Well, I dunno...

It's been all fun and games...

Monday evening was fun; "The Winter's Tale" makes a terrific ballet, although the "game of two halves" tendency of the play was if anything emphasised by the transformation to a purely visual medium.  More of that anon.

Thinking of anons, I seem to have pissed-off my anon from the weekend.  Sorry, cryptic outside-over-there person!  Not knowing who you are kind of throws me, because you clearly know who I am.  Try and put yourself in my shoes, and consider how discombobulating that feels.  I'm happy you seem to have liked my poem & I'm touched that you responded positivly to it.  But I have to be honest; it was written as a response to seeing someone I know walk by looking tired and low.  One particular person.  Now you seem to be taking it personally, and I don't know if you're that person or not;  Again, significant discombobulation here.  I hate not knowing things; makes me feel really inadequate...

So, I'm sorry if I didn't react the way you wanted.  It's probably good for me to feel inadequate, though.  Challenging.

A good few things are challenging just now.  The new ticketing and database system continues to be challenging, bless its digital cotton socks.  We had server issues for large parts of yesterday, which was certainly bl**dy challenging, and reminded me just how painfully dependent we all are on computers these days.  Today we had a fire alarm, and it wasn't a drill.  In fact it turned out to be a complete mystery; so everyone was kept outside the office for a good thirty or forty minutes while it was investigated.  Thirty-forty minutes I could really have used in the office...

At least it was a pleasant afternoon.  There was patchy sun, a fresh mild breeze, goldfinches singing in the trees and big, blowsy golden peonies in bloom.  Compared with some fire alarms I have known, that was okay, I have to say.

Worst fire alarm I've ever been in was a time when I was modelling for an evening class.  In November.  As the saying goes, less said about that, the better.

Then when we were allowed back into the building I got sabotaged in my attempts to do a simple job by the fact I couldn't get it done because something wasn't doing what I expected it to.  Couldn't crack it for the life of me.  Had to email The Man With The Answers about fifteen times in a row, which was both challenging and plain bl**dy embarrassing.  I dislike bothering busy people.  That inadequacy thing, again; I feel I ought to be able to fix my own sodding problems. 

And then when The Man had fixed that problem, I got a different problem and had to give up on the whole thing.  As it was I didn't leave work till six pm.  Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Back to "Winter's Tale".

Firstly; what a cast, what a staging, what amazing choreography!  Between Sicilia and Bohemia the whole physical language changes; so that the first is angular, frontal and formal, full of clenched fists, Graham-technique feet and gripping hands, and the second is all flowing lines and chain dances, leaping and springing and lightness of movement and gesture.

The storytelling is marvellously clear (& scrapping Autolycus makes for a sharper and more fairy-tale-like plot, which works better in ballet).  The homoerotic quality of Leontes' and Polixenes' love for one another is pointed up gently but not over-emphasised - so that one can see Leontes' rage and jealousy are as much over his friend - and first love - as over his wife and second love - but it wasn't egged to the point (which I've seen done on stage) of implying he's never really cared about Hermione in the first place and has only  made a marriage of convenience for the sake of getting an heir.  I loved the way it's shown that, his madness once over, Leontes is practically a broken man; dependent on Paulina, almost helpless at her behest and physically literally in her hands.  The parallels between Leontes' jealousy in the first half and Polixenes rage in the second were brought out perfectly, too.  It's that sort of thing that storytelling through physical language can sometimes do almost better than words.

But ooh, I'm on dangerous territory there; inferring that Shakespeare's words could be bettered if removed is hardly a good line to take!  I can see that argument taking me swiftly off the edge of a precipice if I try to follow it.

I guess it just shows yet again the infinite variability and flexibility of the stories and characters he gave us, though, that they can be retold and reborn even without the text itself, and still come absolutely true...

