The view from the (organ) bench

One zen Roy or Davy’s settee

Stood alone leak at a shed

Wear another later bay be

Inner major forest bed

Mare he was some other mile

Gee sirs cry stir litter chai

And a rise alas chassis him

Who whisk gotten law doff ore

Handy shell to wash a stay bull

And degrade all rozzers door

Andy leads is chill dremmon

Tudor play swear he a scone

The Museum

Back in April, the centennial anniversary of the ill-fated voyage of S.S. Titanic put Southampton, if temporarily, at the centre of the world's attention. Unsurprisingly, myself and other friends and family members were most readily involved in musical contributions to the commemorations, not least the massive performance of A Sea Symphony in the docks on the actual anniversary of the sailing.  A more lasting result of all this was that the much-awaited SeaCity Museum opened its doors to visitors, finally furnishing the city with a maritime museum of suitable dimensions for it's historical significance. And today, I finally got around to making a visit - with the intention of publishing a review here, of course.

As much as anything else, the creation of such an attraction represents the city council finally getting off their backsides and actually making something happen with regards to getting some tourist footfall (and income) into the town, although it's a pity that, as has happened before, the (now defunct) Tory administration were claiming credit for it all when in fact the project was initiated during the years of a hung council.  There was a debacle on a national scale during the planning stage when the council tried to sell paintings and a sculpture from the city art gallery to fund the project, and only backed down when the Tate found some legal clause forbidding them from doing so (massive public opposition is much easier to ignore these days). An added contrivance is that all Southampton addresses are generously being sent a free ticket, except that to use it you have to visit together as a household, can only visit outside school holidays in 2012 and not during the first six days of opening. In other words, if you want to take your whole family, you have to have a free Saturday or Sunday or else an inset day which you take off work, and you won't be the first to get in. Typically for the ID Era, they'll also want proof of residence, so if you have a family of three and were hoping to sneak in Aunty Mabel from Whitstable when she came to visit, sorry, forget it; she'll have to pay.

Still, it's a huge leap forward from the little maritime museum that preceded it, housed in a medieval wool house opposite the ferry terminal.  It was interesting, filled with models of ships and bits of anchors and compasses and other delightful nautical clutter, but hopelessly outdated and greatly under-representing the port. Although the inside of the new museum is bespoke, only a little actual new building needed to take place.  The building housing the galleries was built in the 1930s as part of the Civic Centre, and used to contain the law courts and the police station as well as an elegantly thin tower with a four-face clock at the top.  In a wonderful gesture towards the city's heritage, the clock bells chime the first phrase of Southampton resident Isaac Watts' hymn O God, Our Help In Ages Past on the hour. The coppers moved out into a rather Orwellian monolith overlooking the docks in 2010 and since then the entire East Wing has been refreshed and refitted to contain the exhibition halls. The only bit of construction needed was a rather more angular gallery at the north end, replacing some flowerbeds with a series of triangular sections concertinaed into one another, presumably to suggest waves, sails or the bow of an ocean liner. This also forms the shape of the museum's logo, which looks like an upside-down factory with a chimney. They've at least tried a little to blend it into the existing structure with a nice façade of Portland Stone and some smoked glass.

Let's go inside...

The entrance lobby sets out the tone of the museum.  It's not huge, with today just a single attendant behind the ticket desk and a single staircase and lift to the first floor.  The wing is listed, and a lot of interest is in seeing how they've managed to change the building's function whilst maintaining the heritage features, something which has been done rather well. Other than the contemporary block-colour and sans serif style of inserted walls, the original Portland stone and marble is the main interior texture of the building.  The ceiling vaults of the upstairs atrium have a pleasing decorative pattern to them, and the signs directing entrances to the courtrooms have been retained.  One side of the floor, formerly Court Three, is on the general history of Southampton, and seems like a sensible place to begin. The false roof has been left open in places to show the ornate painted wood panelling of the original court, and one can see the coat of arms at the far end too. Space does not permit a full description of every exhibit in the room, suffice to say there were sections on most periods of history from neolithic to modern, and appropriate artifacts.  Beyond this room was a smaller one containing a huge model of the Queen Mary (from the old museum) and a series of displays on various immigrations to and through the city - more artistic than informative, it has to be said, preferring representative objects over things like statistics.

Unsurprisingly, the other half of the exhibition space is given over to the Titanic.  There was an immediate focus on the actual people on the ship rather than the vessel itself - it wasn't built or registered here, after all - and especially the crew, who were mostly Southamptoners.  This was done through following the situation of five individuals on the ship, from Captain Smith to a fireman, through the various stages of the voyage and sinking.  Notable were the wall listing all the items taken on board the ship at Southampton (did you know they carried horse hair and opium?) and the wireless operator's room.  The main part of local interest was the room dealing with the survivors. The floor was the now-famous map of 1912 Southampton with every residence that lost a crew member marked in red.  I also liked that the other courtroom had been used as a space explaining the Titanic disaster enquiry, still left as a court with jury benches, dock and judge's seat. Downstairs, in the new pointy-roofed bit was a special exhibition (presumably the first of many) on the legacy of the Titanic and the public's lasting fascination with it.  There was an interesting wall comparing five films from the 20th century about the ship, and another with a huge variety of objects essentially cashing in on the name, from beer to dolls.  Other areas dealt with the unanswered questions about the voyage - was the ship going too fast, could the lookouts see enough, and the morality of exploring the wreck. One wonders what future exhibitions might occupy this space.

