The Light Princess

As a New Year's Eve treat we saw the Light Princess.  It's a new musical on at the National Theatre. I had no idea what it was going to be about, only that Tori Amos had written the music/words to it. Sometimes it's nice to go into a show with no expectations. It's a fairy tale based loosely on an 1840's novel about a princess who has lost her sense of gravity, hence the lightness.  Then there is the usual musical love story between star-crossed lovers.  It was pretty good, not as good as Matilda or Wicked, but probably deserves a chance on the West End.

What was particularly great about it was the staging.  Instead of having the princess on wires the whole way through, they had these 4 acrobats which would hold her aloft and manipulate her so it looked like she was floating.  Throughout all of this she was belting out her songs.  The princess was definitely the star of the show, her and the acrobats. There were some catchy tunes too, some reviewers didn't like it, but it was a sell-out when we saw it, and the audience was definitely enchanted. I would give it a go if you can't get into Matilda or Wicked and feel like a fairy-tale.  The only thing I would wish for was that the princess be a bit more pro-active in things.  She was definitely one for being rescued rather than getting out there and doing things.  That was a little annoying because they were pretty close with that, she definitely talked a lot about doing things, she just never actually achieved them.

As a double bonus when we went to see it the Landscape Photography Awards were being exhibited at the same time.  So after the show we could just go upstairs and take a look at some beautiful landscapes.  Weirdly it was sponsored by National Rail, not my idea of a beautiful addition to landscapes.  It was all places in the UK too, which I quite liked.  It's hard for the UK to compete against the wilderness of New Zealand, say, or the majesty of places in Europe, so just to have them by themselves allowed you to appreciate the UK more.  And there are certainly some pretty places in this country.  It's on until February and is free, so if you find yourself in the area I definitely recommend it.

Sights Around Scotland

A very small portion of the reindeer paddock

Before the overnight walk into the Cairngorms we had some extra time around Inverness.  Driving along the road from Aviemore I noticed a sign announcing reindeer tours, how could we go past that!  It turns out that they are trying to reintroduce reindeers to the Cairngorms, apparently they used to be native there, but were all killed somehow.  They don't seem like they would be that fun to hunt, so not sure what happened to them.  But now there is this massive pasture where they keep some of the reindeer, though a lot of them are just free to roam the Cairngorms where they want.  These are Swedish reindeer, so I imagine they can take whatever Scotland throws at them.

The lone, deaf, albino reindeer

The herd charging

So the reindeer tours go twice a day, and seem to consist of the group walking to the paddock and then feeding them by hand.  When I say paddock it's more than that, perhaps a small national park by itself.  When we got there though there were no reindeers to be seen, perhaps a downside to giving them so much room.  Eventually one pure white reindeer appeared.  This thing would never have survived in the wild, pure white, and completely deaf.  Two of the more junior workers were sent off up the ridge to try and rustle up some reindeers for us to feed, and rustle them up they did.  If you have ever seen the storm trooper alpacas, if you haven't I highly recommend it, but just imagine the imperial march from Star Wars playing in your head as this massive herd of reindeer appear of the ridge line and then start charging down at you.  As they started running at us, the lead guide tells everyone to stand completely still and that as they run through us, they won't gore us so long as we don't move.  Slightly scary.  But they aren't super big, and nobody got an antler through anything, so all well that ends well.  And now that they had all appeared it was time for foooood.

Some nice antlers

Whilst we were waiting for the reindeer storm troopers to appear, the guide was giving us some info on reindeers.  Apparently their antlers grow back every year, and they always grow back in the same shape, they are like reindeer fingerprints.  Also because it is so cold in a Swedish winter that they don't want to open their mouths to make any noise, since heat escapes with their breath.  So instead they have this weird tendon that snaps over their ankle as they walk, making this clicking noise.  And that's how they keep track of each other in the mists and snow storms.  When we were out in the Cairngorms the next day we actually saw a few wild reindeer, and even more cool was that we heard them in the fog.  We couldn't see them, but we could hear them clicking away at each other.

As well as the reindeer, highly recommended for a visit, we couldn't go to Inverness without seeing Loch Ness.  I was actually a little disappointed with this loch, I'd seen so many movies about it, where it always seems so wild and remote, but it's only a 20 minute drive from Inverness.  And there are heaps of boats out on it, and just people all over the place.  Not to say that it isn't a pretty loch, it just didn't have that air of mystery that you imagine is necessary for such a place.

