31 July
What I've Been Doing

Just to prove that I haven't been totally inactive during my three months of silence, this is a romp through some of what that I've been doing.

So, end of April beginning of May I began my PTLLS course (Preparing to Teach in the Life-long Learning Sector). This meant, among other things, that I worked Mondays during my training unit and I managed to fit in an Umbraco content management course for the health service staff from Walsall who I visited back in January.

I revisited the three Terry Pratchett novels about the young witch Tiffany, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky (which I last read in 2005) and Wintersmith (which I read the year after, in 2006). They are very good even on a second and intensive reading.

I've been listening to and have now bought audio books of Radio 4's adaptations of Patricia Highsmith's novels about psychopathic murderer Tom Ripley. They have been appropriately nasty although condensing the plots into five separate one hour dramas has meant that some of the substance has been lost even if the overall atmosphere has been maintained. Listening to the audiobooks in bed in the dark has been an occasionally harrowing experience as various characters have been bludgeoned to death with an oar, garrotted on a train and drowned in a muddy pond. Good, meaty stuff.

Ross and I also went to the latest Star Trek film. Unlike him, I am not an ardent fan of the franchise. However, I thought this was an excellent film. It kept me wholly entranced for its two hours' passage. The script was as literate as you get in a blockbuster. The plot was engrossing. The cast were engaging on all levels. We liked Chris Pine - he should be encouraged to strip down to his tighty-whities as often as possible.

I've not mentioned many recordings so far this year so it's good to be able to give The Italian Girl in Algiers by Rossini the thumbs up. It's long while since I've seen it in the theatre but I hope to change that when Scottish Opera take on the work in October of this year.

The Eurovision Song Contest Final took place in Moscow on Saturday 16 May. So, whilst I was helping my father celebrate his 85th birthday, Phil was blogging for Britain in the Russian capital. It's Oslo next year, so we'll have to see whether or not he gets taken up the fjords.

The winning act was Alexander Rybak - not my cup of tea but then it's not often that half of Europe is entertained by a young man fiddling in tight trousers with his legs apart. Phil's verdict can be summed up in the phrase "As a row of tents".

A few days later and I hit fifty-five. Ross, Sam and I went for a meal at our local restaurant, The Fat Italian, and it was very good. My most treasured present was from Ross - a salad dressing shaker. Eminently practical and has been used a great deal over this summer since - which despite what the media says I believe has been warmer that the last two. Whatever, Ross and I have eaten loads of salad and have concocted many, many interesting salad dressings.

Come the Thursday, I was taking part in a focus group set up by Welsh National Opera to get some idea as to why their audience numbers were falling. We told them that the repertory was boring and repetitive and that Opera North were better than them. We also told them that they had treated Liverpool audiences with contempt over the years giving us second string conductors and performers, dropping a week of performances here and there, moving the time of year backwards and forwards. I think that they were hoping to pin the situation on the recession. We told them to think again.

In retrospect, what we should also have said is that they were holding the meeting three years too late. It should have taken place in 2006 so that they then had two clear years to plan for maximising their presence in Liverpool during the Capital of Culture year.

Spring Bank Holiday arrived and so did Linda, Ian and Mary. There was a family meal to celebrate all of the birthdays down at West Kirby. We went for a walk on the waterfront after the meal and Mary and I clambered on the rocks.

We also saw a squirrel.

Around this time, Sam flooded the bathroom to the extent that water came through the ceiling in the kitchen. He'd been having a long, hot young man's shower by which I mean that he was probably wanking himself senseless. During the process, the shower curtain flapped over the side of the bath and water poured down onto the floor and flooded the place. Luckily, we didn't have a major electrical emergency.

I mention this event partly because, in retrospect, it's quite funny and partly because it's quite typical of both brothers. Having flapped about, in the actual moment of calamity, I've not heard Sam say a word about it. He's not apologised. He's not asked what he can to to clear up the mess. And that's fairly typical of Ross too. I was brought up in a tradition of "You tidy up your own mess" and "You pay for your own breakages". Neither brother seems to have any concept of those two ideas.

