alison

I've merged this thread with a previous one on Miko.

I can't quite imagine Asylmuratova as Kitri.

Natural talent on its own will never be enough if you don't put the hard work in as well. If I can digress into another tennis analogy (sorry ): Roger Federer is probably one of the most naturally talented tennis players ever, whereas Novak Djokovic wasn't ever regarded as an outstanding prospect. But neither of them would have got to where they are today, with numbers of Grand Slam tournaments won in double figures, without putting in loads and loads of hard work, and making incremental improvements to their respective games, day in, day out.

Oh, sorry, I misread/misremembered that, then. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it all pans out. As I said, since they're e-tickets I can't see that there would be a problem with returning them.

That was my worry: what if there's a significant cast change within a week of the performance? - or at least between the relevant Friday and whenever the performance is (which could be the following Friday, as I read it). I mean, say everyone grabbed the rush tickets for an Osipova performance, and then she got injured - it's not unknown, after all - and was replaced by a much-loved ballerina, possibly making a debut, who quite a few people would want to see anyway. There's no returns/exchanges, possibly a lot of the Osipova fans might just decide not to go, and write off the tickets, and the people who actually really *wanted* to see M-L B wouldn't be able to. OTOH, suppose you want to get tickets for the National Theatre *and* for the ROH in the same week?

Or Joseph in Josefslegende (I assume that's the correct spelling).

With apologies for lowering the tone , you've reminded me of a sign spotted in the ladies' loos in a theatre some months ago: "All sanitary ware must be deposited in the Southalls bins provided ..." I was trying to work out how on earth you could fit a washbasin or a toilet bowl in the bin!

Just make sure you get out on the right side of the station, that's all. It's literally only a few minutes' walk from the station. There's a thread in Not Dance on where to eat in Southampton, in case that's any use.

Well, I have to admit that the 10 am deadline was always a pain: I might have been working 5 minutes away from the ROH at one stage, but our flexitime core hours required us to be in the office between 10 and 4, so I was never able to benefit anyway. And I'm afraid that yes, yet again, non-Internet users are being discriminated against, but that seems to be so widespread as to be cultural now I do particularly regret the option to be able to buy tickets on the day (unless returns are available), but on the other hand I suspect that not all the day tickets were always snapped up, so it may be that the ROH would prefer to see them used rather than not. With e-tickets now being more commonly available, I hope that more people who would previously not have bothered returning tickets will now do so once they're aware that they're unable to attend - I always get particularly irritated to see empty spaces in the auditorium when I know there's been a returns queue desperately waiting for tickets outside. By the way, what's happening to the returns queue at the moment - is it inside the entrance, or at the temporary box office?

Indeed, my thoughts exactly: she's only 4. As for contacting the press, well, that happens a lot these days, seemingly often as a first port of call rather than a last resort. You only have to look at your local newspaper to see that: I frequently wonder "Why are you moaning to the press? Couldn't you have approached the local business/restaurant/person concerned first and tried to come to a resolution?" The complainers frequently haven't. I'm surprised to see this hitting the national press, though: I guess we're still in the end of the "silly season", and it's a long time since I've expected the Telegraph to stick to what I would think of as broadsheet-level news.

The definition of "quiet carriage" varies according to train company: South West Trains merely ask you not to use the phone or play music, while Chiltern Railways also include talking - within (or outside?) limits.

Hmm, I think I can see as many negatives as positives in this idea, although I must admit I did wonder how the temporary box office was going to cope with the day tickets queue. I'm sorry they've got rid of the day tickets, because there are always people who won't be able to organise themselves well enough in advance to benefit from these new tickets - whatever they may be. I'm not sure I like the idea of no returns/exchanges either, because either the ticket is simply likely to be lost if someone can't go, or it'll probably end up on eBay or whatever. There are already numerous instances of no-shows e.g. in the standing areas where people don't appear to have returned tickets to the box office when they are unable to attend, and I think this will only make the situation worse.

I was wondering if either of them was going to get charged with wasting police time ...

Talking about bateaux-mouche(s?), oddly enough I had a flashback earlier today to my trip on one back in 1979. I never did work out whether the crazy American leaping about the boat and taking photos of everything conceivable (this was in the days of film, as well!) was John Denver, or just someone who looked very much like him ...

That happens quite frequently. Unfortunately, at some locations careless positioning of various bits of street furniture means that pinpoint accuracy is required to get the ramp extended at all!

