"Oggy oggy oggy ......"

It would seem, that after 18 months of getting to know one another over a weekly piano lesson, my teacher has deemed me "safe" to go to the Royal Opera House under his name.

What's probably happened is that he thinks M is a safe bet and I will hopefully behave myself to some extent and, after much promising to get tickets for the opera, I finally broke my opera "cherry".

Have you been?

It's amazing, just as incredible as I'd always hoped. It was one of those wonderful spin-offs from something else you do in your life - in my case, pinao lessons - and something I'd been wanting to do for just as long but either;

a) couldn't afford to do it at the time or

b) was just too busy to organise doing it.

Anyway, I told M we had two tickets and to dig out her glad rags but, horror of horrors, she thought her Mum might appreciate it more than her and would I ask her to go with me??

Um .... ok then, heh heh .... I'll ask your Mum to go the opera with me, lol, I'm so happy!

I shouldn't mock though, because my monster-in-law is an opera aficionado, and was absolutely delighted at the news to visit one of her favourite places. She kindly loaned me a book which outlined the opera, what it was about, who sang which part and so on, and the "date" was set.

Having worked near to Covent Garden for years, I'd watched the ROH being built over many years and always thought it an amazing structure, but this time I was seeing it from the inside, for the first time. It was as elegant as I'd hoped, as opulent as I'd always thought it would be, and here I was, browsing around at the memorabilia in glass cabinets which once belonged to people I'd never heard of from a time long ago.

Fidelio was, my teacher (and the book) reliably informed me, that this was Beethoven's only opera and was "a perfect introduction".

I couldn't agree more - I really, truly enjoyed my evening and I'm pretty sure my monster-in-law did too. It was made all the sweeter by the fact that we were sitting in one hundred and sixty pound seats (each) for the vastly reduced sum of £15 (each).

Coupled with several M&S sandwiches bought earlier in the evening, it's what I call a bargain of an evening!

Well, I had to lower the tone slightly, didn't I??