Things to like:

 

The interactive stuff 

This was all very well-done, chiefly because all the touchscreens and videos were generally used for the most appropriate purpose, showing and explaining things that couldn't be done so well using static displays and information panels.  Some were more child-orientated than others (drive sail the Titanic using a real wheel and telegraph! Rub the screen to 'dig' for buried Saxon treasure!) but all were educational.  There were some other nice touches too, like the 'stained glass window' that was actually a subtly moving projection (watch long enough and you could see the bird dislodge an apple from the tree which fell on the medieval trader's foot) and the Roman video. I personally liked the circular table with an overview map, which cycled round every period of the city's history every ten minutes and allowed several different people at a time to zoom into the relevant areas and read little hotspots of information.

Size and content

 

I ended up spending about as much time in there as I wanted to spend (in fact I could have stayed longer but it was closing), which I count as a success bearing in mind I'm the sort of visitor who sets out intending  to read all the information and look at all the objects.  Everything in there was also interesting, relevant and objectively presented (although interestingly, a companion on this visit noted perhaps a slight left-of-centre tone, particularly the focus on ordinary working people and several mentions of trade union involvement, both of which accurately reflect the town's political direction for most of its modern history).  That said, see criticisms below.

Looks 

 

The conversion from law courts to museum has been carried out with great sensitivity to the building and as a result the whole place looks great.  One of the interesting features, which the architects may or may not have been aware of is the feeling, of being in a transient space, as if one is able to observe the different stages of history just by being there, and there is certainly no sense of having hidden or thrown out the previous function of the building - indeed, it is purposely left on show in places.  Full marks to the builders.

And a few things for improvement:

 

A bit perfunctory in places.

 

Although the exhibits manage to cover a fair chunk of Southampton's history, there are some significant omissions. At no point was it actually explained why the area became a port in the first place, nothing on the actual operation of the docks or the liner trade, nothing on other aspects of transport (the railway, the airport and flying boats), and nothing on important periods such as the Georgian spa industry or the Blitz. One appreciates that space was a little limited, and that the conservators had to pick and choose, but with the potential of interactive features physical room need not have been a hindrance in this respect. In particular, the business of the port operations would surely have been a publicity opportunity that an organisation such as ABP would have seized upon, yet there was no mention of the modern container port.  In a similar vein, several things that were featured were inadequately explained. Had I not some knowledge of early modern history I feel I would have been mystified as to who the Huguenots were and why they were fleeing from France - and even then it would have been nice to read more than a single excerpt from the digitised account book belonging to the businesswoman named Judith. Why the Romans and Saxons actually settled in this area was also barely explained.  Some of the Titanic section also felt a bit padded-out - display cases spaced just a bit further apart than they might have been, not quite enough detail. The only exception was the economic background to the era and its crew, which I didn't know about previously.

It's tempting to say that this was solely due to budget constraints: this is all we could afford; is a museum worth it when we have to cut front-line services, that sort of thing; but it is also perhaps symptomatic of a more general modern tendency to assume that people have short attention spans and won't appreciate detailed descriptions or masses of stuff to look at.  I don't think that's a good way of setting out on an entity like this - surely a good museum is one which caters for many people with different levels of interest about different things, each one of whom who will want to see some things in great detail but skip over others?  A museum should also be a starting-point for further private research into areas of particular interest, and as such ought to at least introduce as much as possible to the visitor.

English only

 

Given the international nature of the city - and the fact that this is a key feature of all the bits about immigration - it seems surprising that there was not a single sign, map, or other piece of information in anything other than English.  The city council publish documents in nearly every tongue under the sun, and rightly so when there are so many languages being spoken here, but not at the museum. One would at least have expected French and Polish. 

Would I recommend a visit? I would say yes, but not to expect the experience to be on same scale as the maritime museums in Liverpool or Belfast. It is more of an afternoon visit than a whole day's attraction. One thing I can't really judge is how interesting a non-Southampton visitor would find it  - I was not particularly impressed by Bristol's municipal museum recently due to finding it too 'localist' - and in fact also thought many of the same other criticisms about that as I have with SeaCity. The general impression of the place was that it was more concerned with people than systems or physical things, which might be less appealing to the outside visitor. However, the widespread appeal of the Titanic should at least provide a good level of familiarity.

Wallpapering

I tend to change my PC's desktop background (known colloquially as 'wallpaper') about every month. Almost always the image is a picture I've snapped on a recent trip, having got into the habit of trying to take a shot or two that contains a large area of the same colour suitable for displaying icons and a calender on top of. However, recently I had the nice idea to create a series of Great Composer wallpapers which could be easily made from 'found' objects on the internet (a la Berio) and knocked up in an hour or two using fairly simple tools in a graphics programme. Here I'm going to show you how it's done, should you wish to copy the concept yourself or just are curious.

The basic idea consists of using a portrait of the composer, their signature and a suitable excerpt of their music. All of these objects could be found from open-source websites, chiefly Wikipedia and IMSLP, and then with a little bit of experimentation arranged to fill the screen space. Depending on the images used and direction the portrait faces, there is scope for some variation with the composition.  The program I used for the project was Paint.NET, a free open-source raster graphics program that was initially developed by Microsoft as a replacement for the standard Windows Paint but then dropped and left in the hands of a community of internet users. It would be an excellent program even if it were payware - it does nearly everything that Photoshop or Coral Draw will, although if you want vector graphics you'll have to get the equally excellent Inkscape. The reason for not using this instead (vector graphics, should you be curious, are a system whereby the pixels become infinitely small as you zoom in and so images don't get blurred) is partly that file sizes will be much larger and that I have a much greater level of proficiency on Paint.NET. Also, it has a number of plugins included that we will be using for this project.

