Moday 11th June - still the weekend for another few hours

Monday morning still feels like the weekend, because the first piano lesson isn't until 4pm. Then two more, brother and sister, at 4.45 and 5.15. I'm not so keen on teaching back-to-back lessons as I like a couple of minutes to stretch, get my thoughts in order and change my focus, literally.

I'm only teaching over zoom, so 30 minutes staring at the screen on top of the piano or the piano keys, and listening intently can be wearing. After Monday evening I'm in a rhythm; write up the previous afternoon's lessons, and sometimes teach a lesson in the morning, and then another couple of lessons in the afternoon.

I've only got eleven students now - at one point I had about fifty piano or theory students, and maybe a dozen or more classes. How ever did I do it? Although I hardly ever wrote up any piano lessons back then, as I made notes in the student's practice records or on their music. Now I write up and email their notes.

I've found a new whizzy way of doing this - I made a copy of their music on my computer (I have also bought ALL the books, another cost I never incurred before!) and annotate it through the lesson.  Then I just screenshot it (if it is still remotely legible) and email it. Whizzo!

Let's see what she makes of this! (Mozart Sonata in A, First movement, one of the killer variations unless you have man-size hands, which I don't). The weirdo diagram at the bottom is from trying to teach half-pedalling... it's very hard to hear what she is doing over zoom but hopefully she will send me a recording.

This wasn't meant to be about piano teaching - how did that happen?

I'm sitting in the garden, drinking coffee, eating a small (honestly, it was a VERY SMALL) piece of chocolate cake. It isn't even 10 am, but I have watered the plants by the front door

I suppose I should remove all those plants growing in and around the cracks, but they are snapdragons and columbines and even a lobelia from somewhere. So they stay.

I have started a batch of creme de cassis from half a pound of blackcurrants a friend gave me from a her garden. This is a new experiment for me. I'm at the 'soak the fruit in a reasonably good read wine for 48 hours' stage.

I have the dough for ginger biscuits, a shortbread recipe, not gingernuts chilling in the fridge. I am feeling Very Virtuous. 

I have half cleared a tub of lettuces and washed them all ready for lunchtime (using the washing water to water the plants in the front).

And I have taken a picture of my spaghetti marrows to share;

because of this short passage in the July section of 'The Morville Year' (hence the picture at the very start of this post!)