Sometimes 30 minutes feel like much more than 140. That happened yesterday at the Royal Opera House. At the end of the second part of Il trovatore, 70 minutes into the performance, I felt that I had spent no more than five minutes in the theatre. That was thanks to Verdi's and Cammarano's wonders and also thanks to the remarkable performance. The interval, however, felt like an eternity. This was partly due to our willingness to go back to the auditorium and to the fact that we had to queue up for ten minutes to be served by a rude barman (something, it must be said, that hardly ever happens at the Royal Opera) who didn't know how to pour a G&T. Things got worse when Maria (who is with Eman my most enthusiastic opera partner) and I tried the drink. It was Plymouth!!!
Whether we like it or not, the UK is an EU country and therefore we are used to being told what to do, what to drink and eat by the bureaucrats who live in Brussels. That makes it even more difficult to believe that those people haven't done anything about Plymouth gin, that tastes like Denene's Splash Cologne. Drinking that crap, and paying 12 pounds for it, made us feel like like British and German tourists in Alicante.
Hotter than Alicante, and a tad more dangerous, is Uganda, where Kevin MacDonald's The last King of Scotland takes place. There, Idi Amin, a more cruel version of Hugo Chavez, seduces a young Scottish man (played by James McAvoy) into becoming his personal doctor. Eventually, the job would entail some more resonsibilities. I won't tell you more: go and watch it. It's a memorable mixture of humour and horror.
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