A first!

Well, I'd like to be able to report that we're halfway to Llangollen, or about to turn onto the River Stort, but the weather's waaaayyyy too hostile for that. The winds just won't let up, and we've had a fair drop of rain, too. I'm a bit concerned for NB Achernar who left for Market Harborough a week ago, and still aren't back. I'm hoping they were loving the cruise so much that they extended it. I wouldn't want to be out there.

Yesterday, we went to the ballet. The Bolshoi. In Moscow. Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. It was a first for us. We'd been saying for years that we really ought to experience ballet and opera, having been averse to both for as long as we can remember. So yesterday it was ballet. We knew the music, but not the dance.

OK, so it was a film at Cineworld. But it was a film of a live performance, in front of a live audience, by the Bolshoi Ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, recorded two years ago. It was enhanced by scenes of the dancers limbering and warming up behind the curtains before each of the two parts, and shots of the orchestra preparing to start. It was superb, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Next, an opera. Then a play, National Theatre or Royal Shakespeare Company, also at the cinema. What a brilliant concept, bringing top-class ballet, theatre and opera to cinemas. Tongue in cheek, I reckon it saved us around £400 in travel and ticket costs, plus about another £100 for a night in a Moscow hotel. Total travel time over sixty hours saved. Not really an option, is it?