AnneMarriott

Advance booking for ordinary Friends opened today. For the first time ever there were absolutely NO stalls circle standing tickets either online or on the phone for ANY of the performances! Looks as if we shall have to invest in a horizontal periscope if we're to see anything of the stage from bench seats practically in the wings... Did anyone else have any luck?

Here, here Alison. My local Tesco has a Krispy Kreme franchise on the ground floor and the aroma wafts up the travelator. Instant nausea. I have actually eaten one, not because of the aroma, but because my other half bought some. I didn't like it at all - sickly sweet with a sort of oily chemical aftertaste. Traditionally-spelled doughnuts are delicious, particularly the jam ones. Leave them alone, KK and DD!

By coincidence I caught part of a television programme about just this sort of scam. Apparently if you click on the link and carry out the instructions (e.g. enter your password) the perpetrators can use your details to send out bogus begging emails to all your contacts. Your contacts may then send money to "help you get back from Outer Mongolia" or somewhere else where you have tragically been mugged and lost all your money, passport, mobile phone etc. And of course the scammers could also make purchases or, I presume, steal your identity for all sorts of nefarious purposes. Follow Victoria Page's advice at No. 5 above - and the same goes for any other bank account, credit card account or anything else which has been "suspended", "access-limited" or "upgraded".

Birmingham Royal Ballet's version by Sir Peter Wright is the best, as Janet McNulty said. The Royal Ballet's version is also by Sir Peter and is next best. I recommend either. Don't know Birmingham's dates but RB runs from 4 December to 16 January. But be quick - tickets for Nutcracker sell fast!

And this (the one I meant to give! - hope it works this time)

Have a look at this:

Well I'm not sure Tsiskaridze deserves any more deference than any other dancer, and he was described as a megastar, amongst other less flattering epithets. And I don't think his coveting of Filin's job is exactly a state secret. Other Bolshoi dancers who have been praised by the critics have been described on this website as "expressionless contortionists". Now THAT's rude!

Don't bank on it (speaking as a Stalls Circle Standing pensioner...)

Ditto!

Wonderful - my laugh-out-loud moment of the year. Thank you, Ian!

Agree it was a smooth experience, which is good. Sadly stalls circle tickets for R & J and Don Q were conspicuous by absence in all except the top few price bands, both online and on the phone. Guess I'll have to do battle with public booking or hope for some returns!

Aileen, I've had experience of mother cats withdrawing affection from their weaned kittens, sometimes really quite aggressively. I think it's pretty normal. But the weirdest scenario was one kitten who continued to suckle up to the age of 18 months - the mother cat had several litters and actively "called" her adult daughter to feed amongst the new kittens. I tried to stop it, without success and the problem only resolved itself with the sad death of the mother under the wheels of a car.

A few (very few) tickets available on the ROH website for a couple of dates. Anyone still looking, be quick!

More tickets available for all dates!

Thanks, Minder - just got two tickets!

Whether they should or not is clearly a matter of opinion. But they might possibly feel that staying away is a more civilised, and even a more effective, way to demonstrate a degree of dismay at the parlous state of affairs at the Bolshoi than slashing tyres or countenancing acid attacks. I'm with those who hesitated before booking for the London tour but decided in the end to do so.

At exactly 10.00 am everything was sold out online for Hansel and Gretel except for three tickets for one of the dates, but when I clicked on "Buy" they had already gone! However I managed to get a couple of tickets by phone - it's always worth trying the phone if you can't get anything online (but you do have to keep redialling and then wait in a long queue!). Good luck with public booking and if all else fails keep looking at the ticket trade forum nearer the time.

My thoughts exactly. Saw the first night and yesterday's matinee and went from quite liking it but thinking it a little too long to loving it and not wanting it to end. Not so sure about the Wheeldon - went from quite liking to not really liking it that much, but there were two casts so perhaps a third viewing will help.

I sympathise. We have a similar, but less tricky cul-de-sac situation where we live - too many cars and not enough garages. There's an unspoken understanding that we'll all park outside our own houses, but people with two cars and no garage obviously need more room than their own frontage allows. Although it's irritating, your difficult neighbour is right - he can park where he likes, unless there's some obscure bylaw or covenant to the contrary. Since his attitude has already made itself plain there's little you can do but grit your teeth and hope that he will become more neighbourly in time. Please don't be tempted into indulging in a tit-for-tat battle - you'll almost certainly come off worse. Best to ignore it and try not to let it upset you - it's bad for the health - and he may get bored and stop being provocative. Or you could try the neighbourly approach - perhaps he has a nice wife you could chat to? or little acts of kindness like taking in parcels for him might make him see that consideration for others makes life more pleasant than selfishness. If all else fails, just remember what a sad individual he must be!

Same here, Ian. I tried several times, but gave up too.

The only gripe I have about ROH intervals is the often lengthy wait for the performance to get underway after the audience (or at least most of us) have been herded back by the fanfare/handbell system. It prolongs the actual interval time quite a lot, even if one leaves it until the last minute before returning to the auditorium. Perhaps the comment about curtain-up having to wait for the people still eating in the Crush Room is not too far off the mark. Edited for typo

I watched a series of this but didn't particularly enjoy it. I found the various categories of dance quite confusing (and indistinguishable in some cases e.g. what's the difference between contemporary, jazz, Broadway and was there modern or am I misremembering?). And I couldn't really follow some of the comments from the judges - a lot of slang and hot air (or even sound and fury) signifying nothing, it seemed to me. And as ever the public voted for the dancer who came across as most cute, or most charming or who had the most poignant back-story, which is a problem with all programmes of this type. A real shame ...

You can park on single yellow lines on Sundays, but finding a space can be tricky. You can also park at meters without charge on Sundays, but again finding a space is difficult. In case you ever want to park on other days, you can park on single yellows from 6.30 pm onwards or free at meters from 6.30 pm. A lot of the meters in the Covent Garden area are paybyphone and if there's any chance you might get there a little early I certainly second KathyG's recommendation to sign up for that ahead of time because doing it on the spot is an absolute nightmare! And the NCP carpark is indeed very expensive, with an off-putting barrier at the entrance that rises slowly enough to give you heart failure wondering if it's ever going to rise, which it always has - so far (if it didn't you'd have to do a steep reverse hill-start to get out!) , followed by tricky corners to navigate to find a space. Then, when you return to get your car, there's the temperamental door-entry system, the even more temperamental trio of pay machines, the tricky corners and finally the precipitous uphill slope at the exit barrier. In fact I think NCP should pay the public to use it.

Fingers crossed for the future ...

Today was advance booking for standard Friends. I was in and out in record time and there were plenty of stalls circle standing for most dates. Wonderful! I hope everyone else was as successful and that the opera buffs have an equally satisfactory time tomorrow.