Life Begins At 30?

Well, the birthday weekend was superfantastic fun! We did watch Peter's Friends on Friday night, after a huge dinner of steak pie and mash, and I still like it. Barney hated it though, which was surprising. He's a funny bugger sometimes though so I didn't pay much attention. I think it was the 'luvviness' of the whole thing that got on his nerves, but I do adore the Emma Thompson character. How can you not love someone with a cat called Michael?? Never mind, the rest of us enjoyed ourselves watching it again.

On the Saturday I woke late and thought I'd be the last person to emerge... I was wrong! When I got up there was nobody stirring except for me. I was joined by Jasper the Cat (above) when I let him in from the rain and was most surprised when he didn't immediately start yowling for food. He's a proper cat though, he'd been out eating mice and things so he was more concerned about his tail being wet than getting a mouthful of Meow Mix or the like. After towelling him down he settled to sleep on the breakfast bar and purred and purred and purred. Wow! What a moggy!

Once the others had emerged and we'd scoffed the fresh duck eggs Chris had left out for us we took a wander into Crail and went to the pottery. Lots of lovely, lovely things to browse there. After that we went to St Andrews to get the finishing touches for the dinner. Dinner consisted of a lovely fish pie made by Cat and cranachan for pudding. Yumsle! Oh, and lots and lots of wiiiiiiiiiiiine. Hooray! There was general hilarity and the like until at around 1am Chris bunged on some Puccinni for me and we had a bit of a sing along.

Needless to say I had a bit of a head on me on Sunday. Uuuurgh. Hangover not fun! So much fun acquiring it though I didn't mind too much. Sunday was spent very gently recuperating and watching The Student Prince as I've never seen it before. A bit of silly old nonsense really but the music is lovely and Mario Lanza has one of those voices that just makes you go 'wibble'. After a late lunch and a cup of tea Jonny and I piled into Barney's car for the trip back to Auld Reekie. We only had to stop once to let me out for a breath of air and then again in Dunfermline for Barney to use the facilities. Not much but when you're hungover and want your pyjamas you really do wish they'd hurry up and invent transporter technology!

The Big Day

Happy birthday to meeee!

Happy birthday to meeee!

A very merry birthday to meeee!

Yep, the big birthday weekend is finally upon me. I'm off to sunny (??) Fife this evening for a weekend of food and drink and fun with friends. Chris has kindly agreed to host the kinder at his Crail cottage this weekend (don'tcha just love alliteration?) so hopefully we'll all have a jolly good time. It's not going to turn into Peter's Friends.... honest! How old were they all supposed to be anyway? Older than us surely? Cat and I were trying to work that out the other day. We have a sneaking suspicion the characters seemed so much older because that film came out when we were at school and our adulthood seemed so very far away... I'm sure it's still not got all of it's luggage in the door anyway. I still love scuffing through leaves and blowing bubbles in my lemonade. I don't think that's ever going to go away ;o)

Even though the big day is not yet upon me I haven't done too badly for gifts so far. My lovely, lovely colleague Susan gave me a bottle of champagne (which I shall have to remember to pack this evening) and lovely, lovely gorgeous, beautiful Nat sent me shoes. Oh joy! I'm telling you, receiving flowers at work is lovely - it's happened to me once and it was a most wonderful surprise but receiving surprise shoes at work is even better! My delight even infected the delivery man and cheered him right up.

The shoe joy continued further in the day. I was going to go for drinks with some of my colleagues but we were all too lame/tired/busy/out of the country to get our act together and actually go out. Instead I decided to take myself down to town for a little late night shopping. Naomi had informed me there was a sale on at Nine West and I decided to go and check it out. I almost didn't but I'm so glad I did because I found the Shoes That Got Away in the sale for £5. Five freakin' pounds sterling! Oh my goodness, how happy I am! I was so happy to spot them sitting very quietly on the shelf, out of the way, just waiting for me to scoop them up and take them home. I will admit to giving them the tiniest of surreptitious little hugs when I picked them up. You can't blame me, I have been longing for them for nigh on twelve months now!

