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Hot Culture
So I put friend #2 on the train yesterday afternoon and was looking forward to a nice slow day today* of . . . frelling laundry, and picking up some/any of the stuff that seems to have accumulated on all flat surfaces,** preferably before the next visitor onslaught*** arrives and (conceivably) wants to put its suitcase down.†
. . . Having forgotten we were supposed to go to Tosca†† tonight at Grange Park. Tickets were of course bought long before I found out that 23.2% of everybody I have ever met in my life was going to be pounding through Hampshire this fortnight. ††† Nor did I know till I got up this morning—to some sadist on the radio telling me with relish— that it was going to be the hottest day of the year. Just the sort of weather you want to get seriously dressed up in and go sit in a small oppressive auditorium with a lot of other people in their best clothes.
I think I’m in love with Claire Rutter.‡ I saw her in Norma‡‡ last year and became her slave. If she decides to widen her fan base and take the lead role in Alvin and the Chipmunks: Carnegie Hall to Coney Island, I’ll probably go see it. But after her Norma, Tosca was a no-brainer.‡‡‡ And she was fabulous. It’s interesting, I don’t find her that persuasive an actress per se—she’s kind of an earnestly-going-through-the-motions performer—but golly can she put it over as soon as she opens her mouth. And it’s not just that she has a great voice—she has enough great voice for two or three sopranos, it seems to me—she has huge emotional commitment to what she’s singing to you about, plus what I don’t know what else to call but authority. She just totally makes you believe.
[Man saluting barefoot wife. It was too hot for shoes. I don't know how Peter is bearing his velvet jacket.]
I didn’t myself feel that either the Cavaradossi or the Scarpia was quite up to her, although Scarpia in particular got a lot of applause at the end. Cavaradossi is to some extent your basic disposable tenor§ role—he lives to suffer anguish, love the soprano, and die—but Scarpia has to dazzle and command.§§ He can’t just be wicked, he has to have charisma: he has to be the kind of sick puppy you can’t look away from. I felt that this Scarpia was pretty much your garden-variety thug. He kills people, sure, but he doesn’t do it with any class.
But Rutter . . . mmm. Worthwhile. Definitely worthwhile.
And now maybe tomorrow can be a nice slow day of laundry, and sweeping the floor, and watering the garden, and deadheading a few million roses and pansies, and writing a novel, and—arrgh, blah, gah, frell—I’m supposed to have Fear No More and Come Away, Come Sweet Love, no no not memorized just prepared off copy by Tuesday. . . .
[Man descending stairs. Yes, wife has put her shoes back on.]
* * *
* Having survived MY FOURTH AND LAST ENGAGEMENT AS RINGING MASTER this morning at service ring. Niall got HOME today, or anyway he better had, or the hunting-down-and-killing clause will be invoked. I was thinking about the Horrors of Command again this morning, and more intensely, it being service 
ring and all. Now the first rule of service ringing is that you only ring what you can sound good at, because this is service ring, this is what we’re supposed to be for.^ And the first rule of handling your band is keep ’em coming back—by giving them something to do that makes them feel both clever and wanted. This can lead to a certain amount of ringing-master dolour and desolation, as today. So having thought of something to do, announced it, and grabbed your rope—the reality of Sunday morning being that you’re not likely going to have a chance to sit out—rather than standing there cheerfully/stoically ringing with everyone else, you’re busy worrying about what you’re going to do next. And what if, furthermore, you’re conducting the freller? I can’t think about this many things at once.
[Man reading placard . . . ]
Why didn’t I take up knitting or the French horn or rocket science or something simple and straightforward?
^ I have done my rant at you about people who learn to ring for their own amusement but can’t be bothered to pay their dues by showing up Sunday mornings. Arrrrrgh.
[ . . . about this]
** I may or may not do an x-rated blog post about my Drain Clearer. Cathy and I were both weeping with laughter after I got it out of its mailing box. It looked so ordinary in the catalogue.