The following weekend, Ross and I took a long break in Glasgow. It's a long while since I was in the city. Richard and I stayed their during Glasgow's Capital of Culture year when we saw the newly opened Burrell Collection and a performance by Peter Brook's international theatre company of a version of the Indian epic The Mahabharata. A couple of years later, by which time I was going out with Keith, I spent a weekend there on a NALGO Lesbian and Gay conference and had a wild and abandoned romp with Ruari, an Irish lad from Birmingham.

We stayed in one of the Premier Inn establishments in Glasgow. We usually use this chain when we go to London. I wouldn't use that particular hotel again in a hurry. Not the easiest for a person in a wheelchair. It was a blisteringly hot weekend and the Scottish Cup Final was taking place so the centre of the city was jammed with young men stripped to the waist. We could have stayed for the anatomy lesson but instead we went to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and were rewarded with a real treat.

To be honest it's all a bit of a hodge podge with a stuffed giraffe rubbing shoulders, as it were, with a Spitfire. However, there's some really good artworks including a room dedicated to Charles Rennie Mackintosh and a display of Glasgow-based artists of the early Twentieth Century which were really good. Like The Divisionists, the Glasgow Boys and the Scottish Colourists were producing work which is the equal of the French masters and yet they feature far lower down the scale in the public's awareness of them. So that was very good.

Back in the city centre, we also called in on the Museum of Modern Art where we saw a couple of nice Bridget Riley's (which I wonder if we'll see again when the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool stages a retrospective exhibition of her work) and a splendid exhibition of works around the theme of gay, etc art. Finally, I got to see David Hockney's We Two Boys Together Clinging and there were other good pieces by Sunil Gupta, Holly Johnson, Sadie Lee, Pierre et Gilles, Jack Pierson and others.

Then it was up to the Theatre Royal for a performance by Scottish Opera. As ever, we organise these trips round opera performances. I acknowledge that this is to do with my love of the art form but Ross enjoys it too. Pragmatically, it give us something to do of an evening and he has the day to pursue his love of the visual arts. First up was a performance of a new David McVicar production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

English Touring Opera's performance of this work became my operatic highlight of 2005; this performance will certainly be a contender for this year's crown. Tobias Ringborg's conducting was spritely. We had the full score with chorus in a wonderfully elegant period production. And it was both funny and intensely painful at the same time thanks to David McVicar's wonderful delineation of all six main characters.

We had four young artists as the lovers. I liked both Violet Noorduyn and Caitlin Hulcup as the two sisters. Joel Prieto and Ville Rusanen were excellent as the two boys. Peter Savidge gave an insightful performance as Don Alfonso, very different from his comic turn in La Périchole at the Buxton Festival in 2002 and better sung than his Sharpless in Opera North's Madama Butterfly in 2007. Marie McLaughlin was luxury casting as Despina. I last heard her sing in Falstaff at Covent Garden in 2003. Easily worth four stars.

On the Sunday, we made our way out to the House for an Art Lover. This is a modern build of a design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh out in Bellahouston Park. It is an intriguing idea as the design was for a competition and was never put into action. Many charitable organisations put in funds and, after over a decade of work, the place opened as a museum, study centre, conference centre and site for wedding receptions.

In many ways the interiors reminded me of Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts House in Bowness-on-Windermere which Ross and I visited in 2008. It's the same period and follows many of the same European design trends of that time. The major difference is that Blackwell had been in regular use for a variety of purposes and so had some sense of atmosphere about it. Whilst interesting, ultimately, I found this site to be sterile.

We headed back into town. Ross had a nap. And then we headed off for food. We were incredibly lucky. We just sort of saw somewhere we liked the look of and went in. It was Sarti’s on Bath Street. Apparently, this is a well known good restaurant and we were very lucky to just walk in off the street. We had a very good meal indeed which, while expensive by our usual standards, was very good value for money.

