Social contact

Had a treat today - caught up with Mariese at the Convent. Masked and socially distanced, but it was lovely to catch up and have a good chat. We had a lovely companion (see below). He was very friendly and Mariese feed him a little of her croissant.

The hip and lower back are feeling much better today. Not perfect, but certainly on the mend.

Also had a catchup with Bronwen this afternoon, albeit via Zoom. She's taking over Thursday's Daybreak shift and wanted to pick my brains. Nice to see her.

Lunch companion

Euryanthe

 Today's highlight was watching a production of Weber's opera Euryanthe from the Theater an der Wien which popped up in YouTube.

The work is a crazy story with a bad libretto, but the score is wonderful. It also struck me how similar some parts of the story are to Wagner's Lohengrin - Lysiart and Eglantine are very like Telramund and Ortrud. It turned out I'm not the first to notice the similarities; Euryanthe is a work Wagner would have known, may have conducted it, and he would have been influenced by other aspects. In particular, the way the work is through-composed.

Unfortunately the production didn't do much to alleviate the work's innate faults, but it was well sung and played.

In other news, the doctor got back to me about the x-rays, without anything really useful. I'm going to arrange a session with the physio at the Health Centre.

Spring

More of the same

 The last three weeks have passed with each day much the same as the previous one. So I haven't been posting.

Yesterday in the shower I somehow made a false move resulting in my lower back twingeing very painfully. The rest of the day I was very uncomfortable but managed to sleep ok. Thus morning it was still uncomfortable but a couple of careful walks today have left me more optimistic about the next few days.

The good news is that over the past week Victoria's numbers of new cases have been steadily reducing - today it was 21. 3MBS is looking towards a slow return to a more complete roster of free-to-air broadcasting.

Promise of a quince