*** People have this disgraceful habit of travelling in the summer. Stay home! Stay home!
† Can’t you just stand there and hold it? What do you think this is, a hotel?
†† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosca The plot summary is kind of a long way down.
††† Note that two more very familiar to this forum people will be appearing on these pages toward the end of the week.
‡ http://www.ruttergadd.co.uk/cr/
‡‡ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_(opera)
‡‡‡ Tosca has the further advantage that it is one of the few operas Peter can be wheedled into going to without major arbitration and sulking.
§ E lucevan le stelle, yes, yes, I know, very pretty aria, makes a great concert piece.
§§ Speaking of commanding. I wonder if he was ever a ringing master?
Opera and handbells
It’s the Queen’s birthday and everybody is going nuts over the World Cup*. I went to the opera.
It has been an unnecessarily exciting day. Well, it started last night.** I was looking forward to a nice weekend’s gardening, because it’s not supposed to rain and it’s not too hot, and I glanced in my diary because I just wanted to check that there weren’t any weddings this weekend that I had to ring bells for. There aren’t any wedding rings*** but my first Grange Park opera of the season was tonight. Which I had entirely forgotten about. Thank the Goddess of Agenda that diaries were invented.
It seemed like a good idea last autumn or whenever it was when us season subscribers were being harassed to stop mucking about with membership fees and book tickets. The only opera I thought it was worthwhile to compel Peter to accompany me to is Tosca; that Peter goes to the opera at all is pretty much an anthem† to his good nature, since opera is not Peter’s Nanki Poo.†† And there isn’t anybody I want to bully into spending a lot of money on a ticket to go with me instead, since I’m one of these if-I-can’t-get-a-good-seat-I-don’t-want-to-go people. So I bought two single tickets, for Richard Strauss’ Capriccio and Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges—which is next Saturday, so I get to do this all again. Gah. I love opera, and it’s thrilling to see it live occasionally instead of just you and your CD player†††, however adored the recorded performance. I just don’t like the faff of going.
So I was stomping around the kitchen creating an early hellhound lunch because I was going to have to give them their afternoon hurtle early‡ when the phone rang. I felt a light premonitory chill when Peter handed me the phone saying, It’s Niall.
Niall doesn’t ring me up frivolously. He only rings when he has cause. He also spends a lot of time leading up to whatever his cause is, which is almost fun to watch, except that I know when he gets there I won’t like it, and the longer it takes him to get there the less I’m going to like it.
They’re laying on a special service at the cathedral tomorrow. Fine. Whatever. The cathedral is always having special services. It’s one of the things cathedrals are for.
They’re laying on a special service at the cathedral tomorrow for which they want handbells.
WHY?‡‡ The cathedral has millions of bells. And ringers. I don’t ring there because, you know how I’ve said that while good towers welcome everyone, other people’s beginners are not wildly popular? Well, I count as a beginner at the cathedral. Niall claims not to know why they want handbell ringers. This may or may not be true—the latter depending on how Niall thinks I would react. And we don’t even get paid—we’re just doing this for the greater handbell good and because we’re wonderful human beings. I am not a wonderful human being. I wanted to spend tomorrow afternoon gardening.‡‡‡ And furthermore our handbell third is not Colin, but one of the handbell gods. I can’t ring with gods: they go too frelling fast.§ Niall said hopefully, but we’ll get tea! Tea and cakes!
Yes, I said yes. I am a masochistic fool. And I can probably get a blog out of it. Whatever it is.
So, all you readers who were here last year, you remember Grange Park, right? 
Note the opera-loving dog. The bloke in the naff white dinner jacket is actually the owner and chief patron. And he comes out on stage with the dog to thank us all for coming. And I’ll take that car over a McLaren any day.§§
* * *
* The what?
** I say this a lot. There should be a second footnote to ‘Days in the Life’ that reads, ‘usually starting the night before’.
*** Not that this has saved me. Keep reading.
† With organ accompaniment
†† Okay, it would be Yum-Yum for Peter.
