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The interior of the Priory Churh at Bolton Abbey during the concertIf asked to characterise this, the third week of June 2018, I would have to give it a thumbs up as a pretty good few days.

The week got off to a great start on Sunday, with a visit from dear friends for an early dinner, before setting off for the short 20-minute drive to Bolton Abbey. Here, we were attending a gala concert, part of the Grassington Festival. It was an all-Mozart programme, played by the local professional orchestra, the Skipton Building Society Camerata, conducted by their founder and music director Ben Crick.

It proved to be a really great evening, with two fine young soloists. Soprano Peyee Chen, who hails from Taiwan, gave an exhilarating account of the tricky Exsultate Jubilate whilst award-winning UK violinist Sophie Rosa played the fifth violin concerto superbly, capturing the exotic quality of the music in the last movement, which gave the concerto its nickname,’Turkish’.

Two early symphonies completed the programme – number 25 opened – this is most famous for its dramatic first movement which provided the arresting opening of Milos Foreman’s acclaimed film of Amadeus. The programme closed with number 29.

Looking north from Bolton Abbey on a chilly June eveningIt was one of those concerts that remind you of Mozart’s sheer genius. All four works dated from between 1773 and 1775, i.e. when he was aged between 17 and 19. They all contained at least one of those wonderful phrases or moments that exist throughout Mozart’s music, when the hair rises on the back of your neck and tears spring automatically to your eyes. It was a great evening, and the interior of this beautiful historic Priory Church was looking particularly lovely. Sadly, though, the weather outside was not quite as good – so that our interval walk was a little chilly and not very photogenic.

The good experiences followed on Monday when a very positive telephone conference with a prospective client resulted in the commissioning of a consultancy project. I also managed to find time to publish online my article on the future of the railways for this month’s edition of Rail Professional magazine.

Tuesday saw me sitting down armed with the latest spreadsheets from the Department for Transport, looking at the trends in bus patronage revealed by their newly published figures. Pretty grim reading they make too – so time to get that all down in an article for my colleagues Rob Jack and Andrew Garnett at Passenger Transport magazine.

The only sad thing about the day was the demise of our coffee grinder after long years of loyal service. In line with modern practice the replacement was ordered online and duly delivered on Thursday – what price bricks and mortar retail, then?

The rest of the week passed as quickly as ever, with consultancy work, getting the tickets for this year’s UK Bus Awards ceremony on sale and continuing to promote my book The Stamp of Nature – including editing a new video posted yesterday.

And as for today… well two really great things happened. First of all, I got on the scales this morning to find that I’d reached another milestone in my years long quest to lose weight – dropping below 14 stone (98 pounds, or just under 90 kg). I reckon that it’s the first time below this watershed number for me since I gave up smoking cigarettes… and that was 33 years ago! Next task of course is to stay there… and then carry on downwards. Fingers crossed!

The other good news was an e-mail from Karen Holmes at 2QT Publishing. Karen was the editor on my first book and is now working with me on my second novel, provisionally entitled The Year of Awakening. Writing this was important, because whereas The Stamp of Nature had lain about for a very long time and was a product of a much younger me, this is a completely new work, started just before Christmas 2017 and completed at the end of May. Could I still do it?

To give you a flavour, she says, “This is a very tender love story and I think you’ve pulled it off. There’s a real sense of the emotions that pass between your protagonists and you develop their relationship in a highly realistic way…” She goes to say, “Interestingly, I think you’ve developed a novel that will appeal to both men and women, gay and straight, because of the way in which it develops this love story.”

Excuse the blowing of my own trumpet, but you can imagine that I was a bit chuffed to read that. As you’d expect, that’s where the praise ends, and she goes on to set a demanding agenda for lots of hard work to come before the book is ready to hit the streets. I am really looking forward to getting on with that over the coming weeks. I’ll keep you posted as to how I’m getting on.

So, time to go and cook the dinner, now, and crack a bottle or two – after this week, there seems to be lots to celebrate.