What you have to remember is, erm, oh, you know

I've been up to my eyes with stuff lately, so haven't had time to update this blog since Easter.

The first rehearsal after the holiday, on 17 April, was an all-day affair, so we were all a bit hoarse by the end. Especially Nan, who spent most of it berating us for still not knowing the choruses well enough. The following week - last Thursday, 24 April - we were not quite as bad, and there were even some bits that all started and finished together, with lots of people singing much of the time.

Hmm. Those choruses are a bit tricky, and you have to remember quite a lot of counting. In the 'Grimes is at his exercise' sequence, for example, tenors have to remember the sequence 2-no-no-no-3-yes-no-yes-4-no-no-no-4-no-yes-yes-3-no-no-no-3-yes-no-yes+1-9-no-yes-yesx2-4-no-no-yes-yes. Which is just about possible, but the effort of remembering does tend to make you shuffle round like a bewildered care-home patient. (Which, coincidentally, was the subject of conversation over coffee afterwards with Abby and Caroline, both nurses experienced with the confused; they must feel at home in our rehearsals.)

But most of the time your counting is easily confounded. The highly varied nature of Britten's rhythmic chopping up, across the bar line, makes it very easy to get lost. If you've mentally based your entry on following someone else and they screw up, then you screw up too.

So chorus members, it's best not try to take your cues from the sops or altos, as they're not too sure of themselves. Don't rely on the basses or tenors, who aren't too secure either. Or the soloists, as half of them are unlikely to be there. Indeed, Mario is still slicing people up in Cardiff or something so we haven't seen him this term yet. We've had no Jenny either - she's doing jury duty, so we missed her in the court scene, ironically enough.

Anyway, that stuff I've been up to my eyes in has included having to finish my bike book 50 Quirky Bike Rides in England and Wales. It's finally going to press, only a year and half late, and will be out by June this year. I'm expecting that the royalty cheque will be enough to buy me a decent-sized pied a terre.

Oh, hang on, no, I mean pomme de terre.

I also reviewed Birtwistle's Punch and Judy, done by ENO at the Young Vic, for Sky Arts - it's up on their website. (Visit http://www.skyarts.co.uk/SkyArts/Opera/Default.aspx to see if they've got round to putting the review up on the website yet - the opera finished its one-week run last week...)

I was expecting it to be two hours of jagged orchestral torture, vocal screeching and 1960s expressionist hiccuping, but I was wrong. It was only 90 minutes. And actually it was rather good - being in the round at the Young Vic puts you within a string of sausages of the singers, and you feel the physicality and presence of the singers. You could even feel the heat from the baby Mr Punch gleefully incinerated at the beginning.

But I did come away feeling a little chastened. We've had seven months to work on Grimes and we're still struggling to do it without a score. Or even with one, actually. ENO's lot on the other hand had memorised 90 minutes of highly unmemorable and difficult music perfectly. How do they do it? Amazing. Well, I say perfectly – how would anyone know?

See you next Thursday. It's from 1pm to 5pm, so we'll have time to do the whole opera, seeing as we'll have all memorised it perfectly...

A sideways look at the world of Dr Crabbe

Hope you enjoyed your Easter hols, everyone. Nice, wasn't it, waking up cosy in bed last Sunday to see two inches of snow outside, and thinking great, the cricket season starts this week?

Like most of us I've taken a couple of weeks off from thinking about Grimes. I've just started looking at the score afresh, uncluttered by preconceptions such as remembering any of the notes or the rhythms.

Next Thursday's rehearsal is the first of the summer term. It will also be, as you know from Nan's txts, an all-day affair. Principals at 11am, rest of chorus to join at 1pm. Rather like cricket, in fact: lunch and tea breaks, and perhaps some scampering off for rain or snow showers or bad light or another bollocking for not knowing the music well enough. I hope we perform as a team rather better than England's middle order.

I've got a temporary job which is based in Lincoln's Inn Fields, right in central London. Rather excitingly, it's just next door to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. This is another of those curious, free, London gems. In its display cases are jars of pickled foetuses, five-legged lizards, and skeletons of eight-foot Irish giants. Most entertaining are the gleefully annotated nubs of diseased offal hacksawed off some Regency pauper without the encumbrance of anaesthetic. ("This grapefruit-sized tumour was removed from a Mr Phillibert of Crouch End on 6 June 1784. His screams were said to be audible as far as Islington. He died at 6am the next day.")