Loch Ness

Mozart's Requim

We got to see Mozart's Requiem the other week.  It was at St John's square, which is a church near Westminster.  Quite a cool church, it is in the middle of this square, hidden back from the main street.  Unfortunately we couldn't find any where to eat.  Westminster is weird like that, you would think there would be heaps of restaurants around to service all the MPs, but perhaps they like to remain in parliament house, would hate to have to mingle with the plebs after all.  So we ended up eating in this taxi driver restaurant, I mean it's where all the taxi drivers eat, not that it was an ode to the movie.  So imagine massive plates of pasta and unhealthy looking men.  The food wasn't too bad, but you would think there would be a niche in this area which needs filling.

The concert itself was not bad, once they got to the actual requiem.  They had really pushed the requiem, and hadn't given any other information as to what else they would be playing.  So during the first half I'm sitting there thinking, this doesn't sound like Mozart, where's the melody, and why are there no singers.  At interval I paid my £2 for a programme, Britten and Purcell, no wonder there was no tune.  Damn them.  They put the piece that everyone was there for in the second half.  Because they know most people would leave at interval otherwise.

Once they finally got to the requiem it was really good.  The choir they had was really good, it was nice to listen to it in a church as well, you feel it's fitting.  Everyone says that the second half of the requiem isn't as good (it wasn't written by Mozart, he died halfway through writing it). I think that's unfair on the composer who ended up finishing it, I enjoyed it the whole way through.

Cairngorms

Our personal lake front campsite

We had a long weekend in the Cairngorms in late summer.  I was keen for some more wilderness after our successful Irish weekend.  And the whole idea of being able to wild camp was really appealing to me.  This was also going to be the first camping we had done in the UK, a chance to test out whether our gear can handle a Scottish summer (it's quite similar to an Australian winter, just windier).

We started at the base of Cairngorm mountain, and it was certainly windy.  It was a struggle to just open the car door.  We had a plan in mind already for what we wanted to do, but given the wind and the low lying fog we thought we should check with the rangers first.  They gave us some great advice as to a nice walk to do, though it ended up being pretty easy in the end.  I think next time we just go with what we have planned.

The peaks surrounding Loch Avon

I'm guessing it's probably hard to be a ranger and pitch your advice at the right level.  When we were in asking about walks in the area, there was another family in at the same time.  They had this tiny kid with them, maybe 4 or 5 years old.  And they wanted to walk to the top of Cairngorm.  At this point the wind was seriously strong, maybe 50mph, and they wanted to take this tiny kid out onto a summit.  He would have been blown off.  So I suppose as a ranger it's probably better to err on the side of over-cautious when giving advice.  I think I just have to learn to ignore it.

Our little tent and the Shelter Stone behind

The walk we did end up doing was really good, straight up from the car park at the rangers station, to the right of the Cairngorm ski bowl, just a little easy.  The wind was really blowing at this point, it felt like it was just accelerating off the escarpment as it came down to us.  Once we got over the ridge it actually felt a little weaker.

We managed to climb Cairngorm in the absolute mist.  It was pretty hard to know where the summit was, these weren't very pointy mountains.  Sure wasn't much of a view up there.  I think we need to work on our mist navigation though, it's kind of hard to know where you are going when you can't see any features.  I didn't want to get too far from the trail in case we couldn't find it again.

It ended up being quite a short walk on this first day, from the top of Cairngorm we dropped down quite sharply to Loch Avon.  I was really liking the wild camping out here.  No one around for hundreds of metres and we had our own lake front camp spot with beach.  I was imagining how completely packed this would have been if you could have driven here.  Instead it was just us and our little tent and not another person in sight.

The top of Ben Macdui

We tried out the freeze dried food you can buy here.  It wasn't bad, and the ingredient list wasn't as scary as some.  I'm always a little put off when there are 10 unpronounceable chemicals.  There was a lot of wind that night, the tent would periodically be squashed flat.  Good job those people with the tiny kid had decided against Cairngorm.  But I was impressed that the tent held up, and there was only one downpour, which again the tent survived against.  Good little tent, it just needs a better porch I think.

We were up early the next morning and headed off past the Shelter stone and more lochs and then straight into mist.  This stuck with us for the rest of the day.  It made for some atmospheric walking, but was lacking in views.  Luckily the paths were easier to follow today, I think we would have been alright, even if the paths had been non-existent, it just would have made for some slower walking.  We managed to climb Ben Macdui, which at 1309m is the second highest mountain in the UK and the highest in the Cairngorms.  It was almost completely flat on the top, you could imagine this would be what the surface of the moon would be like.  Nothing was growing, not even lichen, and it was completely covered in fog so you couldn't see more than 20m in front of you.  Pretty spooky.  We were the only people up there, which is always nice to have a summit to yourself.

