Lean times?

 

 

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I do admire a country where it has the good grace to rain during the night.  This morning, bright sunlight and a brisk 14C to stimulate the circulation of the blood.

Although wittering on about the weather is enticing, it is not really apropos to what I should be talking about.  Viz. The Great Diet.  Again.

Although it feels as if we have been under the Self-Denying Ordinance for most of our lives, it is in fact, merely five days that we have been watching what we have been eating.  Five bloody days!  And this is supposed to go on months!

While the horror of that last statement has time to settle, snake-like, on the tenderer parts of my brain, the other parts of my brain which are not dedicated to thinking of food and drink wondered about my use of the phrase Self-Denying Ordinance and where I first heard it and what it meant, rather than what I have made it mean in my little universe.  When I use the phrase I take it indicate a signal piece of self restraint: like buying a stalls seat for the Opera rather than the front of the Dress Circle or buying the paperback version of an Art Exhibition catalogue rather than the hardback.  You know, pulling back from excess until it hurts!

I remember that the phrase is somehow connected to the Civil War and must surely be something that the Roundheads invented, as it lacks the self-indulgence of the Cavaliers, as they were not noted for the self-denying aspects of life.  I assumed that it was to do with Religion (with a capital ‘R’) and therefore Oliver Cromwell and one or all of the Puritans, Levellers, Ranters, Anabaptists, Quakers and my favourite of the sects, the Muggletonians.  I’m sure that I have missed some of the groups out that contributed to The World Turned Upside Down, but I am impressed with what I can dredge (albeit without much further detail) from my memory when I really try!

So, as a sort of knowledge is ever but a few brief clicks away, I Googled the phrase and found out (reminded myself?) that the Self-Denying Ordinance of 1645 was originally a bill which stated that no Member of Parliament (The House of Commons or The House of Lords) could hold any command in the army or navy.  Thus, neatly stopping inept (and King supporting) nobles from continuing command of any military force.  Unsurprisingly the House of Lords, composed as it was entirely of nobles, rejected the bill and a compromise bill was written which stated that parliamentarians from both houses who were military commanders would resign from their commissions, but could be reappointed.  This winnowing of the command of the military facilitated the eventual formation of the New Model Army.

Which is all very interesting (at least to me) but apart from the few minutes Googling, did not take my mind off what else there was to eat.

Don’t get me wrong, it is not as if we have done without lunch.  We went to our local restaurant, the one with the un-paralleled views of the Med and had a three-course meal!

My starter was a salad (good!) of quinoia (good?) green leaves, carrot and cherry tomato  (very good!) with feta cheese (baddish!)  I restrained myself from adding oil and ate no bread.  My second course was prawn and spinach stuffed sea bass (good! good! good!) and the drink that accompanied it was cold water (superb!)  No wine, no bread, no extra oil!  A positively saintly meal, at least in calorie terms.

And yet, I hear a faint clearing of the throat, as if the unasked question about the desert were hanging in the air.  Ah, yes, the desert.

OK, to be absolutely truthful I happened to catch a glimpse of the tart of the day that was based on Ferrero Rocher (extraordinarily bad!), and I was hooked.  And I did eat.  But, as a sort of culinary justification I did also eat half a slice of melon and, surely that must count for something in my over-weight defence?

I accompanied the meal with a 1.5L bottle of water and I drank the lot.  I am sure that this is excellent, but perhaps we should not have gone straight from the meal to the shops as Toni wanted to buy an auger.  And I am prepared to bet that that is the first time that I have used that word in an ordinary piece of writing.  I think that the only other time that I have found a use for such a word was in a distant crossword, where I can remember (with the skeleton of two letters already in place) thinking to myself that I knew what the word was and then feeling very smug with myself for so doing!  Anyway, the search for the auger was also matched by my more urgent search for a toilet.  There is a lesson to be learned there, I think.

