The Man with No Time

It's been a busy weekend, so I'm breaking the posts up a bit to avoid a deluge all at once! Not only was it the final weekend of the 2014 6 Nations, but also the BULSCA Student Championships (more on that tomorrow). Except that I was only able to attend the Sunday of that event this year, because I had a concert on Saturday night! My orchestra, the Leamington Sinfonia, were performing at Kingsley School in Royal Leamington Spa. We had a great program of music, featuring one of my favourite symphonies, and gave what I think was a really good performance.

After last weekend's manic musical mayhem, last night was the culmination of all of that work. My last ever University of St Andrews Symphony Orchestra concert was a great success, and one of the best orchestra concerts that I've been part of whilst at this university.

Today was a rather sad day. But also, in another way, a rather awesome one. At lunchtime today I took part in my last St Andrews Bassoon Quartet concert (or at least, what should be my last one if everything goes to plan). It's been three years since the quartet formed, initially just to do some Christmas busking, and it's been a blast. We've put on some great concerts in that time, and have repeatedly pulled them off with limited, or accelerated, rehearsals. What's more, most of the music has been arranged specially by our members.

Last weekend was the Queen's official diamond jubilee, which meant a four day weekend here in the UK.  Time for a holiday! I spent all day on Saturday on a train down to Coventry for my friend James' 33rd birthday party. It was a relatively civilised affair, with little in the way of alcohol fuelled silliness; unsurprising really, as James is teetotal. Not that I minded, as it was a nice evening of good food and conversation, and some of the other people there were friends that I'd not seen in years. After sleeping in on Sunday morning we managed to get a few board games in before I left. James' collection has grown even more vast since I left Warwick, and I got to try out a couple of new games. "7 Wonders" is an interesting card game, and I'd be keen to play it again now that I've got a bit of an idea of how it works, whilst "King of Tokyo" was a fun little diversion, but not something that I'd play too often. We also broke out ...