Not everything goes according to plan

An appreciative audience

Yesterday was a day of mistakes and failures, and general panic.  But with a wonderfully restorative ending.

I planned a short ride to Ripon, where my originally planned concert had been displaced by a massed choir serenading Her Majesty.  There’s a beautiful square, near the cathedral, with a bit of a market, a huge monument, and lots of activity.

Surely there could be no better place to play a cello, sitting in the sunshine, serenading the market?

But it didn’t go well.  Perhaps the good burghers of Ripon have more exalted tastes.  I was comprehensively ignored.  I persevered for forty minutes, and earned £1 – from a gentleman who appeared to be selling paint rollers (though perhaps he’d just bought them, and didn’t really know how to carry them).

He had a story to tell – he was writing a book about arithmetic, explaining why it didn’t work.  I couldn’t quite follow the argument.

I should have stopped here a bit longer, and found somethng for lunch.  But I pressed on, to Harrogate, looking for better luck.  En route I had another argument with the GPS, which absolutely insisted on a farm track.

I met the farmer, who explained it was a public right of way, but that if he didn’t maintain it eventually people would stop using it, wouldn’t they?

Eventually, after only thirty miles, but a bit too much emotional turmoil, I found my friends’ house in Harrogate.

Now that was a perfect end to the day, especially the look on nearly three-year old Samu’s face when he heard the cello.

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