) and the Commonwealth
Games in Manchester to contend with.
Last September, I put forward some signifiers of the onset of the autumnal season. Here's some reasons to look forwards to spring.
Extra daylight and flowers I keep mentioning.
The weather is slowly improving though you'd be hard pressed to know it from the rain and wind that has battered us over the past couple of weeks. We've actually had some minor damage to the eaves of the house. Not sure yet whether that's an insurance job or not.
People are emerging from their homes at last like animals leaving their burrows after the winter interlude. More people in the parks - wrapped up against the weather but they are there. Kids playing out until gone 6pm.
Very soon, there'll be the run of sporting events from the Grand National and boat
race that will lead inexorably through to the start of the cricketing season (always
a laugh for the newspapers that because it will be cold and wet) and on to the
Cup Final and Wimbledon. This year, we also have the World Cup (it doesn't seem
four years since the last one
) and the Commonwealth
Games in Manchester to contend with.
Details of this year's Glyndebourne Festival have long since been posted. The new Carmen looks interesting. Maybe it will tour. News of that will be posted soon.
Buxton Festival's programme has just been announced. Cavalli's L'Erismena (which my reference books tell me was a box office success in 1656) intrigues. It's been nearly 20 years since I last saw any Cavalli operas (Scottish Opera toured L'Egisto and Orione in 1984) and Ross is showing an interest in the Baroque - so it looks like a must. Another rarity will be Offenbach's La Périchole. It has the distinction of being one of the very few operas set in 18th Century Peru.
Shortly the Proms season will be announced and then we'll find out what the major opera companies are doing next season. By April, I shall know which opera houses I shall be sitting in during June 2003.
Ross and I have also had our first gardening session. He's already done some hoeing and weeding and I've managed a little pruning. We've now planted out our first seeds of the year - capsicums and runner beans and various herbs for fodder; sunflowers and night scented stock for flora.
All of which has left only a little time for recreation. Big disappointment of the week has been BBC4 - which is in fact BBC Knowledge re-packaged. Or rather the Beeb had gotten fed up on continually recycling its history programmes and has decided to re-stream them in a different format with some direct arts coverage so that it can completely clear out BBC2 and make it a lifestyle channel. Still there's the WNO Madam Butterfly on this evening. We'll probably tape that for viewing in advance of this year's trip to Llandudno.
Last night, after a very pleasant drink and a chat with Roland, Ross and I settled down to watch Memento which ran Chocolat a very close second for being my film of the year last year. I'm as much in admiration for the work as I was when I first saw it. And Ross is now a new convert.
Lastly, I've just finished Cakes and Ale by W Somerset Maugham. I've not knowingly read any Maugham before. He was of that generation which was derided by the generation above mine from whom I received so many of my critical certainties in my school years. Actually Cakes and Ale is rather good. But it is waspish. It couldn't be written by anyone other than a gay man. No heterosexual could sustain such archness.
And, in passing, those among you who, like me, luxuriate in a full delight of the comedic power of the Spoonerism, will join with me in regretting the current scarcity in the avian population of our green and pleasant lands of the corn bunting.
PS
The mystery celebrity photographed at the BAFTA's
was Nicole Kidman. Even now you know, it's hard to credit, isn't it?