In September of last year, I started doing voluntary work at a local school.
I had hoped that, by this September, I would have begun training to become a primary school teacher. But, this was not to be, not this year anyway.
So, I am in the process of re-grouping. I was naïve in the way that I approached things last year.
I spent three days with the kids from the school on a residential stay at Crosby Hall Educational Trust just round the corner in Little Crosby. I've been there on a number of occasions for HMS Pinafore, The Magic Flute and a concert given by the Ismail Piano Trio. However, I'd never really seen the residential school activities before.
I think that the kids had a ball. They visited the animals, had a go on the assault course (or confidence building course as the CHET staff insisted on calling it) and chased round the wood in an orienteering game looking for coloured markers.
However, I'm really not sure that a lot of planning went into to the educational side of it. A map reading exercise didn't work because the map used was poorly designed an executed. A walk looking at land use petered out when it turned out that, after the wood, all of the land was farm land. The walk itself petered out when the path was barred to children and we had to turn back. A traffic counting exercise just didn't go anywhere.
I got frustrated because I felt that I might have done better.
Well, if I am to get my chance, I need to think about what I am going to do with this next year so that I can make a more successful bid for a place to get my teaching qualifications.
On Thursday 15 July, it was St Swithin's Day. It rained. It hasn't stopped since. With some irony, a hosepipe ban is in place at the moment because we have had the driest first half of the year for a very long time.
The legend of St Swithin is an interesting one.
He was a Saxon Bishop of Winchester. He lived his life in a devout manner eschewing all pomp and riches saying that the money would be better spent on the support of the poor. On his death bed, he asked to be buried in a simple grave in the open among his people rather than in some fancy tomb indoor.
His wishes were carried out. Nine years later however, at the point where he was being though of as increasingly likely for sainthood, the monks of Winchester attempted to remove his remains to a splendid shrine inside the cathedral. They started to dig down into his grave. The date was 15 July 971.
It started to rain. It rained for forty days and nights thus preventing the transfer from taking place. Eventually the monks decided that God was giving them a message and they desisted. The story was used to improve Swithin's chances of sainthood.
And to top it all Charles Mackerras died on Wednesday.
I suppose there is a time in everyone's life when your heroes from the previous generation begin to fall away. I am so sorry that this lovely man is gone. There is so much that I owe to him as a debt of gratitude for the wonderful music-making that he has placed before me.
He was Music Director of English National Opera when I was a student in London in the 1970s. He was Music Director of Welsh National Opera when I was in Liverpool in the late 80s and early 90s.
In recent times, I have heard him conduct concerts with the RLPO such as Beethoven's 6th and Shostakovich's 9th Symphony and Beethoven's Symphony No7.
I went to Covent Garden to hear him conduct Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and I watched a webcast of Mozart's Don Giovanni from the same venue.
I've bought recordings such as Richard Strauss's Salome, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte ,Mozart's last four symphonies, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel and Janacek's The Makropulos Case
In 2008, in my annual review of the year's journalising, I gave him a special award for filling my life with music.
I greatly shall miss his contribution to my life.