Oh, ok, happy birthday,Liz.

   Wishing you well kendall and jeff - all? your teeth, my commiserations.

   Yesterday's today is today's yesterday - had tea/coffee with a younf polish woman from work, met a fellow astrloger, found a performance of Mahler 1 that I didn't know about and nor does the Mahler discography compiler, enjoyed the summer/autumn sunshine, found some beat jokes in a book I found ("I've Taken a Page in the Bible!" compiled by the late Alfred Marks" - see latest joke thread for an example); had lors of laughs with a current brilliant improvised beeb show Mock the Week.

And finished watching young performers at the Proms - national Youth orchestra of Great Britain, European Community Youth Orchestra.

Above all, the wonderful, awe-inspiring Simon Bolivar youth Orchestra of venezuela. They are the product a la sistem (?) where street children who've fallen into crime are given the choice of prison or intennsive music study leading to orchestral plating.

the results are stunning - they play terrifically, have a gifted young conductor,Gustavo Dudamel, (who's now to be the next director of the L.A. Philharmonic), and played some items in spectacular and colourful (to say the very least) outfits, swayed in their chairs some of the time, danced about too, twirled instruments, and generally brought the house down.

now if more concerts were done like that,.................

Slept good.




    Ivor