2nd October. Never has Dylan Thomas' poem about October seemed more relevant.. Over the space of a handful of days, we moved inexorably from a "shorts and t-shirt" summer straight into mid-Autumn (and worse) without the respite normally offered by those golden days of September.
Before September was out, I seriously thought about lighting our wood burner. Great leathery leaves (a foot across) from platanes have been swirling and drifting down the avenue for days now - and burnished conkers abound under the chestnut trees and beech nuts are commonplace.
The wonderfully resonant sound of Gautier Capuçon's 300 year old cello we heard during the concert at the Château de Baroja in August has been on my mind of late too.
Max Bruch's Kol Nidre is arguably the finest piece ever written for a cello - and it's played here by arguably the cello's greatest virtuoso - Jacqueline du Pré, who contracted MS (of all things) and from which she died tragically young at the age of 42.