It's only one of several attractions in the area for the lunchtime flaneur. The Oxbridge-like tranquillity of Lincoln's Inn itself, the weird and wonderful Soane Museum, are there too. But for sheer rubbernecked fascination, the Hunterian is something else, a show-and-tell casebook of eighteenth-century medical misfortune in freeze frame. After a while you get blase about it all, like the surgeon bantering about lunch while in the middle of slicing up somebody's pancreas. You happily work through your Sainsbury's egg and cress sandwich while staring at encephalitic skulls, monster cysts, prolapsed intestines and Mr Hunter's mighty surgical toolshed.

It's all a world that would have been familiar to two characters in Grimes: the dodgy pharmacist Ned Keene, who would probably have misappopriated the pickling alcohol and sold it off to Mrs Sedley, and Dr Crabbe, the non-singing physician, dismissed by Boles as a drunken charlatan ("He drinks! Good health to all diseases!"). So I'll count my visits as research.

Talking about surgeons, Mario, I hope we'll have the pleasure of your company on Thursday? I'll bring some egg sandwiches for the Tea Interval, and you can entertain us with stories from the operating table...

Nude women, and Britten (unlikely combination)

I was away from rehearsal last week, as I was mired in my new job. I'm working at the National Gallery, on their website.

Some of it does involve looking at pictures of nude women. They may look fabulous and elegant in the pictures. But you later find out that they were tarts who are now at least 158 years old. Rather like online dating I suppose. At least that woman in Déjeuner sur l'herbe actually is an oil painting.

But the job is only for four weeks. And most of it actually involves putting up mundane details of events on the website. Such as informing people that at 1pm there will be a gallery talk on some 16th-century Madonna and Child, painted by a bloke who sounds like a pizza chain. Web services in most companies are not considered 'creative services': they come under the umbrella of marketing. Presumably the one they use to shelter under outside while having their hourly fag break.

Anyway, the rehearsal yesterday was a musical run-through with scores. We spent about half an hour in the Great Hall before Roger R came in and threw us out. This was because they had to prepare the piano for a Prepared Piano concert later that day. (There's some crack about nuts, screws and bolts here, but I'm too bored with Lynne Truss to work it out.)

It was annoying but quite amusing. Roger had the air of a building foreman telling you to go and park your car somewhere else. Look, we put up that notice of works on that lamppost six months ago. In half an hour there'll be a ruddy great skip going right here where your car is. Not my problem if you can't find another park, pal, etc.

So we trooped off to some pokey rehearsal room upstairs that happened to be free. Fortunately the zombie saxophonists and drummers who usually live up there must have been on lunch break, or not got up yet, or something.

And there we had the company of - for the first time - Peter Grimes himself. A teeny bit late, considering we started five months ago in October, you might think. But it does rather highlight the main problem we've had so far: that the most committed people are mostly (though not all) the ones with commitments, which means they can only make some of some of the rehearsals.

(It's the same principle that scuppers your love life after 30: all the lovers worth having who might make a commitment to you are taken, because they've made a commitment to someone else. Probably someone not as nice, but with better salary/legs.)

Take Dr Mario for example. He's an excellent, committed lyric tenor who will be a fabulous Grimes, and boy he'll look the part. You wouldn't get in a fishing smack with him lightly. (Er, I don't mean it that way. Mario's straight, as he confirmed with some entertaining post-rehearsal anecdotes, more Jon Vickers than Peter Pears.)

But he's also a full-time surgeon who lives and works abroad in a small developing country. (I think he's based in Cardiff.) So when your rehearsals are on Thursday mid-afternoon 200 miles away, that presents clear logistical problems. Sorry, guys, I've got to go and sing. Can you just see to that left ventricle, patch up the aorta and close the rib cage, and if there's any problems I'm on my BlackBerry?

He's not the only one. Hamish, Abby and others, and several chorus members, have to squeeze what they can - sometimes less than an hour - between work commitments. Stuff that has to be done to pay the bills: nursing or making photocopies or assessing the work of Gustave Courbet. At most rehearsals we've had about half the principals, max, and a chorus of two tenors. If we do make it all the way to a half-decent performance it'll be a miracle.

