More Elgar

...but this time accompanied not by the crashing and banging of an MRI scanner, but by the more mellifluous rumble of  the notorious VW EA189 diesel engine.  Handy, really: Ian Rankin's interview on Radio 3 last Friday included only the opening movement: I picked up the broadcast yesterday just as it was starting into the second movement.  The soloist was Truls Mørk, whose interpretation was a shade more reticent than Jacqueline Du Pré's landmark recording under Barbirolli.  Funny, isn't it, how an interpretation that differs from the one you know sounds wrong?  Further along the way home, I listened to the early movements of Mahler's second symphony, less influenced by a familiar version, since the piece falls off the bottom of my Desert Island Discs list: it seemed a pretty respectable job.  I like the way Mahler exploits his material: I'm not sure of the sequence, but melodies from the Rückert Lieder often crop up in the symphonies.

All this was on the way home from a nicely conspiratorial lunch with two co-hobbyists at my late Ma's favourite pub near Maidstone.  Ever tried lobster in a brioche roll, with a token nod at salad and a pot of chips?  Very tasty, but I felt rather queasy as the afternoon wore on (remedied, though, by a suitable Gascon libation and a plate of pasta at supper time).

It remains mild, and the joints are being a little more co-operative today, so I have done a spot of token gardening this morning.  There is still colour here and there on the penstemons and roses, so I've done a fairly restrained slash 'n burn on them.  The rampant sedum, grown from a tiny cutting given to me by Miss some years ago, is now chopped down and ready to contribute to the municipal compost tomorrow.  The iris sibirica, so exquisite in its brief flowering season, goes brown and 'orrible after the frosts, so I've chopped most of them back.  A pleasant surprise, though, to find a couple of near-perfect blooms on the climbing rose Compassion, one of our more recent plantings, and one of the best.  Not bad for December, eh?  Facebook reminds me that, on this day a few years ago, I posted a photo of a snowy garden and foot-long icicles hanging from the gutters.  The knuckles, however, are telling me that I was perhaps a touch gung-ho with the secateur.  But a facebook funny this morning described someone in his 50s as Le vieux, so what should I expect, already?