Cheese and Tuba Medley

I've almost forgotten how to do this blogging lark: Elspeth always seems to get in before me to tell you all about our weekends. Well, Elspeth's been sent to Sweden, and I have to do something to fill those lonely evenings, so here I am.

In truth, this was more my weekend than Elspeth's. We went to Cwmbran to see Mark Carter, a.k.a. Mr Tuba. While Elspeth was enjoying the delights of the largest undercover shopping centre in Wales, I spent many hours talking about tubas, playing tubas, and ultimately buying one. After much debate, I bought one of Mr Tuba's own, specially designed by Mark and built by the Melton people in Germany. It is definitely the best instrument I've ever played, and I am soooo happy to own it! And grateful to Elspeth for not appearing too shocked or unhappy at the size of the cheque I was writing.

Here it is (yes, it's big, yes, it's shiny, and yes, it's loud):

It was good talking to Mark about aspects of my playing too, enough so that I was convinced to spend my part exchange cash that I got for my old student Yamaha on a mute! Practising with it will improve my lung power, and also make me more comfortable practising at home without disturbing my neighbours (too much).

Watch this space for future tuba talk.

Sunday was a marvellous day, with a visit to the Great British Cheese Festival. Last year's was rained off just as we arrived, so we've been waiting for this for more than 12 months, and it was definitely worth it! Highlights included:

• Food from Britain market. More pickles than you can imagine, sausages, pies, beer, cake - brilliant!
• The 'British Cheese - A Revelation' tasting we went to at the end of the day. We happily tucked in to 7 different cheeses from the Lubborn Creamery and Butler's Cheese, accompanied by a nice wine. Even better was the goody bag we picked up on the way out: a whole supermarket chunk of each of the cheese. Each. Fabrielous.
• The Dram Busters - a tasting of whiskies and cheeses which sit well with each other. Mmmm. Unfortauntely, I didn't get a bottle of each whisky to take home.

It's hard to leave out Britain's biggest cheese market, the farm shop, so many free samples of food, fantastic fudge... I was somewhat disappointed though with the location - the farm centre (we had to stop in, since we were there, you understand) is great but everything seemed considerably more cramped than when it was at Blenheim Palace, and it took us over half an hour to get off the site at the end of the day. On balance though, very much a positive, as evidenced by the fruits of our visit, arrayed below:

Beer x 3, Pickles/chutneys x 7, Fruit Liquor x 5, Fudge x 1, Battenburg x 1, Black Pudding x 1, Garlic for planting x 2, Cheese x 19, Sausages x 4, Pie x 2

Anyone care to join us next year?