Gertsamtkunstwerk

Extracts from the Gramophone article on Tristan und Isolde

(Antonio) Pappano (Musical Director of Covent Garden and conductor of T&I) believes that the challenge of the role, and the searing Third Act monologue in particular, have brought out something in Domingo that will surprise even his most dedicated listeners.

"He makes some sounds on this record that he's never dared make before. There's one place where he sings "Furchtbare Trank!" - this horrible drink! - and he goes hell for leather on it. In the long recording history that he's had, I don't think he's ever gone that far and found something like that inside him. But rightly, as he himself says, the music needs it."

Peter Alward (recently retired President of EMI Classics) was asked Has Domingo pushed himself further than ever? "No question." Alward bangs down his coffee cup with schoolboyish enthusiasm.

"Look, what's remarkable about the man is that he never makes an ugly sound. I think we're going to have a generation of Wagner tenors committing mass hara-kiri when they hear this, because I don't think you've ever heard the role sung with such sheer beauty."

As for Domingo, the thought having reached such a longed-for milestone brings out that familiar, generous smile, and a faraway look. "It is perhaps the greatest work ever written in opera, you know. I think so."

from August's Gramophone

Gert says "Bring it on! Purrrr..."

Useful links Celtic myth, abridged and detailed plot, Synopsis, Bibliography, libretto, libretto, leitmotifs and vocal score

Otello - Oh dear

My joint-favourite opera managed to serve me up a forgettable night tonight at Covent Garden. At least, I hope it's forgettable, because the thought of remembering it is quite horrible. As I beat my hasty retreat, I overheard soemone saying "Decidedly average!" and I was tempted to challenge them with "That good, huh?"

Good bits - Verdi, Verdi, Verdi, Boito, Boito, Boito, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. The orchestra played like a dream. The choruses were sublime - especially in the opening storm and the bit when Ludovico arrives with the message from Venice.

Also, Amanda Roocroft sang a pleasant Salce/Ave Maria, although really not a patch on Kiri Te Kanawa or Renée Fleming. No, stop this now, no unfavourable comparisons are allowed. She also wasn't bad in the Act 3 duet, but much of the rest of the time I winced as she failed to hit the high notes.

Cassio was eminently forgettable - quite frankly, I can't begin to imagine how Otello could have ever have thought that Desdemona was attracted to him. Certainly no Robin Leggate. No, stop these comparisons.

Iago - oh dear! What a shower. Lucio Gallo made Leo Nucci look malign. Was absolutely dreadful in the Beve con me, and worse in Iago's Credo. Might as well have been singing The Red Red Robin Goes Bob Bob Bobbin Along. How I wished for Sergei Leiferkus, for example. Except that comparisons are not allowed I got to the point where I was dreading the Si pel ciel marmorea giuro, but, thankfully, he held it together. Just. During the duet after the quartet my mind wondered onto the subject of AVCs. Imagine that, imagine thinking about Additional Voluntary Contributions during Verdi's greatest opera. And it's not even near the end of the tax year.

Ben Heppner was Otello. He wasn't too bad in Act 3. Sounded quite lyrical in that soliloquy. For a moment. Or maybe two. And really wasn't bad in the duet with Desdemona. In Acts 1 and 2 he was bearable, especially if you were able to overlook the cracks and strains in the voice. Gia nelle notte densa was...awful. An insipid Ora e sempre addio. He seemed to miss a few notes in Si pel ciel marmorea giuro but there's such a swirl of dissonance going on it's survivable.

Shall we not even mention Act 4? Best not to, really. It was a bit of a shame that the entire Amphitheatre had a sharp collective intake of breath at that cracked note, the one jsut before the voice vamoused into thin air.

If you're going, I hope you have a better experience. Act 3's really quite almost good. The orchestra played superbly. Verdi's music is unkillable.

Well, you can guess what DVD I shall be watching tomorrow evening. I think it will take considerable persuasion to ever get to me to go to Otello again. Shame, because it's my joint favourite opera.

The music is sublime...

Update:

Identity fraud

Our weekly opinion notice board on the intranet asked last week what steps we as individuals were taking to prevent our IDs being stolen eg buying a shredder, refraining from shopping online, redirecting the post after moving or nothing at all.

Somebody called Robert said

Bought a Shredder… now I need Splinter, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael to help me stop him taking over the world!

On a more serious note: I also shred all correspondence (makes it easier to put in the envelope although rather more difficult for the recipient to read) and always use my wife’s credit card for my numerous online purchases.

Someone else says shes puts all her shredded paper onto the compost heap. I am surprised at this - I wouldn't have thought it would biodegrade so quickly. Any expertise out there? In fact, anybody got any good idea about composters, because that is what Jimmy is getting for his birthday?

