Archive for May 2009
Thoughts of an amateur cellist (2)
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 22, 2009
Earlier this week I spent a concentrated period of time practising ten or so bars of a middle passage of Bach’s third Suite for Unaccompanied Cello which I am currently learning ; this involves lots of string changing, tricky positions and repeated sequences. Three observations. 1) When I first played it, as if sight reading, [...]
Seven things I love
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 21, 2009
Being tagged by Normblog means I must now choose seven things I love which is easy ( apart from narrowing it down and ranking it in order which, apart from the people I love, who always come top of my list, is slightly artificial ) and then tag seven other bloggers, which will be hard, [...]
Thoughts of a non swine kind….
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 20, 2009
- In: Events | Musings | News
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For the past few days I have been ill with spring flu of the non swine variety, the illness that has affected so many in recent weeks, including, so I read in today’s coverage of the Cannes film festival, the actress Penelope Cruz whom I find it impossible to imagine looking anything other than gorgeous. [...]
Crisis time.
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 15, 2009
- In: Events | Musings | News
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For the first time in my life, I am worried for the future of our democracy. As the expenses crisis deepens, here are a few observations. * while MP’s from all parties have been ‘ caught out’ by careless accounting and unjustified claims, I was particularly outraged by money claimed to dredge a moat, fix [...]
Thanks to the NHS ………………
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 14, 2009
In today’s newspaper, there are reports of powerful healthcare lobbies in the US using our National Health Service and its apparent ‘ failures of choice’ – God, how I am coming to despise that word – as a means to oppose Obama’s proposals for more widespread access to healthcare. I am incensed when I read [...]
Saturday Live……
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 9, 2009
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Listen to Melissa, guest on Radio Four’s Saturday Live, this morning, Saturday May 9th. ( Happy birthday Joshua!)
Blog Off
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 9, 2009
My friend – let’s call him O- writes to tell me that he has been ‘exploring’ my blog and is not impressed. This follows a conversation the previous week in which, like several of my friends, he expresses a slightly aggressive surprise at my taking up the practice/habit, whatever we call it? ‘What’s the motive [...]
A win win solution
Posted by: melissabenn on: May 1, 2009
It was not the stuff of banner headlines. Potentially dodgy economic dossiers took that particular crown. But Alistair Darling’s Budget day announcement of 50,000 new traineeships in social care for unemployed young people — part of a package aimed at creating a quarter of a million jobs — was a substantive footnote to the economic [...]
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