Rolling along

Went to the symphony last night for, I'm ashamed to say, the first time since we arrived in Brussels. Combine the F-word's thriftiness and my cranky exhaustion at the end of the working day . . . anyways, we'll be better in 2008. So we went last night, to see the Charlemagne Orchestra. Certainly the best looking orchestra I've ever seen. We were sitting right in front of the first violin section, which contained two specimens of breathtaking human beauty, and was quite fit in general.

But then the baritone, Stephen Salters, started singing and it was as though there was no one else in the concert hall. The Black Russian - hah. I liked the arrangements of Pushkin's poetry very much; it was as though it had been written for him. And perhaps it had, or at least arranged for him - I had the impression he worked very collaboratively with the arranger, Maria Alvarez. Liked the Mendelssohn 'Airs of Elijah' a lot less and felt it suited him rather less. But no probs. He got encored and sang a spiritual. Nice. Not as nice as this:



Anyhoo. The concert concluded with a Mendelssohn symphony that was fucking ace, certainly much fucking acer than the Airs. Violent and sexy. At that point the F-word and I were exhausted and jonesing for some ice cream but from the opening phrases we were suddenly wide awake and frisky again. Left the hall on a high, but the Häagen-Dazs shop was already closed, the staff gawping at us from where they were lounging behind the counters. Had a moment of hating Belgium again. What sort of fuckwit country closes its ice cream parlours just as the concert halls let out? This sort of fuckwit country. Oh well.