As you can probably tell from the title, I can’t speak a word of German, which is making this holiday in Austria rather trying. It’s a bizarre feeling being almost the only one here who can only understand a few words, and even then only when they’re written down. I’m far more used to dead languages, I suppose.

Also, there are a lot of flies.

Still, it’s a rather nice reprieve from city life. As those of you who are taking an interest here can tell, I haven’t been doing that much work on the site in recent weeks – that’s because I’ve been busy trying to sort out a few accommodation mishaps for the upcoming year in London. Thankfully, everything at last seems to be coming together so it’s rather pleasant to be able to come and sit out in the sunshine here in a valley near the river Gail. It helps that certain members of the family have been here before and know the people who run the place of course.

My brother’s shortly to give me a short tutorial in writing drum music, something that has frequently eluded me when I arrange music. Even for piano and guitar parts I can generally get some notes down on the page, but drum music has been somewhat a mystery to me for quite some time. Here’s hoping that will now be a thing of the past.

I’ll see if I can do some work on the site over the next week – it’s not hugely easy to get Internet access with no laptop in the middle of the Austrian mountains, but I’ll see what I can do.