At least yesterday we had everyone, and some bits (some) actually sounded quite good. For an hour - at which point Hamish (Balstrode) and Abby (Ellen) had to scoot to a masterclass, and Dan (Swallow) had to go to I don't know where. So we were back to the Reduced Britten Company, like those Americans who do comedy potted Shakespeare plays with three people.

Still, there were two big positives. First, it was really nice to see Mario again - Charlotte (Mrs Sedley) hadn't seen him since she was dancing provocatively for him last summer on stage as Carmen. Second, Hamish's muttonchop sideboards are coming on a treat. By June he'll be a ginger Captain Birdseye.

Nan, of course, wasn't there. It was her birthday, and she thoroughly deserved a day off, and was off celebrating. We'd put together a special gift for her: Jonny (Hobson) had had the great idea of the Opera Goldies recording a CD for her. (Actually, Charlotte said it was her idea and that Jonny nicked it. Rock-Paper-Scissors, guys.) So last week, we whizzed through some of the songs and arias Nan's worked with us on, accompanied by the ever patient Richard Black on piano, and recorded them on to a CD. (I made a token contribution to the smugglers' quintet in Carmen, stepping straight off my bike, wheezing and croaking like Ian Paisley. Everyone else sounded fab.)

So we really hope Nan likes it. I knocked up the cover for the disc - email me if you want to see an image. If you need to ask why I called it the 'Opera Gold Omnibus', then you probably wouldn't understand the answer. Nan: hope you had a fabulous day yesterday. Happy Birthday, and love and thanks from us all.

Well, I suppose I'd better back to work. Back to Déjeuner sur l'herbe.

You don't have to be mad to be at ENO, but...

Rehearsal last Thursday (21 Feb) was another dismal, shuffling affair, with the chorus doing their famous impression of Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Nan looking desperate, so we won't dwell on that.

Instead we'll dwell on ENO's Lucia di Lammermoor, which is really rather fab; here's the review I wrote for the Sky Arts website. (This was the performance that made national news because one of the principals lost his voice after the first scene, and a bloke from the audience came up to sing the part from the wings while the hoarse bloke mimed.)

Anyway, I went with Abby, and it was the most enjoyable evening I've had there in ages. Usually, when I go with a Goldie to ENO, it consists of
(a) people I used to work with desperately trying to avoid eye contact with me, and
(b) me opening up two tins of cider and a packet of cheesy wotsits in that area downstairs by the loos, where you can stand by a big square pillar and put your drinks on a ledge.

Well, this time, it was different, because it wasn't just me. It was also Abby trying to avoid eye contact, with the various people she's done voice coaching with and suchlike. She was concerned about being seen furtively swigging my bottle of Chilean Cab Sauv, instead of paying nineteen quid a glass or whatever it is at the bar, and thought this might adversely affect her future. (Merely being seen with me, of course, does the trick effectively enough.) So we both ducked and dived round the pillar as voice coach after voice coach, and journo after journo, swanned past.

It was ever so exciting. Then afterwards we had a quick one in that little pub down the Dickensian alley (the Lemon Tree?), or perhaps two, and tried talking French.

And at last, some good news: I have a job. Only for a month, but it's at the National Gallery, so I should get to look at a lot of pictures of nude women. Shame they all died in 1532.

Recruitment Agencies: Useful, just not for getting jobs

Our Thursday staging rehearsals generally consist of us standing around knowing that whatever we're about to do will be wrong, and then getting shouted at. (Guys, this is all good practice for being married.) Don't get me wrong, it's rather fun, and is the most organised and pleasurable part of my week. Which tells you what a disaster the rest of my life is.

Well, no such luck last Thursday. It just turned into a music call. We all stood around the piano with scores and bashed through the church scene and its aftermath. This is the bit where I do my radicalising-imam thing, and soapbox the villagers into an attack against Grimes and Ellen. Which gives me the chance to do a lot of shouting, cursing, waving of hands and railing against the system. Recent graduates, this is all good practice for the experience of job-hunting.

Yes, I still haven't had any luck fixing myself up with any gainful employment since 21 Dec, despite being registered with about ten recruitment agencies. Honestly, they're all absolutely useless. Imagine the piercing intelligence of Jade Goody, the integrity of Heather Mills, the self-awareness of Michael Jackson, the ability to fulfill promises of Del Trotter, and the sense of humour of Margaret Thatcher, and you've got the average recruitment agency drone.

