Wednesday

Shortly after I published my previous blog post, we decided to use the gift vouchers given to us at Christmas to go and see Les Miserables.  Living the high life, as we do, we went to the 1.40pm showing at the Stroud Apollo, together with about twenty other people.  The foyer of the cinema was actually fairly bustling and we expected to find ourselves in a full auditorium, but as we were directed to Screen 3, the majority of the crowd shuffled in a different direction, to see “Quartet”.

As can be seen on my journal entry above, I gave it three stars.  I don’t think Russell Crowe is going to make it in musical theatre as a result of this performance, so no surprises there.  But he wasn’t as bad as some reviewers have suggested, I thought, and I was actually a  little disappointed in Hugh Jackman, if I’m honest.  No doubt, however, that the stand out performance was from Anne Hathaway (whose teeth I had to google about later…)  though I thought all the principal women did remarkably well and in my opinion, Eddie Redmayne made a great Marius.

My main observation is that big isn’t always better.  That a cast of thousands can’t necessarily evoke the same emotions as a small scale theatre show and that epic scenes, whilst impressive from a production point of view are not always as dramatic as low(er) budget interpretations.  It confirmed my opinion that it’s impossible to beat a great live performance.

Oh, and that little moment with Javert, Gavroche and the medal provoked the same reaction in both of us.

Cheap shot.

(this sums it up well, I think)

Update on Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 3:27PM by Gill Thomas

Having read a report and then listened to a radio feature this lunchtime about audience reaction in cinemas, I can report that in the Stroud Apollo yesterday afternoon, there was no applause whatsoever, and apart from the rustling of sweet papers in the row behind me and a single audible gasp at some critical moment or other, no audience reaction at all.  Heartless, that's what we are down here.

Winter

It’s cold here.  Not the bone-chilling, long-lasting freeze of the Arctic, but a few days of lower than normal temperatures and enough to provide us with conversation.  What rotten luck, then, that it turned chilly just when our pianist friend Tra brought her Mum to stay.  After all, if you’re used to the warmth of Saigon, then the top of a hill in the Cotswolds is probably not the most comfortable place to be in mid-January.

So, we stayed home and enjoyed each other’s company, spending time around the kitchen table and doing a spot of mending, which is a necessary skill in any language!

We managed a quick dash from the car to make a quick visit to St Marys, Fairford, where a smattering of snow lay in the churchyard

and the feast of colour from the marvellous stained glass windows was a rich reward for our efforts.

(Actually, the fish and chips at The Swan, Southrop, was also richly deserved, we thought!)

But today, having said goodbye to our friends, we’re feeling lucky to be able to stay at home.  Maybe I’ll use the time to tidy my studio….

Who knows what excitement might prevail!?

Friday, early January

It’s chilly out there.  Snow is threatened, but for now, we can’t really think that it’s going to happen soon.  But we are at home and enjoying the opportunity to catch up and tick one or two things off our lists.

I can’t believe that two of the four bulbs I set on the pebbles on Boxing Day are already a foot high and flowering.  The other two are beginning to think about following on, but for now, are simply putting down one or two roots.  Those flowers smell divine.

Actually, they’ve got competition.  Seeing a bunch of these pretty yellow narcissi in the supermarket for a couple of pounds, I brought them home for the windowsill, to stand beside the pussy willow I’d already put in my trolley.

I usually have a vase of willow twigs at this time of the year and enjoy watching the green shoots appear from those little furry pods over a few weeks.

Oh, and I couldn’t resist the colour of the anemones, so reminiscent of my grandmother and another seasonal favourite.  A few Spring flowers around then, to fill the gaps left by the Christmas tree and all the other paraphernalia.

Mind you, there are still a few heaps of things here and there, including this lovely pile of Christmas books and cards, just waiting for a quiet hour or two to savour them.  I enjoy reading through the Christmas cards again, now the hoohah is all over; it’s a pleasing way to spend a sunny afternoon in the garden room.

But actually, there’s a pile of ephemera from our recent trip there, waiting to be sorted and I must do that before I leave it any longer.

I worked with some of it yesterday.  What you see is part of a page of pockets which allow me to tuck in all kinds of bits and pieces and keep it all together in a folder.

I’ve done half of our trip and just need to complete the other half now, over the page in the next week.  I’ve been putting these double page spreads together since the beginning of October, actually, with a view to moving on from my “photo a day”.  It’s working fairly well, though I’m still developing my style and working out the best approach which makes it worthwhile but manageable.  Though I began with a “Project Life” set up, I’m happier working it out for myself and especially enjoy the opportunity to be able to include all the bits and pieces I like to gather in addition to an –almost – daily photo.

So, this will replace my “photo of the day” here.  For a while, I’ve been looking to move on from that and considering a different way of recording the everyday goings on around here.  I began the page pockets thinking that it could become the means of doing that and am happy with the results so far.  After five years, I felt the daily photograph was becoming more of a habit than anything else and that it had reached a natural conclusion. 

In the meantime, I have a search on my hands.  One small bear from the Home for Retired Bears in Darkest Peru appears to have lost her hat.  I’m not sure Paddington’s dressing gown is very secure without a cord, too.

