Got up at 9, made coffee and an arepa as usual for breakfast, which was that arepa with pancetta, coffee and orange juice. Practised a bit of guitar or, rather, read through bits of the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro by Bach -the Prelude is quite accessible, possibly to a grade 6 for 7. The Allegro is a little more involved and it has to be, of course ( Read more... )

Haven't been posting much as I've mostly been preoccupied with the coming quite major operation. They hammer into you everything that can go wrong so, inevitably, you fret and stress a lot about it.

Half-way through resolving the issue of what I'm going to do with my two schools during the down-time. One of them has accepted doing online lessons and ( Read more... )

So life slowly goes back to normal, or some sort of normal.

Not for me just yet, though. Facing a major surgical operation in a month and a half so still keeping fairly low. Not going to clubs or socials, although I did go to the exhibition at Electrowerkz last night and have met with a friend or two for a pint in pubs with garden, outside.

I do ( Read more... )

So the heat wave came and went and the rain returned. Life as normal , then.

Shell keeps harassing me with phone calls, emails, paper mail. Even though the matter is supposed to be in the hands of the Citizens' Advice Bureau. It is so draining, so very stressful.

Lessons have diminished with the school holiday but still almost reasonably busy, a ( Read more... )

If you take lessons with me and get a mail/SMS/Whatsapp message that says something like "Good morning
, Hope all is ok at your end. Did you make the payment? Not showing here yet" that probably means two things. One is you are behind with your payments, I think you completely forgot and I'm worried. The other one is that I'm probably pennies away ( Read more... )

Adding a guitar reference page to my little guitar lessons website. Not a lot in there as yet, and almost all of it classical guitar related but both things may change, time allowing (and time, alas, may indeed allow for the next couple of weeks)
Guitar Reference Links | Flavio Matani Guitar Lessons:

I'm on Dreamwidth at Read more... )

Teaching at that school in Highbury today. Well, not a lot of teaching as all Years 7, 10, 11 etc have all been sent home to isolate. There's been quite a few cases in the school -including the music dept. Am I worried about this?

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.... of course I am, what do you think ( Read more... )

I had given Ko-Fi a try and opened an account there -Ko-Fi is a crowdfunding site, a bit like Patreon but people can make one-off contributions rather than subscriptions which seemed to me better suited to what I do. The metaphor they use is that of buying the artist a virtual cup of coffee, contributing a couple of quid at a time. Seemed like a ( Read more... )

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I'm on Dreamwidth at http://flaviomatani.dreamwidth.org/ -do follow me there if you can.

This term I have two pupils doing their Grade 8. One, classical guitar on Trinity College exams. The other one is a theory of music pupil on ABRSM. This is of course immensely satisfying ( Read more... )