Swing, Newcastle & The Mikado

Date: 29 April 2007 11:53:31

A great, if not a bit busy, weekend.

First was seeing David Campbell and his The Swing Sessions performance. Wow. And wow again. A great voice, and a great performer: interacting with the audience, with the band members, with the back-up singer [a wonderful talent: she sang several songs before he came on: a powerful and beautiful voice] -- he even sang a song for a couple celebrating their 50th. I'll be getting his CD soon.

Then to Newcastle: why on earth am I not living there? What a place!: in the centre of the city you can wander around easily, you can find car spots (and at cheap rates!), and everything is so close. It was great to catch up with my friend, who talk me around to all manner of places including Christ Church Cathedral (glorious building, and lovely stained glass and other features), whose tower, with very narrow and winding staircase, we climbed; the various beaches including Nobbys and Newcastle; the art-deco Newcastle Baths; a walk out along the harbour where the mouth of the Hunter is, and where we counted 35 cargo ships waiting to come into the harbour to load/unload; and we ate, my goodness we ate. A great day, and great to catch-up with my friend.

I also discovered, if I had a spare 14 days (and a tent and supplies!), I could've walked back to Sydney via the Great North Walk. Though, I must say, doing the walk in sections looks rather appealing: I very well may (so say I from the comfort of my desk and with no expectation I will).

Then, down to southern Sydney today for the Rockdale Opera Society's performance of The Mikado. An absolutely fantastic performance with a stellar cast: Yum-Yum and Ko-Ko in particular, but all the cast, and the orchestra, were fantastic. I do love a nice opera, and I love amateur society productions: the budgets may not be as big, but, truly, the heart and soul and magic is there. The only sour note was the presence, perhaps of illness, of a horrid b.o. from the two people in front of us -- the brochure and programme were used as fans quite often by me, my colleague and her friend. It truly was appalling.

I got to mind my niece tonight: what fun. We played with blocks, drew on the blackboard and sang songs. She so enjoyed the songs that she didn't tell Uncle Ian that she had to go to the toilet. As mummy gave us no spare pants, the only alternative was to take the pants off a rather large teddy bear she has here and put them on her: she enjoyed looking at the elephant on the front -- and, as can be seen, enjoyed eating the apple [which she didn't want chopped up at first, but changed her mind after some difficulty].