Setting up/Portrait:

The first stage is to set up the canvas for the wallpaper.  As I'm creating this background for a standard 17" flatscreen monitor, I will be using a resolution of 1024x468 pixels, so I create a new document in Paint.NET and alter the canvas size to these dimensions (choose Image - Canvas Size).  (If you are unsure how big your screen is, right click on your desktop, choose 'Properties' and look at the 'Settings' tab. There will be a slider half-way down which will show your current resolution - most likely this is already at 1024x468).  The next thing is to choose a subject for our wallpaper. The composer I settled on was Haydn: definitely one of the 'greats'; and with several portraits to choose from available in high-resolution. As we need to show both the portrait and some music, I intended to divide the space about half-and-half. This also means that when our background is 'in situ', desktop icons can all fit over one side or the other depending on what offers the best contrast and visibility. A little searching on Wikipedia Commons brought me to the Thomas Hardy portrait which I copied and pasted into Paint, and then resized to fit just the head into the frame.

At this point we need to introduce a new concept which is one of the best features of Paint.NET and similar programs: layers. In ordinary MS Paint, everything is on the same layer and only one colour can be displayed as 'on top'. If you draw over something, it disappears. Cut an area out and you cut down to the background. But with Paint.NET, we can have multiple layers of a drawing superimposed on top of each other. This means you can draw a background and then create another layer (or several) on top, on which you can draw, move, cut, paste and alter anything without affecting the layer(s) below or above.  We're going to exploit this feature in making our wallpaper.

The Haydn portrait I've just copy-pasted will sit on top of a background layer, which we'll create in a minute. What we need to do first is to 'cut out' his head so we can add a background to avoid an untidy difference between the square portrait and the rest of the screen (I experimented with stretching the painting's background to fill the space, and the result was some way from satisfactory).  There is no easy way of doing this other than to get out the eraser tool and carefully go round the edge of the wig and features with a small tip size. My tip is to release the mouse frequently; this means if you make a mistake and have to hit 'undo' you'll only lose a small amount of correct erasing.

The result of somewhat painstaking work with the Eraser tool.

I decided to leave 'Papa' Haydn's hand and pen in, as it makes a nice touch and would have looked a little odd otherwise.  I have also left in the painted background behind him as this serves our purpose quite well already.  Once all this is complete, I name the layer 'Portrait' or something similar for clarity (select the layer and choose 'Layer Properties' from the small menu at the bottom of the Layers window) and save. We're not quite finished with this layer yet, but for now let's move on to creating the background.

Background:

Create a new layer from the window and name it 'Background'. Then - and this is important - move it down using the arrows to below the portrait layer we already have. Anything we draw in this new layer will be visible only where the portrait layer is transparent - the chequered space in the screenshot above. (This is possible due to the file having something called an 'alpha layer', but we don't need to worry too much about the workings of this for our current project).  Rather than a single colour background, I wanted something slightly mottled that matched the oil paint of the portrait. To get this, in the background layer I stretched a rectangle over the entire canvas (make sure it's set to 'Draw filled shape' at the top when the polygon tool is selected) and then in the visible area scribbled a load of wiggles over it in green, brown and tan.  Making sure only this background layer was selected, I then used the Gaussian Blur tool (Effects-Blurs-Gaussian Blur) on this layer in two separate passes, turning up the blur radius until the wiggles were very subtle. I also ran the 'Oil Painting' effect on this layer, although I'm not sure how much difference this actually made after all the blurring.  The finished effect is very subtle but looks much more classy than a plain colour.

The next thing to do is to return to the portrait layer and run another plugin from the Blurs tab called 'Feather'. It may appear at first glance that this has done nothing, but look again at the edges with the background layer displayed. They will have been blurred outwards a little, removing the 'hard' join between layers. We're done with the portrait layer now.

Music:

Create another new layer and name it 'Music'. It needs to be moved down between the two existing layers - it will be on top of the background but beneath the portrait. At this point I needed to choose a suitable excerpt form the literature to represent the composer. I settled on a passage almost immediately - The Heavens are Telling from The Creation, which is possibly his most famous and masterly work.  I decided just to use the vocal lines rather than including the orchestral accompaniment, but this is a personal judgement.  The staves can be captured by taking a screen shot of the vocal score from IMSLP and pasting it into a new document. To get the music to sit on top of the background we're going to need to cut out all the spaces. Trim using the 'Crop to selection' tool and then get to work with the Magic Wand tool to remove anything that isn't ink. The Wand selects any area bounded by the same colour and will allow us to erase the 'holes' between ledger lines and notes far neater than we could ever do by hand.  Again, there is no quick way of doing this: we're going to have to just keep clicking until all the white on the page is removed and we can see the chequers of the alpha layer.

