Ballet, and the lost art of conversation stays lost

Bizarre day, when the only words you say to anyone all day are the 30 minutes you're on stage. I worked from home, writing, didn't speak to anyone on the phone, my housemates were out. I drove to Clacton-on-Sea - a long old way, did the gig, battling with a 43rd birthday most of it. Then drove home, got in, and just saw my housemate for about two minutes during which she told me how her day was, and when I started to tell her how my day was, she just went to bed. How frustrating. Grr to her.

So instead, dear blog-reader, I shall tell you how my day was. Except I won't, cos my wireless router thing isn't connecting to the internet, so I'll have to write it offline and post it tomorrow. Nice, this conversation lark. It's good to talk.

Well I won't tell you how my day was - I'll tell you instead how my yesternight was, for I went to the ballet for the first time. Twas the Royal Opera House doing The Nutcracker. And what an introduction to the artform it was. If you're going to do something, do it properly, I say. And they certainly did. Now I'm now ballet enthusiast, so the sum total of my review is really that they could all do the tip-toes thing, so 10/10 for that. One of them in particular, playing The Sugarplum Fairy, was very good, by which I mean very bendy and could do the splits on point, and could do lots of spinny things, many many times in a row, and she didn't fall over or wobble or anything. I was well impressed.

It was great to see something with a live orchestra, and equally great to see that the musicians all wore tuxes. Less impressive was that the bloke next to me was clearly some kind of autistic trainee conductor, cos all the through the entire two acts he was waving his arms around like he was swatting wasps, rocking his chair back and forward, humming bits, breathing loudly, laughing at bits that weren't funny (but were I'm sure were musically hilarious) and generally being very distracting in my eye-line. I, being English, said nothing. But boy did I want to lamp him one.

So, a refined evening out. Not my cup of tea, if I'm honest. Twas interesting to do, and I could admire the diligence of the dancers, the wonderful music and the amazing set, but for me I found it difficult to make all these things converge into a show. I didn't really follow the story (although that isn't really the point), and I found myself more looking at the orchestra than at the stage. But most importantly, Zoe enjoyed it, so job done there. It was part of her Christmas present. The other part was goldfish. And unlike the ballet, I could watch the goldfish for hours, without wanting to punch the person next to me for tapping his hand in time to their swimming.

There, I'm glad I got all this off my chest. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a conversation with someone. That would be nice. Call me. (Is that as sad as it sounds?)