Another day, another lunch break

I've just tried to go to Kew's new ice cream parlour, attached to the visitor café beside Climbers & Creepers, the children's play area. Sadly I found it was closed for cleaning. I had to content myself with looking in through the windows at a tempting display; twenty different flavours, dozens of choices of sprinkles, sauces, popcorn, doughnuts etc... It felt a bit like being six again - "No you can't have an ice cream, you had one yesterday" - oh well, it's a rainy day, not really ice cream weather. I was just curious.

At least I could still get a sandwich in the main part of the café, where I bumped into Quarantinewoman by the cake section. We had a short chat about cake, how good cake is, and the general necessity of cake, while she tried to squint at my name badge surreptitiously. I restrained the urge to say "You've forgotten who I am, haven't you, Quarantinewoman?" as it seemed a bit mean since she was trying to place me without embarrassing herself. I bought cake (gluten-free chocolate squidgey cake, yum!) and left her still in contemplation of the choices. It's a cake range worth contemplating, goodness knows.

I walked back to the office. In the rain, summer scents like pine and escallonia come out, and the lavenders are veiled with silver droplets. Partway back, near the Orangery, there's a bed that has been planted up with herbaceous plants, all now in bloom in a wonderful array of clashing colours - yellow, orange, purple, more yellow; pot marigolds and day lilies and salvias, all blazing away in the muted, rainy light. There was a wren singing in the tree above the bed, and a toddler in wellington boots was passing by carrying an umbrella larger than himself, jumping in puddles blissfully. Heaven in a garden.

What else? Ah, yes; heaven in music.

Last night's broadcast of heat three of Cardiff Singer produced not one but two of those spine-tingling moments when you feel the touch of angels. The order of play went - one good, one adequate but nervous, then one very good - an Aussie mezzo who bounded through a gorgeously tricky chunk of Handel coloratura, making it sound easy-peasy.

I was just thinking "That's tonight's heat winner, then" when the next singer came on and trumped her. Valentina Naforitsa from Moldova; sheer bliss to listen to, a classic lyric-dramatic soprano with beautiful tone, seamless legato, wonderful awareness of vocal colour, and true acting ability. Oh, and good-looking, too. The famous "complete package" that the jury members always say they're looking for. Okay, thought I, so that's tonight's winner, then.

And then Andrei Bondarenko from the Ukraine came on and trumped her, with a superb baritone voice that was like velvet, subtle and flavoursome as manzanilla, from bottom to delicious top. Beautiful tone - check. Seamless legato - check (and in spades, too). Perfect control, perfect colour, perfectly-balanced dramatic sense - check. Oh, and did I forget to mention? - good-looking, too. A singer who could step straight into Favourite Baritone's roles and do every one of them justice - yes, even Pelléas - he had a beautiful upper register and I can't believe he'd have any trouble with it... indeed, the mere thought makes me long to hear him sing it, and I wouldn't have expected ever to want another Pelléas after FB.

To get two such fabulous singers, one after the other, leaves the hairs on the back of one's neck standing up. This, of course, is why the finalists are the top scoring singers overall, rather than automatically the heat winners; because it would be cruelty itself if one of these two had been dropped, simply from the bad luck of being in the strongest round so far. As it was, I felt it was rough on the Aussie lass, who was delightful, because she paled in comparison with them. I think I've just seen two of the next generation of Great Singers - the people who in forty years will be judging competitions like this, and getting goosebumps themselves as they hear the next generation coming out and dazzling them.

Andrei Bondarenko won, but if the Moldovan doesn't also get into the final I'll fry my hat and eat it with tartare sauce.

You can read all about Cardiff Singer of the World, from commentators a lot more expert than me, and also listen to the performances, on the BBC website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0120y62
It's worth it.

The odd dreams strike again...

One of my favourite books when I was a child was called “The Complete Book of Fortune". It was a huge compendium of fortune-telling methods, oracular games, popular superstitions and sayings, descriptions of amulets and their supposed powers, and so forth; all the myriad ways that we have tried to see the future, encourage good fortune and escape disaster, over the course of human history. Some of it (“Napoleon’s Book of Fate”, the Mystical Art of Phrenology and Physiognomy) is seriously daffy; on the other hand, I’ve found the chapter on how to analyse someone’s character from their handwriting very useful on occasion, and the results impressively accurate.

