I’m marginally better with the clarinet, but it’s still audibly hard work.  I looked up the date when I said I was going to take lessons again – it was January 2007.  Well, I am.  I get things done, it just sometimes takes a while.

The phone rang, sometime after 10 this morning and when LT was just getting ready to leave for his other home (and mine, of course).  It was the Rector, wondering if I’d be free to play for the Ash Wednesday service?  “You mean today?” I asked, intelligently (well, I thought so, he didn’t say as much).  And yes, he meant at noon today.

I didn’t need more notice, not really, so I said yes, it’d be a pleasure, and turned up half an hour early to tinkle the ivories, as I hadn’t played the organ for about three months.  It was fine.  There were die-hard churchgoers there, they hardly needed accompaniment.  I baulked at the smearing of ash on the forehead, though.  I just can’t.  It’s not the ash, it’s the whole religious ritual thing.  When i was at a Roman Catholic school, it was one of the weird things the Catholics did, not the sensible Anglicans.  And I grit my teeth and smile at lighting candles in someone’s memory, if it’s the thing to do, but greasy ash just isn’t possible.  Fortunately, I was interviewing later so I had an easy and true excuse.

One of the latest clutch of chicks has the cutest stripes, I do hope it turns out to be a girl.  The back is almost like that of a partridge chick, though the wings and breast are yellow and bantam chick-like.  Of the five half-grown bantams, I’m reasonably sure that two are girls, but I’ve a feeling the others aren’t, which is a pity.  I can’t keep more surplus cocks.

I have a few fairly clear days, in terms of my diary, so must get on with things.  I’m immensely looking forward to having Zerlina and Gus for a few days over half term.  LT will be back here by then too, so it’ll be absolutely brilliant.  Until then, it just has to be productive, one way or another.

Some jolly chit-chat from a post of mine on Facebook this evening.  Almost like blogging in the old days, when comments took on a life of their own.  But we’re still here, at least.  And now I’ll catch up on Scrabble and so on, as I’ve got a bit of time on my hands.  And reading blogs, of course.