Ten things

via misia:

Ten things I have done that you probably haven't (but if you have do tell!).

1. Debated with a former Archbishop of Canterbury.

2. Had ten tons of pork flavour repackaged and shipped to Saudi Arabia (there wasn't any actual pork in it).

3. Been threatened by the Beast of Bolsover.

4. Done the round trip Toronto-Melbourne four times in eight weeks.

5. Rugby tackled the mayor of Toronto.

6. Wired up the Piazza in Covent Garden for a concert.

7. Had sex in a neolithic stone circle.

8. Committed a politically motivated burglary.

9. Swum across the River Wear in January.

10. Shared a student union pie with Robin Cook.

An odd coincidence

Yesterday lemur_catta and I headed up to Contact Editions to do a little bookstore browsing, not realising that they had a 75% off moving sale on. I scored half a dozen new and almost new hardbacks for $60 which wasn't bad at all. They range from a memorial volume of essays for Edward Thompson, through a history of the Foreign Legion to a book of noodle recipes.

That, though, is not a coincidence. The coincidence consisted in running into Marshall Pynkoski, the Co-Artistic Director of Opera Atelier, with whom I had a pleasant chat about upcoming productions (Dido and Aeneas and Actaeon in April, Lully's Armide in November) then getting home to find my continuing subscriber discount mailing from OA in my mailbox. It's a good deal, I can get both of us really good tickets for Armide and next April's production of Monteverdi's Orfeo for $300 including tax. (We already have tickets for Dido/Actaeon). I'm going to try and get the same seats we had for Don Giovanni; front row centre orchestra, they were perfect.