Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei Deus

Years ago I went to a performance of Rachmaninov's Vespers at King's College Chapel, Cambridge. It was utterly divine in every sense. I bought the CD too but really one needs speakers of the size and quality of the Chapel to appreciate the music.

I went to Salisbury Cathedral one Sunday afternoon about three years ago and entered to the kind of music that we think is reserved only for heaven. I went back a couple of weeks later but they were singing something different and it wasn't as good for me I'm afraid.

Well, yesterday I listened to Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei Deus on the radio and although I had heard it before, I have never shared my experience of it before. I am currently listening to a version of this work recorded at King's College Chapel and while the quality of the recording is not too good, it still transcends the ordinary. I love choral music anyway, as just a few people know; and this is among my favourites.

You can listen online to the version I am currently listening to here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZL3POaATn8&NR=1

There is another version that I have just listened to, too, that sounds better but is shorter. This version has the score to read along to: if you're lucky enough to be able to sing along too then that's excellent for you! Here is that version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4xmB1QWYk

Someone wrote a note that this is not music to listen if you're sad. I can see why they say that but I'm not sure I agree!

DW

The Navigation Sowerby Bridge

What have the following got in common?

• two Milky Way bars
• a Curly Wurly
• a Fudge bar
• a Sherbet Fountain
• a Swiffels Matlow Drumstick
• a Flumps
• The Navigation Pub in Sowerby Bridge

Give in?

The link is the Sweetie Pub Quiz they hold on Sunday evenings. Nominally starts at 9 pm and it's a shout out loud quiz where the first person to shout out the right answer to a question earns the right to dip into a bag and pull out one of the above sweets.

The list above is my personal haul from last night's quiz: I got the answers to the first two questions right and thought, better not answer too many more!!! Over the quiz I got seven questions right myself. The fundamental rule is no shouting out until a question has been asked in full. In that case the young girl with the sweetie bag gets to dip into it rather than anyone else. Well, I did that: what position did Pope John Paul II play in his football team in his younger days? I bellowed out far too early but got the answer right ... what position did he play, then?

There's also a separate play your cards right game and since no one won it last night, next week's cash prize will be £260. Buy a sheet of raffle tickets for £1 and that gives you five chances to get into the Play your Cards Right game. Gail from our team got the right to have a go but she drew a pair very quickly so we were disappointed! Shame!

I don't drink alcohol these days but the beer and cider and so on seemed to go down well so there you are.

When we arrived at the pub I asked Nev, brother in law, to buy me a strong lemonade. It was a joke and he understood but for some reason it absolutely threw the girl behind the bar and I ended up with a tiny bottle of bitter lemon!! We didn't make that mistake again!

A good night out with nine of us and a full pub: celebrating another brother in law's birthday: happy birthday Danny Butt.

DW

Modern Script Writing Jokes!

On Radio 4 this week there is a story at the end of Woman's Hour to do with the Holy Grail that seemed to be set in medieval Europe and in modern day England, as far as I could tell.

Yesterday there was a medieval character on there who was made to say the following:

Now you got money don't you.

I ask you!

DW

Noctua Pronuba

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I have just found two Large Yellow Underwing moths in my conservatory. They were both dead and now that I have found them I realise they have been dead for a few weeks.

I don't use the conservatory very often and I had seen a blob on the carpet at the far end of the room. I thought the blob was a bit of fluff or dust.

I found the one behind the blinds first and then took a second look at the blob on the floor and found it was also a dead moth.

From Wikipedia:

The Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba) is a moth, the type species for the family Noctuidae. It is an abundant species throughout Europe, one of the most common and most familiar moths of the region. In some years the species is highly migratory with large numbers appearing suddenly in marginal parts of the range.

This is a quite large and heavy moth with a wingspan of 50-60 mm. The forewings are quite variable from light brown to almost black. The darker individuals often have a pale streak along the costa. The hindwings are bright orange yellow with a black sub terminal band. As with other Noctua species (and numerous other insects), this contrast of drab at rest and bright in flight is used to confuse potential predators. This species flies at night from July to September and is attracted to light, sometimes in huge numbers. It will also visit flowers such as Buddleia, ragwortand Red Valerian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Yellow_Underwing

Here is my photo of one of under side of the two moths:

DW

Taking Spreadsheet Orders

I have mentioned a few times already that I am writing a book on Excel 2007 and have already uploaded and am working on a new web site to go with it.

I want the book and the site to be as relevant and user friendly as possible so I am asking people, anyone, if there are any spreadsheets they would like to have developed, free of charge. Please bear in mind I do not program with VBA I am afraid.

There are and will be loads of spreadsheets aimed at accountants and bookkeepers. In addition there are already a few spreadsheets for manpower planners as I have been working with a manpower planning expert to develop those. There are spreadsheets to deal with statistics and data analysis. I am waiting for some engineering commissions and will be preparing some spreadsheets that marketing people might use.