Having done this, there was one little addition I wanted to make: the score only showed the words in English, and I rather wanted to have the German text as well. Apart from personal satisfaction and an acknowledgement of Haydn's nationality, this would also better make the staves fill the space. The German text was copied from another score and then typed in Paint.NET using the text tool, getting the font as close as possible to the existing type. I also put it into italics just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately the program's text editor does not not seem to have any provision for special characters, so to get the umlauts in 'erzählen' and 'Hände' I had to manually draw pairs of dots and position them over the letters. They've come out rather faint but they're there. I also had to move the existing staves to fit the new lines of text in. This was done by moving all the text to a new drawing, then very carefully selecting each part with the lasso tool and copy-pasting it into a new layer.  I then moved this selection up a few pixels and copy-pasted the German text (already aligned with the notes) into the layer before manoeuvring the whole lot in position so it was aligned above the rest of the staves. This was done separately for each voice until I had four layers which could be merged back into one (we'll cover merging at the end). The only problem that now remained was to fill in the gaps in the stave brace: this was done by selecting the existing area and stretching it over the gap from each side like elastic. Done!

Having added the additional text, the lines of the staves were manoeuvred back into position.

As the wallpaper has a dark background we need a light image on top. To do this for the music I selected the image and used the 'Invert colours' tool to turn the black to white, then copy-pasted the whole lot back over to the 'Music' layer of the original file. I also reduced the transparency of this layer a little and added a very slight blur to avoid the harsh contrast created by sharp pure white. It serves as a sort of 'semi-background' and also seems to match the colour of Haydn's wig...

The result is very satisfactory. I enlarged the layer and moved it across to position the music tucked slightly behind the portrait - again personal taste.  The inclusion of the line 'The wonder of his work/displays the firmament' seems particularly fitting, and I would like to think this could be seen as alluding to the mastery of Haydn's music as well as the creation text. All that remains now is to place Haydn's signature and dates in a new 'Text' layer. The signature (there are two different Haydn signatures, I chose the one with his initials in) was found on IMSLP and adapted in much the same way as the music: white background cut out using Magic Wand, then the colours inverted and moved into position at the bottom left on Joe's shoulder . The name and dates were done in Paint.NET's own text tool and positioned top right.

Finishing:

The final stage is to make this into a usable picture file by flattening it. If we've been saving our work regularly, as wise precautions advise, the default file type will be one with a .pdn extension. This is Paint.NET's own file format, one which supports the layering we've been using. However, we can't use a file like this as a normal picture because no other program can actually display a Paint. NET file with layers, so we need to change it into a .png, .jpeg, .gif or similar format.  To do so, we need to merge all the layers together into one. Paint.NET makes this easy for us by including a 'Merge layers down' tool in the Layers window, but first we need to double-check what goes on top of what and move them up or down if necessary. The order of layers in the window should be Text- Portrait- Music-Background. Starting with the top layer, hit the 'Merge down' button and the two layers will combine into one. When you've finished, the drawing will be a single-layer image that can be saved in any picture format. I would recommend using a png or a jpeg to keep the file size down, but check the quality is turned up to maximum. I saved it as 'Haydn desktop'.

All that remains is to navigate to the new file, right-click and choose 'Set as Desktop Background'. Give the cogs a moment or two to whirr and you should have Haydn sitting as your background screen.

The finished article in use.

A few concluding thoughts:

• This concept is highly versatile as long as one has a portrait image and another work example to use. It could easily be adapted for any figure or object of history. As mentioned, there is scope for variation of the basic idea: the portrait could be bigger, smaller, face the other way, the signature could be elsewhere, different fonts, etc.
• Oil paintings will probably produce a more satisfactory result than colour photographs, as they are easier to merge with other colours and avoid overly sharp edges when cut around.
• Using a fairly dark colour scheme seems to have worked well with the bright icons and calendar that sit on top of it. All are still legible and easy to locate, one of the design principles of desktop wallpaper.
• Be aware that with a system tray at the bottom of the screen, some of the image will be obscured. Luckily, this doesn't seem to create any adverse effect in this case.
• The next one of these will probably be Mozart. I plan to offer these as free downloads from this blog once I have a small collection.

Neolexia

Things for which terms should exist, but don't:

• The manoeuvre made by horn players whereby the instrument is spun around its centre axis several times until the condensation within dribbles out of the bell onto the floor.
• The exaggerated follow-through gesture all string players, but notably cellists, make with their right hand after a pizzicato. There are varying degrees of this.
• The dirty bit of the bow hair right next to the frog, which never sees either rosin or contact with a string.
• That thing oboists and clarinettists do to clear water from a key, namely inserting a roll-your-own paper and blowing through the instrument in a faintly immature manner.
• The duuu-yurrrrr-yumm bell-curve glissando commonly found in cockney music whenever trombones are involved.
• The conductor's gesture of tapping the stick three times on the stand to get the musicians to shut up.
• That quasi-arpeggio pattern of pitches trumpeters always do at the start of rehearsal.
• The experience of only being able to play a rapid passage of notes correctly when one doesn't realise one is doing so.
• The thing string quartet players (usually the leader) do where they nearly-but-not-quite jump up from their seat during moments of excitement.
• A particularly necessary one: the layouts where the strings are laid out Vln1-Vln2-Vla-Vcl or Vln1-Vcl-Vla-Vln2. I use 'new/modern layout' and 'old/proper layout' in conversation but this can often confuse folks who have only ever seen the former.
• The film canisters wind players carry and always have to go to the lavatories and fill with water to soak their reeds in.
• The person who places the conductor's score, open at the first page, on the stand before a performance.
• The person who presents the soloist with flowers (women) or booze (men).
• A person who claps in the wrong place at the end of Sibelius Five.

