Masterchef No More

It being spring Masterchef is back on our screens, but like Dancing on Ice before it, I'll watch until the end of this  series to see who wins and then call a halt. The main reason for my decision is this

I think that just abut sums up most of the things I find irritating in the extreme about Greg Wallace; most of the rest you would need a soundtrack for.

I hate the stupid faces he pulls and his stupid put on mirthless laugh, and I hate how he pesters and patronises the contestants. I'm constantly annoyed by how, when giving his opinions on the food that is served up, he simply repeats what the other more knowledgeable judges have said, but changes the wording slightly, presumably because he thinks that will disguise the fact that he has no opinion of his own. I'm sick and tired of is clichéd phrases, and I swear if I hear him say ''you've got the sweet earthiness of beetroot coming through there' once more I will throw something at the TV. As it is I shout at it (well raise my voice! I know they can't hear me) off and on all through the programmes, and generally it's when Greg opens his mouth to speak and I say 'No-one cares what you think Greg'. Because honestly - nobody does. I really don't know why he co-hosts htis program, he's not a chef, as far as I know he doesn't even cook, he's just a thrice bankrupt, thrice divorced bloke who knows a bit about vegetables. 

Anyway I can't take it any longer and my Masterchef watching days are over. I'll continue to watch Masterchef the Professionals because Wallace makes only fleeting appearances on that and when he does is largely kept in check by the infamous Marcus Wareing. But unchecked, full flight, giggling, gurning, groaning, ghastly Greg - no more for me, thanks. 

Making Things Happen

One of the reasons we dashed down to Glasgow last week was to attend a Masterclass at Scottish Opera.

It's not often we have the opportunity to go to these but they fascinate me. I love watching the process of an older, experienced singer not only coaching a younger singer in technique, but passing on ideas and hints gained from a  lifetime  of performing.

We started sponsoring artists through Scottish Opera's Emerging Artist program a couple of years ago. This year 'our' singer is a young Russian, a  baritone who is a great admirer of Sir Thomas Allen . As huge fans of Tom ourselves this was one of the major  reasons behind our decision to support this singer rather than any of the others. We knew Alexey was keen to have the opportunity to study with TA so it gave us a huge amount of pleasure to be able to fund a masterclass with the two of them. 

They looked at Largo al Factotum from The Barber of Seville, a big sing in anyone's terms, especially  for Alexey who came straight from a day's rehearsing a completely different role. It was fascinating to watch the two of them refine the performance and once again to realise all the  detailed work that goes into making the difference between competent, good and great singing  - or in Tom's terms, between singing in Llandudno and singing in Milan. 

The passing on of tradition, of expertise, of wisdom, has always played a massive part in opera , more than in any other art than perhaps ballet. Being able to facilitate this in a small way was absolutely a privilege for us. And as far as we could ell, the participants and the small invited audience all enjoyed themselves very much in the process. Seemed like a win/win to me. 

Spring is Sprung

So there has been this happy coincidence recently;  spring has finally arrived (although if you were judging from today's weather which is strong winds and lashing rain you might doubt it ) and I can actually see some of the things it brings, so I went out and took some photos in TWWCTG.

Miniature daffodils ...

...and miniature daffodils with that white stuff whose name escapes me for the moment

some of the heather is in bloom 

and finally finally the snowdrops have made it

and here's The Cat Lorenzo enjoying the sunshine. 

I don't think the coming of spring has ever lifted my  spirits as much as it has this year. I can't think why it should be so, unless winter was worse than I thought.  Whatever the reason though, I'm very glad of it. 

A Little More Attention at the Back, Please!

Remember when I bought those new trousers recently and didn't notice they had a side zip and was only saved from the consequences of my inattentive folly by the fact that I could actually get them on and off without needing to bother the zip at all?

Well last week I wore the new pyjamas that I purchased even more recently and here's a thing. The trousers have tapered legs. And pockets. I don't think I have ever had a pair of pyjama trousers with pockets in them before.

I'm not objecting. I think the tapered legs and the pockets are lovely. Very Twenties, very elegant. If only I had an elegant Twenties body to put them on. 

Eye Update

So I went to see the eye surgeon last Tuesday and he wasn't at all grumpy or abrupt as I had been told he was. Possibly a bit condescending, in a nice way, but hey! why shouldn't he be? He\s the one that knows about eyes. I'm just the patient who needs hers fixing. 

Anyway it was good news. He's quite happy to do the op in the left eye, so I'm waiting now for the summons to that. It's a scary prospect, particularly after what happened last time, but really, how unlucky would  I have to be for the machine to fail on me a second time? 

