It has been a very long while since I have blogged. I have been busy, and will certainly be in trouble for blogging now, when I should be typesetting a newsletter. However, there are certainly things worth recording. Exactly one year and four months after my intimate introduction to the front end of a BMW, I have finally been discharged by the St. George's fracture clinic. For once, and despite the raised eyebrows of the radiologist when she looked at my slides, I felt a fraud as I queued up for x-ray. I have been offered the exciting possibility of a series of operations to try and close up my skin grafts, but given that each procedure would need two weeks off work, and that the most gory scar would probably prove too stubborn to treat, I have a feeling I am going to pass. So, barring an appointment with an 'orthotics' specialist who will try and sort out my limp with some exotic insoles, and my monthly meetings with the lissome beauties of the physio dept, I am released into the wild. Which is surely worth celebrating. Except, typically, I shall be doing it on my own, as my Mum and Dad are throwing themselves on the mercy of the NHS for a cataract and hip replacement operation respectively, and Sarah and William are back in William's Chelsea pad. A.k.a. Mercury ward, Chelsea and Westminster hospital. Rarely has my tax bill seemed more justified. And not to be left out, Hope and Ellie have decided to go down with the flu. So the champagne remains on ice.
William has been practising being ill. This is an early attempt:
And after some practice:
He has clearly perfected his technique. We were fairly sure he had a bit of a sniffle. Then a blood test revealed four separate bacterial infections, and a fungal growth just for good measure. He was blue-lighted to Chelsea and Westminster, and is now on three different IV drugs. William does a great line in Man flu.
I am still teaching at the City of London School. If I wanted to stay in teaching, I would certainly be applying for a job there. The pupils are certainly more savvy than Tonbridge, and, if I am to properly understand some of the more oblique references delivered in class by some of my sixth-formers, they have discovered my online presence. As I said, a great school.
I have, however, been planning my escape, and have been auditioning frantically. It has not been ideal, bellowing at 2H in the morning, and trying to sing Handel runs in the afternoon, but I do feel that I am singing well. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the key audition panels agree with me. Glyndebourne seem happy to have me back, but all of my attempts at further advancement seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Or at least I like to think that deafness is the problem. Annoyingly, the big companies refuse to give their reasons for not considering you for work. This creates an unfortunate vacuum where the rejected auditionee can either construct an enormously elaborate conspiracy theory involving masonic blacklists, or shut themselves in a darkened room bewailing their obvious complete inability to cut the mustard. The truth quite possibly lies somewhere in the middle. I like to believe that I now find myself in the unfortunate situation where I am too long in the tooth to be the next young thing, and yet have not enough experience to sell myself as an established pro. All very frustrating. So much so, that, in desperation to sing something other than 'messenger' (a role I recently sang to great acclaim in La Traviata at the Birmingham NEC), I am considering trying to put on my own production next year. I will be trying out for a significant role. I bet that bloody masonic blacklist gets in the way though. Did I mention that?