As the daylight fades and twilight steals up on the dieter, the temptations of the night approach.  I don’t know why it is that darkness encourages hunger, but it does, and sometimes, no often, no always, a piece of raw cauliflower or carrot does not send the demons of hi-carb desires back into the shadows.

I am sure that Toni is not going to let me forget my desert backsliding, and it is right that he does so.  I am hitching my lack of sliming motivation to the more Puritan regimen that Toni has adopted.

Here’s a drink (of water) to the world turned upside down and self-denying ordinance!

Cheers!

-o0O0o-

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Nothing is easy

“Computers make things easier!”

There was a time when that little mantra might have been a source of fond hope.  There was, who knows how long ago, a sort of tipping point where the manifest failures of new technology were offset by the promise that after a few tweaks everything would be button pushing easy!

I remember as a smallish child I was given a Maths Computer to try out by a friend of the family, no, bugger that designation, he was my uncle in all but name.  He was a maths lecturer and was able to get his hands onto all the newest technology and I was privileged to try it out.  And it was, indeed exciting to feel that one was in the vanguard of modern education – well, more playing around with a gadget, even if that gadget was to do with maths!

As this ‘computer’ was in the late 1950s you might wonder what it looked like.  It was basically a long metal box with a little Perspex window in the centre with a coin-shaped cut out on the bottom right edge, and with a large button to be pushed along a notched groove parallel with the right hand side.  To work the machine, it had to be pre-loaded with a series of cards on which there were maths questions.  You used the button to load up a card which then presented the viewer with a maths question that you read through the little Perspex window and there was a space underneath the window for you to write in your answer.  After the answer was written, you pushed the button up a notch; your answer was now behind the window and the official answer was revealed and you could put a tick or a cross in the little coin cut out and push the button on to get a new question and a new space for your answer!

How cute that now seems!  And there were design flaws as the mechanism rucked up the paper and the whole thing had to be disassembled to get it going again.  But the excitement of being a pioneer never left me and unfortunately dictated my technology buying infatuation for the future.

As soon as they became available for general consumption I bought calculators, digital watches, handheld computers, personal assistants, computers, radios, cameras – you name it and I bought it, as long as it had electronic thingies making it function.

And most of them failed or crashed or simply let you down.  One computer, my Sinclair QL, actually reduced me to tears after the keyboard froze and, in spite of my plaintive pleadings with it to work, it steadfastly did not.  I retired to my bedroom and sobbed into the pillow knowing that I would have to work all night to get the work done that I had to do by the morrow.  Those were the days when ‘saving’ a document could take a couple of minutes and the computer would be inoperative during this time.  I hadn’t saved and I had to redo.  I went to bed at 6.30 am and got up at 7.30 am for a full day in school!

And that was not the only time that faith in computers was misplaced.  How many program failures, software failures and messages like “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” with a digital bomb fizzing on the screen have seared themselves into my technological memory.  I can remember buying programs where the developers encouraged users to report failures so that the inevitable bugs could be ironed out.  Bug free was the impossible dream; bug ridden was the everyday reality.

But when things worked it was like magic!  And that remembered ecstasy was enough to get one through the difficult times when nothing appeared to be working, nothing would print, nothing would load up properly and the screen was blank.  But we were encouraged to think that all the machines (all the expensive machines when you compare them with what you get for your money now) that we used were John the Baptist Computers, all of them preparing the Way for The Computer that would truly be The One!  I’m still waiting!

Where, you might ask, does all this come from?  What has prompted this remembrance of technological pain past?  The simple answer is, buying a ticket on line.

For the first time in a long time I am not going to the opera alone.  I have a fellow enthusiast accompanying me!  As I am a season ticket holder I can get a small discount on extra tickets and I offered to purchase a ticket in the hope that the discount would be able to buy us a cup of coffee at the interval at least.  As it turns out the discount may stretch to a couple of small beers, if we are lucky.  But that is not the point; the point is that simply purchasing the thing was a bind.

Buying a ticket has to be thought of in terms of how easy using the computer is to purchase it compared with picking up the phone and doing it via a real person at the other end of the line.

