Song Circle

Katy turned up first, dressed in red and blue and flustered after inadvertently riding the tube to Mill Hill East (home of the Mill Hill Beast).
We sat and ate Owl-and-the-Pussycat biscuits until Nadya arrived. Both of them loved my new house which made me very happy. Katy sang first: our subject had been travel, and her song was brilliant. She told us she'd written it this morning, and it was about a trip to Egypt she'd made at New Year. Mine was the New Year's Eve song, and Nadya's was acapella and walking, a song about being in the street in the rain.
We haven't done this for months, and it felt great to start up again. Later, we walked along to the antique market to show Katy, and we poked about and browsed; I bought a wicker umbrella stand for 4 quid. Nadya bought a beautiful wool kilt, brand new, from the Cancer Care shop, and came back to eat pistachios and grapes with me for lunch.
Poor Whippersnapper cat was looking terribly ill, and Nadya came with us to the vets. He is there overnight, with suspected pancreatitis, much to our distress, because we've just lost Old Lady Cat and we don't want to go through that again. So I sit with my fingers crossed while he is fed painkillers and water to try to stabilise him.

I read Mojo this evening, and noticed a review of the Marina and the Diamonds CD. Marina used to attend the University of the East (for about a term), and I remember her playing her songs at the Songlab, an informal songwriting group I run there. She was very talented: she had a sort of 'different' quality to her, a self-containment, and she was definitely ready to go off and make music on her own.
I hope she does really well.

Strange times,
as always.