††† I’m having trouble not obsessively reading up on the just-released iPhone 4. One of the questions near the top of my list is, am I going to be able to copy multi-CD operas on it, without the little ratbag copying CD 2 over CD1, which is why the Walkperson chiefly contains every Steeleye Span ever cut.
‡ Which didn’t work at all. When I got home they were all over me. We want to go out! You missed our evening hurtle! Whatever that was in the afternoon doesn’t count!
‡‡ Sorry, those of you who follow me on Twitter. But this is the full, complete version
‡‡‡ I wanted to spend this afternoon gardening.
§ I’ve met this particular god before. And I know what’s going to happen. He’s going to try to make me ring faster, and he’s going to ask me when I want to ring my first peal. Full peal. You know, two or three hours.
§§ And the opera? Um. Here, read this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jun/07/capriccio-review
I’m even a major Susan Gritton fan. And it was not only sung fabulously, it was also acted immaculately, which is still an unfortunately rare thing on an operatic stage. But—all you Richard Strauss fans, look away now—I found the story irritating and (sacrilege) almost twee, and the music surprisingly disposable.
But it may not be Strauss’ fault. I was sitting next to a woman who took up not only all of her seat but about a third of mine. I am, in fact, so angry about this, I’m thinking about writing to the admin about it, although what can they do? Tear out the expensive new armrestless seating and replace it with the kind that has barriers? It’s a small hall; I’m sure they did it this way to save space. But it is intolerable to spend all this money on a cultural event and then essentially not get what you paid for because the person sitting next to you stole some of it. If you don’t fit in a normal sized seat, stay home. Or buy two seats.
Sunday evening . . . unnnnngh
I should be working on PEGASUS.
In the first place, I am very short of sleep. No, no, I was all ready to go to bed at the proper hour last night, erm, early this morning. I was just moving the current bathtub book* from the side of the bath, and muttering to myself as I dried it off**, to the bedside tor, because until I finish PEGASUS I apparently need light frivolity last thing at night: mostly I read homeopathic journals in the bath*** and large insufficiently water-resistant nonfiction tomes in bed. And as I dried and muttered I heard . . . a noise. A buzzing noise. Where the hell, where in all the hells, are all these bloody wasps coming from??
ADRENALINE SPIKE. I didn’t get to bed all that late after this little contretemps, but sleep? Pfft. But the alarm went relentlessly off at getting-up-for-service-ring o’clock this morning. Fortunately my Sunday morning tea is strong enough to make crutches out of: just dump it out of the pot and plane the edges down a bit.
And in the second place, I’m presently watching La Sonnambula on Sky.† Gah. I saw it once, long long long ago at an age so tender and fragile I still wasn’t absolutely sure that I couldn’t live without opera, and while (as I remember it now) Carmen and the Barber of Seville quickly renewed my commitment to the art of musical melodrama and mayhem††, it took me decades to have another go at La Sonnambula†††. It’s a bit like I Puritani only the because-her-lover-has-betrayed-her mad scene happens while she’s sleepwalking. Sic. Everybody wanting an(other) excuse to be snarky about opera falls about‡ over the sleepwalking—I agree that the entire village just happening to be on hand for our heroine to tightrope somnambulantly over a Tyrolean gorge is a trifle implausible, but I would wear the sleepwalking.‡‡ The thing that makes me blow gaskets is why does she want the jerk?‡‡‡ He’s a pathologically possessive loony, and the sooner she lets him marry his old sweetheart—who mysteriously also still wants him§—and marries the Count, who is obviously interested, the better.
However. I have been working on PEGASUS.§§ I haven’t had quite the dazzlingly brilliant and inspired day I had yesterday§§§ but I have crawled back up that 362-degree reverse slope# and am back to clinging to the 22-December-deadline precipice## with teeth and bleeding fingernails. Hope is the thing with feathers, you know? ##
* * *
* Bathtub book is a genre, okay? Some people lie on beaches. I lie in the bath. Mostly, as above, I read stuff that would make me a Better, More Informed Person if I remembered any of it.^ But there are times when I want bathtub books.
