First Harbingers
9 April

Well, the hour changed and the days seem longer.

Various signs of the turning of the seasons. Boxers instead of trunks. Cotton rather then woollen socks. The occasional short sleeved shirt. Vests with no sleeves at all. The lighter duvet on the bed. Curtains open for longer. Central heating off for longer. A positively cacophonous dawn chorus. The introduction of salads. Washing drying on the carousel in the garden.

Out in the garden we had loads of dillydaffs this year. The policy of not cutting the leaves back too early seems to have encouraged fewer to come up blind (ie without a flower).

We moved a lot of bulbs around at the back end of the last growing season and they've yet to establish themselves. So, no great display there. The muscari have been especially disappointing and the broom from last year has decided to take a year out to establish itself.

However, the helebores and the rhibes have really caught the eye. The rhibes is particularly pleasing as, year on year, it has really come back after it was moved.

It's a similar story with the Euphorbia, which was almost dead two years ago, but, this year, has now produced a fine array of flowers. We are also delighted with our camelia which we have grown from a tiny shoot until it is now quite a sturdy small shrub and is gradually turning into a fully fledged bush. Two years ago it offered its first flower. This year there are lots of bright red blooms.

Trees around the area are sporadically leafing. There is a profusion of forsythia around Crosby - it feels as though it must be a good year for that particular shrub. And coming over the fence from the neighbour who abuts the bottom of our garden there is a tree/shrub which produces a profusion of perfumed, white flowers at this time of year and, this year, the display is magnificent.

Earlier this year, I mentioned that I was looking for some more varied work at Connect. I've already had one trip to The Capital to deliver what my employer seems to designate as a discovery workshop. I've now got some work delivering training in the open source Content Management System, Umbraco. Problem is, as ever with Connect, that we treat each new commercial opportunity as a Post-Graduate project rather than a job of work.

And also coming up, I have some training which will give me a PTTLS qualification (that's an acronym which stands for Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector). It's all to do with the fact that the government is trying to professionalise and qualificationalise all sort of areas which, heretofore, have been the provenance of the gifted amateur. Actually, I'm sort of looking forward to it as it will get me out of the office for six consecutive Wednesdays.

Today, however, it has been down to earth with a bump as Steve, Ian and I have been struggling with venerable kit which has really ceased to be fit for purpose.

It hardly seems just a week ago that I was in Southport meeting up with Robert for a meal. The tour he has been on reached that neck of the woods. Audiences weren't that wonderful and he has reached the stage where he will be glad when it's all over. He took great glee in telling me that Joe Perou had been delighted with my review of his buttocks when I saw the show back in March. However, since Joe does not dance at my end of the sexual ballroom, I shall not be pursuing the matter.

We talked of a number of things including some of his friends from Percy Street days. They, like him, have grown up. One, I remember having his nappy changed on a train on its way to Cornwall. He's now about to enter the armed forces. Robert was saying that he was none too happy with life.

As with the young men who enter the training programme at work, I believe that a number of them need to change their surroundings if they are to make a change in their life. I guess the armed forces does that. It gives them

• an environment away from the temptations they have surrounded themselves with
• a disciplined structure within which to operate and
• a whole new family

And, of these, I suspect that it's the new family that is the most sought after aspect of the whole business.

While we were lunching in Pizza Express we noticed the Google maps car gliding past. So, at some point, I should be able to see my car parked in the forecourt of the Friends' Meeting House and, should the angle be right, see through the Pizza Express window Robert and I eating our food.

I've attended two more concerts at the Liverpool Phil. The first was conducted by Mr Petrenko and included a spirited rendition of Elgar's Cockaigne Overture as the curtain raiser and which for me was the best music making of the evening. I doubt that many people have heard Rachmaninov's Spring Cantata. I can't say that I disliked it; however, neither would I say that I shall chase another performance. It was OK but that was it. Stravinsky's complete score for The Firebird was very well played and enthusiastically received but I was more reserved that many of the audience members around me. In retrospect, I think that I should have preferred to have heard the reduced concert suite. All the big moments are contained in that work; the rest, whilst very pretty, is often best explained by the choreography - and I'm not sure that that is how music should be listened to.

The weekend brought a Sunday matinée concert of the Baroque with the Bach family to the fore. We heard J S Bach's Brandenburg Concerti Nos 2, 3 and 5, his Violin Concerto in A major and the Ricercare for strings. I enjoyed all of these although the Phil players are not Early Music specialists and, frankly, some of their rhythms still sound like a knitting machine. For me, the best piece was the least known - C P E Bach's Cello concerto in A major with Jonathan Aasgaard, the Phil's principal cellist, as soloist. It was light and airy throughout and it had a fabulously invigorating final movement. though I can't say that it was a great concert of music, the overall effect was to send the audience out onto the streets of Liverpool with smiles on their faces.

We've also seen a couple of good films recently.

I did like Slumdog Millionaire, although I don't find that I can be as generally enthusiastic as others. Was it worth the Oscar for Best Film? Oh, on balance no. There's something about the way that all affluent people approach life in slums (see Dickens for example) which tries to persuade us all that, despite the grim hardships, there's still a great deal of colourful fun to be had. Ultimately, you see, it was an outsider's view of an alien culture. I do wonder what the film would have been like if it had been within the Indian film industry for an Indian audience. Still, Dev Patel was good, better than in TV's Skins and will improve. And Ross and I loved the Bollywood musical dance routine that accompanied the credits.

Better was Milk, which might have gotten Best Picture but didn't. I cried. I know that it's my history and all and that I've been to some of the San Franciscan locations but I did feel that it told a true story with some integrity and feeling for period detail. Sean Penn made a good job of presenting Harvey Milk, although from what I remember of the original from documentaries, he was camper and harsher and more brittle again. James Franco played Scott Smith, who was Harvey's long term friend and love interest and did it very well. So far, I've only ever seen him in the Spiderman movies as Peter Parker's friend, Harry Osborn. He and Sean Penn made a very creditable stab at playing a gay couple by simply playing all their scenes together as quietly and intimately as possible. I'd mostly put that down to the direction of Gus Van Sant. Best performance of the lot, however, was probably given by Josh Brolin as Dan White, Harvey Milk's assassin. He made a difficult man seem very believable. Overall, very good.

There have been any number of candid photographs out there on the Net from the shooting of this film. I did like these two which were, presumably, taken by a fan or a paparazzo during the location filming of a Gay Pride March in 1970s San Francisco. Both Sean and James do seem to be enjoying themselves. I wonder if they found it at all liberating to wander round hugging another man?

Can I also say that, even though in plot terms it was entirely gratuitous, I completely welcomed James Franco's skinny dipping sequence. Any excuse to get that young man's buttocks out into the open has my vote any time.

We've also seen Mamma Mia. The kindest thing that I can say is that it really isn't my sort of film.