Celebrity blogger

As mentioned in my last post, I have become the official chorus blogger for Glyndebourne. You can view this new incursion into cyberspace here.

Yet again, this throws this blog into a strange limbo of purpose. I have been specifically encouraged not to write about work in any setting where editorial control cannot be exercised - which is fair enough - and even William has let me down in my last attempt to write a post that remained even vaguely relevant to my blog title. He is not, it now transpires, going to have his Botox injections. His consultant has decided that nothing should be done that might in any way deflect Birmingham Children's hospital from putting him on the transplant list for his bowel. Everybody is now getting very serious about this possibility. In matters of life and death, walking can, apparently, wait. Rather throws my woes of the last couple of years into relief. William remains on top form, however. Given the attempts of the last few years to find a 'best-fit' diagnosis based on his various eccentricities, the medics must surely include his inability to ever stop talking as a key symptom.

Just as when I couldn't walk, I dreamed of strolling through the countryside, William is now obsessing about food. His favourite book is currently a cookbook, and he is rarely seen without a biscuit shoved to his nostrils. He is such a connoisseur of things olfactory that he can now tell what biscuit you may have eaten just before you bent down to talk to him. Perhaps a career as a master of wine beckons: 'Chateau Cheval Blanc 2005. A complex vintage, where a background of brambly fruits is complimented by overtones of Garibaldi. A soft first mouthful is followed by a lingering taste of custard cream with slight overtones of rich tea. A huge jammy dodger of a wine.' Robert Parker needs to look to his laurels.



William is not only developing his palate, but he is getting quite literate. The attached video shows him in a bookshop. (He 'wants to look at one more Mr Man' - thirty minutes later he was still using the 'just one more' line) He is already cracking through the 'Oxford Reading Tree'. An early title that Sarah kindly chose has a picture of 'Dad' on the front cover with his leg in a huge bandage. Not only can I provide assistance in his intellectual development through my past as an English teacher, it seems I can educate through illustration too. Ever the consummate professional. Unfortunately, I have managed to educate him in less impressive ways too. As his nurse approached him tonight with yet another device to take his vital signs, William responded with the obvious borrowing - 'Bugger that!". I'm not sure that the widespread hilarity that followed did anything to persuade him that he was in the wrong. Fortunately, work is about to get very busy indeed. Maybe William needs some time off from Daddy's contributions to his intellectual 'hothousing'.

William's legs

How oddly things turn out. Just as I was wondering how I could continue to blog when it would doubtless mean either ignoring my work, or risking appalling indiscretions, Glyndebourne have asked me to be the 'chorus blogger' on their official website. This could be a disaster. Either they have given me a long enough rope with which to hang myself, or the blog will have to be so anodyne as to be entirely uninteresting. At least walking the tightrope will prove interesting in itself. Especially after those late shows when we've had a couple on the train. If and when they decide to publish, I will provide a link.



Meanwhile, it is now William who justifies a blog on the subject of his legs. As if the poor little blighter hasn't enough to worry about, the 'orthopods' have decided to correct his increasingly eccentric gait by injecting Botox into his calves, and putting him into plaster casts for a month. I can see this going down like a cardboard submarine. It's especially galling as we've been asking for their input for months to no avail, and now they've turned up, everything seems so urgent that they are going to do the procedure tomorrow. As the attached video shows, Wills likes to get around the hospital quickly, and will not be impressed with the prospect of a month without being allowed to walk. Things are getting rather urgent on other fronts too. He is running out of adequate sites to attach his IV feed, and so the prospect of an assessment for a small bowel transplant looms ever closer. It's likely that he will be considered for the 'list' within the next couple of months. It's great to think of one's son as being at the cutting edge, but not necessarily when it comes to his participation in surgery. Anyway, William has given up calling me his father. Instead, as soon as I appear, I have to play the role of which ever engine is involved in his latest game. So I am Mavis. Or Donald. Or Gordon. etc. etc. If I didn't already have an equity card, I'd certainly be due one by now. Perhaps it will mean I can still qualify if Glyndebourne fire me when they find out what really goes on.

Lookalike

Looking at yesterday's photo of William, I was reminded of a famous scene from the movies.

William-












ET -











I always knew my offspring would have movie star good looks.

Older

Two years after I phoned in sick to Glyndebourne, and I am finally back. Surely a contender for the world record sickie attempt. An odd feeling. It partly feels as if I have never been away, and partly as if I am coming back as some sort of veteran, battle-scarred but not bowed by my years in rehabilitation. That it was my 30-xth birthday last week didn’t help this last sensation. So, in attempt to make the best of it, and as my birthday happily coincided with the beginning of Glynditz rehearsals, I instigated an evening in the pub. I then spent the evening carefully cultivating the next morning’s hangover whilst enjoying the ageist taunts of the Glyndebourne whippersnappers. I enclose a photo of a whippersnapper. Of course, I had a great time, and am delighted to be back. Even though there are now potentially 11 moths of Carmen stretching ahead of me. And after the smoking ban, it can only have lost its magic.