Homeopathy

Last week I went to see my homeopathic rheumatologist. I say 'mine', but he's also the Queen's. He asked me lots of questions and decreed that I should take Vitamin B complex daily (I seem to remember the lovely French doctor recommended that last year, but I'm so crap at taking Vitamins daily). He also suggested I cut down a bit on the alcohol, and his third recommendation was that I take Sulphur twice a week. I have been reluctant to take it, because he said that it would make me feel worse before I felt better. I considered on Thursday whether I should I take it on Friday, at the start of my four day weekend, or on Tuesday, at the start of my three day work stint. I felt I ought to take it on Friday, but I didn't get round to buying any until today, in between my optician's appointment (exactly the same prescription as I've been having since I was fourteen, so no need to buy new glasses) and my hair appointment - 30% off colour Mondays and Wednesdays before 3pm - am I filling a void left by the sadly hiating Blue 'Value' Witch.

I took the sulphur at about 1415 hours, ever since when I've been running around like a blue-arsed fly. I reckon, if I stick to my good intentions, take my Vitamin B complex and Multi-Vits daily, take my sulphur twice weekly, have a substantial breakfast (eg baked beans or sardines on toast, and an organic biolive wickedly whole milk yoghurt), take a healthy packed lunch (eg summer vegetable quiche, and tuna and sweetcorn, tomorrow,) drink plenty of fruit juice, have bananas and tangerines as afternoon and interval snacks, and make my own coffee at work rather than forking out fortunes for shop-bought crap, I shall turn out to be Healthy/Value Gert and I could rule the bloody world. I've told you about the gin trick, haven't I? Oh, and the quiches were 2 for £2.50 and the fruit juices 3 for 2 at Sainsburys.

An evening at home

Those of you have been reading this blog some time, oh, you know, maybe a couple of weeks, and especially those related to me, be you commenters or lurkers, know that I am not exactly the world's most organised person. This can be summarised by the 'Magazine Pile'. I subscribe to four magazines - two weekly and two monthly. I tend to read the New Statesman when I'm travelling around or, for example, like today, in the hairdresers. Public Finance is boring, and it's not even worth my while looking at the job ads for the next few months. But I ought to read it for updates in my profession, so sometimes I do, even though it generally focuses on the petty shenanigans of Local Government and forgets that many of its members work in Central Governemnt (or indeed the Health Service, Practice, or Industry).

I actually get BBC Music and Gramophone mainly for the CDs that are attached, so the magazines just get tossed on the pile to be read. Sometimes, I am organised enough to toss them to the bottom of the pile. Until Saturday evening, the pile was residing on the dining table, but we decided to eat dinner sitting up at table, so Jimmy shifted the two piles (please note, I cooked...) - Things-to-Read and Things-to-Deal-With - onto the sofa, to join the third pile Things-Not-Yet-Classified/Things-Miscellaneous (mailshots, sunglasses, empty cassette boxes, camera battery etc). In moving the Things-To-Read he unearthed My-Secret-Stash-of-Porn™*, which was slightly embarrassing but not very.

This morning's post had been flung on top of the mixed up Things-to-Read and Things-to-Deal-With piles, which in themselves were sitting higgledy-piggledy with the Things-Not-Yet-Classified/Things-Miscellaneous pile. So this evening, I decided I really ought to re-sort all Things. That involved opening this morning's post - Sky Magazine (remove plastic cover place remainder straight in recycling bin) and Gramophone Magazine. Oh god, I thought, yet another magazine to not get round to reading, and tossed it onto the table to form the bottom of the new Things-to-Read pile. As I was busy sorting through empty envelopes, out of date mailshots, staff-pass-holder-cords, make-up purse (that's where it got to) etc I glanced at the Gramophone magazine and thought "That's a very nice picture of Simon Rattle and his Dvorak Tone Poems" - ooh, Sir Simon's gone all Czech, wonder why..."but that's an advert. I wonder what's on the front..." This is the August Gramophone Magazine, so hot off the Presses it's not even on the Website yet, which as I write is still showing its July cover (DFD at 80).

Actually, you know what I'm going to say don't you..."Domingo Records Tristan: Plácido on opera's toughest assignment and when he'll stop singing. Plus Star Tenors, the Next Generation" And inside, six pages, which I think I shall settle down to read with a nice gin-and-bitter-lemon, but only after I've packed my bag for work tomorrow.

And the Gramophone CD 'Cover Story' is Act I scene 5 (excerpt) from Tristan und Isolde. Obviously, it's dificult to judge a four hour opera from a 6½ minute excerpt, but I think I might stick my neck out, take a risk and buy the whole thing.

There are some other nice tracks on this CD, always good to hear a sampler of what's being released. There's a lovely excerpt from Gluck's Paride ed Elena (no, I've not heard of it either) and I was thinking, ooh, this sounds lovely, I might get this, ooh this is a gorgeous soprano voice. I wonder who it is. And I look, and I know I'm going to get it. The Guardian only gives it three stars and says

Cult mezzo Magdalena Kozena and silvery soprano Carolyn Sampson sound gorgeous, but are on the cool side as Paris and Cupid respectively. The best performance is Susan Gritton's Helen

So, the moral of this story is - it's really not good to be organised, because I have just spent £60 in the course of writing this post....

