When I was very young, I wasn’t surrounded by classical music. We listened to the radio but it was either the popular music of the time or music of my parent’s generation. (Or talk radio in the case of my grandfather.) More often than not, the house was filled with music of our own making. We were a great family for singing.
This morning, on Radio Sweden, the presenter said something about “making classical music relevant to the younger generation” in the middle of his usual, soothing Swedish. It made me wonder. Why is this a thing? And, if it is, should modern music be made more relevant for the older generation as well?
This, in turn, made me wonder how I became aware of classical music. It was at school, of course. I principally blame Mrs Goris, one of my high school music teachers. She introduced me to Beethoven who she adored. She would sit at the piano and bang out the opening of the “glorious fifth” to a mostly bored class of juvenile delinquents – we were the roughest school in the state at the time.
But, before Mrs Goris, I remember a Mr Chisolm at primary school who organised the school choir. He played the violin and, although I don’t remember what music he enjoyed, he gloried in choral works, passing that appreciation onto me and, I assume, the rest of the choir kids.
These fledgling efforts of passing on knowledge, gave me a lifelong enjoyment of classical music. Which is not to say that it ever interfered with my listening and enjoyment of the popular music of my own time.
To be fair, I am a bit eclectic when it comes to my tastes in just about everything, music being no exception. So, perhaps I’m not the target audience. Also, I didn’t understand the rest of what the presenter said, given it was in Swedish. For all I know he might agree with me, for I am clearly a man of great taste and intellect.
Away from my music appreciation preferences, today was a shopping day, so I dutifully rolled my trolley down to the bus stop. On the way I found out why the footpaths remain passable regardless of the weather.
Ahead of me, on the footpath, was a grader, hurtling towards me up the hill. It wasn’t scraping the path, it was dribbling out grit from the bucket on the back while its big tyres scrunched along the sides. Given it was rubbish collection day, the grader had to dodge around the many bins that had been left out. This caused big tyre marks going up and down the kerbs.
Speaking of snow, at Trollbäcken Centrum, a big grader was clearing snow from the top car park. The grader would pick up a bucket full of snow then take it to a rapidly growing snow hill out of harms way. I thought it quite odd – moving snow with heavy machinery – and, obviously so did a motorist coming towards me.
The man was driving very slowly, his head turned towards the grader, watching intently as his car continued to go forwards regardless. I watched as a huge truck came up behind the inattentive driver. The truck was going at a reasonable speed but slowed as it reached the car.
The truck then figured it was safe to go around the car and proceeded to move across to the other side of the road. Which was fine except for the fact that the guy in the car wanted to turn left, across the path of the truck.
There was a massive blaring of horns and the truck slammed on its brakes as the car meandered its merry way into a car park.
That was my drama for the day.
Mirinda, on the other hand, between bouts of intense work, headed up to the forest in order to get lost for an hour or so. She returned with two very exhausted cockerpoos. I cleared their paws of ice and their lower legs of snow (and Emma’s face because she never fails to face slam the snow) and they immediately ran into the lounge and collapsed.
And then, late on, Dicte disappeared again.
We were happily watching an episode when it went into buffering mode. Or, as I call it, The First Red Circle of Netflix Hell. I reversed out and, suddenly Dicte had vanished. Like last time, I searched in vain. The entire three seasons had ceased to exist. We watched an episode of Star Trek Enterprise instead.
Dicte returned, and we managed to finish the episode, but it did make us wonder why it’s now happened twice and why it’s only with Dicte. Okay, I realise how annoying she is, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason for Netflix to manage our viewing.