A whole section of the popular superstitions chapter concerns superstitions associated with weddings, including “How to divine the future with wedding cake”. When given a slice of wedding cake by the bride, you are meant to eat all bar one last crumb, wrap that crumb in soft fabric, and place it under your pillow when you go to bed that night. Then take a careful note of your dreams and interpret them in the usual way (ie with some confusion), as they will tell your fortune in love and marriage.

So of course, when I got given a slice of W’s incredibly rich wedding cake yesterday I had to save a crumb, didn’t I? I mean, come on – a dyed-in-the-wool old singleton like me - I’ve got to know my fortune in love and marriage!

Guess what - I dreamed I was having coffee with several Kew colleagues, funnily enough including Marinated Artichoke Man. Clearly my subconscious hasn’t completely got over that earlier dream yet. This was all very mundane, though; just a bunch of people chatting in one of the Kew restaurants. It was so normal and un-dreamlike I was quite surprised when I realised partway into the conversation that it was a dream.

Then the dream took me to a marvellous antiques shop specialising in Edwardian cookery equipment. I was looking round very thoroughly and taking notes, as I was preparing my Wedding List. Yes, it seems my subconscious wants to spend married life not just in the kitchen, but in a kitchen without electric mod-cons!

So there you are; a tribute to the power of suggestion. I tell myself I’m going to dream about my future in love and marriage, and I then dream about something that might actually happen in the future (=coffee in the Orangery) and then about something I might actually do if I were getting married (=buying kitchen equipment). At least Mr Marinated Artichokes featured, which is some consolation.

Subconscious mind, you’re hopeless.

See "The Road to Mecca" and die (or at least cry)...

On Saturday I went to Dalston. This is irritatingly difficult for a west Londoner – it took me longer to get to the other side of London by public transport than it would take to get to my mother’s, over seventy miles away. But it was worth it. I went to the Arcola Theatre, to see Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca”, and it will be hard for my theatre-going to top it this year. It was absolutely bl**dy brilliant.

It’s a fine play which I have loved since I first read it in the late eighties. Perhaps it’s a little too drawn out in the first half – but it builds up to a terrific final scene and Linda Bassett’s rendition of Miss Helen’s great speech about her artistic journey and the purpose of her life reduced me to tears. If the play is still in print, I think a lot of my friends are going to get copies for Christmas this year. It says so much about creativity, about freedom, about women’s lives, about growing old, about inspiration and how we find meaning in our lives, about friendship and above all about being a creative artist, with all the joys and all the pains that that entails. And it says it all so beautifully.

It is on for another few days; if you possibly can, see it before it closes - Saturday the 10th is the last night. Sadly I think a play about an elderly South African outsider artist is probably way too much of a minority interest for anyone to fix up a West End transfer. Besides, the gorgeous, intimate studio space of the Arcola was a perfect setting, unlikely to be replicable elsewhere.

Nice café, too; six quid got me a good-sized plate of lovely veggie food and a cold pint; perfect on a very hot day. The cakes looked good, but I was strong. Incredibly, I resisted cake. Quite proud of that - I mean, they were brownies, and something with toffee on top, and carrot cakes...

mid-afternoon...

Work seems to be decaying into a rather random bout of chatting and cake-eating as we bid Julie farewell. Very nice cake; definately in favour of more cake at work. The gluten-free ginger cake from The Village Bakery was particularly good.
I'm going to do something constructive, and answer a complaint letter - a v silly complaint (like most of them). Why do people complain about unutterably stupid things that can't be remedied, while suffering in silence through some of the appalling customer non-service that happens every day? People are odd.
It occurs to me that one of the other reasons I will miss Julie is that she is far more computer-savvy than me and I have been picking her brains to solve my computer difficulties for absolutley ages... "Julie, how do I ~?" "Julie, where would I find a ~?" "Julie, I'm having problems with Excel..." etc etc. I'm just going to have to cope without.
Think positive, Imogen. The woman behind me at the Opera House last night was reading "The Power of Positive Thinking" in the interval; an odd conjunction with Don Giovanni. I wonder what a really trendy director would make of trying to relate the two...