(or, to be read in a very broad Glaswegian accent: 2020 can git intae tha sea)

So the blog has been rather quiet of late. Not to worry since as far as I know only about four people read it apart from myself. Nevertheless, I feel that I owe it to my patient readers to provide an end of year update. And to my memory, which has turned middle-aged: I don’t have a problem remembering things, it’s just that there is now so much stuff in my head that it is becoming rather cluttered in there.

There have been no further updates on the organ front since the last post, other than that I am now running GrandOrgue on an elderly laptop, attached to not-totally-awful speakers. I am running the Piteå School of Music sample set by Lars Palo. This organ is situated in a school in the north end of Sweden, and is quite beautiful to hear. A three-manual instrument, it has an elegantly simple tonal palette which is a joy to play. I’m currently hacking away at some bits of Bach which I haven’t played in nearly 20 years. The neighbours are very forgiving.

David has made some attempts to visit and make some final measurements before cutting off bits of the toe piston moulding, but 2020 hasn’t been a year for social visits, so we haven’t progressed in that area. In addition, I have been rather overwhelmed with work issues and finding all the… interesting… problems in the new house which the seller forgot to mention. Nothing dramatic, just lots of little things which I have had to fix before fixing other things. With all that to occupy me, I haven’t made any progress in wiring up the thumb pistons either. The drawstops require a psu, which is also David’s domain. Still, I have high hopes for 2021.

On the dog front, I have lost Bailey and Dewi in unfortunate circumstances which I won’t go into here. I have unexpectedly gained the companionship of Dyson (so named for the way he sucks up frozen peas), an American Bully. At 32kg he is at the smaller end of the dogs who have lived with me. He is quite a character, and only two years old he is very active and bouncy. It is not his fault that he had to be rehomed, and he is the first dog I have owned for many years who has not been “broken” in some way. It is a pleasant change.

I’ve landed myself an interesting secondment into a different department, which I hope will lead to something more permanent. It is very different to what I have been doing for the last eight years, but similar to things I have done before. I hope there is the opportunity to make the secondment permanent, but we shall see. I am very, very busy, but it’s the good sort of busy.

On the whole, 2020 has been one ginormous pair of pants. Here’s to a less-disagreeable 2021.