My account here was hacked. I've had to restart it empty of content, but with same user name. Composer from small solo pieces to operas & things in between.
Aberchirder, Aberdeenshire
Joined August 2026
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Since I seem to be glacially slow at getting followers back after my account here was hacked and misused by a malignant person with a Swiss email, I may not become very active again here. I have opened a Mastodon account, but I'm unsure what I may or may not do with it.
Today we turned to the gravity fed water supply for winter. I'm now more relaxed about possible long power cuts in storms. (11 day one a few years ago.) I don't like relying solely on grid (or technology) in winter. Pic from today's walk just before sunset. 8ºC. Light WNW breeze.
Last winter we couldn't use the gravity supply. It had been raided by the son of a neighbouring farmer, claiming he didn't know the well was still ours after the land it was on had been sold to them (a generation ago!). Somebody said something & he has now removed his diversion.
David Ward retweeted
Verdi gives us tenors the gift of allowing us to enter into characters easily through his music, but when the music stops, it can be difficult to get out of character!
#otello
Pics from my walk before lunch to the top of the farm. It was 8ºC but felt a bit colder in the WNW wind force 3-5.
David Ward retweeted
Hallowe’en started its life as a poem by the writer Violet Jacob. She wrote this a few years after the death of her son in the Battle of the Somme in WWI.
The poem was put to melody by the late Jim Reid. The poem told from the perspective of a man working on the farms of the North East, and acknowledging the vacant space around him in the bothy sheds as his fellow workers had fallen in the war.
#ScotsLanguage #FolkMusic
David Ward retweeted
finished writing my next book this week so am off on holiday. i leave you with a personal list of my 100 favourite novels. happy reading! —
1) From my front door at 07.14 (sunrise 07.21). 2) From bathroom window looking NE at 08.36. 3) Nasturtiums now bedraggled but still producing flowers on last day of October: there's been no killing frost yet (which is odd for here). Currently 12º C & calm.
David Ward retweeted
You could almost believe the mason put down his chisel yesterday. Yet this Romanesque bird at St Peter’s in Rowlestone, Herefordshire, was carved nearly 900 years ago.
My walks 1) In the woods yesterday a large tree felled by Sunday's storm. 2) Today in field next to cottage & in 3) middle distance the pump house for our water. We should be on a gravity fed supply for winter by now, but there's a problem… Mild today up to 13ºC, S wind force 3.
David Ward retweeted
Well, there we are: finished writing my Shostakovich quartets book this lunchtime. An exhausting but wonderful journey. Will be out next autumn. I need a shot of vodka!
David Ward retweeted
A message from the residents of Unst, Shetland to the SaxaVord Spaceport which as applied for a licence to start dropping large, disused rocket components into the sea north of Shetland.
It's website highlights its “founding commitment” to “minimise our environmental impact on earth and in space”.
It adds: “We will work with launch operators to track returning components and record jettisoned material entering the marine environment.”
Yeah right...
David Ward retweeted
In the shelter of the Hundred Acre Wood they stood up straight again, to listen, a little nervously, to the roaring of the gale among the tree-tops.
“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”
“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought. ~A.A.Milne
David Ward retweeted
#jokeofheday My mom was known in my recital audiences with her loud Bravo-oh! #music
2 unrelated pics from today. I had a routine eye test in Huntly at midday. Need new specs, but not urgently. Back home, waning gibbous moon rising, from my front door looking NE at 17.26. Still breezy, but SW wind is slowly easing, now gusting to force 7. Not cold: 7ºC.
David Ward retweeted
Farm workers with horses ready for ploughing, early 20th century. I don't know the name of the farm but the image was captured by an #Invergordon-based photographer. If you recognise it, I would love to know
[source: HLH Archives, D1751/2/2/7]
David Ward retweeted
Tonight at 7pm at @Guggenheim NYC, I am honoured to be presenting/moderating @santafeopera’s ‘Works and Process’ event for OF ONE BLOOD. Musical excerpts of the opera + in-depth chat with the work’s creators (mum and dad). Big Apple friends come along!
guggenheim.org/event/works-p…
