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.

The end of Tosca

Tosca has finally taken her last death leap at the Albert Hall, and thank goodness she seems to have stayed dead this time. Cavaradossi died too, of course, but the effect was somewhat diminished by his later appearance in the pub. The suspension of disbelief had been rendered difficult anyway, as in an early performance his dodgy wig had fallen off just as the firing squad dispatched him. Sadly, the wig was not given a separate bow.

The full glorious experience of the Gubbay chorus was neatly captured by a Times Journalist who briefly shared my dressing room desk. ‘Like a rugby changing room, but more camp’ apparently. There was not a lot for us to do in Tosca, but despite the enormous amount of wasted time, it was great to find myself back with my chums, as well as making some new ones. Glyndebourne starts in a fortnight, so the treadmill really gets going in earnest then. And a full twelve months of back-to-back Carmens begins. At least there’s a lot to do in that opera, but I suspect that by this time next year even the sniff of a toreador will be enough to bring on palpitations. And they’re a sweaty lot.

My flat looked briefly as if things were getting sorted out. The Poles moved in, work was done – it was great. And it was never going to last. The guys dealing with the contents seem to have gone completely AWOL. Five minutes before I was due to meet them in Tooting, they rang to say that they were in Brighton. I am not at all sure that this can be put down to the failure of a Sat Nav. As things currently stand, these guys have thrown away 90% of my belongings, hidden the other 10%, not showed me any paperwork to show what they’ve done, and then proved impossible to find for four months. My gathering nervousness is perhaps not entirely surprising. Still, Thames Water is due to have a look at the drain tomorrow, so perhaps I shouldn’t relinquish any belief in miracles just yet.

William is enjoying a pleasantly bizarre period of development. He has just run up to me and asked if I had a big face. I have also been required to provide the voice for pretty much every inanimate object in the house. His taste for anthropomorphism has even extended as far as having conversations with his buggy. These are episodes that must surely tempt a few passers-by to consider calling the authorities. And this might not necessarily be a bad idea. George Phillipson at the City of London School has just sent me the department photo taken last term. An alarming transformation does seem to have taken place recently.

Last November:









Last week:













For a boy brought up as an atheist, this is a worrying development. Especially as I've had to intone the litany at church for the last fortnight. "From fornication and all sins of the flesh, Good Lord deliver us". Indeed.

Christmas

Perhaps it’s the lack of focus that’s delayed my blogging of late. Or perhaps it has been the return of the prodigal, and all that entails. William is back, and I have had to re-adjust my orbit to his gravitational pull. His subtle approach to life at home includes such discreet measures as shouting "DADDY WHERE ARE YOU!" every morning at six o'clock. It's great to have him back. In fact, his return has been just one of many extraordinarily positive recent developments. Whilst various middle managers have been squabbling incompetently about their share of Direct Line’s payout to sort out my flooded flat, the Poles have moved in, and are quietly actually doing the work. And if that wasn’t enough, another seriously grumpy call to Thames ‘nobody can speak to you now, as we’re all on lunch during February’ Water, has finally yielded results. Engineers are coming to see if they can do anything about my flat being the sewage outlet valve for SW17. Wonders will, apparently, never cease. And the final steps in the treatment of my leg have been taken. In fact, they were steps into a box of polystyrene beads, as this was how I was measured for my special insoles. As a special treat, the kind orthotics man in the white coat pointed out that I was flat-footed on the other foot, so would throw in a bonus insole on the NHS. Hurrah for the welfare state. I really must sort out that tax return.

All of this good news is entirely appropriate, as today has been designated Christmas day in Sarah’s house. The overall effect was slightly spoilt by spending this morning intoning twenty solid minutes of dirge-like lentern responses at church, but once I'd pocketed the cash it was a little easier to summon up a degree of festivity. So after consuming an enormous roast, I am now sitting surrounded by the detritus of Christmas; looking at a tree, tucking into a mince pie, and surveying the minefield of discarded wrapping paper that I will later have to try and avoid if I am to not to suffer significant personal injury on the way to the bathroom. My present from the girls was a box of aftershave samples that they mistakenly won on a 50p tombola in the belief that it was perfume. It is, as we all know, the thought that counts. William was finally able to take possession of the train table that I’ve been working on for the last three weeks. He took to it immediately, which was hugely gratifying. Within seconds, engines were crashing all over the place. I was contemplating a re-touch within half an hour. I think I need to let go.

Perhaps the most significant development of the last few weeks, however, has been my return to the treadmill of opera work. I have missed it enormously. Though I did have to remind myself of this constantly as I sat through rehearsal after three hour rehearsal in a freezing warehouse for the dubious honour of striding on, singing three words and then hiding in the shadows at the back of the stage for the rest of the act. And after I’d spent an entire afternoon playing a small role in ensuring that Tosca’s suicidal 30ft leap from the battlements of the Castel Sant’ Angelo went smoothly, I was beginning to wish that she would consider doing the job properly so that we could all go home.

