Time Away
10 August

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I didn't really feel as though I had much benefit out of my last week's holiday.

Yes, I went to a couple of performances at the Buxton Festival. Yes, I finished off teaking the garden furniture. But, mostly, I feel that I frittered the time away.

Well, this week has been different. As well as being simply time away from work, there has been a better blend of simple relaxation, interesting visits and practical endeavour.

For the practical stuff, we've had the central heating serviced, the car serviced and I've been to the doctor's and have learnt that the pains in my left arm are most probably tennis elbow. I have to take ibuprofen for a month and see how it goes. Oh, and I've washed down all of the internal windows - normally a spring job but somehow this year overlooked.

The first visit came on Monday. Ever since Ross bought his new electric wheelchair, I've said that we ought to go out with it somewhere. It breaks down so that it fits into the back of the car and it is liftable.

So, we went to Meer Sands Wood just outside Rufford. And it was lovely and green and peaceful and, given that it is the school holidays, I just wondered where all the families were.

And the really good thing is that all of the paths are properly laid out and compacted so that it is very easy for a scooter such as Ross has to get around.

We took a packed lunch and had a good time of it. We shall return. It is the sort of place which it would be good to get to know through the variety of the seasons.

I've also been to London. The journey down was easy and I booked into the hotel with time to spare so I had a power nap on the bed.

Up at three and round the corner to The Place, where I met up with Robert and we spent a few hours together over a couple of pints and some food. And it was only when I came to do my finances when I got home that I realised that an important milestone had been achieved and passed with ease. My son bought me a meal. Hmmm. That's adult for you.

We chatted about life, Ross, Robert's partner Anna, Robert's work, my work, Gill, joint history, mutual friends, tulips and the fall of Western capitalism (that was my bit) and a lot more. We parted on the Central Line. Robert went East to Epping and Gill. I went West to Holland Park.

Like Buxton Festival, English Touring Opera and to a certain extent Opera North, I value Opera Holland Park for the opportunities it gives me to attend operas normally outside of my compass. During the past decade, there's been

• Pietro Mascagni's Iris
• Francesco Cilea's L'Arlesiana
• Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur and
• Léo Delibes' Lakmé

This year, it is Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda.

You may well ask. I've only seen it once before in 1993, given by Opera North, just before I moved down to London.

Although you would probably recognise the ballet - The Dance of the Hours - which has been done to death by comedians and parodied beyond belief in Walt Disney's Fantasia.

Anyhow, it's one of those big women in big frocks singing big tunes sort of operas. So, it was brave of Opera Holland Park to mount the work. Even major opera houses shy away from it because of the demands on the principals.

We were only half blessed. Our tenor, Vadim Zaplechny, was a very mixed bag - barnstorming one moment and croaking the next. If he was indisposed, they should have made an announcement. David Soar, a Welsh National Opera principal, however, was a splendid bass and well remembered for last year's Il Trovatore.

The ladies - hmmm. Well, I hated the sound of Nuala Willis's contralto. She seemed to have about half a dozen different voices, each for a set of four notes. Couldn't be doing with it. And I didn't warm to Gweneth-Ann Jeffers in the title rôle. It has the potential be a big, rich soprano sound but, I suppose, she's still developing as an artist and the voice really isn't properly under control yet. I felt uneasy.

Olafur Sigurdarson made an impression in Falstaff last autumn and his baritone was just as forthright here as well. At least, this was an opera which could take that sort of treatment.

Best performance for me was Yvonne Howard - she was in Peter Grimes earlier in the year. The band played well under Peter Robinson. Martin Lloyd-Evans moved the show along. Jamie Vartan's designs assisted. It's just that it needed more in the vocal department to be truly memorable. It's slightly harsh but I'm feeling like only two and a half stars here.

So, Wednesday morning and what to do?

A while back, I felt that I should start re-visiting major, national sites in London. I went to Westminster Abbey. Well, it's been over two years but, on Wednesday morning, I managed another - this time, St Paul's.

It was an intriguing contrast to that older but (to my mind) much less interesting space. Wren had the chance to build the world's first Anglican cathedral and he took the opportunity with relish. I liked the restrained palette of colours and the way that space and light were transformed. There's science and spirit combined here.

There's an interesting panel on the wall near the great West door. It's a dirty grey colour. This is what the walls looked like until they cleaned them up a few years back. And it's what it must have looked like when I was a teenager some forty years ago, which was the last time I visited the place on a family holiday. I can honestly say that it must have looked incredibly drab compared with the crisp, bright space it is now.

Further down, you are into the Choir which suddenly is a riot of coloured mosaics - some of which Wren wanted - which are a Victorian addition. Who ever said that the Victorians were drab and uncolourful? I'm not sure that I like it but I doubt that they'd strip it out now.

And then you get the High Altar - which looks at though it should be Victorian but which is mid-twentieth century (the Victorian altar having been destroyed by a bomb in the Blitz) and yet goes back to the design that Wren originally conceived of but which was put aside because it was to close to the Popish model of St Peter's in Rome. Actually, it looks like something out of The Magic Flute.

And then down in the crypt you get all sorts of memorials like the one below to Nelson. There's one for Wellington. Churchill, who was the other "national hero" given a funeral at St Paul's, is, of course, buried at his country home, Chartwell - he has memorial wrought iron gates instead.