The right eye needed some laser treatment and I was rather disconcerted to discover that he intended to do that there and then. Probably better than giving me an appointment and having me go home and get all worked up about it though. It took about 30 seconds, I was promised an eyeful of floaters for a few days which was what I got but they have mostly resolved themselves now, just one medium sized one left that I hardly notice unless I move my eyes very rapidly indeed. On the upside the world is suddenly a much brighter lighter place and I can see lots more than I could! Still can't see to read properly but the op will take care of that and meanwhile the improvement has totally lifted my spirits, which had been getting very low. 

So All was Good.

And then on Wednesday morning we caught the early morning ferry for what we thought was going to be our madly busy two days in Glasgow ....

New Things 2018No 1 /Baking Subscription March.

Yup, it's two for the price of one today. Obviously plans for enjoying ten new things in 2018 have been somewhat hampered by my limited ability to see but I have now managed one, courtesy of the baking subscription. 

And here it is

just to be clear, it's making a ganache. The OH has done this quite often, often enough to jeer at contestants on MKR Australia when they try, but I've never bothered. However, there it was on this month's recipe, so I made it. I did what it said to do on  the card, despite the OH's protestations that it was the 'wrong way' which basically means 'not the way I do it',  and it turned out fine; thick and glossy like it should be. . As you can see.  

The whole thing looked like this

I can't tell you how good it is as we haven't sampled it yet. We're off to Glasgow at the crack of dawn tomorrow and we're taking it with us so that son no 2 and his flat mate can share. Going on Wednesday and back on Friday, which  sounds, and possibly is, a bit mad. But there is something we don't want to miss tomorrow, and again on Thursday, we couldn't go today because of my hospital appointment and we're coming back Friday because we're trying to cut down on the time we ask other people, basically our friend J, to feed the cats. 

Some Good News

Yesterday I chased up my position on the ophthalmic waiting list with the hospital and they told me there was an appointment letter on its way, and today the letter turned up so they were obviously right! I am seeing the surgeon next Tuesday afternoon and I hope very much that he will be amenable to doing the necessary to restore my sight to something a lot closer to normal vision than what I experience just now. 

It's a bit scary but as I said to someone, this  is the only way forward so the sooner the better really. The optometrist worried me a bit with all his talk of possible complications and risk to reward ratios, which no-one said anything about when I had the other eye done, but hopefully the surgeon can put the little worries to rest and I can await the operation with a calm (ish) mind.  

A Tale of Two Operas

So last time we were down in Glasgow we went to see Flight which is a very recent opera, composed in 1998 by Johnathan Dove, a commission for Glyndebourne apparently (that's what Mr Google tells me anyway) We don't normally go to recently-written operas because we have this almost unshakeable belief that they will be harsh, dissonant and generally not to our taste. So I'm not sure why we went to see Flight except perhaps because we were in Glasgow anyway and it was on, and I certainly bought rather cheaper seats than we would normally have because why pay a lot of money for something you will probably not enjoy, eh? 

As it happened we got our seats upgraded because one of the characters in the opera spends most of her time singing on a gantry and is only visible from the waist down in the seats we bought, so we probably ended up more or less where we would have normally been anyway. 

And if you ever get a chance to see it, grab it with both hands. It was wonderful. It's based on the true story of a refugee who lived in an airport - there was a film as well at one stage, with someone famous who I find tedious - Tom Hanks perhaps? or Kevin Kline? The music is very tuneful, the main part is written for a counter tenor, which is something you don't come across every day, and its a very moving and engaging piece about the horrors people endure to escape from even worse things, and how the comfortable people, who don't live with horror every day, treat them. The SO production was really good and got rave reviews, even the one during the bad weather where the orchestra couldn't make it and so had to be performed to a piano only accompaniment. Talk about the show must go on! An heroic effort by the pianist. 

Meanwhile in another part of the operatic universe Covent Garden was staging a 'provocative' production of Carmen by Australian enfant terrible Barrie Kosky. In an attempt to make the story 'universal' - why? there were apparently aspects of 19th century Paris, 1930s Buenos Aires and between-the-wars Berlin included in it.  This led to Captain Morales attempting a soft shoe shuffle to some of the soldier's music in Act 1. It didn't fit. The set was a large and perilously steep staircase which took up about 80% of the stage. It possibly seemed like an inspiration at first but it really wasn't. I've said before on this blog that I don't expect a facsimile of Seville when the curtain goes up on Carmen, but just a staircase seemed  reductionist in the extreme. In the bit we didn't see, Carmen was standing at the bottom of this with a cloak which folded over every step right the way up to the top. Must have been an absolute pig to arrange. We know this because there was some introductory waffle before the performance started, and there were several shots of this cloak which seems to me on the surface to be a Very Bad Idea Indeed.  but it may not have been, I can't obviously say because we'd left before it made its official appearance. Carmen made her first entrance on this staircase -  in a gorilla suit. Don't ask me why. I have absolutely no idea. She took the head off before she started singing but it as quite a long time before she got rid of the rest of it. A disturbing image.  As previously reported we made it through to the interval after which the OH declared it wasn't Carmen and he couldn't face any more of it and could we please go home. So we did. 