^ I’d like to believe that my diabolically bad memory is merely an opportunity for buying lovely colourful notebooks+ to write things down in but I think if I tried to push that one Pollyanna would die of an aneurysm.
+ I love office-supply and stationery stores. Second only to books and chocolate.
** Which is why I only read cheap paperbacks with shiny covers in the bath.
*** With the unfortunate result that my shelves of back issues tend to be . . . crinkly.
† I’m also eating lovely fresh roast chicken. Late.^ The hellhounds get way too much of the chicken in this household. They also believe that anyone doing anything with chicken is doing it for them. And since Dogs That Eat are my favourite things in the entire known universe^^ all the hellhounds have to do is cruise the kitchen doing their poor sad hungry dog imitation and I instantly drop everything and feed them.
^ Yes. The story of my life. Supper, bedtime . . . turning in novels. All late.
^^ Husbands bearing expensive gifts are second.
†† And silliness. Silliness is very important.
††† And then it was Joan Sutherland, and . . . eh. I know I’ve confessed this here before, but Sutherland always sounds like she’s singing Olympia^ to me.
^ Olympia is the mechanical doll that the wet jerk of a hero of Tales of Hoffman falls in love with. Mechanical. Doll.
‡ Britspeak for ‘laughs’. Which phrase always makes me fall about.
‡‡ As I like to keep reminding you, I write fantasy.
‡‡‡ Speaking of wet jerks. Pillock. A family-rated blog forbids me to describe him as he deserves.
§ The family blog thing is also preventing me from making the obvious assumption. In print. And I feel sorry for the ex-sweetheart. She should have him up for breach of promise. And the business with the scarf that she supposedly dropped in the Count’s room . . . please. Hasn’t anyone read Othello/seen Otello?
§§ And am about to go back to it.
§§§ And for anyone who reads this blog but isn’t on Twitter: http://wondermark.com/ ^
Get with the programme, guys. I especially like: ‘I respect anyone who can’t muster the conformist attitude to write in a straight line.’ Footnotes. Yesssssss. Depraved, degenerate mental processes. Yessssssss.
^ I will try to remember to fix this as soon as it has its own address. Waving your mouse over the individual title doesn’t seem to function the way it does on Days in the Life, and when my One Trick doesn’t work, I have no idea. +
+ Postscript, next day/night: http://wondermark.com/thanksgiving-bloggers/ Nothing to do with me: the Excellence that is Maren posted this on the forum
# I don’t do maths. You know this.
## Not a Tyrolean precipice. And I’m awake. Barely.
## http://www.online-literature.com/dickinson/827/
Okay . . . *
. . . We’re on. I’ve heard from my editor; she says it’s still worth a shot at the autumn ’10 list for PEGASUS and how fast do I think I can do the rewrites—? Unh. I won’t actually know till I have. She hasn’t yet given me (or Merrilee) the uber-final, drop dead, drop dead or drop dead, deadline when it has to go into copyediting—if it’s going into copyediting for next autumn—it’ll be November, but November is four weeks long. If it’s the beginning of November I’m in more trouble than if it’s the end of November. But I’m afraid the short form is that I’m back to the rockface with my plastic spoon.** Sorry guys. Trust me, I am not spinning this out just to keep you reading Days in the Life for updates. ***
This however brings up another painful subject. If PEG I comes out next autumn . . . I am going to feel morally obliged at least to try to have PEG II in for autumn ’11 . . . which would mean writing the thing in about ten months.† And this seems to me even less likely than getting PEG I in for my editor to read by 8 October just passed, having not stormed through to the end of the third draft till the middle of September, which was spectacularly unlikely enough. †† I mean, yes, I have some of the first draft written already because it was originally all supposed to be one book . . . but I had quite a bit more of the first draft written when I sat down to finish it as one book a year ago, and see where that’s got me. And even if PEG I slips to spring ’11 . . . I’m still going to be trying to get PEG II out a year later.
It’s not going to be one of my nicer, jollier, more relaxed years, whether the countdown starts now or a few months from now.
