A take on bringing the kids to the ballet - but it's the Nutcracker!

     It's the winter holidays.  That means one thing - the annual trip with the kids to the ballet.  It's a ritual, I tell you, a yearly round of tantrums, fist thumping and uncontrollable crying: 'Not again.  Take somebody else to the stupid Nutcracker.'  'But it's so Christmassy.'  'So is hypothermia.'  In the end I just have to agree to go, but on the strict understanding that I can sing 'Everyone's a Fruit and Nutcase' under my breath during the 'Dance of the Reed Pipers'. 
     Thing is, they are not even our kids.  Haven't got any.  Instead, we have a dog whose chief advantages are: 1) you can leave him at home while you go out to get drunk without returning to find Social Services on your doorstep; and 2) he never, ever wants to see The Nutcracker.  So each year we borrow children from different branches of the family.  And why?  Because my beloved once heard somebody on Desert Island Discs whose childhood was transformed by a visit to the ballet, that's why.  I never trust stories like that.  When such people talk about being 'transported', I only ever think of convicts and Australia - for the thousand that went out, only a handful made it back.  For every celeb who later talks dreamily of their youthful visits to the concert hall, how many countless others sat bored witless, silently vowing never to return?
     What get me is not Tchaikovsky, nor even the audience packed with little girls.  No, it's the parents.  It feels like bulk lip-service to culture.  Once a year they cart the offspring off to the Nutcracker and that is that box ticked for another 12 months.  I suppose at least it has themes that are likely to resonate with young people.  A lot of children's concerts I attend turn out not to be children concerts at all, but merely adult concerts at which children are present - the only differences seem to be that the hand dresses casual, Harry Potter is always in there somewhere and the thing is hosted by some slightly over-eager actor type who hasn't spent long enough on the script.  I should know, I have done it myself a few times: from the stage, the mass of squirming forms reminded me of looking out onto farmyard.
        Now, you are probably thinking I am a resentful, child-hating monster.  Not a bit of it.  On the contrary, as a professional entertainer I am writing to tell you that I am available for children's parties, and, strangely, my diary is empty over the festivities!  Oh, all except for one date in December, of course, when I'll be at the ruddy ballet.

- Rainer Hersch is a British conductor.

a thought, merely a thought

     Even if you were going to live three thousand years, and even ten thousand times that, still  remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.  The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same.  For the present is the same to all, through that which perishes is not the same; and so what is lost appears to be a mere moment.  For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can anyone take this from him?  These two things then you must bear in mind: the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man hall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that he who lives longest and he who will die soonest lose just the same.  For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he  has, and that a man cannot lose something he does not already possess.

- from Meditations by Emperor Marcus Aurelius

Our Favorite Tumbrel Remark

   Lady Diana Cooper was waiting under her umbrella outside the Dorchester hotel tapping her foot impatiently waiting for her Rolls Royce when a beggar approached her and announced that he had been without food for three days. Her response? "Foolish man that you are. You must try to eat. If need be, you must force yourself."

A list of my favorite brindisis (Opera drinking songs)

So let's raise our goblets and sing....

• "Libiamo ne' lieti calici"  - from Verdi's La traviata.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWECvv4wcIQ

• "Viva, il vino spumeggiante"  - from Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OlbwdEnrdc

• "Si colmi il calice" from Verdi's Macbeth.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WRyz3P6_Xw

• "Inaffia l'ugola" from Verdi's Otello.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qKmAQ8klQ

• "Vin ou Bière" from Gounod's Faust.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXw8UQnRRo0

• "Il segreto per esser felici" from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNssdwEAQl4

The Hunter. A poem by Christopher Mavrikis

THE HUNTER

Dawn breaks over a frost covered fen
An Osprey glides above its prey
Emulating passions once defined by men
On a crisp lovely November day.

A lone hunter watches near
An idle dream or a quenchless desire
Cedar swamps harboring white-tailed deer
Blood forged iron tempered by fire.

Memories of a father's love
Sublime guidance a nutured past
Watching the hunter from above
Ka Boom goes the mightly muzzle blast

As the hunter cares for his provision loneliness makes him sad
He whispers to heaven a little prayer and says I love you dad.

- Christopher Mavrikis

Must Read Books Detailing Vital Epochs in American History

Lincoln; by Gore Vidal - This amazing historical narrative gives readers a look into the inner workings of the Lincoln administration during the Civil War. Not only does it give the portrait of Lincoln a human touch but also shows us how fragile the Union was during the whole of that conflict.



1776; by David McCullough - Mr. McCullough takes his readers to the through the first two years of the American Revolution from the siege of Boston and the American response that usurped the British from that city to the battle for New York where Washington is forced to surrender the island of Manhattan. This book shows us how perilous our cause was during those first two years.



1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls; by Winston Groom - The Japanese empire was conquering China, Hong Kong, Singapore; capture McArthur's 140,000 man army in the Philippines. Pearl Harbor, the German war machine had complete dominion over continental Europe. This was the terrifying year that the world was on the precipice of global totalitarianism and how the American forces tiled the scales of destiny.