Opera. Not.

 

Originally I was going to the opera last night.  Siiiiiiiiiiigh.  Of all the Met Live operas this season—most of which I have thus far missed for one reason or another—this is the one I most wanted to see.  MARIA STUARDA is not my favourite opera by a long shot, nor even my favourite Donizetti opera* but I love Joyce DiDonato and I totally wanted to see and hear her sing the flimflam out of Mary Queen of Scots . . .  as seen/heard through the eyes/ears of a nineteenth-century Italian who for dramatic purposes wanted Mary and Elizabeth I to meet, and so, by golly, they do.

Then about a fortnight ago Tabitha invited me to a dinner-and-live-jazz evening at her church.  She takes an interest because she’s been praying for me for years** and is now visibly restraining herself from assigning me 1,000,000 books to have read and annotated by next week.  I did look at my diary . . . but I wrote the Met Live dates down in last year’s diary, last spring when I ordered the tickets . . . and better than halfway through January I still haven’t got them in this year’s diary.  I did hesitate, not because there was any shadow in my mind that there might be something else happening that night that I hadn’t written into this year’s diary, but because social mobs are not my thing, and while I usually like it live, jazz is not my thing either, and the dinner was almost certainly going to be stuff I can’t eat.

But this finding a community is a ratbag, since I’ve been anti-community all my life, and I haven’t given Tabitha’s church a fair trial because of location/scheduling problems, and it is one of the churches with a rep for good energy.  So I stifled a sigh and said Thank you.  At least if I went with Tabitha I’d have someone to sit with. . . .

Then it SNOWED.***   I wouldn’t have got to the opera anyway.

I rang Tabitha to say I WAS NOT DRIVING IN THIS† . . . but I assumed the jazz and dinner would be cancelled:  even if most of the attendees are walking distance the band had to get here from elsewhere, and elsewhere was also having gruesome weather, and this is England.  We don’t do serious weather here.  —No, no, said Tabitha, it’s still on.  And, going into carrying-all-before-her mode, which is Tabitha’s natural state, she said, I’ll see if I can find you a ride.

She found me a ride.  Then follows a Comedy of Technological Errors when nobody’s fancy mobile phone picked up anyone else’s message.  There were a lot of very-carefully-low-key last-minute landline phone calls wanting to know if anyone had answered anyone else and if so what did they say—?††

When we got there††† I quailed.  This is the church I’ve told you about that still looks old from the outside, but inside it’s had its insides ripped out so, for example, they could take all the service chairs out and replace them with tables and turn the space into a giant candle-lit restaurant.  Eeeeep.  If I’d come in my own car I might have spun on my heel and fled.  There were nearly 300 people there, all of them talking. 

I don’t think the evening furthered my development as a Christian much but . . . it was less ghastly than I was expecting as I trembled on the threshold.  And the looks on the faces of the other people at the table when, under pressure, I admitted that I wrote fantasy fiction for a living, was worth some discomfort.  The accountant sitting next to me claimed he’s going to find one of my books and read it.‡

This morning the puppy crapped promptly.  So I went and rang New Arcadia’s bells.‡‡

* * *

* In spite of having CDs of The Three Donizetti Queens by Beverly Sills

** Come on, God, get the lead out.  This one needs you

*** It’s snowing again.  I didn’t make it to Aloysius’ church tonight.  Whimper.  That one’s well ahead in the community search but I wish they sang hymns instead of soggy drivel.

† I’ve told you this a million times, right?  Of ordinary activities, driving a car presses on the ME the worst, because of that constant hyper-vigilance you need behind the wheel.  You don’t even notice you’re doing it, if you haven’t got something like ME gnawing at you, although lots of people find driving tiring.  And sure, when I lived in Maine, I drove in snow.  I didn’t have a lot of choice.  But I also had four-wheel drive and I didn’t have ME.

†† This included Tabitha.  Carrying it all before her doesn’t work with technology.

††† There was the bloke driving and his daughter and son in law, Grandma staying home with the kiddies.  The daughter was wearing high heels and a frilly frock and was in danger of death by hypothermia or massive breakage caused by sudden violent contact with frozen ground.  I was wearing two cotton turtlenecks, two woolly jumpers, a wool shawl and a coat—and fur-lined boots over heavy cotton tights and a long thick skirt.  She admitted she was being silly but, she said, she doesn’t go out much, and she wanted to wear what she wanted to wear.  I get this.  She’s also young and pretty and has two kiddies under five.  Her dad dropped us at the church but we all walked out to the car after, and her husband had her by one elbow and I had her by the other, and we STAYED UPRIGHT when her feet went out from under her. . . .

‡ I’m thinking he may have to take a course first.  Fantasy 101.  The final exam will consist of twenty multiple choice questions which will include such material as, A dragon is:  (a) a flame-throwing, princess-kidnapping, treasure-hoarding scaly reptile of generous proportions (b) a large nearly extinct mutant telepathic marsupial that mostly hangs out in caves in a few wildlife parks (c) an immoral but difficult to trace tax evasion much loved by greedy creeps, especially bankers and shareholder boards;  plus a choice of essay.  LOTR vs RINGWORLD:  would women rather be objectified and marginalised by JRR Tolkien or Larry Niven?  Discuss.  Edgar Rice Burroughs and H Rider Haggard:  are series that go on and on and on AND ON AND ON AND ON always a mistake?  Discuss.

‡‡ Well, this weather, I’m going to get desperate for a bell fix.