25 October
The Mildness Continues

Well, we've got to the hour change again.

It's still incredibly mild compared with this time last year. We don't yet have the central heating on for more than a couple of hours a day. We're just putting the winter duvet on the bed but it's not a necessity yet. I haven't looked at the thermals yet and I've not yet started taking winter vitamins either. However, I really should contact Gail about re-commencing my Bowen sessions.

This lunchtime Ross and I took the car to the waterfront and ate our sandwiches looking over a sun drenched Liverpool Bay. We certainly wouldn't have managed that twelve months ago.

But to go back a week.

Saturday night, as a final treat for my holidays, I drove Roland and I over to Leeds for a performance of Leos Janacek's The Adventures of Mr Broucek by Opera North at their home base in the Grand Theatre. It's one of Janacek's least performed works and, though John Fullijames' production and Martin André's conducting made a good case for the work on the night, I can't say that I'm going to actively seek out further performances. Good but not exceptional.

John Graham-Hall put in another of his fine performances as Broucek. He was ably supported by Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (last heard as Peter Grimes), Jonathan Best (last heard at the Buxton Festival this year in The Lighthouse) and Donald Maxwell (last heard at the Buxton Festival this year in Lucrezia Borgia). Anne Sophie Duprels may have been an excellent Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly two years ago and a charming Manon for Scottish Opera this May time but here I could not understand a word of what she was singing.

Monday I was at school again with my usual class. I helped create a wall display. This is going to be a skill which I shall need if I'm going to enter the profession. I was quite pleased with my first effort - I had a lot of help and encouragement from the Teaching Assistant in the classroom.

Tuesday took me back to work and straight into an Induction session followed by the beginnings of my intensive three weeks training the troops in customer care.

Wednesday evening brought Welsh National Opera to the Liverpool Empire with Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata. David McVicar's production is handsome and will, no doubt, bear oft reviving. Andrea Licata's conducting was acceptable. Myrto Papatanasiu was fine as Violetta, Alfie Boe was alright as Alfredo (he has the notes but not the full amplitude of voice) and Dario Solari (last heard in Il trovatore) made a sonorous father figure. David Soar (last heard at the Buxton Festival this year in Lucrezia Borgia) was luxury casting as Dr Grenvil.

But overall, I have to say that, although I was engaged throughout, I was not much moved. Again I find myself saying that this was good but not exceptional.

Thursday took me away from work to deliver a commercial training course out near Buxton. That meant a very early start - I drove away from the house before 6am and was passing by the Cat and Fiddle at round about 8am. It was a long day, my client group were not the best and the website I was working with kept crashing. Still, I'm a professional and I coped.

Friday was just a work day. A very tired work day.

It's not long since we were at Clwyd Theatr for Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. Saturday night we went back again - this time for Festen, a Danish play deriving from a film made in the Dogme tradition. Overall, it was very good though harrowing in its intensity.

Ninety minutes straight through. No let up from revelation after revelation concerning peadophile abuse within a wealthy family. Some of the plotting didn't hang together when I thought about it later but the central performances carried me through.

I also wondered what might have happened if the whole had been translated to the Valleys. How would a predominantly Welsh audience have coped with that?

We also ate in the theatre. This was not as good. It wasn't bad. It certainly seemed to be home cooked rather than bulk purchased. But my main course, anyway, did have the feeling of something that had been heated up more than once. I wouldn't avoid eating there again but then I wouldn't race to seek it out.

There's been various media things as well.

I keep listening to the Radio 4 Classic Serial. In recent times we've had the latest installment in the Complete Smiley series with The Looking Glass War. This was reasonable but not as good as preceding episodes. Since then, there's been Beau Geste and Howard's End which were also most reasonable.

On the debit side, what was a bit of a let-down was the recent Book at Bedtime which took us through Eoin Colfer's sequel to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series And Another Thing. It felt more like a pastiche than a work in its own right. I think that Colfer should stick to his own Artemis Fowl novels.

I've bought the new Naxos recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No5 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko. It was good but not as good as last year's concert which was a sensation. I suppose it's one of those arguments for live performance against recordings. That evening was very special; the chances of repeating it in the recording studio were limited.

TV has given us a few things of note.

The BBC have come up with their usual autumnal series based on a classic wok of English literature. Previous years have given us Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit and Bleak House, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, George Elliot's Daniel Deronda and Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now. This was good without being outstanding. Frankly, it's a bit heavy on the heritage. The technical department have worked out how to film candlelight and firelight and so we are treated to an overdose of these effects.

Nevertheless, the settings are handsome, the playing is well-rounded and well-grounded and the script is literate. It's good Sunday evening viewing.

I mentioned Trinity earlier. This has turned into something of a damp squib. It's not raunchy enough, not camp enough, not stylish enough to really carry the day. And they should have spread the buttock quotient throughout the series rather than top loading the whole affair.

Better by far has been True Blood, an American import which has at last begun to appear on Channel Four. The vampire plot is stylishly gothic and it features among its cast Australian Ryan Kwanten. There seems to be something in his contract which demands that he disrobe at least once every episode. We applaud this.

It's also a very good series. And I would say that even if Mr Kwanten did not take his clothes off. Honest.

Last Chance to See has come to an end and has proven to be the best factual programme that I have seen so far this year. One of the most delightful episodes was about the kakapo, a large flightless parrot which lives only on an island sanctuary in New Zealand. The crowning glory of this episode was when Sirocco, the island's tame parrot, tried to mate with the back of Mark Carwardine's head.

The whole series has been excellent. And I would say that even if Sirocco has not gone through his gutsy mating ritual. Honest.

What's even more astonishing is that Sirocco the kakapo has his own Facebook account. Don't believe me. Use Google to prove me wrong.