Birthday Octave
23 May

We've arrived at that time of the year when the setting sun comes into my work room and the celebration of my birthday is uppermost in the minds of all right thinking people. Ahem!

As has become a little tradition, I took the week off work to have a good time and, mostly, managed it.

The most frustrating thing was the weather which turned cold, damp and windy. So, I got no gardening done and set about doing some remedial painting and clearing my room instead.

Actually, I'm being disingenuous. The most frustrating moment of the week happened when, having made arrangements to meet up with Scot on Friday morning, I woke to find an email from him saying that he was ill and would have to cancel.

Well, having already achieved a boner the size of Florida and being already full of stirring thoughts as to how I was going to pound his sweet and gorgeous ass into oblivion, I was, to put it mildly, not best pleased.

Luckily, I do have the ability to laugh at those sorts of situation, at me, at the malignancy of the gods, etc. Thank goodness, I hadn't already dropped a Viagra before I switched the computer on. As it was, I was chewing carpets with frustration.

Anyhow, what did we get to see and do. Well, we started with Never Let Me Go, a film of the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley. It was OK and was as bleak as the book. Wouldn't want to see it again though.

That was on the Friday night. Come the Saturday afternoon, I high-tailed it into town to pick up Linda from Lime Street Station and take her over to my parents. We discussed tactics on the way and she agrees with me that mum responds far better to ideas which come from her than from me. It's unfair but, if we have to play it that way, that's the way we shall have to play it.

I was just quickly dropping Linda off as I had to be back in town by 5pm for the start of Die Walküre, the latest live relay from the Met in New York. After last year's Das Rheingold, my expectations were high and, if those expectations were not entirely met, then they were not entirely dashed either.

Eva-Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde and Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund made a splendid pair of Volsung twins getting Act I off to a good start. However, though James Levine kept the pace of the piece going well, there was something elemental missing from then end of the act which I've experienced on other occasions. I wasn't unhappy but I wasn't entirely satisfied.

Normally, I find most of the second act a bore. There are a number of long, expository passages re-telling the story and filling in some narrative from between operas. On this occasion, I was riveted.

Stephanie Blythe's Fricka was monumentally good and in Bryn Terfel she had a Wotan who matched her in vocal and histrionic skill. We also got our first sight and hearing of Deborah Voigt's Brünnhilde and she was good also. The whole of Act II was intensely good.

Act III is musically the most cogent of the three acts. Here it went well without thrilling me. The final scene of Wotan's Farewell with Brünnhilde lashed to a rock surrounded by fire was appropriately spectacular.

Die Walküre is much less of a sword and sorcery spectacle than is Das Rheingold. There is more human drama there. So, it's appropriate that the emphasis was less on the technology and more on the singing actors and, despite what the music critics are saying, I think that Robert Lepage's production strikes an appropriate balance between the two.

At this point in the year, I have now seen four opera performances and all of them have been telecasts rather than live theatrical experiences. I know that there's a difference. However, I would say that this is a way for me to get to see works that I wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity of sampling. And it fits with my notion of only attending performances of work which I've not seen for a decade or more. This is intended to help me save money, although it's not really working as there is still a lot on offer.

Take the four operas I've seen so far. Nixon in China I had never seen. Le Comte Ory, I last saw in April 1991 in a performance given by Welsh National Opera. Capriccio, I last saw in February 1985 in a performance given by Scottish Opera. Die Walküre, I last saw in November 1991 in a performance given, once again, by Scottish Opera. I think that this makes a point.

Sunday took Ross and I over to my parents' for Albert's birthday meal. It was a sadly jolly occasion. Albert opened his cards and presents. How much he really understood of what was going on was debatable but honour was served.

When we were talking about presents, mum told me that dad had suddenly started fixating about the piano piece Claire de lune by Debussy because he had listened to it on a wind-up gramophone when he was in India serving in the RAF during 1945-46. She asked me to buy a copy. I did better than that. I ripped a whole CD for him out of my own collection. We had a private moment in the kitchen over that one once he had grasped what I'd done and why.