* It's not really Porn, it's Opera News, M Lifestyle, and Classic FM Magazine that have not yet been added to My-Even-More-Secret-Stash-Of-Porn™ in the spare room

Take That

  Don't get me wrong - I was never into Take That. Just five pretty expertly-styled boys with a modicum of talent. I do remember when something happened, either they split, or maybe it was when Robbie left. But it was big news. Bigger news than the IRA ceasefire that was declared that day.

Four boys that got lucky to be in a band with Gary Barlow who wrote some fairly decent songs. Still, their best songs are covers -  How Deep Is Your Love, Relight My Fire, Could It Be Magic, It Only Takes A Minute  And they got lucky in getting producers who could transform their voices into something bland enough to be inoffensive, and something sweet enough not to grate.

There was a time, back in the 90s, when I made all the disparaging comments about five pricks and oh was that one about the front row of  a Take That concert, all just small kids?  Then there came a time, 1996, when it became imperative to buy their Greatest Hits. In fairness, it's not a bad record. Tunes, and that sort of thing. Some of them fairly memorable - Everything Changes, Babe, A Million Love Songs. I expect for a fair proportion of people now in their mid-Twenties Take That provided a soundtrack to their growing up. Fair enough. But there's nothing on this album, except perhaps How Deep Is Your Love? that really speaks to me as anything other than a pleasantly executed pleasant tune. I haven't played it more than probably a dozen times in nine years, and I can't see myself playing it many more times in the foreseeable future.

But you can bet that when I see Robbie on Saturday, I'll be waving my cigarette-lighter or whatever appropriate sheeplike gesture is required in order to feel the sense of momentous occasion.

And if the Spice Girls make a Greatest Hits I expect I'll buy it...

Plumbing

For a few days we have been conscious of a bit of a whiffy smell. He has claimed it's the kitchen sink, I have claimed it's the shower. He said we should put bleach down, I said we need Soda Crystals and a bit of plunging, but didn't actually do anything, whilst he put down some bleach, which helped a bit.

I pulled the plug out in the kitchen sink this afternoon and heard a glug-glug coming from the shower room. I stuck my head round the door and noticed a back wash coming into the shower.

Suddenly, he's going on about Spirit of Salts. Means nothing to me, but out he pops to the local hardware shop and comes back with Spirit of Salts. It's gruesome stuff, covered in warnings, and, although in liquid form, it gives off a noxious gas.

A bit of Googling later, it turns out to be Hydrochloric Acid, 'one of the most corrosive of the non-oxidizing acids'. If mishandled

Exposure to hydrochloric acid can cause circulatory collapse which may lead to death; it can also cause asphyxial death due to glottic oedema. It can also cause conjunctivitis and corneal burns, inflammation and ulceration of the respiratory tract, dermatitis, skin burns, rhinitis, laryngitis, tracheitis, bronchitis, pulmonary oedema, dental erosion, hoarseness, a feeling of suffocation, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, dehydration, convulsions, oliguria, hypotension, chills, shock, lethargy, stupor, permanent visual damage, cough, and choking. Ingestion or skin contact with hydrochloric acid can cause corrosion of mucous membranes of the mouth, throat, and oesophagus, with immediate pain and dysphagia; it can also cause gastric haemorrhage and intense thirst.

So, he poured it down the sink and down the shower (using an old w-u-l bottle as an applicator) and we ran to the garden for 20 minutes.

For about five minutes I ran the tap down the sink. It wasn't nearly half as bad as it was before. Again I suggested plunging, and produced an actual plunger from under the sink (much to his surprise - the same surprise he expressed when I produced electric drill, spirit level, thing for detecting pipes and cables etc etc). I ran the sink tap and he plunged the shower.

What a foul smell, a mixture of HCl and mouldy soap etc! We're doing another run with the Spirit of Salts, and it will soon be time for me to run the tap again, hoping that Fresh Air will disperse the smell by morning.

What Jimmy didn't know is that I'm actually quite handy at Emergency Plumbing.

He's now going on about how useful Hydrochloric Acid is for disposing of bodies in the bath...

Three Tenors may reform

So says the super soaraway Sun.

When did they split up?

Interview with Bryn Terfel

'I'm not sure I have many things to do after Wotan'

At the end of the article, there is, helpfully, the phone numbers you can ring to be told there are absolutely no tickets available for Die Walküre...

Did I mention that I have tickets for three out of the four performances...?

Eugene Onegin

Starring Gerald Finley

Written by Tchaikovsky, libretto adapted from Pushkin's poem, translated into English

At English National Opera.

A wonderful night out.

The papers had said, Go to see this for Gerald Finley, which is the main reason I booked the ticket. But, good as he is, he was not the only reason to enjoy it. Most of the rest of the cast was serviceablly competent but generic. I did not take to the tenor playing Lensky - Gwyn Hughes Jones, although I will say he did a creditable rendition of Lensky's Aria. Catrin Wyn-Davies (Tatyana)was particularly impressive and melodramatic in her 'mad scene'.

The production was sumptious, especially in the 'crowd scenes' - there were three in total. The dancers were as worth seeing as the singers. The duel scene was very moving. It's not an opera I know very well* but I thoroughly enjoyed the music. And The Royal Opera are putting it on next season with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Rolando Villazon and Amanda Roocroft.

