A Double First For Me!
Up until last night, I’d never been to the O2 at Greenwich or ever seen any serious ballet live. I did see Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo with C once a few years ago and enjoyed that, but it could not be described as mainstream ballet, although it is serious dance.
Last night, a friend who works at the Royal Ballet, took me to see Romeo and Juliet at the O2. So it was a double-first!
I enjoyed it immensively and felt that it worked well both as a show and as a spectacle. The only thing I didn’t like was that some in the audience, were constantly going in and out of the arena.
But don’t take my word for it, read the review in The Independent.
Here’s an extract.
Some details do get swallowed by this venue. The big crowd scenes blur, but Kenneth MacMillan’s famously impassioned duets keep their power. As the story’s focus shrinks to Juliet’s bedroom, then her tomb, the ballet reaches out to conquer this cavernous space.
So I think the Royal Ballet can say they have a success on their hands.
I should also say that because of my rather odd eye-sight, which could follow the detail well on the stage for a minute or so before my eyes tired, that the format with large video screens allowed me to rest them a bit, by watching the screens intermittently.
I would suspect that I might enjoy ballet and other shows in a large arena more than I would in a traditional theatre. But I do know that my eyes are getting better, as towards the end of the last football season, I found the action much easier to follow than at the start.
I would certainly go again!
One of the Earliest Places I Can Remember Turns Up in The Times
The Times today has a piece about how some hospitals should be merged or closed because they are failing.
The headline of “17 years ago closure was needed urgently. Today, Chase Farm stays open” summarises the text well. When I used to live in Cockfosters as a child, no-one had a good word for the hospital, so I suspect it hasn’t improved much after the years. The last time I was there was to see C’s godmother, who was recovering from a stroke in the hospital and I can’t remember anything positive or negative about the visit.
But I can remember my first visit to Chase Farm Hospital in 1950. It was to collect my mother and my baby sister, who had just been born there. We parked in front of the very same building shown in The Times.
The main thrust of the article in The Times is that Peter Carter, the head of the Royal College of Nursing has said that some failing hospitals should be shut.
I would agree.
When my son was first admitted to hospital in Manchester with an illness that later turned out to be pancreatic cancer, the place was a disgrace and they failed miserably in their diagnosis. Only when we moved him to Addenbrooke’s did we learn the awful truth.
So let’s shut failing hospitals and concentrate resources on services that work. We should also move a lot of those services into the community as Dr. Carter says.
Will LulzSec Target the UK Legal System Over Jailing of Joanne Fraill?
LulzSec are a group of hackers, who have broken into various computer systems all over the world, including a web site linked with the CIA.
I do wonder whether the jailing of Joanne Fraill for discussing a case where she was a juror on Facebook, will get a response from LulzSec. Especially, as some reports say all jurors who use Facebook to discuss cases will be jailed.
How long before the idiots on Facebook start a “Free joanne Fraill” campaign?
I can’t help feeling, that this one will run and run and in a direction that the government and the judges won’t like.
What Joanne Fraill did was wrong, but then it was also incredibly stupid. So are we now jailing people for doing things, they don’t have the intelligence to realise are wrong? In Joanne Fraill’s case, she should have been given a community sentence. Perhaps one working with the victims and problems of drug addiction, that her actions have inadvertently made worse, by stopping a trial of drug dealers.
Is Stress Good For You?
This article on the BBC web site, makes an interesting point.
I’ve had enough stress in my life to satisfy a dozen people, but was it worth it?
Of course it was!
I’m with Bertrand Russell on stress.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but pressure is the father of genius!
If you have a serious problem, then think your way out of it. Moaning just makes it worse!
A Thought About Pensions
Are the Unions attacking the wrong target in the Government over pensions?
If I look at my pension, it’s not as big as it could be and that is probably because the advice I’ve received over the years about it could have been much better in places. It has been managed by three or four providers, a couple of whom have been taken over. It is now being managed by a friend, who works for a respected institution, but getting it there involved large amounts of paperwork and slowness on the part of the previous company.
But I’ve been lucky compared to some of my friends, who have suffered downright incompetence, or were unlucky enough to have chosen the likes of Equitable Life.
So is the problems with paltry pensions, not so much the rules, but the management by the companies and individuals involved? I know this doesn’t apply to pensions provided by the government, but poor private pensions, must mean that there is pressure for everybody to come in line.
Remember too, that when pensions came in, it was expected that those receiving them would only live a couple of years at most. Now most live a lot longer.
But if you think the problems are bad here, then just look at some European companies, where pensions are funded totally from taxation.
Christ Church Greyfriars
Tonight, I also had a look at Christ Church Greyfriars, the remains of which lies behind St. Paul’s. It wasn’t as lucky as its larger neighbour had been in the Blitz.
Like St. Luke’s in Liverpool it stands as a memorial to those who died and suffered in the Second World War.
St. Paul’s As I’ve Never Seen It Before
To me St. Paul’s is London’s church, if only because it stood unbowed to the Nazis as a symbol of defiance and hope.
Tonight though, in the evening sunlight, I saw it as I’d never seen it before in all its pristine beauty after a thorough cleaning.
The Newly-Cleaned St. Paul's
Thinking back, I don’t think I actually saw the cathedral until the 1960s, as my visits to Central London were usually fairly limited, despite living in the suburbs. As an example, I didn’t visit the Tower of London until I was probably twenty. And that was because I was showing a friend from University around.
A Piece of Concrete With a Lot of History
This piece of concrete in the Victoria Town Gardens behind the Palace of Westminster, looks like a very rudimentary and hurried repair.
A Repair to the River Thames Wall
But behind it all is a bit of forgotten history. This picture shows a steel girder, which could be a piece of railway line in the concrete.
Steel Girder in the River Thames Wall
And this shows that the detail on the river side, that is a feature of the Thames river wall is missing.
Missing Details in the River Thames Wall
So what is it all about?
I went to a lunchtime lecture at University College London about archaeology on the River Thames. The lecturer explained that during the Second World War, we identified that a serious break in the wall of the River Thames could have flooded much of the central part of the city. This would have probably flooded the London Underground as well.
So a top secret repair unit was set up to fix any breakages in the wall immediately. As the lecturer said, even today little is known about the unit. During the war they kept it quiet, as they didn’t want the Germans to know how vulnerable London was. After all, the Germans only needed to be lucky once.
But as you can see, even if the repair would not be acceptable today, it has fulfilled its purpose for seventy years.
A New Metropolitan Line Train
I took the North London Line today and changed onto the Jubilee line to get to Westminster today and was able to take this photo of one of the new Metropolitan line trains as it passed through West Hampstead station.
New Metropolitan Line Train at West Hampstead
I’m not sure how many of the new trains have been delivered, but from the outside it looked a lot better than the rather tired old trains you see on this and the other sub-surface lines.
The Anonymous Widower 