Beethoven

What could anyone say on Beethoven other than sheer brilliance. To go all through the nine symphonies  and listen to tonight's performance was truly wonderful. I literally cannot describe the feeling it produced in me.

I have been listening to Beethoven forever, or rather it feels like that. as from the time of being a tiny little girl, aged three, I heard his music as my mum loved it. We used to listen to what I called Radio Three but I'm not sure I understood the BBC bit at that age; I merely loved his music.

Later on we had records, from my uncle and I progressed from "The Pastoral", Symphony no.6 to many other composers, including Chopin, Ravel, and many others, and so my love of classical music grew. I learned how beautifully Julian Bream played classical guitar and what a harp sounded like.

However, and I have discovered many composers since whom I love, and the musicians who perform their music, but Beethoven will always have a special place in my heart, yes, because it's something my mum and I just loved listening to together, and I just listened so intently, I felt I had every note and rhythm in my heart and if I could sing every part of the orchestra at once, I would.

I agree with my mum on the symphonies she liked best apart from the fourth which is  one of my favourites. She agreed in the end too. The first two she felt, were a bit like Mozart, which I see no problem with at all, but I know what she meant. The third, "Eroica", she adored and she loves the seventh and the ninth is the absolute conclusion to sheer beauty. So I basically will totally thank my dear mother for my total love of Beethoven.

In younger and sillier days, my mum and I used to prance around the living room, pretending we could actually perform ballet, and what a wonderful memory that is, which will never leave me. :-).

My mum never played an instrument , and probably never got the opportunity to learn but she danced, and I would have loved to have learned to do that, but we give each other different things. She gave me the chance to learn piano and violin later and I an eternally grateful for that.Most of all though, she gave me my love of Beethoven, and it will remain forever.

As a pianist, I had a great adoration of his piano concertos, another of my gifts in listening from my mum. We started as usual with the 5th (Emperor) and progressed through the earlier ones; all beautiful, but the slow movement of the 5th will always be part of me.

I was a reasonable pianist, I think, well got good grades, and my teacher believed in me but I only went so far, but I did play the first movement of the "moonlight sonata", think that is grade five, and loved playing it. His music is technically difficult, hence the brilliance of him.

Anyway, enough ranting for tonight. I will always love Beethoven's music.

A new day.thing

I feel inspired to write this by a comment on twitter, which was a response to me wondering "What tomorrow may bring"? The answer was "Magic" and "Wonderment" and to enjoy the day. May I say this made me smile and I thought that it was a lovely way to look at life.

Sometimes when we go to bed, we dread the next day, if it holds something we don't want to do, so we create scenarios, and they are not usually as bad as we imagine, but it takes a lot of will to follow through what you don't want to do: in my own personal experience, this usually happens because you have had a bad personal experience previously. However, I realise I am not remotely alone in this feeling.

This is an extremely personal thing which will have individual meanings to us all.

I am not writing this about myself, although it could so easily apply, but I feel sympathetic to the individual concerned.

In many ways, I would like to "practice what I preach", but alas I do not. I still live with my own fears, and it's an awful lot easier to advise someone else than to do the same thing yourself.

The whole point is though, to try to find a way through the past experiences and issues that hold us back from being our true selves. We all have a right to be ourselves and not be controlled by anyone, whether it be governments, or any other "body", that has that power.

Everyone should live within standards that are exceptable  to all, but we should never dread tomorrow for the sake of any other's actions.

Life really is beautiful when you open your eyes to it. Just being out in the garden on a sunny day in Scotland, which has been rare this summer, can do wonders for your soul. :-). ;just being with the people you love is all important.; losing your past issues is much harder but by no means impossible.

Here is to tomorrow and the joy of living. :-)

Plans.

I have never in my whole life been a fan of planning anything. In my experience, plans never work out as you want them too, so you just end up disappointed after all the original stress of trying to make them work, for all involved in the first place! It all seems pretty pointless to me.

