House upheaval

Nearly degutted kitchen

Last week was traumatic. Not only did I have operations on both eyes because of retinal tears, but the builders arrived to gut our kitchen in preparation for our new one.
This meant moving contents of kitchen cupboards into... somewhere else. So now we ask, "where did we put them?" "I was looking for a bit of mustard..." "Do you know where I can find a tea towel?" "Where are the sprinkly things?" (aka spices).
Poor husband was traumatised by this chaos. He'd planned to bake a cake on the Friday before his train Risex exhibition, but with two builders, two plumbers and an electrician wandering about the kitchen, noise from drills or saws, old plaster and paint falling off the ceiling, no cupboards, water or electricity sometimes going off, dust sheets or dust over everything, and where are the scales? Er? no! No cake this year.
I hope the Risex visitors aren't traumatised by lack of cake.

Some contents of some cupboards

Choir recording project

Angel studios welcomes NSC

Our choir made a recording at Angel Studios, London. Most of us had never been in a recording studio before, never recorded before, and indeed, our local choir didn't exist a year ago.
The building looks old from the outside, but inside you have no natural light, no idea what’s happening outside and most of the inside is sound proofed, padded and stripped of its originality. You can still see character in the stair banisters, and the old gas fire at the end of the ladies’ loo. We were about 80 people to fit in our studio, of which there are at least three.

We recorded only six songs, about 20 minutes worth, but those took all day, doing takes and retakes, as well as the director reminding us of parts or to be quiet, and freeze at the end of a take, not claim, cough or shuffle. We finished with a minute to spare at one minute to six, time enough to take some more photos of the choir to go with the CD.

A few of us stayed after recording to watch the mixing. I walked into the mixing lab as they were playing one of our songs and was stunned to hear what we sound like. You usually hear only your own part, concentrate on that and can't hear the blend. We're good!
The technology was fascinatingly powerful; look at this speaker on the wall. It's as big as quadraphonic speakers, so you can imagine the quality of sound that it produces..

Speaker

Mixer board with two choir acolytes 

Look out for the Next Stage Choirs Christmas recording in the autumn. This is going to be amazing.

Prickly new car

Why do Citroen call their car a Cactus?
It should fit better in my garage than my old car: http://ejh2.blogspot.com/2009/12/tight-squeeze.html
Got a new car. It's all right. It's bigger than I need now I have neither children nor octogenarians to transport.; I'm not the hugged (aka squeezed) generation any more