Glyndebourne does, however, present a slightly difficult issue for the continuation of the blog. The more comic anecdotes – and there are plenty – are really best kept off the web in the interests of maintaining the mystery of the theatre, and, more importantly, in the interests of me maintaining my job. Only yesterday I sat down for a cup of tea, and was told that a colleague’s wife had found my blog, and that a decent score had been logged on the ‘shoot the tenor’ game on my website. I guess a little discretion is required if I am to talk about work at all. And it will be difficult to talk about anything else for a while. We are working six days a week for the foreseeable future.

William has been less than impressed with his Dad’s new extended absences. To make up for it, he has been indulging in dirty protests, and cramming his more bizarre behaviour into our morning slot. This morning, he came out with the memorable comment that ‘Spoons don’t smell of snowflakes.’ Yesterday, having provided a voice for everything else within sight from his cuddly toys to his duvet, William finally got round to asking me the inevitable. That I provide a voice for his willy. For the record, it has a slightly high-pitched cockney accent, and is slightly grumpy. If William were ever to make it as far as requiring a father-of-the-groom speech, he may wish he hadn’t. He is currently snoozing, surrounded by his ‘friends’. I enclose a photo.

My flat continues to provide gainful employment for seemingly endless layers of insurance-related bureaucracy. Two days ago, a veritable committee of professionals working deep into the night were involved in an extensive email debate about the nature of my kitchen sink. I was copied in, but at no time was asked to contribute. I chose to anyway. I’d had a couple of drinks and was beginning to lose patience. The race is now on. Before the place is finally finished, will house prices fall and the rebuild/administration costs rise fast enough to make the place an insurance write-off before I can move in? So long as this doesn’t happen, I plan to have a flat-warming party when the job’s done. I might combine it with my 40th. And invite those whippersnappers.

Lenten abstinence

In the spirit of my Tosca costume and my weekly Lenten incantations against the sins of the flesh, I went to Paris this week and ate a dozen oysters and a steak tartare. The trip wasn’t made for this reason – there was a genuine work-related reason – but it was certainly this meal that made a lasting impression. Things were already feeling a little unsteady as I sat in a traffic jam on the M1 coming back from Luton airport. By 24 hours later, there was a definite backlash in the tummy department. Undeterred, I set off for Matthew’s stag night the next afternoon. Six hours later, I had made several emergency stop-offs, consumed three quarters of a packet of Immodium, slept for an hour at Keele service station, and was staring at a road closed sign in the middle of the Peak District, with only a vague idea of where on Earth I was going. Perhaps somebody upstairs was making a point about my non-compliance with the Lenten fast. Either way, by the time I got to the stag festivities, I was only able to manage a Diet Coke. These are the sacrifices we make for our pals.

By way of recompense, the next day was a performance of the John Passion in Hertfordshire. Rarely has a piece of music proved to be such a self-fulfilling exercise in penance. The tenor soloist is offered the Hobson’s choice of singing either the Evangelist or the two fiendish arias. Either will leave you bleeding from the throat, and neither is particularly audience pleasing. In fact, the second aria regularly comes in at an extraordinary ten minutes long, by which time the audience are getting their sole pleasure from wondering whether or not you are going to make it unscathed. I did, but doubt it was particularly beautiful. As it is about Christ’s agony, perhaps that was all right. I just wish Bach didn’t take the concept of word painting so literally. Bach clearly had a personal vendetta against his tenor, and conversely seems to have been rather taken with his alto, to whom he routinely gave the best tunes. The Alto gets to stand up twice, deliver a couple of the greatest audience pleasers of the Baroque period, barely break into a sweat, and look smug. Evangelist and tenor aria soloist get to exchange wounds at the end. And my favourite part of the John Passion is the end. This is because the final words refer to praising endlessly. After two and a half hours of implausibly difficult yodelling to the accompaniment of scraped cat-gut, this is surely proof that Bach had a sense of humour, if a somewhat dark one.

At the end of the concert, I had the choice of a three-hour drive back up to Derbyshire to admire the depth and breadth of my friends’ hangovers, or to drive home in the certain knowledge that William would demand that I woke up at the crack of dawn. I chose the latter, and William didn’t disappoint. At least I’d taken the morning off church, and so had a glorious hour and a half on my own.

Missing church services. What an excellent idea for a Lenten fast.