It took me two attempts and to complete the operation (in spite of the fact that I am a registered season ticket holder) and necessitated re-setting my pass word for the boking site; using the details on my credit card; using details on my season ticket; taking a code from my mobile phone; taking a further code from my email account; filling in part of a form; deciding just which of the many reductions I was entitled to; other bits and pieces and, finally, printing out the ticket myself on my own machine – and for all this I was charged a €1.50 fee for -  what exactly?

Would it have been easier on the phone?  I think the answer is probably yes, it would have been easier, but my ticket might have been waiting for me in the theatre, rather than being in my hot little hands. 

And, as usual, I will know what to do the next time round.  This is the ‘Billy Bookcase Syndrome’ based on the famous bookcase of the same name in IKEA.

The Billy bookcase is one of the basic pieces of furniture that is sold in the millions.  Countless people have unpacked the bits, looked at the illustrated page of instructions and thought to themselves, “Well, this can’t be that difficult!”  Then they try and make it and find that, yes, the basic principles are fine and easy to understand, but then the ‘why didn’t they mention’ element creeps into the creation: the unstated assumptions of the obvious that neophytes need to know, nay, need to be told.  And as you make the first Billy bookcase you know that the second and succeeding ones are going to be so much easier.  In reality, of course, that attitude is one of the ‘saving lies’ by which we live our lives.  However, the general principle holds true: the second time is easier than the first.

The real tragedy of this shared experience is that the results of that experience are not shared and therefore do not appear to inform a reworking of the instructions to include the things that you thought you didn’t need to point out.

Remember, we live in a world where someone bought a mobile home and when the owner went on a drive they put the home into ‘automatic’ and then went to make a cup of tea, as they assumed that ‘automatic’ meant that the thing would drive itself.  After the inevitable crash, the owner of the van sued the manufacturer for not making it clear what ‘automatic’ would and wouldn’t do!  And won. 

If that story is any reflection on the standard of public understanding then it is difficult to imagine any set of rules for anything like building a pre-fabricated bookcase being smaller than War and Peace!

But in my specific case I say, bring on the next person who wants me to buy a ticket for the Opera, I’m prepared!  I think.


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Do not die Seneca!

Every music goer has his or her own story of ‘The Supressed Cough’ or perhaps a description of when the supressed cough came out, and the consequent feeling that the entire audience was glaring in your direction wanting to rip you to pieces for ruining their favourite passage in the piece.

My moment came towards the end of the first half of The Coronation of Poppea in the Liceu last night during the death of Seneca.  This is one of my favourite parts in the opera and I would have preferred to have enjoyed it in tranquillity, rather than while wondering which of us was going to die first, Seneca with his vein slitting or me trying to keep in a cough that was bursting its way to the surface like magma from a volcanic explosion.

Things were not helped by the fact that the orchestra was in keeping with the ‘early’ nature of the music with sparse and delicate orchestration and so there was rarely sound sufficient to mask any “audience participation”.  I found that I could not breathe properly and had to take tiny bird-like sips of air so that I didn’t activate the full cough that any reasonable breath would have guaranteed. 

Somehow or other I managed to keep the cough under control, though to the people sitting behind me there must have been some strange writhing to observe before black-out and merciful release.

I will spare you the phlegmy details of that luxuriant cough, but the relief did not make up for the previous minutes where the sonic restrictions imposed on an audience member trying to be considerate had appreciably limited my life expectancy.  Not coughing I felt, was my Sydney Carton moment, “It is a far, far better thing I do etc.”  Admittedly I was not taken to the guillotine, but I did die a little death during the struggle for silence!

Apart from that, what was the performance like?

Well, this production of The Coronation of Poppea (1642) by Claudio Monteverdi was a concert version so there is no dramatic production, scenery and costumes to speak of, though the singers made the most of their score-bound, music stand limited opportunities – but the major action was through the music and the voices, as it should be.

