Serious food

We benefitted from it being Agnes' birthday yesterday - and her wishing to celebrate elsewhere rather than by taking up the posh lunch tickets we'd bought her. Looking through the programme a while back, she had been full of enthusiasm about Morito coming to our festival: we on the other hand had never heard of Sam and Sam Clark, half of whom were there in the Spiegeltent to promote the inevitable book. Great food, and with it six delicious wines (from Laithwaites) - and also good company on our table, though from the photograph you might not gain that impression.

Before the lunch, I had been to another Times Leader Conference on stage. Much talk around the subject of poor Alan Henning - as David Aaronovitch, to applause, described him, "a modern martyr".

In the evening we drove to Tetbury for our one and only visit to this year's music festival on its final evening. It was a happy choice, as the Dunedin Consort's Bach St John Passion was one of the very best TMF concerts we have experienced - and there have been a good few over the years. A superb performance all round.

Trinity + Brompton

The three musicians who played last night - a house concert for us lucky few who were invited - are all soloists in their own right, Matthew Trusler, Thomas Carroll and Ashley Wass. Though they came together 18 months ago, to date they are just known as the TCW Trio. At supper after the performance various more or less conventional names were tossed about as possibilities for the future: as we departed, being told we must come to their October performance at the Tetbury Music Festival, I tossed out the idea of "Three Line Whip". That would at least raise a few eyebrows.

But their music making speaks volumes by itself, in particular (last night) the performance of Tchaikovsky's great - almost symphonic - piano trio. Staggering. After which we set off for home, but only reached the end of the drive: one of the back tyres had picked up a nail. Hence the enforced - but very pleasant - stay for supper while, having given up the struggle to change wheels, we awaited the breakdown man: the wheel nuts were on too tight, he said.

Trio yesterday - Triple Crown day today, with England's emphatic victory in the rugby. And the welcome news this evening that our parish priest has bought his first bicycle - a Brompton. Can we call this a win for Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link?

Daisy's tea party

A full-blown birthday tea took place this afternoon in our kitchen: Ida's new bear was its focus, though assistance was needed to blow out the candle. I am (with Caroline) just about to abandon our domesticity for the first time in a week, donning black tie for a grown up dinner with friends near Tetbury. Often, we are happy at home, failing to see in the New Year, but for tonight we have had no less than three invitations.

Tetbury finale

I have to confess a love/hate relationship with Bach's B minor Mass. When I first heard it, more than half a century ago in York Minster, it meant nothing more than a numb bum. What was all the fuss about? I wondered. "Ankündigung des größten musikalischen Kunstwerkes aller Zeiten und Völker" - Nägeli describing it as his "Best ever" piece of music a couple of centuries ago. And again this evening, as Bach was taking 15 minutes over his first Lord have mercy!, I wondered whether I would, despite the appropriate words, possess the stamina for another two hours of this iconic piece. After all, the Mass I'm used to takes less than an hour end-to-end even with a sermon and more than a hundred communicants. Besides, what has Bach to do with prayer?

The B minor - I have heard it a lot on record over the years - gradually began to reestablish its power over me, though, as the soloists, and solo instrumentalists, came forward in the Gloria. By the interval, I was committed to sitting it through, and by the end, just sorry that Dona nobis pacem came so soon. Jonathan Cohen directed a stunning performance! His 20-strong Arcangelo choir were superb: it's invidious to single out individuals after such an event, but Tim Mead's Agnus Dei and Rachel Brown in both her flute solos were outstanding (Mead having starred also in the Sheldonian Messiah eight months ago).

And my question "What has Bach to do with prayer?" was answered in the "...et sepultus est", a moment of utter calm and devotion. One of several.

For something completely different, there were two Cheltenham events earlier in the day: dinosaurs for Ida (I enjoyed it if anything more than she did), and another Times Leader Conference. Very entertaining. Historical characters improved: "Ivan the Not So Bad, Ethelred the I won't be a Moment." "Hedgehogs: why can't they just share the hedge?" What if Nancy Dell'Olio married Lawrence Dallaglio? And apparently Ian Fleming had an affair with Nick Clegg's grandmother. "We are digressing less than we would normally," said Danny Finkelstein.

And who was saying The Times had gone triv.?

More Festival-going

Caroline is rightly indignant with the Cheltenham Festivals continuing to sideline the Gardens' Gallery in Montpellier. Not only do they omit any mention of the Gallery in their brochure, it doesn't even feature on the festival maps, or on the signposts. And the massed bank of festival loos is plonked just next to it, reducing it to worse than Cinderella status. (Postscript: A Festival-goer caught short, spent her penny, and then - noticing the Gallery - went in and spent a further £300.)

