Still no better – probably overdid it over the weekend and woke up feeling absolutely ghastly. I was home alone, so ended up spending the afternoon on the couch, alternating between watching episodes of Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers and working on the quintet.

The quintet’s in a frustrating place at the moment. I think I’ve solved a few problems today – pulled the end off and added a new chunk in before it. Had a significant amount of trouble reattaching the end, but I think it works. I’m not sure I’ll be able to go back to the opening material though – not literally at any rate – the slower tempo of the opening just doesn’t really work, I think, coming back at the end but I’ll review it tomorrow. At any rate, it feels very much like it’s wanting to move to the end now – which is a HUGE relief. It spent so long being stalled it’s just wonderful to know that it’s found where it wants to go. I think the new section I added today has helped a lot, so YAY!

I also inadvertently ended up cooking dinner tonight. Parents brought home chicken but then couldn’t decide what to do with it so I took over, and it turned out rather well: I boiled a bunch of Brussels sprouts, till they were only barely done, cut the chicken into small pieces and tossed it in plain flour seasoned with paprika, salt, pepper and a smidgen of saffron, then fried it off in olive oil and a little butter with some little bits of bacon. Once the chicken was cooked, I dropped in the double cream left over from the other night’s trifle, then the sprouts to warm them through, then folded through the cooked pasta. I think everyone went back for seconds, so I think I’d consider doing it again. The sprouts made a nice change

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Rather poorly today. Seems that Djelibeybi has given me his germ and so yesterday and today I’ve been doing battle with inflamed sinuses, earache and general urkness.

So I slept most of this morning and had some very bizarre dreams – very sci-fi/fantasy really. Dramatic but not nasty. This afternoon I was booked in to go to a session with my physio on relaxation – I’m a very stressy person and she thought it might help. And it seemed a useful session. I certainly relaxed *during* the session and will give it a go again over the next few days too, so I hope that’s a good start.

Afterwards I found my mother drifting about the Pitshanger Lane shops, so I treated us to treats from the bakery (I had a raspberry muffin, she had an apricot tart thingy) and we finally found reasonably priced Pedro Ximenes sherry at the cheese and wine shop. Whereupon my brain froze up and I got millilitres mixed with centilitres and brought home 2 bottles when I only needed 175ml it turned out. Um. Not very bright sometimes. But at least the Christmas pudding is finally under way (I have to nip out and buy currants tomorrow morning) with the sultanas (blech!) and prunes busily soaking up sherry.

Haven’t really felt up to doing anything on the quintet today – too achey and miserable. Hoping tomorrow will be better.

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SO proud of myself. I have done barely anything today. This morning I did do a quick edit on the recording from Friday night’s concert, so that’s ready for archiving now. Then there was a lot of dozing, napping and quiet silly conversation. And then I somehow mustered some energy and went out to buy the camera connection kit for the iPad and made dinner and a chocolate ripple cake. Um. On second thoughts, I guess I actually did do stuff. Whoops.

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Didn’t do terribly much today – a little fluting here (Bach and Telemann), a little library trip there, a bit of a wander round in the fog with my mama, an agonising trip to the physio. Quiet, but I think that’s what’s needed today. After the composer forum, my brain seems to be teetering on the brink of an idea for the quintet and I didn’t want to rush it and spoil everything, so it’s had a bit of a mental health day. Tomorrow I’ll get back to the writing and see what happens. Cross fingers, Hold thumbs and send notes to the man upstairs please that it takes off again!

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With parents gone to the Isle of Wight and Djeli home with man-flu, I decided to take a mental duvet-day myself. Watched TV (finally saw An American Werewolf in London), tended to Djeli’s needs for lemonade and Lemsip, went to my physio appointment and knitted a bit. The hat’s nearly complete now but, alas, I have run out of yarn with a mere 5 very short rows to go, so it’s on hold now till I can go out and buy a little more.

Oh! And I also made the Buttermilk Oaten Bread out of my new Teatime Baking cookbook. Verdict: Excellent flavour, but oven is totally mad. Before it burnt everything. This time it never even reached the temperature on the dial so the loaves didn’t cook through properly and ended up a little doughy. Flavour really good though, so they’re definitely worth another try.

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And good golly, it’s been a long time since we just hung out together on our own. Parents went off to see the London Wetlands Centre (and gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up – must get there sometime) and I did some doodling about trying to make the notes I have turn into a proper opening for the quintet (fail) then Djeli and I sauntered into town to inspect microwaves. We didn’t actually buy anything, but we came away with knowledge and a ball of wool for me to knit myself a therapeutic hat with (Auntie Madge’s Wisp scarf is driving me insane – the point at which I thought I’d nearly finished turned out to only be halfway there so I need something different to knit – a quick win – before I start in on my mother’s scarf which is a chunky-weight chenille version of the Wisp pattern). Then Djeli made his fantastic shepherd’s pie for us for dinner and we all watched My Family and Other Animals and then Slumdog Millionaire. All in all, a tip-top day

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I knitted. I listened to Fauré. I napped. I greeted our landlord and handed him some boxes of stuff he was taking away. I greeted the man bringing home our Roomba. I napped. I made dinner. I read about 3 pertinent lines in my PHP book. I caught up with some blog-posting.

