Today's Flight to Korea

Who's First?

There's a lot of flying involved with this job and over the years, in the background, a devious game is being played. It takes place in departure lounges all over the world. The players involved can be seen positioning themselves for any advantage they can get. Its like watching a chess game.

The game: Who's first onto the plane.

The players: LSO Leader Carmine Lauri and LSO Fourth Horn Jonathan Lipton.

The Rules:  Anything goes. Limited only by ingenuity.

When did it begin? I wanted to interview them separately.

"Carmine, as a leader of the LSO, I notice that you're often last onto stage.  How does this feel being last given your passion to be first on to an aeroplane?"

Carmine. One move ahead today? 

Carmine.  "Strange, but at least on the platform I know that there's a seat reserved."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Maybe over 15 years."

It started with Warwick Hill and Mike Humphrey. They worked as a pair. Cunning.  One on each side of the shuttle bus so that one could be first up the steps onto the plane and save seats; usually by the emergency exit for the extra leg room.

The problem was with charter flights.  The free seating.  First come first served.

Jonathan. Today's winner?  

Our 10 hour flight today is from London Heathrow to Seoul in Korea. I'm talking with Carmine who sitting across the aisle in row 32. Nobody has seen Jonathan. Perhaps he's booked himself on another flight.

No he's been spotted up the front in seat 1D. Business class!

One nil to Jonathan?

Carmine "He's fritted away his airmiles!!"

Four more flights on this tour. Game on..  

When one door closes ....

.... another opens?

I joined the LSO on the 24th April 1979. Keen and eager and sitting near the front of the first violin section. On 25th November this year I'll be 65 years old, sitting nearer the back, and under the terms of the membership I'll be leaving the orchestra. Perhaps not quite so keen and eager, but hopefully a better musician. But as my long time friend and colleague Claire Parfitt keeps saying ... "there's many a good tune played on an old fiddle".

At the end of this year I'll be retiring to Tavernes, a small village in Provence. 

Its a massive change going from a full time job in the LSO to a life in France.   Someone said, it's like going from being a small fish in a big pond to being a big fish in a small pond. I'd like to explain that Flaque is french for puddle. Secheresse is when there's no water at all. ..... I thought it might help to write about it.

Its got to the stage now where most concerts Im playing pieces for the last time. And after 38 years, most pieces have a personal history to them. Some funny moments, some challenges, some delights and some train crashes too.

Playing in this band evokes profound feelings. I'm grateful for having had the privilege of playing with such great musicians and for having many as friends. I have been apprehensive about how to approach these final months. I'd like to treat it as a celebration.

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cables at Abbey Road Studio this morning