So, anything you think I might be able to help with. It could be something that needs finishing, something that needs updating from Excel 2003 to Excel 2007, something that you have got ideas for but that you don't know how to do.

This is a genuine and open offer and if I can do what you want and it fits within my objectives then I will do it.

Please write to me at duncan at duncanwil dot co dot uk ... address coded to keep the SPAM to a minimum.

DW

Don't know who to blame

Someone must be blamed but I don't know who!

I have been making excellent progress on my new Excel 2007 web site: soon to be unveiled. I have uploaded some video to the site and I have created a couple of pages, of many to come, with Spry tabs. Then I knew that the home page to www.duncanwil.co.uk needed a bit of tlc so I gave it some!

Then for some reason that I spent around two hours trying to fathom, the layout of the home page collapsed. I thought I'd repaired it at one stage but to no avail.

Anyway, I really have no idea what the problem was so I did the only thing I could do. I rebuilt the entire Spry tabbed section and now, tough wood, the home page is back to normal.

Praise be!

DW

A First Class Young Lady

Just heard from daughter Fran: she got her results and she's just been awarded a FIRST CLASS HONOURS degree.

How good is that?

Pleased as Punch and Proud as a Peacock

DW

From Catherine Slack to Brighouse

You wouldn't want to be my legs today!

For the first time in a long time I joined my sister, her husband and other family members on an 8 mile cross country walk on Saturday. Now, I have been going to the gym every other day and going on the treadmill for a couple of miles and then the bike for another 2 - 3 miles but it did not prepare me for that expedition.

We didn't rush at all, taking about four and a half hours in all and we stopped a couple of times but it took it out of me! I woke up on Sunday in creaky mode and walked a bit like John Wayne in Rooster Cogburn. Today I woke up even creakier and the muscles set solid when I sit down for any length of time but they do loosen up fairly readily when I start moving around.

In spite of that and in spite of my legs almost giving out at one stage as we scaled over 100 steps on a steep hillside I really enjoyed the walk, the countryside and the effort. I will happily go on the next trek.

Here are some photos to keep you going.

The view down the valley from near Catherine Slack:

A tunnel through the trees about half way round!

It's Shaun the sheep!

I love dry stone walls!

DW

Brilliant?

I have written about this before but was still surprised to come across the example, from a Radio 4 programme about lottery winners this morning:

Lottery Winning Caller: I feel physically sick
Lottery Rep: Brilliant

Now, why was that brilliant I wonder?

DW

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I were away ...

... When we did fractions and that.

I am standing next to a map of Halifax town centre next to the bus station in Halifax and on the map I can see

The town hall quarter
The George's quarter
The market quarter
The theatre quarter
The Piece Hall quarter

Erm, FIVE quarters?? There must be a good explanation.

DW

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The only man?

Why is it that every time the BBC mentions Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al Megrahi they call him THE ONLY MAN TO HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF ... ?

Do they ever say, for example, Jack Scroggins, one of 500,000 benefit fraudsters ...

Or even, Elizabeth Battengurg, the only crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ... currently reigning??

Clots!

DW Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The Wonders of Modern Technology

Here I am working away in my office at home and I can do my work on this laptop and at the same time I have plugged in a spare monitor and am keeping an eye on the final test match, England v Australia via skysports.com ... a must win game for England.

Marvellous!

DW

Burnley ONE Manchester United NOTHING

Burnley's first game at home in the Premier League and they have WON!

Fantastic!!

Come on you Clarets!!

DW

I Love Work ...

I could stand and watch it for hours. Name the author!

I am working away on my new book and across the road there are three people painting the fence of a house and digging up the front garden and moving some large paving stones around.

The people involved are

• a 30 ish woman, the owner of the house
• a slightly older woman, sister or friend?
• a young boy, 14 years old ish and possibly the son of the second woman

When they started their work, they all began by painting the fence and they made good progress.

The owner of the house then moved away and started to dig the garden, leaving the other two to continue painting the fence.

As the work got too heavy for the house owner, the second woman moved from painting to digging and moving the heavy paving stones.

That left the boy alone. He painted with some gusto as he leaned on the hand rail that goes from pavement level to garden level. Having lived with three teenage boys I predicted to myself that this boy will be in serious difficulty when he can no longer lean on that hand rail. And so it proved to be!

As the women are digging and sweating their way across the garden with spade and paving stones, the boy has been drinking orange, consulting with the women but now is sitting on the steps leading up to the garden and throwing  a hammer across the garden in an attempt to get it to stick in the soil as if it were a knife! Painting activity there is none!

The boy is uncontrolled and apparently shameless!

DW

I put it in, I did, I did!

On Saturday I got home to find a new viewing card for my Sky television set up. All I was supposed to do was to take out the old card and put in the new one. I looked at the box and could see a slot but there was no card in it and I couldn't see any other slot for any other card.

I put the card in the slot anyway and even though there was no message on the screen as there was supposed to be, nothing broke or stopped so I was happy.

