I am on the emailing list for the Royal Opera House's student standby tickets. It's awesome. Tickets for a tenner. Sometimes a fiver (like when I saw La boheme). I get an email on Monday letting me know I could get tickets for yesterday's matinee show of The National Ballet of China's production of Swan Lake. YES PLEASE! So I go online to see what sort of tickets I can get, and the "best available" option rewards me with two seats in the orchestra stalls, 13 rows back, right in the center. This is the view from our seats:
I mean wow. It gets better...I have never seen such a crisp, tight, precise ballet performance before. It was perfect. Sure, the guys weren't as powerful as American dancers, but they were a hell of a lot more graceful AND light on their feet. I think I heard Prince Siegfried's landings maybe half a dozen times throughout the entire three-act ballet. And Odette/Odile....oh man. I could rave for AGES. She was flawless. As Odette her dancing was mournful and fragile and dreamlike and even a little bit hesitant/nervous. As Odile she was so full of charisma and pizazz and all her movements were strong and assertive. It was incredible. Her footwork was perfect. Her arms were beautiful. There are 32 fouettes in a row in the pas de deux in the second act. She made it look easy.
The whole thing was just plain incredible.
Major delays on the Northern Line coming home turned me into a sticky sweaty mess. Took me twice as long to get home, with a lot of that time was spent at a standstill, and there's no air circulation on the Northern Line if the train ain't moving. But I was still in such a good mood from ballet I didn't mind too much.
I get home and find out Sonja is going to get hamburger buns. Fabulous. This means I have to figure out how to make hamburgers from scratch. Of all the things I've ever made from scratch, hamburgers is not one of them. Sonja couldn't believe it. So I tried to explain to her about how awesome packages of frozen hamburger patties are for a busy family. Then I realized her argument would probably be something along the lines of "well we're a busy family and I'd NEVER buy those...", so I quickly threw in "yeah...a busy family that doesn't have a dedicated au pair to cook for them when they don't have the time or energy..." The rest of the conversation is as follows....sort of. I mean, it's pretty close but obviously I have to paraphrase some of it:
Sonja: Ohhhhh....you mean they don't have a bitch
Me: What?!
Sonja: You're my bitch
Me: Excuse me?! So is this a good time to bring up my fees for next year then?
Sonja: Like Luke [her assistant/lap dog]. He's my bitch.
Me: Yeah. He is. But he's sort of more of your bitch than I am. I mean, he follows you around and crap.
Sonja: Yeah. He idolizes me. But you're my bitch too.
Me: I don't have you on a pedestal though like he does. Sorry. You're too heavy.
Sonja: (looks shocked)
Me: (grinning while making lifting motions with my arms) You know. I'm not strong enough to lift you up and put you up there. On the pedestal. Sorry.
Sonja: (still looks shocked, exits the kitchen)
Me: No really though, we need to talk about my school fees for next year. Come back.
Sonja: (returns)
Me: Just because it's getting close to the cutoff date for getting a discount for paying early and I need to know if you guys are covering them again this year or if I have to.
Sonja: How much of a discount?
Me: It's 2.5% if you pay in full by the last Friday in August. I can't remember off the top of my head how much that works out to...
Sonja: 2.5%?! That's like, two quid!
Me: No....it works out to 250 or something like that. I'll pull up the webpage after dinner and show you the exact amount.
Sonja: I thought it was direct debit from my account.
Me: No, that was for last year. I mean, you could do it again this year if you want but then you don't get the discount.
Sonja: It's Julian's turn to pay fees this year.
So while I'm not sure if they're going to be paying for school again this year, at least I've planted the seed. I'll bring it up again in a couple of days.
Can't believe she said I'm her bitch though. It's even harder to believe I didn't lose my cool.
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