Raymond Gubbay’s Tosca should be a good show. It is a great opera, and with some cracking performances. There is not a great deal for the chorus to do though. We come on at the end of Act 1, pretend to be in a church with as little camp affectation as possible, and leave by the nearest exit. Annoyingly, a couple of offstage moments mean that we have to hang around until the end of the third act, which means that we can’t go straight to the pub, and have to loiter for two hours playing card games in nineteenth century ecclesiastical costume. If that didn’t ensure enough time-wasting, I am covering the role of Spoletta; a scarred henchman who has virtually nothing to say, but manages to pop his head into every scene in the opera. Act 1. Come in, look scary, agree with the bad guy, loiter. Act 2. Come in, gabble key plot details over 30 seconds, look scary, loiter. Act 3. Come in, loiter. A pattern emerges. I have pondered over a number of crosswords during cover rehearsals. There are highlights. Spoletta gets to torture the lead tenor in Act 2. The risks presented by this are usually minimised by doing it offstage, but it’s all spelled out in this production, so it’s not a role for anybody too ambitious. But the crowning point of the role is as he gets to run/limp after Tosca at the end of the opera. This means that I have had a clear view of the most astonishing feature of the piece. This is the booth half way up the ramp to the battlements where Tosca enters as a well-endowed dramatic soprano with life experience, and exits as a twenty-something gymnast ready to take the death-defying thirty-foot plunge. If anybody was ever looking for the definition of the magic of opera, then this is it. It’s great to be back.

On topic

As Bid pointed out to me over a pint of Harvey’s a few days ago, this blog is in danger of becoming ‘off-task’. It is sadly true that I very rarely find myself with my foot up these days. But if I am to briefly remain on-topic, there have, in fact, been some key recent developments in my rehabilitation. I have started work again as a full-time opera singer. If freelance opera singing can ever be described as full-time. And yesterday, I was signed off by my physiotherapist. It is a little disappointing that my first cover role after the accident is as a chief of police with a scar, and that I found myself in a physiotherapy department today trying to make William do what he was told, but the general news is good. The only remaining elements of my recovery involve getting some insoles made, and doing enough stretching and exercise to ensure that if I ever have to break into a run, I don’t resemble a cross between Olivier’s Richard III and a pregnant penguin. I really must get to the gym. Anyway, for the sake of continuity, I’ve attached a picture of my most recent x-ray. This is me ‘healed’.

Further astonishing developments have occurred elsewhere. Despite some lingering incompetence from various sub-contractors dealing with my flat, there is every chance that some builders might start work there this week. A huge step forward, despite the fact that Thames Water will doubtless flood it again within the month. And, even more pleasingly, it seems that William’s release papers have finally been signed. If all goes according to plan, he should be at home by the middle of next week. The challenge of looking after him gets ever more complicated – I have now taken to trying to make sense of them in a ‘manual’ – but life should still be significantly easier with him back. And if I no longer have to sleep on the floor, then Hope will have somewhere to sleep when she is driven out of her bedroom by her sister’s snoring. Earlier this evening I discovered evidence of an aborted attempt at camping out in the bath.

Sarah is determined to celebrate the return to family life by celebrating the Christmas that we didn’t have. I must admit to struggling a little with this concept. I’m not sure I fancy another round of crippling hangovers and being force-fed brazil nuts and brussels sprouts. I might be more agreeable if I could convince the family that a Bond film is an essential part of the traditional festivities. I don’t fancy my chances. However, I have thrown myself at sorting out William’s present. I decided to build him a wooden train set that would perch on the coffee table. Which seemed a great idea until I tried to put together the track. As I started a third hour fruitlessly trying to jam together pieces from assorted Ikea trips, charity shop buys and presents from relatives, it was becoming increasingly clear that this was a task approaching the building of the new Wembley in terms of its complexity and likelihood of arriving late and enormously over-budget. I had no idea that the construction of a track designed for three-year-olds would require such expertise. A glance at the various layout plans on the web should have alerted me to the problem. Grown men spend significant portions of their time building these tracks, and creating detailed architectural plans. I had been hoping to get the job done in time to finish a glass of wine in front of Newsnight. I am pleased to report that the track is still not created.

No quality footage today I’m afraid. But some fairly grainy and, I’m afraid, sideways footage of William mugging to camera. As the face of CHASE – his hospice – William managed to raise them a record sum of over £40,000 in their winter campaign. As you can see, such photogenic quality doesn’t come without hard work.

Catching up

Time for some catching up. After a week that was mostly concerned with William recovering from his operation, it was time to catch up with some admin. So, after ensuring that I had enough of a hangover to make the morning really enjoyable, I spent some happy hours yesterday listening to the on-hold muzak of various different organisations. The prize for the most ridiculously tortuous set of menu options followed by the excuse – ‘Sorry, I can’t put you through as our computers are down’ – went to Thames Water. Of course. The prize for the employee who spends most time ‘on lunch’ went to ‘Nikki” of the escalations department of Thames Water, who has been on lunch since just before Christmas. But a late overall winner of the prize for the most optimistic on-hold muzak went to Direct Line Home Insurance claims department for their glorious choice of Frank Sinatra’s ‘It Was a Very Good Year’. Inspired. And after a morning of back-to-back phone calls, I managed to sort virtually nothing out. But felt virtuous for trying.

