La Traviata in Glasgow

So we'd originally built our trip around the first night of Scottish Opera's Traviata which dovetailed nicely with the latest group get together of my Dorothy Dunnett friends in Leeds.Things like the supervisory meeting and the exhibition at the National Museum were really just happenstance. The opera, rather than the play, was the thing. 

I say first night, and it was but it was the first night of a revival which is not quite the same thing as the first night of a new production, but why split hairs? They hadn't done it for a while and we hadn't seen any production of it  for years, so it was all very fresh and we were really looking forward to it. We took son no. 2 and it was his first 'proper' opera, his previous two experiences not really counting. The first because he was 'in vitro' at the time - and believe me walking up to the gods at Covent Garden when 5 months pregnant is not something I'd really recommend, but it was a Janacek opera and it was Tom Allen singing a major role, so worth it. The second was very recent when he went, at his father's suggestion, to see the dementia friendly Boheme which Scottish Opera did in Edinburgh.I'm not quite sure why the OH thought that was a good idea, maybe because it was short? He'd enjoyed that but said  it would have been better if it had been the full story, so we took him with us to see Traviata. As introductions to opera go, Boheme and Traviata make a good pair I think. 

I have hugely fond memories of Traviata because it was only the second opera I ever saw and it was at the Bolshoi, many many years ago. I loved it, although not quite as much as I had loved the Eugene Onegin I'd seen only a few days previously, and my love affair with opera started there, in an otherwise horrible 5 week period of study in Moscow. For many year I used to say being introduced to opera was the only good thing that came out of that trip, and even today I think that's probably true.  But I digress ....

I wasn't sure how son no 2 would get on with it to be honest but he loved it, despite sharing his father's distaste for sad endings. As I said to him, if you want to go to the opera sad endings just have to be sucked up. 

And we had a fabulous time too. Like I say it was a long time since we'd seen it so it was almost like seeing it for the first time and as we're now a lot older perhaps the tragedy of it gets to us more than when we were younger. It was not a faultless performance, although all the singers did well once they had warmed up. And I was rather taken aback to be confronted at the beginning of Act 2 with an Alfredo wearing nothing but underwear. Not something I'd encountered before. But it is very much a piece which will sweep you away if you let it, and this time I was inclined to let it and so I enjoyed it very very much. 

By an amazing coincidence, Scottish Opera are also doing Eugene Onegin this season too! but not until late next spring so I must conserve my soul in patience for that one. Meanwhile we may go south for a new opera called Flight, which is set in an airport, in the new year. Or we may not. Travelling in winter from Orkney is notoriously chancy, but who knows? we may give it a go.  

The Salad and the Wood.

So last Wednesday I had a meeting with my supervisor which went as well as it ever does which is to say it went fairly badly. He reiterated that he 'doesn't have the time' to do it, in which case I do rather wonder why we've been putting one another through what is presumably a mutual hell for the last four and a half years.but there you go. And that was probably the kindest bit too.

To cheer myself up I had arranged to have lunch with my friend A. She had suggested meeting at Soonny and Vito's and I had provided myself with a Google map of the route from Universty Gardens to S & V's. Apparently a 15 minute walk. I walked for a lot longer than 15 minutes and wound up on the Great Western Road which was nowhere near where I wnted to be. It didn't help that it was pouring with rain so that my map became more and more of a sodden little mess the longer time went on. And not only did I miss my turning on the way there, once I had got myself back onto the right road I walked right past the place because I was looking for it on the wrong side of the road. Me and the sense of direction, we have a really special relationship. An especially bad one as it happens. 

Anyway I was only 15 minutes late, which is really bad, but it could have been muc much worse,  and A said she hadn't been there long herself so it wasn't too dreadful and we settled down to look at the menu. I had soup and a sandwich and A ordered a goats cheese tartlet with salad. The soup and the andwich were great. Halfway through her salad A found a lump of wood on her plate. 

Now this is not ideal, and I'd like to think that any self respecting catering establishment would be horrified to realise they are serving up bits of tree with their green leaves, but it has to be said that the response from the waitress at  S & V's left quite a lot to be desired. When A poited out the strange interloper on her plate and said she wasn't sure what it was, the waitress declared herself equally baffled and seemed more than ready to leave it at that. When A pressed the point with  the comment that she was a bit concerned to find it on her plate the waitress offered to gert rid of it for her. Which she did by taking the plate, taking the piece of wood off it, and giving A the plate back. I honestly could not believe wat I was seeing. A again pointed out that  she was reluctant to eat the rest of her food without at least knowing what the wood was and from whence it came, to which the reply was  'Well I don't know. I don't work in the kitchen I'm just a waitress'.

At this point I suggested, possibly with just the slightest degree of edge in my voice, that she might like to go and ask someone who did work in the kitchen, a notion which seemed to strike her as completely off the wall, but to be fair she did and came back with  he message that 'chef didn't know where it had come from either, he thought it might have been in the order from the supplier who sends the leaves'. She added that if A liked she could choose something else from the menu and she wouldn't be charged for the salad. 

(Thinks: what sort of 'chef' chucks salad leaves onto a plate with such carelessness that he fails to notice the presence of a block of wood about half the size of a thumb?)

It will come as no surprise I'm sure to hear that we departed without dessert, lovely thought their cakes looked,  and walked through the rain, but along the river, to the Yarn Cake where there are no stray pieces of timber in the cake and there is the added advantage of being surrounded by beautiful yarn which you can purchase should the fancy take you. The fancy certainly took me and I bought two skeins of yarn, one of which is for a Christmas present for someone else so doesn't count. I was also given, by pre-arrangement,  3 skeins of wonderful yarn by A which she no longer wanted to keep, and which is for a specific project I had planned to start in March. As things have fallen out I could start it much earlier than that, but more of this another time. 

