This week’s piano practice has been the ill-tempered clavier. (I know, wrong use of “tempered” but if you point that out I may biff you.) The bank (see previous head bang) has still not sorted out mistake. Now another is spotted. ‘Can you hold on?’ No, I can’t hold on. Please ring me back. ‘Okey dokey.’ (Small cheer for any reader, apart from C, E and C Grant, who can pinpoint the quote “and don’t say okey dokey”.) As to the ring-back, I already know it won’t happen. Thank goodness for scales. They’re tremendous aggro-absorbers. You can really crack a good scale, really go for broke. Up and down I zip, swearing not so gently, irritations trapped beneath drumming fingers. I’ll keep going until the irritations are pummelled to death, then I’ll pummel some more. I’m in no mood for mercy. My goodness, I wish I had a drum kit.

It’s been that kind of day. Bank in which we have some savings made worrying cockup; staff gripless; sleepless night. Some other ongoing transaction ground to halt: ‘we’ll call you back by the end of today’. No call. Waiting for other things. Still waiting now. Perhaps I don’t exist. Then, right at the end, a conference organiser, to whom I’d just paid the fee, has booked me in for the wrong conference. I’m tempted to use a large four letter word in capitals, shouting it aloud. On the good side, not entirely dreadful practice (though still in gloves as temperature sinks and sinks). Watched 56 up on the itv player – aren’t other people’s lives fascinating, but what can have happened to Neil, to turn his boyish delight in life into gloom and neurosis? Then watched Birdsong on bbc iplayer. Well, I watched a bit of it. Couldn’t remember the plot, so keen to view. I found it like Mahler: deadly slow. I didn’t care what happened, if they’d only hurry up. They didn’t, so I lost the plot (again). I’m going to bed shortly. Better tomorrow.

Thus was Puccini’s Tosca dissed by the critics after its first performance. It’s an enviable phrase. As to its supercilious thumbs down, who cares! This ‘shabby little shocker’ transported the audience at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal last night. We were happy to be shabbily shocked. At close of play, we wanted yet more shabby shocking, more yearning, stabbing and general hysteria. We wished Tosca would do a bit more Vissi d’arte before chucking herself over the parapet. We wished Cavaradossi and Scarpia would come back to life and fight an ariatic duel. In short, we could happily have sat through the whole thing again. What a delight it is for Glaswegian West Enders to have such shabby shocking so close to home.

I cleaned out the bird this morning. I perform this duty once a week. The bird and I do not communicate. I don’t even know his/her gender. The bird is just the bird. Our relations are limited to my ‘good morning, bird’ as I remove the cover of a morning; ‘goodnight, bird’ as I replace it at night, and on Saturdays bird is marginally inconvenienced by the cleaning. Bird is, I think, roughly seven years old. That’s how long we’ve had bird. (I don’t want to call bird ‘it’, which is clearly wrong, but it’s hard to write without pronouns.) I wonder, this morning, whether I’ll miss bird when death makes the final grab. Seven years of cleaning is habit forming. Also, bird (and a birdy friend, already deceased) arrived courtesy of a daughter, so seems a chirpy link to this house’s childish days. I don’t know what I’ll feel. Perhaps nothing at all. In truth, I’ve never been keen on caged birds but I admire this one. Bird has survived cats, dogs, the big freeze, the big heat, cage catastrophes and my limited ministrations. The cage door is often left open but bird knows that outside over-rated so resists the lure. I’m writing about bird because this morning bird gave me the eye. I have no idea what this means. Perhaps bird is thinking ‘Human cleaned cage this morning. This happens once a week. We don’t communicate …’

No warmer. Sun appeared for a tantalising 30 seconds. Off to bed with electric blanket, hot water bottle and husband. Yes, I do turn the blanket off before introducing the bottle. No, the bottle isn’t full of gin, but that’s quite a good idea. I’m thinking of remaining in hibernation until the temperature reaches at least 10 degrees, although may be tempted out for the opera … warm in the opera house too. May hibernate there.

Apologies, but woes today. It’s so damnably cold and dreich I can’t think, can’t sit, can’t stand – well can’t stand it, more like. Certainly can’t play. Disastrous practice. Fingers all over the shop. Brain paralysed. When May is miserable I just want to cry, or shout at somebody. Such a waste of spring. I’ve got used to miserable Glasgow Julys, and worse Augusts, but a grim May feels a low blow. Apologies. If it’s warmer tomorrow, I’ll be more enthusiastic. If not, can’t promise anything except, like the weather, more of the same.

Some days I get nowhere. Several days sometimes. This is the third of such days. Fingers on some kind of strike. Perhaps they’re off on holiday but forgot to let me know. Either way, they’ve ceased to work. This is annoying, particularly since Goldberg Variation 5, all semiquavers and crossing hands, requires 8 fingers, 2 thumbs and a few toes in full working order. As it is, my semiquavers are uneven and my hands crash into each other, tie in a knot and end up in a splodge. Not a good look. Not a good sound. Not a good day.

At Glasgow’s City Halls, it’s D-night. Dvorak, Mozart and Beethoven doing delightful D-ish things: a suite, a concerto, a symphony. D, to me, is yellow. Does this make me a synesthete? Whether or no, I am not wearing yellow to make D feel at home. A concert is a nice way to start a bank holiday weekend. Except there’s no bank holiday for me. I must work on Monday. Dddddamn.

I don’t think of myself as a complainer, yet I spend quite a lot of time complaining. In the last hour I’ve complained about at least four things. Perhaps complaining is becoming a hobby, or a habit, or a hobby-habbit. Anyhow, I only got 10 minutes of practice in today, and only by ignoring the husband’s dinner. So I complained about lack of time and he complained about lack of dinner. We were companions in complaint, or companionable complainers. Slight panic. I thought for a moment there that I’d run out of things to complain about, but I’ve just remembered something else. Husband has gone to bed. I’ll write my complaint down to be sure of complaining about it in the morning.