Priorities, eh?

mit Schlag?

The eternal Viennese question.  With or without cream?  Not a dribble of pouring cream or half and half, but a great dollop of whipped goodness on top of anything and everything you care to choose.

Oh, and the default is definitely “with”.

Of course, the Austrians are well known for the sweetest of things.  Shop windows are full of chocolate (Mozart Kugeln, truffles and krapfen) and the coffee shops vie with one another over the claim of the original Sachertorte.  (We bought ours in Demel, shown in the picture above, though of course, the Hotel Sacher has a louder call).  We enjoyed our Apfelstrudel on a couple of occasions and searched in vain for another favourite: Kaiserschmarrn, settling for the Salzburger nockerl instead.  Lesser known perhaps are the Manner wafers, which have a knicker-pink shop of their own in the city centre too.

But man cannot live on only sweetness, and on our first evening, feeling tired and looking for the simplest answer to the question of our hunger, we sought advice from the concierge for somewhere to eat; somewhere gemütlich and with traditional fare to offer.  He proposed the Weissen Rauchfangkehrer, about which I wrote in an earlier post.  Whilst the food here was certainly based on traditional dishes and tasted remarkably good, it was rather too refined, too delicate and a little grander than we would prefer.  So, rather than a hearty bowl of gulaschsuppe, a somewhat elegant arrangement appeared, to the slight disappointment of those who were hoping to tuck in.

We tried an old favourite, Witwe Bolte’s, on the opposite side of the Ringstrasse.  Here, we’d enjoyed the hearty fare we were hoping for on our last visit, and the website promised good things.  Sure enough, once again the food was good but somehow just that bit too cheffy.

Perhaps the old days of plain and simple, traditional cooking were over?  Maybe the Viennese no longer tuck into platefuls of dumplings and noodles?

One member of the family (I’ll leave you to guess who) was determined to find somewhere to enjoy his favourite tafelspitz  and identified Plachutta.  Not only was it on a street not too far from our hotel, they could squeeze us in if we were prepared to come early.

Guess which restaurant saw us again the following night?  Not only was the menu full of the best, traditional Austrian dishes, the service was super and those copper pans contained exactly what they promised.  For those of us who choose slightly lighter fare (ahem) the Wiener Schnitzel is first class too!

This morning, as I pottered about, catching up on this and that, an email arrived with this link.  I think someone’s going to be trying it out for himself before too long!

Monday, Monday

(can you read those words without humming ?)

Looking outside this morning, we feared there might be snow, but fortunately, it was still raining.  

My focus was a little closer, though; the last hotel breakfast for a while.  We sat planning our day over boiled eggs and Birchermuesli watching as the rain turned to a drizzly kind of sleet.  Fortunately, by the time we’d packed our bags, negotiated a late checkout (“What time would you like, Mr Thomas?”, “Well, we don’t need to leave until four”.  “Then four o’clock will be fine”), the rain/drizzle/sleet had stopped enough for me to take an umbrella out with me but not to put it up.

A rather different city greeted us this morning though.  The Christmas decorations in the Kärntner Straße were being taken down and there were several of these elevator platforms here and there making a pretty swift job of it, too.

It was delivery day, clean up day…back to work day. 

We were heading for the Haus Der Musik, in one of the side streets, where we planned to spend a couple of hours before doing a little light shopping and so on before our flight home.

It was an excellent choice!  As well as the usual museum-type collections of memorabilia (those are Brahms’ spectacles!), there was lots of interaction.

We composed waltzes which were played back to us and for which we could have ordered a partiture (but we didn’t).  We learned a great deal about the science of music and hearing and enjoyed fiddling with touchscreens and twiddling knobs (no children here on a weekday morning to get in the way!)

We even got to conduct the Wiener Philharmonic!  Not that they were taking a blind bit of notice of me…

I admired a display of little dance cards from one of the grand balls and enjoyed the morning very much indeed.  We left humming and with a spring in our step. It had been a good choice!

So, back into the city, past these gorgeous caryatids (there appear to be so many in Vienna!) in Josefplatz, where we meandered around, eyes gazing upwards at the lovely buildings and the rooftop figures too.

So this sight came as a little surprise!

The stables of the Spanish Riding School were just there to our right but we’d been so busy looking to our left, we failed to notice.  (A pantomime audience would have been screaming “behind you!” by now)   A handful of the grey Lipizzaner horses were taking the morning air and looking very graceful indeed.

We were more in need of some refreshment however, so “drei heisse Schokolade, zwei mit schlag und einmal ohne” in Julius Meinl was an excellent idea.

Making our way back to the hotel via Kärntner Straße again, instead of peering into shop windows, I glanced the other way and noticed a beautiful decoration on the wall opposite – how had we missed it before?

The young man and his camel were particularly cute!

(so was the warm coat I spotted in the Gerry Weber shop sale, too ;-)

With no  room for any more krapfen, apfelstrudel with or without schlag,  it was time for home.

The weather had dried, the sky was white and it was cold.  It threatened snow and we were happy to be moving right along before it came in and created any havoc.  The taxi whisked us to the airport in no time at all and after a very full flight home, our little jaunt was done.

Good to be home, as always!