Planning an Early Night

before my flight out tomorrow, so just dropping by to say Au Revoir and I should be back in early July. 

As far as the Congress paper goes, I got a reply back saying she was 'only the moderator, had no control over anything, and had no idea if it would be possible to stay in the room over our allotted time.' and as far as that last went, obviously no intention of trying to find out either. 

So I told her that there was no way I could reduce my paper any more if they still wanted it to make sense and that obviously somehow I was going to have to find the time to write something else and that, with the limited time available, if I managed that it would be a miracle. 

Several hours later, after I had indeed  managed to write something else, I got another e-mail saying that you have to be flexible in the conference game, that two of the participants had trimmed their papers down to 15 minutes each and she had heard nothing at all from the third who might therefore be a no show on the day. In that event, obviously I could give my whole 20 minute paper as long as I remembered 20 minutes was the Absolute Maximum because the discussion is the whole point of the exercise. To which I replied that I had been flexible, I had written something completely new, it was 14 minutes long and that was what I was bringing to present. 

(I rather meanly, because I can be quite a nasty person, hope that the other person doesn't show. Because then she has 44 minutes of people presenting papers and then is stuck with keeping a discussion going for anther 46 minutes, and honestly - good luck with that one Katie! )

I have to say that this has taken some of the enjoyable edge off the prospect of going but I'm not going to let it get to me. I have got annoyed, I have dealt with it and I have Moved On. I'm determined to have a great few days in Vancouver, followed by an even greater week with my son, his wife and my grandchildren. 

I'm going to play nice and have a ball. 

That noise you hear

is me grinding my teeth.

I have been struggling, on and off, for a week, to get my paper for the Vancouver World Congress down to twenty minutes. I achieved this yesterday, by dint of cutting every unnecessary adverb and adjective and cutting down examples for points I was making, from two to one if lengthy and three to two if short.

About half an hour ago the panel chair e-mailed the panel participants to tell us that we no longer had 20 minutes (although she had confirmed that just last week) but 15.

Somehow I am supposed to find the time to cut my paper by 25%! Like I say, it's bedtime here in the UK and I only just got the message, tomorrow I have appointments and packing and stuff, I fly out at the cack of dawn on Tuesday. Where in all that am I supposed to find the time to reduce my paper to something so truncated it will hardly be worth giving?

I have e-mailed the chair and other three participants expressing my dismay and suggesting that, as it is so late in the day,  we  leave the papers at 20 minutes and sacrifice the first half of the tea break for questions/discussions.

We'll see what transpires. I am not hopeful, and I am very very very cross.

La Boheme in Inverness

A few years ago I would never have volunteered to go to Inverness for anything, let alone an art form as prone to accidents as opera, because Inverness and I have History, much of it bad. I never knew what I did to Inverness but whatever it was I doubt it was as awful as the punishment the place meted out to me in return.

However of late there has been a rapprochement, probably to do with not being able to avoid it if you're a student at UHI, so I had no qualms about setting off at the crack of dawn - again - for the city on Tuesday.

And it was all fine; no delays, calm sea, I even managed to buy some clothes for the upcoming trip to Vancouver and Toronto, although Marks and Spencer let me down badly over the matter of a posh black skirt or evening trousers in my size. The conference (or World Congress as we should probably call it, that being its official title) naturally has a banquet, as all these things do, and this seemed to call for something a bit more celebratory than the brother in law funeral top, but not quite as dressy as the Duchess of Gloucester reception dress. Not that I recognised the DoG at the do, since I would not, nay, self evidently  do not, know her from Eve, but the invitation had a dress code which was why I didn't turn up to that in funeral top and trousers. ) I did get a nice top to wear to the banquet though and have mail ordered a back skirt to go with it. Hopefully it will arrive before Monday when I put the finishing touches to my packing. 

We had been offered a private look around the set before the performance began so we turned up at six and were shown around by the Man in Charge of Stage Management. The USP of this production is its extremely detailed set and we were really pleased to get up close and personal with it and see how much care had gone into making the props and so on. I didn't take nearly as many photographs as I should have done, because I was too busy listening to what I was being told but I've got a couple. 

The auditorium, seen from the stage

and a lovely Art Deco chair

my photo doesn't do it justice but it was very covetable. Also on view there is Musetta's pet leopard, naked in that photo but when it made an entrance it had a costume! - a diamanté studded collar and white leather leash. 

My favourite prop (apart from the donkey which we had part sponsored) was a plate form the Café Momus in Act 2, which had a half eaten crepe suzette on it, simply because of the thought that had gone into that. Two empty dessert plates from whoever who had enjoyed their dessert, plus a half eaten one, either because the diner was too full to finish it, or it just wasn't very good. 

As far as the production goes it was swings and roundabouts for me. Yes I can see that it's a clever idea to base  everyone in the chorus in Act 2 on a real person who was living in Paris at the time the production was set (1920s) but actually is it really a good idea? Because unless the audience has a working knowledge of jazz age Paris then most of that is going straight over their heads. The Musetta was based on Josephine Baker, that was too obvious to miss, and I saw Gertrude Stein, but after that? In any case I got distracted because right at the beginning of the act a woman pushed someone in a wheelchair upstage and , as she was wearing the most wonderful maroon coat and hat, I spent a lot  of the rest of the act trying to glimpse her again. 

The roundabout, as opposed to the swing, was the basic idea of the production, which was that the whole opera was the romantic fantasy of a very sick young woman visiting Paris before she died, and who 'becomes'  Mimi to live it out.  When I heard about this at first I thought it was a bit naff, but actually in terms of the opera it works very well and explains a few things about the plot that otherwise just have to be taken on trust or skated over. 

