Today I had lunch with a real live orchestral conductor, by the name of Julian Gallant. Nice man, as are his wife and brand new baby, whom I also met.

While Olga and baby were in another room feeding and being fed, I asked Julian one of the more interesting things you can ask people who have interesting jobs, or jobs of any kind really, which goes approximately as follows: "You're on your death bed and have only a few minutes to live, and it turns out your grandson has just shown up and he wants to do what you did. What do you tell him? Secret of your work in thirty seconds. Go."

He first answer was simply: rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. Then he said: be clear, clear, clear. Then he said: help them. Rhythm, clarity, help. And don't show off.

Not bad. He didn't have to think very long about it either.

Gallant and his Russian born wife Olga between them run, conduct and musically direct the Russian Chamber Orchestra of London and they also run a closely related enterprise called Ensemble Productions, closely related meaning that they organise events involving other musicians as well, and dancers too. Scroll down here for some future events, some of which I intend to go to myself, and report on here. There's also a link to more information about the Russian Chamber Orchestra.

And then my host took me to visit and have tea and fruit cake with a lady called Elena who is a choreographer. The real thing. She works for all the top London companies, and has also worked on movies, coaching movie stars. Which is hard, apparently.

You blog about it. Eventually it starts to happen.