One of those who defied the limitations of a concert performance and who had a great stage presence was Filippo Mineccia, a counter-tenor singing Ottone.  He had a beautifully modulated voice and, while it lacked power, it was expressive and touching.

The key roles of Nerone (David DQ Lee – counter-tenor) and Poppea (Sabrina Puértolas) were central to the drama.  Puértolas brought more raw sexuality and sensuality to her singing than I have heard in this role, while the oafish, self-satisfied vulgarity that Lee brought to the character of Nerone was a counterpoint to and at the same time a development of the characteristics inherent in the character of Poppea.  I would have to describe Lee’s voice as a Helden-counter-tenor, it had a throaty fullness that could, and did fill the Liceu and gave a real masculinity to the role.  This was a voice that could easily be imperial and the contrast with the more delicate voice of Mineccia gave a dynamic to the drama of the interactions of the characters.

Maite Beaumont sang Ottavia and produced a version of the Lament that I have not heard bettered in any live performance that I have been to.  Her voice was point perfect and the pathos that she injected in her song of loss was astonishing.  She showed herself to be dramatically and vocally versatile in singing through a whole range of passions, and each one of them convincing.  For me, her voice was the stand out performance of the evening.

Luigi De Donato as Seneca was magisterial and his vocal range was strong in every register the music asked him to hit.  A rich and full voice that seemed to relish the challenges in the role.

There was some doubling in the roles so that, if you were not sure about the narrative, you could be confused as a character you had just heard being one person suddenly transmogrified into another, but the music led you surely and with voices of this quality who cares if you are kept guessing!

The role of Arnalta was taken by Krystian Adam, and he made the most of the opportunities that it offered especially in the lullaby, a real moment of pathos in the power struggles going on in the imperial court.

Drusilla was sung with intelligence and grace by Verrónica Cangemi, while Franciso Fernández Rueda sang his variety of roles with competence and musical precision as did Cyril Auvity.

The scoring of the piece allows the music director a fairly free hand in how it is presented.  I have heard productions of The Coronation of Poppea which have been accompanied by what sounded like the 101 strings of Mantovani in lusciously Romantic music and I’ve also heard ‘authentic’ productions where I have failed to recognize any of the instruments in the orchestra.  This version led by Jean-Christophe Spinosi was a little more conventional.  The orchestra (Ensemble Matheus) resources were limited, with recognizable strings, continuo, harpsichord, lute, harp and what looked like a dulcimer.

I have to admit that I was a little disconcerted by the sounds in the opening of the opera, by what I took to be roughness from the wind section, there was also a certain scrappiness from some of the strings – but as the piece progressed so I became more immersed in Spinosi’s approach.

You could say that Spinosi was less of a conductor and more of an actor in the piece as he sat, stood, clapped, stamped, smiled and encouraged.  He was not afraid to go for dissonance in the name of drama, but at the same time, he was more than prepared to manufacture musical moments of tremulous delicacy.

When, at the end of the production and for the curtain call, everyone, singers, director and the entire orchestra came to take a bow in a line together, it seemed like a fitting accolade for what was an ensemble piece realized by individual virtuosi!

This is being typed on my MacBook Air now that the battery has been replaced.  I was informed by the Apple Centre that I went to that they would have problems finding a battery because my machine was ‘vintage’!  Vintage!  I asked how this was possible and I was told that Apple describes as ‘Vintage’ any machine over five years old, and that specific parts would cease to be readily available.  If this is true then it is a truly disgraceful example of forced obsolescence.  However, in spite of the machinations of Apple, they did manage to get a replacement battery and installed it in double quick time for which I am grateful.

And what a joy this machine is to use, I am now remembering! 

It turns out that I do not want a two-in-one tablet and laptop; I do not want a larger screen; I do want a ‘proper’ keyboard layout; I do not need the extra memory that I thought I did.  In short, I should have stuck with what I already had, instead of which I spent a lot of money on a ‘better’ machine that I do not like using.  Ah well, hoist by my own gadgets.