Then Manon by Jules Massenet. During the time of this Journal, I have already attended two other productions of this work given by English National Opera and Opera North. Before them I had seen it at the Royal Opera House in 1994 and at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1987. I've never not enjoyed the work and this was a good evening too without it being in the same league as the previous night's fayre.

It was certainly colourful in Renaud Doucet's production although I felt that Francesco Corti's conducting was often overly loud and missed some of the work's elegance. Anne Sophie Duprels had both the heft and the charm for the title rôle. Paul Charles Clarke was a might bumptious as des Grieux. However, he was very moving in the Saint Sulpice scene. Harry Nicoll gave a good account of de Morfontaine. It was good and enjoyable but no more.

Having seen the film Twilight on New Year's Eve, Ross went out and bought the four books in the series. I first resisted but have now read them all. Actually, I quite liked the first one but then they descended into a formula and became more and more like a cross between Buffy and Anne Rice. I shall look forward to Jacob bursting out of his trousers in the next film as he metamorphoses into a giant wolf. But I'm not really looking forward to sitting through all of that plot.

I went to the first concert of the current Phil season back in September of last year. It seemed only fitting that I should therefore attend the last concert at the end of a very enjoyable series of concerts. But actually, probably, I shouldn't because I can't say that I was left feeling overly happy by the end. Back in 2007, Barry Douglas gave us a thrilling rendition of Brahms Piano Concerto No 1. His way with Brahms Piano Concerto No 2 was much less appealing, much too clangourous. After the interval, Carlo Rizzi gave Saint-Saëns Symphony No 3 - the Organ Symphony - an elegant but ultimately underpowered reading. It was alright but not really good by current Phil standards.

Not long after, the booking for the next season opened. Ross wanted to go to the first concert but the seats that he likes had been sold on subscription. So, I'm going on my own. I supposed that that's the price of having an orchestra that people really want to listen to.

And then we had our outhouses demolished. And, owing to a glitch in the finances, we've not yet got the garden shed installed in their place yet.

However, the plants have benefitted from the extra sunlight. The red hot pokers were the best they have ever been. The euphorbia has come back from the dead. Best of all has been the display from the astilbe which really has set the pond off nicely.

But I'm proudest of all of the potatoes which we have grown and are now eating our way through.

Then it was down to London for some Quaker training. Given that someone else was paying for the travel and one night in a hotel, I took advantage of the situation and took in some culture.

I was really looking forward to the Futurism exhibition at Tate Modern as it included several artists from The Divisionists exhibition. But I was disappointed. Firstly, the Futurists turned out to be extremely right wing in their views. Secondly, the Italian section was small and the Russo/French section large and uninteresting. Thirdly, the whole show felt disjointed as though it had been thrown together from a number of disparate ideas. I did like Umberto Boccioni's sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space and his painting Dynamism of a Human Body. I also liked Gino Severini's La Danse du Pan Pan au Monico. But, overall, it was an unsatisfactory experience for me.

The evening took me off to Holland Park for Roberto Devereux by Donizetti. I saw this work at the Buxton Festival a couple of years ago and was very impressed. I would have to be honest and say that, whilst I enjoyed this performance, I did not think that it was as good despite having a fine cast and the veteran Richard Bonygne at the helm.

Leonardo Capalbo was Roberto. I've now seen him perform several times with with Opera North - as Luigi in Il tabarro, as Paco in La vida breve, as Ismael in Nabucco and as Romeo in Roméo et Juliette. He seemed less at home here though he looked very good. Majella Cullagh was in commanding form as Elisabetta - I've seen her with Opera North as well as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. Yvonne Howard was the third principal and she too has been seen with Opera North as Auntie in Peter Grimes and at Holland Park as Laura in last year's La Gioconda.

Certainly, it went well but it didn't have the headlong descent into a thrilling and emotional climax the way that I remember the night at Buxton. Still, it was good.