William has taken a little while to recover from his operation. He discharged himself early from paediatric HDU simply by constantly declaring to anybody who would listen that he wanted to go back to his room, and generally refusing to co-operate unless his demands were met. I can’t think where he gets his stubborn streak from. However, progress has been slow since then. He took a while to be weaned away from his morphine pump, and confidence in his ‘magic bag’ (the ileostomy bag) has been knocked by the realisation that there was a deal of initial pain involved. The ileostomy itself is none too pretty, and William is keen to ‘clean it off’. In fact, he has two chunks of his small intestine poking through his abdomen wall – ‘stomas’ - and cleaning them off would not be the way forward. But they are doing their job, as they are constantly leaking the unpleasant fluid and gas that were making him so uncomfortable before Christmas. The slight downside is that they are leaking so efficiently that William is now on enormous amounts of IV replacement fluid and still suffering symptoms of dehydration. He has also developed a slightly disconcerting habit of unconsciously farting through these ‘stomas’. As I earlier blogged, there is some quality toilet humour ahead of him.

He is really on the mend now though, and has gingerly returned to his habit of toddling around the ward with his daddy literally in tow. He is re-asserting himself as the ward character, although more through his fantastic eccentricity than any charm offensive. After he had told yet another nurse (Simone – a wonderfully efficient and caring professional) that he didn’t ‘want that one’, I thought it best to start trying to address his issues with politeness. “Let’s role-play,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll be Simone. When I say hello, you say hello Simone.”

‘No,’ suggested William, ‘you be a giraffe.’

A little more work is required.

It is, however, reassuring to see William returning to his old self. Here is a photo of him asleep last night with his ‘friends’. The prominent black creature that looks as if it part of a voodoo ritual is his current favourite. Bizarrely, it was given to him by Boris Johnson MP, as part of a photo call arranged by the Evening Standard whilst William’s lifelong Labour Party supporting father was out of the loop. What on earth was going on when this photo call was arranged? Boris Johnson, London Mayor hopeful, giving voodoo dolls to sick children? The Tories don’t believe in decent funding for the NHS, but are prepared to turn to black magic instead? I arrived as the photo call was in full swing, and paced angrily outside the playroom as the flashbulbs went off inside. ‘But he’s a lovely man,’ intoned the play-specialist, as I grumped in the corridor. Of this, I have little doubt. But having William’s illness exploited by a politician whose policies I would never support was always going to be a difficult pill to swallow. Even if William did receive a voodoo doll that is now his favourite ‘friend’. Anyway, in the spirit of the whole extraordinary episode, William has named the doll ‘Sally’. Naturally.

2008

2008. New Year’s resolution? To stop offering hostages to fortune.

The year so far has included two nasty hangovers, a dose of man-flu, a couple of grumpy exchanges with Thames Water, and a nagging sense that my tax needs sorting out. Why would anybody celebrate New Year?

Sarah and I went to see the fireworks on the Embankment. They cost £1,000,000 apparently. £10,000 a minute. We walked about four miles up the river and huddled in the drizzle on a jetty at Millbank to watch the show. I have attached a photo. The money would surely have been better spent on decent drains in Tooting. By the time we got back to the Chelsea and Westminster, they were already taking down the Christmas decorations. And my leg hurt. Bockers was celebrating New Year in a lodge in Scotland, hunting. If I was handed a shotgun as the year turned, things might have got messy.

William is finally going to be operated on. It has taken some time for everybody on his team to agree that this is the way forward. Agreement was reached when his doctors took the radical step of talking to each other, rather than making a decision then going on leave so that the next chap could make a different decision. His op is next Wednesday, if all goes according to plan. He will have two new openings on his tummy. His nurse confidentially agreed with my summary of the situation. William will have three bottoms. If he grows up with the same sense of toilet humour that defined my childhood, he will not be short of material. He is, however, going to have to improve his personal hygiene. The following video highlights the problem. Apologies for the gratuitous nudity.

Christmas update

My faith in humanity has been restored. Obviously, this is partly due to the season of good will to all men. But mostly because a box of delivered chocolates has sat outside the front door of my sodden flat for at least two weeks, and nobody has pinched it. It was under plain cover, I suppose, but even so I am impressed. Exactly twelve months ago, the locals were looting my living room.

