I’ve finally booked tickets for the Royal Opera House using a voucher that’s been burning a hole in my pocket for nearly two years now. In light of the fact I haven’t done anything about this for two years, burning might be too strong a word. Quietly steaming might be closer to the mark, whilst going stone cold through neglect would be the technically accurate term. Why the long wait? Well, I could put forward a variety of excuses, so I will: on at least four occasions I tried to book tickets for operas whose name, if not byzantine plot, were reasonably familiar to me; however on each occasion I discovered I was approximately four years too late to get a ticket. Of the ones where tickets were still available, the price exceeded the value of the voucher by some several million pounds. (I’ve rounded figures up for ease of understanding).

And this was a sizeable voucher we’d been given, well into three figures. Faced with these difficulties my enthusiasm for redeeming this gift waned, somewhat inevitably. However, there was a deeper, albeit harder to reveal reason behind the tardiness in dealing with an act of generosity by two very close friends. For all the extravagance of opera, all the glamour and sheer scale of the spectacle, there is one abiding problem; the sheer, unadulterated naffness of the art-form, the mind-bending suspension of disbelief required to treat the protagonists- who invariably look as though their make-up has been done for them by an LSD-crazed paedophile- with anything like approaching credibility. Without wishing to add to the size debate in relation to modern performing artistes, the elephant in the room as far as opera is concerned is all too often an elephant in the room; and waiting for her to sing, whilst hordes of hysterically unbelievable eunuchs chant around the stage like a chorus of Cecil B de Mille extras on a hen night, can be trying on the nerves.

However, having admitted somewhat ashamedly to myself the reluctance for responding to the generous gift that I’d been given, I did finally manage to book seats, and having purchased the tickets, and realising there was £25 or so left on the voucher, popped into the ROH- well, I’m family now, so I’m allowed to use the acronyms- and asked how I could use up the remaining amount. Obviously I was hoping to exchange said sum for some mind-altering substance from behind the bar on the night, but obviously all-too-prepared for the reality that this would probably stretch to around one and a half Gin and Tonics in the crrr-aaaaa-zzzy world of opera finance, where a show is not a show until you’ve haemorrhaged the better part of 20 million quid on giraffes, flame throwers and Sperm-whale sized sopranos who can shatter the sun with a single cadenza. I was informed initially that the only place I could redeem the leftover amount was the gift shop-‘Marriage of Figaro’ egg-cup anyone? Thought not..-then told that actually it couldn’t be used for anything other than toward the cost of another production. I double-checked this information, politely at first, but with an increasing sense of urgency which seemed lost on the box-office; “Yes, you can put it towards any number of productions, in the Main House, the Linbury Studio, etc.”. “But you don’t understand”, I wanted to scream, “I’m never coming back. Why would anyone come back? Opera is bollocks! One-hundred-per-cent total and utter bollocks! And even if it was only ninety per cent balls, the fact that it took almost three times the length of the opera I’m now booked in to see to buy the bloody ticket in the first place would be enough to guarantee I never darkened your foyer again”.

But of course this would make me look like a total philistine, and if there’s one thing that philistines really hate, it’s looking like a total philistine. So I ended up nodding sagely at this information, even forgetting to laugh hollowly when the kindly member of staff told me I could even use it towards the cost of “a friend’s ticket whenever they came to see a show”. The fact that a Royal Opera House employee actually thought I might have an acquaintance culturally sophisticated and/or wealthy enough to be a regular attendee of their establishment actually made me fall in love with them a little bit, and so it is with this sense of comradeship in mind that I shall be girding myself to attend “La Fille de Regiment” later in the month. And offer my belated but extremely heartfelt thanks to the two incredibly generous friends who have given me this- literally- once in a lifetime opportunity.

Getting out of the city has always been a vital part of being able to live in the city, and whenever I can feel my mind wandering towards rural fantasies it is almost always as a consequence of not having followed this advice-to-self. Going to Wendover yesterday was a much-needed exile from the beloved Big Smoke, and a timely reminder of how much of England is still a vast expanse of nature, something it is all too easy forget in the teeming confines of a large city. The other reminder was that when we visit people in the country, “going for a walk” normally requires a drive of some duration before the walk itself can begin- a duration of, say, roughly, about the same length of time it takes to get out of London and in to the tranquility of the countryside itself. This, of course, is an enormously satisfying piece of rationalisation for living in the madness of the capital and not upping sticks- who has sticks in the metropolis?- and moving next door to River Cottage.

It was also very reassuring to hear someone tell me that the great Roman letter-writer Pliny complained vociferously about the endless chatter from the middle-classes about the respective merits of staying in Rome, or selling up and moving to a much larger villa in Tuscany: “Of course, you’ll have about three times the space you get in Rome and wonderful for the kids and all that, but you’ll find more culture in a strawberry yoghurt than you’ll get in Montalcino. Plus the locals all talk funny, and have sex with their livestock etc.” Gratifying indeed to know this dilemma has being going on for at least two thousand years. (At least two thousand;”I mean, I like living in a cave and it suits me for work, but is it any place to bring a kid up? Jeremy bought a new wheel yesterday, I don’t how we’re going to afford it….”)

I keep telling myself I’ve got over this dilemma but it only takes one person to tell me they’ve moved out and I get all tangled up in notions of quality of life again. Someone told me recently they were moving to Eastbourne, and as soon as they started eulogising about the sea, I felt a pang for rural living, and waking up to fresh air and gazing across the horizon. I mean, this is madness- Eastbourne is not so much God’s waiting room as the slab on which he lays the cadavers out, and I know this; I’ve been there on tour and been deafened by an audience of 500 people, all with their hearing aids set to stun, drowning out a full PA system whilst all simultaneously shuffling in their seats trying to work out where they are/why they are there/who they are/where the toilets are and where’s the nice man who said they could get an ice-cream at the interval. And yet  a brief conversation with a potential London emigrant can convince me that a better quality of life is to be had in this geriatric melting-pot. It was only the news that they were now deciding to move back to London that calmed me down.

Deep down I know I couldn’t leave, and that London is a spiritual home- I’ve known since the first time I came here as a small boy that this was the only place I wanted to live in. It’s not for everyone, of course, but I have put a lot of effort into making this my “home-town”, and take a lot of pleasure in what the capital provides. All the things that you will be told you can’t have in London are there for the taking- knowing your neighbours, being recognised as regular and valued customers in your favourite store, experiencing the kindness of strangers. These things can take more time in the city, for a very obvious reason- there are so many thousands more of us, and creating space for your presence to be acknowledged requires a bit more effort, but it can still be done all the same. Then you have the luxury of a sense of community, but a community that is constantly being added to by new people, bringing with them new experiences and new ways of being. The world passes by your doorstep when you live in this great city, and you can engage with it and discover things you could never have imagined or contemplated. People will come and go, but not all of them, not all at the same time, and the backdrop to your life really is an ever-changing and exotic landscape. 

There, I’ve convinced myself all over again.