Birthdays
19 May

My dad's birthday and mine are very close together.

Part of the reason for visiting my parents last weekend was to see him before his birthday and do the celebratory bit and for them to reciprocate before they went off on holiday to Torquay on Sunday.

My birthday falls on a Monday this year so I've been using the weekend as a time of celebration.

Ross and I trucked ourselves over to the Lowry for a performance of Martinu's Julietta. It's one of those little performed works. I can remember a New Opera Company production when I was a student about which friends raved. So, I've been awaiting my chance to sample it for myself.

After the first two acts I was thinking that, although it was stalwartly performed, I could understand why it was seldom seen. And then the third act kicked in and I perfectly understood why my friends had raved. Suddenly, the themes of dreams, illusion and reality all came together. Suddenly, the staging, with its overtones of the dispossessed of Europe, all made sense.

Special praise is due to Paul Nilon as Mischa and Rebecca Caine as Julietta. I loved Frances McCafferty's Fortune Teller. Eventually, a very definite four star event. A pity the audience was sparse but we more than made up for it with the enthusiasm of our response at the curtain.

The new Matrix film is due out next week. In a timely fashion, I'd asked my sister, Linda, for a DVD of the first film, which I first saw in the company of Rod from Seattle back in 1999. We watched it in the comfort of our big screen lounge and it is still very good.

Sunday was a rainy day on and off but we got out to Lady Green Nursery and we've got lots of lovely plants to go in the back garden so there'll be plenty of colour and we also got three tomato plants and some French beans as the seeds I planted earlier in the year have just not taken at all.

Nutkin has been running madly in the wind. The combination of showers and sun has promoted abundant growth in the garden. Particularly good this year are the irises, the hosta, and the azaleas. However, the daffodils and bluebells disappointed. Presumably the dry weather in March took its toll there. Many of the plants that came up from Ross's garden in London last year are starting to flourish this time round. His twisted willow and witchhazel are coming on fine as are the many shrubs. The buddleja, astilbe, hydrangea and lavender are showing good growth. The only big failure has been the ceanothus which I transplanted from the front garden last autumn and which has died back quite considerably before re-establishing itself. No flowers at all though this year as it put all its energies into survival.

We finished the weekend off by watching One Hour Photo with Robin Williams which was very disturbing in a creepily, quiet way. A good candidate for three stars.