The most regular chocolate thieves are both away at the moment anyway. Hope is with her dad, and Sarah is still incarcerated in Chelsea. And there is enough chocolate in a children’s ward at Christmas to ensure a localised obesity epidemic. In fact, on Christmas Day, there was apparently something of a surfeit of Santas too. Not three hours after a Santa with a slight limp and suspiciously high-pitched Ho Ho Ho was strong-armed into doing the rounds, than he was superseded by a member of the London Fire Brigade in a similarly unconvincing costume. I am informed by an entirely unbiased source that the earlier incarnation was far superior. Though not, I suspect, as far as some of the young mums were concerned. Photos will doubtless follow.

William was delighted with Father Christmas, especially when he finally remembered to deliver the ‘Gordon book’. And that was the favourite present. According to the back, a bargain at £2.50 in elf currency. I’m hoping that his tastes will maintain such affordable levels. No doubt Father Christmas was pretty chuffed too. William was also in sparkling form for Christmas day, which was an enormous relief. He had been pretty uncomfortable for a couple of days before, and his doctors had even threatened to remove his line on Christmas Eve, which would have meant sticking in temporary peripheral lines for at least a week. Not very festive. But now Thursday seems to be D-day, when he will have the op that will hopefully relieve the pressure in his tummy and settle things down enough to start planning for coming home. William has already started planning his return, as he is demanding that his favourite cuddly toys – his ‘friends’ – are sent home in his stead. They are seen here sharing the bed with William in his 'boys are smelly' pyjamas. For the meantime, all is on hold. William is on his drip more-or-less 24 hours a day, is windy and often sore, but is otherwise as entertaining as ever. This currently means that we are all part of an enormous Thomas role-play. William is generally Gordon, the express engine. So when he is not joining the rest of us in the great festive television slob, he hurtles around the ward at high speed, with me following and doing my very best to ensure that he doesn’t yank out his central line. I am Harvey the crane – performing the necessary role of rescuer when he falls ‘off the lines’. Everybody has a part to play. The ward sister is Trevor the tractor. William is doing his best to ensure an early release.

Incommunicado

I managed to lose my mobile phone on the late night train back to Croydon the other day. I confess that its loss was entirely due to my altered mental state. On its own, the experience of catching a late train back to Croydon is enough to alter anyone’s mental state. The doors at Victoria are kept locked until 10 minutes before the train leaves, presumably to keep Croydon’s denizens from making themselves at home – using the facilities to cook chicken nuggets, pushing dirty faced children around in decrepit buggies, putting knitted ballerinas on the toilet rolls in the Ladies. That sort of thing. So you wait in the crystallising frost, and join a steaming, stamping mass of ex-revellers, all nursing impending hangovers, and too cold to speak. The cold and nausea seem to drag you down like a sinking anchor. Finally the gates are opened by a chain-smoking porter – all non-smoking rules are suspended when the end of a Marlboro is the only source of warmth – and you shuffle to the platform, gradually trying to coax your limbs into forward movement. And it was whilst I was nestling in the corner of a carriage, quietly trying to remind myself that I was human, that I presume my phone dropped out of my pocket.

It’s quite liberating, really. Unless I turn on my computer and surf through mountains of spam and Facebook generated invitations to stick crappy applications to my profile, I am un-contactable. Glorious. Except that I was waiting for a call back about my flooding problems. I thought that I might finally have persuaded Thames Water that my flat has flooded four times in the last four years, and that they might look into doing something about it. Despite the fact that they still don’t have it ‘on their database’. In frustration, I had even tried suggesting that I wouldn’t put the phone down until I heard the clicking of keys as the data was being entered. ‘I can’t enter the data,’ responded the customer services drone. I asked who could. ‘I don’t know.’ I may have spotted the flaw in their data system. A shame that they haven’t. So I phoned Ofwat. Who will doubtless have the same conversation, but had promised to phone back. Possible progress after four years of repeated homelessness. And then I lost my phone. People become letterbombers because of this sort of thing. A pointless act of revenge. Thames Water’s internal post system would doubtless lose the bomb anyway.

Christmas is going to be spent at William’s Chelsea pad. It is kind of the NHS to provide us with such a fashionable festive address. In fact, we have managed to swing a ‘hotel room’ for Christmas evening. For ‘hotel room’, understand a room on the fourth floor with white walls, a single bed, strip lighting and chewing gum encrusted carpet tiles. I suppose it doesn’t do to encourage people to feel too comfortable. In contrast, Sarah has decorated William’s ‘bay’ so thoroughly that it has begun to resemble Santa’s grotto. And William has been wound up to such a level of festive over-excitement that I arrived the other day to find him bouncing up and down in his cot shouting ‘We wish you a merry, Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas’ at the top of his voice. Santa has been once already - William gamely tried to hide his disappointment that he hadn’t arrived with any of the presents he asked for - and there is a stubbornly tenacious coating of stray glitter on every flat surface. It is in no way ideal that William will be in hospital over Crimbles, but he will certainly enjoy himself nonetheless. His impending operation – laparotomy, ileostomy and assorted biopsies – is now due in early Jan. Christmas at home has been delayed to his potential return in mid-February. I can get the girls their presents in the January sales.

