Music Sweet Music

On top of Aran Fawddwy, highest peak in southern Snowdonia

Have we all slipped sideways into some parallel universe recently? One where Britain is not in the EU, David Cameron is not the Prime Minister, and Wales is the best football team in Europe? It seems quite possible that before the year is out, Germany, the US and Britain will all have a woman in charge. Or maybe we'll slip into another less palatable universe where Michael Gove is Prime Minister, Donald Trump is the US President and Europe's far-right parties begin to take control. Then it's probably time to head for the hills. (I'm already here.)

Despite all the political shenanigans taking place, life does have a habit of just carrying on much as it did before. I'm still growing veg and selling it on Wednesdays to the veg box scheme and on Fridays to local people, hotels and shops. I still keep inflicting this blog on the world every week. And I still play organ on Sundays at the church down the road. Last Sunday Anna joined me there on the violin.

Cwm Cywrach

Between us we formed about a third of the congregation, and as each hymn was announced we had to spring up, leave the tiny congregation which became even tinier, hurry to the back of the church and climb the steep stairs right to the top where the organ is located. Once we'd got our breath back we could begin to play. Fortunately the minister usually reads the lyrics of the first verse to fill time till the music starts.

The organ at the back of Mallwyd church

The musical side of things is picking up a bit for me here. I've been asked to play organ for a wedding at the end of July. When I went round on Monday to meet the couple and agree on what music to play, I was taken aback to find they were the same people from whom I'd collected a huge heavy wardrobe for Anna about six weeks ago, she'd found it on EBay. This is in a good-sized village twenty minutes drive away from here. To make it even more disconcerting they had moved house since then, but just across the road.

The vicar has kindly lent me a key to a village hall with a piano in it. It's not far from where Anna lives, so we've already been in and practised some violin/piano duets. A piano is a very different beast from the organ and one I feel a lot more comfortable on.

Mange tout and turnips from my garden

I've also started giving weekly piano lessons to a neighbour's daughter. She's keen to learn which helps me a lot. It's interesting seeing how she pieces together how the written notes match up to the keys in front of her, and attempt to control her fingers to play the right ones.

As a helpful reminder to me of how hard it is to learn musical notation, I recently came across an entirely different form of written music called “Sol-Ffa” which is apparently popular in Wales. There are no horizontal lines, no dots. Just four rows of letters, each one relating to a different note of the scale (Doh, Ray, Me, Fah, Soh, La, Tee), and a general instruction for what key to play it in. No obvious way of knowing whereabouts to play them on the keyboard, which fingers to use, or how long to play each note for. I think I'll leave that till I've mastered the Welsh language.

My first calendula flower to open