Gerald Finley will be on the radio on Tuesday. A bit of googling finds a recent interview with him, brief biography, profile and I'm not the only blogger who's a fan...

Next season he's appearing as the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro at Covent Garden and I've already booked for him in Beethoven's Ninth next April. A couple of lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall, with only limited tickets available.

* ie not at all, really

Camera Policy

Jag's post about the camera policy at Twickers for U2 is well-timed.

I notice the long-list of rules for Live8 says

No professional cameras, video recorders or any form of audio visual or audio recording equipment allowed in the event site

On one level, this has a semblance of sense about it - it is saying that we really don't mind people bringing bog-standard cameras that are going to take really crap pictures at that distance. But the audio thing. Hmm, my camera and my phone are both capable of audio-visual recording (vv crap). Not that I ever use either of them for that. And my main reason for taking my phone will be in case we get separated.

Earlier this week I had an interesting exchange of emails with ENO. I wrote - in observation - that when I had attempted to take some pictures of Gerald Finley at the curtain call of Eugene Onegin, an usher had politely asked me to stop. I acknowledged that I recognised that photography is forbidden per the programme, and that I know that flash photography during the performance can be distracting to performers and audience alike, and therefore, I don't use it during performance. I noted that many other venues ignore the use of cameras, flash included, during curtain calls, applause and bows, and that some performers respond positively to cameras (although I know others don't like it). I also provided a link to my phlog, explaining that my photos are far from commercial standard, and exist just to give pleasure to fans.

I received a polite and constructive email back

Had the Press Office been advised in advance that you wished to take photographs we could then have cleared this with the appropriate people eg Gerald Finley and FOH staff etc and advised you accordingly if this would be possible.

Which is fair enough. The only thing is, I really can't imagine any circumstances in which I would feel comfortable calling up any Press Office of any professional company and asking to arrange such a thing. I'm just an amateur snapper who happens to have bought some webspace.

Carlo Maria Giulini, RIP

I never got round to posting obit links for Giulini, but fortunately, the NYCOF did, and better than I would have.

Interview

with Plácido

And picture, too

Meanwhile, there could be a Three Tenors Concert for Germany 2006. Presumably as long as Pavarotti doesn't cancel.

Dream yoghurt

I think I have just found the yoghurt of my dreams - Rachel's Organic Bio-Live Wicked Wholemilk yoghurt with a choice of flavours: toffee with fudge pieces, maple syrup, apple and butterscotch, and golden honey.

I don't like all that low fat shit the supermarkets keep plugging, but I do know that bio-live is good, because of the friendly bacteria.

Yo! to Rachel

Organic milk contains two-thirds more Omega-3 fatty acids than non-organic.

We ♥ Omega-3

We also love cholesterol. there was an article in the New Statesman a couple of weeks ago, by Margaret Cook, a cardiac specilaist:

A high blood cholesterol is an ominous finding, and in many information sources on the internet you will find advice (usually Bupa-sponsored) about how to lower it through dietary changes and medication...

...Vast sums of money were spent on trials designed to show that adjusting diets to lower blood cholesterol would lower the risk of heart attacks. Alas, the research did not come up with the expected results. Cholesterol levels did not drop as expected; heart-attack rates were not reduced...

...The market for statin (cholesterol-lowering) drugs is flourishing on misinformation. There is ample evidence that they may lower death rates from heart attacks in some people, but cause damage in other systems, and possibly deaths from other causes. Recognised dangers are memory loss and mental confusion, increased risk of breast cancer in young women, liver disease and heart muscle damage by interfering with the all-important enzyme CQ10...

...Cholesterol has a role in enhancing immune function, and a raised level seems to be beneficial in the elderly. Clinical trials on drugs must have a narrow focus to germinate results, an approach which works conveniently for companies sponsoring their own statins...

...It is time for cholesterol to be rehabilitated as a chemical vital to functioning - one that we adjust too radically at our peril.

Full article

It could be a new put-down as diet-obsessed thin people with limited brain-capacity "Ah yes, but you're too thin to be intelligent." I think the wording needs to be snappier. (Not that I have a blanket prejudice against thin people, some can't help it, it's genetic, or their metabolisms or something.It's just those that brag about their faddish diets and how much weight they've lost and are too stupid to know how stupid they are.)

La Bohème

I'm never entirely sure about La bohème. When I did a review of a DVD I started off by saying "Let's start with suitably lowered expectations," and finished with "Madmusings - failing to 'get it', one opera at a time..."

Actually, not a great deal of change, there. I mentioned on a Newsgroup on Sunday evening that it is, at best my fifth favourite Puccini opera. I wouldn't like that claim to be overly scrutinised, but I definitely prefer Tosca, La Fanciulla del West, Manon Lescaut and even La Rondine.

