{"id":129,"date":"2009-07-25T16:59:12","date_gmt":"2009-07-25T15:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=129"},"modified":"2009-07-25T16:59:12","modified_gmt":"2009-07-25T15:59:12","slug":"at-the-royal-albert-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=129","title":{"rendered":"At the Royal Albert&nbsp;Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday 21<sup>st<\/sup> July<\/p>\n<p>Back in London and to the Glyndebourne Prom. It is <em>The Fairy Queen<\/em>, a sought-after ticket and recklessly I have offered it to Val. If he doesn\u2019t show, owing to advanced alcoholism, I\u2019ll be furious. But he\u2019s there when I arrive, using the Royal Hall as a resting post. For a flash I think of sending him straight home. I can see at once he is drunk. He lurches upright, bellowing and trilling like a duchess. People stare, not least, I should imagine, at his catastrophic undead appearance. I manage to stop him from stealing a sandwich. I dread the performance. What if he starts shouting?\u00a0 It\u2019s happened before. And the Orch of the Age of Enlightenment so delicate and tiny in sound? But he is calm and we love <em>The Fairy Queen.<\/em> It is one of those evenings of unalloyed pleasure that can never be anticipated. The surprise of Val, in his state, enjoying it so much is not the least of it, for me.<\/p>\n<p>I feel I have done Val a good turn. Thank goodness I didn\u2019t make a smug scene about his being drunk and wipe out all chance of happiness, however momentary. But smugness is inescapable, I fear. I may well think of Val is less fortunate, but what about my own addictions and compulsions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday 21st July Back in London and to the Glyndebourne Prom. It is The Fairy Queen, a sought-after ticket and recklessly I have offered it to Val. If he doesn\u2019t show, owing to advanced alcoholism, I\u2019ll be furious. But he\u2019s there when I arrive, using the Royal Hall as a resting post. For a flash [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}