Level 2 Chi Kung.
After a week’s respite, an unwelcome return to agonising knee pain last night – but the good news is, I think that I have now identified the problem. I’m pretty sure that it is the steep downhill sections of the route to school that is stressing the injured knee. If I’m correct, then I should be able to get back to long walks quite soon – so long as I avoid the steep bits (not particularly easy given where we live). I will start by taking the longer but less steep route to school via the village and build up from there.
After a week of fairly conscientious practice, Dash had a good guitar lesson. Mr Baulch managed to restrain himself from too much joking around / sarcasm and exhibited great satisfaction when Dash picked up some key new thing without being told. Apparently this is something that some people just pick up instinctively but, if they don’t, then it is very difficult to teach.
Katie’s Stagecoach session had been moved to the afternoon, so I dropped her off at 2:30pm but had to leave Nick to pick her up at 5:30pm as I had a ticket to the Met Live production of Verdi’s Macbeth at the Greenwich Picturehouse. It was the first time I have tried an opera in this format (I have seen a few plays) and, overall, the experiment was a success. Soundwise, it is not, and I’m guessing could never be, like being there, but in terms of the visuals, it is amazing: a clarinet solo starts up and suddenly there you are, in the cramped orchestra pit of the Met, watching at point-blank range as the clarinetist’s plump white fingers produce the sublime thread of music. I am not a fan of modern dress productions. Pete Postlethwaite’s wonderful King Lear was not in any way enhanced by having him dressed as the manager of a failing football team. My niece, having dragged me to Coriolanus in the hope of seeing Ralph Fiennes in a toga, was mortified to find him dressed, throughout, in a three piece suit. And Macbeth, Banquo et al would definitely have been better in kilts than vaguely WW2 battledress – but the decision to dress the witches as pearl-necklaced, Daily Mail reading, curtain-twitchers was a stroke of genius! Another benefit of the Met Live format is the commentary, both before the production and in the interval, hosted by the wonderful Anita Rachvelishvili – who is so gorgeous I will now be scrabbling around trying to get a ticket to her Carmen – a role she seems born to sing.
Amazon has come good – they responded to my note overnight – with a bunch of waffle about how prices change etc etc but, in the end, agreed that I can purchase the books at the price they were when I put them in the basket.