I really hate the way that in recent years SPBT has seemingly been turned into little more than a "backing group" for Kolesnikova - and the publicity suggests that she's the only reason for going to see them - they are far too good for that. When they first appeared on the scene, I was entranced by the company as a whole, because you didn't tend to see dancing of that quality appearing on the regional theatre circuit - I saw them in Croydon, Woking, Southend and probably quite a few other places which don't immediately spring to mind. Admittedly, they did tend to use quite a few guest artists back then - it may have been before Kolesnikova was even on the radar, except that I remember at Southend they were selling some sort of publication about her - and I rarely if ever saw her, so had no opportunity to see what the fuss was all about, but I could certainly appreciate the quality of the training behind the company. And of course I do remember the odd performance by their "other" ballerina, Elena Glurdjidze, before she decided to join ENB instead. I should be really really sorry if the end of Kolesnikova's career were to become the end of the company as a whole, but I do wonder, having built her up so much, what will happen when she's gone, or at least isn't still dancing the big classical roles.

Interesting, although I think that if people are ambulant disabled there may be a limit to how far along the platform they could walk to get to the relevant carriage. Yes. I had to get myself into one of those while I was still on crutches after a knee operation. It was not fun. I may well have sounded off on this before, but some years ago (although this century), some time after new rolling stock with designated wheelchair and even bicycle spaces was introduced on Southern trains, I was at London Bridge where a man in a wheelchair was trying to get on the train. He *did* get help from station staff, who carefully put the ramp up to the door for him and wheeled him in. Only trouble was that the designated wheelchair space was in the next carriage. So they just left him in the doorway, crammed with other passengers all around him. I was disgusted - so much for disability awareness.

Oh, so some of the main printed press *were* there? From what I'd seen from the Links pages, I was starting to wonder.

Melody, you've obviously become so naturalised that you've forgotten that to the British "Asian" refers to people originating from the area covered by Pakistan/India/Sri Lanka/Bengal/Bangladesh and possibly a few other countries I'm not sure what term is currently preferred for Japan/China/Korea etc.: it used to be "Oriental", but I suspect that is probably vanishing under pressure from the US. "Far Eastern"? Means the same thing

Some decades ago, I went for a major job interview with a big-name company, whose works was well out of town. They provided a company driver - in a Merc, or something - to take us all back to the station afterwards, and he was an extremely competent driver, apart from his habit of driving us at 100 mph down the motorway I was just praying that we wouldn't have a blowout or something, because, good as he was, if we'd lost a tyre at that speed we'd have been lucky to survive. I think this was before the age of Michelin run-flats. Lin, I think the approach to mini roundabouts, signalling-wise, is to treat them as though there isn't a roundabout there, i.e. signal left if you're turning left, nothing if you're going straight on, and signal right if you're turning right. That's unless anything's changed in the last 25 years Now, that I'm surprised to hear. My Dutch teacher, who was based somewhere in East Kent, was always complaining about being dragged out of bed by the police to interpret for some HGV driver or other who'd been caught driving wrongly. Unless it was just that they never got as far as prosecuting them ...

As I've frequently said over the years, when asked about advice for getting into my own profession, sometimes you can't actually take the obvious, direct route, but have to take a more roundabout path to get where you want to be. It sounds as though that's what your ds has done, and congratulations to him!

Yes, but the more I think about it, the more medical or related conditions I can come up with which might really require the facilities of a disabled loo as opposed to a standard one, even if the person in question isn't technically disabled in the conventional meaning of the term. I'm going to shut up now, before this discussion gets even more revolting

50% of the time, maybe - if you're lucky. I've had to spend several tube journeys recently standing on one leg and hanging on to two different rails, one with each hand, and you'd be surprised at how many people are struck with temporary blindness. Not to mention the ones who are plugged into ... whatever ... and just sit there staring into space. To be fair, people sitting down on trains (but not tubes these days) often have a headrest in their line of vision, so can't necessarily spot the problem. But it's the ones who just sit there and stare at you as if to say "What's wrong with you?" who are the worst. One of these days, I swear I am actually going to come out and say "No, please don't bother yourself - I enjoy doing flamingo impressions on moving trains"! Can you be *sure* that's what they're doing? (I'm sure some do, but might not others have a not immediately visible medical problem of some description?) I'm never really sure what the etiquette is for disabled loos, anyway. Obviously if someone disabled wants to use them, they have priority, but what if on average you only get one disabled person passing through wherever-it-is per hour, then what happens for the other 50 minutes? Should you never use them full stop? And what does that say about combined disabled/able-bodied loos?! No, you lie on the floor on the Night Tube. Or at least that's what Time Out's reporter reported on opening weekend.

Janet, yes, he did. And I could see it once he'd turned the corner and was bearing down on me Seriously, you should have a look at cars' indicators these days - they're often now in a place where you can't see them properly from the side, or in front, or ...

Blasted car designers who are more concerned by the overall appearance of their babies than whether their turn indicators can actually be seen from the necessary angles. That's yet another time I've thought a car was going straight on, and so crossed the minor road, only to have to move pretty sharpish when the car turned!