More Promming: Claudio Abbado conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra for Mahler's Third

Well, it was a wonderful experience. Dad sucked on his teeth and said it was a bit of a trial, but live and with this orchestra and conductor it was just fascinating. I'm very glad I read the program notes before the performance, as the idea of it being a progression through the natural world made a lot of the music make sense. Claudio Abbado is an absolute phenomenon. He's this small, rather spindly old man who, when turned away from the audience, looked more like he was dressed in a dark grey mac than immaculate white tie, but because of his wide white cuffs every movement of his hands could be seen. Close to his body in the quiet parts, wide and swooping the loud parts, the baton often looking more like some tai chi exercise, tight lethal curves that looked predictable but moved before you realised he hadn't done what you were expecting. Much like the music, which never did what you expected, but always surprised pleasantly. And there I'll have to leave it, since it's late and I need to sleep, but I really have had some wonderfully contrasting orchestras, between the SBNYO and tonight. It's also almost pleasant to queue for the Proms, if you arrive in good time. I sat with my paper and MP3 player, and waited for the doors to open, and chatted with my neighbours, and felt a real fellow-feeling with the other Prommers on the arena floor. Ears still sore from the three encores I stayed for - I think they probably did five in the end.

Prom 2: Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela

Who were absolutely amazing (the BBC page on them). They got four encores and a standing ovation, and deserved them all. I got there too late for an arena seat, and ended up in the gallery, which was a happy chance: seeing a big orchestra from above you get a real sense of the physicality and movement of the players. The orchestra formed up in good time, and what I could see was an almost insectile series of the same movements (turning a page here, raising a bow there) repeated at random across the entire orchestra, my eye trying to follow or predict the twitches of movement. Then the conductor came on, and the orchestra formed itself into lines around him, structure coming out, the blackish mass of the violins and violas suddenly going amber as the instruments all lifted at once, and paused, and waited. It was almost a pure movement, one done because it's a side-effect of your purpose, and it got echoed after a moment, when they all came in together, every string player's hand and bow moving to the left and right together, hypnotically. Being down in the arena makes you aware of the crowd around you, but being up in the gallery makes you aware of the mood of the entire hall, and I think the sound quality is better, since you have a clear line of sight to every instrument. The sound quality was certainly much better than at Nitin Sawhney's Prom, which did get a bit muddy at times.

Copernic problem: Indexing kernel cannot be initialized

I use Copernic Desktop Search quite a lot at work - it's very useful since I can search through all the documents on all the network shares I can access, and it's much quicker than Outlook for searching through my emails. This morning, it stopped working, and just displayed "No matches found" no matter what I did. Turning on logging, I was given the cryptic message "Indexing kernel cannot be initialized. Please contact our technical support team. Error = 80004005".

Rabbit sandwiches

Well, I was amused, anyway. A nice, dense, chewy sourdough loaf from Paul, Wensleydale cheese, and English apples makes a very tasty sandwich.

Spamalot

Just went to see Spamalot and it was absolutely wonderful, so many little jokes playing off The Holy Grail without ever boring you by following the plot or the dialogue too closely or for too long. Lots of good visual gags, the Lady Of The Lake was a commanding (6' 2") presence who looked and sounded all gorgeous all the time, Arthur not quite as good but a very capable and earnest support, with his horse Patsy. Lancelot was fun, and did I mention the lovely little jokes? Several had to do with him. Excellent set, too, God's Feet coming down at one stage, then taking off later, Tim the Enchanter coming in with a sparking broomstick, the audience being involved, musicians getting shot or threatened, glitter, Camelot as Las Vegas (with showgirls), a very self-aware production that played just about everything for laughs. I went with my flatmate Paul and a whole bunch of his friends, and we all had a very good time. I was sat next to Paul's sister Evie, and I think she laughed almost the whole way through.

London Underground Anagram Map

I can't claim credit for the idea, and I have no idea who did the original work of finding out that Gospel Oak can go into A Log Spoke. But I can claim credit for posting it as a PDF so it can be printed at any size, and working out some new anagrams for the bar on the left-hand side. Thankyou, Anagram Genius!

Here's my version. If anyone has suggestions for improving it, please leave a comment.

Nitin Sawhney’s Prom last night

Very good! It was good to talk to Mary and find out what they'd been up to in France, and we were lucky to get in. There was an absolutely enormous queue, something like 1500 people long, which seemed to have been forming since about six o'clock for a nine o'clock performance. A very wide range of guests, and Natacha Atlas showing off her flamenco singing skills. I was a little disappointed that Sidi Labh Cherkaoui and Akram Khan didn't do any dance, but their physical theater about a man getting through an Indian(?) train station was pretty mesmerizing. The only really Western orchestral music going on was when he and the orchestra played music that he'd scored for the new game 'Heavenly Sword' - the rest was often more Indian than Western. Anoushka Shankar was excellent on the sitar, although I couldn't see her when she sat down. Her sitar itself looked interesting, definitely the result of a Western design aesthetic rather than an Indian one. It looked like something off the cover of one of John Meaney's books - blue and white and vaguely organic. Standout for me, though, was when Imogen Heap came on. She wasn't more technically skilled than the others, but she inhabited the music and pushed these gorgeous rolling multi-layered beat sequences forward. We weren't sure if she was looping her own voice or not, but whatever it was, I'd have liked more than one track! Huge applause at the end, and entirely merited.

Sidmouth Folk Festival

The backstory: last Friday, around 4, Fiona said "You know, they're still desperate for stewards at Sidmouth". And I thought, hmm, and looked outside at the weather, wondered where I would rather be, and then made the phone call to Stephen. At five I'd sorted a lift, at seven we were round at Fiona's house (playing on the Wii - 178 on my first game of Wii bowling, but I don't want to discuss my performance at Wii boxing), and by nine o'clock we were on our way to Sidmouth courtesy of the fantastic Julia, playing folky tunes all the way down thanks to my little MP3 player => radio gadget.