Four months and counting

Well, that's the second extra L'amore dei tre Re lecture sold out. Amazing really. If you want to know what is shaking everyone's tree you can read something about the opera here http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/ohpseason/features/lamore_dei_tre_re.asp.

January is at an end and Christmas was only five minutes ago. That means we open in about twenty minutes time. And I have been seeing crocuses. We never get to enjoy spring because it's nature's equivalent of the tune that accompanies the Countdown clock. And the clock is ticking. It's a terrible thing to be trying to hold off time. It is inexorable and just pushes past you with shrug. But we are on schedule, with Friends' Preview brochures going out this weekend and that means ticket bookings in their thousands landing on the box office door mat - it's head down and plough on for Cecilia from hereon in.

I had something of a surreal meeting with councillors yesterday. Actually, I was sitting in on the surreal section of a meeting before I presented a couple of papers of my own. They were discussing the annual review of prices and in our business group including sports facilities, waste management, leisure services, parks and cemeteries, there are hundreds of different fees and charges. Of particular interest yesterday was the section of the report dealing with cemeteries. A fulsome debate on grave sizes, ashes burial (I’m not talking about the cricket), exhumation, paupers graves and gravediggers’ salaries ensued. It was fascinating - if not a little macabre - to those of us whose daily life rarely takes in the detail of graveyard soil conditions and grave depths. But you know, it has to be done. Indeed, it did remind me that ultimately, the council has some very important things to deal with. Naturally, some wag referred to the body count in opera.

I haven’t yet advised our thousands of patrons of the existence of this blog but I know some people are reading and vanity is definitely kicking in because I am starting to thinking about how many. Insane really because I am already anxiously re-reading my text to ensure I don’t upset anybody and the arrival at these pages of hundreds more patrons, colleagues and peers would only heighten the anxiety. Blogs continue to get a bad press too; I read of Jodie Marsh’s blog yesterday in which she dumps various boyfriends unceremoniously. And Paul Daniels even fulfils his Blogger obligations whilst on holiday in Barbados. Errr..