These ain't flip flops!

I don't normally talk about footwear on this blog, at least not intentionally, but in line with its random nature, I'm going to take the opportunity to do so.
So be warned: this post has nothing to do with music. Well, not at this point, anyway. (Except that I'm still listening to The Wandering Gyre - sorry, the Widening Gyre (!) It's that Anthony Ritchie symphony I mentioned a couple of posts ago.
Anyway, back to footwear. I've just come across a site on the Net where they claim to be advertising flip flops. Flip flops, as any genuine Kiwi of a little vintage will know, are the Kiwi equivalent of jandals (or thongs, as they were also called - except that thongs are now what they call those dreadful skimpy bits of underwear that people who like to expose their rear-ends when they bend over always seem to wear).
I mean, does the thing in the picture in the upper left look anything like a flip flop to you? Well, it might if you're under 25, but to real people this ain't a flip flop. This is a scuff - even the site the picture comes from says it's a scuff. And it's used for climbing around bits of rock - if you're into that sort of thing. A genuine flip flop would give you absolutely no protection when climbing rocks. You'd bash your toe (s) within the first couple of minutes.
I should know about flip flops. My wife wore them constantly for years - hardly even wore anything else. (Although she, being English, called them jandals - and they were quite good for threatening recalcitrant children who wouldn't go to bed(!))

While we're on the subject of feet and their adjoining legs, I thought I might as well add this delightful picture of my legs encased in slippers. Slippers with paint on them, to show that I actually do other things beside blogging, sometimes!

Widening Gyre

I've just started listening to the Concert Programme's podcast for May. It's Anthony Ritchie's The Widening Gyre, performed by the Christchurch Symphony, under Marc Taddei.
Here's a little of what's said about it:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

The poem suggests that a gyre (a revolution or rotation) will bring about a ‘second coming’ of an important historical figure, and the dawn of a new millennium (the gyre is represented by a rolling, sliding timpani sound). Yeats’ vision is pessimistic, however: he sees the coming of a ‘rough beast’ who might be equated with certain infamous historical figures from the twentieth century.

I know a small amount of Ritchie's music, and attended the premiere performance of the piece he did in collaboration with George Griffiths, for the Otago 150th Anniversary: From the Southern Marches. I was so impressed with that I bought the CD when it finally came out, something I only rarely do.
I also went to The God Boy. I'd been asked to assist with the rehearsals as a repetiteur, but it would have meant taking two or three weeks off work, which I couldn't really do - and the music looked as though it needed more concentration that my mind was really up to anyway. I don't much enjoy repetiteuring work these days; I've never enjoyed following a conductor at the best of times (!)
Repetiteuring now feels a bit like some kind of exam time, and I've had enough exams for this life. I don't mind coaching a singer, because then you've got some rapport. But conductors always have a good deal on their mind besides the repetiteur and you can't afford too many mistakes. It puts them off. Getting out of sync with them puts them off (you) even more.
Talking of exams, I just remembered, in one of those lateral thinking moments, that yesterday at church, when we were doing the lunches, we didn't wear exam gloves. That's a relief. I always find they smell more than the food!
I meant to say I enjoyed The God Boy, though it takes a fair effort of mind to focus on a modern opera for a couple of hours. Ritchie doesn't eschew melody, which is a relief, but even in spite of his melodic lines, attending an opera for the first time, without any real means of preparing oneself for the music, is quite a task for the brain. There's only so much the brain can take in, and opera's don't give the listener much room for a bit or R & R.