Nevertheless, I decided to book up to see it at Covent Garden. I think my prime motivator was that Angela Gheorghiu was Mimi. I was really gutted to read that the scheduled Rodolfo, Yu Qiang Dai is indisposed for the run and is being replaced, mainly, by Tito Beltrán, and for two performances only, by Rolando Villazón. I know little or nothing about either Dai or Beltrán, but I really would have liked to see Rolando Villazón. I would be happy to hear him sing the phonebook. Sold out - Angela Gheorghiu does that. Ah well, I shall just have to satisfy myself in seeing Rolando (twice) in Rigoletto.

The production shown is nearly as old as me and older than some of the Principals on display. Safe, traditional, it works. Including the cast of millions in the second, Cafe Momus, Act.

Music - good. Storyline, all right. Characters, two-dimensional, but, hey, this is opera not Play for Today. I think I'm supposed to say, music great. But I can't bring myself to it. I was sat next to a chap in his late forties, who was with his son, a student, and was talking him through it. A little too much, I think. Didn't quite grasp the concept of shutting up when the orchestra was playing. Was convinced that the conductor was Antonio Pappano when the programme said it was Mark Elder (and it looked a lot more like Mark Elder than Antonio Pappano...). Asserted the tenor was Chinese - he looked very Chilean to me. But he summed it perfectly - all the great arias happen in Act 1 - Che gelida manina, Mi chiamano Mimi and O soave fanciulla - and it's worth going to anything with Angela Gheorghiu in it.

Although I have to say she sounded a bit below par, vocally. I wonder if she was being tacticle, because in the less interesting bits she sounded quite generic, but where it mattered those glorious gorgeous high notes were there in all their splendour, and, quite frankly, worth the price of the ticket alone. I wonder if she had vocal difficulties, she certainly seemed to be coughing a lot...

The tenor, Beltrán, was eminently forgettable. A whiny nasally voice, without the top notes required, and with, at times, a very vague approximation to pitch.

Most of the rest were perfectly adequate also-rans, although Angela Maria Blasi as Musetta was larger-than-life (over)-acting wise, and Jonathan Lemalu as Colline sang an eloquent Vecchia zimarra

But the star of the evening was Mariusz Kwiecien as Marcello, definitely to voice to watch out for again.

The Times and Guardian agree.

So did the Camden New Journal, after a fashion...

But musically, it’s largely a success. Making his Covent Garden debut, the young tenor Mariusz Kwiecien does sterling work as the painter Marcello – he will no doubt be playing the lead very soon.

Hint to Jonathan Allen:

a) Do your homework
b) Mariusz Kwiecien is a baritone - the clue is, he sang Marcello, a baritone role. Actually the clue is in the programme you got, no doubt for free, along with your free Press Ticket (paid for by taxpayers, donors and the ticket-buying public...ligger!)
c) The lead is a soprano role. That means, er, woman.

And he gets paid for writing such rubbish? There are some pretty piss-poor showers calling themselves journalists, if you ask me...Chap sat next to me would have written a better review.

Coming to a Big Screen near you on 30 June.

Update: Also in the Observer

Visibility

I know I have a fair few Gay and even more Metrosexual readers, so I thought I would run this one past my readership.

In the past few weeks I have noticed more random acts of light-but-unambiguous intimacy between same sex couples in random not-gay-specific places than I think I have ever done in my life - a few weeks ago, I was a bus going through Brixton, I noticed two women leave a kebab shop and exchange a kiss. A few days later, two men walking into the Coliseum exchange squeezes. That same night on the bus, a man kissed his partner's forehead. A few days later, two middle-aged women holding hands as they walked down Whitehall. On Monday, two men careesiing on the Terrace at Covent Garden. On Wednesday two men holding hands in the Coliseum.

I can't believe that, suddenly, I've started noticing something I've been oblivious to for years.

Cor, wot a scorcher!

The buses are beginning to bug me. And I know I'm not alone. Yesterday I had to go to Kings College Hospital. The only way to get there is by bus. In the end I got three buses, one there and two back (I stopped off in Brixton en route back). By the time I reached home every item of clothing I was wearing was nasty and I couldn't wait to strip off. I had been wearing them for less than four hours.

It wasn't so bad going out in the evening, but still uncomfortable wearing just a very slight dress and the minimalist of underwear. At the Coliseum, I overheard someone discussing how she was going to get home. She could get a bus from Trafalgar Square but preferred to walk to Cambridge Circus (Admittedly, not far) to get a 38, which is one of the few Routemasters left.

I got a Routemaster this morning - a 159, as it happens. I know that Routemasters are past it, particularly in being inaccessible to anybody with accessibility challenges, and are also quite dangerous when people fall off the back but in so many ways they are a superb design. The ventilation is simple but effective - have an open door, and, most importantly, have the dinky wind down windows that enable a through-draught.

The Routemasters were designed by Engineers at London Transport depots. Modern buses must have been designed by a committee of ivory-tower residing computers. One of the most important factors in design has to be fitness for purpose. Not for usage by computer-modelled theoreticals but by real people. Of course, it is easy to me be wise after-the-event about how the modern buses are not fit for purpose. But it beggars belief that so many have been built and bought and no-one making decisions has even thought about how it is affecting ordinary people.

