What a busy couple of weeks it’s been. We have a new album out at last: I don’t know why it hasn’t appeared on iTunes yet but it does appear to be everywhere else. Talking of new albums, this one is rather good too. I keep trying to persuade John Butt to join twitter, but he says he’s in too much trouble for spreading gossip already. And this one isn’t out yet but is absolutely amazing.

Preparations for Purcell’s Revenge next week took an unexpected turn when we heard that the UKBA will require us to present our passports to the folks at Aldeburgh for inspection. What? Aldeburgh has hard-won UKBA sponsor status so that it can invite non-EU artists without visa requirements: this is a wonderful timesaver for the artists (some of whom might have days’ journey just to get a visa), and a treat for audiences as we get to see and hear them perform.  Now, as anyone working in higher education will know, the UKBA are not the easiest of people to deal with. They change the rules at short notice. They are, well, let’s be charitable and say insistent that things are done their way. There are other less charitable and more graphic descriptions of how they sometimes work – Google it yourself.

Now if there was a uniformed border guard visible at the side of the stage checking that we were all British enough to be allowed to perform without further documentation, we’d all know where we stood. And the audience would (I hope) be utterly outraged. But this burden is passed on behind the scenes to the promoters, in this case to Aldeburgh Music, the most supportive and encouraging organisation towards musicians that I have ever encountered.  The administration of this alone is an enormous task for them – every performer who is there for more than 24 hours, even if they are from the UK, must fill in the UKBA forms and present their passport for inspection and copying.

So John Potter has decided to make a stand against this: he’s just not coming. You can read his reasons here. If you’re thinking ‘what has this got to with Purcell?’ the answer is ‘a hell of a lot’. I don’t think it’s being glib to suggest that Purcell’s work is multicultural, especially when a Tory MP can deride last year’s Olympic opening ceremony as ‘multicultural crap’ (and voices have been raised publicly against it again recently). The French influences on Purcell’s music are clear and obvious, but we’re also going to be pulling out the Irish tunes and the Scottish fiddle music that he worked with. We’re not just going to play some nice tunes and think about happy we are to have ‘British culture’ (or English in some cases): the idea of playing early music purely as a branch of the heritage industry has never really appealed to me. I love museums but I wouldn’t want to live in one.

When foreigners are viewed with suspicion, everybody suffers, but culture is one place where you can easily see how much poorer we become. So please stand up and make a noise about this. In the UK as a whole (but thankfully not here in Scotland) suggesting that the country closes its borders is now seen as legitimate political debate rather than the dangerous right-wing ranting that it is. These people must not win.

Anyway, besides all of this it’s been the end of term at the university and I have the little matter of a score to write for two hours of rather wonderful television drama. So I’ve been much too busy, and my family now only know me as the guy who sometimes shows up at mealtimes and stares at the table. Must do better.