All the cast are pitch-perfect (though the programme note that says something like "Leontes remarks on Florizels ressemblance to Polixenes" had us all giggling naughtily - ah yes, the ginger tom takes one look at his dark-haired friend's extremely ginger son and that's what he thinks?).  The six principals were all excellent as were rest of the cast, right down the batting order.  In particular Edward Watson's Leontes was terrifying in his insanity, bending and writhing like a sea-creature or a giant multi-jointed invertebrate; and then tragic in his grief, weak and broken in spirit in the aftermath.

I'm always happy to see Gary Avis given a decent role, and as Perdita's adoptive father he gets to be both a solid dancer, leading off folk dances and proving he can still partner most of the fellows off the map, and also a gentle and truthful actor.  Valentino Zucchetti was a stunning Clown; please, someone, anyone, give this chap more to do, and stretch him, let him get his teeth into more and more.  He has an astonishingly elastic jump, tremendous footwork, and a frisky, charming, insouciant stage presence.  I can't wait for the day they give him Lescaut to do...

The whole Bohemia scene is simply lovely; where everything in Sicilia was trammelled and tight, and love could only be expressed with small gestures and taking care not to overstep the marks of good manners, suddenly here we get the happy innocent tenderness of young love, the affectionate sibling joshing between Perdita and Clown, the solid loving paternal strength of the father shepherd and all the cheerful flirting and falling-for and delighting of the festival crowd.  Every gesture is suddenly wide-open and free, the lifts are big, the footwork bounding and stomping and joyously natural. 

And it looks tremendous, too.  The designs are gorgeous; clean plain colours, plus sober black, grey and white, in Sicilia, and rich tapestried patterns everywhere in Bohemia, where hems are embroidered or fringed, fabrics brocaded, cushions painted and everything imaginable decorated.

Joby Talbot's score is further evidence that he's become the ballet composer who should be at the top of every list today.  It's less gallumphing than his "Alice" score, richer and subtler and more shimmering; it reminded me of Prokofiev's "Cinderella" and Henze's "Ondine", and one really can't give much higher praise than that.

Problems?  The animatronic baby is bl**dy creepy (one almost couldn't blame Leontes for being freaked out by it) and the bear pursuing Ben Gartside's kind-hearted Antigonus is a bit odd; not as theatrically effective as I'd hoped Covent Garden, with the resources at its disposal, could rustle up.  Darcy Bussell, presenting from backstage (I love backstage stuff!) was wearing a garment with a collar apparently studded with jelly-tots; very distracting...  But that's about all I can find to nitpick over.  The final scenes had me in tears.  The lovers' plea to Leontes; his humbling himself to help them and his reconcilliation with Polixenes; the little touch of the father shepherd being greeted honourably by the kings... Paulina's recognition scene was simple and perfect (my goodness can Zenaida Yanowsky act when she's given the chance) and then Hermione's restoration and duet with Leontes, and the reunion with her daughter, were sad and painful and noble; emotional truth at its clearest.   

Fab-u-lous. 

And now I must go to bed, and be ready for another little wrestle with my new database and ticketing system tomorrow.  I want to learn to drive this thing properly.  I will not be defeated by my tools.

Immies for last year

I realise with embarrassment that I never got round to doing my personal arts awards for last year.  Oops.  Not as though anyone is likely to have been waiting for them, but still!  It's the awards time of year, and here are mine.  I can't give you a parade of evening-dressed stars shivering in the rain, but that's probably just as well, for them if not for me.

So: here are the winners of the Immies for 2012.

Performances of the year:

Concert: Britten “War Requiem”; Philharmonia Orchestra under Lorin Maazel, in the Festival Hall back in March.  I don’t always like Maazel’s conducting, he often strikes me as terribly cool and measured, but with the War Requiem to play with, and my favourite orchestra and chorus, and a top-notch trio of soloists, he really got fired up and let rip, and the result was a truly fabulous performance.  Especial honours to brilliant Mark Padmore (still having trouble believing this chap was at school with my brother Steve), the heart-rending tenor soloist.  

Operas:  “Der Rosenkavalier”, ENO at the Coliseum.  “Peter Grimes”, ENO at the Proms.  Impossible to slip a sheet of paper between these two for quality of performance; conducting, playing and cast were all first class.  It was fascinating to see how the ENO “Peter Grimes” actually got even better when done as a concert performance rather than a fully-staged production – a real indicator of the strength of the performances and the commitment of all concerned.

