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Nine Handy Trouble-saving Opera Hacks
Do you ever think there’s a little too much drama in opera? Here I offer a few suggestions as to how the participants could save themselves a bit of trouble.
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Passing Back the Wisdom
“Knowing what you know now, write a letter using exactly 100 words to yourself at the age of sixteen.” That might be fun, thought Nick. Surely it was only fair to give the boy the benefit of his experience?
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The Rolling Stones, O2 Arena, 25 November 2012
Ah, the Stones. Unquestionably the greatest rock’n’roll band of all time. No-one else can match them for authenticity, for appetite, for longevity, most of all for excitement.
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Basil Murray Savage 1910-1994
You don’t usually remember much about the kids in the year above you at school: any interaction tends to be fleeting, unless, for example, you’re good enough to play in the school football team a year early. But I remember Andrew Skinner, or should I say, Skinner! because that was…
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Paddington Bear and the Cholesterol Bath
Come back in a couple of months and you’ll find me sporting whiskers and a white napkin while a rosy-cheeked maid serves me my kippers, eggs and tomatoes under a silver cloche, as my butler hands me a freshly ironed copy of The Times, from which I emerge occasionally to…
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Teacher’s Pet
I had already embarked on a lifetime journey of pedantry, and sensed that an injustice had been done. But I didn’t get involved: I was Mr Savage’s favourite, and there was no reason to put that at risk.
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David Bowie, Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, 24 December 1972
Bowie prowled the stage screaming “Gimme your hands…cause you’re wonderful” – written for this very purpose – reaching out his healing hands to fans like the god he had become that night.
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David Gauke: My Part in Not Preventing His Downfall
Before I had reached the end of the driveway the door opened and a man in his seventies shouted after me “He’s a traitor!” It seemed that not all voters had embraced Gauke’s idea of a more thoughtful and respectful style of politics. I was reluctant to engage: I was…
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Night visits
I’m staying in a large house, York maybe, perhaps I own it, and there’s a small hatch leading off a landing to a suite of larger rooms which are nicer but neglected, and I wonder, am I allowed to go there and why don’t I use them more often
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Nain
I am lucky to remember all four of our grandparents, although Nain – Maggie as she was known – is the one I remember least well, as she died when I was seven.
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elementary
if I could give a longer list of elements I surely would, of others that I may have missed no news has come to chorleywood
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Please don’t
Please don’t wave the Union Flag around as if you own it, or as if you speak for everyone in the UK. It is the flag of a country whose people have many different opinions.
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Concerning inconsistency in the London and Boston Marathon qualifying times
Welcome to the unforgiving world of athletics age grading.
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king commode and his expanding rubber band, Watford Grammar School for Boys – 1st April 1969
I had no yardstick by which to measure the quality of the live music I heard that night, fifty years ago. But to my impressionable young ears, it was the best thing, ever. Thank you guys.
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Dr Feelgood, Cambridge Corn Exchange – 25 September 1976
…they were prophets come to lead us to a better future, or a better past, and I reached for them, a parched wanderer at an oasis.
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Everly Brothers, Royal Albert Hall – Thursday 22 September 1983
“Do you think they’ll get it?” asked the brothers. The reply came back from their British hosts “Are you nuts? They’ll go crazy!”
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Led Zeppelin, Empire Pool, Wembley – 21 November 1971
It was electrifying: I had never heard anything like it, and somehow by the end of their first song tears had welled up from sheer excitement and joy.
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The Golden Tree of St Francis
A woman was screaming. Pitched halfway between fear and anger, loud and sustained. An adult woman, Dan thought, yet there was a note of petulance, the suggestion of a toddler tantrum.
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