What I Did Yesterday...

M's letters are going so slowly. 100 different letters for 100 different people. Those reports sit still unsent.

Today, I smell of hospital because my arm hurts and I have had to anoint it and bandage it up.

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Anyway, in the evening I got all dressed up - yes I DID go out!!!

I put on my little black cocktail dress, black diamond tights, black knee-length high-heeled boots, and a sage-green Russian-style bolero with faux-fur trim.

I went to the Arts Club for an evening of Opera in Love. When I got there and handed in my coat, the staff sent me upstairs with a glow because a couple of waiters were standing outside the dining room and said, "You look very pretty this evening." I smiled and thanked them shyly, continued up the staircase and the evaluation continued something like: "Yes isn't she looking lovely?" "Oh indeed she is."

I was tickled pink and it showed. As I waited beside someone not much older than I to enter the drawing room, she said, "You look sweeter than I do, maybe you can flutter your eyelashes and get us a free drink!"

Three students from Trinity College - a tenor, a mezzo soprano, and a pianist - performed some pretty love arias from popular operas. I didn't see a programme so this will be a struggle. You'd know them if you heard them...

Mozart: le Nozze di Figaro & la Clemenza di Tito
Beethoven: Fidelio
Puccini: Nessun Dorma (Turandot), O mio babbino caro (La Boheme), something from Tosca...
Handel
Verdi: la Traviata, the bit where Don Alfredo tells Violetta he loves her and she says forget it
Sorrento
plus a gorgous Chopin barcarolle in the middle
The encore was the drinking song from la Traviata


When I arrived, the room was full; my flatterer and I snagged the last chairs in the room. The head of the Opera Circle, V, had invited me at the Xmas ball, and the chair next to her was empty so she waved me over. It was at the front and I could almost touch the singers. (They had sung at V and P's wedding last month.)

For the first time ever, I understood the words. Nothing got lost because we were in such an intimate setting, so even the people at the back got it all. But when they hit the loud notes I literally got plastered into my seat and felt myself unpeeling afterwards.

Hearing the Chopin I was reminded of how much I love to hear his music performed live.

Beaming with appreciation, some of us made our way downstairs to the dining room where the Opera Circle attempted to sit together.

There was a set menu and I chose:

1) split pea soup
2) roast guinea fowl in a creamy watercress sauce
3) passion fruit mousse surrounded by diced mango, papaya, and pomegranate seeds

Someone shared a bottle of sweetish dry white wine with me. I skipped the espresso, as it was late and nearly 11pm when I got home.

Rather shockingly, I discovered P and another lady, who we were all meeting for the first time, were cognitive and organisational development pyschologists, respectively. I thought I had escaped all that! After an initial conversation about architecture, art deco, and which museums to join, we descended into a discussion about my pet subject, birth order, with a bit of neuropsychology. Get out...!

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Finally, I wrote a poem called First Desire, which you can read if you visit my quiet blog, Your Eyes Only.