And . . . I’m officially about to chop back another day of my frelling overtexted blog entries: probably (ahem) Mondays; I’m going to have to work more hours more evenings. I take a lot more photos ‘for the blog’ than I ever get around to posting†††, for example, and I have an awful lot of funny links I never get round to posting either—the kind I wouldn’t mind seeing again even if I’d already seen them on someone else’s blog. And I hope to continue to torment people into writing me guest blogs. . . .
* * *
* I’m late, mindblown and distracted by the fact I’ve been watching Lucia di Lammermoor all evening. Sky Arts can go for months without showing anything I want to go near with a sharp stick and then they’ll have a little rush of opera—they’ve done this to me before. And I could have recorded it, except this is how I end up with .002% free space on the recording gizmo^ so I thought, never mind, Lucia is very silly, I just like the noise, I’ll watch it. What do I have to do tonight anyway besides a few more pages of PEGASUS, write a blog entry, hack at He Was Despised some more^^ because my voice lesson is tomorrow, practise the frelling Warlock so Oisin won’t snigger at me on Friday, find the homeopathic remedy(ies) that will have hellhounds eating promptly and eagerly every day for the rest of their lives, and distill a clean energy source from junked computers and plastic bags.
And then I went and wasted a lot of good global-solution-discovering time finding this new Met Lucia tremendously moving. http://www.scena.org/blog/2009/02/met-in-hd-lucia-di-lammermoor.html I agree with him about the tenor. You wouldn’t know he’d stepped in at the last minute; and that awful final aria poor Edgardo has to sing after Lucia has totally ripped up the scenery in the mad scene he delivers with aplomb and commitment: you feel not for the tenor, but for the character. But I don’t agree with this reviewer at all about Netrebko, and I’m not even a drooling fan. Zaftig? Frelling spare me. I did notice a slight dearth of fancy high notes but I still found the mad scene compelling . . . and sad, which is harder to bring off, because the crucial thing about Lucia is that she’s such a depressing little wet. It’s difficult not to feel that if she’d had a little intestinal fortitude earlier on she wouldn’t have been goaded into sticking a knife (repeatedly) into the husband her ugly-piece-of-work brother has forced on her.^^^ I love the music but the story sucks poisonous toad slime—and a less-than-first-rate performance will leave me thinking too much about its absurdity and feeling too little of all the great washy emotions that opera is so good at. Star crossed lovers! Dying! Whee! Something I would like to see some day is a Lucia who never collapses on the floor and rolls around in despair however. I think it would be possible to play her as merely crushed by circumstance; I think she could stand up to her disgusting brother even as he’s convincing her that her true love has betrayed her; I think she could at least stay on her feet when the priest advises her to submit. I think if Micaela can be played as a woman rather than a fluffy bunny, and the production of Carmen we saw at Glyndebourne last year proves that she can, someone can bring off a Lucia who dies because her entire social structure is stacked against her, not because she has the moral conviction of overcooked spaghetti.
^ I tell myself this is a better system than having two-thirds of the sitting room given over to stacks of dusty videotapes. Ten years ago, when I spent my year and a half on the sofa with acute ME—which is also when Peter bought me the it-was-a-monster-then-but-there-are-much-bigger-now TV we still have—is the one time in my life since TV tape and playback systems were invented+ that I began to catch up on all the stuff I taped.++
+ Do you realise# that when STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL NONSENSE came out, you only saw each episode once? If you were lucky they showed most of that year’s again during summer rerun doldrums. But that’s all. Forever. I was Marked for Life by this experience: it’s another of those things that will keep turning up here, because it’s about How Technology Has Revolutionised Our Lives. I also, later on, spent a lot of time on Greyhound buses going up and down the east coast to small art house theatres showing THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. In hindsight recorders were inevitable. But to a geeky teenager with a seriously bad crush on Mr Spock this was on a par with fantasies like growing up to be someone who got paid for writing stories. That one still stops me cold occasionally. I what?