Until a month ago, Pascal Lamy headed the World Trade Organization: yesterday afternoon he came to Cheltenham to discuss his forthcoming memoir, "The Geneva Consensus". The Times' Philip Collins kept the discussion nice and general, though without much sympathy for where Lamy was coming from, Collins appearing both less internationalist and more Conservative.

The memoir's title was chosen to juxtapose the author's standpoint with the Washington Consensus, which has come to stand for "Liberalise and God will take care of the rest." Lamy's approach is rather to take care of how trade works - in order for trade to work at all.

He praised Gordon Brown - prescient about the need for global governance - but China's "Don't ask me to do what you haven't done!"sums up the impasse, for instance in reaching a worldwide consensus on carbon reduction. We can't, Lamy maintains, halt globalisation, because technology is its engine - and technology has no reverse gear. It brings people closer to one another, but they still have different cultures. (The Inuits have always killed seals, but Europe expresses its disgust by banning Canadian imports.) Globalisation has formidably shrunk the numbers of the planet's poor, but at the expense of greater inequality.

A stimulating hour! As was my evening session - a genial chat between Mark Lawson and Jonathan Miller. Again, the interviewer gave his subject plenty of rope: with this, he readily reprised the role of enfant terrible, by which he first came to fame. There were a few repetitions, and one or two names escaped him, but otherwise it was hard to think that this was a man in his 80th year.

Until afterwards, that is: beginning my bike ride home, I saw someone in the shadows outside the Writers' Room, puffing at a cigarette. The enfant terrible had morphed into the Picture of Dorian Gray. I turned the bike round, and asked if I could take a photograph. (Nothing ventured...) "I hate being photographed," came the response, but he was willing to chat. "I'm not a Jew, just jewish," I quoted from Beyond the fringe. Was he a believer in the divine? "Certainly not," he said, "and what's more if Jesus came back I would ensure he was brought before the International Criminal Court."

This morning, by contrast, I escaped to Tetbury again, and heard - inter alia - the sublime Sarah Connolly singing Schumann and Duparc. These repeated words of Baudelaire, set by the latter, sum up Tetbury in contrast to grungy, pragmatic, busy, eclectic Cheltenham: "Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté."

Used condoms form the detritus after Glastonbury: discarded Times cotton shopping bags after Cheltenham, and statins after Tetbury.

Cheltenham Festival of Literature

Two competing festivals this year, less than 30 miles apart! At least till the end of this weekend. Tetbury, hub of Royal South Gloucestershire, attracts a wide local audience plus many loyal regulars from London and further afield, émigrés for the weekend, no doubt dipping into Westonbirt Arboretum for some Autumn colour during their stay. Cheltenham's twin tented villages draw many more all and sundry, an amorphous horde growing by the year, less dress-conscious than last night's gang.

Once, at a gathering near Tetbury, I fell into conversation with one of the RSG Set. "Where do you live?" he inquired. "Cheltenham," I replied. "Cheltenham?" He spoke the word as if he was rinsing his teeth with a wine he thought was corked. "Cheltenham? Completely beneath my radar."

At our Literature Festival events, you used to be able to meet up with friends: now it's a matter of chance whether or not, even as a long-established punter, you see anyone you know. Harri is one of the regulars: I remember seeing her and her mother at an early event in last year's Festival and being amazed by the thickness of their ticket bundle. Today, therefore, I requested a photograph: the wadge on her lap covers admission to 42 events, I gathered!

We were queuing to get into The Times leader conference: I loved it last year, an hour of rich theatre with a highly-articulate cast of six. The only disappointments this year were the absence of the editor, and the distraction of the large screen flickering away in the background, above the stage.

Tetbury Music Festival

Elise Smith, inspired founder of the now well-established festival of music performed over a long weekend in Tetbury's beautiful parish church, threatened us in her speech before tonight's opening concert with a spelling test as we left. Not many of us would, I guess, have remembered "Myslivecek", the composer of the first piece on the programme, and hardly more "Bezuidenhout", the surname of the fortepiano soloist in two concertos, one either side of the interval.

I can't say I had much opportunity to fret about the possible quizzing, as the music proved all-absorbing. Both concertos, well-known works, sounded quite different to "normal" at the gentle hands of Bezuidenhout, accompanied by a tiny orchestra of original instruments. Time stood still in the slow movement of Mozart's K453.

It was the first of two Arcangelo concerts during this year's Festival: we look forward eagerly to Jonathan Cohen's take on the B Minor Mass on Sunday evening.

Tetbury 10

The music festival at Tetbury seems now a well-established part of our calendar: others attend from far further afield than Cheltenham, and indeed local hotels can count on doing a roaring trade this weekend.

In its tenth year, there is cause for celebration. So it seemed fitting that Mitsuko Uchida, that sublime performer, should be on the bill to open this year's festival: there is no bigger name in the world of piano playing today. We were looking forward to hearing her in the flesh for the first time.

