Music and informal surveys

I was hobnobbing with the toffs a couple of weekends ago.

Out in the pound note area of the Buckinghamshire countryside is a rambling complex consisting of barns, houses, fields and forest over about 60 acres. The buildings range from 1930’s back many hundreds of years, featuring just about every example of barn construction that you can imagine. This is the home a Music Camp. Musicians arrive; pitch tents; eat, sleep and generally socialise in a sort of communal way; and play music. Once a year they have a summer ball and I squeezed into the dinner suit and attended the ball and was royally entertained by a swiftly put together big band playing all sorts of jazz numbers.

After what the organisers called an “interval for sleep”, we reconvened for brunch and were let loose to wander the grounds at will. In almost every barn, outhouse or awning there were a small collection of musicians playing chamber music of one kind or another. Even a walk in the woods was accompanied by a solo flautist producing magical noise. It would not have been at all surprising if it had turned out he had goats legs, or a Fairy Godmother appeared in answer to his summons.

Part of the afternoon’s entertainment included a brief tour of the grounds in the company of the owner, where I had the opportunity to resolve a couple of building issues that had been foxing him for some while.

I’m not above doing this for anybody, really. It often requires an informal assessment to allow the building owner to determine the best course of action, and I am usually content to perform this signposting exercise without necessarily charging a fee from the outset.

Of course, laying on an event over two days, involving top notch musicians in sumptuous surroundings to receive this informal advice is not absolutely necessary, but I won’t turn it down.