I was lucky enough to get to see the Scissor Sisters in the Olympia last Sunday. They were amazing. Jake looks amazing, having spent much time in the gym since I last saw him. Still shows what hours of mindless muscle pumping will do. I'd much prefer to climb some mountains, but that's just me. Also, Anna Matronic may be the sexiest woman alive. I want her hair.
Their new album Night Work is out today. I think I little trip to the shops will be necessary.
si je t'aime, prends garde à toi! (Prends garde à toi!)
Carmen: Love is a gypsy's child,
it has never, ever, recognized the law;
if you love me not, then I love you;
if I love you, you'd best beware! (You'd best beware!)
I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket to the Opera in Dun Laoghaire on Friday. It was my first opera, and I was worried that I might not be able to hack it. How wrong I was; it was exhilarating. Despite being sung in French (of which I don't have a word) and being sung over four acts, I was glued to it.
A lot of the music was familiar enough to be, as Bizet's Carmen is probably the most popular opera in the world, but I would have been a goner if it wasn't for the subtitles. Mon Dieu, it was amazing. Here's the Habenera aria, just to give you an idea. Carmen is traveller woman and she is singing about love, and describes it as "a gypsy child, who knows no law" - it's a phrase that I haven't been able to get out of my head since.
This morning I'd a bit of bad luck. Having literally of been up with the birds - it was 4.05am when they woke us for a full-blown dawn chorus - Stephen and I drove to Dublin from our rural retreat in Carlow this morning. I discovered that all was not well however, when I pulled up outside my house and opened the car door, I could hear a loud hissing noise. I checked my tyres and to my horror, I discovered a visible hole in the wall of the front driver's side tyre, whereby a steady stream of pressurized air was pissing out. I couldn't believe it; It was such a horrible ending to a what had been a wonderful day.
I lost no time in restarting the car in order to get it up onto the driveway, out of harm's way. I knew I'd have to replace the tyre, which would be a tricky and dangerous operation if it had to be done with the car teetering on the kerb on the side of Errigal Road. After a lot of effort, (it's not easy to pull the weight of the car up the steep kerb when one of the tyres is dead flat) I managed to wedge it into the driveway; making sure to leave enough space on one side to be safely able to change the tyre. Then I'd to abandon ship and get ready for work, as is the fashion, as life sometimes gets in the way of such things.
In work, I mentioned that I'd a puncture and also that I was rather apprehensive about changing it, mainly because I'm a lady, and ladies don't usually do such things. Jeremy gave me two very good pieces of advice. 1. To loosen and tighten the bolts whilst the car was off the jack, in order to benefit from the friction. 2. That I might be waiting a very long time, before "a man" would come along and rescue me. At this point, I interjected that I'd probably be waiting so long that the entire car would end up on blocks - a custom known to be practiced in these locales. This lady was going to have to grease up, and that was the end of it.
Well I'm not going to go into the mechanics of it all, cause that's not for here, but suffice to say I managed to change the tyre in a record time of 22 mins 12.6 seconds. I'm very proud of myself. I only needed the help of "a man" at one point, when my neighbour arrived and gave a particularly pernicious bolt a bit of a loosening, but apart from that, job done. As soon as I publish this post, I expect my phone to buzz with head hunters from MacLaren, Ferrari and Jordan - offering me a lady job, for my lady things.
I was down visiting Stephen earlier and just as I was about to leave for home we heard a massive foghorn. My first reaction was that Mary Harney had burped, but when we looked out the window, we saw that a ship was about to leave port. The Le Diamant, which is a large white boat, has been sitting on the riverside opposite Stephen's apartment for the last week or so. Anyway, this evening she decided that she'd had enough, and that the time was right to leave our fair shores. She was led out into Dublin Bay by two tug boats, the Beaufort and the Shackleton.
