More dislikes

• I still hate incense (see here)
• Drivers who come up close behind me when I am already going 40mph in a 40mph zone and flash their headlights.
• Choirs who seem unable to process in or out of the choir stalls in pairs - come on, it isn't difficult!
• Visiting choirs who think it is acceptable to perform music they have only encountered that day whilst acting as the guest choir at a cathedral.
• People who, after a 30 year friendship, treat me like s**t and expect me to accept it.
• People who cannot do their job but still charge the earth
• Companies who want more for fitting a kitchen than for supplying it.

Gift Aid

See later edit at the foot of the post.

And also a LATER post HERE

I don't mind signing on the dotted line to gift aid any donation I might make to a charity. What I do object to is being asked to pay MORE should I decide to use gift aid.

HELLO!

The point of me gift aiding a donation is to allow the charity to claim back my tax and thus boost their income.

This happened to me the other day when I visited the Amberley Working Museum. They tried to say that they would give back the extra as tokens but it didn't wash; they had already got my back up. They tried to tell me it was the law that my donation had to amount to 10% of my entry fee.

I didn't have to pay extra when I went to the Fishbourne Roman Palace; they are up front about how gift aid works. There, they regard the whole entry fee as a donation should you opt to gift aid it.

Anyway I enjoyed my short visit to the museum although I had been before. I had a chat with the wheelwright as my grandfather and his father were wheelwrights.

I shall investigate!

____________________________________

Friday evening.

There was a very swift and full comment on this post about 4 hours after it was uploaded. I have looked at www.tax-effectivegiving.org.uk and, as yet, I have not found a mention of the extra 10%. I do not propose to look through all the documents on the site.

The facts are these.

• I was in a queue for a museum which cost £9.30 to enter.
• As I waited, I saw the invitation to fill out a gift aid form. I did this but I did not see [which is not to say it was not on display] the higher entry charge of £10.25 for the joy of gift aiding.
• I was thus taken aback when asked to pay £10.25 instead of £9.30 the published entry fee.
• I do not understand how a donation of an extra 95p changes the original £9.30 into a donation.
• It is not clear if they intended to claim the tax back on the £9.30 or on the new figure of £10.25.
• Why could I not have said (as is suggested on the website above) that I did not wish to pay a £9.30 entry fee at all, but would donate £9.30 if they would let me in. Essentially this is what the Fishbourne Roman Palace people let you do.
• Whoever thought up this scheme is an idiot. I am quite happy to let charities claim back tax but not if I have to pay extra to do it.
• I think this explains, however, why - last year - so many places I went to allowed one to return again within a year in return for gift aiding. This seems to fit in with one point made by 'Taxback'.
  

This is music

After my weekend away with some dissonant music I needed a quick fix of good stuff. You can't beat this one. Enjoy!

What is that?

I've just found this video on this site.

Watch it. Did you cry? Yeah, me too!

R.I.P. Dad

Back Home

Woken by a howling cat at 6.30am on Saturday I got up an hour early, dressed, had breakfast and departed for the cathedral city [of which I wrote a few days ago] somewhere in England. I was in very good time for the 1.00pm start even though I took 45 minutes to find the hotel; the sat nav kept wanting me to turn up a No Entry street.

Today has been fine. The morning service went well (Palestrina and Eccard). Annoyingly, I came in correctly in the Agnus Dei and my neighbour came in a beat later but I thought I was wrong and he was right.

Evensong was a doddle. Psalm 100, Brewer in D and Sumsion's "They that go down to the sea in ships". Rose Responses and two of the hymns which I'd had at my wedding in 1983 meant I knew all the music.

Saturday, however, was grim, as I knew it would be. The composer had been engaged to play the organ [which he did all day Sunday, very well]. However, he was invited to conduct his own music whilst the usual conductor played the organ on Saturday. Now, he may well be a good organist but it was extremely obvious that he had not learnt the organ part for the canticles; there were tons of wrong notes and he just hadn't got the measure of the organ at all. In his eagerness to be 'nice' to the composer he effectively made the whole project twice as difficult. It was like cycling uphill with the brakes on.

Still, the whole choir went out for a meal in the evening which was very nice and I got to know some of them a little better. I may even go to sing with them again.

At least my voice was on form and the practice I had done paid off.

One happenstance to report. Su Pollard was staying at the same hotel as us as she was working in the city; she wears some very curious clothes! Any detective will now know where I was!

Late news

Well, I'm back from the choir rehearsal I attended this evening. It was 45 miles away so I tied it in with a visit to my mother.

As for my health I feel fine now, so it was probably the result of a day on the croquet lawns yesterday. I do not get hay fever as such but I have noticed exposure to grass [in the days when I used to cut the lawn myself] makes my nose run. I shall not be certain I am OK until tomorrow.

The rehearsal tonight was 'interesting'. The other tenor on my side hardly sang. There was an alto who had been primed to sing the tenor part but she didn't want to sit with us. The choir master didn't seem to care about the lack of definition from the basses; in fact it was like singing a solo most of the time; we could not hear the other side because we were not sitting opposite each other. It would have made sense to put all the same voices together to learn the stuff. What is more, I may find I am pushed to the other side on Saturday and back again on Sunday as some people can only make one or other of the days.

