Mitch Benn was very good. He sang Everything sounds like Coldplay now, which is a parody of mean genius that makes me glad I spent some time watching the TV coverage of Glastonbury, so can appreciate the cruel beauty of his Chris Martin impersonation. And he sang the heavy metal song about Ikea, though not Happy Birthday War and Size Zero, which are a couple of my favourites. You have not truly experienced music until you have seen the three minute rock opera adaptation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A baroque element was added by the black helium balloons that occasionally descended from the ceiling. Nothing to do with Mitch Benn's show, they were left over from a Goth event the previous day.
Our only gripe was that the Arts Centre printed on the tickets that the doors would open at 7.30pm and the performance start at 8.00pm, whereas the queue (which we had expected to miss by arriving ten minutes after doors open) didn't start moving until twenty to eight, and the show didn't begin until half past. I wish they wouldn't do that. I mean, I really, really wish they would just tell the truth about when things start, and then stick to it. The Mercury Theatre manages it, as has every classical music venue I've ever been to (apart from The Royal Opera House about 25 years ago). I don't want to spend five minutes standing on the pavement in the cold and then another forty minutes sitting on a not especially comfortable chair, nursing half a pint because I'm driving.
At home the plumbing is slowly disintegrating. I had been hearing a strange, worrying, deep sort of rumbling hum for some time, and initially blamed the lettuce farm for acquiring some infernal new engine or generator and running it it at anti-social hours. However, as the noise grew worse the source of it became apparent, and it was not from the farm at all, but emanated from above the upstairs bathroom. The Systems Administrator thought that a slow leak from the lavatory cistern was causing it to refill equally slowly, and triggering vibrations at the resonant frequency of the pipework. I was horribly reminded of the episode of Steptoe and Son in which Harold installs central heating. Fortunately one can get instructions for practically anything nowadays on the net, and spare parts for lavatories, so we have a new seal in a box in the kitchen, awaiting installation. In the meantime the water inflow to the cistern has been turned off, and in order to refill the tank after flushing you have to temporarily turn it on again, using a screwdriver kept by the loo for that purpose. The SA was going to fix it, but first of all ran out of the right sort of plumbing tape, and then wrenched one ankle putting it down a rabbit hole and didn't fancy crawling around the bathroom. The current method of flushing is sufficiently inconvenient that it probably will get fixed, and not join the spare bedroom door which has been held shut with a piece of bent coat hanger since 2003, when the catch broke.
Meanwhile our boiler engineer left a cheerful message on the answerphone reminding us that the boiler was due for a service. This followed on the from message he left for us in July letting us know that it was time for the annual check. Then the boiler failed to come on one morning, so I had to leave a message on his answerphone admitting that he was dead right that the boiler needed servicing, as it now wasn't working at all. He is coming on Monday. He is a very cheerful engineer, who doesn't do that demoralising thing that so many builders do of tutting about the state of your property, the dreadful job of installation and maintenance done by all previous artisans, and your own poor choice of make and model. He was fully booked last week when I rang him, but would have squeezed us in on Friday or over the weekend if it had been cold. We said we'd last until Monday. We have an immersion heater, and weren't running the radiators yet anyway, though it is a nuisance losing the heated towel rails (which are effectively radiators). I keep festooning my towel and bathmat in front of the Aga to dry, and then it gets to mealtime and the SA tidies them away.
I have worked in the garden all this week, but there is a limit to how many times you can talk about weeding and picking up leaves. After a morning spent on the gravel in the front, I moved this afternoon to the back. A white Rosa rugosa, which has been dying back in parts for a couple of years, is really not looking good, and I think it is time for that to come out, along with assorted seedling trees which have sprung up. Tomorrow could be time to get out the pick axe, and tackle another big clearance job. Though the knuckle of my left hand is still tender, so I'll have to see if it's up to pick axing.
I'm off for some more music tonight, as a friend came by some concert tickets at the last minute, from another friend who is ill. Dvorak and Brahms (I think). Pizza and The Sopranos has been rolled forward to Monday.
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