{"id":7284,"date":"2020-03-17T10:56:38","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T10:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7284"},"modified":"2020-03-17T15:55:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T15:55:37","slug":"la-retraite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7284","title":{"rendered":"La Retraite"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Opera singer Laura Baldassari\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Retreat, entrench, dig a hole.  No, that is not how I want to frame this.  Last weekend I celebrated my birthday with\nfriends, eating out and having some superb musical entertainment in a public\nvenue. As the curtain went down at the end of the performance and we clapped\nand cheered till our hands ached and our voices went hoarse, I reflected that\nfor the foreseeable future entertainment was going to be of a very different\nflavour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if it\u2019s not going to be cinema, theatre, concerts, exhibitions,\ngigs, festivals, poetry readings, raves, mass parties, choirs, stand-up (delete\nas applicable), how are we going to entertain ourselves in the coming months when\nit seems that our lives are about to be turned upside down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes I know there\u2019s always the telly, and we are spoilt for choice\nnowadays, as Verity so eloquently reminded us in her blog Box of Delights.<\/a>  <\/em>This is well complemented by such choice\noffers provided by BBC Sounds, Audible and Spotify. Then there are all the\nbooks I haven\u2019t got round to reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But somehow the non-hedonistic side of me is whispering that\nTV, radio and literature won\u2019t quite cut the mustard.  I am beginning to feel a yearning for accomplishments,\nfor the ability to entertain in my own right. So what are my options? Well that\nof course is totally dependent on my range of talents. One of the earliest\nblogs I wrote for damesnet lamented my lack of artistic ability on any front. Art for Art\u2019s Sake<\/a> spells this out in a\nblunt, cold fashion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus no select gatherings of friends or family while I sketch\nus all picnicking en plein air, no sharpening of pencils or mixing of palettes\nfor me. What about music? My piano skills could be brushed up save for one\nmissing item \u2013 a functioning piano. And I won\u2019t be emulating the opera divas of\nMilan singing from their balconies as they wait for liberation from lockdown.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless I can sing a bit, so could perhaps learn a few of my favourite operatic arias in Italian, thereby putting to good use the hours I have spent over the last few years studying the language. On that point, I sincerely hope that the (now cancelled) plans we had earlier in the year to tour the northern end of Italy this summer did not in any way contribute to the severity of the virus outbreak in the region!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have started looking at knitting and dressmaking patterns for some of the younger members of the family. Here I am on safer ground, for at least I have a bit of a track record in this field. This won\u2019t exactly count as entertainment, but hopefully will give pleasure to some people in the long term. (I am of course choosing to ignore the opportunities afforded by the arrival of Spring, in terms of cleaning, tending the garden and redecorating.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, I\u2019ve just remembered that another member of the family asked me to make some curtains for their sitting room about five years ago. Perhaps the time has come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I won’t be emulating the divas of Milan singing from their balconies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,2,182,55],"tags":[268,76,194,97,105],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7284"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7303,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7284\/revisions\/7303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}