Next year, Opera Holland Park is having a go at Giuseppe Verdi's La forza del destino and Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini. With a following wind, I hope to see them both too.

Saturday daytime saw me through my Quaker training and then I was in to town for a meal at Gaby's near Leicester Square tube station.

And then a play - my third in London this year after Entertaining Mr Sloane and Three Days of Rain. It was The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov given at the Old Vic. And that's theatre with which I have an old acquaintanceship - right back to student days when I attended national Theatre performances there. This show was part of the transatlantic Bridge Project linking Broadway and the West End. It was exceptionally well directed by Sam Mendes.

Heading the cast was Simon Russell Beale who I last saw as Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone at the National Theatre in 1995 and who was on television last year hosting BBC4's The Choral Tradition. He was joined by a strong ensemble which included Sinéad Cusack and Ethan Hawke. I was captivated by the whole throughout. The sense of loss, the sense of a dangerous future ahead, the personal intermingling with the public and the political. It was a great production of a great play.

Apparently, the same team will be doing The Three Sisters next year. I shall try to see that production as well.

A couple of weeks went by with little to report. Ross and I were going to go to a performance of Haydn's Creation by Southport Bach Choir but he felt ill so I went on my own. It was good and I enjoyed myself but, in amongst all of my despondency this summer, I do seem to have been doing an awful lot of things on my own.

However, I did go to Tate Liverpool with Roland for the Colour Chart. Neither of us was very impressed. There as an awful lot of art of the conceptual or science project school. You could look at it and appreciate the idea but nothing lasting has stayed with me. Jim Lambie's Zobop will give you an idea of the bright colours, nice ideas but lack of spiritual, emotional or intellectual nourishment.

A few days later, Ross and I got those three things in spades by going to the cinema broadcast of the National Theatre production of Racine's Phèdre starring Helen Mirren. This seems to be a growing idea allowing nationally funded companies to be seen more widely. We've seen the Royal Opera's Hänsel und Gretel at the Wigan Odeon and Doctor Atomic at FACT from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was a superb piece of theatre. Very difficult to bring off because it is a style so remote from that of today. It is rhetorical, high-flown, in-your-face. It is also unremittingly horror-struck. Helen was every inch the Queen, shredded by the pull of her desires. Dominic Cooper was the object of her (and our) lust, Hippolytus. Margaret Tyzack was fabulous as Phèdre's nurse, Oenone, gradually providing her with the path into temptation. Stanley Townsend was less good as Theseus. John Shrapnel got the best moment of the play and took his chance, delivering the long final speech which reports Hippolytus's bloody fate with gripping clarity and horror. Nicholas Hytner deserves all praise for his direction. The design by Bob Crowley and the lighting by Paule Constable were exemplary.

The National will be broadcasting Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well in October. We shall try to get to see that. In January, they will also be putting on a staged version of the novel Nation by Terry Pratchett which I have just finished reading. It was a good read so I look forward to that as well.

And, at this point, we are just heading into July, which, luckily for this narrative has been a quieter month than most. I went to a hotel near Runcorn for a briefing on City and Guilds' plans for the future one Monday and attended a thing called the BioBank on the following Monday. This latter is a long-term research project about lifestyles and health which will involve tens of thousands of people around the UK in their late middle age. I got a full MOT and was pronounced reasonably healthy though I could do with taking more exercise and reducing my BMI by a little.

Then it was down to London to see Robert.

On the Friday morning, he, Anna and I went to Tate Britain to see an exhibition of work by Richard Long. His work uses natural objects like the Norfolk flints arranged in a circle seen opposite. His work also includes maps and verbal documentation of walks he has taken which look and read like poems. All of these background materials felt to me like meditations on the natural landscape out of which came the physical art pieces. Much of it is profoundly simple and quite spiritual. As he writes... White Water Line demonstrates different types of energy. It uses china clay from the big clay pits near St Austell in Cornwall. This work represents the force of my hand speed, and the forces of water, chance and gravity. I make the top line of the image and nature makes the rest, revealing the cosmic variety of the microscale.