It made me wonder. What is the process by who gets a memorial here - or at Westminster Abbey for that matter? And who decides who goes were. Why is William Blake in St Paul's and not in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey? Why is Arthur Sullivan in St Paul's and why is George Frideric Handel in Westminster Abbey?

Anyhow, along with the audio tour, I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours there.

Then to Gaby's for a meal and I suddenly wondered what I was going to do next. I'd planned to visit the National Gallery for a second viewing of the Divisionist exhibition. But, after St Paul's, I didn't want any more art. And I didn't want to do shopping. So, checking the clock, I realised that, if I headed off immediately to Euston, I could catch the 13:17 train and be back in Liverpool for an early evening meal.

Well, what luck I made that choice. Network Rail had, once again, brought the system to a standstill. I ended up travelling back through Sheffield. A journey to Liverpool which should have taken less that three hours ended up taking well over six hours.

Thursday and Friday were both billed as being cloudy and showery days. In fact, both were fine and I spent much time in the back garden whilst Ross was off doing work in schools. I read a lot and drank pinot grigio.

There's a problem to reading second and third novels by authors whose first work you liked - others may not be up to standard. I really liked A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss. The Coffee Trader, however, I thought was tedious, thinly plotted and under-written. So, I was nervous about opening A Spectacle of Corruption. I needn't have been so concerned. It was a rollicking eighteenth century romp set in around the parliamentary election of 1722, with a Hanoverian king newly on the throne, the effects of the bursting South Sea Bubble still swilling around and Jacobian plots behind ever corner. A thoroughly good read.

Similarly, having read Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, I was apprehensive of reading The Gate of Angels. Once again, my choice was vindicated. I love the way that she constructs sentences on a hairpin of balance and sentiment. Where Offshore was almost poetry in its compression, The Gate of Angels was nearer to Barbara Pym or Nancy Mitford or even Robertson Davies. I feel that this is a voice I want to read more of and to cherish.

Ross and I caught up with Cloverfield on Friday night. I think that it is very clever in the way that it pretends to be the video recordings of actual events - a bit like Blair Witch with (alien?) lizards and urban terror. I also found it very funny. Beyond that, no. I'm afraid that the early hype from JJ Abrams was too good by half and raised expectations to an unreasonable pitch.

Having seen Kevin Bishop in Food of Love recently, I've taken to watching his comedy sketch show on Channel Four. He was in his early twenties when he made the film, so he must be in his late twenties now. So, it's pleasing to see that he's still not shy about getting his buns out for the lads even if there is now an understandable thickening around the waist.

It's supposed to be from a Hallmark TV show about the making of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Kevin spoofs Colin Farrell wanting to shoot a sex scene as part of a family movie - the look is sort of right but the accent is very, very off. Still, there are usually two or three good laughs per programme - with or without the buttocks.

Saturday, it pissed down. Sunday it didn't.

Come Sunday night, Ross and I were off to Crosby Hall. We were there last year for the Hoghton Players' performance of HMS Pinafore. This time it was Heritage Opera performing Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Flute is not necessarily a work I would travel to hear. Don't get me wrong. I think that it is (or should be) in everyone's top ten operas. It's wonderful. It's just that this is now my fourteenth attended performance so I'm trying to limit them. But, and here was the over-riding factor, I feel that it's good to support local endeavours.

With a small company supported by piano, you have to re-adjust your expectations. It's not going to be like Welsh National Opera or English National Opera. In the event, I had a belting time. With a couple of exceptions I'll mention later, the singing performances were more than adequate and the whole experience was moving and amusing in equal parts.

Best performance was probably Thomas Eaglen who I heard in that awful Marriage of Figaro with the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra in February. He was a not very engaging Count Almaviva on that occasion. Here he was Papageno and it was like watching and hearing a whole different performer. Papageno is an odd rôle. Tackle it right and you have the audience eating out of your hand. Get it wrong, like Teddy Tahu Rhodes in that WNO performance, and you look like an oaf. I found Thomas Eaglen engaging and believable as an ordinary man who simply wanted to eat, drink, sleep and father children. He had a tremendous amount of pathos in his suicide scene. Well done, him.

I also loved the antics of the three ladies/three spirits, Samantha Chambers, Wendy Sharrock and Sinoed Ellis, well sung and well communicated all three. Camp as tits without being silly. Mention also of Sarah Helsby-Hughes's Queen of the Night which was as clear and intelligent and big a performance of that difficult rôle as I've encountered.

My real problem was with the Pamina and Pamino. Serenna Wagner certainly has all of the notes but was just too forceful for Mozart and for the small space we were sitting in. Ulises Llorca had the same problem magnified. He sang Mozart as though it was Donizetti. Every top note was produced with squillo which is defined as a resonant, trumpet-like ringing sound in the voice of opera singers. Being a native of Havana, his English was not pronounced with the precision of a native speaker. Added to this, I thought that his eyes and teeth approach sometimes reminded me of David Tennant.

In the smaller rôles, David Palmer was fine as the Speaker/Sarastro, Eric Cymbir was OK as the First Priest, Keith Cawdron was less satisfactory as the Second Priest and Adrian Lawson had fun as Monostatos but appeared to have no voice at all. Still, I've paid far more and travelled far further and enjoyed myself far less. Three and a half stars.