Classical Jaz

As light begins to glimmer – another dark Monday morning – trying to cope, basically …

Daughter’s operation went well / she was home the next day / and is planning to be back at school (with, hopefully, some appropriate adjustments meantime) to-morrow …

Having joined Historic Scotland (@welovehistory), we’ve been trying to make the most of our membership by visiting local castles. This is Dirleton Castle, where we spent a rather chilly Sunday afternoon learning some quite interesting stuff about the doings (and the weaponry) of the people who lived there, and thereabouts:

to Blow away the cobwebs – a walk up Traprain Law – cold, windy, and sunny:

Next week, daughter (pictured above) will be having an operation – one of a series, so we know the drill, but always an anxious time …

everyBody!

and another begins – happy new Year, everyone …

Musical Youth and enCore were singing carols in the Concorde hangar at the Museum of Flight / an opportunity for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas …

I may have mentioned before that I am doing a photo-a-day project this year (playing second fiddle to the truly amazing unFinished symPhony, who is showing us how it should be done). Taking account of human frailty, in my case I’ve relaxed the rules, so that mine was never going to be a 365. As the year has progressed, I’ve decided that 144 (a nice, round number) is a more realistic goal.

The evocation of a cold Sunday morning above is the 142nd …

Once a year, we get to have a chat with a manager. It’s called the annual development review. As preparation, we have to fill out a document, wherein certain leading questions are asked. I think that I guessed that my answers would ring alarm bells – I was just being as honest as I could.

The result is that my annual development review has become an informal chat. I’m hopeful, though. My boss knows that I have Asperger’s, and, I think, recognises that there has not yet been any constructive engagement with what that means for me, and for how I fit into this particular workplace …

Thinking of my mum’s friend, who lost his life in a shot down bomber during the second world war. Also of my uncle, who was a conscientious objector, and was a medical orderly in Singapore, and spent the war in a prisoner of war camp. Ironically, as Laurens van der Post suggests in “the Night of the New Moon”, his life may have been saved by the dropping of the atom bombs, as his captors may have been planning to kill their prisoners, as a last resort …