Following the feet

Even if March, a lunchtime walk beyond the first water meadow slightly dusts my feet. Mud is there to be found by the thirsty wasp, the probing beak of waterfowl, but the path is dry. The leaf litter rattles and pops in the sun and the occasional scurry of furred or feathered feet. Birds call out, love and alarm, threat and food. Great-tits saw, chiff-chaffs call eponymously, wrens laugh and trill in greater proportion to their size; crows crow and all over the woods, the nuthatches are whooping at each other like the ones in my garden. Amongst the brimstones I see a single white, a single brown (some sort of fritillary I wonder).

I pass the place I watched a chaser last year; this year just a stream, the pool deleted by waterway maintenance. Across the water meadow looking out for the swampy patches, flagged by soft rush, but finding only cracked mud. Black spiders run, avoiding my shadow; I avoid them in turn, twisting my footfalls to mimise the genocide. A ground beetle.

I pause on the following bridge to watch the still ditch. I hear gulls testing out the thermals over the wooded ridge, the alternating alarm and scalding of a wren, hoping to keep the destination for its full beak of moss a secret, but still in a hurry to build. The faint stink of still water frequented by livestock overcomes the air, which is otherwise almost undisturbed. The nearest hawthorn trees are marked with a green outline and further up the ditch is a willow with a straw coloured halo. These colour patterns follow the field edges and merge with the faint pink of silver-birch trees and the stubborn browns of the slower oaks and the beeches, still diplaying a crisp crop from last autumn. Towards the town and river a dog barks, its owner barking still louder, so I move back again, mindful of the spiders but watching the shape of two buzzards following the gulls and crows up in circles.

Joining the few open bluebells in the woods I find a single violet and, returning to fields and sun, a dead-nettle in bloom. The dandylions poke their golden muzzles up, measuring the year as surely as their later seeds will measure the hours.

First Magnolia

Unadorned yet with leaves, yet with tulip blooms revealing their inner layers, ready to point to the compass marks and every heading in between, an ivory feather duster palm greets the spring sunshine on my way to work, just as the camellias bring forth their third flush of pink and carmine. The best one in the village is just about to peak (again), but unusually has already started to grow out its shoots of paler green and fresh foliage. The bravest of all these plants began at Christmas, in that warm spell we enjoyed away from work and strolling and chasing children, who hoped, forlornly, for snow.

Now a variety of bees buzz in the garden, spiders are already looking round and ready to lay their silked eggs. The birds pair off by species. Robins are building by the conservatory, in a pile of pots; blackbirds strut and squabble; doves love and coo; a trio of coaltits confounded the still air on Sunday by the compost bins. Last afternoon, while washing up, a brimstone fluttered. Two weeks since, the pond started to gel with the spawn of frogs; the water's surface dances every time I pass en route to the shed with potential mates, bathing.

Saturday was beautiful. Saturday was gorgeous, down by the Solent, a few rounded sails passing in front of the needles. We visited the sailing club to sit or stand and chatter, laziness excused by refreshments. A very few were sailing, but spring cleaning and the first mechanical service of the year were being exercised out on the water; tenders plied and faces shone at the prospect of the start of water sports again.

A third flush of camellia flowers

I've been reading about the process of learning mandolin on the forums of mandolin cafe from a bunch of folk who have been before me, and had enough interest to pass on some tips. The first tip that struck me as useful was to actually know the piece that you are trying to play, and I was reminded how poorly I knew some of the tunes in the my Hal Leonard Mandolin Method Book 1. Much of the material is folksy or bluegrass, neither of which genre is particularly familiar to me.

So I sat down and actually listened to the accompanying CD, indeed I ripped it to my MP3 player and listened to it and - some of it I don't like much and much of it is played technically perfectly, with great detail and precision, but a total lack of soul. I realise that this is part of the teaching method, and that more advanced techniques bring the soul back in and add some enthusiasm and verve, but it left me uninspired.

I've tried stealing my youngest's guitar tunes, but they have a bad habit of hitting G and carrying on down. So I decided to buy myself a mandolin book that I could have a bit more fun with: Beatles For Mandolin. Lots of tunes that I know, that I enjoy and that I can listen to with pleasure. Like all Beatles transcriptions, I'm sure that there are detractors of these arrangements, but some are suitably simple and fun and they sound fine to my ears. For example, it so happens that the introduction to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is very simple for mandolin, but instantly recognisable. I'm racing through "Here Comes the Sun" at the moment, but the instrumental parts are too hard for me.

The second tip that came to my notice is that the strike on the mandolin strings is an oblique one. With the arm still and rotating the wrist, the pick is stroked across the strings at an angle. This gives a much more mellow sound; sounding the two strings clearly.

Other suggestions were to make every fret count (In other words to avoid playing lazily and carelessly) and also to play loudly - I think because it amplifies the errors.

