Aurel's laurels

It seems Steph proposed a meme to JP Deni before several others got in on this great one. I asked JP to interview me, but she needed a little time to get to know my blog. I am thrilled now to get the questions. Now:

1. We know that you have excellent taste in music. What sort of musical background do you have?
Oh no. Lynette got quite cross with me because I thought that Mozart seemed like classical pop.
I failed miserably at piano, trumpet and guitar lessons when I was a boy. When I was sixteen, I recorded the Brandenburg concertos from 78s and we took this bulky tape recorder with us on a ski-ing holiday. I broke my leg the first day and spent the three weeks listening and reading Goodbye To All That, as usually, very slowly. Thus Bach is always associated for me with a rather austere bleakness, which I find very moving, but pleasantly detached.
It was, I suppose, film music which really turned me on to orchestral music and some serious composers. I also worked as a documentary film editor for a few years and we were often very free with the music we chose for those wordless sequences. It turned out that we payed very little copyright on electronic music because the musicians did not regard electronic manipulators as instrumentalists. I also had tapes of John Cage and Ligetti and, earlier, Leadbelly given to me by producers. The one genre I know very little about is, in fact, pop, apart from the Beatles and Mamas and Papas. Through my wife, I have come to love Country and Bluegrass. My Mp3 player is very... varied.
2. What was the first difference that struck you when you moved from England to North America?
Oh good questions, well worth waiting for. Um. I thought everything here was thinner. Bacon slices, toilet paper, wooden doors basically made out of cardboard and tightly folded paper. Electric plugs, with half the voltage of England, can afford to be very simple, relatively cheap things. On the other hand, gas has always been half the price of petrol. My salary here for the same job was four times what it had been In England.

3. What is the best part of being a dad?
Well, starting with birth; after the doctor, I was the first to hold our first born. He was entirely calm. As his eyes opened to his new world, I soaked his face with tears of joy that seemed to jet right out of my eyes. I'd never cried like that.Then I stayed at home with him until he was three. House husbands have a lot of fun, their lives slow right down to the baby's pace and, out in public, they can enjoy very high status from women. And then they multiplied. Each is different. I watch them grow and, in little ways, I grow them. They have deepened my love for their mother. I was forty when I had my first child and, by then, had come to assume that no one would want to have children with me. The sorrow I felt for myself then is way surpassed by the love I have for the richness of my life now.

4. What would you do during a day when you had absolutely no commitments at all and could do whatever you wanted to?
Sleep late, make love, eat all meals out, see a movie in the afternoon and go to a play in the evening. I'd still go to bed as early as possible.

5. What would an ideal double feature at the movies be for you?
:) :) I didn't look at these questions ahead of answering them. Um. I have a yearning for the double bills of my youth. The English government insisted that an English film be shown with every American film in secondary release. So I would see rather cheaply made gangster films in black and white along with slick Hollywood color films. I'm cheating already... I would start with Passport to Pimlico, eat an ice lolly and watch some advertising and pathetic trailers and then settle into....the red curtains open... and....I watch.... Dr Zhivago. Actually I saw the end of it about twelve times, as I found a way to sneak into the theatre well after it had started. I was never bored.

And, once again, here are the rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.