Pissed on at Glynders

Young Pythagoras here had developed a reputation over the last few years of guaranteeing blue skies at Glyndebourne simply by turning up. Early in the season? Late in the season? No worries. A succession of (it turns out) ineligible young ladies were encouraged to pack sunscreen with the fizz. All the more so in August! If only I had gone as far as suggesting a parasol – anything to put between myself and the angry skies last week would have been appreciated.

A first interval in patchy cloud encouraged us to lay the picnic out, only to find – a mere fourteen-and-a-half hours of Tristan later – that the weather had turned inclement all over the damn salmon.

Not feeling quite so smug for nabbing the secret spot that always catches the last of the afternoon sun (but lies what, in rain, feels like three miles from the auditorium) the picnic was hastily adjourned to under a big tree. Which does not, it turns out, offer the same sort of weather-proof cover as, say, a restaurant. Who’d a thunk.

Come the Liebestod my moth-worried black suit was almost dry and (ah, the smell of wet wool in the evening) but that situation proved temporary, as the scramble to the car was effected in a violently wet cloud chunder.

My motto from now on? Don’t end up with a wet suit – just turn up in a wetsuit. Ok, it needs tweaking I suppose.