Stage play: Nick Payne “Constellations” at the Duke of York’s Theatre.  An extraordinary piece of work; funny, moving and deeply thought-provoking – and a tour de force for the cast.

Exhibition: David Hockney at the Royal Academy.  Marvellous, inspirational stuff.

Dance: The Royal Ballet revivals of Ashton’s “The Dream” and “A Month in the Country” and Wayne McGregor’s “Infra”.  Such a total contrast that I cannot pick between them.

Performers of the year:

Opera: Stuart Skelton in the ENO “Peter Grimes” prom, see above; Otto Maidi in the Cape Town Opera production of “Porgy and Bess”.

Stage: Rafe Spall in “Constellations” – an object lesson in how to make a thoroughly ordinary guy into a credible romantic hero.

Dance: Zenaida Yanowsky in “A Month in the Country”.  Luxuriously gorgeous in her abandonment, in duets with first Gary Avis and then Rupert Pennefather, and heart-breaking in her final moments of desolation.  She was also a superb Odette/Odile in “Swan Lake” in the autumn; no mere princess here but a true Swan Queen, regal, mythic and tragic.

Nutcracker, Firebird, Hobbit, laptop...

Here's something really cool to start with

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20918398

Excellent idea.  Now all I need is for someone to do the same thing for SF writers!!

Work is getting busier, which is no bad thing.  On the good side, Great-British-winter-wise, once or twice lately we have had some watery wintry sunshine.  On the bad side, we’ve also had snow – and not nice crisp snow that settles and makes kids happy, but the sloppy wet kind that doesn’t settle but gets everywhere, and still makes going out miserable.  

 January is probably my least-favourite month – there simply isn’t enough daylight.  At least here, with all of Kew Gardens to mooch in during my lunch break, I can smell the sweet scents of winter-flowering plants, and watch for snowdrops and the rose-pink buds of limes and maples, to remind me of spring.

What have I been up to?  Writing, quelle blague; what a surprise.  I’m relieving the work of typing up and revising “Gold Hawk” by also indulging myself with a little fanfiction on the side.  It does feel a bit like having something on the side, too; a really sinful indulgence, like a box of good posh chocs (think Booja Booja quality) or a bottle of 20-year-old Laphroaig.  Or a fling, obviously (only I get all screwed up over those, whereas with chocolate or liquor, or fanfic, I can relax and enjoy myself).  Not sure what I’ll do with it, beyond using it for relaxation purposes (ooh, now that does sound dirty!), but it’s giving me some much-needed light relief in this dark month.   

I gather that some people consider writing fanfic to be a dreadful and unforgiveable sin.  Obviously I’d be a stinking hypocrite if I pretended to agree with them!  I guess in their book I’m hell-bound and that’s all there is to it. 

From what I’ve read (not very much, I should add) some of it is drivel and some of it is porn, or at least porny.  But plenty of mainstream legitimate fiction is drivel and/or porny.  Surely anything that gets us consumers to wake up and doing something creative, instead of just sitting on our backsides all day consuming, can’t be all bad?  Whether it’s taking a camera out to photograph the texture of leaves, or taking a sketchbook when you go on holiday, or keeping a journal, or singing in a choir, or going outdoors to reconnect with nature and discover some natural history, or writing a short story about your favourite fictional characters, just for fun; it’s creative, it’s self-expression, and it’s engaging with the world and responding to it instead of simply being spoon-fed the mental equivalent of junk food.  It’s co-creating, in a small way; and that, if you’ll forgive my going all religious on you for a sec, is blessed; it’s lending a hand in the Goddess’ work.

