Wednesday 10th January

I've discovered a whole load of comments for December waiting to be published - I apologise to you if you had commented and then I didn't publish it. (Although I need to check back to make sure I haven't published everything twice...)

We watch QI from time to time for half an hour before going to bed. Sometimes it is amusing, sometimes informative, sometimes both (and sometimes neither). A week or so ago they were discussing how to cut two slices from a cake in such a way that you can avoid the rest of the cake drying out. The answer was to cut the cake like this;

And then you can remove that piece and push the two cut edges together

Which is what I did. I divided the slice into 3 so I could have one-third and Himself two-thirds.

This is our Christmas cake, which I never got around to finishing with marzipan. I wasn't planning on adding icing. I'm not a fan of marzipan, but I cut some pieces off the block and used them to top his slices;

There. Morning coffee for both of us, to suit our preferences!

All three piano/music students had lessons today... there was a time when I could teach eight to ten lessons a day, five days a week, and think nothing of it. Three is my max these days. I also wrote detailed practice notes for yesterday's two, so I consider this to be a pretty full-on day. The last lesson was fun and I don’t have to provide notes; they used to be theory lessons but they have become music appreciation and background for her A-levels. It's changed from my day (a lot has changed in 50 years, thinking about it). We would never have studied film music, or musicals, for example. 

She's also studying a Haydn symphony, the 'London'. So, as background I introduced her to  

the 'Toy' symphony, where he included toy instruments, 

the 'Clock' symphony where there is a constant tick tock theme in the second or third movement, 

the 'Surprise' symphony where the soft slow movement has a sudden unexpected loud chord in the middle of the tune, and finally 

the 'Farewell' symphony where, in the last movement the players leave the stage one by on, switching off the lights on the music stands until at the end, there are just two violinists left.

There was time for a quick listen to the Swingle Singers and also Jacques Loussier and their take on Bach.

If you are at a loose end, have a listen.  All these pieces are great fun.