Madama Butterfly

I left the Ukrainian National Opera's performance of Madama Butterfly with mixed feelings last night. I was very proud indeed of my 5-year-old daughter, who had just played the role of the child Sorrow. She was on stage for an hour, and she wasn't feeling at all well, but she pulled it off like a good'un. As she often reminds me, "Grandpa used to say, 'the show must go on'". We had to dose her up with paracetemol and ibuprofen, but she did it. There aren't too many 5-year-olds who can put that in their CV.

But - as for the opera itself - what a crock! It was well-performed, especially by Butterfly herself, but honestly, what a lightweight script. How clumsy the set-up for Pinkerton's inevitable betrayal, how wearisome the endless twittering about love being like stars or flowers or whatever, how annoying the almost complete lack of anything actually happening. And not one memorable tune...apart from the one memorable tune, of course.

I'm not a great opera lover - obviously - but really, come on Puccini. You ain't no Mozart, dude!

PHONE ARE OUT

One of the joys of working in a large organisation is the occasional email from people who clearly are not used to typing, or probably even writing. For example:

PHONE ARE OUT
I WILL PUT MOBILE ON AS IT AN EMGENCY.

It reads like a ransom note. Perhaps he's a kidnapper in his spare time. I really don't understand why some people are incapable of writing in lower case. Do they hold the shift key down accidentally with their huge knuckles as they type? Or do they engage Caps Lock deliberately so they don't have to bust their brains working out where the big letters should go?

I know what it is. The Gumbies have finally learnt how to use email.

Situational Obviousness

It was with a familiar feeling of resignation that I attended a mandatory Situational Awareness course at work the other day. Previous experience shows that these company-mandated tick-the-box training sessions are usually dull squared.

In the event, it was OK. There were, however, a couple of truly impressive examples of tautology which I feel I must share with the wider world:

1. "Things that are difficult, aren't easy, are they?"
2. "You've got to experience experiences in order to gain experience."

Move over, Socrates.

National Karma

Yesterday a Eurostar train screamed into St. Pancras station, empty but for a few journalists, taking just over two hours to get to London from Paris across the shiny new High Speed 1 track. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Londoners were taking much more than two hours to get from, say, Liverpool Street to St. Pancras, thanks to industrial action on the Underground. There you have British life in microcosm.

Much Largest Than World

I offer you a direct quote from this morning's spam. It looks as though it's arrived in English via, I suspect, Russian or Serbo-Croatian. Other than that, I believe it speaks for itself:

"Blondes always giggled at me and even gentlemans did in the municipal WC!
Well, now I laugh at them, because I took M_E GA D IK for 7 months and now my member is much largest than world."

Wind Farms Not In Windy Places

So the UK government is spending "hundreds of millions" of pounds on wind farms which aren't viable because it isn't windy enough. Is it me? Do you see people setting up cattle farms on cliff faces or planting forests in the desert? Isn't it mind-bogglingly obvious that they should've checked how windy a place was before building a wind-powered generator there?

Perhaps they're so used to generating wind themselves that it didn't occur to them.

Lost Beach Ball Trauma

My wife, 4-and-a-half-year-old daughter (A) and I were at the beach today with a friend and her kids, and naturally a game of "beach ball catch" was initiated. Unfortunately this instantly became "beach ball chase" as the wind kept grabbing the wretched thing and tossing it towards the sea. Very soon the game had developed into "kids throw the beach ball up in the air and laugh at A's daddy running to save it again". After five or six 300-yard dashes and mumbled curses I said, "ok kids, no more throwing the ball now". One of A's friends asked if he could hold it, so I said yes, and we started back up the beach. Then the little rascal threw the ball up again with a chuckle, and I was off again, the sole competitor in the Over-40s Shingle Stumble. This is what you get, I thought, for playing with a bag of air on Hurricane Beach.

Anyhow, this time I didn't quite make it, and the ball flew into the sea and started bobbing mischievously further out of my reach. I couldn't get it, so I headed back to the family and the dreadful sight and sound of little daughter tears. We tried to comfort her, but she wasn't interested in the idea that the ball was having an adventure, she just sobbed that she wanted it back.

"I know exactly how you feel, darling," I said. "When I was little my ball fell in the sea, and Grandpa swam out to try and get it, but he couldn't make it." Suddenly that memory came flashing back to me. The ball is yellow, with red wavy lines and blue spots...I'm watching it bobbing out to sea...Dad's swimming after it...no good...that awful feeling of loss. My dad died at the end of 2003 when A was just one, but she still remembers him and misses him. I looked up. A's yellow beach ball was still in sight, the wind blowing it in a straight line towards the pier about half a mile away. The coast curves there, and I realised that with any luck the ball would return to shore at some point way off in the distance...before being drawn out for good on the ebbing tide. My brain ticked a couple of times, like a dusty grandfather clock in the attic. Suddenly I yelled "I'm going to get it!" and sprinted off down the beach, vaulting over groynes, leaping over pools, I'm SuperDad, unstoppable, invincible...

The wife told me afterwards she noticed the moment when I stopped running and started wheezing. I'd hoped they would've given up watching by then. But I kept going. I think in truth I was on some belated quest for closure. The only time I ever remember seeing my Dad in the water, ever, was on that beach long ago when he tried to save my silly ball from drowning. Well, fortunately the laws of physics didn't let me down, and the ball came in on a wave just about where I thought it would - about a mile away from where we'd started. Oh yes!! Now I know what it's like to win a marathon! The World Cup! YES! I did it!! Hahahahaha! In your face, forces of disappointment! For once I made a snap decision that didn't turn out to be stupid, dangerous or just plain wrong! I saved my little girl's cheap piece of plastic from a very slow trip to Holland...

Of course, by the time I returned, flushed but triumphant, she'd forgotten all about it and was enjoying a Wild West train ride. But that didn't matter. Somehow, I've closed some connection that was unresolved. I feel I've done something, strangely, for my Dad. And when I put A to bed, she told me I was the best man in the world.