However, to come back from these heights to my present reality; the big problem at the moment with my writing, of all kinds (serious, frivolous and even perhaps drivel) is that my laptop is sick, and getting steadily sicker.  It now gets conniptions every time I try to save what I’m writing onto disk.  Since it’s far too old for me to be able to save onto a USB stick (they may not even have existed when it was manufactured – at any rate it lacks the necessary scart/port/whatever), floppies are my only option if I want something saved in a portable format.  And I can only get my work onto ICW, or into a friend’s mailbox, if I can get it off the machine in the first place.  Lately, I can have been peacefully typing all evening, and then the laptop will suddenly turn up its toes and refuse to do anything more.  Instead, I get a frozen screen, and it refuses to switch off, either, and sits buzzing for hours until it runs its battery right down.  By this point it has generally kept me awake for several hours, which is not good.  I feel about ninety this morning, after having this happen again last night.

Around the edges of a lot of typing, I’m having a busy old time of it culturally-speaking; a good dose of high culture, and a healthy fillip of somewhat-lower-culture.   A Nutcracker, a triple bill and a Hobbit, to be precise.

I love the Royal ballet’s “Nutcracker”; it is very, very traditional, with snowflakes and glittery costumes and wicked mice and a gorgeous transformation scene.  I’ve seen it about six times, so this trip was a complete indulgence.  Mainly I went to see Akane Takada in action as the Sugar Plum Fairy.  She’s one of their up-and-comings, just starting to get some bigger roles.  It’s one of the joys of going to see a particular ballet company regularly; getting to spot young talent and see them progress rapidly (or, frustratingly, not so rapidly) up the ranks and into the larger parts.   She wasn’t a flawless Sugar Plum, but rather a lovely one nonetheless; she doesn’t over-extend, which loks right to me in this kind of pure classical stuff; she has a delicious finish, right down to her fingertips, and that trick of coming down off pointe very smoothly (which probably has a technical name) so that every balance seems to flow into the next move without the tiniest transition.  She also looks like a Japanese Googie Withers, which can’t hurt. 

The triple bill was “The Firebird”, “In the Night”, and “Raymonda Act 3”.  Two utter marvels, and a dollop of glittery idiocy and Mittel-european flouncing in character shoes.   

Mara Galeazzi’s Firebird was extraordinary.  She is a dancer who is immensely good at conveying powerful human emotions, but here she genuinely seemed to be touching the non-human – instinctive, reactive, self-preserving, utterly wild – so that the creature’s reappearance to honour her pledge with Ivan Tsarevich became not just the working-out of the plot, but a moment of real awe and power.  This is what fairy tales do, when you’re a child and the stories are new; hit you in the eyes with their archetypal potency.  It’s good to see it can still happen, and raise the hairs on the back of my neck.  It’s also a joy to see Ms Galeazzi back in action again, let alone in such blazing (almost literally!) good form.  

The Jerome Robbins was utterly wonderful, too.   Why don’t they do a Robbins triple bill?  “In the Night”, “Afternoon of a Faun” and “Dances at a Gathering” are all in the RB rep now; and wouldn’t that be a simply dreamy evening?  I suppose they fear that it wouldn’t put bums on seats.  It would get my bum there; but that’s only one bum on one seat (or technically two if I went twice, which is always a temptation with mixed bills as there’s usually more than one cast).   “In the Night”, anyway, has grace and charm and delicacy and romance and humour, and an indefinable overarching quality of mystery; it is far more than the sum of its parts, as all the best short works are.  I saw Emma Maguire and Alexander Campbell as Couple One, luxurious Zenaida Yanowsky and big Mr Kish as Couple Two, and Roberta Marquez and the great Carlos Acosta as Couple Three.   Gorgeous casting in a gorgeous, haunting ballet.

“Raymonda” does nothing profound for me, but it was great fun, and looked gorgeous, and everyone was dancing their socks off.  ‘Nuff said.

“The Hobbit; An Unexpected Journey” is a muddle.  I wish it weren’t.  I loved Peter Jackson’s three “Lord of the Rings” movies, although they aren’t perfect (the bits that grate with me, the unnecessary tweaking of the plot in particular, grate more each time I see them).  This looks just as good and for a change some of the tweaks actually work better.  If one is going to present the story of “The Hobbit” as part of the same canon, and not as a lighter, more child-orientated work (which the book certainly is), then one has got to stress the seriousness of what is going on, and set it firmly in the same continuum.  I can accept that; much of it has been lifted and shoe-horned in from the appendices of the “Lord of the Rings”, and I think from the “Silmarillion” too; and I think in the main it’s fairly well done.