In the shop at the end of the exhibition, I discovered some books about Land Art. Richard Long works in this tradition. So does, Antony Gormley, Andy Goldsworthy and James Turrell. It would appear that, without knowing it, I have been for some time drawn to work of people working to a common theme. And actually, my Rossi also works within this tradition too. He was pleased when I pointed this out to him. He felt it helped to join things together.

Last year, I read Philip Reeve's quartet of novels about a dystopian future which included predatory moving cities. By the end, I was glad to be done with them. So, I was only being half-hearted when I turned to Fever Crumb which is a prequel to those novels. It was alright. It looks as though there will be more. If Ross buys them, I may continue reading but I shan't search them out.

A couple of Mondays later, Ross and I went to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool for an exhibition entitled New Radicals: From Sickert to Freud. All of the works were taken from the permanent collection although many were not usually on display. I wondered why as there were many fine works here. Oh, why hadn't they produced a catalogue? I would have snapped it up. It was a gem of a show. There were some well known works like the Walter Sickert opposite (The Bathers, Dieppe) and other well known works by artists such as LS Lowry, Lucian Freud and Ben Nicholson. But I didn't know that the Walker possessed a landscape by Bloomsbury Group member, Duncan Grant. And it's not a bad work either. I can't ever remember seeing it before the public before.

Then there were others like Christopher Wood, whose French Cyclists can be seen opposite, who I had never heard of. Liverpool artists George Jardine and Albert Richards, for example. And Matthew Smith. None of these turn up on the Gallery's own webpages and they don't feature in the short gallery guide on sale to the public. I shall go again and try to get Roland to accompany me.

Then it was time for the Buxton Festival. I had been booked in to see Messager's Véronique but events at work told on me and I decided to forego the added pressure of a mid-week trip into the Pennines. Instead, I waited until the Saturday and Ross and I made a day of it.

We stopped off at Lyme Park for lunch and then took in Peter Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse. It was an effective piece of music theatre. Quite whether or not I'd actually call it an opera is another matter. Jonathan Best turned in another fine performance as the bible thumping Arthur. I also liked James Oxley's tenor voice as the romantic Sandy. Damian Thantrey was passable as Blazes. There was a frisson at the end of the ghost story but I don't think I would seek this work out for a second viewing.

The evening was a different matter. We've had good experiences with Donizetti at Buxton having previously seen Maria Padilla and Roberto Devereux at the Festival and Mary Stuart and Anna Bolena from English Touring Opera. The size of the house seems to suit Donizetti's works. And so it was with Lucrezia Borgia.

Firstly, it was a triumph for Mary Plazas as Lucrezia Borgia. David Soar's Alfonso and Miroslava Yordanova's Orsini were not far behind. John Bellemer's Gennaro was good but not outstanding. But the work was splendid and well captured in Stephen Medcalf's production under Andrew Greenwood's baton. Like Roberto Devereux two years ago, we hurtled towards a finale of the purest horror as six people sit round a table and die from poisoning and a mother watches her own son die. This is what we want big tunes and big frocks and voices that are in our faces.

Next year, the Festival is having a go at Peter Cornelius's Der Barbier von Bagdad. I hope to see that too.

For want of any particular plan, this was a book I simply picked off our shelves because Ross had bought it and I had heard of it - Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. In the event, I found that it was a book which I could admire for its skill but it wasn't one that I liked at all. The writing is fevered and intense. Some of the scenes of grand guignol are very well imagined. But I simply didn't find it believable.

What have been absolutely ear-grabbing have been the Radio 4 adaptations of John LeCarré's spy novels with George Smiley as a lead or incidental character. So far, we've had Call For The Dead, A Murder of Quality and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Simon Russell Beale crops up again as Smiley. They have all been very nasty and very good.

Which pretty much brings me up to date.

I haven't mentioned either of our cats so far so here is a photograph of Nutkin and Jemima on our bed.

And here is one of Jemima with a newspaper