I caught Opera North's enhanced concert performance of Richard Strauss's opera Salome at the Philharmonic.
Don't you just hate it when you put something somewhere safe.
I've had three occasions in recent weeks of scouring the house from top to bottom in search of that perfectly logical but nevertheless inscrutable (to deter the light-fingered) place where something of immediate utility had been placed some time ago.
Heat stroke is no real excuse to seek safety in a public place. I suspect that, if I stumble and tumble into the chilled cabinet one more time, the staff at Sainsbury's will become suspicious.
In any case, I have to limit myself. When I tried the same ploy last year, someone put a yellow sticker on me saying that I was past my sell-by-date - and I was spread over the cheese counter at the time.
I caught Opera North's enhanced concert performance of Richard Strauss's opera Salome at the Philharmonic.
Strauss' music conjures a stomach-churning intensity out of the drama of Oscar Wilde's play. The work is vile, sordid and very nasty in the best possible way. Richard Armstrong was immense as the conductor churning the sound world, unleashing might climaxes and then thinning everything down to a spine-tingling whisper.
The four principles, Jennifer Holloway (Salomé), Arnold Bezuyen (Herodes), Katarina Karnéus (Herodias) and Robert Hayward (Jokanaan) all contributed to making every audience member feeling unclean by the end. There was no safe place to hide from the unpleasantness of it all.
A restorative pint was definitely needed afterwards.
Ross and I drove over to Barton to meet up with his family in advance of a meal at the Olé Olé Tapas Bar in Lincoln to celebrate Megan's (Ross's sister) 40th birthday.
The area of Lincoln that we were in was very pleasant, a bit away from the cathedral and castle but still replete with the sort of historical markers that leave people from the USA gobsmacked at the way we take our back story for granted.
The meal was pleasant and there was plenty of it so there was a degree of waddling as I moved away from the table.
Nevertheless, that didn't stop me from packing away a very tasty Sunday Lunch at the Marrowbone and Cleaver in Kirmington the following day.
My little sister will be sixty in August. Please don't ask me how I feel about that sentence. I'm not sure how safe I feel about leaving my middle years behind me.
As part of those celebrations, she and Ian have been on a rail holiday not dissimilar to the one Ross and I took in 2010.
Here they are in Budapest which we also enjoyed enormously.
Oooo!! Nile Wilson!! I know you are a gymnast but I'm really not sure whether to laugh or wince at this one.
It doesn't look like a safe thing for a lad to do unless you are planning to become a castrato.