 But there are also some completely extraneous additions; notably a prolonged battle in the Orc halls that looks as if it was lifted wholesale from a computer game.  And all the way through, one is aware that here, things could be taken with leisure, spreading the story over three films when it fills one pretty short book.  Compared to the taut, compact story-telling in the three LOTR films, this looks relaxed to a startling degree.  The dwarves get to do both their musical numbers, for goodness’ sakes.  I didn’t really need either.

But what works, really works.  The “Riddles in the Dark” section is like something from a different movie altogether, tight and powerful and genuinely scary.  The designs are glorious (though I’ve always felt the Peter Jackson Shire looked too untamed – it has the appearance of a landscape that was first settled and farmed perhaps two or three generations ago at most, not countless centuries.  It should look like rural Kent or Devon).   Little things like the moon-runes and the sword Sting glowing are spot-on.  Above all, the cast is excellent, and I honestly don’t think that if they had instigated a world-wide hunt for Bilbo Baggins, à la “the search for Scarlett O’Hara”, they could have found a more perfect lead than Martin Freeman.  He is simply wonderful.

Well, anyway; I’ve been writing this in my lunch breaks since the end of last week, so now I am finally going to post it, and then try to keep a bit more up-to-date.  But here’s to more cultural fun, both high and low, for the rest of this year.  And here’s to the blinking laptop behaving itself tonight.  Please?

What I reallyreally want...

I'm not very likely to get everything I really want, so I ought (by the standards I was brought up on) to be saying "Well, that won't happen so I'll settle for this instead...". 

Instead I am going to remind myself that it was on February 26th, 2003 that I said to an old friend over lunch "Well, I'm never going to meet anyone as interesting as my Favourite Baritone..." - and then walked into my Favourite Baritone outside the Post Office, the very next day. 

I look back on this weird event, as its tenth anniversary approaches, and I think that if the Almighty had wanted to give me a good kick up the a**e S/He couldn't have picked a better way to do it. 

That one (very brief) encounter in the street remains one of the biggest shocks I've ever had in my life.  Favourite Baritone had no reason whatever, at least none that I have ever discovered, for being there, on that particular day, in that particular place.  It was nowhere near where he lives.  And he stopped walking down the road right next to me.  I only looked up because I thought the pair of feet that had stopped so apparently deliberately right beside me must belong to someone I knew. 

It taught me, more effectively than any amount of preaching and teaching and pep-talking could ever have done, that anything that is within the laws of physics can happen; anything, however improbable. 

Favourite Baritone has gone on to have a pretty good ten years - lots of career success (well deserved), plus getting married and becoming a dad.  His missus has had quite a good patch too; getting married and becoming a mum, obviously, plus continuing her own rather fabulous career as a Principal of the Royal Ballet to some pretty wonderful effect.  Talk about a Golden Couple!  More power and happiness to them in 2013...

And I have gone on to have an eventful decade; a lot of which would not have happened without my having had that bizarre lesson in the Nature of the Possible.  My dad would probably still have passed away and I expect that Baby Bro would still have got his degree.  I imagine that national and international events would still have been much the same, too.  But I'm fairly sure that I would never have moved to London, found a job that paid me enough to live on, or started writing again, if I hadn't had that encounter.  So my thanks to FB, for being on that street corner, that fateful day, and kick-starting all that for me.  I owe you, mate!

May 2013, then, be a year in which more interesting things happen, in celebration and recollection of that first, startling realisation - that almost anything can happen, and therefore some good things may...

And in the name of optimism, I am going to ask for at least one of the following:
To get my writing properly published - and widely read;
To write lots more;
To meet interesting people and make new friends;
To get my own place to live and finally get out of living in shared flats and other bizarre digs;
To be healthy and for all my family and friends to be healthy too;
Love;
Joy;
Happiness;
And a hunk of my very own. Preferably an intelligent, creative one who can do DIY and likes my cooking.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Notebooks, rock and ballet, "Jesse James" and scones...

