Good morning Mick and all GN's on a breezy slightly raining morning with a little snow on the ground but looking extremely cold out there this morning in North Yorkshire. Well this is very late for me to be coming on, but no have not been sleeping in, but rather been transported by the tv. Sky arts had a performance from Wiener Opera of Turandot, so I have sat with coffee and cereal, watching and sometimes joining in with the singing. So now it has ended , I am restarting the day at nearly 9am.
When I first came back from Portugal having been singing professionally with the Gulbenkian choir I joined the cooperative arts theatre in Nottingham. As luck would have it at that time there was a very good mixture of amateur, semi professional and the odd professional who were there. This included a lovely tenor who had been in the royal opera but had had to come up to Nottingham, for family reasons , and they had a good selection of voices to choose from and so it was decided to do Turandot.
We worked hard, and it went well and even for some years afterwards, I would have other singers asking me if it was Verdi or Donizetti etc as it wasnt well known or sung often. Only when the three tenors sang Nessum Dorma did it begin to be better known. It was probably quite a stretch for amateur groups to fill all the roles. Another person who did not want to sing in the grand opera but preferred light opera and g and s was Sue Pollard. Dont know if you remember her but she was the chalet girl in Hi de Hi amongst other things. She had a lovely voice and we tried to tempt her to come with us but she declined.
I have known her all these years and what you see is what you get. As we say round here "there's no side to her". She was always known for having all sorts of amazing earrings amongst other things. Anyway that is how come I am only just starting the normal day. Well as normal as it is likely to be.
I think by the sound of it , the poor weather has encouraged many people to get down to jobs put off for some time over the holidays etc and hopefully if we can make a difference now the minute the weather improves we can be off and out!!
The first part of my day now is to just do ordinary household jobs, sweeping the kitchen floor, making bed etc etc., but then I have several more important things to do. Firstly go out now it is good daylight to hunt around and try and find my spare key. I dont have much hope but maybe it has fallen out of the box and is on the ground in the shed, but once I have searched there, will have to go through all pockets of coats and so forth and look everywhere inside for it. It is so annoying and will be very expensive if I cant find it. For safeties sake I cant just get another key cut as it is the key to the flat and although I cant for the life of me , think what anyone would want to come and steal from me, I will have to replace the whole lock and get new keys , which will be a real nuiscance. In all the time I have been here there has been no problem , and if anyone has had to use it I have then changed the number to get into it so havent left the same number, so a real hassle, to have to sort out quickly.
Well like many others I had planned a bit of a sort out, so key hunting will also encourage me to sort out coats, find gloves and handkerchief and lots of old shopping lists stuck in pockets while I hunt, so the time wont be wasted. Didnt have a very good nights sleep and my back is painful today so it will be things I can do sitting down or standing. If I get onto the floor I think I might not get back up! Still I hope as a minimum today to have at least sorted out all these pockets and things and then like others, my airing cupboard needs a good clear out as over time hand towels and bath towels have got mixed up and no doubt disappearing flannels are in amongst them too. Cant tell yet but hope that I am in a "get rid of"mood. Then I have no problem sorting stuff out , putting bags for the charity shop, things that my grandson might enjoy and still the odd thing that I seem for some reason to have here belonging to my son. When he was moving around a lot , he used to ask me to keep various things for safekeeping, some things were retrieved quickly, but a few things I still seem to have kicking around in drawers. It was often certificates , when he had done courses etc., which he didnt want to lose in his frequent moving about in those days, but that was years ago!
Well I am all at sixes and sevens right now and so I will just wish everyone a good day and to keep warm and safe and then get back to reading the posts a bit later when I have got a little sorted out here.
The fridge can do with a good sort out, as over the holidays , when it is so full I dont do much cleaning and checking , so by the looks of the weather I am thinking either curry or casserole fits the bill today and that should use up whatever vegetables are lurking in their box. Have a very nice cauliflower, white and closed up which will definitely feature in the menu somewhere, and I think I have a little treacle pudding lurking in there which will only take about 1 minute in the microwave to heat up for a cheering sweet on a miserable day.