoons at www.leviathan.co.uk and a familiarly poignant musician's tale in Vanities.