2011 in numbers

Travel (all distances approximate)

Miles driven by me = 7000 miles
Miles by road: =3750 miles
Miles by rail: = 660 miles
Miles by air: = 760 miles
Miles total: = 12170 miles
Things needed fixing on cars = 9 (hole in sump, wing mirror damaged by parent/wheelie bin; heat shield distorted; driver's electric window motor; air conditioning regas; driver's electric window motor again; air conditioning again; blown headlight bulb impossible to remove, LED centre brake light not functioning)
Countries visited: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Scotland
Walks: completed Itchen Way, first stage of Solent Way, various rambles in Lakes.

Rather less walking and considerably less rail travel than last year - which will be rectified in 2012 - but offset by huge amount of road distance.  Nearly 20% of total miles were accomplished during the Hungary trip.

Music

Concerts = 51, plus 23 services, 7 shows, 1 recording session, and other informal performances (e.g. choir singing carols at pub, weddings, chamber music course)
Compositions completed = 7 (The Sun Rising, Serenata for harp, The Bells of St Marys, There is a Blossom Sprung of a Thorn, Englefield Green, Beatus vir, Jak Drahokam) plus 8 orchestral and 2 quartet arrangements and works in progress
Hours spent in non-performance playing (practice/rehearsals) c.2000 divided evenly between cello and keyboard instruments

These are all up from previous years. The increased number of concerts is hard evidence of how much more I'm playing the piano these days.

Favourites

Piece of the year: Nielsen Symphony No.3 'Expansiva'
TV series of the year: The Killing I and II
Most interesting places: Pest, Budapest; Old Town, Edinburgh; Ulverston, Cumbria; Easedale Tarn, Cumbria; Avebury, Wiltshire; Lake Balaton, Somogy;
Cups of tea drunk @ average 3 per day =  c. 1200
Wine: Korona Egri Merlot 2008
Beer: Thwaite's Wainwright Ale
Food: Hortobagy-style pancakes

What Happened in Hungary: Epilogue

And so we reach the end of the trip, essentially a run for home.  The sun was setting over the mountains as we joined the evening traffic heading west from Vienna.  After a few attempts I succeeded in snapping an 'Alpine Symphony cover'  - my term for any picture of mountainous terrain which would make suitable cover art for a CD of Strauss' masterly tone poem.  I put on some Sibelius chamber music and enjoyed a few drops of Hungarian white (albeit from a service station paper cup) as the day ended and Austria dissipated into darkness and artificial light for the second time in my travels.

I'm going to skip over most of the next twenty-four hours, as it involves the reliably tedious activity of sitting on a bus in much the same fashion as I have already described. If you really wish to get an idea of what this is like, imagine the monotony of driving at night but without most of the comfort/entertainment value of whatever car you usually inhabit.  A few incidental memories include my considerable annoyance in having to give a €2 coin to provide the c.€0.50 needed for the toilet somewhere in Germany, due to my inability to ask for change; and the delicious alacrity of changing drivers in the very same lay-by in Aschaffenburg where we had spent so many agonising hours on the way out. I suppose we may even have started a tradition of using this spot as a convenient changeover point, such that in the future the town may acquire a large bus station due to the actions of some nameless idiot of a mechanic who failed to check that an alternator wasn't about to be 'slightly on fire'.  I think, although I can't be sure, that I slept a little because I don't remember the transition from darkness to early morning, although I do remember that shortly after waking I noticed that the cars now had yellow license plates and there were a lot of cyclists on the urban roads, meaning that we had entered the Netherlands. we were only in the country for about fifteen minutes, crossing the very southern salient of the country around Maastricht and Genk.  Breakfast was at a dull service station somewhere short of Brussels, after a heroic five-hour night shift by our new driver had taken us all the way across Germany. I had coffee, some pastries and a waffle, although to honest you could have given me the packaging as I couldn't really taste much. Still no messages from home, although many false alarms due to the over-fastidiousness of my phone provider, thinking fit to notify me by text whenever I crossed into a new network area.

I remember looking at a faded map on a wall of Benelux highways with a friend and trying to work out where we were and how much further we were going. I do like to actually have an idea of where I am in relation to the rest of the planet's geography rather than being content with 'somewhere in Germany'. The obvious thought is to estimate how long remains: based on the outward journey and some dividers-and-compass navigation I try to work out what mileage remains through the Low Countries.  Perhaps another four hours to Calais?  It turns out to be about right: we hit queues going round Brussels (the absence of which prevented us being even later on the way out) and I remember having a long conversation with the fixer about my travel guide to Hungary. He remarked after reading certain passages that it was generally very accurate but that there were a few glaring errors, which brought him to the surprising conclusion that the author had some kind of pro-Jewish axe to grind. In general he seemed to note mine and Companion's level of perception. 'You are sometimes too negative' he remarked to me ' but you are the ones on this tour who know the most.' I'm not sure I shall ever forget these words.

Belgium became a barely distinguishable part of France and in another hour we rolled up at the Eurotunnel terminal in Coquelles.  Almost nothing now stood between us and home - that is, apart from the UK Border Agency, possibly amongst the most objectionable people in existence. Their recently erected fortifications at every point of entry to the UK are largely the result of panicky political rear-guard action (fend off tabloid hysteria about millions of asylum seekers hanging off the bottom of trains et al) and they serve little useful purpose other than that the passport control building usually incorporates a public urinal.  And no, I don't mean the inspection desk, although one could be forgiven for mistaking the contents of the two. Get in line, minions.

