Happy Birthday Ann!

It is Ann's birthday, so last week we went to the opera to celebrate. The The De Vere Horsley Estate where we stayed is a large mansion set in 300 acres of Surrey with a fascinating history. Built in 1820 by Sir Charles Barry; the architect of the Houses of Parliament, it was bought by the Lovelace family. Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, was a close friend of Charles Babbage and helped him by writing the first computer program for his mechanical computer, and a modern computer language has been named in her memory. Another famous owner was Sir Thomas Sopwith, inventor of the Sopwith Camel First War fighter plane.

Normally busy with conferences and weddings, it was eerily quiet with few guests, several of whom, like us, were staying for the opera. There is still only a skeleton staff working. All large weddings are on hold, and the manager (who was doubling as a bar waiter in the evening and breakfast waiter in the morning) told us that there are hundreds of weddings, delayed for up to 18 months, booked in solidly every day from the moment the hotel reopens for normal business. He is Irish but had been back to Dublin only once during the emergency, for the funeral of his brother who had died suddenly from Covid.

Ann returns from her trip below

Ann and I were roomed in the tower. Although a romantic situation, the room was inevitably a little cramped being built into the thick curved wall. The toilet, as large as the bedroom, was in the room below accessed by a steep spiral staircase. Paying a nighttime visit required great care with a steady grip of the handrail. 

We dressed in our finery ready to drive the short distance to the venue at Grange Park, but there was a minor hold up when I tried to do up my dress trousers. They appeared to have shrunk, so I could not make the tab meet the button on the other side. No matter how tightly I pulled, there remained a stubborn gap of a couple of inches. In the end, I was pulling so hard the tag tore through the cloth, so I ended up wearing a dress jacket, fancy shirt, bow tie, and my ordinary dark trousers. Luckily, I had not driven down in jeans! Finally we arrived to see Falstaff, with Bryn Terfel as the glutenous and lecherous fat Shakespearean knight. At 79, Verdi was even older than me when he composed this wonderful piece. 

We had seats at the front of the stalls, and with the orchestra tucked away under the stage, we were but a few feet away from the great man and could appreciate every nuance of gesture, and every tone of Bryn's superb voice. It was a truly magical night, with a hamper picnic in the park. Unfortunately, because of staff shortages, the hotel bar had closed at 10p.m. so we enjoyed a nightcap in our room instead.

Happy Birthday Ann