The following day, I was at Lander Road which felt strange. What with illness, school holidays and various Bank Holidays, I've hardly been there in the past two months. And, I'm not sure how long I will be there in the future. Whether I become a student at Liverpool Hope or I get on the GTP programme, I do need to start thinking about planning for my logistical needs in more detail and Mondays would be an ideal opportunity to do just that.

On Tuesday evening, we took in Thor. Well, it was alright as these things go.

I was on safer cultural ground (for me) with Beethoven's Fidelio and the Wednesday. Keeping with my idea of only attending performances of works that I have not seen in over a decade, I checked for this work and found that the last time was October 1984 in a performance by Scottish Opera. Whilst I wouldn't insist on waiting nearly thirty years before seeing the work again, I wouldn't rush either. It's an odd piece; some very good moments followed by really untidy linking passages.

My view of proceedings wasn't helped by the box like set which was appropriate for the domestic nature of many scenes. Unfortunately, from my seat in the circle, the sightline caused by the ceiling of the box cut off the heads of the singers as they retreated to the back of the room. consequently, the first scene was populated by a group of singing decapitated torsos.

The cast was OK. The main principals sang well - Fflur Wyn (Marzelline), Jeremy White (Rocco), Emma Bell (Leonore), Andrew Foster Williams (Don Pizarro) - although I really didn't like the sound of Steven Harrison's voice (Florestan). Sir Richard Armstrong conducted well although the Opera North horns burbled quite a lot. It was good but no more and I would need a lot more than good to want to see and hear this work next time.

My birthday morning was fine. I got CDs of Wolf's Mörike Lieder (as recommended by BBC Radio 3's Building a Library and they were very good) from Ross, money from my parents, some garden vouchers from Ross's parents, an audio book of Arthur Ransome's Swallowdale from Linda and a book about church architecture from Mary. There were cards aplenty.

My own treat to myself for the birthday day was a trip over to Salford to see Opera North give Janacek's From the House of the Dead. The unpromising title gives pause for thought and the fact that the work is based on a short story by Dostoyevsky and is set in a Siberian prison camp will underline the fact that it is not a barrel of laughs.

And yet, it is filled with humanity and full of life-affirming hope. It is a work which I have held dear since I first saw it in 1982 in a stunning production from Welsh National Opera. This performance was the best I have seen since then and was certainly streets ahead of the horribly updated if well performed show I saw at the Coliseum in 1997.

Richard Farnes conducted a spell-binding account of the score; he really nailed Janacek's sound world. The cast was excellent but special mentions to Roderick Williams as the political prisoner Goryanchikov, Alan Oke (Skuratov), Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts (Filka Morozov), Claire Wilde (Alyeya), Robert Hayward (Shishkov) and David Kempster (Checkunov).

John Fulljames' production was good. I liked the projections of the words of the stories; it underlined the idea of individual testimony. I was less than enthusiastic about changing the injured eagle into a prisoner with an eagle tattoo on his back though I can see the practical reasons behind it. I felt that the final few moments were fluffed by an unnecessary directorial gloss of having Goryanchikov show fear at the outside world. That type of mental damage may be psychologically real but it's not what the music is about at that moment.

Nevertheless, I left the theatre unwilling to drive home immediately which is how it should be.

Friday brought frustration.

I've already mentioned how Scot and I did not meet up.

We also had a small problem with our domestic electrics which took pretty much the whole day for me to get sorted. But we now have a tame electrician who we know we can trust.

We finished the day by watching The Adjustment Bureau which was OK. It was good to see Terence Stamp still looking incredibly sexy at 73. There's hope for us all there.

I also need to note that I have discovered the world of downloads and am hooked. At a fraction of their retail cost, I have now downloaded piano music by Satie (which I have long wanted), Handel's Saul (so that Ross and I can listen to it in advance of our holiday in Buxton) and Sullivan's Ivanhoe (which I bought for sport since at £6.99 I was willing to take a punt whereas at £29.99 I wasn't).

A quick download. A quick burn onto CD through i-tunes. A quick use of a CD cover template in Word. Done. Dusted. Well pleased.

I just need to buy a mobile phone now in order really to join the 21st century.