This week I attended (along with many others from ANU including Peter Höfner, Ali Nosherwan Hamed, Xin Lu, Kai Phan and Carlo Zancanaro) the yearly meeting of Formal Methods researchers in Australia at the University of Queensland. It was good to hear from colleagues again, and I was very impressed by the size of the group.

Peter Höfner also presented some of the initial thoughts and work around Yi Yao's PhD topic, and it was good to help clarify our thinking there. I think I will encourage all of my students not just to attend, but also to speak next year.

We encountered a kookaburra at breakfast that seemed determined to steal people's sausages (swooping right in front of them). This kookaburra seems to have absolutely no fear of humans, so I was able to get very close to take a picture. Eventually we saw it smashing a piece of bread against the table to "kill" it, as they do to lizards and snakes in more natural contexts.

This is a special edition of Church Music Corner where I share the programme for the second church choir concert of 2026, To the Soul's Quiet Harbour, continuing in the funerial theme established by our first concert. The student musicians from Burgmann Anglican School joined us at All Saints Ainslie to perform an afternoon of chamber music to a fairly full house. We sang pretty well despite being lopsided in numbers (I was the only tenor.)

The main works performed by the choir (interspersed by instrumental performances from Burgmann) were the first four of Parry's Songs of Farewell: My soul, there is a country, then I know my soul hath power, then Never weatherbeaten sail and There is an old belief. The last item of the concert was O How Amiable by Ralph Vaughan Williams, which we sung with pipe organ, choir, and instruments.

I think the concert went rather well. Thanks to all who put the effort in to make it possible, and to everyone that attended!

Respice in me, et miserére mei, Dómine: quóniam únicus et pauper sum ego: vide humilitátem meam, et labórem meum: et dimíte ómnia peccáta mea, Deus meus.

Cibávit eos ex ádipe fruménti, allelúia, et de petra, melle saturávit eos, allelúia, allelúia, allelúia.

Today at All Saints Ainslie we were in few numbers after our concert yesterday but we still managed to sing Tallis' Verily, verily I say unto you (link to my own recording I made last year):

Verily, verily, I say unto you:

Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man

and drink his blood,

ye have no life in you.

Whoso eateth my flesh,

And drinketh my blood,

Hath eternal life.

For my flesh is meat indeed,

and my blood is drink indeed,

He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood

Dwelleth in me, and I in him.

We didn't make any observation of the feast of Corpus Christi which I'm a bit unhappy about (but that's why we have at least got that Tallis anthem programmed).