Mad Week

Many moons ago one of my supervisors asked me to give a talk for a group of amateur astronomers operating in Brighton. At the time I had been happily working on programming and my write up for my report. Summer had seemed an awfully long time away and with no good reason to refuse (apart from I’d never done it before, so I didn’t know what to do – got to learn sometime!) I’d agreed happily, proud to have been asked. However by the time summer came around I’d been volunteering, giving talks to scientists and slaving over my report. I was genuinely shattered by now and feeling guilty for not having done much ‘real’ work for my PhD, but with the reputation of the lab at stake I set about writing a general introductory talk on comets for the Brighton Amateur Astronomy Society. It took a few days to write (more guilt!), as I had to delve into a bit more detail on the background surrounding the formation of comets than had been relevant for my report.

In the end the society was lovely. They are based at Emmaus Brighton, which is a charity that does houses homeless people and gives them meaningful work. I was very impressed with their handmade Analemmatic Sundial (which is one of those life-sized ones where you stand in the middle and tell the time by which marker your shadow points at). All the members were very nice to me (they could clearly tell I was very nervous) and I clearly put on a good enough show because they emailed my supervisor to say thank you! They were very interested in comet ISON (eagerly anticipated at Christmas time this year), and I’ve promised them a follow up when the results start coming in. The same week as all this was going on another opportunity landed on my doorstep that I couldn’t pass up: a night at the Royal Opera House!

One of my favourite things about living in London is the amazing shows that are just on your doorstep. When I was an undergraduate I used to get discount tickets with the theatre society at Imperial, but since then I’ve signed up for all the discounts I can. There are lots of schemes aimed at getting younger people into music and theatre so there a quite a few opportunities for cheap seats if you know where to look. Most theatres also offer discount tickets for students (or sometimes even just under 25’s) wishing to go mid-week. For instance, I’ve been signed up to the Royal Opera House’s Student Scheme for quite a while now and this week they were offering top price tickets to a performance of the Rondine by Puccini, at only £10 each! Despite being very tired from my experience in Brighton (and everything else that had happened recently! - see previous post) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity! 

The plot of Rondine is a little strange. The main character, a woman called Magda, is fed up of being rich and surrounded by rich men. She wants to be loved in that old-fashioned romantic way that only really exists in movies. So she sneeks off, pretending to be penniless, and falls in love with a guy called Ruggero who’s just moved to the city (this is all set in a rather glamorous version of Paris in the 19th century). They fall in love instantly and run off to her country house to escape everything. The only trouble is that Ruggero is actually poor and so after a while she gets bored. She doesn’t want to move in with him and live happily ever after in some pokey little cottage in the countryside, so she tells him it’s over (in that ‘we just can’t be together’ kind of way) and that’s the end of the opera. By the end you don’t really like any of the characters (even Ruggero seems a bit pathetic), except Magda’s maid and her suitor because they’re so entertaining (she’ll say ‘I hate you, I never want to see you again’ and then ‘what time are you picking me up tonight’ almost in the same breath). The music was amazing though and the whole experience of attending the opera at the Royal Opera House was completely different to anything I’ve ever experienced - it really was better in the original language and felt a lot more like a special occasion. A lovely treat at the end of another mad week!

View from my seat at the Royal Opera House - I could see right into the pit!