A good week of tennis viewing culminating in Murray's victory over Dimitrov in an absolutely gripping match this morning.

As well as the two streams corresponding to its TV channels  Eurosport broadcasts additional streams and it has been possible on occasion (it's a bit hit and miss I don't know why) to watch a match on one of them without either commercial breaks or commentary.  That's such a bonus since much of the time the commentators contribute very little to enjoyment of the game.  I generally don't need to be told that a good shot has been played and remarks such as "..he grabs the ball with his racquet and returns it full of meaning..." simply annoy me.  I am indebted though to one commentator for sharing with me the knowledge that Sharapova never wears sweat bands and seldom calls for a towel between points.

Again more or less by accident I caught Zambia's second group match.  They played Tunisia and were all over them, mounting attack after attack, swarming around their goal, banging away but only managed to get a ball in the net after 60 minutes.  Tunisia got an excellent equaliser ten minutes later.  That seemed to put fire in their bellies and in the dying minutes they scored a winner.  Such a shame. 

Perhaps the new president will take a day off to nip up to Equatorial Guinea to encourage them, or maybe Guy Scott will since he looks likely to have time on his hands.

I enjoyed The Merry Widow very much.  Unlike the Daily Telegraph I found lots of wit and sparkle in it; the book and lyrics in particular, by Jeremy Sands, were a treat to the ear.  The sumptuous set and costumes were lovely, the can-can dancers spirited and the principals incarnated their characters well although I will agree with the Telegraph to the extent that I found some of the delivery of the text a wee bit clumsy.  I also understood the business with the fan very easily which I didn't the last time I saw the show.  Mind you that was done in Hungarian so I didn't stand much of a chance.

The Australian Open Tennis grand slam is upon us and I have purchased a month's subscription to Eurosport to watch it since neither BBC nor ITV have much coverage to offer.  It's a streaming service so I can watch on a PC or even a telephone but the device of choice will be my smart TV.

It's remarkably cheap (provided I don't rack up some excess broadband usage charge and I remember not to let it be automatically renewed).  As a bonus I got it in time to watch Zambia's first match in the African Cup of Nations.  They scored a great goal just outside of 60 seconds after the kick-off and spent the rest of the game gamely trying to get another but gave the ball away rather too often to their opponents, the Democratic Republic of Congo.  They were the better team overall but only managed to get through the Zambian defence once so the match ended in a draw.

The time difference between here and Melbourne is such that the daytime matches start at about midnight our time.  I shan't see many of them.  I did try to stay up last night to watch Murray's first match but tiredness got the better of me.  The evening matches on the other hand start at breakfast time, to be honest a bit before my usual breakfast time but I may make an effort to get up earlier for the next two weeks.  

Throughout 2014 I was sure that I was going to fit in a visit to Belgium to enjoy some of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Adolphe Sax, whose invention I've been learning to play for the last several years.  Dinant where he was born looks worth a visit even when it's not bedecked with saxes but I didn't make it there nor to Brussels where he was brought up, studied music and became an instrument maker in his father's business and which has been hosting a large Sax exhibition.

The French have a great claim on Adolphe since it was to Paris, a much more important musical centre than Brussels, that he moved in 1842; where he set up a workshop and over the following years developed the saxophone to a form recognisable to us today.

So it's not surprising that as part of the inaugural activities at their new concert hall, which opened on Wednesday, they are devoting Saturday afternoon to the saxophone.  I was tempted and if Easyjet had had a Saturday morning flight I might have succumbed to temptation, but I'm going to the Met instead, not actually to New York but to it's satcast manifestation in the Cameo where I'm standing in for a sick friend and accompanying his wife to The Merry Widow.

Although the sax was initially taken up by military bands and used by a number of classical composers, it has flourished in the world of jazz and nowhere more so than in the USA.  Now thanks to my favourite jazz programme I know that the Met (museum not opera) is running a sax exhibition till the end of April.  I've never been to New York and would quite like to visit so maybe......