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Graham Buik |
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Just in time! Today, Sunday 16 April 2006, happens to be Easter Sunday. And this particular Easter weekend is one that Isabelle and I will not forget in a hurry. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about right now. I just thought it was interesting to note in passing that on Easter Sunday last year I was making the final preparations to launch my website – and my business, which started on 1 April 2005 – and today, on the “same” day in 2006, I am preparing the text for my page on my wife’s website – and she began working with me on 1 April 2006… Easter Sunday 2005 fell on 27 March. That day also happened to be our “birthday”! Let me explain: my wife and I were both born on the 27th day of the month – Isabelle on 27 January 1968 and I on 27 December 1957. So on the 27th of each month we sing “Happy Birthday” to each other. And it was “only yesterday” in 2005 that my good friend Mathias Buckinx phoned me on my GSM – just in time, as it turned out, as I was still putting some finishing touches to my website. So, just in time, I was able to update my link to the website of the Belgian band he had recently joined. Appropriately enough, Matt’s new band is called “Just In Time”!!! Check them out at www.jit.be Matt’s “just-in-time” phonecall reminded me of an evening in 1999 (Wednesday 20 January, to be precise) when he had phoned me on my GSM (not the same phone or the same number as the one I use now – isn’t technology wonderful?!). I was just about to walk out the door of my apartment in Etterbeek en route to visit a fellow member of our small amateur choir (a certain Miss Isabelle Toussaint) at her parents’ house in Uccle with a view to recording a tape of the four voices of some choral pieces for distribution to the other choir members to facilitate “remote” practising between our weekly rehearsals. (Isabelle was going to sing the soprano and alto parts and I would take care of the tenor and bass voices.) It must have been about 18h55, because the appointment scheduled in my Community Help Service 1999 Pocket Calendar indicates that I was due to arrive on the other side of Brussels at 19h00... Matt’s surprise phonecall led to the first of many “changements de programme” that Isabelle would soon come to associate with me. In fact, having just acquired some new computer equipment and software, and knowing my interest in live music, Matt had decided spontaneously to phone me in case I should ever be interested in making digital recordings onto CDs! Well, suffice it to say that, rather than sitting down at the keyboard when I arrived chez Isabelle, I shared this exciting development with her instead. We decided to schedule our first recording session with Matt for 11h00 “the day after tomorrow” – Friday 22 January. Then I started recounting how I had come to know Matt in the first place. That just happened to involve a recapitulation of the “high points” of my life story to date, punctuated by Isabelle’s laughter at regular intervals. Now it just so happened that laughter was one of the aspects of human communication I had studied at university, but despite this background I was still puzzled. Was my life story really that funny? Well, no, actually – not at all, in fact. It transpired that what had amused Isabelle so much was the extent to which many of my experiences paralleled her own. We soon came to the conclusion that, as well as working together exceptionally well (notwithstanding a shared tendency towards perfectionism), we would basically be crazy not to get married – and, as anybody who knew us at that time will testify, nobody was more surprised about that turn of events than we were ourselves! So THANKS AGAIN, MATT! And there was really no need to apologise yesterday for forgetting our birthdays. You were actually a day EARLY for our “anniversary”!!! Well, it was a pleasure meeting you here. I hope you will find enjoyment and inspiration as you continue to explore Isabelle’s website. A la prochaine, Graham
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La dernière mise à jour de ce site date du 25-05-2006
