This is the time of year when people reflect on what has gone on over the past year, decade, century or more. It’s also a time to eagerly look forward to the future.

Flutewise cover from 1988

Today I’ve been thinking about this day in 1988 when I received the very, very first copy of Flutewise. It was quite a moment, especially as the copy that was delivered to me had a huge mistake – some red ink had not been printed on two pages! I was mortified. I phoned a good friend in publishing, Simon Hunt, who very calmly told me to stop worrying, it would be fine – and of course it was.

In those early days Flutewise was put together in what would be considered a bizarre way today, cut and paste. It’s the sort of method you’d expect to do in primary school, but it was quite the norm then. The articles would be typed out and then printed. Drawings were preferred to photos as photos were so expensive to reproduce. Once the words and pictures were ready they were literally cut out and pasted with Pritt stick into place. Then a film was made of it before printing. It was slow and the results were not really that good. But everyone loved Flutewise from the start. And so I’ve continued for coming up to 22 years. Are you impressed?
It’s often been very hard work, but most of the time it has been great fun. For sometime now though we’ve been thinking we should change things. From New Year we are. We’ve got an exciting new website. The few people who’ve seen it have said, ‘It’s amazing’, ‘Not what I expected’, ‘Wonderful’. I’m really proud of Andy for what he has achieved, it has been a mammoth task that has taken a very long time, but I think it will be well worth it. We’ve a few tiny problems to sort out and then it will go live, probably tomorrow. So you can come back and check and find out how you register to use it.

It seems timely that the new site should be launched now, 22 years after the first magazine. Times have changed and are changing.

Happy New Year!

Stephen opening his present

What a lovely day I had yesterday. I went to Stephen’s performance of the Magic Flute on Glyndebourne’s main stage. Now that is really big time. I was very, very proud of him and extremely impressed not only by his playing but the fact that he’d been given his own dressing room with his name on the door! You know you are important when that happens.

After the performance we drove into Brighton to visit Andy’s new music shop (67 St. James’s Street, Brighton – go and visit and buy lots or have your flute fixed or serviced). I gave Stephen his Christmas present when we got there. Any idea what it might be? I’ll tell you about what Stephne gave to me another time, I need to take a photo, it’s great.

Then we went off to Portslade Town Hall for our magic Flute event. Numbers were low as 4 people didn’t turn up but the people who were there were the best. It was a really happy event, everyone enjoying playing Mozart.

So the winter magazine is out, now all I’ve got to do is tidy my very messy office and then start more planning for the new decade. We’ve got something very exciting planned for over Christmas for all of our loyal members so watch this space – or your inbox. Enjoy your Christmas preparations and when you’ve got a minute check out the Jethro Tull website

At Portslade Town Hall - what is Stephen doing?