The School Trip Abroad, and why….etc

So here we all are in Berlin. Well, not Mr Millard. But I am here, and my parents are here, and the St Marylebone High School Symphony Orchestra is here, playing a selection of wonderful stuff
– Handel, Elgar, Bernstein, Mozart….its very moving. I’m sitting in the rebuilt nave of a bombed out church in central Berlin hearing these peerless pieces and watching my daughter playing the cello, with my 80-something parents who have never been to Berlin before and have always wanted to..its good.

Phoebe, amazingly, isn’t covered with embarrassment about this. She’s staying in a hostel and appreciated the fact I brought her the contents of my minibar last night (the chocolate sort, not the boozy sort). She DID resist the idea of coming on a school orchestra trip at first but when all her friends signed up, she calmed down a bit.. I said , in my most Helicopterish fashion “There is NO POINT being a Music Scholar and playing an orchestral instrument if you don’t go on these trips.” (hear the voice of a person who has never played an orchestral instrument and never been on such a trip…) Anyway, Berlin…what’s not to like? Apart from perhaps the hostel.

Anyway, my children are always rather happy about being on hols with me. I can’t wait to tell her about our latest adventure with www. adventurecompany.co.uk- Tanzania under canvas!! Up close with, er, African wildlife…

That’s all to come later in the year. First, though, there’s the concert tonight in the Zitadelle of Spandau. Gary Kemp, I wish you were in the audience!