Work wise January was a very quiet month. The highlights are always the Three King festivals that we put on in the 2 care centres here on Dønna and Heroy. There is (unsurprisingly!) copious amounts of cake and hot chocolate and the singing of Christmas songs round the Christmas tree, the main feature of these events is the little play put on portraying the visit of the wise men to King Herod and then Bethlehem. Despite my, all modesty aside, quite stunning interpretation of Gabriel before Christmas, my role this year was much diminished. In 2023 I was the star leading the wise men on a small journey but this time I was demoted to merely plugging the star in to a power outlet. Not much scope for dramatic interpretation there. And talk about being kicked when I was down, I didn’t win anything in the Bingo. This was slightly offset by a kindly gentleman for Lokta donating one of his prizes to me.
After all the busy Christmas period, we didn’t have many services in January - indeed just one service on each of the islands. I had told Liv-Helga about a piece by Theodore Dubois called the March of the Three Kings and explained that to represent the star the performer had to stick a pencil in one of the keys and she seemed quite keen for me to play it. As I was rehearsing it before the service, Stig enquired if the organ was broken as there seemed to be something wrong. Not the most reassuring comment I’ve ever had regarding my organ playing so I took the unusual step of asking Liv-Helga to say something about the piece before I played it so that people knew it was meant to sound like that.
All that being said, I have to be honest and say that I found December and January quite tough. Due to a late change in the work schedule I ended up working everyday for Christmas - I thought I had the 28th off but it ended up that I didn’t and this affected me a lot more than it should have, and let’s be honest, more than I expected. I then had a piano recital on the 31st and as that got closer I got depressed about the lack of musicality in my playing. And for whatever reason the heating didn’t go on so had to play in the cold - during the concert I came close to saying, sorry I can’t play this particular movement because my hands are so cold.
Throughout January there was a number of little things that individually I could have coped with but they just seemed to pile on top of each other. I had physical problems as well - my wrists seem to have lost a lot of strength, toothache (which I normally take as a warning that my physical health isn’t great but visited the dentist (at vast expense it must be added!) and also developed a problem with a finger on my right hand. Obviously my first thought was that I had some sort of brain condition but thanks to the diagnosis of my friend Amy it would appear that I’ve got “trigger finger”. When it was at its worst, I needed to use my left hand to straighten the finger out on my right hand which as a keyboard player is not ideal. It is worst in the mornings and it hasn’t affected my playing so far.
But speaking of little things and on a more positive note I have acquired a kitten. The poor little sod arrived in Bjørn in the middle of a 20 hour power cut so his first evening was dark and cold. Not a promising start but he seems to have settled in a bit better now. Trashed the toy I bought him though. I am very much enjoying reading/ watching all the JRR Tolkien stuff at the moment so I’ve called him Finrod (“the faithful” or “friend of men”) - a musical Elf who appears in the Silmarillion. He comes to a sticky end (the Elf, not my cat) against Sauron but think we should be safe in that regard on Dønna. I actually went to see the new animated Lord of the Rings film across in Sandnessjøen and I literally had the entire cinema to myself - but even then I still squirmed during the trailer for an “adult” animated film.
It has been the worst winter weather I have endured so far - as well as the power cut mentioned above, my car got stuck in the snow at the house and at one point when I was driving down to Herøy I could not see in front of the car. It was so bad that I stopped and when it let up a little I discovered that I had actually been driving off the side of the road.
To finish on a positive note, I had a visit from Rebecca and Owen who had been back in Dundee and they very kindly brought me back some Haggis, Tunnock’s Wafers and Typhoo tea bags so all is now well again in Graeme’s world :-)
Commentaires