I'm feeling a lot better today, although I've still not written anything and I'm tired but I'm a lot happier.

So, I saw (listened to?) Handel's Messiah last night at the Bridgewater Hall in  Manchester. Brilliant, and all in all very uplifting. I love the whole hairs on the back of the neck thing you get from some bits of music. There's nothing like being in the same room as a big choir singing the Hallelujah chorus.

But there was a couple of funny incidents. During the first half, in a quiet bit, there was a loud bang and I jumped. I looked round wondering what it was and noticed a plume of smoke coming off one of the lights way over on the other side of the hall. It was right up high over the stage but there's seats way up there too and three women up there who were pretty much on eye level with the exploded lamp. They seemed okay, if a little spooked. It must have scared the crap out of them because it gave me a turn and I wasn't that close.

Then in the second half the timpani get involved, but only for a couple of the choruses. So, the guy's sat at these two kettle drums with bugger all to do for most of the time. His coping mechanism was obviously constantly retuning his drums. He had his ear against the skin for most of the time, twiddling the knobs, tapping and knocking. OCD with drums. I know they go out of tune but not that quickly. It was really quite funny if a bit distracting.

On the plus side I think I wrote a story in my head while I was there :-)