Harrogate Archives » Angelina Egerton

2019 Goals – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

8 January 2019 2 Comments

Hello and a belated Happy New Year. How was your first week of 2019?

The House.

As I’m writing this, a plumber is replacing our boiler, which of course packed in just days after Tim and I moved in to the new house.

So it’s been a cold few days for us.

Nevertheless, it’s taught me to be very grateful for our usual way of life – have you ever thought about just how amazing it is to have hot water on tap? How wonderful it is that our houses heat themselves automatically? How blissful it is to have a hot shower and dry yourself with a warm, dry towel?

I’m feeling very grateful for these little things today.

This is a time I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time. Tim and I are in the house, and things are finally starting to settle down into a rhythm. The only things missing right now are a washing machine (lost by the removals company *sob*) and internet (being installed on Friday *yay!*).

Life.

My plan going forward is to put these blogs up on Mondays, but as you can tell, this week’s is a little late due to not having sufficient internet/spending all my time doing laundry at my parents’/trying to stay warm in the freezing-cold house.

Last year I feel like I made a lot of progress with procrastinating less, achieving most of what I set out to do and generally staying a bit more organised. In 2019 I want to continue all of that, but I want the increased productivity to result in more income, please. It sounds shallow, but my goal is to make more than I spend. I don’t want or need loads, just enough to pay the bills and have a bit left over for a rainy day/doing up the house/getting married.

I’ve signed up for some extra work online – teaching English to Chinese children – which is actually really fun and will hopefully tide me over while I find work as a harpist and harp teacher in York. I’m very grateful to a friend of mine for recommending this to me – you know who you are – thank you babe.

My piano will be brought over from Congleton in the next week or so, at which point I can start giving piano lessons in York too – hurray! I am also starting to give harp lessons online (when I have internet) so that is a super-exciting new venture.

Health.

Another 2019 goal of mine is to prioritise my physical and mental health, I’ve gone back to the beginning with my running and starting to work my way through the Couch 2 5k app, I’ll be practising yoga and meditation regularly and trying to eat as well as I can – nothing too strict but my long-term goal is to have a good, healthy quality of life for as many years as I can. Of course, once our garage gym is all set up, Tim and I can do our strength training in there as well.

This may be the subject of another blog post (let me know if you’d like to hear more on this), but the life of a freelancer can be a little chaotic (just a little), with late nights, early mornings, disrupted meal times etc., so keeping our bodies on a schedule when it comes to eating and sleeping really helps our bodies and our health. So, as I’m reading The Circadian Code by Dr. Satchin Panda at the moment, I’m trying to stick to a regular eating/sleeping/waking up schedule to see if that results in an increased amount of energy. Fingers crossed.

So, that’s probably enough from me for now. I really hope you are well (and warm) wherever you are. Check back next week for another post.

Chat soon,

A x

Uncategorized

The show(s) must go on.

27 August 2013 1 Comment

I am writing this from my home for the week in Newcastle. This week I’m playing for the Newcastle Musical Theatre Company’s production of Sound of Music in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal. The first performance is tonight, which is very exciting! Here’s my harp in the pit:

I left my pillar cover on just to be on the safe side… the ceiling is really low! This is probably the easiest pit I’ve been in recently. This month I’ve also been playing with the National Festival Orchestra for the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton Opera House, which is beautiful:

The technical team in Buxton move harps all the time (or so they told me) and thought it best to lower my harp down into the pit from the stage. Oh my. It was crazy – but actually – if you have enough people helping it’s not too bad. Here’s my view from the pit once I was in:

I was there to play in Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow. What a fun operetta! It’s still going round in my head most of the time. The performances were separated by a day, and instead of being able to leave my harp in the pit I had to heave it out to go up to Scarborough to take part in a concert organised by the lovely Christine Cox, playing alongside Simon Lindley, Keith Swallow and Phillip McCann. It was lovely to do some solo performing:

After Buxton, Merry Widow was also performed in Harrogate’s Royal Hall – the pit was even more tricky than Buxton! The harp had to be lifted over a waist-level rail before being lowered into the pit – thankfully again I had loads of people helping me (by helping me I actually mean doing it all themselves while I try not to freak out too much). And I couldn’t even leave the harp there because in between performances I had to drive up to Newcastle for the first Sound of Music bandcall! Yes this week has been mental. I enjoy playing for shows so much though it’s worth all the driving, no question.

