Ah...

There is a weighty feeling that drags like a plummeting lift when you realise that an essential piece of the preparation for a project is still unfinished the night before or worse still , has not even been started. As day dawned after a very short night I had no visa to enter Australia. An e-application is lodged but progress halted at Friday teatime. At work with on a project 90 children this morning it was easy to slip back into denial and pretend that I wasn't even booked into Oz at all - maybe I'll be bicycling round Anglesey after all. But tickets are booked, car park pre-paid, hotel confirmed, seat T18 in the stalls of Sydney Opera house has my name on it, for one day at least.

Epic effort for a Master

An amazing day yesterday - Tom,who organised tickets for the BBC Proms as birthday gift, arrived about 9pm on Friday evening. After a late night session swotting up with a DVD of Wagner's Die Meistersinger (helped down with bread, cheese and a bottle of German lager) we went to bed at 2 am, got up at 6 and zipped down the M1 to Potters Bar where we touched base with big sister Liz who leapt into her car to lead us in to Potters Bar Station. Racing against time, we jumped on a train to Finsbury Park, changed to the Piccadilly line for South Kensington just making it to take our seats in the Recital Room of the Royal College of Music for 11am and an illuminating talk by historian Tim Blanning about the historical context of this fascinating, entertaining and once you have a translation to hand, thoroughly accessible masterpiece.

The Meistersingers and Guildsmen of 15th century Nuremburg seem to have had much in common with the Little Mester Cutlers of Sheffield who were held in high esteem before the magnates of the industrial revolution ensnared them into dependency and transformed the once green and pleasant Don Valley into a reeking vale of filth from which it is only just recovering. I could see where Wagner was coming from in his critique of a society defensively clinging to the rituals of the past. The struggle of the creative and passionate to shine through a protective layer of restrictive rules and regulations is an issue now, as as ever.

Tom had to prod me awake a few times in the following two talks which were only slightly less inspiring but I am pleased to say that I was fully recovered by the time we took our seats in the choir stalls in the grand Royal Albert Hall, possibly I ws sitting in the very seat where my Grandad Logan once sat when he sang with the Royal Choral Society in the 1930s. Fortunately I wasn't required to sing, just to sit back and set free Bryn Tervel and the awesome Welsh National Opera Company on the stage of my imagination.

The next six hours flowed by in a most civilised manner with tea interval for a picnic in Kensington Gardens. Too soon we were streaming out of that magnificent building with 6,000 others and heading back by Tube to drive back up the motorway and fall into bed at three o'clock this morning. Thankfully the 6,000 others went home by another route.

This morning I find myself humming the cobblers' anthem. Maybe, now I have a full set of instructions from a Master, I shall write my own travelling song.

Fifteen days ...

Fifteen days till take off. Some travelling to do first. Last weekend Maidenhead, Cheptstow and back to catch up with family. This Friday down to London with Tom to immerse ourselves in Wagner. My first Prom, first Wagner, not quite the usual introduction - five hours or so of Die Meistersinger in German, a concert performance so no story, no lavish costumes or magnificent set - just the music.We get a masterclass and an introduction to Wagner talk beforehand but I somehow think we will be revising as we drive.

Got to plan, got to pack ...

Just four weeks until I set out for Australia and I'm busy every day until I go.
I've got a ticket so that's a good thing. A passport and a visa too. I've a birthday gift of Australian dollars to buy myself a treat and I've bought two books - no three: Australia , Brisbane and Sydney. I hope I read them before I get back.

I've pulled my suitcase down from on top of the wardrobe, opened it and closed it again. It's full of the blankets I'm saving for the ice age.
I've got four weeks.