I am a naturally spontaneous person who likes to live for the moment, especially as you never quite know how you are going to feel at any given time.It may be extremely obvious that I also write my blogs in this way but this is just who I am and how I operate.

Actually, in the process of planning events, I usually know how they will transpire. I will wake up with a sore back, a road will be closed somewhere, we will get lost, no-one will agree on what they want to do, I will end up making the picnic, I will not have enough tea and so the list goes on. I should laugh really as it usually turns out fine and you enjoy it, it's just the planning of it I dislike.

I've never been into holidays where every day involves something you have to see or do. To me, a holiday means escaping your normal stresses, not having to do them in a different way. Maybe I am not a true traveller at heart.

I personally think that some of the best experiences of my life have been totally impromptu.they have certainly been my happiest ones.


I love seeing anything new, I love museums, I love live music, and I love isolated places of beauty. I just can't do it all at once.


For me, I work at my best when I just feel like doing something, whether it be playing piano, reading, using the computer or doing crosswords; I work with my mood at the time. That is a brief description of a few things I would choose. 


I have never really thought that my mum and myself were terribly similar, but we are in that way; she hated plans too. :-)

In my last blog, I wrote a brief comment on someone I very liked who passed over. Nobody could have planned for that to happen so why do we at all?

There is not one of us who can possibly know what is ahead, no matter how we try to work it out, and nobody loves analysis more than me. We just really don't know what will happen, so hence the pointlessness of plans.

However, I do appreciate that to function in this world, at times they are necessary, or maybe we would never do anything!. However, adaptation is a great skill and it's something worth remembering. :-)
 

Death

Today,I went to the  funeral of a very lovely person whom I knew for a long time. She was a beautiful person, in every sense of the word; I mean, absolutely beautiful as she had a heart of gold, like all her family.
        One of the saddest things about this is, is that people kind of "lose touch" to some extent and it's only when they pass over that you suddenly remember all the wonderful bits about them; they were never forgotten, merely life goes on with our own personal issues and we lose track of others.
What I will always remember about this absolutely beautiful soul is her determination, what a "laugh" she was, her loyalty to all, and how much she "Stood up for me" in the face of adversity;What an absolute "Gem" she was, and will always be, and I hope she knows I am saying this.


I aspire to people like her and those close whom I was privileged to be around. 
Many would say I should not write this, but I want to and I wish there were more people like her in this world; she wouldn't even have minded the mistakes in my writing; she was everything we should aspire to be;a true gem!


Rest in peace you lovely soul.  Fiona xxxxx 

Just thoughts

I just like writing what I feel at the time, so I will do so.

I have had both a frustrating and inspiring day. It started with my "Hoover", which technically is a vacuum cleaner but it will always be a "Hoover" to me as that was who made them when I was little. It wouldn't lift the various deposits on the carpet, the cat hair, the crisps, curtesy  of my gorgeous four year old granddaughter, the general mess that always ends up on a carpet or actually anything whatsoever. Well, I decided to take this "Hoover" to bits as I had gathered that the tube was blocked, and then I truly wished I had not bothered to do so.What a job this was! I had to remember where every screw was, to put it back together, thought I had actually managed to unblock the lower tube, but realised that was not the actual problem; the problem was in the other tube, the one that is supposed to be easy to remove but just isn't! My goodness, I could go on about this "Hoover" for ever but it really was extremely annoying and time consuming.

I gave up on the first episode of trying to fix it, but being the stubborn individual that I am, I had to try again, This time after eventually removing other hose and detecting blockage with the help of my husband. After him suggesting using his "stick", I finally dislodged the offending article which was a bit of cardboard that dust had gathered round, caused by my cats scraping boxes. All that for a bit of cardboard! The "Hoover" was nearly fired out the window, so short my patience was, yet I can have endless patience  for what I like.

