30 March
Sam and the Half Marathon

We have Ross's brother, Sam, staying with us at present.

All I can say is that there has been a falling out in the student house which has been his abode so far this year and he feels that, with exams approaching, he needs a less stressful environment in which to live. And he's family and so we have found him room in the inn.

Although, in actual fact, we haven't seen very much of him this week as he has been thesping - of which more anon.

The first thing that I need to note is another Royal Liverpool Philharmonic concert under the baton of Vasily Petrenko. And it was another very good night in the concert hall.

We started with Schubert's Rosamunde overture which passed happily enough. The first half concluded with a stunning performance of the opening Adagio from Mahler's Symphony No 10. I was almost too wrung out to applaud.

The second half brought a performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No 8. As recounted elsewhere, I have heard a performance of this work once before at my first visit to the Edinburgh Festival in 1973. I'm not sure that I have a great memory of that occasion apart from being pinned back in my seat for some of the great outbursts in the first movement. Whilst the performance wasn't in the same league as that of Shostakovich's Symphony No 5 given just about a year ago, it was still very good. Roland viewed it as work in progress.

Then, on the following night, we attended a student production of the hit musical Fame. Yes, you're right, under normal circumstances, wild horses would not get me into a theatre to see such a show. But there was the Sam connection you see. Just over a year ago, we went to see him in Cole Porter's Anything Goes. I have to say that that was the far better show. Still, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy it at all.

And the cast put their heart and soul into it and belted out those siren anthems and hoofed their way through those modern dance routines. It's just that, middle class to the core, they didn't really convince as tough kids looking for a way out of poverty into at least work and at best something approaching riches. It was all quite reasonable and appropriately swathed in leg warmers.

And then on the Sunday following the last night of the production, God bless him, Sam ran in Liverpool's half marathon. Oh, the resillience of the young. He was very pleased to clock in a time of 1:58:58. He's doing the complete London marathon with his dad in a few weeks' time. Respect.