Happy places recollected in convalescence

I still think it was something of a miracle: given notice of my big operation at Charing Cross Hospital that it would take place on Tuesday 18 July, I ruled out this year's chance of visiting my favourite annual event anywhere, the Pärnu Music Festival. I'd been booked to arrive on the 17th; J would join me on the 19th, and the following week we'd spend discovering Lithuania. I simply hadn't thought of what mover and shaker Lucy Maxwell-Stewart proposed: why not see if we could shift my days to the beginning of the festival? Amazingly, the festival agreed: I would leave the previous Wednesday, and return on the Monday evening before going in to hospital the following morning.

Between them, the PMF and the NHS swung into action. My brilliant Macmillan nurse, Anne Moutadjer, fixed up five appointments for me on the Monday and Tuesday before my departure on the 12th: another MRI scan, outpatients, stoma, plastics team, surgeons. So I was good to go.

The festival always has an enchanted air, but this year for me it was especially magical. Starting with our driver from Riga Airport, ex-bassoonist Marcus now in the middle of his national service. Traffic in Riga was awful, so we arrived late, but perfectly happy. Here's the moment of unloading with Marcus's harpist girlfriend Kaisa, who also works in the office, our flattering Marcus - 'when you two speak English in the back it's like some kind of fairy-tale' (let's not ask which one) - and Lucy. 

Though it was an immense bonus to catch the first concert, which is conducted by my hero Neeme Järvi (who turned 86 this June), I didn't mind missing the first half too much: after all, as Auden pointed out, Mozart's divertimenti were composed as background while 'Milord chewed noisily, Milady talked'. We were glad of the excellent coffee and a snack, and I told Kristjan Järvi how thrilled I was that he was putting on a 'Babylon Berlin' spectacular - another plus of being there for the first five days. The Divertimento, meanwhile, is burbling away on the screen behind us.

My dear friend and photographic artist extraordinary Kaupo Kikkas didn't think I'd make it, and was very moved when we stepped in to the hall at the interval. For a full (very long!) account of all the events, with the usual superb photos by Kaupo, read my Arts Desk coverage. I just wanted to add here that I really did feel the great warmth and concern of many of the great musicians I've got to know there: the first visit to the Passion Cafe found many familiar faces sitting round a table. As Alec Frank-Gemmill knew about my condition, word spread fast and I felt very love-bombed. 

I also got to know more of the top viola players present. Andres Kaljuste (pictured left) has been a good friend since we first met one Passion lunch in the company of his wonderful pianist partner Sophie Rahman (alas not there at this year's festival). But I hadn't spoken before to Julia Dinerstein - teaching at the Järvi Academy, had just played in Strauss's Capriccio Sextet that evening - and her husband Alexander Zemtsov, former LPO section leader, soloist and conductor. It's a viola-oriented family: their daughter Dana and AZ's brother Mikhail (currently undertaking a surname change, I gather) also play in the Zemtsov Viola Quartet - and there are others...

Another lively spirit, interested in everything, is Xandi van Dijk. I had no idea he was married to Kärt Ruubel - first-class pianist and admin both here and for the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. Somehow the news made me joyous - two more delightful people you couldn't hope to meet among musicians. Their young son was here too.

Xandi also played viola to Kärt's twin Triin's violin - I heard the Ruubel sisters as a fabulous duo in Berlin -  in Mozart's Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, a surprise highlight expertly conducted by someone I've got to know a bit on Twitter, Mikk Murdvee. But there's more about this on TAD.

Finally, the master-co-ordinator who brings all these people together, forging ties across the musical world which will last for a lifetime. Paavo Järvi also happens to be one of the world's great conductors, of course - I'd put him in the top five - and Estonian Festival Orchestra concerts are always events, a parallel to what Abbado achieved in his last 10 years in Lucerne. Glad I got to talk to him again at the end. There he is above on the right with Tea Tuhkur, former bassoonist in the orchestra, now working for the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, and that classiest of leaders Florian Donderer.

Pärnu was also an opportunity to get as fit as possible before the op would curtail my movements for some time. So I swam daily in the sea

and the river, actually much better for instant depth because you have to wade a long way in the Baltic, though I enjoy that too,

as well as plenty of walking - up to the meadows and marsh at one end of the bay, where there's a fine boardwalk around the latter

and plenty of tern action along the way. 

They don't hesitate to swoop above their weight, as it were: when babies are around, even the crows are likely to get it.

The boardwalk at the other end of the beach I took on an afternoon when mass cumulo-nimbus clouds seemed to be heading our way: I have memories of being drenched a couple of years back.

But while Kaupo told us of torrential downpours on the main road from Tallinn, the storm passed us by.

I did take a big long walk from one bridge over the Pärnu River

to the next

and back on the opposite bank, swim included, but I didn't cycle. My last time on a bike for the foreseeable future - since after the op I'm not allowed, given my plastic behind, to do so for at least six months - was during the other blissful close-to-op festival visit, covering three fabulous events in Ravenna. I remembered the peaceful setting of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, the only UNESCO World Heritage Site outside the city centre, from two concerts there. 

This time I had it more or less to myself - otherwise, there were only a few other tourists in twos or threes. Not bad for one of the wonders of the world, both in its apse mosaic and in its colonnades of beautiful pillars.

The bike path is parallel to a minor road, with sunflower fields on the other side, and then there you are in total tranquillity.