Of course, it's typical of Britain. Britain as a whole is designed on the basis that temperatures are always between 2 and 25 degrees. Which, for most of the time, they are. But on the odd occasion they venture outside these extremes, the country descends into chaos. Yesterday evening, going through Brixton I noticed a chap sitting in the fountain in the Peace Garden. Not a Trafalgar Square-style public splash pool, not the three-tier one that has been nicked from outside the Tate library, but one that is no more than a glorified birdbath four foot off the ground.

Walking from Charing Cross to St Martin's Lane, I saw a chap lying on top of Oscar Wilde. "How gay is that?" I thought. He was still there four hours later, but he had a woman on top of him. Not very gay, I decided...To be honest, they were both rather the worse for Substance Misuse, and probably didn't have a clue who Oscar Wilde was.

Coming back on the bus I overheard a woman on the phone to someone. She had been away for the weekend and had just got back in time to rescue the garden. She's going to Majorca on Monday for a week and doesn't particularly want to go, except that it's someone's birthday party. Having putting so much effort into the garden she doesn't want it ruined in her absence. Would you believe that we have a tomato plant dying through excess heat? It's a good thing that Jimmy's watering them everyday. It's looking very beautiful right now - especially the plants that Eleanor helped plant...

We put all sorts of stuff on the garden. All organic waste is dug into the soil. Jimmy runs a cafe and gets through a lot of eggs. He has taken to collecting them up and transporting them home, crushing them and putting them on the garden. I noticed the other day that Starbucks are selling off their coffee grounds as garden compost. Duh! I thought, I generate coffee grounds at home, seeing as though we all are already putting our teabags round the rosebushes, it would make sense to add the coffee grounds. when I start saving them up and bringing them home from work, you'll know I've gone doolally!

The other day, Andrew Turnbull said that, so long as Civil Servants looked authoritative and professional, they did not need a tie.

This really comes as no surprise to me. On an ordinary day I would doubt that more than 50% of male staff are wearing ties. Today, I calculated it was less than 10%. And, to be honest, I think the majority of them look perfectly fine. I was in the lift with a chap wearing shorts. He would have looked perfectly fine if he had not been wearing a sloganned t-shirt. Nice pair of shorts. Nice pair of legs, actually, shame about the face. Didn't seem to have much charisma, either. In a polo shirt, he would have looked neat and sufficiently serious.

Fifteen years ago I had a manager who didn't wear a tie as a matter f course. He kept a couple in his desk to wear for the occasional formal meeting. I know some men really object to wearing ties. Others like to wear them in order to complete the look, to project an image, and, perhaps, to boost their self-confidence. I understand that. When I have a meeting, with someone senior or someone unfamiliar, I wear a smart suit. Today, dedicated to report-writing, I was wearing a cotton blouse and linen skirt. Although the skirt ended up quite creased, I don't think anybody could have accused me of looking unprofessional.

The very strange thing about my office is that when temperatures were only in the high teens, the office felt warm. This week it has felt deliciously blissfully cool.

I am hoping that my Song Du Jour tomorrow will be "Take Me Dancing Naked In The Rain." When the storm comes I want to be out in the garden, dancing, as near to naked as modesty permits. I am so looking forward to it. Remember, when it rains at Wimbledon, it rains at Gert Cottage.

Wasted day

Ah, graduation day: The silly hats, fawning parents and photos that won't go away

Ah, graduation day! She rememembers through gritted teeth. The sexist ruling that declared that Ladies didn't have proper mortar boards, but some stupid soft version. We were all invited up to the Departmental building beforehand. Every other department that issued invitations offered sherry and nibbles to graduands and parents. Not the Politics department. Not even water, and the temperature was actually hotter than today.

Us Ladies were supposed to wear a black dress or white blouse/black skirt to graduate. Even though I was twenty-one and about to graduate, it really pissed me off that i was the only Lady in my (admittedly tiny and predominantly male) department to be wearing a black dress.

The crowning nadir was when the professional photographers wrote to me to say that the particular film they used for my 'official' photos had been over-exposed and there were no photos. They would, however, pay for the rehire of the gown so that I could have them redone in their studio (no mention of travelling expenses...!). But my brother had taken a decent enough one of me, so, as far as I was concerned that did. Would you rely on a professional photographer or a schoolboy?

And the Graduation Ball was a really horrible unenjoyable night. I hated it. And missed some bloody good telly because I graduated on 14 July 1989*, and there was some splendid stuff coming from France. They rounded the evening off with Henry V, because Laurence Olivier had jsut died. The chutzpah of that has only just occurred to me...Agincourt and all that.

*bicentenary of storming the Bastille

A note to my next-door neighbour

Quick quiz. Is it more stupid to:

a) use a barbecue in a garden little bigger than 12' x 12', thus ensuring that the rooms of your immediate neighbours are filled with smoke and the smell of rancid meat; or

b) use a barbecue to cook foods that will, regardless of their quality, always taste better when cooked on a conventional cooker?

Hope you get food poisoning, H.