Then last night, Monday, I started seeing a message on the screen telling me to put the card in the box! I said, I have ... This kept happening: maybe half a dozen times in 24 hours so I decided to do some research on the Sky web site.

I found what the message meant and what I should do about it: put your card in the box, it said. Well, I was flummoxed. I read through the instructions and then the extensive FAQ and could see nothing I had done wrong.

Then in the corner of the web site I noticed a photo of a Sky box like mine and lo and behold right next to the slot where I'd inserted my card I could see a flap behind which was another slot! I had known nothing about that slot before.

I scuttled over to my box and found the flap, took out the old card and inserted the new one. Instantly I was presented with the message I had been promised. I did what I had to do and now all is well with my television world.

So there you are and it's Celtic 0 v Arsenal 1 as I type this. C'mon Celtic!

DW

Some Photos What I Have Took

Here are a few photos I have taken over the last few days. They come from my phone camera so may not be up to my mega camera standard!

First photo is an oddity: the warning of death by suffocation is to be found on a safe in an hotel room in Geneva. The size of the safe is far too small for me to get my head in and moreover it is around five feet off the ground so a child hell bent on suffocation would have to be extremely determined!

The next photo subject caught my eye outside Bradford Forster Square railway station, West Yorkshire. I liked this one:

Again from Bradford, this is a sand sculpture of Charles Darwin. My guess is that it is around 10 - 12 feet tall. Very impressive and the photo that follows explains the purpose of the sculpture.

Bit of fun there then and well done Bradford for livening up our lives a bit.

DW

How did that get there?

I think I need a cleaner when I know the reality is that I only want one. Well, judge for yourself as you read this story.

The fridge in my house is small and around five years old. It was a cheapy, cheapy fridge for young Master W's room in Halls. When we all went our separate ways and he no longer needed the fridge, I took the fridge.

This fridge absorbs water from the atmosphere like a sponge and it gets deposited and frozen in the tiny freezer compartment at a rapid rate. Consequently, because I am not fully sorted out domestically (I am really but I don't want to be), I have been squeezing the few frozen things I buy into a smaller and smaller aperture. When I got back from my trip on Saturday I resolved to defreeze the thing and start again.

It has taken until today for me to be able to get round to mopping up the water and cleaning the fridge. However, in the freezer compartment I found some vegetables that I simply cannot remember ever putting there. More seriously, there was half a block of LARD in there. How on earth did that get there? Lard? I never buy lard cos I'm a veggie. Do I? Did I?

Anyway, I know I need to defrost the fridge much more often as I think that was the first time in two years.

Hands up if you think I need a cleaner!

DW

Forgive the Aeroplane Story

On the flight from Zurich to Manchester today I was happily minding my own business when an elderly well spoken woman got on and started talking about her seat and that of her husband, also an elderly person. She announced that he couldn't sit in the seat assigned to him, a window seat, because he needs to have the arm rest lifted ...

One of their seats was the seat next to me and the other was the seat next to the man in front of me. Good egg the man in front of me, he selflessly moved to another seat, the one in front of him and not the one next to me.

The old man slithered his way into the seat in front of me and all was well with the world.

Then one of the stewardesses came out from behind their curtain and said to the good egg man that he couldn't sit in the seat he was now in because it was a business class seat. He said he had given up his seat for the gentleman behind him. The stewardess insisted that it was a business class seat and he couldn't sit there. The man stood up, announced he'd never heard anything more ridiculous and came to sit next to me. He then had a strop on for an hour or so!

The old woman said to her husband, "These people don't seem to want to be very helpful do they." I think in their case, they were helped sufficiently well. Why they accepted a window seat for the old man is something I would have questioned.

The next time I looked at the old man he was taking a mighty swig from his duty free gin bottle.

End of story, such as it is.

DW

Lausanne here we come!

Your ace reporter is currently ensconced in the first class compartment of the 1327 train from Geneva Airport to Lausanne. On time and so far, we have just arrived at Nyon, a very smooth ride.

The journey is scheduled to take 48 minuted and, perhaps not surprisingly, the railway line hugs the coast of Lake Geneva. There are alpine heights to be seen across the lake and into the distance.

On Wednesday from Geneva city I could see a snow covered mountian but today's mountains are bare.

On this showing, Switzerland is a very neat and tidy place. Even the maize plants, sunflowers and fruit trees are very tidily arranged in their fields.

More later.

DW


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What's Wrong with me?

How about this? Young Master W trolled off to Kazakhstan for a few weeks and as I got involved in booking his ticket and saving him wads of cash, I got him to use my KLM frequent flyer card details. He did!

As he checked in to come home they said, good evening Mr Williamson I see you've got a frequent flyer card with us.

Dima replied, it's not mine it's my dad's ...

They said, no matter, we're upgrading you to Business Class anyway.

WHAT?

What about me? Never happens to me!!! Even with my Gold Emirates card I've NEVER been upgraded on long haul.

Well done that lad but for goodness' sake!

DW


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