Always happy to look back on my first coverage of the best mosaics in the world from my first festival visit (though I'd seen quite a few of them Interrailing in 1982). In addition to meeting old friends in Ravenna and making, I hope, a couple of new ones, I was so happy to welcome the irrepressible Sophie Sarin, inspiration for this blog when she maintained her own much more exciting one about building and running a mud hotel in Djenne, Mali, and what happened next. She's now just set up a guest house in Siena and was in the midst of its taking off, which is why she could only visit for less than 24 hours. But once past a meltdown finding her air B&B, I think she had a lovely time. She conceded that la cucina di Emilia Romagna is so much better than Tuscany's - I took her to the Alighieri which does a range of utterly distinctive dishes with various home-made pastas (the festival folk, who have offices above, use it a lot).

I insisted that, as a first-time visitor, she saw the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia - my favourite small bulding in the world, much raved about here - and San Vitale. We also had to walk around the Zona Dantesca, including his still very much in use parish church, San Francesco

and of course Dante's tomb.

I think Sophie eventually 'got' the special magic of Teatro delle Albe's 'Don Chisciotte' Part 1 - like the stunning Dante, it will be spread over three years - but she absolutely did love the supper afterwards. I'd had a super lunch with three of the regulars, and always feel welcome on the big table outside at the restaurant they've been coming to for 40 years, Al Passatore. I love these people, above all their guiding spirits Marco Martinelli (to my left in the photo) and Ermanna Montanari (just beyond, with her back to us), more than ever. Sophie was especially tickled to be driven home by Quixote himself, Roberto Magnani - who started off as a teenager in the company - in what he called his four-wheeled Rosinante...

I didn't get to swim on the coast - my plan for the last day, to cycle again and hit the woods and the sea, was khyboshed ny the heatwave that begun, fortunately, the day I was leaving (it was 37 degrees at Bologna Airport in the early evening). But before that, I'd achieved my target of a swim a day while in Ireland - seven in Dublin Bay, mostly at Sandycove

and most of them with my New Best Friend Catherine Bunyan (here she is at the Forty Foot on the right, with visiting friend Marcelle Hanselaar).

My first swim alone nearly killed me - as noted here on a previous reconnaissance, the water at Coliemore Harbour looked so inviting, 

but once out of the harbour entrance, the rip tide between mainland and Dalkey Island is notorious. Thought I'd have to shout out for help as I got weaker, but managed to get near to the harbour wall and wade along touching the kelpy, rocky bottom (just as well Ireland doesn't have sea urchins). The currents are notorious - wish I'd known, didn't see a notice on one of the quay arms - and folk have drowned. Anyway, to complement my gannet sequence, I mustered energy enough after a little lie-down to catch tern action

and the distinctive white  ovals on the back of a White-Winged Scoter (correct me if I've identified wrongly).

Then there were two swims on a beach we had more or less to our (four) selves (we were staying with friends in Midleton, a trip based around going to see the phenomenal Siobhán McSweeney in Happy Days at Cork Opera House, which did not disappoint). This is Ballynamona near to Ballycotton, good as the tide's coming in for quick immersion.

Ireland's coastline didn't have the benefit of a National Trust/Operation Neptune to provide anything like the 598-mile South West Coast Path we walked over a decade. But the Ballycotton Cliff Walk is as lovely as anything in Devon or Cornwall.

Nature was out to oblige - a Stonechat or two kept us company

and this beauty, which turns out to be not a bee but a very large fly, rather basically named as of the Yellow-Faced variety.

We stopped for a picnic at Bryony's and Jon's favourite spot

and J and I went down to the beach with its splendid rock formations

while diverse shades of green tumbled down the cliff close to a cave entrance.

More familiar companions on the route back.

As coda to the swimming time, I got two more delicious early morning plunges at Aldeburgh around a cluster of sensational festival events, 

and the daily dips in Pärnu. The good news is that I can swim with my stoma, too... But my, does that take some getting used to. The first four days in hospital weren't so good, though thanks to the epidural I mostly slept through the first two, and then vomiting sessions meant I had to be intubated - the ghastliest thing I've ever had done to me while conscious. But the staff were a joy, a model of collegiality, professionalism and good humour. I'm glad I got a fair cross-section of them together for this shot, which I treasure.

So many wonderful visitors, too, whom I welcomed in the second week - first, I wasn't really up to it - and the biggest surprise of them my beloved godson Alexander, who came down from Scotland specially. Not a bad view from the window either, looking out over to the Wetland Centre.

Having completed my stoma diploma, I was free to leave on the evenng of 31 July, and amen to home being so close via the Margravine Cemetery that I was able to walk home. J put this out on WhatsApp as 'David putting the hospital behind him'.

Since then I've been blessed with many home visits and tried to do a daily walk. Tuesday's circuit of the cemetery with friend Simon and therapy dog Max

was exhausting, but it's been getting a bit easier. On Thursday I went by foot and tube to meet friend Jill at Paul, South Ken tube, before J's birthday supper at Ognisko. And yesterday, before he departed back to Dublin, I took a bus to meet him at my favourite of all the gardens along the river (yes, even including Kew), the Walled Garden of Eden (as I call it) within Fulham Palace's grounds.

Let's end with some cemetery visitors, as I've just embarked on Patrick Barkham's The Butterfly Isles. Margravine shows what happens when you let No May May extend, in part, throughout the summer. Butterflies everywhere, but my absolute discovery was the beautiful Marbled White, first seen with the eyes on its undercarriage, then displaying.

Their season is now over, I think. Earlier I saw a Comma

while Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers are still abundant.

The distinctive yellow and black caterpillars of the Cinnabar Moth, overlooked by a ladybird that might have consumed them, promised much, but not yet seen the results. 

One thing Barkham tells one is about the different rates of progress from egg to caterpillar, pupa (or not) and butterfly. Looking forward to learning so much more.