But it was not to be: she rang the festival codirector a week ago to say that her doctor had told her to rest for two months. Last night's audience was not the only one to be disappointed.

But was it? Amazingly, the substitute found at such short notice was none other than Paul Lewis, and not only that, he played all three of Schubert's last sonatas for us. Some stand-in. Some performance.

Chipping Campden Music Festival

We missed going to Campden for any music last year. The programme for this year's Festival is full of goodies, but most of them whilst I've been away walking. Last night, however, we went in order to catch a glimpse of Imogen Cooper, accompanying Kate Royal in Mozart's 'Ch'io mi scordi di te...', with the Festival Academy Orchestra under Thomas Hull. This was her third appearance at this year's Festival - she told us she'd enjoyed her stay in the town: it was good to hear she is lined up for next year's Cheltenham Festival, accompanying the Dutch mezzo, Christianne Stotijn. Campden generates an especially friendly atmosphere, and whilst the pews are pretty purgatorial, at least they aren't as claustrophobic as at Tetbury. Not bad woodwind playing from the Festival Orchestra either! But afterwards, not a chance of buying much-needed fish and chips, whether in Campden or Broadway! We found some chips eventually in Winchcombe - but they might have been bits of old shoe leather.

Jonathan Biss

Yesterday's Heart and Soul group discussed ways in which we could each intensify our local community experience. The implication being that, if we needed to travel anywhere, let's go low-carbon. Better however to stay at home. That was in the middle of the day: in the evening we took the car an hour Southwards, to hear a pianist from Indiana, flown in a few hours before from New York. And in the interval, the talk was with one person just returned from New Zealand, another off to Burma this week, a third having been skiing since New Year in Wyoming, a fourth glad that his cruise had not ended with a rocky encounter off the Tuscan coast.

In this private concert, Jonathan Biss, 31, tried out a programme he's to perform seven times in three different countries over the coming five weeks. "Remember, you're hearing it here first," our hostess warned me last night. Indeed we shall: this "outstanding" performer played Beethoven, Chopin and sublime Janáček to the huge acclaim of a discerning audience, before sending us home with a silvery sliver of Schumann.

My photograph was taken while Biss rehearsed for his Tetbury Festival recital in October 2010.

The Piano Tuner

Peter Newham has been tuning our piano ever since we acquired it - is that nearly 30 years ago? Before then even, I had encountered him when he and his wife first came to live here, wanting legal advice. "You are the first person in Cheltenham I met," he told me this morning. Like Somerset Maugham and W.H. Auden, he has one of those faces, which portrays character with no prospect of masking it. It's as if the sensitivity of his ear has transferred itself, Dorian Gray-like, to his visage.

Peter has strong views on planning. "Why can't our planners go and look at the Plaza Major in Salamanca before deciding on a glass and steel look for the new square in North Place?" To my enquiry, whether he's a member of our Civic Society, however, he replies, as I anticipated, "I'm not a joiner."

Our old upright is in the dining-room, the walls of which are now covered with Tetbury Festival photographs: he has stories, of course, about many of the musicians featured in them. But also he is the first person to liken my Douro Valley railway shot to something out of an old movie, and wants to hear the story behind my Gersois tobacco pickers tableau. "The trouble with both my pianos [he has made two] and your photographs, Martin, is that, inexplicably, nobody wants to buy them."

I enquire after his tricky back: he illustrates his clean bill of health since his last visit here with tales of riding horses in Szechuan amongst Buddhist Tibetan nomads and Muslim Hui Chinese.

An hour with Peter does the soul good.

Nice music, shame about the sales

Five wonderful concerts have been given in Tetbury church during this year's festival. Music by Schubert (Paul Lewis), Bach (Jonathan Cohen's Arcangelo consort) and Victoria (The Sixteen). And hotchpots on Saturday from the Elias String Quartet (in the morning) and Steven Isserlis with Dénes Várjon (in the evening). For me, perhaps the highlight was the quartet's performance of Haydn Opus 64, No. 6, but any such choice is invidious. The standard was uniformly exceptional: it was a great privilege to hear so many fine musicians in such lovely surroundings. And what a great programme book!

By contrast, my exhibition was a flop. People came, yes: indeed it was a highly sociable weekend. However, sales at the Gallery were few, and certainly mine were far from enabling me to meet my framing and mounting costs. As I have always said, people in England just don't seem to buy photographs for display; or is it just mine? Certainly, the punters this weekend were mostly of that age when they might be thought to have already lined their walls, which is why so often over these past four days one heard the excuse, "But I don't have room for any more!"

