Home to a music feast

Up before six, driving for half an hour to Birmingham airport in the rain to take Rachel to her six forty five check-in. So sad to say goodbye to her, even though she's only ever a Skype or Viber call away. She loves rain, and is returning to 40C+ in Phoenix, with infrequent downpours even in the 'monsoon' season, as she calls it. After breakfast, we went to bed again for an hour, before tidying up and leaving for home. It only rained for the first hour. By the time we stopped for a coffee at Strensham services, driving conditions were much improved.

After lunch I went into the office for an hour, which ended up being two hours as Ashley's new Acer all in one desktop stuck and then crashed in the middle of some indefinable process and then hung with a black screen after reboot. I tried all the various repair options in turn without success, and finally resorted to a factory re-set, still running when I set out for home much later than I wanted to. I listened to the Archers on my Blackberry as I was walking to the bus stop, and was late for supper. Cursed machines!

We watched the evening's BBC Promenade Concert from the Albert Hall, modern American orchestral music with choir singing as an instrument, the way the composer and conductor Eric Whitacre put it. One piece paid homage to the revelatory stellar discoveries of the Hubble telescope. In its final movement Whitacre invited promenaders to access a smartphone app (with call handling switched off) to look at pictures taken by Hubble of an area of sky dark to us but emanating light from myriads of galaxies 13 billion light years away, almost as old as the universe itself. If I understood aright, the sound  of Hubble's signal was broadcast from the phone app, and its low level background noise from hundreds of devices written into the musical score. Ingenious, with a genuine touch of awesomeness in its beauty.

Then, BBC Four offered the 1955 movie of Guys and Dolls, digitally re-mastered in brightest technicolour Cinemascope, chock full of memorable songs and witty wisecracking dialogue, fabulous stageing and dance routines. It was late, but irresistible to watch. Though tired, I didn't fall asleep, and staggered to bed very very late, happy to have re-visited my distant youth, with Miles Davis' from the album 'Birth of the Cool' version of 'If I was a bell' ringing in my head, rather than that of inebriated Jean Simmons in the movie. Lovely times.