See, sometimes dreams can come true.... and for the bargainlicious price of £5!!

The Fat Lady Was Singing All Right!

I went to see Scottish Opera's production of Madame Butterfly last night, which is great because I'd been wanting to see it ever since I found out it was on (way back in January). I had thought of trying to get a group together to go for my birthday but the logistics of arranging the tickets and getting a night to suit folk was too much for me to contemplate so I didn't bother. As luck would have it I received an email offer from those lovely people at 5pm.co.uk for stall seats at £10. Bargainous!

The seats we ended up with were pretty dang good as well, M 11 and 12. The supertitles on the near side were slightly obscured by the rails on the box but, as I don't need specs, I was fine. Kirsty was a little less fortunate because she forgot her spectacles but she's seen it before so wasn't too bothered. The lyrics are mostly mince anyway! As long as you get the gist of the plot you're fine.

So, the plot...

Madamemoiselle Butterfly is a noble hard on her luck who has had to turn to being a geisha to support herself. This could be true, it might not be - she sings about how everyone in Japan is from noble birth and she knows what it was like to be rich. I think she probably did because she's such an idiot really. Sorry to be blunt but she is. Anyway, she 'marries' this American guy - Pinkerton. He's under the impression it's a nice little arrangement with a geisha but she's looking at it as actual matrimony. She's only supposed to be but 15 years old you see. Heh, the lady singing the part was one of these large sopranos so when she sang that you kind of thought "15 what??? 15 stone?"

Anyway, despite the sniggering from the audience, she goes on to sing about how she's giving up her ancestors and becoming a Christian for her lovely American. So naturally, all her relations disown her. Bummer, but she's in love so she doesn't care. So her and this Pinkerton chap set up home after a lot of singing about moonlight and love and so on and so forth.

Cut to three years later. She's waiting for Pinkerton to come back... and there's a three year old toddler tottering about the place. The neighbourhood is rife with rumours that she's a big slut and nobody but her believes Pinkerton is coming back. The 'marriage broker' keeps trying to set her up with other men but she refuses them all. She sings the lovely aria about what it will be like the day he does come back and how she'll hide from him and when he finds her they'll be so happy. The audience are sitting there going 'Yeah right' and remembering the hara-kire dagger that she made a fuss of in Act 1...

So Pinkerton does turn up back in Nagasaki, with his new wife in tow. Dun dun daaaah! He didn't know she had his son but when he finds out it is decided that he and his new wife will take the child. The snivelling coward doesn't even want to speak to Butterfly and runs from the house leaving the new wife to speak to her about the baby. Butterfly realises what's going on, kisses her son goodbye, blindfolds him and then cuts her throat with the dagger. Pinkerton finds her lying in a pool of her own blood and that's the end. Not a terribly jolly story.

The opera itself is superb though. I didn't enjoy it as much as La Boheme and I didn't cry as much as at Turandot but I did have the urge to climb up on the stage and punch Pinkerton's lights out. I'm very surprised that the consul friend in the script was so tolerant of his terrible behaviour, especially seeing as it is made clear that he has a soft spot for Butterfly himself. The chap who played Pinkerton did get booed when he took his curtain call but he hammed up the villain pose for it so I don't think he minded all that much.

That Puccini's a geeeeniouuwse man!

Life Is A Cabaret Old Chum?

I went to the strangest thing last night, this cabaret that was part of the Leith festival. Now, I'm not entirely sure what cabaret involves but I've seen the film and it wasn't quite like what we saw! Admittedly they started with a burlesque stripper, but she wasn't very good. Give the girl her due though, she did get up in front of a room full of people and strip to "In the Navy" by the Village People. That's gonna take some balls surely - though not literally thank goodness!