That was a good week ....part 1

So there I was back in the Central Belt last week, with a side trip to Leeds at the weekend. And a good time was had, with one foreseeable and unpleasant exception. But there you go, as Austen said 'let other pens dwell on guilt and misery'.

We hadn't been planning on being away for a week but the OH won tickets to the Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites exhibition which was on at the National Museum and so we needed to find a time to go before it ended. And this seemed to be the only option for us  given that it ends in mid-November and we're not planning any more trips south for the foreseeable future. Well I'm not. 

Incidentally I took no photographs while I was away at all but here's a picture of said Prince and his brother from the exhibition.

                                                  

Taken from Google. You weren't allowed to take photos inside the exhibition anyway.

The competition in which the OH won the tickets was on Facebook, and basically you had to say what you would take on a picnic to make it perfect and in amongst all the 'wine/ glasses/ pate/ gold forks I suppose his (calculated)  answer of 'someone I love' did stand out. The prize was in two parts; there were the tickets and then there was a copy of the catalogue signed, if you can contain your excitement, by the actor who actually plays BPC in the TV series Outlander. Hooray. Or not. I did say we could always try and sell it on e-bay, but that was before I saw it. It's a beautiful book, full of photographs of some of the exhibits together with some historical background and essays on aspects of Jacobite culture. The 'signature' of the actor I cannot decipher, since it seems to comprise some single arcane symbol. Although he has helpfully appended BPC to it. 

I enjoyed the exhibition and I certainly enjoyed the associated pop up shop, but I had the same  problem with it that I have had with exhibitions at the National Museum before. It was Anglo-centric. It took a totally English view of the period and the people in it. Never was the phrase, history is written by the winners, more brilliantly displayed than on occasions like this, when the National Museum of Scotland  simply regurgitates the English view without even noticing (presumably, which is bad) or perhaps not even caring (which is worse). Do not by the way run away with the notion that I am a some sort of romantic Jacobite fan.  I'm not. The Stewarts generally were a pretty poor lot, both as people and as monarchs, although probably not a great deal worse than many of their contemporaries  throughout the ages, but I doubt I'd have been turning out for the Prince had I been around in 1745. I just think that the National Museum might try and be a bit more National as in Scotland rather than National as in England's junior branch, that's all. 

Also on was a much smaller, and free, exhibition of Early Scottish Silver which the OH, a one  time and maybe to be again, maker of silver jewellery was keen to see. And that was interesting too. 

Afterwards we took the opportunity to go and check that the George Campbell Hay stone was still in situ in Makar's Court, where it seemed to be weathering nicely, before meeting up with my friend V and her husband for a lovely Italian meal, which was a good end to an interesting and enjoyable day. Although it rained quite heavily on the way back to the car.  

Next time, the strange tale of the salad and the wood. 

Project 60 in Review

Maybe it's just me, but when I think about the completion of Project 60, what I think about most is the ones that got away. The things I didn't get round to, or didn't have time for, or didn't lose weight so that I could do them. 

These include, in no particular order, making pannacotta and Danish pastries. Learning to weave. Doing a brioche scarf in two colours, finishing a pair of socks from the toe up, learning the technique of double knitting.  Riding a zip wire, abseiling, gorge walking, having a flight in a glider and a ride in a hot air balloon.  Going to Gleneagles, glamping, a holiday on a canal boat, going on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, doing the Sydney Bridge climb.

On the other hand, I did do a shed load of new things. Well, 60. Obvs. And that is something to celebrate. 

Looking back, here are some highlights. And lowlights. 

Highlights

Favourite - a close run thing between the trip on The Ghan, and going to the opera at Drottningholm. Both things I've wanted to do for decades and neither disappointed. Both left me with very happy memories; twilight in southern Sweden and an opera house lit by real candles, late summer in Australia, with helicopter trips and camel rides and amazing landscapes to look at every day, and  a night time outback fire with coffee, hand made chocolates and singing. 

Most proud of - getting the stone placed in Makar's Court for George Campbell Hay. At the time I said I wasn't particularly proud of this, but on reflection I am quite. It took determination, stamina, and several steps out of my comfort zone, including setting up a crowd funder, being interviewed by a journalist, and learning to take responsibility for my own choices and not be disturbed by other people's ideas of how 'things should have been done' A hard lesson, but a useful one. 

Most useful - having my colours 'done'. It was an enjoyable experience,  and it's saved me from making some mistakes when it comes to buying clothes. 

The most surprisingly guilt free - buying that expensive statuette in Dunkeld. Never regretted for a moment a single penny of the cost. Very odd, but pleasing.

Most surprising - discovering how easy it is to make jam.

Lowlights

Most underwhelming - Flying 'upstairs' on a plane. 

Most worrying - making lemon curd and wondering if it would ever set this side of the end of the world. 

Most unpleasant - trying crocodile meat, although the green olive tapenade ran it a close second. 

The positives outweighed the negatives by a country mile and although some of the things I did were very low key and domestic I was very relieved to discover that I could make jam and lemon curd and marmalade and bread and battenburg cake and muffins.

Some of the stuff I wanted to do I couldn't fit in because of time and financial  constraints, since the Ph D took, and still takes, a lot of energy, time, and money. But I'm coming to the end of that now, so the plan is to get some of them done over the next few years. With that in mind I have decided to make an effort to try ten new things every calendar year. I'm not  quite sure what to call that as a project, although I have until January to decide. Other plans to do with baking, reading and craft are also on the cards. I'm very aware that once the thesis has gone in there will be a yawning gap in my life which will need filling.