Here's the thing. I have no objection in principle to updating opera, or twiddling about with it or setting it in a time or a pace that were unknown to the original composer. If it ends up saying something new about the piece, or enhancing the audience's understanding or appreciation of character, plot, music, anything, why not? But, and it's big but, if all it does is display a few random ideas that have popped into the director's head and which he thinks show off his learning or imagination and serve no other purpose, then the question, contrariwise, is why? It can work. Johnathan Miller's Mafia Rigoletto did, for example, because it gave modern audiences a way in to the atmosphere and mores of the circle round the Duke in a way which saying 'Set in the court of the Duke of Mantua' doesn't. And that's good. But just because a director has an  idea, it doesn't mean its a good idea. And in addition to that there was an awful lot of previously unused or not generally performed music dragged up for use in this version. Stuff Bizet threw  away before the disastrous first performance.Stuff he threw away after it. Stuff he replaced with other stuff as time went on. I always think there's generally a good reason for discarded material having been discarded, and that's because its not very good. So bringing it back isn't necessarily the wisest of moves.  

I love Carmen. Sadly I've never seen a completely satisfying production of it, but I live in hope. 

Pot Luck at the Library

The Orkney library has a scheme going. You give them the princely sum of  three pounds fifty pence and in return you get one of these.

An Orkney library tote bag with a genre label and six  books from that genre that they're wanting rid of. It's been going a while now and I've not succumbed, but on Saturday when  we went to get our tickets for this evening's shenanigans with James Oswald I finally did. It was a bit of a gamble because I read so much crime fiction the odds were that at least one of the books I would have read, before or that they would all be American thrillers, which I'm not keen on,  rather than British police procedurals which I love. 

In the event I did surprisingly well. Here's my selection.

Two of them are American, butt hey seem t be more your standard murder investigation than thriller, One of the others is set in China, which will be different, and another n post colonial Kenya.  Michael Gilbert is the only author of the six I have previously encountered and his books have a Fine Art/Antiques background and I remember now that I used to enjoy them. The final one is described on the front cover by The Guardian as a 'zestful mix of criminous and domestic comedy', so that seems promising. Obviously they are all rather old, which is why the library wants rid, but I don't care about how old they are as long as they are good. 

I shall doubtless report back at  a future stage. Meanwhile we are now back from the trip to hear Mr Oswald and it was, rather to my surprise, very good. Even the OH enjoyed it and he hasn't actually read any of JO's books!

Mad Social Whirl

I'm in the middle of what passes for a mad social whirl here where we live. And it's bloomin' tiring. It not that we're particularly busy, but generally speaking life is so quiet that any trip out, over and above the supermarket, counts as excitement and that rarely happens more than once every two weeks. So I am rather shocked to find myself  with so much t do in  so few days. 

Today the OH had a dentists appointment in the  morning, and the training restaurant at the college was dong Mexican this week so we bridged the gap between the two by doing some town based chores and shopping. (Tell me, why does it take so long to decide how to frame a tiny cross stitch picture?). The food at college was fabulous; I sampled both desserts; churros because hey! churros. They're the Spanish/Mexican equivalent for me of pannacotta ie if it's on the menu I have to have it. The other one was fruit quesadillas; they looked lovely and they were and if I can find a recipe I amy even try making them. One of these days.. The main courses were good too, but, you know, it's the desserts I'll remember.

Came home and fell asleep on hthe sofa (oops!) listening to Part 2 of the current Radio 4 afternoon drama which is a prequel to the TV series Waking the Dead. Now I stopped watching Waking the Dead after about a series and a half because I couldn't bear it when the Trevor Eve character went round SHOUTING at everybody ALL THE TIME, and also it wasn't vey credible, plot wise. I  like my Tec TV to be credible, but anyway, -  the prequel series got a good write up in the Radio Times, not that that means anything much these days, and I thought I would listen because I could always knit to it. Or, as happened today, fall asleep. I will have to listen to the second half of the episode  on catch up. Meanwhile back on our busy day, the OH had uncharacteristically suggested doing something off his own bat, which was getting tickets for the Covent Garden livecast of Carmen which was this evening and we went. More of that another day but it was billed as a controversial production, so all I'll say is, brace yourselves. 

Meanwhile tomorrow I need to get up and bake cakes in the morning. In the afternoon I'm going out with friends to a local café/bistro place for coffee and cake. It's something I started late last year; we try to go once a month. The thing is it's very easy to let days slip by here and get to October and discover there are people you haven't yet wished a Happy New Year so I figured if we aimed for once a month then we might manage that most times - allowing for people going away to visit family or have a holiday or whatever. So the weather put paid to February, but March we will have done. Unless we get six feet of snow overnight.

