Bad Day, Good Day

 So, Saturday was supposed to be such a good day. We were going up to Edinburgh, meeting an old friend in the early afternoon for a cup of tea and a bun, followed by an early evening meal with a recently retired friend and then we were going to the Festival Theatre to see Scottish Ballet's new ballet Mary Queen of Scots. 

The first thing to go wrong was that, when I rang to confirm arrangements for the tea and bun scenario on Thursday I discovered the friend and all his family were confined to bed with a terrible cold for the foreseeable future so he couldn't make it. Oh well we thought, that's OK, just means we can take  a later train into Edinburgh. 

Next up was a message on Saturday morning from the recently retired friend who was also bedridden with a lurgy and wouldn't be able to make it either. She said we could cancel the table she had booked for the meal or go regardless, she left it up to us. We considered cancelling, but then decided we'd quite benefit from a nice Italian meal, given the continuing stress around the flat so we decided to go. 

On the train into Edinburgh the OH checked the train times home. He had been convinced that on Saturdays, unlike Sundays, trains in the eveing were once an hour to Stirling, but his conviction had been misplaced. We then checked the running time of the ballet, whihc I was convinced was about 1 hour 20 and my conviction was also misplaced, as it was actually 2 hours 10 ( or 2 hours 20 depending on which Google answer you believed) This meant that we would miss the train just after ten, giving us a wait of 40/50 minutes for the Last Train Home just after 11, getting to Stirling at about midnight and home about half an hour after that. By the time we'd worked that out, I was not a happy bunny. 

Still we turned up at the restaurant ready to relax and enjoy an unhurried meal. We explained about our friend not being able to make it and the man checking us in said 'You should have phoned to tell us. Now there is a big problem rearranging tables'. He accompanied this with an exasperated sigh. 

Now my tolerance level for men speaking to me as though I am an idiot and a trouble maker had been well breached earlier in the week by a surveyor who treated me as though I were a cretin, and when I tied to insist he stop telling me something I had understood even before he told me it the first time, let alone after his third repetition and actually answered the question I was asking, had told me to 'stop shouting'. I wasn't shouting but I have noticed occasionally with other people that hurling an accusation of shouting  seems to be a new tactic for getting someone to shut up. Presumably they then back off lest they be thought rude. I suspect this is a tactic that only works in Britain. Anyway, I'd had enough of stroppy men for a week,  so I asked the maitre d', which is presumably how he saw himself, if he would prefer that we go somewhere else instead?  Quite why it should be such a major problem since it involved nothing more than possibly taking away a chair from  a table or even just having us sit at a table with an  empty chair I don't know. Note also the 'now there is a problem ...' which didn't straight out accuse us of being the problem but certainly wasn't accepting that it was his problem and nothing to do with us. I bet people are forever booking tables and then not turning up and we certainly hadn't done that! Although by then I was wishing we'd cancelled it. 

This did nothing at all to lighten my mood and since we were annoyed we skipped the bruschetta we'd been planning to have, and confined ourselves to one soft drink apiece with what we did eat.  I will say that the food was very nice and the waiting staff friendly and efficient, and had it not been for the attitude of the man with the table plan I'd be planning to go again. However he did have an attitude and we won't be going again even if it  is Italian and less than a minute's walk from the Festival Theatre. 

We didn't have coffee there but had that in the theatre bar instead. 

I have to give you that photo because it's the only one I have of the day.  Taking photos of the ballet was forbidden as usual. I think I could probably have taken one at the curtain call had we been there but we weren't. We didn't enjoy Act 1 so we left  in the interval. That at least meant we got the just after 9 train and were home just before half ten. Had we loved the ballet we would have bitten the bullet and stayed but it certainly wasn't worth, to us, the extra time and hanging about that staying until the end would have meant. 

I loved Mary's first act costume and I loved the music. The dancers were all excellent.  However there were too many gimmicks and for those of my readers who remember it, there was a lot of 'Pingu' movement. It was also very longwinded and repetitive in places. So repetitive indeed that the OH dropped off several times. Also given that this was a national Scottish company, who commissioned a ballet about a Scottish icon ( I know, it's weird that MQ0S IS an icon and I wouldn't accord her iconic status myself but there you go) I found it offensive that the ballet opened with the English Queen Elizabeth and that she was given equal prominence with Mary - certainly in Act 1 and as far as I could see from the synopsis in Act 2 as well. This wouldn't have mattered if the ballet had been called Mary and Elizabeth, or even, Elizabeth and Mary but it wasn't. It was called  Mary Queen of Scots and to build it around the concept that Mary was defined only in opposition to the ultimately ' winning' Elizabeth ( itself an historic construction of arguable validity) is the biggest act of cultural cringe I've seen in a   Scottish institution for - well not as long as I'd like, but certainly several years. 

So Saturday was a day to forget. Sunday we were promised rain all day which is what we go and I did some ironing, finished a jigsaw puzzle, read a book and did some sewing. It was much more enjoyable than Saturday was. 

Here's the puzzle 

It is on loan from my sister and she's coming to stay early in November so I wanted it done ( this was my second attempt) before then, so that she could take it home with her. It is very much a sign of my disturbed equilibrium last week that I was doing a jigsaw puzzle at all. I'm hoping I won't need to resort to another one any time soon.