I don't think she quite understood how I managed to get the Radio 4 coverage to come out of my phone but it gave us the start and finish cues with Big Ben and the last post.
I met up with my mum this morning so that she had someone to stand alongside during the national pause for remembrance.
I don't think she quite understood how I managed to get the Radio 4 coverage to come out of my phone but it gave us the start and finish cues with Big Ben and the last post.
Lovely moment to have shared.
Meanwhile, in London, alone and symbolically representative of the nation, HM the Queen stood quietly paying homage to the fallen in Westminster Abbey.
I found the simplicity of this gesture utterly moving. For me, far more so than any martial panoply.
The pause gave us all time to reflect on the past year - the fallen heroes in the caring professions as well as the fallen heroes on the battlefields.
I caught up with Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on one of the Met's nightly webcasts. The first thing that needs to be said is that the production by Otto Schenk with designs by Günther Schneider-Siemssen is of a type and style which is unlikely to repeated in my lifetime and represents the zenith of that faux photo realistic approach. Levine's orchestra matched the production with a weight of sound that had enough opacity to allow detail to shine through.
It was, quite simply, an achievement.
It's difficult also to imagine casting of such expertise and depth. There isn't an also-ran among the main seven cast members where most opera houses these days run out of money after the main three or four. Michael Volle's Sachs was an assumption of great humanity and beautiful tone when required. Johan Botha made Walter sound like an easy sing when it most definitely isn't. Annette Dasch's Eva was radiant and I could go on.
All the more so since the country went into a fully fledged lockdown once more as of last Thursday.
The evidence of the growth in infection rates has been growing for some time but I hadn't realised until I saw this graph how long it has been since both SAGE and the Labour Party made their first calls for a lockdown. I don't know how members of the government can hold their heads up in the face of such evidence.
Their motivation is made amply clear by the following tweet made just about a week before the reversal of policy. There's a very gung-ho, cavalier aspect to the attitude displayed. It was deleted very quickly after first publication. Just not quickly enough.
Thank goodness I had my wits about me.
I persuaded Ross to make some mince pies as a practice before Christmas.
Otherwise, I managed to fit in a last session of Yoga on the Wednesday morning.
Ross's appointment with his CPN went ahead on Thursday.
Roland and I agreed that walking his dog along the foreshore at Crosby on Friday counted as permissible exercise.
Danny is currently very excited about moving into his own place. He was keen to meet up at short notice.
Currently, he's busy decorating all the upstairs rooms so he's sleeping on a mattress on the living room floor. It was like being a student again and I had him with his legs over my shoulders.
When I left, there was this big black car outside Danny's place with two lads in it. Danny had said that the two friends who were helping him with the decorating were waiting for us to finish so they could get back to work. I grinned at them as I walked passed.
The lad driving was wearing glasses and he just looked straight ahead without a flicker. The other lad (cute) had his head down buried in his hand looking monumentally embarrassed. I don't think they're used to that circumstance.
Danny laughed and told me I'd hit the nail right on the head.
It was a great little meet to be honest. I'm loving our times together. There's always something new and a good sense of fun and connection.
No doubt life will start to close in again in the coming week.