Yes ,thank you all for wondering, I am still here.
Lots of music involvement over the past few weeks, other than normal church services and preparing for our "Carols for Christmas" next week (mustn't call it Carol Service!!!) Played for a couple of Baptism services and two or three funerals.
In a funny sort of way I find these, not exactly comforting, but enabling me to continue on my journey without dear Nick, especially in choosing music to play before the service. Our musical tastes were quite different, but he was nevertheless an accomplished musician ,particularly on his "kit", although not playing regularly in any band or group.
Two instances I will share with you.
When he was still at school, age about 14, he played percussion in the West Wilts Wind Band and in one concert the first item up was the Radetzky March. There was Nick, concentrating and producing clean and crisp accompaniment on his kit, but looking awfully worried. So during the interval I said to him "What was the problem Nick.?You looked worried to death during that piece".
"Well", he said "I had to play it from memory as the music was not in my folder"
When we moved here to Radstock I tried to get him interested in the local Brass Band; I had heard that they were short handed in the persussion section. So he went along for a rehearsal to give it a whirl. And that was the problem. The MD was a stickler for accuracy and did not deem Nick's occasional drifting into his own interpretation if the part was not particularly interesting.
TTFN