Bursting at the seams

Walking into the office these days is akin to arriving at Terminal one at Heathrow. The door opens and the sight of a sea of people milling about greets you. I don't know where they all came from! They could be working for us or they could be the artistic team of a production showing a model, as was the case yesterday when it was lovely to see the latest Peter Rice model (complete with cardboard version of the new steel gantry/proscenium). He was in along with Tom Hawkes and Jenny Weston (choreographer) to show the designs and ideas for Lakme. As ever with Peter, the drawings were beautifully rendered and I am sure Lakme will have the sumptuous oriental elegance it deserves. Indeed, he is off to India shortly for a trip he has wanted to do for many years and whilst there will be doing some fabric shopping so authenticity is assured too.

It is obvious that the expansion will make demands upon us across the business but as is the way, those demands don’t arrive at equal intervals; like London buses, they all arrive at once and suddenly one is faced with getting things done in short order. Since we don’t have endless resources in order to employ outside agencies or recruit lots of new staff, we have to be a little more creative. In recent times we have been rather successful at find talented graduates looking for experience. Indeed, Clarinda and Kate both began as volunteers (or Interns if you are American) and ended up in full time employment. Kings College London seems to be our university of choice since there are many music students there and Clarinda has been sifting through a number of CVs and interviewing possible graduates who we would want to come and work with us. I had a look at some of the CVs and was confronted by lists of academic and music attainment that embarrassed me. How does a person find the time to get Grade 8 in about four instruments before they pass 18 years of age? All seemed to have columns of exam passes at A* too. In fact so prevalent was this last fact that when I saw one who had only attained an A, I scoffed. It was hard to escape the truth of how utterly misspent was my youth. I suspect that not only will we have a problem finding space and computers for these mini-Einsteins, we might also have difficulty in supplying work that is challenging enough to keep them from falling asleep. I am reassured, however, by the undoubted fact that they are unlikely to make good coffee.