Humbug

Christmas is coming, and it is time to practise the ‘Bah Humbugs’. I am perfectly qualified for this. I have read Dickens in a professional capacity. I have the sort of trained diaphragm that can produce a really resonant ‘Bah’. And I have a sweet tooth. So I like humbugs. Plus William and Sarah are facing a Christmas in Stalag Chelsea and Westminster, and I am currently either working, sleeping on Sarah’s floor, or trundling up the A23 between Croydon and Chelsea. So Crimbles is seeming a little unattractive at the moment. And my poor junior school classes are feeling the brunt, as the froth of their youthful festivity beaches on my dry cynicism. But that’s a metaphor. And they need to learn to recognise those. So they’re stuck with me banging on for another week.

It was the boys’ Christmas dinner this week, so that was at least one nod to the festive season. Sparky put on his pinny, invited everyone to his place in rural Kent, and produced goose fat-roasted potatoes. It was enormously impressive. Then we threw ourselves at the mercy of the commuter belt – singing carols to his neighbours. And they were unimpressed. The mood was perhaps best captured by the resident of one of the mansionettes that we serenaded.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re wassailing.”

“I don’t know what that means, but here’s some money.”

Presumably hush money. It is difficult, in these circumstances, to put a name to the enemy. Ten good singers – ex-members of the National Youth Choir – must sound at least reasonably impressive when they sing carols on your doorstep. Years doing just that in London have been very successful. But the mansionette dwellers of Kent remained impassive. They presented a blank, red-brick face. “New money,” complained one wassailer. But this is a difficult insult to throw when the corollary is that old money is better, which is equally alien to a jaded socialist such as me. So I have worked on a new coinage. Cash And No Taste. CANT for short. It should be delivered with a London accent, as it sounds appropriately offensive then. And will therefore be appreciated by my current colleagues, who are both gloriously cultured, and wonderfully foul mouthed. I will miss them when I give up teaching again, and get back to singing.

Tonight was the department dinner – a moment to realise what I’ll be saying goodbye to, as we had dinner in the Athenaeum. My post-modern confusion at being found in such a setting was no better encapsulated that when I took my phone out to show a colleague that I had the number of somebody I knew only as Aphrodite on my phone, but was told off for the nature of my classical reference, as I shouldn’t have had my phone on. That Aphrodite is a composer of crossover music was information that could only cloud the issue, and is further evidence of the terribly difficult times we live in. Time, I think, to sign the Glyndebourne chorus contract and submit myself to a comforting few months of putting on fancy dress and pretending to be somebody else.

Released.

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?

Mummies

Sarah has been in Loch Ness this weekend, running another marathon. And finished in just inside four hours. Very impressive, and we have some champagne in the fridge to celebrate. I didn’t quite get around to sponsoring her this time, which is fairly poor, but I have provided the celebratory champagne, so fingers crossed that this evens the score. Especially as Sarah’s running habit is clearly designed to highlight my own immobility, and the champagne had been bought to celebrate my own return to walking unaided. Not that I’m bitter. She’d better bloody well bring me back some whisky though. A Johnnie Walker Black Label at least. And given that I’ve also done all the family washing, tidied up and looked after all three sprogs for three nights, I’m sure I’m worth a decent bottle of Glenmorangie. Though this might be a dangerous precedent to set if I ever get touring again. So maybe I’d settle for a Loch Ness Monster key-ring.

Being a single parent has not exactly played to my strengths. I have, however, so far managed to avoid the comedy disasters of last time. One highlight (and there were many) of that episode was patching up a cut above Ellie’s eye with a bit of tape and sending her to school telling her not to make a fuss. Two hours later, and still losing blood, she was in casualty. Sadly, even this masterstroke of incompetence failed to put Sarah off entrusting me with her brood. The girls have, at least, been on pretty good form. They have spent most of the weekend playing in the street outside. Obviously, my own experiences of playing with traffic have proved less than exemplary, but they seem to be able to keep out of trouble in the cul-de-sac.

William has been less keen to give his daddy a quiet life. As proven by the attached video (This is a new experiment, and should be watched sideways!), he has been developing worrying daredevil tendencies, and, in fact, celebrated the temporary absence of mummy by pulling out his gastrostomy tube, thus requiring the intervention of his home nurse within hours of me being left in-charge. At least she had the decency to point out the encouraging sign that the washing machine was on. I like Anna. She knows the score.

Today, and on the advice of my mother, we went to the British Museum. As somebody had chosen to end it all on the East Croydon line, the journey took rather longer than planned, and by the time I was able to change William’s nappy, things were already pretty messy. Our cultural visit then lasted approximately 20 minutes. We saw some mummies. “Look William – it’s a mummy!”

“No it isn’t.”

“Look William – it’s another mummy!”

“No it isn’t – mummy’s in Scotland.”