Then there was a couple of African dudes that came on. One did a couple of poems but he lost me on the second one, my mind wandered and suddenly I had no idea what he was on about. Poetry's not really my bag baby and I get on with it even less when it's being spoken. I don't know why, I just do. Anyway, then they played "Music of the Ancestors" on some plinky-plonky instrument that looked like it was made out of a gourd. Um, very nice but it's not exactly the Weimar Republic is it?

After those fellows they brought out a Bavarian lady with an accordion. She taught us how Bavarians drink and sang a song about a pig. I think it was something to do with cutting up the pig. A song about making sausages perhaps? Eurovision hopefuls take note! Then she sang a song about a guy who tried to climb up a ladder into his sweetheart's bedroom but his rival knocked the ladder over and he drowned in the cess pool. Charming! She finished off by bringing out a buxom Bavarian maiden to teach us the drinking song that involves rocking back and forth and side to side. I suspect the Bavarians do this in order to get even more drunk even more quickly but I'm not going to knock them for that! I'm sure the songs sound a lot better through the ol' beer ears for a start.

After the fun of Bavarian drinking they calmed us all down again with a chap who does... I don't know what you'd call it. He played with balls I guess. Right, you've seen Labyrinth? Ok, pull your attention away from memories of David Bowie in those leggings... That's it, move your gaze upwards... He's the troll king and he's sort of juggling bubbles. See it? Clear glass globes that he's rolling around and running over his hands. Ok, the guy in the Leith cabaret did this as well, only he wasn't David Bowie in tight tights and he did drop them a couple of times. Give him his due though, he picked them back up, made a joke of it and carried on. The show must go on!

Just when I wasn't sure how much more I could take they brought out some Annie DeFranco/KT Tunstall wannabe with a guitar who sang about how rubbish it was to work for Standard Life. Bless her, no that's not what you went to university for. We went to university in order to avoid getting a proper job for a few more years, drink ourselves silly and hopefully get laid. However, when you come out the other end and realise everyone and their bloody dog has a degree you curse Maggie Thatcher (because that's what you've been doing your whole life so why stop now?), get a job and continue trying to get laid. Whiny guitar songs that use typewriters as percussion don't usually factor into it. And while I'm on the subject, the typewriter was completely out of place for that song because it was obsolete by the time I got to uni and I must have been a good 5 years older than that girl. I guess a laptop wouldn't give the same timbre though. God grief, I'm getting very bitter and cynical in my old age! Ah well.

By this point we weighed up the pros of staying and seeing what else they could wheel out against the cons of missing the last bus and being stuck in Leith. We were so near the docks you could smell the brine in the air - it smelled a bit like poo actually. The older and wiser side of us won the argument and we legged it during the interval. I guess life might be more like a cabaret than I realised - you expect it to be full of excitement and sex and really wild things and it turns out to be a Bavarian lady singing about a pig!!

WTF?

So, I get a lot of junk mail sent to my work account. The spam filters are rubbish so I'm always getting emails telling me I've won the Eurolottery or that somebody needs help to get $17 million out of the Ivory Coast or something. I generally just delete them straight away.

This morning I think I was spammed in the name of art. I got an email entitled Banksy: Manifesto which I almost deleted straight away. The fact that I recognised the name Banksy made me pause for a moment and wonder if that email was just straightforward spam? I could see in the reading pane that there was a link at the bottom so I Googled "Banksy Manifesto" and came up with several sites, the main one being this one:

http://www.banksy.co.uk/manifesto/index.html

Now, it would seem Mr Banksy is trying to make a point about... um something I guess. I'm not immediately sure what that is though. Call me a thicky philistine but I sometimes need pointers in my art appreciation. There was no information on the website about the point he's trying to make or why I got an email directing me to the site, and that's just annoying in my book.

What's even more flipping annoying is I just had a look at the rest of the site and I really, really like what I saw. Dang it! The drawing above, for example, just makes me chuckle and the Statue of Liberty one at the end is hilarious.

Well, he made me think anyway and must be applauded for that. However, if anyone can shed light on the email that started the whole thing I'd be most grateful!