Westonbirt

The National Arboretum may not be quite at its golden best, but it still made a pleasant diversion this afternoon, between Tetbury Festival concerts. The main drag was heavy with people, but there's plenty of scope for escaping the crowd, and getting a little lost on one or other of the lesser used tracks. There are after all 17 miles of them. The sun peeped through for some of the time, and the drizzle only started just as we drove away out of the car park.

Earlier, I had been taken out to lunch at The Close, the first visit to that hotel since we stayed on our wedding night. Not wanting to offend my hosts, I can't nevertheless say I'd go again just for the food.

Tetbury Music Festival

Last year’s festival at Tetbury took place during a freeranger downtime:this is the back story. I was asked by its Directors to take photographs during the 2010 festival that could be exhibited this year in the little gallery (once a pub) along the road from the church, used for festival exhibitions in recent years. This turned out to be something of a challenge: clearly the visual artist-in-residence was deemed in some significant eyes as of very secondary importance. I was put in my place more than once, and that place was not such a comfortable one to find oneself in.

However, a body of work emerged, and tonight it’s being hung in the gallery – a dozen or so framed photographs and more than twice as many mounted. I wonder how many will be sold during the next four days? Oh, and there’s another photobook too, which I have published via the reliable Blurb once more: the above shows the front cover.

Badminton anyone?

I'm in need of training for a projected cycle ride from home to Ampleforth, starting on Palm Sunday. So this morning a friendly pacemaker led me on a preparatory spin - 26 miles before lunch, a looped route with the Badminton estate at its extremity. (He lives near Tetbury.) The weather wasn't as Spring-like as yesterday's, but it kept dry, and I didn't miss my gloves. Coming back, the wind was behind us, which made a difference.

Probably it's only in South Gloucs. that one can pass the country homes of both a Duke and a Prince (Highgrove) within such a short distance of one another. There's a fine view of the side of the Duke's William Kent-designed mansion from the lane we took. But what's that mysterious-looking upside down top hat flying above the flagpole? I don't remember hearing any aircraft noise, and it doesn't look like a bird.

Four firsts

I have been out every night this week - a sign that the Summer holiday period is well and truly over.

Monday saw the first meeting of our church finance committee with the new parish priest: a refreshingly different sort of get-together from any we have ever had before. I feel it's going to be a pleasure to work with Fr. Bosco, given the ambitious ideas he has for the two parishes to which he's been appointed.

On Tuesday, the Cheltenham Film Society had its first showing of the new season: Xavier Giannoli's film Quand j'étais chanteur with the beautiful Cécile de France alongside a mountainous Gérard Depardieu: it was a boring story. The Chairman's welcome speech and the wine and cheese afterwards were the best bits of the evening!

The Cheltenham Music Society's opening recital was on Wednesday, an altogether higher definition performance, by the Carducci Quartet. The evening had a World War II feel to it. Britten's first quartet was followed by a very accessible quartet by a pre-war refugee from Vienna, Joseph Horowitz. The Quartet (with the brilliant Nicola Eimer) finished with Shostakovich's wartime Piano Quintet.

This was chamber music playing of the hightest standard - good enough almost to distract me from the draught which was blowing under the rear doors of the Pittville Pump Room. It was a pleasure afterwards to be introduced by Jane Blunden to the "middle" of the Quartet, Michelle Fleming and Eoin Schmidt-Martin, word of which reached Ireland before I could even get round to typing this!

Churches can also be draughty places at this time of year, but not last night: there was a packed audience for the opening Tetbury Festival recital by Radu Lupu. Not having heard him for decades, I had forgotten quite what a distinctive virtuoso he is. His playing isn't to everyone's taste, particularly those put off by unprepossessing platform behaviour; but the Beethoven in the first half was, for me magical, especially the Andante of Op 14, no 2.

The Schumann Fantasie on the other hand seemed erratic; but then I have grown used to listening to the incomparable performance by Marc-André Hamelin on Hyperion. Perhaps my restlessness was to some extent to blame: when sitting in Tetbury church, "no matter where; of comfort no man speak."

Interesting to contrast Lupu with Gérard Depardieu: both gone to seed rather.

Lunch at The Blue Zucchini

Our good friends Sarah and Helena Priday invited us out yesterday, to The Blue Zucchini in Tetbury. The conversation barely parted from the topic of music, even after Sarah had left early, on Bampton Opera duty. We seemed to be surrounded by excellent raconteurs. Two of the other guests turned out to have been employed by the impressario Victor Hochhauser in a past life: many were the stories that came gushing out about their years working with him, his wife and the rest of their very distinctive cadre. "There was the time," said one, "when Mstislav Rostropovich started tickling Victor, who ran round and round the office laughing helplessly, trying to escape and crying Oh do stop Slava!"

As you may imagine, we were easily the last party to leave the restaurant.