This week seems to be going past too quickly, and it's Wednesday again already. This is another argument for my ten day week. I've been thinking about this some more, and I've realised that the year should always start on a Sunday, or whatever day comes before Monday. If you do that, New Year's Day is always a day off, and Christmas Day and Boxing Day also both fall at the weekend. Which is handy, since a crucial part of my plan involves abolishing public holidays. You only ever need two calendars - one for a leap year, and one for the rest.
The French apparently had a ten day week as part of the Metric obsession that came with the Revolution. No-one liked it because they only got one day off in ten, instead of one day in seven. My plan of the longer weekend gets round this, of course.
There's only one problem with my plan to become the modern day Julius Caesar, the last person who did any major calendar reform (he gave us our leap years). He was dictator of most of the civilised world at the time. And like a lot of dictators he was removed from power in a rather brutal way. I'm not really that keen to follow his example too closely...
Harmonious and Less Harmonious
I've had a piece of music running through my head almost continuously for the last three or four days. Helena was messing around on the piano at the weekend, and she played a couple of notes that reminded me of something. I found the music online (the benefit of concentrating on centuries old stuff is that there are loads of out-of-copyright scores available to download), and set about playing it.
The music running through my head sounds great. Unfortunately the reality of my playing isn't yet at that level. And probably never will be. This is where You Tube comes in - type the name of any piece of music, and you'll find someone who's videoed themselves playing it. They're not always great, of course, but they're generally a lot of fun to listen to, and it's a good way of hearing different interpretations of the same piece.
The following is played by a guy who calls himself "thelastmusician". I hope he's wrong about that, but I really enjoyed this. It's Handel's movement of variations, known as "The Harmonious Blacksmith", from his fifth keyboard suite, and it's justly famous because it's a lot of fun:
8 comments:
Uh... did you miss the attachment?
oh and FIRST!
Brian? Why would you want to abolish public holidays?? We count on those days to stay sane since we know we will soon be getting a day off.
I regret that I dropped out of a college class that would have taught me how to play piano after 3feeble attempts to play a short piece of music. Come to find out, just because you fingers are nimble on a computer keyboard, they are perhaps so on a piano. At least that's what my piano teacher may have told me!
that really was a lot of fun Brian
thanks
Bee:
No I didn't miss the attachment - it must be you.
the public holidays have to go towards the 3 day weekends. So you still get the same number of days off, just different days. You also still get whatever leave entitlement you have now.
FADKOG:
I never learned an instrument when I was young, sadly. Maybe if they used piano keyboards for computers, that would help. Or the other way round. There are almost exactly the same number of keys.
Jean Knee:
That's okay, any time.
The 10 day week - mate, we need to have a talk. But wanting to excel on your instrument - I can only wish you luck with that.
Chris,
There are all sorts of benefits - if you want less than 8 consecutive days off you use one day's leave less than with the current 7-day system. And don't forget the 30% reduction in Mondays. Fair enough, you have to go 7 days between weekends, but then you get to binge for 3 days every week.
Anyway, self-employed writers won't notice.
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