Then it was the long walk back to the start.  All in all a great overnight walk in the Cairngorms, and much easier than I thought it would be.  We are definitely going to be back!

Magic Flute - ENO style

The ENO was putting on a performance of the Magic Flute by Mozart, and we managed to get tickets to the last performance, which was a bit exciting.  After Philip Glass it was nice to hear an opera with a bit of melody to it.  The staging was a bit plain, modern day dress and not much action on the stage.  Again they tried to do some clever things with bits of paper, that seems to be where opera staging is at the moment.

They did some quite interesting things with a blackboard (you would be surprised), and they did make a big deal about having this "foley" artist on stage.  They were standing in a glass box off to the side of the stage and would make various sound effects throughout the performance.  That was something I hadn't seen before.

It was sung in English too, which I'm not sure I like.  English with surtitles is always a bit weird, shouldn't we be able to understand them in that case.  Though I still needed the surtitles quite a bit.  So why not just sing in the German?  It's all about the sound afterall, and German is quite a cool sounding language.

The really disappointing part, ignoring the lack of drama on the stage, was the Queen of the Night missing her high notes in the really famous aria.  If you want to hear how it is supposed to sound, check out this link.  Ours didn't sound like that, there are about 6 times that she has to hit some really high notes, and every time they were more of a scream.  Very disappointing.  I guess making her sing it whilst her character was in a wheelchair probably didn't help.

Kew Gardens

Cactus shapes

I do enjoy a bit of flower porn, so Kew Gardens in late summer always is worth a visit, regardless of the incredible price.  So whilst we are about to hit the coldest months of the year, enjoy some colour.

My favourite has to be the Princess Diana's glasshouse and the alpine house.  Give me some tiny, struggling plants any day.  Plus it's always cool in there, which is refreshing on a hot day.

We saw some parents nearly lose their minds out there.  They had lost their child, we had seen them wandering around one of the glass houses calling out his name.  Then later on outside they had reached the end, still hadn't found him.  They were really starting to panic and were about to call the police, when he just seemed to appear from a hedge.  Panic over, but I'm pretty sure that kid got a stern talking too.

Double flower action

Nothing like a good macro shot

The mythical lotus flower

Even the cacti were getting in on the flower action

A wasp inside a flower

Satyagraha - Philip Glass

This is an opera by Philip Glass we went to see.  This is the only performance piece I haven't made it all the way through.  It's a pretty weird opera.  It's (very) loosely based on Gandhi's time in South Africa.  To be honest I never knew Gandhi spent anytime in South Africa, so I was coming from a long way back with this opera.  I was trying to get some background on what Gandhi got up to in South Africa to give me some idea of what was going to happen in the opera (I shouldn't have bothered really).  There wasn't a heap I could come up with, he was beaten up a few times, it's where he first got his ideas of nonviolent protest, but overall, there's not a lot of "narrative".

I know operas don't generally have a lot of plot, boy meets girl, boy can't be with girl for any number of implausible reasons, boy gets girl/someone dies, the end.  But then it's really all about the music, the plot is just a vehicle for some nice sounds.  I've heard some of Glass' orchestral works, and quite liked them, so thought the opera would be nice to listen to as well.

The day of the opera I did a bit more reading, still desperately trying to work out what the story was going to be about.  I find out that Philip Glass got his start in experimental theatre, that the opera was going to be sung entirely in Sanskrit, there were not going to be any surtitles, and the words were taken from the Bhagavad Gita, which is some 700 verse epic Hindu poem.  So not a lot to do with Gandhi's life in South Africa.  Well, still the music could be nice.

The best I could say about it was that the stage production was good, they were doing interesting things with puppets and paper.  But that is seriously about it, the music was lacking any sort of melody.  If you ever wonder what modern composers do, they are still trying to push their art form forward I guess, then go see one of Glass' operas, and you'll see the direction it's taking.  It was a lot of droning, and people standing around on stage, unfortunately the orchestra didn't really get much of a look in.  And since you had no idea what was going on, it was kind of hard to get engaged.  Sorry Glass, I guess I'm not quite ready for experimental opera, with no plot, or musicality.  Perhaps in 20 years time.