Assuming the brace position

As of tomorrow, life will be dominated by music for most of a week. And, inevitably, by the logistics which surround it The piano has been tuned, the fact that musicians need to be fed is in hand, if not entirely sorted. My own efforts are focused on Tuesday, when our friend the baritone will sing for us and a small but lovely audience – he’s staying for several days, but he, his accompanist who is also one of the Professor’s graduate students, and the composer will be there that night – which means on one level, that all kinds of useful business will be transacted in course of the traditional post-mortem (all three of the above will be staying over), on another, which is my sphere of operations, that as well as a buffet party on Tuesday, it’ll be Breakfast of Champions on quite a lavish scale the following morning. Preparations are quite well advanced. I have filled the freezer with rolls and suchlike, by way of advance organization, pastry and so forth are in the fridge. We’ve finished painting the garden fence, the lawn is temporarily respectable (Barry the Great has indicated that it’s 90% moss and in fact, we should kill what’s there and re-sow, but has done a decent cosmetic job on things as they are: in a fortnight from now it will look like death, and remain thus for most of the summer, alas). I’ve got so much of the domestic end of things under control off and on the last couple of days that panic is pretty much averted (unless the cooker suddenly dies, as memorably, a cooker died on my wedding morning; golly, that was a panic and a half). Anyway, fingers crossed. Things are looking very nice.  The tulips are coming out, though sadly, the daffodils and narcissi seem to be going over very quickly. We sent a box of our narcissi to a friend in Cambridge who is not the sort of person to buy flowers for himself, and who, barring miracles, will not see another spring. I hope they got to him and arrived in reasonable condition, and that they gave pleasure.