Repeat. Several times. Then a good deal of whingeing from the girls about being hungry, and endless upset from William that he had the wrong Thomas book. I gave up, and took them to McDonald’s and the park. These are, of course, attractions that can be found nearer to home, but then we would have missed William’s comedy routine with an unsuspecting passenger on the number 11 bus. “Are you asleep lady?” Etc. So, I was glad of my mum’s advice – I did ask, after all – but should have remembered that we spent some of the most happy weekends of our own childhood playing with Lego from a bucket.

Sarah is back tomorrow. I can quite understand why she went to Inverness. Though not entirely why she seems keen to come back.

Gym

Lordy! My last post was in high summer, and it’s taken me until after the equinox to post again. Oddly, the weather doesn’t seem to be any different. On the plus-side, I’m imagining that any of my friends, family or acquaintances who had developed a habit of reading this blog will now have given up entirely, leaving me free to pontificate, talk nonsense, or libel at will.

So. What has been going on? Firstly, of course, and slavishly adhering to the initial premise of this blog, there should be leg news. And it’s still there, and unencumbered. The plastic boot is in the bin. Metaphorically, of course. It’s NHS property. So significant progress has been made. I still limp, and can’t run yet. I am missing a lot of buses. But I am now thoughtfully reminded by every medical professional I have the pleasure of meeting (professionally, of course) that I should feel lucky that I have a leg. So it is my lucky leg. Though perhaps a tattoo of a rabbit’s paw would be in bad taste. Or even a discreet horseshoe.

William has been out of hospital for some weeks. This appears to mean that his morning and evening routines are Daddy’s responsibility. Proof of this, were it required, is provided by the dawn chorus that typically wakes me up. “Change my nappy Daddy!” I think it’s great that he is home.

The flat is now empty, and 90% of my possessions are in a skip in Croydon. A poetic end. The carpet has gone, but the drying machines are still not doing their job, as there is nowhere to plug them in, and no electrician in Tooting who seems able to attend an appointment when he says he will. Nearly three months on, and I am tempted to try and dry the place out myself with kitchen paper. That advert for ‘Bounty’ makes some fairly extravagant claims.

Despite all of this progress, I’m still not back to where I was with my job. I suppose there’s quite a lot of confidence to be won back from potential employers, even if I was as sprightly around the stage as I ever was. Which, of course, I’m not. So it’s a slow business. And as mortgage rates have thoughtfully chosen this moment to rise, my only two chances of avoiding skid row have been the ongoing legal case, and the possibility of picking up teaching work. And the legal case is proving interminable. The other side seem to think I should have factored in the possibility of meeting a wannabe Stirling Moss in an aged BMW into my road-crossing calculations. So I was a relieved man when the City of London School rang and offered me work until Christmas. I had been weighing up the relative benefits of a job in Starbucks or McDonalds. It will be difficult to look the head of English at Tonbridge in the eye again though. I left him with the distinct impression that the reason I couldn’t take on the job there full-time was because I was busy establishing my international operatic career. And one of his first jobs of the new term would have been to write my reference.

At least the city is a great place to work. Over ten years ago, I did part of my PGCE there, and tiptoed in with a shaky idea of the principles of English teaching, and a determination to account for every minute of a forty minute lesson with a detailed plan. Now I waltz in with my bullshit valve jammed permanently in the open position, and an accidental knowledge of my subject. It’s a different job. And rather more enjoyable, even if it isn’t my job of choice. However, there is an integral contradiction to being an English teacher in the City of London. It is not a job that sits obviously in the same space as the unfettered capitalist. Pinstripe suits don’t have leatherette elbow-patches. So, in order to feel suitably city-boy and to please my physiotherapist at the same time, I have joined a gym. I haven’t been there yet, though. I don’t own a pair of shorts.

Food

Three weeks into what shall become known as the ‘plastic boot’ period, Hopefully not too long to go. I have got away with a couple of small roles ‘without boot’ too. There’s not a great deal of moving around in the role of 1st Armed Man. It rather defines the phrase spear-carrier. Then learning Ravel’s l’Heure Espagnole on two weeks notice and three days rehearsal. Quite terrifying, even though my role was a minor one. The attached photo shows the cast on their way to performance. You will notice the various coping strategies. Learning the score, whistling the tune, or giving in to apparent mania. I am due to sing the Count in the Barber of Seville on Sunday for a different group. This is a little more substantial - I am only offstage twice, and one of those exits is for a quick change. It shall be performed with boot. I doubt the company will be too impressed when they realise that my footwear makes my every move sound like the arrival of a cyberman. The swordplay involved may prove quite interesting too.

William is back in hospital - this time at the Chelsea and Westminster for a longish stretch. The idea is to try him on food. Sadly, this will not mean the boy tucking into a burger and chips, but rather Mummy and Daddy preparing amino-acid soup to pump overnight into one of his tubes. Hardly Gordon Ramsey. Meanwhile, William has developed his own unusual take on eating. It consists of plucking imaginary foodstuffs from the air, then either eating them, or offering them to me, so that I can pretend that the sausage, chocolate or strawberry calls to be let go, and has to be rescued from my mouth. All rather surreal, especially when he starts eating elephants, triangles and colours. So, in celebration of William’s new-found propensities for imagination, I took him out to the Tate Modern. This was an education for him, me, and for the countless gallery-goers that he chose to regale with his insights.

