Axa - another year

Axa - the Beguiling

The snow has her very excited - chasing snowballs and tossing them in the air as if they were mice or small birds, ambushing us from under the saw horse in the garden - she trots after us on our walks, then skives off on some personal quest. She's about four years old now.  

Our first real snow came last night - about 30 mm perfect for snowballs. It lies along dark branches under a sun that rolls along the horizon - lovely walking today but the wild weather elsewhere has cut across various musical plans over the last week. We did manage to get to Langholm for our guest appearance at the Langholm Orchestra's Christmas concert on Sunday. We drove on the main roads, slowly through the freezing fog at the Border, and carefully into the deeper snow in the town. This orchestra offers the opportunity to people who can play an instrument fairly well, but who aren't professional musicians, to meet and play the music they love together. I guess all musicians dream of a solo career at some point in in their lives - few can achieve this - so I think we ought to celebrate the small bands and orchestras across the country that allow people to express themselves as best they can in music, for their pleasure and ours. Richard and I sang all the carol arrangements from backstage and I suddenly felt fearful that all those lovely words and tunes might be slipping away from children's common memory - they carry such powerful metaphors in our minds - whatever the residue of belief.