Fresh
15 December

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This has probably been one of the coldest Decembers we have had here for a while - in fact, the radio informs me that it is the coldest start to a winter in many areas for nearly 30 years.

There have been a number of sub-zero nights and days of temperatures hovering not much above the level of freezing. The pond has been frozen over in the back yard and the car's windscreen has been encrusted with layers of ice rather than frost.

But above all it has been bright and clear. Very little cloud indeed. And so, even on the morning's drive into work, I'm looking at lightening skies and pleasant mornings. Evenings too, though the car lights are still required, there seems to plenty of light around in the end-of-day skies. It lifts my heart.

However, Roland tells me that a corollary of this is that it has not yet snowed in Moscow and that the bears in the zoo there have not yet begun to hibernate.

The week after our trip to London has been a funny one.

For me it began with my final Phil concert of the year. I went with Roland to hear Paul Lewis in Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto. This completes the cycle begun in April with the fourth concerto. Since then, we've had the third in May, the second in September and the first in November. Overall, it has been an excellent achievement thoroughly worth the effort of organising five nights' out.

I like Paul Lewis's blend of intellectual rigour and poetry. I like the sense of fun that he brings to his music making. I like the fact the he roots his Beethoven in the eighteenth century as much as in the nineteenth. I like the crispness of his rhythmic articulation. I like the precision of his left hand work. And I like the partnership that he has developed with Vasily Petrenko. They work together.

We also heard an over-heated version of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade. It's a slight work full of charm and elegance and grace. These are not characteristics that Mr Petrenko does well. And it was so here. The best that can be said is that the band did everything that was asked of them.

Meanwhile, Ross crapped out and felt horrible. There are a lot of bugs going around. Flu-like things. The norovirus. All fairly usual for this time of year.

At work, I had the unpleasant duty of sacking someone from the training programme for looking at pornography. It was the right thing to do but it made me feel dreadful. Other than that I felt less and less happy as the week went on. So, I too then spent the weekend feeling crapped out and horrible. I missed a night out with colleagues on the Friday night and a meal on Lark Lane with Ross's family on the Saturday night. Sunday was a day of doing little.

But Monday was OK again. I've done a few more things to prepare for Christmas in that I've finished off the remainder of the cards and present wrapping. And then I've bought some carpet for the kitchen to cover the tiles so the old folk can't complain too much of the cold. We've also bought an oil heated radiator for the back bedroom to boost the heat in there for the aging Ps.

Television has begun to wind down in front of the mid-winter festivities. Little Dorrit came to a fine conclusion. I still think that it is not as coherent a novel as Bleak House but it has been a marvellous journey over the past six weeks or so. Spooks ended on a high note but Alex Lanipekun's character, Ben, was killed off without ever getting the chance to get naked. A chance lost I feel.

The one new item has been three extended adaptations of Swedish detective novels based on the character Wallander. Kenneth Branagh plays the main character with smoldering restraint. However, I'm not sure that I can take yet another troubled police person irrespective of how clever the plotting is. Nevertheless, it is good to know that bad things happen in Sweden too and we do find that Tom Hiddleston (standing) as Martinsson is very watchable.

I also need to mention a new recording I've acquired of Sir Charles Mackerras conducting Richard Strauss's Salome in the Chandos Opera in English series. This was such a revelation after the dismal concert performance this February. The orchestral playing is phenomenal, clear and precise but following the emotional surges with abandon. Susan Bullock makes a glorious Salome and John Graham-Hall is an excellent Herod. Sally Burgess sounds a little raddled to my ears for Herodias. But the whole experience is as nasty as it should be.

The main item on the horizon is that Roland and I are planning to go to Madrid in mid-March. We had intended to go there in June to see Juan Diego Flórez sing the rôle of the Duke in Rigoletto. However, he has cancelled and neither of us feels that we want to go to Madrid just for another Rigoletto no matter how good the other singers are.

So we are going to go to Tannhaüser instead.

I know that this infringes my Wagner ban but I've only ever seen Tannhaüser once before in a strange production by Götz Friedrich at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. And it is probably Wagner's most lyrical work before he went to the dark side. Apparently, this production features a more than passable orgy at the beginning in the Venusberg. So, there'll be a very good reason for sitting in the stalls then.

And being in Madrid will give me the chance to do other things like go to the Prado and the Royal Palaces, etc. So, some early travel for David next year.