Lest this seem like disgruntled arch-libertarianism, there are two very good reasons why musicians should loathe border guards and state agents of all types: firstly the criminal actions of the soldier who shot Anton Webern and the US immigration official who ordered Britten to destroy his music for fear it was an enemy coded message - these types deserve every kind of slow painful death possible - and, secondly, that on a more general level their job (which of course they are 'only doing') is utterly incompatible with the remit of music and art. In a shameful display of knee-jerk reactionism, the acclaimed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami was first refused a US visa to visit the 2002 New York Film Festival, then resigned a commission to direct at English National Opera after refusing to put up with the 'disgraceful' bureaucracy he was subjected to by the UK Border Agency (they were implying that he might disappear or try to claim asylum once here, withdrew his visa for no reason and forced him to give two sets of fingerprints to get another. The border police, presumably steered by the hand of politics, arrogantly refused to apologise for their procedures and trotted out the party line that this was necessary to catch criminals). 'It is the job of border guards and authorities to put up barriers, and it is our job to break them down'. It is the latter organisation I am forced to jump through hoops for now - and to whom I cheerfully wish all kinds of terminal illnesses upon - having to queue up and present a passport to a humourless drone, who seizes upon the chance to tell us what to do with some nonsense about not crossing a faint line on the floor, in order to enter my own country. This is all the more remarkable given that I have been able to cross what was the Iron Curtain without so much as leaving the vehicle. The cretins search the bus and berate the driver for not properly locking some minor luggage hatch - as if an illegal would have anywhere to hide inside the fully loaded compartment! I suspect they say the same to everyone, savouring their moment of power over others and the chance to get even with society just because their parents wouldn't let then stay up and watch Top Gear when they were small. (I think that's just speculation - ed).

Anyway, despite the best efforts of Kafka's field staff, we made the next train. Another half-hour in a tunnel, then another motorway except this was one I recognised, even felt familiar with, and so I knew how little of the journey we had left. It was only a few minutes before we pulled over at a dreary service area outside of Folkstone where I bought a sandwich, checked the nation was still at rights - oh no, wait, the Coalition are still on the throne - and felt a little depressed by the percentage of other customers who were of pensionable age. The next stop was Clacket Lane services where our fixer and his daughter were met a by a friend with a taxi, and went off to London for (presumably) tea at the Ritz with His Jenkinsness and some other fixer-y types. I knew the next forty miles off by heart and was once again cheered to recognise the bits of the North Downs Way going past.

We made as unceremonious a return as our departure.  The bus smacked over a speed bump (hopefully shortening its life expectancy a bit) and glided into a shaded car park.  I'd done the usual thing of stuffing al the possessions I'd spent the last day spreading about the cabin back into one bag, made a last check round and got off to retrieve my things.  I called Best Mate and asked him to bring the Meg over, as I knew how to fit all the cases in it. He was a little surprised I was actually letting him drive it, but he safely navigated the black Renault into a vacant space, got out and declared, simply, 'Brilliant'.  I said goodbyes to friends old and new, got the back seats down and loaded everything we'd brought on the way out as well as various unused drinks from the bus. In fact it wasn't really a farewell at all as quite a few people were coming back to the house where I was staying.

And that was pretty much that.  My sister gave birth to a little boy at about seven in the evening, just as I was sitting down to enjoy a chicken tikka masala with my companions, and I drove home the next day to be at somebody's birthday party and see the newborn child when I returned. Then I sat down at my computer, clicked to open Blogger on my favourites tab, and - well, you know the rest...

Loose ends

The previous posts in this series can all be found here: Day One; Day Two; Day Three parts One and Two; Day Four; Day Five; Day Six and Day Seven

I've put together an approximate chart of this adventure which you can view below. (Google Maps Maker is a marvellously adept bit of technology - I'd not used it before - and will automatically generate a path along roads from just a start and end point, even to the extent of recognising one-way streets, roundabouts and motorway ramps).  I have endeavoured to include placemarks for most of the locations mentioned in this account, whilst the rest should be obvious from where the lines start and end (zoom into Budapest, Eger and the Lake Balaton area).


View Hungary 2011 in a larger map

Other burning questions:

• Was it really that bad sitting on the bus for so long? I mean, surely it would've been far more tiring to drive it yourself, even in some hired Teutonic barge with a humongous diesel engine up front?  You know, I couldn't have put the question more succinctly myself.  I suppose taking a private bus is non-stressful and reasonably comfortable.  However, I can't really recommend coach travel for more than a day-long journey.  There are many advantages to it, notably: no baggage weight restrictions; no extra costs for carriage of large instruments; having a vehicle for use once at your destination; still cheaper than all but the most budget airlines provided the group can fill the bus. However, there are a number of significant disadvantages - it takes much, much longer than flying and a considerable amount longer than same distance by car or train; usually necessary to drive through the night as a hotel stop will wipe out any cost advantage over flying; large right-hand-drive coaches (especially those with ski boxes) are less than ideal for negotiating narrow streets in foreign countries/Eurotunnel trains; coach toilets can fill up very quickly (particularly when members of your party spend much of the journey in very determined drinking), start to smell and cannot be emptied easily, meaning regular potty breaks are a must (as well as keeping to driving time regulations) which lengthens journey times still further; breakdowns are considerably more lengthy and costly than on modes of public transport. In addition, it got very cold and uncomfortable once we were stuck for the night.  On balance I would advocate that it is probably worth paying a little more to facilitate the 'jet and Transit' approach, whereby a van sets off with everyone's instruments to the destination a day or two early and the players then fly out to meet it there. It isn't a perfect solution by any means, but I have found it from past experience to be the best compromise.
• Wasn't it a bit unreasonable to expect acres of sightseeing time on a concert tour, particularly one only a few days long?  Yes, I was probably a bit ambitious with my projected 'tourist' schedule. In Hong Kong, we had three concerts in over a week; Berlin the same in eight days. I should therefore have probably not been disappointed by the amount of time I didn't have to see Eger, towns near Balaton and many areas of Budapest, simply because it wasn't possible doing three gigs in four-and-a-half days.  The business of unloading a coach, setting up, rehearsing, changing, doing the gig and packing up again naturally takes up a considerable proportion of time in a day - and that's before factoring in driving two hours or more to the location itself. However I still want to re-visit everywhere again without an instrument in tow and my wristwatch weighing heavy on me, and actually have the time to appreciate everything.
• Was the effort of learning (admittedly basic) Hungarian worth it? Let me be clear I didn't do it just to show off (ok, at least not to start with) and whatever the motive it was thoroughly vindicated.  I suspect my accent was moderately terrible. But every Hungarian I spoke even a few words to - shop vendors, toilet attendants, hotel staff, ticket windows - seemed delighted and gratified that I'd tried to learn their language. English visitors seem more and more to take the lazy and even contemptuous approach of not even bothering to learn any of the vernacular tongue when abroad. Of course we're not expecting fluency for a short visit, but Hungarian is not that difficult compared to, say, Cantonese or Bo, and even a few basic phrases will do wonders for goodwill and convenience.  Anyway, when members of your party come up and offer to pay for your drink if you'll order for them, you know you've done something right.
• You went to Hungary before, didn't you? What did you think of it the second time around?  My fears that the destination would fail to live up to expectations were, happily, unfounded.  Hungary is one of the places that actually fulfils much of the myth-making I tend to do before actually visiting somewhere and did not disappoint.  Budapest is as beautiful as you can imagine. The lake we visited really did have milky pink waters at sunset. The food and wine were superb and plentiful.  What I was really concerned by was the notion that since my last visit Hungary would have become too much like Old Europe, and become filled with generic multinational-corporation adverts, fast-food and fast-coffee shops, cars and glass towers. Naturally I would not begrudge the old Warsaw Pact countries that which we enjoy under democracy, but neither would I like to see the individuality of a nation subsumed by outside influences. Happily, the balance between modernity and preservation seems to be about right. The EU flag sits aside the red, white and green tricolour on the town hall, yet the hall itself otherwise looks exactly as it did in 1900. Outside, a new Ford is parked in between a still-running Trabant and Wartburg.  The refurbished Metro 2 still runs old Russian-built stock (almost all clean as a whistle) with globular light fittings and chrome bars on the carriage sides. Of course, I did learn via our fixer several less proud aspects of the country - every nation has its embarrassing bits - corruption; heavy-handed authority; the government's treatment of ethnic minorities, in particular the Roma. But this is all outweighed firstly by the splendid treasure-house of cultural artefacts that Hungary, in all its various geographical stages, has left to the world, and secondly by those of today: food, wine and, still, music. It's a good country, as they go.
• I'm getting the impression that you're starting to prefer holidays to tours. And quite right you are.  This is, for me, significant.  In the old days, I used to think that playing concerts put us above the regular tourists, as we were actually contributing something to the host country above buying stuff with foreign wealth. Now I'm not so sure. Having had the financial and cultural means to take both normal holidays and participate in tours, I am starting to feel that if I visit somewhere new, it should be for the purpose of actually seeing the place and appreciating it properly.  Beside, I get enough playing done at home that the attraction of doing it in front of a foreign audience has diminished somewhat - although the fact that most other countries do not share the UK's philistine attitude towards concert music is still a draw. 
• I can't help thinking that all your mithering over others' drinking was somewhat over the top.  Look, I consider myself pretty liberal and certainly don't delight in moralising at others.  I have no problem with people getting completely cream-crackered as long as it doesn't bother me. When somebody whom you have never exchanged even a greeting with suddenly explodes into your personal space at an ungodly hour of the night, however, I consider it quite reasonable to tell him in no uncertain terms where he can stick it and what is going to happen if he doesn't. In addition, I was rudely awakened to the fact that even a group with a cultural purpose can still behave like louts, somehow flirting with two apparently contradictory worlds.  Probably the most apt metaphor for this less admirable aspect of our visit was the (nameless) individual who opened the bus' emergency door to vomit on a World Heritage Site.  Another, who is otherwise a fine tenor, thought fit to walk over a car and apparently narrowly avoided arrest for it. I've said before that the English in particular have a literally fearsome reputation abroad. Other countries get merry and (usually) manage to refrain from causing carnage. Why can't we?
• How have you been able to remember all this? Other than having a reasonably exceptional memory and a penchant for noticing things in general, I was writing notes-cum-prose most of the way which totalled about 40 pages in all (my handwriting isn't particularly miniscule). I tend to keep such a document quiet, as on announcing one is writing a diary people tend to assume it's full of gossip-y personal stuff (rarely the case but not unknown) and then get rather disappointed when it's a description of an interesting coloured duck on a bridge or what I had for dinner. Which brings us to...
• This blog has been going on for ages and the posts are massive!  One does one's best.  Not including this coda - no, in fact, let's include it - the word count is a healthy 29,000 words over nine posts, give or take. Obviously I've not written this all in one go, although sections were already formed in my mind even before we returned, but I've stuck at completing it and thus it's probably about the most complete account suitable for the medium. I could have written even more detail, given the time, although I think without a real plot it would have been a little unsuited to this breakthrough into novella territory.  Still, I judge it all to have been worthwhile via the message from a composer in the US who '...immensely enjoyed [the] blog, by the way. It is engaging and very readable.'
• Did your wine get home safely? Yes, thank you; indeed it did, largely due to the absence of dealings with any jobsworth baggage handlers. I sampled the white as an accompaniment to a chicken-based meal some time ago and found it as agreeable as the first time. But, as I stated at the time of purchase, the '08 Merlot is being saved for a very special occasion...