Anyway, the consequence of these ideas and a new book and some practice, is that I'm having more fun and improving. I also treated myself to a Snark multi-instrument tuner, which is a gorgeous little toy.

In search of 8 strings

Well, I spent some money on a mandolin at last. I think I tried enough different instruments to have a good idea of what I wanted and could afford and then finally found a shop which had enough choice, and staff who knew what they were talking about.

We had a trip to the North planned over the weekend and this seemed like a good opportunity to broaden my search for a new instrument without travelling too far specially. An Internet search had brought up a Crafter M75EO which I was interested in after I tried out an M70E in a second hand shop in Bournemouth. A small detour to Cambridge would have made a nice lunch stop, so I called Miller's Music to enquire about their special price on the M35EO. It seems the website is disconnected in some way from the shop, and the staff in the shop appear to have no knowledge of what is for sale via the website. It transpired that although they may once have sold such an instrument, the sale stock was all out by the time I asked. Oops, lost customer.

I had a look in Grantham on the way. Fox Music in Grantham came up on the yell search for Nottingham. We found Fox music easily on Westgate, just outside the George Arcade. Fox had two Vintage models, one electro-acoustic. For the money I quite liked the acoustic and then tried the more expensive model. This didn't play as well as the cheaper one and I took a sighting along the finger-board to find that it was flat up to where the neck and body joined, where there was a large bulge on the G-side. Sadly unplayable and leaving me with no confidence that the acoustic model wouldn't go the same way.

Eldest son had an ambition of his own to visit Nottingham, so with very little research, except to ask yell.com if there were any musical instrument shops in Nottingham, we set out with a varied agenda on Saturday morning to visit. We found a few things that we were shopping for, and an enquiry in a shop in the Victoria centre lead us to the Music Room. The Music Room were very friendly and helpful and had a sale of sheet music and books, but only one mandolin, a Tanglewood. I tried the Tanglewood, which was almost in tune and liked it, but it was slightly pricey. When asked the staff had no hesitation in suggesting that I try Dave Mann's music nearby.

Dave Mann's Music is a little wonder for string instruments. I didn't count all the mandolins they had! Give them a call and see if they can help. Such a pleasure to walk in to a shop where, not only do they have a wide range of instruments, but also know what they are talking about. Given a price range and a brief specification I was left to myself for a while with three instruments for comparison covering a wide range of prices and qualities. The first instrument I tried was an Ozark, all wood finish, out of my price range. I liked the sound, but the A-string seemed a bit intrusive, ringing rather loudly compared to the E. Really I'm not an expert, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt. Second a Brunswick F-style. I nearly dismissed this from serious consideration, since I had played one in a second hand store in Bournemouth, where I saw the M70E. That one was expensive and unpleasant. This one I couldn't really fault for the money. The third instrument was a Stagg, feeling light and rattly.

The Brunswick is a MM2155, an f-style and a bit of a tart to be honest. The sound is quite loud compared to my existing awful ebay model and I bought it because it is good enough for me to learn on, in the price range I had set, and because it was such a relief to visit a shop that took mandolins seriously and could offer a real choice. The finish on the Brunswick is not perfect, the tone is good, the action is a great change from the ebay banana. I can practise for more than 5 minutes at a time and just occasionally a chord will work first time; a barre is possible; a strum hits all the strings, even the ones that are fretted.

The solstice is really tomorrow

I saw a bee today, a grand, fluffy black and yellow and white queen of a bumblebee, but I do not know if it was the old year's swan-song, or the herald of the new.

The moon, hidden in eclipse, visits twice full.

We had days in the week with frosts at both ends, but not severe enough yet to need an ice-scraper twice. In compensation came a full moon, cosying up to Jupiter early in the week, but moving with its fullness to a point above Orion. It cast witching shadows when I walked out on Friday night and, last evening, back-lit a sky full of lenticuls, like an Austrian blind for astronomers.

Expecting to keep a constant at my age, I find myself decorating cherry cakes in a grid, distinct from my previous radial patterning. The perception of irregularity when eaten in slices is more pleasing than what I learnt at my Mother's knee.

After a furlough that has lasted since July, I am getting sore fingers again from my appalling ebay mandolin. Still trying to convince myself, and, just as importantly, those that have to overhear my efforts, that I can stick with the learning process and emerge improved. Youngest son recently obtained a distinction in his grade 1 guitar and sounds most proficient and pleasant. We expect a change soon though, since the reward for the achievement was a promise of an electric guitar for Christmas.

crisp morning snap

A rainy evening, followed by wide open, dark skies had brushed the car's panels with a frozen wave motive, patterned by Esher. I chipped and scraped at the glaze to the warming hum of the engine.

A kiss, applied by a retreating trick-or-treater to the driver's glass, is almost gone after a half dozen spongings and a scrape. None-the-less, sitting there I still feel loved, whatever the intention, noticing that lipstick makes good anti-freeze.