On Thursday morning a friend and her daughter, who is just back from two years working in Israel, are coming round for coffee and in the evening the OH and I are, unbelievably, out again!  since we are off to the library for an author visit. Long term readers of the blog may remember that the last time we did this, when the author in question was Arne 'The Dull' Dahl, it was not a huge success and I am rather trepidatious about this one. The writer concerned is James Oswald who writes detective novels set in Edinburgh, but as he comes from a fantasy writing background there are bits of the supernatural that float round the edges. I'm not a big fan of the supernatural/detective crossover, although I have put up with it in JO's books until now. He had a new one out in January which I've read and I think that actually, now, I'm done. His writing tics are becoming more and more obvious, his hero is getting more and more obnoxious and really I've stopped caring. I will not of course be saying any of this on Thursday evening. Well, not out loud, anyway. 

Shuropody

I know, I know, shudder at the spelling for which I can't even discover a 'punning' or 'cute' reason, but that done, marvel at the fact that I got better service here than I got from the NHS podiatrist.

Shuropody was recommended to me by a friend when I was bemoaning the useless 'get some wide shoes with arch support and no top seaming and by the way you can't get anything like that on Orkney' advice that I was given. They have a practice/store in Glasgow so on our recent visit I trotted off there. 

The lady who served me was really very nice and helpful and nothing was too much trouble for her. She didn't even blench when I changed from hand knitted woollen socks for trying on everyday shoes to sock size tights for trying on going out shoes! I bought some going out ones and we found a pair of everyday ones, but sadly they only had those in brown so I've had to order a pair (style and size noted down for me by said helpful lady) in black from the website and they arrived today. My one moan, since I accept that they can't keep every style in every colour in every size in their shops is that, like so many other firms they charge extra for delivery to the Highlands and Islands, despite the fact that they used the Post Office to send the stuff. Totally iniquitous and teeth grindingly annoying but so so common that I have given up complaining as it would be almost a full time job. 

As it happens I have my follow up appointment with the  podiatrist on Monday* so the shoes have arrived in good time for me to show her and see if she finds them suitable, although I've no reason to think that she won't. And at least I can demonstrate that I have taken her advice. I even invested in a tube of witch hazel cream and have used it a couple of times when the pain has been bad. That said I will make an appointment at Shuropody one time when we are down in Glasgow to have my foot looked at and possibly get a personalised orthotic made as I was impressed by them. 

*such excitement when the letter arrived addressed to me with the NHS Orkney logo on it as I thought it was the much longed for ophthalmology consultation. Sadly not.

After the visit to Shuropody we wandered off to the Buchanan Galleries where we purchased a new cheese box from Lakeland (such are the excitements of modern domestic life, but I have to say that it is a huge improvement on the previous one which we should obviously have replaced years ago) and then we had a lovely lunch with our friend KH from Scottish Opera. We'd spotted a tapas style restaurant on our wanderings  and decided to try it, and it was lovely. (Café Andaluz, small chain, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen). Definitely worth a revisit and not just for the churros, although they helped. 

Bedside Books Number 7

This has taken a bit of getting through. It's a Canadian novel which I bought when we were over there last summer and I thought I would love it but I didn't.

One of the review quotes in the early pages refers to the book ar 'a stirring sage of midwifery in Nova Scotia'  and if you took out 'stirring saga' and replaced it with 'quite dull story' then I'd go along with it. 

The protagonist of the book, Dora,  becomes an unofficial apprentice to a traditional midwife in the early years of the twentieth century. A doctor comes to the nearby town, pooh-poohs their methods and ideas, and tries to take over obstetric care in the area where they live. 

That's about it. The author seems to have no other novels to her name, just journalism and possibly some sort stories,  and was inspired to write the book because she and her family moved to Nova Scotia and she discovered the house she lived in had been a traditional birthing house for women of the area. She did a lot of research, much of which is shoehorned into the novel in a less than subtle way. You can't help feeling that the reason Dora takes refuge at some point in the book in Boston is juts so that eventually a friend she makes there can write to her later about the Great Molasses Flood of  1919. 

Much is made by the author, book jacket designer and in reviews, of the 'scrapbook style' of the book, meaning it includes  (fictional) newspaper reports and advertisements, letters, facsimile invitations etc  alongside the narrative. Anyone would think McKay had invented intertextuality all on her own when this was written in 2006. She didn't.  

I don't know why the book didn't resonate more with me, as on paper it should have done. Maybe it's because I didn't like Dora much. Maybe it's because the topic of 'stupid science led doctor wants to take away traditional female wisdom' has been done to death  Maybe it is the clumsy attempts to incorporate research that has been done and so then has to be put on display. As I say, I don't know. I do know the book is  off to the charity shop.