“What’s that, William?”
“Colouring in. An orange rectangle” (Mark Rothko)
“What’s that, William?”
“Cutting out.” (Matisse)

Surely pretty astute. It normally takes a degree in Fine Art to get to the stage of wondering what constitutes a stripe in Rothko’s Four Seasons’ murals. William was straight in there with a decent opinion, armed only the basics of crayon usage in his skills set. He’s the man.

After the gallery, we went to Borough Market. William was not as impressed with the cheese shop as I was, and insisted on clasping my hand over his nose. In fact, he has decided to frame any feelings of general malaise in terms of food. “I’ve lost my biscuit,” seems to be William-speak for “I’m generally cross, and haven’t quite figured out why.” It’s fair to say that his biscuit was missing as I sat him in front of the goats’ cheese counter of Neals Yard Dairy. Goodness only knows what he would make of the less-than fragrant mushrooms I recently discovered growing on the carpet in my flooded flat.

NHS

Hurrah for free state healthcare. My leg has been freed from its cage, William continues to be kept going, and with a smile on his face. And we have father and son splints. Mine is temporary, and needs to be worn whilst walking around. William's need to be worn overnight, and will most likely be a semi-permanent fixture. But they have tractors and helicopters on them. Which makes them far superior.

It has been a while since my last blog. All sorts of things have happened. Term ended at Tonbridge, and I once again have given up English teaching, to try and return to my old singing job. At the moment, I have approximately four confirmed dates in my diary when I have paying work. Two days after I left paying work, I went to Lille for an audition, where, outside the opera house, I turned down a particularly tenacious beggar, who told me that I was rich, and that I should f-off back to England. Bi-lingual beggar he may have been, but his grasp of the realities of my finances were about as sound as his understanding of the Entente Cordiale. And I didn’t get the part. I did come back with a decent bottle of St. Julien though. Some things are worth dipping into the overdraft for.

Things may temporarily look up on the cash front when Direct Line finally cough up the insurance payment for my last flat flooding. Although they will be unimpressed by the fact that it has flooded again. I have yet to figure out what I have lost, as it is still inches deep in foul smelling South London effluent, and I haven’t been able to get in. Odd that I spent at least a year as an undergraduate living in conditions only slightly less squalid, and never felt so fussy. However, now that my leg-metalwork has been taken off, and I am sporting my plastic open-toed orthopaedic boot, I’m guessing that squelching through raw sewage isn’t the way forward. Especially as I am still sporting open post-surgical wounds. Ideally, I need an NHS wellie. Which hasn’t been forthcoming, so I have been unable to explore. Even so, I do know that my copy of John Humphries' book about English Grammar has bought it – I saw it floating by the front door. I’m not sure I needed my recent career choice illustrated in quite such a graphic fashion.

They may not be able to provide wellies, but the NHS has come up trumps in every other regard this month. 24 hours after my frame had been removed, William had an extremely nasty turn, and I was in casualty again. He toddled over to give me a cuddle, and three minutes later, was shaking uncontrollably, going blue, and showing every symptom of ‘septic shock’. I phoned for an ambulance with my spare hand. It arrived in five minutes, and I was then astonished by just how quickly it is possible to drive from Addiscombe to Mayday hospital. Within the hour, William was sitting on a trolley regaling all who would listen with the intricacies of various Thomas stories. When you hear griping about the length of hip replacement waiting lists, it rather falls into relief when you know how impressively the health service can perform when they need to. Having said that, it did look briefly as if the nearest bed they could offer was going to be in Hampshire. And Dad’s waiting for a hip replacement.

William is home again now, and on familiar form, if a bit weary. He has mastered the phrases “I want,” and “I don’t want,” and is rather good at saying “Please!” However, he rarely, if ever, actually knows what he wants. It’s very confusing, approaching the age of three. It seems to have sparked a sort of mid-life crisis. “I want a cuddle!” “I don’t want a cuddle!” These are difficulties recognisable to all men. It was no surprise to come home yesterday to find him seeking solace in the arms of a nurse. When you’re a toddler, it seems, state healthcare can even stretch that far.

Weddings

I sang at a wedding today in Farm Street, Mayfair. My astonishment at sitting through a sermon delivered by a Jesuit priest on the subject of sex was only compounded by the realisation that the church was dedicated to the immaculate conception. You have to wonder about the church’s authority in some matters.