PS You might be a professional "musician" but you really really can't sing. The fact that I can hear your caterwauling over my loudspeakers, with all the downstairs windows and doors shut, really shows that you have no shame and no self-awareness. And no musical sense.

PPS Revenge will mine, and it will be a dish I shall eat cold. Next time you beat your wife, or even row in the middle of the night, I shall be the one calling the police. Depend upon it.

*proving that even if you can't fool all the people all the time, or most of the people most of the time, you can fool enough suckers often enough...

TfL Beat the Heat

Nice to see that over 1,000 London Buses

have been instantly improved by the simple measure of retro-fitting more windows that open on the upper decks.

Older buses had windows that slid open and created a cooling breeze. Most of the modern ones have inward-opening flaps specially designed to prevent air-movement. Duh!

Always carry a bottle of water with you

Valuable blogging time...

...has been sacrificed to the arduous pursuit of lying in the garden soaking up the sun whilst gently quaffing on wine and desultorily reading a book.

Banish homophobia from CofE

Archbishop vows to ban homophobia

I was delighted to see John Sentamu appointed as Archbishop of York.

He wanted people to stop using "ghastly" language that implied people were "not human beings" because of their sexual orientation."I want to say to people, 'Please, please, please don't use such ghastly words,' because every human being regardless of their sexual orientation are standing in for God, each one of them is actually loved of God.

"And when you use language which implies they were not human beings who are you to do that because you did not create them?'"

I find that very profound because there is a great deal of hatred spouted in the name of religion. Here is a highly intelligent man going back to the absolute fundamental basics of Christianity.

Here is a profile of Archbishop Sentamu

Jephtha

I went to this at English National Opera on Wednesday and combined it with a mini-blogmeet with the lovely Simon from A Piece of Monologue. It's a lovely feeling when someone comes up and says "Hello are you...?" and I was very pleased to meet Simon. (BTW, I don't normally drink out of bottles, but figured it was easier than negotiating for a plastic cup. As another BTW I figured that having nearly three litres of gin doing nothing at home - I'm still on a bottle I got in DutyFree at Christmas/New Year 01/02 - and hipflasks not being very expensive...I discovered at work that the taking of hipflasks to venues is not unusual behaviour...!)

Jephtha is actually a Handelian Oratorio, although it was staged 'as opera' by ENO. I don't know the piece, but I figured that that doesn't really matter. In Handel's time the point was to churn out formulaic new works to entertain an audience with new characters and stories, and the audience knew that Mr Handel would deliver the goods. The Handel formula happens to work.

I had a problem with the staging of the first act, with far too much going on that I didn't really follow - oh I yearn for surtitles: there was a libretto printed in the programme but not much use in a darkened auditorium. There seemed to be a lot of swishing of the curtain and back and forth between a couple of sets, and a lot of moving around and people sat on chairs with their back to the audience. But as it progressed it became a lot clearer, very enjoyable, and really quite moving. I think the stand-out aria was Waft her angels through the skies, which, coincidentally, a Danish tenor sung in the Cardiff Singer of the World televised on Thursday (and thus, performed on Wednesday). The tenor in this production was Mark Padmore, who really isn't my style. Simon was quite correct in sselecting Sarah Tynan for praise, and reminded me that she had been the Woodbird in Siegfried, where I had much enjoyed her.

I can't say that I'm rushing to buy this on CD, and I wouldn't be especially anxious to hear it again, but, assuming that ENO will revive it in the future, Iwould probably go a gain, and would recommend it for a good, if not necessarily great evening out. Although I suspect it will be better with surtitles.

Musically, a consistently pleasant score, with some very good choruses and one or two decent arias. Not top drawer Handel but definitely likeable.

Diva speaks

A Life in the Day - Renee Fleming

via

I shall be see Renee as Desdemona, the start of three crazy weeks about which I might find time to blog!

11 steps to a better brain

A fascinating article about how you can improve your brain power, in the New Scientist

In summary, eat smart and sleep well, and music and exercise are vital.

My personal highlights*:

Around the age of 40, honest folks may already admit to noticing changes in their mental abilities

You are what you eat, and that includes your brain. First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. Beans on toast is good. Toast alone boosted children's scores on a variety of cognitive tests, but when the tests got tougher, the breakfast with the high-protein beans worked best. A smart choice for lunch is omelette and salad, followed by yoghurt.

Don't forget to snaffle a snack mid-afternoon, to maintain your glucose levels. Just make sure you avoid junk food, and especially highly processed goodies such as cakes, pastries and biscuits. Brains are around 60 per cent fat, so if trans-fats clog up the system, what should you eat to keep it well oiled? Evidence is mounting in favour of omega-3 fatty acids, in particular docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. In other words, your granny was right: fish is the best brain food.

Music really does make you smarter, though unfortunately it requires a bit more effort than just selecting something mellow on your iPod. Music lessons are the key. Six-year-old children who were given music lessons, as opposed to drama lessons or no extra instruction, got a 2 to 3-point boost in IQ scores compared with the others. After two years of music lessons, pre-school children scored better on spatial reasoning tests than those who took computer lessons.

