Hi, Al -- I can't remember what to use on a viola peg that keeps slipping (a friend in the same orch is having this problem). I remember using baby powder if a peg is sticking, but wasn't there something else we used on the opposite problem?

your sister, Kathy

Hi Kath

The stuff your friend wants is Hill peg paste (or any peg paste, I guess!) This is a brownish, gunky paste, which gives the will to live back to almost any violin peg. You can get it for about a fiver over here, don't know about in the States.

This can be however only a temporarily solution, as you well know. Once a peg has started slipping it will probably need professional adjustment, or even replacement, as pegs don't last forever and, in time, just smooth themselves out.

Yours,
Alice

Dear Alice,

Do I have swine flu? I feel terrible, and not like eating, but I can keep food down. I wake up feeling horrible, recover and feel more hopeful around midday, and then quietly collapse throughout the afternoon. Worst of all, I go the bed just after coming home from work, and nap a little, after which I can't sleep in the middle of the night.

But swine flu has to be more dramatic than this, right?

P B, Orpington

Dear P,

I don't know. You want to check out the sites where swine flu experts hang out.

All I know is that your sad tale has touched a definite chord, as I too wake up feeling lousy, decide that I'll live around noon, and deteriorate thereafter. Still worse, I have it on good authority (various mothers and daughters at local London schools) that this can last up to three weeks, which is approximately two-and-a-half weeks longer than I wish to live.

So this is my question to you: what was Michael Jackson's pet doctor's name again?

Yours, sinking fast,
Alice

Having just returned from playing a concert in France, I am surprised your French correspondent arrived at the Prom early enough to form any view on the sound quality. Surely he wandered in noisly at around 9:15pm having missed the first half and interval?

I say this having returned from playing in France where the concert, advertised to start at 9pm barely emerged from the womb by 9:15pm.

My theory is that it is down to French cuisine and beer.

The order of an evening of music is as follows:

1. Dinner
2. Music
3. Beer

In England we have a light dinner which ends at around 6:30pm and we enter the concert hall at 7pm for a 7:30pm start. The concert has the good grace to shut the **** up by about 9:30pm whereupon there is a good 2 hours drinking time left.

In France, the food is so tough that a normal set of molars struggles to chew through the average meal in less than three hours which means the concert starts at 9:15pm. The music is much the same as in England, other than the fact that it is played a notch up on tempo in order to bring the end of the concert nearer. Afterwards, the French retire to a bar (at about 11pm) whereupon they order a beer -- discover it tastes like urine, and sod off to bed.

So, my little French cousins: Learn to cook and brew some beer which doesn't taste like it's just exited a camel's urinary tract and you may enjoy music more and not feel compelled to talk through it!

Your views McVeigh?

Gloria Stoatgobbler

Hi Gloria,

If you think that's tough, try touring Spain, where the punters consider the evening ill-spent if the concert slips the leash by ten.

It is extraordinarily difficult for the average orchestra player to maintain his/her normally high standards of alertness when the symphony doesn't even get weaving until 11pm.

Cordially,
Alice
PS Aren't you -- er -- a little tough on French food???!!!!!!