Committee

We paid Julie and Carol a surprise visit last night and sat up until 3am watching the Oscars with them in Lewisham. We left before the best actress fell flat on her face whilst collecting her award, and missed Barbra Streisand and Adele, which I was sorry about, but sleep was beckoning. We did see Shirley Bassey, however, and applauded her wildly. She's almost 80 and can still chest a C! Legendary. 

Of course, when you go to bed at 3.30am, you wake up feeling exhausted and somewhat disorientated and I had a day of meetings at the MU to attend. We were trying to think of ways to encourage some of the larger funding arts organisations in this country to invest in recordings. It's so important these days for composers to have recordings of their music; particularly as the art of score reading seems to have passed into legend. The music industry is changing all the time and it's our duty as the MU writers' committee to keep on top of things. 

We were given fancy sandwiches and boxes of fruit for lunch, which I slightly overdid.  I have an intolerance to kiwi fruit and melon, and after chowing down on a whole plate of the latter, my throat started to feel very itchy and my voice started sounded curiously silky. Fortunately Fiona was on hand with an antihistamine, but this is definitely an allergy I need to watch. I think avoiding melon and kiwi for the last few years has possibly exacerbated the problem.

From the MU in Oval, we went to Soho, and sat in my favourite spot, downstairs at Leon on Old Compton Street where Nathan met us for a bite to eat. He's just cast on another sock. Another masterpiece, no doubt.