Indebted to debt
November 26th, 2012
Debt is something that’s been on my mind a lot this year. If you’ve seen my posts from earlier in the year you’ll be aware that my father passed away eight and a half months ago, and being his next of kin, I had to sort out all of his posthumous affairs – which involved sorting out some debt-related business (with added complications, unfortunately). I’ve also been paying increasing thought to my future housing situation, and the big decision that has to be made by anyone wanting to move in to a place of their own: to rent or buy? Read the rest of this entry »
The end of part 1
April 12th, 2012
At approximately 8:35 this morning, during the few minutes’ wait I had between connecting buses whilst on my way to work (for the first time in five weeks), I hit a milestone with some relief: that of finally, for the first time in over a month, having cleared the backlog of jobs I’ve had to do to sort out my father’s complicated affairs. The process is by no means over; there are still many many things that need to take place or that I need to do, the most pressing of which is obtaining the Grant of Letters of Administration from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. But that, like everything else for the time being, is now out of my hands: I sent the application off a few days ago, so now all I can do is wait. There are lots of things I’m waiting for or to happen, all of which will require my attention when they arrive/happen, but until they do so I can now relax… finally. It’s a nice feeling.
Four short weeks
April 8th, 2012
For a little while now I’ve been considering writing a blog post about what I’ve actually been doing in the past four weeks since my father passed away – to aid which I’ve been keeping a list of all of the main jobs I’ve been doing each day. I think most if not all of the people who read this blog find it via my Twitter stream, which has seen me post updates on what’s going on with reasonable frequency. But that’s only half the picture, really, because of the limitation upon tweets’ lengths and the desire to adhere to the etiquette of not spamming people’s timelines with large numbers of really boring tweets. On here, though, I have no such restrictions or concerns… so this is, for anyone who’s interested, what’s been taking up my time for the past few weeks, starting the day after my father passed away:
The final resting place
April 7th, 2012
False Promises
March 24th, 2012
False Promises is a piece I composed in 2007, and which has been dear to my heart ever since because it was performed to a composition class by professional musicians; for once, I found that other people actually liked the music I composed. It describes a particular aspect of my relationship with my father, and therefore has added poignancy for me at the moment… I had been toying with the idea of posting it ever since he passed away, and after having a chat with a friend earlier today about the frustrations of people never hearing my compositions, I’ve decided to do so. The programme notes feel too personal for me to post publicly, but I don’t mind sharing them privately if anyone wants to know more about the story the music is telling.
Consequences
March 13th, 2012
The story so far
March 3rd, 2012
I’m omitting some details, hospital visits and events from this for privacy reasons, and to avoid making it even more tedious to read than it probably already is. Some of the details I’ve omitted are important, but… there’s only so much I want to share with a blog the whole world can see.
Tuesday 14 February, 5:04am
I receive a text message from my father to say he’s in North Middlesex Hospital with fractured limbs, and that he needs my help. It sounds serious, but I keep an open mind.
Being Human
February 7th, 2012
Tonight I want to blog about Being Human, a programme which began its fourth series on BBC3 two nights ago. I sense its a programme that’s not too well-known, probably partly because it doesn’t air on one of the terrestrial channels, and I think that’s a shame: granted, this is just my personal opinion, but I think it’s a brilliant show. I don’t often get much of an emotional connection with stuff on the TV; it’s often just an empty-time-filler to me. But Being Human is really a case of… ‘wow’. Which is why I’m blogging about it: I want more people to discover and watch it!
White Wine in the Sun
December 24th, 2011
First of all: a warning that this is going to be a very self-centred post which, unusually for this blog, talks about feelings rather than merely things that happen to me or that I observe. I make no claims about how interesting it’ll be…
With that out of the way, the thing I want to discuss today is Christmas. That joyful time of the year when your head gets filled with countless cheesy Christmas songs and your stomach gets filled with more food than seems humanly possible. When ‘goodwill to all men’ is motto of the day and your week is filled with so much family time you don’t quite know what to do with yourself. I like Christmas. Not the tacky, commercial aspect of it, and I’m not religious either so that side of the festivities doesn’t have any meaning to me personally. But I like the sentiment; the giving, the receiving, the revelling in the sanctum of one’s own family and friends. Read the rest of this entry »
In print
December 3rd, 2011
A couple of weeks ago an unassuming little package dropped through my letterbox, adorned with a variety of Royal Mail stamps. It was just a small bubble envelope, whose contents were revealed to be two CDs of choral music. But these, however, were two choral music CDs with a slight bit of ‘specialness’ about them: they were produced by a friend’s music company and… were adorned with some photos I took. Read the rest of this entry »