Vislat.

Birthday numbers

Sometime today or tomorrow, In The Mists will receive it's two thousandth visitor. This milestone looks set to near-coincide with the blog's first anniversary, which is a happy occurrence. Indeed, I'm pleased that I've been able to come up with enough content that the post count is still going strong, and can see no reason for this to change. Cheers!

As Leonard Slatkin used to say in place of a Last Night speech, some facts:

Traffic to the blog has increased overall, beginning with 149 page-views in the first month of its existence and increasing to 314 in September 2011. The lowest month was December 2010 with just 60 page-views. I (and, judging by forum posts, many other bloggers) seem unable not to include our own page-views in the count, but as this is at best once or twice a week when visiting the blog to log in I hope it is not too statistically significant - and anyway, it still counts as a page-view.


Predictably, the majority of traffic comes from the United Kingdom. Currently, 1454 hits have been from UK domain addresses, which accounts for nearly 90% of visitors. The next (but significantly smaller) country is the United States, again unremarkable due to us being 'divided by a common language'. Below that; Germany, Australia and the Netherlands account for between 20 and 100 total page-views each. Minor players include Italy, Russia, Singapore, Denmark, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Finland, Thailand, Brazil, Japan, Pakistan, Bermuda, Latvia and Lithuania. (Ignore the 'Visitors by Country' box as that's only been there a few days).

The single biggest browser used by visitors is Firefox (64%), which is appropriate enough given that every word has been typed in the very same.  11% use Internet Explorer, 9% Google Chrome, 6% Safari and 4% Opera.  Around 5% use various mobile devices or proxies (note that stats do not equal 100% due to rounding).

Similarly, Windows dominates the users by operating system, with a commanding 83% of machines used to access ITM running it.  Macintosh systems are as low as 9%, whilst iPhones, Linux and other Unix are drawn on 2% each. A few hits have been registered as iPad, Samsung or Android, which matches the smartphone browser data in the last paragraph.

Oddly enough the average reader therefore uses exactly the same computer equipment as myself, which could be interpreted as a sign that in some way I am reaching my target audience.

The ten most popular posts, by page-views, are: 
1. What Happened in Hungary: Day One (109)
2. Transportation (68)
3. The River Itchen (Part 1) (51)
4. Neglected Composers #1 (49)
5. What Happened in Hungary: Day Three Part Two (40)
6. My Hovercraft is Full of Eels (39)
7. Neglected Composers #2 (35)
-  Some Cartographic Esoterica (35)
9. On Arrangement (31)
-  Why Violists Rule the World (31)


The number of posts on the site, including this one, is currently 44. This works out at a mean average of 45.45 recurring reads per post. It also means that I'm posting on average almost exactly once a week, as I reckon to have been away from any opportunity to blog for about 7 weeks this year.

By far the most interesting data is on what brought people here in the first place. A sizable number are from the 'adverts' I put on my Facebook page announcing significant posts, but the rest have followed links from other blogs or search engines.  A link from the A History of the World in 100 Objects site listing blogs that mention the programme has delivered a few hits.  The Young Composers forum and Diamond Geezer's blog also generate noteworthy percentages, but in all these cases the content of the link is usually clear. When it isn't, there are some fascinatingly arcane searches that result in a hit. Three people have searched for the Detritus Review, a blog I link to in the sidebar but have never yet mentioned in a post.  'Plane crash intio a27 viaduct near fareham [sic]'; 'sea traffic' and '19th century southhampton oil landscape [also sic]' have no obvious connection to any of the content here, other than that the words appear in disparate places within a year's output.  Some traffic comes from pictures that appear in image search results.  And happily, a few have typed inthemistsblog.blogspot.com into their address bar and come here directly and intentionally.

I never expect In The Mists to become a massively popular and influential blog, and certainly not in its first year, so I'm quite satisfied at having a small but regular stream of visitors reading what is, after all, rather niche content.  Looking toward the next year, I intend to keep the subject matter roughly similar, with perhaps a little more emphasis on revealing the mechanics of writing music.  There will be regular updates on my biggest composition project to date (it involves choirs, and at least two guaranteed performances) following the entire process of creating the piece.  It would be heartening to see another couple of followers join Marius over there on the right sidebar.  Whatever happens, we shall endeavour to continue to provide interesting and enlightening pieces for the world.