So

39 years old and counting. If one more person tells me I don't look it I may have to dismember them with the large axe I always have about my person.

The day was very pleasant -- thank you to all who sent their best wishes in one form or another. I particularly enjoyed the bilingual serenade.

Ian gave me rollerblades, which either means he's trying to encourage me to have more fun or trying to kill me, I'm not sure which.

As seems to be almost a tradition now, we lunched at the Oxo Tower restaurant, and very nice it was. Walking there over Blackfriars Bridge we think we saw the A380 fly over, though it's difficult to be certain. It seemed pretty big, and also oddly alone in the usually crowded London skies.

In the evening we went with Antonio and Neil to see Les Ballets C de la B's vsprs, which is no Foi but nevertheless diverting, with some lovely elements in amongst the usual chaos, lunacy and formlessness. Some of the audience seemed pretty nonplussed, but that's no bad thing.

The weekend brought an outing to Janacek's harsh opera The Makropulos Case and a joint celebration dinner at Lesley's with old friend Joni, whose birthday is the day after mine. Ian didn't get on with the Janacek at all -- certainly the jagged vocal lines are pretty taxing -- but I found it very moving in the end. It's the second time I've seen it. The first was about 17 years ago, in a very different production. I don't remember it clearly, but it seemed a lot more affecting this time around. Perhaps that's a consequence of age; which is, after all, what the piece is about.

One of the reasons I've been so absent from these pages lately -- apart from the general intersection of crapness and busyness -- is that I've been stressing over my application for this, which I finally delivered yesterday (having misread the deadline, which is actually today). If I'm feeling especially self-flagellatory at some point I may post some or all of the personal statement, a nauseating mixture of misrepresentation, ingratiation, verbosity and showing off; but more likely not. If they choose to overlook its more egregious flaws then perhaps I'll be back to being a poor student come September.

In any case, the heat's off for a little while and I'm looking forward to the impending long weekend. The distribution of bank holidays throughout the year may be distressingly irregular, but on the upside May is always a real treat.
Posted by matt at May 26, 2006 09:50 PM