Maybe music lessons exercise a range of mental skills, with their requirement for delicate and precise finger movements, and listening for pitch and rhythm, all combined with an emotional dimension. Nobody knows for sure. Neither do they know whether adults can get the same mental boost as young children. But, surely, it can't hurt to try.

Never underestimate the power of a good night's rest. Skimping on sleep does awful things to your brain. Planning, problem-solving, learning, concentration, working memory and alertness all take a hit. IQ scores tumble. "If you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk," Luckily, it's reversible - and more. If you let someone who isn't sleep-deprived have an extra hour or two of shut-eye, they perform much better than normal on tasks requiring sustained attention, such as taking an exam.

Simply walking sedately for half an hour three times a week can improve abilities such as learning, concentration and abstract reasoning by 15 per cent. The effects are particularly noticeable in older people. Senior citizens who walk regularly perform better on memory tests than their sedentary peers.

Workplace studies have found that it takes up to 15 minutes to regain a deep state of concentration after a distraction such as a phone call. Just a few such interruptions and half the day is wasted.

Music can help as long as you listen to something familiar and soothing that serves primarily to drown out background noise. Psychologists also recommend that you avoid working near potential diversions, such as the fridge.

I find it interesting, but none of it is news. I cannot believe that there are people who still cut out fat and sugars from their diets, and think diet is all about shedding a few extra pounds, and that, in doing so, it makes them, somehow, superior to Tubbies, like me.

I am the only person on my Unit who regularly has music in the workplace - earphones, of course - although I see a tiny minority of other people throughout the building doing likewise. My manager is totally cool about it (except for the one occasion that I misguidedly cranked up the volume...!) but the looks of some of my colleagues suggest that they think I am just skiving. A few months back I had my Uni scarf draped over my shoulders because I was sitting in a draft. Somebody very important - and extremely famous in Public Admin circles - bounded over to me because his daughter attends my old Uni and was quite flummoxed by my non-reaction. When he realised that I had my earphones in he was apologetic for disturbing me and not at all put out by this non-traditional behaviour. He has a reputation for trouble shooting large problematic organisations and I have no doubt that he is well aware of the theories about how music boosts performance.

I have to confess to being very stupid in my sleep management. During the week I try to get through on six hours, making up for it when I can - I had nine hours last night and would have had more but for the postman knocking the door to deliver some (v. nice) registered post for the master of the household.

Yesterday I managed to sleep through my alarm - radio and beep, and the standby of my mobile was downstairs. Fortunately I awoke fully alert at the sound of my Secretary of State discussing unit costing. I never previously realised that his is a wonderful voice to wake up to - not too soothing, but definitely not too strident. Certainly not a monotone, but without dramatic shifts in tone or pitch.

*copied and pasted with big chunks omitted and some selective paraphrasing

Critics round-up

The Guardian on Rigoletto , which I shall be going to see twice in July, although with the so-called 'B' cast - a B cast that includes Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Rolando Villazón... It's a revival of the production that the ROH released on DVD. Also in the The Times.

Eugene Onegin at ENO:

The main reason you need to see English National Opera's revival of Eugene Onegin is Gerald Finley's startling performance in the title role.

And, guess what, that was the main reason I booked a ticket for next week.

Tailgaters

We all hate them, we know it's bad driving - now you can get stickers to tell them to 'fuck off', nicely at Nine Points That's Why and Off My Ass

I found links to these when looking to see if there was any news coverage of an incident that happened the other day in Streatham.

A lorry was stopped at the lights outside the police station remember this bit. The car behind contained a man, a woman and two small children. The (male) driver started honking his horn and flashing his lights. The lorry driver stepped out of his cab to enquire what the problem was. The car driver told him to get a move on. the lorry driver said he wasn't going to jump a red light, especially not outside a police station remember this bit. So the car driver took a hammer out of the car and hit the lorry driver, hard.

A rather large number of police officers emerged from the police station and arrested the car driver. Sick fuck. (And in front of his family. Nice). BTW, he took the hammer out of the car. One would have thought that if he was carrying tools for work, or had just been shopping, considering that he had three passengers, the hammer would have been in the boot. I think that's attempted murder, don't you?

Fisher's Hat

Fisher is a theatrical designer and milliner, who always goes to Ascot and always manage to get himself media coverage (he's also one of the nicest people you could imagine).

I do like this one although not as much as the one he had one year, which was a horse perched on his head!

If anybody sees me go anywhere near a boat, they have my permission to shoot me

As Steve Redgrave famously said in Atlanta in 1996, four years before winning his fifth Olympic Gold at Sydney.

I had this very strange thought today.

I really would be love to be a Local Councillor. It's too late now to contemplate standing next year. But in the 2010 London Local Elections, I will be only forty two years old, and thus twenty years than the national average councillor.

I could be bloody good: eight years of on-the-job experience will have been followed by eight years reflection of what I could have done better. Coupled with the all the day-job experience I have and will have picked up by then.

Live 8

Guess who got tickets...Jimmy!

I suppose I shall have to be nice for the next nearly three weeks!