Performance wise it was good. The problem with every Boheme I ever see has, is that it is fighting against my almost ideal Boheme, done way back at Covent Garden. Not that I saw it live (if only!) but we have it on video. A cast to die for, with Thomas Allen as the most credible Marcello ever, Neil Schicoff at the top of his game vocally as Rodolfo, someone called  Marilyn Tschau as a really sexy but golden hearted Musetta and Ileana Cortrubas, over 60 at the time, but still more than convincing as a 20 something seamstress dying of consumption. It's on You Tube, or at least bits of it are. Worth seeking out. Now it is grossly unfair to compare young singers at the start of their careers with internationally acclaimed singers at the height of their powers but the problem is that, if you know a good performance well, then you can't not. 

None of the major roles was less than good, although the Rodolfo was a bit 'careful'; you could see him thinking about breaths and steps and note lengths. I really liked the Schaunard who had a nice voice and was a convincing actor. The girls were fine and there was nothing wrong with the Marcello and I really wish I could sound a bit more enthusiastic because it was a lovely evening, but I am struggling with this comparison thing. Luckily I think Boheme is the only opera where an almost perfect performance is so sunk into my psyche, so it shouldn't bother me again. Let's hope not. 

I'll try and get the OH to send me some of his set photos to put up next time too. 

Travelling Times

So last weekend we were down in Yorkshire for a very flying visit, mainly so that I could meet up with these lovely ladies

This is the 'Leeds Dorothy Dunnett Group, with Leeds in inverted comments since one lives in Salford and one in Lincoln. We used to get together 5 or 6 times a year and obviously they still do and although when we first moved here I used to join them by phone it wasn't a success and it petered out. 

Last year, as some of you may remember, one of the group died and since then I have made more effort to keep in touch with the group as a whole and joined them in Leeds in March and again last weekend in Harrogate. It is a ridiculously long way to go for a day, although the plan is normally to combine it with other things that take us to mainland Britain. Logistically that didn't work out this time, but like I found with opera, you don't realise how much you're missing something until you get that first experience of it again. I will be back with this group again at the end of July. Some friendships fall away as we get older because of the way life patterns itself, but some, especially those made in the 'settled' years  are worth keeping in good repair, and this is a whole set of them that fall into that category.

Meanwhile having mentioned opera, we're off to Inverness on Tuesday to see their new production of La Boheme which, depending on what you read is either sumptuous or totally OTT. All I know is, we sponsored the donkey, so it had better be good! 

The Highland Chocolatier Revisited

When we set off to come back yesterday the OH mentioned that he thought that 'in order to avoid Perth, he thought he would go the Highland Chocolatier way'

Which we did. I wasn't sure whether this was just his odd way of referring to the Perthshire Scenic Tourist Route or whether he was thinking perhaps we should go to the HC shop.

He tells me it was just his way of suggesting the alternative route, which it probably was. There again we did stop, and go into the shop, and we came out with these.

Have you ever seen chocolates quite so beautiful? So far we have eaten only four, but being truffles of course they will not keep. So I expect them all to be gone by tomorrow. 

Just before I go away ...

here is what we did last time.

Last Friday we got up at the crack of dawn to catch the early ferry.

The cats did their best to keep us at home

Don't go! Don't go! We're gonna stay here til you switch off the engine and give up! 

I honestly think we should be allowed to embroider our names on the seats we normally sit in on the ferry as we use them so often. Anyway we drove to Wick where we picked up our friend A. We then carried  on south to the Highland Wildlife Park where we met up with some other mutual  friends and their four year old daughter, who were on holiday in Scotland from Truro.

It was a blazingly hot day which was nice in itself, although it did mean that most of the northern animals, which were what we were there mainly to see, were all taking shelter from that strange golden orb in the sky, and so were invisible! A major exception was the male polar bear

who was a bit of a poser to be honest. 

The wolf wood was closed for 'maintenance' apparently - wonder how the wolves felt about that?-  so we didn't see the wolves, and the lynx and snow leopards resolutely refused to put themselves on show. But we did manage a tiger, wild cats, snowy owls, the polar bear, arctic foxes, and right at the end the wolverine deigned to come out and bounce about for a bit. And we saw V and M and little A, which after all was the main purpose of going.

We dropped A off at the station in Inverness afterwards so he could train back to Wick and we had an overnight stay in Inverness, as we couldn't do the trip in one day because of ferry timings. I'd hoped to do some Vancouver clothes shopping in Inverness the next morning but it was too hot and I didn't feel up to it, so we went to a large garden centre just outside Inverness instead.. We were looking for rockery plants really, although we cast an eye over the patio furniture as well, and the OH saw a gadget 

which he had to have. Given how tedious it is to water pots, and we do have quite a lot of them now, I don't begrudge it to him. And we found a few alpines that we couldn't get in Orkney and that weren't purple or white. Nothing against purple or white, it's just that's what we have most of in there just now. 

On the way back, since we had plenty of time we stopped at Brora and ventured on to the beach there. 

It's very pretty and the photo doesn't really do it justice. Half an hour there listening to the sound of the waves was very restorative. 

Tomorrow we are off again for a very fleeting visit to Englandshire. We drive all the way to Wetherby, then on Saturday I spend the day with my Dorothy Dunnett group in Harrogate and return to  Glasgow, and on Sunday it's back to Orkney.After which we are staying put until 13th, which is like,  you know, days! 

In other news my article for the Prgaue University journal got finished, referenced and sent off a day early. I thought this well impressive but of course the Vancouver paper is a long way from being finalised, so I shall have to concentrate on that when we get back.