'RITES' rights

Since Andrea's raised the question of pre-ordering RITES OF SPRING in the US, I thought I'd better mention, regretfully, that as yet we haven't sold the US rights. Hodder & Stoughton are publishing it in the UK and Commonwealth territories - so if you're in Canada, South Africa, Australia etc, you'll be able to find it in a shop near you sometime after 13 March. But in the USA, nope. I suggest pre-ordering from Amazon.co.uk via the link at the top of the index - I'm sure they can ship to the States. Sweet of you to toast me/it, Andrea - thank you!! My cat decided to join in and brought me a well-mangled mouse as a present last night...

By the way, the Amazon blurb has nothing to do with me, and, frankly, not all that much to do with my book. RITES may not exactly be Ian McEwan, but it's a little more serious than it sounds in their paragraph. Anorexia ain't funny and the girl in the story is in a life-threatening situation. Before you ask, I've never had anorexia. Given the amount of it in the school I attended, that seems little short of miraculous, but I always liked my food far too much. Especially chocolate.

HELLO!!! - ANY US PUBLISHERS OUT THERE WANT TO HAVE A LOOK AT MY BOOK????

Fiddleblog?

Tasmin Little is on tour in South America and is ALMOST blogging it. She's writing 'Letters' chronicling the trip on her website. To me, that looks like blogging, Tasmin - welcome aboard the blogosphere! In just a few days her experiences have included an earthquake, an almost equally alarming cocktail, some astonishing-sounding food and some fantastic audiences at her recitals. But does Roger Moore do the Spanish cryptic crossword? To read the latest, click here.

Memory lane

A post at Sequenza 21 about Palestrina takes me back twenty years to heady (and chillier than now) days at Cambridge University, where all music students had to learn to write 16th-century counterpoint. It was rather like filling in a crossword puzzle. I suppose it kept us out of all-night parties, dangerous drugs and, worst of all in the faculty's eyes, daring to practise our musical instruments. I'm not certain what other useful function it fulfilled, but I do have a vague fondness for the calmness and beauty of Palestrina as a result. Two LPs of it found their way into my then-modest collection and I used to play them frequently in an attempt to immerse myself in the ancient aesthetic we were attempting to recreate. The trouble was that the music is so calm and so beautiful that it's also extremely soothing. I don't remember ever hearing either album to the end - I always fell sound asleep about half way through...

If you're new to the wonders of Palestrina, try this CD.

Meanwhile, to wake you up, here are a few responses to Google searches that have led to some readers finding this blog:

The Octobass is huge and magnificent and lives in the Musical Instrument Museum in the Cite de la Musique in Paris.

I don't think Nikolai Znaider is married, but I may be wrong.

I don't know who Leif Ove Andsnes's girlfriend is.

Marc-Anthony Turnage is NOT 'awful'. He's a great guy and writes fantastic music.

Heim truths

Oh yes! Norman tells it like it is.

All I can add is that I wouldn't mind paying to hear this lady if I could stand what she does musically. But I can't. Her Korngold recording, to be fair, is OK, but the Tchaikovsky that's paired with it is cringe-worthy...as for the Mozart, well, we'll see.

KEATS for golden October

TO AUTUMN by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.