I am particularly annoyed by the cathedral's choice of one of the hymns. We have a 6 line verse to sing to a 12 line tune (hence 2 verses fit one sing-through) but - in all my 45 years of exposure to church music - I have not come across this tune before. It is a pretty tedious example, with no significant musical merit. Unless the congregation know it well (as a local 'party piece') they are going to struggle. Furthermore if we have to sing it in procession [unless it is in unison] we are well and truly f**ked.

As you can gather I am not a happy bunny at the moment.

A quick one

Not feeling too well this morning. Either I caught a bug during the blood donor session (all those people, so little air) or all day yesterday playing croquet did me in (I ache all over)

Anyway I logged in to share a link.

Semitones

This weekend coming I'm leaving Mrs TS at home as I am off to sing with a choir at a cathedral quite some distance away (I'd better not say which one for reasons which will become clear).

My sister roped me in as the choir with which she sings is short of tenors.

I received the newest music only a few days ago; I already had the Palestrina, Brewer and Rose Responses.

The Saturday Evensong music is nearly all by one (living) composer who is actually playing the organ for the occasion. His Responses are not too bad but the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis have required several hours of work at the piano for me to work out the notes. I wouldn't say I really know them well, even now, and if I lose my bearings or we cannot get the note after a few bars rest the tenor section will be sunk!

I have a real problem with guest choirs at cathedrals using their visit as an opportunity to show off; this isn't what the cathedrals want nor why they extend an invitation to visiting choirs. It also seems foolhardy to plan to sing a piece which is musically extremely demanding, especially when one has had to draft in supernumeraries.

The tenor part of the work in question often moves entirely by semitone and the notes swap to their enharmonic equivalents now and then. We only get a melody twice; even then the writing is angular. What was this guy thinking about?

I wish I could pull out.

I'll let you know how it goes.

An Arm Full

The video is here!

I went to give blood today. I was a donor some years ago but had to stop for health reasons. I now feel able to go back, but everything has changed.

The National Blood Service now run an appointment system although I think you can still walk in off the street. Mine was 2.55 and I parked the car in the town car park a few steps away from the hall they were using, having paid for an hour of parking; this proved to be only just enough.

When I went in, the atmosphere was one of hustle and bustle and there was a radio playing in the background; not very conducive to a calm atmosphere, I felt, although I expect somebody thought it would put the customers at their ease.

I was seen at 3.10 and did the health questions. They now ask you to have a drink before you donate, which was good as it was hot and I needed a glass of squash.

Once I was on the bed, they found a vein and then left me to get on with it! In the old days somebody sat with you all the time. Now they circulate and look at you now and then; a bleeper tells them when your bag is full.

Afterwards they do not ask you to lie down for a further 15 minutes; you sit and have a cuppa and a biscuit. I filled in the feedback form because the girl who did my interview spoke far too quickly and I could barely hear her above the radio anyway.

These days, as you donate, they advise you to wiggle your fingers and toes AND clench your buttock muscles! Two ladies who had given blood were sitting at the tea table laughing. When I asked why they told me they had done the buttock clenching as required but they were glancing round the room giving points for the quality of the buttock clenching they could see going on!

I hope my O-Neg is put to good use.

One for Steve

Steve says he cannot hold a tune in a bucket. I thought this video was both funny and informative. Enjoy!

Edit

The link above (today) sent me to the wrong video - I have no idea why. The whole set of videos is HERE.

Roast Beef

On Sunday I was given some runner beans by a chap who had plenty to spare. I decided to cook roast beef and Yorkshire pudding tonight as runner beans with gravy is a rare treat for me.

Our bean slicer has not been used much over the years; it's far easier to open a bag of frozen peas. [Also, I do object to buying runner beans from a supermarket which have been grown hundreds or thousands of miles away.] I cannot find a photo of our kind of bean slicer anywhere on the web; mother had one exactly like that shown above, but ours fixes to the worktop with rubber suckers. There is something rewarding about turning the handle. Mrs TS has vowed to throw this gadget out many times but I have resisted!

Earlier the afternoon I played the organ for a funeral at Higham Ferrers where I was organist from 1985-1989. The organ was ripped out over a year ago and they have a digital/pipe hybrid. It doesn't quite all work, even now.

However, they have reused the old keyboards, pedal board and stool so - once I had selected the stops - it was like being back at the same instrument, at least it felt the same but sounded totally different.

There was special music to play; three pieces of Bach. "Wachet Auf", "Air on the G String" and "Jesu Joy of Man's desiring". Luckily all these are 'party pieces' of mine.

Don't believe all you see on You Tube Here or Here.

So, two blasts from the past in one day.

A few websites

I have just returned from a holiday but will blog about it later (probably).

This is a list of a few websites I have visited recently.

http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ What it says! There are useful pages such as THIS.
http://www.recyclenow.com/ I recently bought a Kitchen Caddy
http://www.europadisc.co.uk/ I discovered this from a forum I visit but haven't used it yet although I shall point Santa Claus to this page.

Finally, this lady is becoming popular on the web!