{"id":1582,"date":"2010-05-18T15:47:39","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T14:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/?p=1582"},"modified":"2010-05-18T17:10:01","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T16:10:01","slug":"football-with-a-french-accent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/?p=1582","title":{"rendered":"Football with a French accent"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1583\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1583\" style=\"width: 241px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/garagepair.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1583\" title=\"garagepair\" src=\"http:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/garagepair-241x300.jpg\" alt=\"children\" width=\"241\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/garagepair-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/garagepair.jpg 515w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 241px) 100vw, 241px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1583\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An enthusiastic Amy tries to put a spring in Oliver&#39;s steps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At last the weather has turned warmer. Walked three miles back from Joe&#8217;s at lunchtime after beating him 3-0 at chess (the first luckily on time, but the other two quite good games), and stepped into John Lewis&#8217;s to research TVs for Andrew, adding a diversion to Timberhill to buy Claxton Opera tickets. Very pleasant. \u00a0The weather was quite good at the weekend too, which we spent at Caddington to celebrate prematurely David&#8217;s 38th birthday \u2013 actually today. On the Saturday we were joined by Philip Coomes and family, and had a really good time, rather too much of it spent playing football in the garden, which meant I was exhausted in the evening and went to sleep through <em>Dr Who<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Oliver is developing into a really good little footballer, and Lydia and Alistair aren&#8217;t bad either. Meanwhile Amy has developed a French accent, though only while talking to her dolls. The various French numbers feature strongly, but although I didn&#8217;t recognise any other words, they sounded as if they ought to be proper French words, even if they weren&#8217;t. Taught Oliver a bit of guitar after I managed to get it roughly in tune and Dot finished it off. Oliver is also learning cello, and Vicky came round in the evening to give him a lesson. Amy has a keyboard in her bedroom, so it&#8217;s just a question of time\u2026 On the Sunday we had lunch at the Harvester nearby: just right for a family, though Oliver was feeling rather poorly, with a cold suddenly developing. Had a decent steak.<\/p>\n<p>On the way home we decided on the spur of the moment to call in to see Joan at Baldock. Against the odds, she was in and had a couple of friends with her. They insisted we stay, so we had a pleasant hour or so there. The female friend had been to Wall Hall College, so she and Dot had something in common, though they weren&#8217;t there at the same time. Joan has just had another granddaughter (Harriet&#8217;s) and is going up to Leeds to see her today.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday Dot had to go to Acle school in the morning, but she got back in time to come with me to the lunchtime Norfolk and Norwich Festival concert we&#8217;d booked for at the Assembly House. Good value at \u00a37. Superb cellist Jessica Hayes paired with Polish accordionist Rafal Luc. An unlikely team, but I thought it worked well, though Dot was not as convinced. Both agreed that the accordion solo of Mendelssohn&#8217;s Organ Sonata No 6 was brilliant, sounding just like an organ: tremendous force and amazing dexterity and feeling. Called in at John Lewis afterwards for tea and looking for an iPod dock, but couldn&#8217;t find what we wanted: similarly failed later at the Apple Store.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been fortunate with our Festival choices: on Friday we went to St Andrew&#8217;s Hall for the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, which was absolutely brilliant, especially during the opening Borodin. The final Shostakovich I found less memorable, though it was technically well-nigh perfect. Violinist Chloe Hanslip was great (except in actual stature) for her performance of Philip Glass&#8217;s Violin Concerto No 1, which I thought was brilliant. At the end the orchestra did a couple or encores featuring their livewire redhead drummer Alla Mamyko. The percussionists were fascinating throughout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At last the weather has turned warmer. Walked three miles back from Joe&#8217;s at lunchtime after beating him 3-0 at chess (the first luckily on time, but the other two quite good games), and stepped into John Lewis&#8217;s to research TVs for Andrew, adding a diversion to Timberhill to buy Claxton Opera tickets. Very pleasant. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/?p=1582\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Football with a French accent<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1513,870,928,1512,1450,969,1076,1514,1135,1256],"class_list":["post-1582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accordion","tag-amy","tag-caddington","tag-cello","tag-concert","tag-david","tag-joan","tag-moscow","tag-oliver","tag-vicky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1582"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1586,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions\/1586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog360.back2sq1.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}