Hello. Welcome to my little self-indulgent internet realm.
I'm Christine and this is where I gather various things, mostly to entertain friends and family.
My New Year's resolution for 2010 was the following ambitious endeavour: "This year I'm gonna go out and do all those things - I'm gonna right the wrongs and answer the 'what ifs'." Below I shall dutifully share some of the things I have done so far (and some I meant to do but didn't).
I wanted to reduce my work hours to free up some more time for all the FAR more interesting things I could think of spending my time on. My colleagues seemed to concur that this option was reserved for people who had kids and that my request would probably not be granted. But if you don't ask, you don't get. So I asked and I got! How many hours I wanted to work was left for me to decide, and I was astonished both by how easy it was and how no one else seemed to even consider it. Come on - who doesn't want Mondays off?
Okay, this was one I didn't have the guts for, but I immediately regretted not doing it. I was at a Brett Anderson concert in a small venue, and inbetween songs there was a bit of random banter between Brett and the audience. At a quiet moment I wanted to shout "Congrats on getting married!" but my courage left me, being in a small space with hundreds of people, including my husband and the man I have spent my entire adult life referring to as my inspiration. I did want to congratulate him. Having heard him sing about the women who have been a part of his life for a couple of decades, I am happy he has found someone to marry. I'm sure he felt my best wishes and support beaming toward him the whole evening, though.
Since I was about 6 years old and found out Mensa existed, I always reckoned that membership of this esteemed institution was the pinnacle of achievement. Yet I never got around to (or dared, perhaps?) to sit their official test. This year I decided to grab the bull by the horns. British Mensa uses two tests, one aimed towards verbal reasoning and one with diagrammatical challenges. Different IQ tests use different scoring systems, so you are given a score which shows what percentile you fit into compared to the rest of the population. A score in the top 2% for either test qualifies you for Mensa membership. After analysing and evaluating my own performance thoroughly the result arrived, along with an invitation to join Mensa. I'm glad I finally took the test!
I'll be damned before I'm "age-appropriate". I'll dress like a 20-year-old, skip like a child and complain about noise like an OAP whenever I please. The title of this section is from a James single from 1992, but that's not to say I'm stuck in the past. I explore new things, just because I *can*. I went to a concert with a band called One Night Only despite knowing that the rest of the audience would probably be at least 10 years younger than me - and they were. I knew there would be nobody there who knew me, and I proudly declared to my colleagues, "I'm gonna dance, and it's gonna look bad!" And I did, and it did, and I had fun! It was a great gig.
All in all, I can recommend not holding back (or trying not to, anyway). It's giving yourself a great gift, answering those questions and trying the things you're not sure you dare to do, and it can do wonders for your confidence. People say the things you end up regretting are the things you didn't do, which is certainly true for my experiences this year.
Life is subject to cancellation without notice. Get the most out of it.
P.S. Next year I really should get around to climbing the Inca trail in Peru and seeing Machu Picchu!
Being a great lover of the performing arts, I thought I'd offer an opinion of the shows of the year so far (ordered chronologically).
To be honest, Messiah is somewhat long-drawn. I'm not a huge fan of Händel (there's only so many times you need to tell me poor Jesus was "despiséd" before I start to share in his pain!) so I can't really say whether this was a great rendition or not, but we decided to give this annually recurring event a miss for New Year 2011.
Lovely wee intimate concert. Great venue. I had presumed the music would be low-key and mainly acoustic as on the albums. However, this was full-on electric rockpop, which didn't suit all the songs, but Brett was in fantastic form.
With lyrics so gorgeous it makes you almost misty-eyed (some ladies were unable to hold back a wee tear), powerful music and amazing voices, this was a beautiful experience musically. However, the change of the setting to modern-day New York didn't work out that well. The poor artists can't afford medicine, but they have laptops?! Better to stick to the original setting of Paris circa 1830.
As is the case with professional musicals, this was a full-on evening of entertainment. There were a bunch of funny references to pop culture, for instance suggesting Simon Cowell had been "sent from Hell to destroy music" and that X Factor had played a large part in killing music (the story takes place in the future where all instruments are banned and music is computer-generated). Although the story is somewhat ludicrous, you play along simply because of how funny it is. The music was fantastic - of course, it's Queen after all - and for the grand finale of Bohemian Rhapsody, Brian May himself took the stage to play the guitar solo. I'll be seeing it again, this time with Kevin, when it comes to Glasgow in February.
Again a thoroughly professional night of entertainment. With dramatic set pieces (including the chandelier which gets released from under the theatre ceiling and swishes down past the front rows to "fall" on the stage) and mind-blowing singing, this was another experience I would definitely repeat. Love the story, love the songs, and it was done with all the skill required. The Phantom without his mask reminded me slightly of a sewer creature from an early episode of the X Files, which I suppose fulfils the purpose of making you agree he's hideous. However, as with so many love stories, no compelling case is made for the other leading man (he's just the only alternative), which means I couldn't really see why the leading lady was attracted to this self-satisfied piece of fluff. Anyway, that's about the story. The production was excellent.
In all good musicals, one or two of the songs remain in your head for days, sometimes weeks afterwards (or in Kev's case, a year - for the sake of humanity, let him never see Cats again!). And after hearing "I Dreamed A Dream" dozens of times over the last year thanks to a certain Miss Susan Boyle, the mind quite easily gets stuck in a distinctly Les Mis groove... Especially Rosalind James as Éponine made an impression - a gorgeous voice for "On My Own". Musicals are such elaborate sensory experiences that you can only surrender and be carried away, and Les Mis was no exception.
This is a great concept. For the last few seasons, Scottish Opera has staged a handful of brand new mini-operas of approximately 15 minutes each. I had attended a study day previously to find out what to expect in terms of the music, which was useful. They were all very different: Zen Story had a distinct Eastern influence; Sublimation made use of sound diffusion to underline a horrible memory; The Money Man kept playfully changing pace (keeping the musicians and the conductor on their toes); 74° North had a beautiful and haunting libretto about the past; and The Letter (the most accessible piece musically), which takes place in a Jewish settlement at the beginning of World War 2, used a certain scale which is frequently used in traditional Jewish music. The stories were gripping and very well told, and although the music wasn't "catchy", it perfectly underpinned the mood in each piece and almost told the stories by itself.
An enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon with a broad programme of music, beginning with Bartók's Hungarian Sketches, then some Mozart and Rossini (a symphony and two operatic arias), and ending with Mendelssohn’s Overture and incidental music from A Midsummer Night's Dream - concluding with the famous Wedding March. Very uplifting and lovely music, and perfectly set in the bright, ornate space of the wee church.
There is now a break in the concerts for a little while. Fortunately, the upcoming Scottish Opera and RSNO seasons promise some fabulous experiences from September onwards. For now, I have our first wedding anniversary, a gruelling written test and a trip to Denmark to keep me busy.
As this is a music-related post, I should probably mention that over the last few months I have uploaded some more mp3s to the page My Music. And whilst on the topic of new additions, there is a new poetry page called "Status Report" in the Writings section.