What happens is this. You see a job online. It suits you perfectly. So you apply for it. Ah, but you're not applying to the company. You're applying to the recruitment agency, who obviously are there to take a cut. What happens then is that you get a call from someone from the recruitment agency called Claire who suggests that you go in to their central London office and have a chat about your skills and requirements. So you take along your passport (to prove you're actually British and not an international spy) and chat to Claire for 45 minutes, who tells you at unnecessary length what a fantastic agency they are, asks you naive questions which are answered on the CV she claims to have read, and writes down copious notes in biro on her hardback jotter. Then you never hear from her again and she never returns your calls. Repeat ad infinitum.

Or is it me? Perhaps it's time to take a long, hard look in a mirror. Urgh. Actually this is what Nan keeps telling me to do. I don't like looking at myself. Apparently I'm doing the amateur thing of bobbing my head too much, leaning forward and straining from the neck, when I should be standing up straight and letting the body do the work. And I'm talking about the interviews with Claire here. With the singing it's even worse.

Still, all my job-hunting experiences have been useful for my Boles characterisation. When I want to vent spleen against Grimes and Ellen Orford, I obviously don't picture Mario and Abby, two of the most pleasant and talented people I know. (Er, that's meant to be a compliment, not a comment on how many people I know.) Instead, I picture Dave and Claire from the recruitment agency. It makes all that shouting a pleasure.

Of course, if you ARE from a recruitment agency and you're reading this, the above description doesn't apply to you. Oh no. Of course not. You're smart enough to have found this page, for one thing, and to have read it this far, for another. In which case, what on earth are you doing working in recruitment? Ah, but to change jobs you need... a recruitment agency to help you! Doh! I see your problem. Tell you what, if you fancy being surrounded by talented people for a change, come along to our rehearsals on Thursdays.

Well, last Thursday's rehearsal went comparatively well. That's a bit like saying Derek Conway MP is honest compared to his Italian or Nigerian counterparts, but at least it was something of an improvement, with quite a few people knowing several of their entries.

And there was plenty of entertainment. We were doing the Pub Scene where Bob Boles, viz me, gets roaring drunk and tries to chat up one of the Nieces. My efforts to portray the beaming pisshead caused a fair bit of amusement, possibly for my staggering acting ability, possibly for my staggering, or possibly just because of the novelty of seeing me sober pretending to be drunk.

We also did a couple of run-throughs of that pesky 7/8 round about Joe and his idiot son going fishing and, do you know, we pretty much started and finished in the right place. I'm beginning to think that we might just get through this opera without having to take down our Facebook pages out of embarrassment.

In the evening I went out to ENO to review their re-run of Anthony Minghella's Madam Butterfly. (You can read it on the Sky Arts website.) It's really rather good, despite the odd sight of Butterfly's three-year-old boy being played by a wooden puppet. Actually the puppet was one of the best actors on stage. That's meant as a compliment to the blokes working him, not a dig at the singers, who were jolly good.

Though I was a bit distracted by Ashley Holland's Sharpless, who was a dead ringer for Hale of 1990s TV duo Hale and Pace. I kept expecting him to break off into an aria about 'the Management', though of course Puccini didn't do comedy very well. A bit like Hale and Pace I suppose.

I went with Casey, who is doing the Butterfly/Suzuki Flower Duet later this year with Jenny somewhere for someone. So she could come along and make some notes. Casey is playing the very Niece that I slobber over in that Pub Scene; so she was remarkably composed, considering that earlier that very day I'd been repeatedly groping her in E flat minor.

Nessun' dorma nelle montagne Lake District

Not really a Grimes connection here, really, but I've just got back from a stag weekend up in the Lakes. Not, of course, mine. One of the lads in the room next to me heard me singing bits of Grimes in the shower and commended me the next morning on my singing. Actually, he thought he'd been hearing selections from HMS Pinafore, but I suppose he wasn't a million nautical miles away.

Anyway, the next day we all walked up to the top of the Old Man of Coniston and he insisted I sing Nessun' dorma at the summit, in the freezing cold fog. Which I did, after a fashion - probably the fashion of a Stars in their eyes contestant doing Russell Watson after nine pints of Bluebird the night before.

The party was amused, anyway, though they were keener on doing a team version of The hills are alive with the sound of music.

I can't make the rehearsal on Thursday, as I'm up north for a wedding. Not, of course, mine.