We drop-in on this musical household to hear how they have been spending their time.

Transcription

Julian: So here we are in our lounge room with one of our dogs, the other one is over here….Scoutie….come on.

Dimity: Say hello to everyone, Scout!

Julian: Yeah, good girl….

Dimity: This is Woofie.

Julian: Don’t know if she is in shot. So here we are, this is about the second week of all this social distancing,

Dimity: And lockdown

Julian: and lockdown. We’re coping as well as we can, and we can’t complain, compared with a lot of people, our life, lives are very…. Fortunate.

Dimity: We are incredibly fortunate.

Julian: We have access to food, the weather’s been spectacular. We take the dogs out every day. What have you been filling your time with for the last couple of weeks?

Dimity: Well…as you know, we’ve got a renovation going on with a property down the south coast so I’ve been full steam ahead with that! I’ve had more time that I thought I would have, to look after all those details so that’s been quite fun! And filling my days, shopping online for various things trying to do everything at a distance, and yeah, I guess as a result, taking a little bit of a break from the violin, but I think this next week I’ll head back in to… back to playing. Julian, you’ve been really busy.

Julian: Yeah, well with the Conservatorium in lockdown as well through the Sydney University, we’ve had to move everything to online teaching so it’s been a learning experience for all of us to start teaching one-on-one but via various internet platforms, and it’s a challenging thing to teach someone with little…headphones in your ears. The sound is never quite as good,  but it’s turned out better than I expected, and I’d never actually given a lesson via any such means in the past. So now I’m quite comfortable with it, and it will probably be something I feel I can do in the future, although there’s nothing that can replace the one-on-one, sitting in the same room as a student, aspect of teaching just the same as performing.

Dimity: There’s nothing like being there! *laughs*

Julian: There’ve been many groups out there on social media with recordings they’ve put together, people in their own living rooms and we’ll probably do something in the fullness of time, as well. But, what we are really hankering for is that opportunity to do what we do, and that’s to play for audiences.

Dimity: We’re very lucky to have a comfortable home and a nice garden, and the dogs and nice places to walk where it’s safe and we’ve been enjoying cooking, and all the other aspects of our life that we normally rushing through in order to prepare all the concerts and go on tours and that kind of thing so, yeah, we’re so far we’re managing very well,  and we hope you are too!