There have been a number of occasions over the past fortnight.
The very excellent series of webcasts from the Metropolitan Opera in New York will shortly come to an end after over a year of offering free access to nightly broadcasts of their back catalogue. I've not been an assiduous follower but have managed to catch a fair few of those I have not seen before.
In that vein, I watched through a showing of Nico Muhly's Marnie. I was surprised by how old fashioned it was in many ways.
It takes its plot from Winston Graham's book rather than Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic variant but the whole treatment of the narrative is cinematic from beginning to end. The musical language too could easily be cinematic.
The whole piece is very well made (I think the costume designer deserves an award for their evocation of 1950s Britain) and not at all difficult to listen to or sit through. I'm just not sure that it's very good and certainly not the major occasion that it was being hyped up to be.
Mary has had a brush with Covid. Initially, it was simply an exercise in self isolation as both of her housemates had tested positive for and started showing symptoms of Covid. She remained negative while they both endured and then began to recover. Her term was therefore extended by three days.
And in the corresponding boys' house, they all had it. Too much mingling I tell you. Football and beer. Ha!! The latest figures from Scotland show an amazing correlation between incidences of coronavirus in young males 18-25 years' old and UEFA Cup matches. It's hardly creditable really.
Then Mary tested positive. Sigh. Just a headache to begin with and then feeling crummy for a few days. Thank goodness her one jab must have given her some protection. All the friends she knows that have had it have recovered OK with varying degrees of illness but all consistent with what we know of the virus. Mary has mild symptoms so she should be able to look back on this with a sense of having earned her Covid badge in the early 2020s.
Mum oscillates between realms of reality. Talking with her recently, she seemed all there until the moment she asked if I'd ever lived in the flat upstairs. On being told that I've never lived in the building, she brushed it aside by saying that she must have seen Ross then. On another day, she called the Abbeyfield Area Manager asking for her Linda but then had no recollection afterwards of the phone call. But it's interesting that mum can make complicated phone calls at certain points in her confusion.
She also become very impatient and impulsive. She got it into her head that she had left her shopping in the boot of my car one Wednesday morning whilst I was at yoga. That resulted in seven calls to our answer phone and five to Linda's mobile. Linda left a message on my mobile so I called round to the Old Vicarage once yoga was finished and left a message that mum's shopping had been delivered on Monday but that she had later asked for some deodorant which could be found in the black bag she carries around everywhere with her. By that evening when Linda made her usual phone call, mum was fine. It was as though nothing happened in the morning. The anxiety seems to flare up quickly and disappear just as quickly.
Mum celebrated her 94th birthday. Because Ross had been laid low with a stomach upset of some sort, I didn't see mum face to face on the day. I just didn't want to chance being the carrier of any sort of bacterial or viral infection that passed on gastroenteritis. Nevertheless, she got her card and her perfume and had her hair done as a special treat.
A couple of days' later, we went for a walk on the waterfront.
The following day, Ross and I celebrated the 25th anniversary of our knowing each other.
I never know from one year to the next whether or not Ross will make any sort of celebratory gesture. He acknowledges that anniversaries such as these mean absolutely nothing to him. I try not to take that personally.
Anyhow, this year, I ended up with a card but hadn't bought him one. I made do with some prosecco for myself.
We'd been going to visit the Lady Lever Art Gallery the following day but Ross had one of his narcoleptic days and so I put my foot down. I've done the supportive think on previous occasions and it's just too much for me these days trying to deal with a 45-year-old man who's just falling dead asleep and snoring by the side of me.
The following Friday brought the final farewell concert for Vasily Petrenko after fifteen years at the helm of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra as a Chief Conductor.
It was an excellent evening of music making. Petrenko and Simon Trpčeski joined forces for one of the best performances of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No2 - the slightly reduced numbers allowed to orchestra to be more rhythmically fleet and for the jazzy woodwind to blend with the overall sound rather than struggling to overcome it. The final race to the finish was impelled by an exciting propulsive buoyancy rather than sounding like the usual rushed clatter bang crash.
I adored Schreker's Der Geburtstag der Infantin and felt that Walton's Façade: Suite No1 was an absolute joy.
There were speeches but nothing went on for too long or became too mawkish. Then there were two encores with Elgar's Carissima given a tender and affectionate rendition and Mussorgsky’s Jolly Lads' Gopak from Sorochinsky Fair urging us on our way home thrillingly.