Bad Singers, Self Not Included

One Saturday afternoon in the not-so-distant past, my father and I were sat sitting in his car, listening to the broadcast from the Met. It was Tosca that week, but something had gone horribly wrong. The leading lady had lost the program completely, along with the libretto, the conductor, and her sense of pitch.

"She sounds a bit like Maria Callas," said my father.

"Are you joking?" I shot him an incredulous look.

"In the lower registers...."

"And in the upper registers?"

"Maria Callas towards the end of her career! Haw, haw, haw!"

We spent the rest of the trip cringing at the poor woman's humiliation. Quite rapt, we were. It was a--it was an operatic trainwreck. Our ears were ringing, but we couldn't lift a finger to change the station. Oh, I wish I could remember the name of the miserable diva! It was as if Florence Foster-Jenkins had returned to life and staged an assault upon the Met. Her high notes were so strikingly awful they still haven't faded from my memory. They unfolded like sheets in a high wind, and went sailing off across the rooftops, losing form as they went. It was impossible to make out a single word. My theory was that she simply didn't know the words, and was trying to hide it under a lot of hollerin'. ("Singing" just doesn't do the sound she was making justice. "Hooting" comes closer, I think. Imagine an opera-singing screech owl, and you're beginning to get the idea.)

Today, I heard a performance that was even worse, if you'd credit it. How, one might ask, could anything possibly be worse? Well, the first performance was simply awful. This new one, on the other hand, was so insipid I've forgotten it already. I can hardly even remember which opera it was. I've heard more inspired performances from Britney Spears. Let's put it this way: you know how, when Pavarotti sings in any language besides Italian, you sometimes get the impression he's just reciting by rote, and doesn't have a clue what he's saying? Well, these singers sounded like that all the time. Faugh! I was relieved when I got out of the taxi and...

...oh, right. I was listening to it in the taxi, on the way to yet another wildly unsuccessful apartment viewing. I went halfway to bloody Surrey this time (desperation sets in!), and all in vain! I should've known not to bother: a fog was down all day, and a sparrow alit on my windowsill as I was making Stella's breakfast. Two bad omens, and yet I went!

The viewing went too--went badly, that is. The place was decent, and the landlord seemed agreeable, but when I rang for a taxi home, it took forty-five minutes to arrive. I peered out the window as I waited, and there wasn't a shop in sight. Christ, there wasn't even a bus stop. It was hopelessly suburban, and probably outside my grocer's delivery range, to boot. And I waited, and I waited, and I thought:

Man, I can't possibly live in an area where you can't get a taxi inside ten minutes. What if Stella took ill again? What if I did? What if I wanted to go to Stanley Park in the summer, or Bloedel Conservatory? What if a friend wanted to visit? No, no. This is the arse-end of nowhere. Where is that taxi? Twenty minutes...thirty...forty! Has my watch broken? Landlord! Landlord--what's the time? No, it hasn't broken. Forty-five minutes I've been waiting! It's getting dark. I feel like I died and went back to Umeå. Hey, these windows have double glazing. Oh, my God. I've been staring at this window so long I've noticed the glazing. Somebody shoot me, quick!

And that was the end of that. In the taxi on the way home, there was a radio programme about mothers whose children had died in various horrendous and avoidable ways. I hoped the host of the show would get up and smack those hags in their yammering faces for being so careless, but he never did. By the time I got home, I was well miffed.

Anyhow, that does it for this week, apartment-hunting-wise. I'll rest tomorrow, and then it all starts again. Twenty-one days left to find a new Rat's Nest. (I can't stand another twenty-one days of this! What a pain in the arse! Royally rogered by the god of rentals, that's me!)

Oh, I'm so behind now! I haven't even finished my website. My art's all offline--how am I to sell anything like this? Maybe I can finish it tomorrow. It wouldn't be resting, precisely, but it wouldn't be terribly difficult either. All I've got to do is write new descriptions for several dozen images, finish up with the coding, and...faugh. That's going to take me all day. Double faugh. Still, I've got to make an effort. I've got to come up with an extra half-month's rent if I mean to move, and enough to cover expenses, as well. He couldn't have told me I needed to leave before I took down my old site, of course.

I almost wish I was back in the car with my father, laughing at some unfortunate opera star. I didn't have much to worry about that day. I had, that morning, kissed someone I shouldn't have, but no-one had seen me do it. School had only just gone in for the term, and I hadn't any homework to think about yet. I hadn't hidden any salmon in my closet lately, and the sky was spotlessly blue. It was, as car-rides with one's father go, nigh on perfect.

Ah, well. No use being sentimental. My father never even speaks to me unless he has to. Never has done, now that I think about it, not since I got old enough to be annoying. Sod him and the car he rode in on. Onward and upward. Tally ho, and so forth.

(I've got to stop listening to Bellini while I write these things. Makes me all soggy. Ha, ha.)