It has been a good week for weddings. Not only was I told that the Church of the Immaculate Conception had been the venue for four couples deciding to choose such an inappropriate venue to take the plunge this weekend alone, but my brother was married last Saturday. Whilst the family nature of this wedding was rather compromised by the fact that it proved impossible for the family to come with me, it was still a very fine weekend. It was, however, just south of Edinburgh. And I was singing a Magic Flute in Bristol the evening before. And teaching in Kent that morning. Perhaps a little ambitious. When I caught myself in the mirror on Friday evening, after my marathon trip up and down the M4, even I was surprised by the nature of the black rings around my eyes. Until I noticed the triangular eyebrows, and realised that I’d forgotten to remove my stage make-up. No wonder that chap in Reading services had looked at me so oddly. I’d thought it was just because of my limp.

The car was ditched on Saturday morning in favour of a flight to Edinburgh from London City Airport. A revelation. There was not a single queue, and not even the remotest suggestion that the flight wouldn’t take off at its allotted time. Extraordinary. My only disappointment was that Security failed to even raise an eyebrow as I walked through the metal detector. It has been a standing joke since my accident that my leg would set off every possible alarm at airport security. And when I finally tried it out, not a peep. I could have shoved a sawn-off up my trouser leg and got away with it. Doubtless they were aiming not to cause offence. I’m not sure I would have taken any, in the circumstances. The policemen with sub-machine guns do tend to remind the modern airport traveller of current priorities.

The wedding itself went in the usual haze of celebratory boozing. Everyone had a thoroughly decent time, and I left on Sunday morning with a new set of relatives in my phone book. Relatives with fiery red hair, a farm in the lowlands and a collective understanding of the value of a decent night on the tiles. The blood-line is secure.

I didn’t escape the wedding entirely unscathed. I did get a little over-enthusiastic during the ceilidh, and had to eventually retire hurt. Fortunately, the pain settled down after a couple of days, and has left me with nothing more long-lasting than yet another pin-track infection. I attempted to deal with this as discreetly as possible by visiting the Tooting ‘walk-in centre’ and asking for the relevant anti-biotics. Sadly, however, I was referred to the A&E dept, and spent three hours being x-rayed and generally administered to, before finally leaving the hospital with exactly the same box of anti-biotics that I had earlier asked for. On the plus-side, the ‘Orthopods’ (as they are affectionately called by their colleagues) did take the opportunity to realise that I seemed to have dropped off their radar, and so arranged a proper appointment for next week. It clashes horribly with some invigilation, but I plan to move heaven and earth to attend, as I have high hopes that this might be the appointment that marks the loss of my unwelcome appendage. In fact, I’m so eager that I may forgo breakfast just in case they can slot me in there and then. Here’s hoping. And praying. Perhaps the Jesuit fathers can help me out. And give me some advice on my sex life while they’re at it.

Exams

The half term is over, and Tonbridge’s every covered space is full of regimented desks. Exam season proper is here. When I first started teaching, this induced quite a thrill of vicarious nervousness. It had not been that long since my own Finals and A’ levels. The sad truth is that it had also not been that long since my O’ levels. And now that GCSEs are being are being sat by a second generation, it is fair to say that my own exam experience feels like it happened quite a while ago. Now, in fact, the overwhelming thought when the exam tables go out, is how boring invigilation will be.

Invigilation. A bizarre word. It sounds like a medical process. To undergo invigilation should involve something being painfully removed. One’s vigils, perhaps. Whatever they may be. It would certainly be a process resulting in the unfortunate victim being left only able to silently walk up and down, automaton-like, in straight lines.

There are ways to make the time pass more quickly. It is always a joy when candidates – for that’s what your pupils have become – start asking for more paper. The race to provide extra sheets is a glorious form of minority sport. The race participant has to not only arrive at the relevant desk first, but he also has to spot the hand going up, and walk in a dignified fashion, as quickly as possible, in order to beat his fellow dignified competitors to the wire. Dead heats are quite common, at which point seniority comes into play. Undignified walking or any hint of breaking into a bustle result in obvious disqualification. However, at Tonbridge, I have so far been unable to persuade anybody to take part in my favourite invigilation pastime – exam battleships. This really has to be reserved for schools where one’s feet are well and truly under the classroom desk. The game is familiar. Certain lines of desks are designated as a competitor’s frigates, destroyers and battleship. Each invigilator then takes turns to take shots. These are achieved by standing behind a desk and giving the pre-arranged signal. Perhaps a cough. The game can get quite exciting. Lines of candidates can potentially get quite nervous about the extra attention they are receiving. A sunken battleship can be celebrated by a quite fabulously inappropriate display of triumph. A short exam can create almost unbearable tension in a difficult game. All so much better than simply trotting around with a handful of sweaty treasury tags.

Sadly, Tonbridge’s exam season is inducing a different variety of nervousness this summer. My sense of the growing inevitability of a summer of unemployment. Glyndebourne cannot now employ me until March at the earliest, and even my few performances of Barber of Seville are looking ever less likely as I continue to sport my unorthodox leg-wear. The Count’s costume, after all, consists of tights and breeches. One cyberman in search of temporary gainful employment. Isn’t that why we took those exams in the first place?