This has been a busy week.  I went to work, and to a meeting at Hampton Court Palace.  I gave out leaflets in the rain at Kew The Music (and am due to do the same on Sunday).  I went to the latest Royal Ballet triple bill.  I watched a beautifully-made and acted, but terribly depressing, movie.  I featured in a photo shoot as one of a pair of "ladies enjoying afternoon tea at Kew".  And, of course, I wrote.

I've finished the first notebook and started a second.  I've discovered that hard-boarded A5 spiral bound notebooks are the perfect thing for me to write in at the moment.  They are portable, and somehow less intimidating, than A4 foolscap notepaper, which is what the whole of "Gabriel Yeats" and "Ramundi's Sisters" were both written on.  A4 paper is good if you have space, and are very relaxed; e.g. flopping on a lawn with a large cold drink to hand.  But writing in snatches on the tube or on a bench at work, as I am doing this time, somehow a smaller notebook feels more comfortable.  This size takes about 16,000 words to fill, so I even know roughly how much I've written. 

It's going so fast that I know it's going to be a bit rough-and ready, and probably full of inconsistencies.  There will be time enough to revise, later.  A few pages back, one of the characters surprised me by announcing very firmly "We don't use that word", of a term I had myself been using blithely up till then.  It is a very odd sensation, when the characters in a fiction begin to have minds of their own.  But it's a strong sign.  Anna and Thorn and Carlton are coming clearer all the time; one of the cruxes of the story, which was fuzzy until last night, has clicked; and I have a title at last.

I am writing with rock, interestingly.  "GY" was written with Brahms and Mozart.  This story is coming with the sounds of The Icicle Works, Bill Nelson, The Waterboys, Vieux Farka Touré and U2.  It has drive, and they drive me.

The ballet was a mixed bag.  The bill opened with "Birthday offering", which is a sparkling piece of solid frou-frou, in costumes that look like off-cuts from the Quangle-Wangle's Hat.  It's a steady stream of show-off turns, for seven ballerinas and their cavaliers, and it was very nice, but to be frank a bit empty.  Tamara Rojo was stunning as usual, though I hope she has something more worthy of her dramatic powers to do in the programme of new work that ends the season.  I should be sorry if this lovely, frilly bit of bling were the last time I ever saw her dance. 

The last piece in the bill was "Les Noces", which I know I ought to admire; modernist masterpiece, unique historical artifact, etc etc.  But, I'm sorry, I don't really like it that much.  Call me weak-minded, but I wasn't grabbed.

The middle piece on the bill, though, was another of Ashton's mini-masterpieces; "A Month in the Country".  Worth everything for this.  WOW.  Zenaida Yanowsky, Favourite Baritone's Ballerina Missus, was stunningly good as Natalia Petrovna.  She is a luxurious dancer whose height makes her grace yet more gorgeous; there is a sense of effortless scale to her every movement; and she is a powerful actress.  At the very end, as she loses her lover, and faces the realisation of what her future will be, the simplicity and truth of her gradually shrinking movements, her stillness after that brief, brief hour of rapture, were simply heartbreaking.  Needless to say I cried.

What more?  The movie: "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".  Looks fabulous, is very well-acted, desperately sad and very, VERY slow.

On the plus side, it's the first time I have ever begun to understand why Brad Pitt became a star; in a role seemingly meant to be semi-sleepwalked through, he is actually rather good.  Casey Affleck, who I knew of only by name, does extraordinarily well at the difficult task of playing someone who is stupid and pathetically lacking in self-awareness, without turning the role into a caricature.

