Bolshoi or Budgens?

I paid an insane amount for the ticket (why is ballet so bloody elitist?), but I don’t begrudge a penny – although my bank manager might. I am extremely broke at the moment, and some might argue that I shouldn’t be spending the equivalent of three large food shopping expeditions on three hours of fantasy. I would, of course, disagree. Workwise, I’m on chapter eight of a pretty difficult novel, and have spent the summer so far closeted in my office, emerging only for dog walks and occasional whinging at neighbours about the hard life of a writer. I am antisocial, uncommunicative, wound up and exhausted. Watching Don Quixote in the opulence of the Royal Opera House is my version of a hit of cocaine, or, for the younger reader, a shot of adrenaline.

Tomorrow I will shoot through chapter eight (the trickiest in terms of plotting) and sail through to chapter nine, all thanks to the wondrous Natalia Osipova, the divine Ivan Vasiliev, and of course, all the rest of them: orchestra, corps de ballet, soloists, coryphées, costume, wigs… There are hundreds of them – just like all those people on the credits of a movie – and probably with an audience that takes a similar amount of notice of them – i.e. – not much…!