In Charge

I put my boots on ready to set off for a walk when I suddenly remembered there was a pre-performance talk at Snape and I had to be there an hour early. Boots were thrown off, pasta was hurriedly put on the stove, and I raced upstairs to don my black togs which luckily were ready ready for me. Back downstairs I flung some pesto into the pasta, chucked in several handfuls of spinach, dollopped the lot into a tupperware dish, grabbed a fork and hared off to Snape. I needn't have worried too much: the opera, specially commissioned by Aldeburgh Music, Opera North and the Royal Opera, was being performed in one of the studios, and the talk was in another one, all quite low key. The usher briefing was nearly non-existent, and so I found myself alone in charge of the audience as my co-usher didn't arrive until the talk started. It was wonderful! I loved it!

Another usher, I'll call him Harry, was there on a freebie ticket, and boy did he chat me up, all five feet of him. He's an awfully nice man, and we had discussed H Is For Hawk at some length during the first aid course on Tuesday (he and his reading group hated it!). I sent him off to find some programmes, and he returned with them like a puppy, looking up at me with puppy eyes, practically panting. When he told me I looked lovely in my black clothes, and he'd save a seat for me next to him, I smiled and moved on to deal with punters. You 'avin' a larf 'Arry?

While I ate my supper in my car a man emerged from one of the recital rooms and stood in front of me talking on his phone. As I munched he put his finger in his nose, pulled out a bogey, studied it and then scrunched it up deliberately and threw it away. Pig! I wanted to open the window and shout, Oy, mate, you must be foreign. We don't do that sort of thing here. But who did he turn out to be? Only the star of the opera, English to his back teeth! I could hardly look at him.