Now I will get to the nice ending to this frustrating experience. I did eventually fix this annoying appliance and ended up having a very interesting (in twitter language), chat with the clever and I think, very talented @AndrewDBaird1. I have a huge interest in Astrology but I do not have the knowledge, though it is something you could forever study. I would like to learn more on "The houses", which I barely understand, I didn't quite get that far. I understand some of the aspects in Astrology, but it is a highly complicated subject and I massively want to learn more. Anyway, if anyone out there wants to learn more, I would recommend Andrew, as I just know he has complete instinct and knows what he is talking about. I will be ever fascinated on this whole subject.

From "Hoovers", which are "Vacuum cleaners" to Astrology, it has been an interesting day. :-)

Next cat

To continue on my cat theme, I am going to write about my beautiful little cat "Mo".

After the disappearance of my gorgeous "Tiger", whom I missed greatly, I heard of a litter of kittens from a friend. Her cat had had a litter of four kittens and "Mo" was the tiniest. She was absolutely lovely and I instantly fell in love with her. She was a black cat, quite similar to "Suzy" who I have now. However she had a completely different personality.

"Mo" was a tree climber from the beginning and I still laugh at the memory of her getting stuck up a tree as a kitten at my Granddad's, just before we were about to leave for the train. He had to get out a stepladder to rescue her, but I rather think she could quite easily have climbed down. I think she just liked his garden. :-). Anyway, we made the train in the end. She probably didn't want to go in the cat box. That's fair enough.

"Mo", like "Tiger",was a very affectionate little cat but didn't have "Tiger"s following me everywhere instincts. Maybe that's a Tabby trait which I will go into more detail later on my four Tabbies. She would curl herself around my neck when she wanted petted and had a very loud "purr".

She liked my mother's Copper Beech tree too and spent many an hour up there watching what ever she wanted to. The tree is now more mature (obviously) as it was just a young tree when my dad transplanted it from my Uncle's garden in Devon and now it is just lovely. Incidentally, when I was young and fit, I spent a bit of time up that tree myself so I can see the attraction of just being there. However, I don't suppose "Mo" wanted to read as I did. Lol.

I had "Mo" for five lovely years until she became a victim of traffic. It still makes me sad to remember but she had her freedom. Later I will write on why I have house cats now, but this is the first clue.

Cats

Since I was a tiny girl, I have always loved cats; actually all animals but especially cats. I grew up with a beautiful black Labrador called Honour who I adored , and in addition we got a lovely wee budgie called Dougie but I always wanted a cat.

When I was nine years old, my grandma took me to Gourock to stay with my aunt. One day whilst out playing I made friends with a lovely little cat and told my grandma about her. She was very thin, and incredibly hungry and as it turned out pregnant and very young. My grandma rescued her (both her and my aunt loved cats) and I wrote a begging letter to my dad asking if I may keep her. I didn't hold out much hope but amazingly he agreed . As we were going to Devon when I went home, my Grandma looked after "Judy" as I had now named her, while we were away. She so fell in love with her though, she couldn't bear to part with her. Instead, I was given a beautiful little tabby kitten whom I named "Tiger" and she became the "Joy of my life". :-).

"Tiger" was a beautiful female cat with a lot of love to give. ( And I still got to visit "Judy"). She used to follow me everywhere and literally did follow me to school a couple of times which was most amusing, to say the least. ( A bit like the nursery rhyme.."Mary had a little lamb".) I had four and a half lovely years with her, then she decided to share two different houses ;mine and that of a family who started feeding her and wouldn't stop doing so, even though asked politely not to. She was well fed and loved, but apparently she threatened the Bantam hens! Well that was their excuse.

This may sound hypocritical as we adopted "Judy" but my grandma did try to find out who she belonged to, and she was obviously starving, but these people knew she belonged to me. It got to the stage where I had to go and ask for my cat back everyday, but the lady continued to feed her. It still annoys me to this day.

Eventually I gave up, and told them just to keep her. Sadly, shortly after, she disappeared and I never found out what happened to her. I loved that little cat.

I have written so much on her, I will save what I write on all the lovely cats I have had and the beautiful two I have now,for another blog.