A good while ago, my cousin mentioned to my mother that he would quite like it if he and I could go to an opera together, so Idiscussed this with him. He did say he liked Russian opera, so I suggested he came with me to Eugene Onegin, but he didn't reply to my email, and when I rang him he said he didn't like Eugene Onegin, but suggested Mitridate Re di Ponte at Covent Garden, which, for some reason, he prefers to Mozart's Da Ponte operas. So I got the tickets, and last week when I saw him, we agreed to meet. I rang him yesterday and we confirmed arrangements - the Nag's Head, which is on the left as you come out of the Tube, only you can't come out of Covent Garden tube at the moment because it's closed. I said two o'clock, but I'd be there a bit earlier. Conscious that he doesn't have a mobile phone, and is proud that he doesn't have a mobile phone, and keeps telling us - various people with mobile phones - that he thinks they are unnecessary, I thought I had better get there extra early, because if I'm delayed I can't really contact him.
So, in the end, I get to the Nag's Head at 1.30 and settle down with a very nice pint of McMullen's AK and my Public Finance magazine, including an interesting article on the response to the July 7th bombs.
Two o'clock comes, and I've finished my pint. It's getting busy and noisy in the pub so I go and stand outside in the seering heat getting increasingly anxious, looking at my watch, looking round. I've checked the live arrival boards at Charing Cross on my phone (everything running more or less on time), I've rung my mother just in case he'd rung her (I expect he knows her number, learnt it at a young age) because I doubt he would have my mobile number. I walk round the Royal Opera House "Ladies and Gentlemen please take your seats in the auditorium this afternnoon's performance of Mitridate Re de Ponte will commence in two minutes". I speak to a woman in the ticket office, I go back to the pub, I speak to the barmaid, I walk round the opera house again, I go back to the pub and have another half (by the way, I don't especially feel comfortable sitting in pubs on my own, so I like to have something to read, but I'd finished my magazine).
Three o'clock I decide to go home.
There are various things I would quite like to have done today - spend time with my partner; Lambeth Country Show; London United Festival in Burgess Park; trip to the seaside or countryside; dinner in a nice air-conditioned restaurant; Fairy Queen at the Proms. Mitridate Re di Ponte was less desirable than any one of those.
Just before four I got home, having sat on hot tubes and even hotter buses, and made a few phone calls, but, of course, everybody was out, and I realise I don't have his brothers' mobile numbers.
Half eight, my delightful cousin phones. He was in the Waggon and Horses, which is nowhere near Covent Garden Tube. Well, it is sort of, the nearest Tube is Covent Garden, but it's the other side of the Piazza, requiring a walk past the Nag's Head. I told him I was bloody furious, accepted his apology, pointed out that it's an easy mistake to make, so most people would use their mobile, don't ever boast again about not having a mobile phone, and, by the way, my mother is now worried, and I left a message with his brother. He said he'd ring his brother. I ring my mother, who wasn't exactly worried, assuming he was on another planet, and of course, she wanted to talk, in the meantime his brother is trying to get through to me desperately worried, I'd deliberately left a bland message which, of course, he'd analysed as being deliberately bland and non-panicking. So I explained everything, saying what I had said "Nag's Head on the left as you come out of the Tube..."
"Covent Garden?" he said "McMullen's pub, can't miss it..."
So I have no opinion to offer on Mitridate Re di Ponte (yes, I know I could have gone into Acts 2 and 3, but that would have meant waiting another hour, and not knowing what was going on and I rather wanted to salvage what I could from the day to spend with my partner).
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