So here I am, in Newcastle for the week. I thought I was being sensible by buying lots of healthy food to cook for myself (I’m staying in university halls of residence) but I didn’t realise that the kitchen is devoid of any pans/pots/cutlery! I think some band members are donating stuff to me for the week, but tonight I’m afraid I’m having garlic bread and pizza, shove in the oven and eat. As simple as you can get!

So that pretty much brings us up to date. As ever, thanks for reading! Lots of exciting projects coming up in the near future! I can’t wait to tell you all about them.

Music, Uncategorized

Harrogate revisited…

25 March 2012 2 Comments

I have wondered whether or not to write about this gig, because the whole day was just pretty stressful and I try to keep negativity out of this blog. But as this whole thing is about being honest about what the music business is like, I’ve decided to include it.

Let’s start with the good:

My parents came to watch the concert – it’s always so lovely to see them and to have some supporters in the audience, someone to play for.
The playing itself was lovely, it’s music I enjoy playing – particularly the Agnus Dei from Howard Goodall’s Requiem, that’s a really nice part to play.
There was wine in the interval.

Ok that’s done, onto the rest of the day:

Harrogate, despite being a small town, seems really difficult to find your way around – due to all the one-way systems that my sat-nav is too old to know.
Once I’d found the church I had to unload, up a few steps but no big deal. The next task was to find a car park.
Found one! Full.
Found another one! The machine gave me a ticket before letting me in and I dropped it on the floor! So embarrassing, I had to actually stop the traffic after parking to go and pick it up from where I’d dropped it.

Once I’d found my way back to the church (thank you smartphone GPS) I just turn around to put my bags down and turn back around to find a man I’ve never seen before grab my harp and say ‘ooh it’s pretty heavy isn’t it!’ Cue a rather annoyed ‘excuse me I’ll do that!’ from myself and he wanders off smiling to himself – infuriating!

The conductor – a lecturer from Leeds Uni, asked me to go to the other side of the podium once I’d got settled down – I wish he could’ve introduced himself to me and asked me to set up there when I’d first arrived. I’m pretty sure he had no idea of my name until I gave him my business card after the concert. Being referred to as ‘harp’ all day is a bit depressing. There are some more things I could say but I will leave it there.

The second half of the concert was a performance of Carmina Burana by what was frankly a gigantic choir including a school choir – I’m sure several of whom didn’t sing a single note. I watched from the front row with my parents.

Oh, and one more thing, music geeks will relate to how annoying this is. The audience applauded after every movement. I’m sure it added at least 20 minutes to the overall running time of the concert. I found the perpetrator who started the applause and glared at her several times to no avail. My mum and I couldn’t stop ourselves giggling due to the fact that my dad had brought a score along so he could sort of ‘read along’ with the concert – and he sniggered to himself every time something went wrong – in the front row. Amazing.

So after the concert all the was left to do was get paid (yay!) and drive home through what was probably the worst fog I’ve ever seen. Ever. So as you can imagine I was very relieved to arrive home to a nice glass of sherry and a catch up with the parents.

Music

Majestic Hotel, Harrogate

13 March 2012 1 Comment

This is probably the last thing any harpist wants to see upon arrival at a gig:

Was there a lift? Of course not! So I do my usual thing of asking to get a small team together to carry the harp up the stairs. The man who seemed to be in charge walked straight up to my harp and grabbed it before asking ‘is it heavy?’ Cue one huge heart attack. The man was busy telling me exactly what the best way to lift it would be until I managed to get a word in edgeways and remind him that I move my harp on a daily basis and maybe, just maybe, have a little more experience in that area than he does.

Long story short, the harp got up the stairs, my way. I win, harp is fine.

I’m amazed that, when I called the hotel earlier to ask about parking near the door, I asked ‘are there any stairs?’ and got the answer ‘no, just a couple to get in the door then you should be fine.’

Slightly misleading don’t you think? See above picture.

Anyway, the gig was background music for a dinner. I was playing with a lovely flautist Jenny Dyson – in her first year of a Masters course at RNCM. We did a mix of Welsh folk songs (all of which are still dancing happily away in my brain and will continue to do so for some time I’m sure) and popular serenades (Mozart, Beethoven, Bizet etc.)

It was so nice to have some company in the car to and from the gig, especially the journey there – battling rush hour traffic on the M62 is never fun, so at least there was company, good conversation and an assortment of confectionery items.

This week is crazily busy, this post will have to be cut short as I’m about to rush off to London to play a gig tonight at the Royal Courts of Justice with the lovely Esther Swift.