All senses satisfied.

Daughter, Ex-H and I had a highly enjoyable afternoon out yesterday to the Scottish Ballet at Eden Court, Inverness. We had an excellent lunch first at one of Inverness’s better eateries, the Rocpool. To be perfectly honest it was the meal I was chiefly looking forward to as ballet can leave me less than satisfied. If you aren’t a devoted foodie look away now.

My starter involved figs, pomegranate seeds mixed with mint (inspirational!) and tiny balls of feta turned in nutmeg. It was delicious. We all had Cod ‘puttanesca’ to follow which my shaky Italian thought probably meant ‘Whore’s Cod’ and I was right but no-one listened to me. I’m not sure what the whore had to do with it unless she used the recipe to seduce her customers. The cod was fresh and just flaking, cooked to perfection. The saucy combination of capers, olives, tomato, red pepper and chillies was certainly sensual enough to improve the business of an upmarket lady of the night. No pasta appeared, happily as I don’t like pasta much, but a neat little rondelle of creamed spud had a mysterious object like an unexploded bomb sticking out of it. Some nervous forensic nibbling and I had it pinned as the promised anchovy , cooked in tempura batter. I haven’t had a fresh anchovy since the Belgian days so it was another trip along that particular memory lane which, ignoring all other legacies, left me with some extremely pleasant gastronomic experiences to recall.

Buoyed up by good food and a little wine we headed off down the road to get our other senses tickled. The first half of the programme was ‘Carmen.’ I think I had too many expectations of the heavy voluptuous passion I associate with the opera, of matadors and gypsies, with Bizet’s hypnotic music throbbing through this tale of love and jealousy and death. Well, it wasn’t like that. The music was there but ‘nice’ was how I would describe it, with a few interesting adaptations . The dancing couldn’t be faulted and Carmen herself was certainly quite emphatic , still it felt weak. The male dancers didn’t really pull it off as hard-bitten soldiers despite a lot of ‘manly’ posturing; the toreador and the matadors wore their bejewelled costumes with evident pleasure and pride but I don’t think they’d have scared many bulls, (they might have dizzied it with their leaps and twirls of course) Whatshisname who stabs Carmen in the end was so shocked by what he had done that he did some complicated twiddles and retched a bit. Not very convincing IMO.

N liked it, particularly he liked how the music had been arranged. Chloë hasn’t seen the opera so had no expectations and enjoyed it.

The second piece was quite different, much more Ballet Rambert, with no orchestra, electronic music which was often loud, always insistent, often jarring, not meant to be comfortable at all. It was called ‘Cheating, Lying and Stealing’ and was billed as having no beginning or end, being a moment in time. The dancing was much stronger, freer, less classic, sinuous and sexy. I loved it. The scenery was great, a back drop of hills and a distant house which all of a sudden included a luminously outlined sofa and was overhung by an enormous red oblong as the time of day changed from dawn to dusk and passions heightened. The sofa turned into a huge fireplace with what looked like real flames; dry ice blew on mists; the towering grey blocks at the side of the stage began imperceptibly to move and traversed the stage changing colours as they did so. The Japanese first female dancer was poison in a tiny, beautiful, package, using all her evidently extensive range of sexual wiles to get what she wanted. When she and her rival killed the man they fought over it was no surprise.

At some point my breathing, which had been troublesome all day, eased. I’m not sure what that says but it was quite marked. Maybe the second piece was cathartic.

When the clapping began N, who had funded this treat and was sitting between Chloe and I, grinned at both us as we turned to him to say ‘That was excellent.’ He told us gravely that he 'wasn’t so sure.' We collapsed into giggles because without any exchange we had both known that’s what he would say. He ‘wasn’t sure’ mostly about the music which at times had admittedly been hard to bear. N is a classicist. (He even swims classically if I remember rightly from our visits to Greece. A very measured breaststroke.) He took our teasing cheerfully. He knows we all love him.

Sandy would have enjoyed the occasion too. He likes to watch the orchestra and he’d have been impressed by the second piece. Sadly he now has a very nasty tummy bug which involves regular trips to the lavatory so we had to leave him with Iain.