Most of all though, I procrastinated. Big-time. And it felt good

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Today was our last day in Paris and this evening has been – understandably – a little fraught, with the packing and calculations of how long it will take to get to Gare du Nord tomorrow and so on. I’m also feeling rather frazzled at the prospect of tomorrow as a whole – getting the flat all cleaned and tidied and parents out to get to the Eurostar, then getting us all home from St Pancras, and then finally the most stressful thing of all – getting us out of the house again to go to the premiere of my new piece Deconstruct: Point, line, plane. I don’t know that any of my other premieres have ever had me so worried as this one. I know I’ve built this piece exactly how I wanted it to be. I’m confident that it can work, but the criticism I received about it when it was still in its embryonic state just makes me doubt just a little bit, even while I know that it didn’t want to be anything other than what it is. And then there’s the question if whether the performers have just decided to change it… And if they have, is it still under my name or have they correctly listed it as an arrangement. I tell you, the sooner Wednesday rocks up, the happier I’ll be!

But we’ve had a lovely last day in Paris. Ran some errands, and my Da finally took me to Shakespeare and Company – and what a gorgeous bookshop it is!!! Most of the books upstairs aren’t for selling – they’re for sitting about and reading! And they’ve got a piano up there, waiting to be played, so we were all happy – the Da nosing around the poetry section, me reading snippets of Julia Child on French bread, the mama playing Debussy on the piano (and drawing quite a happy crowd: Mama: ‘It’s just you there, isn’t it?’ Me: ‘No, but they’re not listening, they’re all reading books, aren’t you?’ Small throng: *assorted giggles*).

And then we visited Notre Dame. And for the first time I noticed the lovely chapel and column paintings – don’t know how I missed them before – so clean and clear. Really gorgeous.

I should stop procrastinating with photos and ‘fess up though that I’ve done precious little Creative Pact work today – I really think I’m reaching the end of what I can do on the iPad for this project. It’s been great and really useful, and I’m VERY glad I didn’t bring the laptop (especially now I’m on the verge of having to lug lots of lovely foodie shopping back to Blighty) but I really need to be working in PHP now, which means I need my books and a server and an Internet connection I don’t need to reset every 30 seconds. Um… On second thoughts, I guess that’s not so much an iPad limitation as a limitation of circumstances, due to not having packed the PHP book and only having rubbish Internet. But still, feeling a little hamstrung and like I’m treading water. I have managed to achieve a tiny bit, but it was only setting up template pages for the contact page (will contain a PHP form) and a page to hold the Tate’s video interview with me, which I can’t tell if I can embed because Vimeo just tells me it’s Flash, which obv won’t work on the iPad – going to have to wait till I get home to see if that should even have a separate page at all or just a link to Vimeo (suspect the latter, which means I’ll need to work out the best styling for putting about a paragraph of text into the right column and making it all look nice). So not a complete fail there, but a bit wussy, really. Still, planning in being at home and working in it for pretty much the whole of Wednesday and Thursday, so I think I’m still in with a chance to get it ready to fly on the 30th…

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Well, not 100%, but I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve really achieved today. In fact, I’m quite proud of the fact that I’ve really achieved nothing today. It makes a nice change. I did make a start on continuing with the <canvas> chapter, but I was so exhausted after a crazy week finishing up at work (am now a full-time composer for the next few months and part-time tour guide for my parents – woot!) that I feel sound asleep and don’t even remember now what it was I read. Not a reflection on Bruce Lawson & Remy Sharp’s writing, I hasten to say…

I did also tick a couple of boxes on my website control panel so that it’s tracking activity on caitlinrowley.com and set up an email address, but it’s hardly impressive, is it? Will do better tomorrow..

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Baked some brownies tonight to take to work tomorrow for my second-last day (because a bunch of lovely colleagues won’t be in on Friday) and while I was waiting for them to bake, I found a link to a video of a live performance by Tripod posted to YouTube. Which of course set me off watching a bunch of other Tripod videos, which ultimately got me thinking that I hadn’t seen any Doug Anthony All Stars clips in far, far, far too long. Which I quickly rectified. And so should you (Disclaimer: not if you’re a sensitive person, a PC person, in any way likely to be offended by pretty much anything. Oh, and if you’re at work, it might be best to give them a wide berth too… genius, but nobody ever said genius needed to be tasteful! That said, this one’s pretty tame for them…): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71cEL7v1WGc&feature=related. To give a little context, these guys were HUGE back when I was at school. They used to be on every week on a stand-up programme called The Big Gig. Invariably childish and offensive, invariably brilliant. Great voices, stupid jokes. (I loved them so much, I even took to wearing a tiny plait in my hair in homage to Paul </confession> so it’s fabulous to find they’re just as funny as they ever were)

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