# I know. Some of you are old too, and remember.
++ It wasn’t worth it.
^^ which after listening to Anna Netrebko is going to be brutal
^^^ Although this leads to one of my favourite pieces of silly-ass operatic behaviour, which is the priest rushing out on stage to describe finding her bending over the body of her husband lying in a pool of his own blood, and brandishing the dagger with which she has just done the deed. What, you didn’t want to interrupt her?
** Actually I went back to it last Tuesday. And let me tell you, if it’s the beginning of November . . . it’s a spring ’11 book.
*** And just by the way, I still don’t know how the hell I got even the unfinished version in by the 8th. Miracles do happen.
† GAAAAAAAAAAH. That sound you hear . . . if I could bring it a little more under control, I too could sing the mad scene from Lucia. With the fancy high notes.
†† But miracles do happen.
††† And for example, if life will stop being so dranglefabbing exciting maybe I’ll finally post the photos of the brown velvet jacket tomorrow which I wore to the handbell wedding on Saturday.
Bowen method for creatures great and small
If I were any tireder the Zombie Police would arrest me on suspicion. Did anything happen on Saturday?* It’s too long ago, I can’t remember. But there was the quarter on Sunday and then yesterday was Glyndebourne*** and today the hellhounds and I went to see my Bowen lady** and Bowen always wipes me out. Uuuunnnnnnh.
I don’t usually take the hellhounds to see Tabitha. I usually go a little early and do something creative on the way like stop at the supermarket and check for offers on champagne, or cruise Waterstones†. But I don’t leave hellhounds in the car; I’m way too paranoid about dog thieves, and as I’ve said here before, young lurchers are very popular. So we went straight there and had a brief Ecstatic! Gambol! on Strange! New! Ground! —you’d think I keep the little frellers locked up in a closet, the way they go on. And then I lifted Darkness back in the car and tottered†† indoors. Tabitha was going to do both of us. And Chaos would, of course, help.
I brought Tabitha out to meet hellhounds because she was going to be twiddling Darkness while I lay inert and hallucinating on her table: part of the Bowen system is that they do something to you and then go away for a minute or several while your body decides what to do with what they’ve done. It tends to put me under almost on contact††† and I lie there having lovely experiences of other realities, periodically illuminated by Tabitha reappearing and doing something else. Today to my back and environs. I really feel I’ve been sufficiently punished for my indiscretion about high heels to the opera almost a month ago and I’m considering suggesting that fair is fair and it’s time Darkness started lifting me into the car occasionally. Today’s other realities were rather more ornamented by sudden starbursts and Catherine wheels of pain than usual.
During my first intermission I heard the front door open and close and then . . . a familiar sounding bark. One single, not-very-alarmed bark. A sort of ‘hmm what have we here’ bark. A second similar after a brief interval. A third after a slightly longer interval almost sounding as if he’d contracted for three and so had to fulfil the commitment. Then silence. I lay there in my semi-coma, semi-thinking okay, this is good, if someone ever did try and steal them, at least Darkness would bark.
Tabitha came back in giggling. Darkness may be the warning system but Chaos is the welcoming party. Hi! Can we play? I’m a really nice armful. Let me show you. –He’s really strong, said Tabitha. Ahem. Yes.‡ Then she did something else to me and I drifted away again. There was no more barking.
Darkness and I barely made a short round for the afternoon hurtle post-Bowen, much to Chaos’ chagrin. But Darkness, who is generally the better eater of the two of them—well, let’s say the less bad eater—has been decreasingly willing to go to the effort of eating the last week or so and is generally just more pulled-in on himself and wary, which is not Darkness’ natural temperament. And he came very nearly bounding out of the dog bed tonight to eat his supper standing up. All his supper. I can’t remember the last time he didn’t lie down first. And then eat three mouthfuls and look put-upon. Of course he’s also immediately showing a distressing desire to play tug-of-war games and I’m having to play the Big Meanie. But . . . progress. Yaay.