The rest of the cast are also excellent.  My current hero does what I guess may be his regular thing of quietly burning a hole on the edge of the screen while others are busy delivering their dialogue, centre stage.  It's a pity that his character gets killed halfway through, though; especially as he plays the only person with something like a shred of a moral compass left (if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor).  I like to be able to sympathise with someone in a film..  Pretty hard when the only sympathetic character is lying butt-naked and dead in a snow-filled ditch.  I do hope it wasn't real snow, incidentally.  There are some sacrifices no-one should have to make for their art.

This afternoon I found myself modelling again, for the first time in over seven years.  Not for a life class, but for a photo shoot.  If all goes well I am now going to appear enjoying my afternoon tea in a piece of Kew literature.  It took ages and I discovered just how unappetising cold, milky Earl Grey smells, having to wave a cup of it in front of my nose for over an hour.  I prefer my tea hot and without milk, and I loathe Earl Grey.  But I did get to eat two very fresh scones with raspberry jam and Cornish clotted cream.  Any Friday that ends with a belly full of fresh scones can't be all bad!  And the pictures have come out well.

Weekend time, now.  Writing time.  And washing machine time, and grocery-shopping time, and all the rest.  But writing time, I think, first and foremost.  It has me by the ears and will not let go.

Friday evening

Whoof, Friday already, thank goodness…

I’m on a list of volunteers for a clinical trial at the moment and am drinking a pot of sickly-sweet orange-flavouring-flavoured liquid each morning before breakfast – it’s a new health drink, supposedly intended to reduce hunger pangs and cravings between meals. Which it does, for me, by dint of giving me vile indigestion. I’m having trouble stomaching food at all, I feel so dreadful; I’m blown up with gas, am unable to help periodically belching like a marine, and am permanently uncomfortable with heartburn. If I’m in the control group, gods help me…

But I get two days off at the weekend. Thank goodness.

Let’s talk about something else.

Last night I was at the Royal Ballet; a triple bill, and a mixed bag. I’m a big fan of Zenaida Yanowsky, and “Seven Deadly Sins” was made on her; she’s just come back to work after a few months off, post-baby, and I was glad to see her in action again, but frankly I’m not that impressed with the ballet. It looked an awful lot to me like one deadly sin (guess which) in seven semi-differentiated forms. A very good cast, but basically uninvolving, and less-than-inspired choreography with far too many splayed legs.

The second piece was Mats Ek’s “Carmen” which was weird. Effective, but weird. A completely, deeply bizarre piece of work, a very peculiar set, thoroughly strange costumes, and very in-your-face, I-have-to-be-different choreography; but, in the end, powerful and convincing. Tamara Rojo was born to play Carmen, Lauren Cuthbertson was severe, snakily sinuous and creepy in the Micaëla role, and the blokes were all good. Oddly enough, though, the highlight of the piece was a terrific solo for a woman mourning the officer murdered by José, danced with riveting passion by a young lass called (I think) Melissa Hamilton.

Finally, and fabulously, Christopher Wheeldon’s “DGV - Dance à Grande Vitesse”. This was a real wow, a knockout, glorious piece of beautiful, exciting, almost totally non-narrative dancing, with a dazzling score by Michael Nyman. The corps were on the top of their game, and the octet of soloists I saw was to die for. Eric Underwood and Sergei Polunin are two bright young up-and-comings with great futures ahead of them. Leanne Benjamin was as wonderful as ever; Edward Watson was athletic and intense as usual and a joy to watch. Mara Galeazzi and Lauren Cuthbertson were also both excellent. For me the cream of the crop was young Ms Hamilton again, breathtakingly good in a big rôle full of twisting stretches and difficult balances, originally made for Darcey Bussell, and the marvellous Gary Avis partnering her with his usual excellent and attentive care. I’ve never understood why he isn’t a huge star; he’s tall and powerful but possessed of tremendous natural grace, has both strength and tenderness as a partner, can act, and is, in a quirky sort of way, very good looking, with strong facial bones and large eyes, and a sudden broad smile full of delight – a smile which came out rather a lot last night. This particular duet he and Melissa Hamilton danced was simply gorgeous. “DGV” lifted the evening from hit-and-miss to solid hit, and Mr Avis and Ms Hamilton lifted “DGV” from hit into absolute stunner.