Steve's Been Ill
8 February

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Well, the talking point of the past couple of weeks has been the fact that my colleague, Steve, has been off ill from work.

Steve's wife Trish has been unwell for something like eighteen months now. For a variety of reasons, although the medicos knew that she was probably suffering from a gall bladder problem, she only had the operation to remove said organ just before Christmas. Although she's still in some discomfort after the operation, she's already feeling better.

Steve, however, is completely run down. He's had eighteen months of sheer hell. There was one night when the hospital staff admitted that they almost lost her. Not surprisingly, his body has absorbed a lot of strain and is feeling the effects. And now that the worst is over and he is beginning to relax, so his system is saying that it is OK to let go.

He's had a number of odd days off during the past twelve months. He went off on a first aid refresher course on the Monday. Trish had had a cough over the weekend. He came home on the Tuesday night after the course finished with a temperature of 102°F and went to bed. He stayed there for three days. He had viral pneumonia.

A first week dragged into a second. According to Ian, he wasn't talking on the phone. My concern grew. Well, I know from my own experience what it is like to enter a world where you think that returning to work is the worst of all possible experiences.

No-one else seemed to recognise that there was an issue to be faced. So, at work, I said that we needed to plan for the possibility of Steve being absent for a number of weeks. My message wasn't well received. But I stuck to my guns and we now have a Plan B in place which, should it come to it, will at least see us through. It will not be perfect but at least it will see us through.

And it won't rely entirely on me.

And this is a major point.

Because, not many years ago, I would have been totally within a mindset which said that the only way out of this mess was for me to lead the charge on my white steed.

So, I've been careful to spread the burden and to involve others in the discussions. And, although I've taken a lead in suggesting solutions, I've not always suggested myself as the prime mover in making things right. And I've listened to Jill who said that there is more than one way to skin a cat. And I've taken her at her word on that one. Particularly as I have annual leave booked and I am loath to give it up.

Yesterday, Thursday, we heard from Steve that he hopes to be back at work on Monday. Well. I hope so for my sake. But, for his sake, I hope that he takes as much time as he needs because he doesn't need to be completely run off his feet.

In all of this Ross and I took in a concert by Ensemble 10/10, the RLPO's contemporary ensemble, at the St George's Hall Concert Room where I saw Donizetti's Emilia di Liverpool in January.

First up was James MacMillan's Busquéda - a piece which interpolates poems written by mothers of the disappeared ones in Argentina with the Latin Mass. It's part sung, part spoken, part instrumental and wholly affecting.

If that was not enough, after the break came Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. I've waited nearly half a lifetime to hear this piece live. Written in 1940, whilst Messiaen was incarcerated in a German prison camp, the odd line up of piano, cello, violin and clarinet was determined by the available musicians and instruments. It is simply a piece that transcends the boundaries of its physical gestation. It is gloriously, sublimely spiritual. I can only imagine what the other inmates made of the piece because it makes no concessions to any musical education or literacy.

I was in tears at the end. I was stunned and speechless. Members of the audience were on their feet. I was sorely tempted but didn't. I don't know that I was physically capable of standing at that juncture. It was quite superb.

Less than a fortnight later I should have been back there for a leider recital including Schumann's Dichteriebe (one of my all time favourite pieces) and Britten's Holy Sonnets of John Donne but this came right in the middle of the uncertainty about Steve's presence at work and so I decided that discretion was the better part of physical survival and I ducked out.

I'm told by fellow Quakers that I missed out on a night to remember and I'm sorry about that. But I think that I made the right decision for me.

Two nights later and we had been told that Steve was returning to work next Monday and so I took the plunge to attend a concert at the Philharmonic Hall with Ross. Vernon Handley conducted an all English programme. We heard him conduct back in 2000 and he has a strong tradition of conducting English music. He didn't disappoint. Bax's The Garden of Fand was awash with subtle orchestral colour - more like Ravel than anything English. Vaughan Williams' Symphony No 5 formed the whole of the second half and was pretty good. Handley is aging rapidly (he was in a bad car crash a few years back) and, frankly, I think that he ran out of steam towards the end. The first three movement were fabulous however.

But the main event of the night was Ian Bostridge in Benjamin Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings. This is another work which I've waited a long time to hear live and I was not disappointed. Bostridge and Britten seem to go together - for example The Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice. The whole work is just a series of little mini-dramas. It was good.

I've also polished off a couple of novels.

There are times when I wonder whether or not I've been reading the same book as described on the cover. Kings of Albion by Julian Rathbone is set at the time of the Wars of the Roses. As you discover at the end of the book, it is a record of a Chinese emissary interviewing an elderly Arab trader about his visit to England at this time with an Indian prince. But it is not an adventure story and the details of battle of few and far between and mostly come at the end. I just found it overly clever and quite hard work to plough through for minimal return by the end. A chore.

I've also been disappointed by Miss Garnet's Angel by Sally Vickers which, once again, came festooned with praise on its cover. I wasn't too fussed about the idea of a modern day story running in parallel with a re-telling of the biblical tale of Tobias and the angel. It just felt to me to be a bit too clunking. Less effort at grinding out the parallels and more effort on simply telling the story would have suited me better. So I read it and completed it with effort and can't say that I found it to be more than reasonable.