* * *
* Besides worrying about Sunday’s quarter peal
** There are thousands of Bowen sites out there now (including a few in ‘about’ on this blog) but here’s an interesting article about a test study: http://www.thebowentechnique.com/content/research.htm
*** http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/24/lelisir-damore-review , although he’s suffering a slight case of critic-itis: L’Elisir is not a scathing portrait of anything, Dulcamara^ is fine, and his sidekick is supposed to be silly. Duh. Lighten up, Tim! —I am interested that the replacement soprano was flown in at the last minute: there was a lot of stage business that she sure got her head (and feet) around in a hurry. I assumed she was an on-site understudy, and had been through rehearsals.^^ Now this is almost funny: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/5901533/Opera-LElisir-damore-at-Glyndebourne-review.html He wants to slam it because it possibly dared try to take L’Elisir seriously. Is it a requirement of being a critic that you’re dyspeptic? Last night’s opera was adorable. Trust me.
^ Last time I saw L’Elisir I wasn’t a homeopath yet. Every time I hear Dulcamara’s name now I start moseying off on the homeopathic remedy. One of the games you play in college is deciding on a remedy for each of your tutors: the choices are not always polite. Last night was a dulcamara-y night too. http://abchomeopathy.com/r.php/Dulc
^^ At Glyndebourne prices, they ought to be able to afford understudies for the understudies.
Staring at the audience is almost as gratifying as listening to the music, at least for those of us who don’t live like that. There was one incredibly elderly lady we saw at tea, bent almost literally double, tottering along on her cane, wearing an odd sparkly cardie thing that I would buy in a minute in a vintage clothing shop. We decided that she’d sung in the chorus there before the war. The First World War. And has been coming every year since, having given up singing after her fiancé’s wood-canvas-and-baling-twine RFC plane was shot down.+ She is also possibly the Countess Flatfootflooziewithafloyfloy who donates a new production every year: she was certainly well-known to the staff. Peter and I both noticed the startling absence of frilly young things on smug elderly gentlemen’s arms: Peter opined lugubriously that wealthy elderly gentlemen are feeling the economic crunch too and are taking their wives to the opera this year.
Oh, and the bloke on my other side started talking to me while we were waiting for the second act! I’ve always been someone that people ask directions of, but is my face going all friendly in my old age, and not just harmless? Here I thought my last several operas have been so chatty because I was there alone. Fie.
+ The RAF didn’t come into existence till 1918: I just looked it up. I also have my resident history lesson sitting next to me at the table: Peter’s father flew in the RFC and . . . hey! Peter! Write me a blog entry!
† http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/home.do For you non Brits, it’s boooooooooks. I try to use Waterstones rather than amazon because it’s also a real store where you can go fondle the merchanise.
†† Bent almost double, although I have never sung at Glyndebourne. I’ve told you, haven’t I, that after about ten years of being married to Peter I found I remembered the ’40s well?^
^ I’m 57 this year. You do the maths.
††† I’ve never been hypnotised. I’d be tweeting like a bird before she got her shiny toy out and started waving it at me. I’m so clearly a brilliant subject I keep thinking I should try it some time to go to the dentist. Unfortunately I’m a coward of darkest French’s mustard hue.
‡ One of the other mysteries about last night’s audience was where were all the gym bunnies? Granted the absence of frilly young things, but not everybody present had sung there before WWI. I was talking to Hannah about this today^: doesn’t anybody just, you know, have a life with physical activity in it any more? Bell ringing? Hellhound lifting? Riding dressage on a horse that needs holding together? Not at Glyndebourne last night.
^ Thank the gods (and goddesses) for Hannah in my life for many, many reasons, but near the top of the list the last few years has been this menopause thing. She doesn’t get to eat either, and she has to work like a coal-heaver to stay fit. Since she lives in Manhattan however she has special dispensation to have a personal trainer and still be a normal human being. She sent me a photo of herself recently at the Prix Goncourt or some damn thing with six other editors and a stray dog and barring the dog she was probably twenty years older than any of them: and she was also the only one with arm definition.