I have to admit that coming back to a small, light and stylish machine like my MacBook Air is an absolute delight: yes, it is overpriced and it doesn’t have the specs that many cheaper machines boast, but it does have an illuminated symbol on the front cover and it still looks as slick as it did when I bought it.  All those Vintage years ago!

Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!

Never ask a swimmer what he is thinking about as length after length is completed: he might tell you!

            Which is a lead up to my telling you what I was thinking about as I swam my way through my daily metric mile.  I would love to admit that poetic ideas swirl through my mind as my flailing arms create more substantial currents in the placid salty waters of my local pool; or that the themes from my Open University courses course through my mind – but that would be, generally, a lie.

            What actually went through my head was the phrase, “Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!”  If I could work out why this, admittedly delightful, phrase went through my mind, I feel that I would gain a valuable insight into my basic motivations and understand my character with a clarity which is so sadly lacking in my day to day existence.  But I can’t.  It came out of nowhere and, once I had thought of it, like one of those irritatingly compulsive snatches of music that you dread hearing because you know that you will be hearing in your mind for the rest of the day, it battered its way back and fore in my brain for the rest of the swim.

            I know swimming is essentially boring, but it’s not so boring that the repetition of an out of context phrase is enough to keep you stable.  I had to think of context and I soon realized that my knowledge of this phrase comes from an opera.  Admittedly an opera that I have seen on television rather than in an opera house, but one that was deliberately provocative and created ‘problems’ in Cardiff, prompting a far-right, so-called Christian demonstration outside the Millennium Centre shocked at the language and themes in the piece which was based on a musical interpretation of ideas suggested by the Jerry Springer show.  The actual phrase was part of the lines sung by a participant in the show called Baby Jane who enters singing,

This is my Jerry Springer moment. 

I don’t want this moment to die. 

So dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians. 

I don’t want this moment to die

I had actually remembered the line as “Coat me in chocolate . . .” which is not as effective as the ‘real’ line, but that is not the point.  My mind did not stay on this, shall I call it ‘concept’, and instead as I continued my swim I began to think about other odd lines in operas.

            Probably my favourite odd line in opera is from Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten which is, “And a box of Swan Vestas!”  An opera which stays in my mind from the Welsh National Opera production in Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, because when Albert’s flowered circlet (he had been crowned Virgin King of the May) was thrown into the audience, it was caught by my friend Robert!

            “Pigeons on the grass, alas!” was the title of one of James Thurber’s wonderfully funny occasional pieces written for the New Yorker.  As Satan said to an insufferably smug member of the angelic throng in an unpublished extract from Paradise Lost that Milton never used, “Not to know Thurber is to argue yourself unfunny, the lowest of your throng!”  It was with unparalleled delight that, having bought an interesting looking second-hand record in Kettering market, I discovered not only the music of Virgil Thomson, but also the ineffably pretentious libretto of the one-and-only Gertrude Stein and the fact that “Pigeons on the grass, alas!” was one of the more memorable lines from the opera Four Saints in Three Acts by Thomson and Stein!

            When I finally got to see a production of this somewhat obscure opera in London with the ENO I was overwhelmed and turned to the staid lady sitting next to me and said breathlessly, “Wasn’t that wonderful!”  To which she replied, “No.”  Ah well, each to his or her own. 

And “pigeons on the grass, alas!” by the way, is one of the more comprehensible lines in this opera.  For odd quotations you are spoilt for choice in Four Saints in Three Acts, but if I had to choose just one, it might be, “Having happily had it with a spoon.”  And if that doesn’t make you want to find out more and listen to it, then you are made of sterner stuff than I.

I will end with a line that I did not hear in the whole opera, but heard in an extract, “Life without hats?  How extraordinary!”  That is a line where context really makes it.  I have forgotten the composer, but I know someone who will know, if I can be bothered to ask.  Or there is always Google, or ‘research’ as we used to call it!

            Now off to Terrassa for a Birthday Celebration for which, for once, all the presents are ready and wrapped!