The Dogs B*****ks

Having Goofy de-sexed was a lot less traumatic than Jessie.  That is not to say it was without risk, as all surgery carries some risk.  His recovery was much quicker, he was a little wobbly on his feet for the next couple of days, but otherwise he seemed unfazed and it wasn't long before he was up to his normal naughty tricks.   While exploring around the new University Hill development in Bundoora he ran off after a mob of kangaroos and disappeared without trace for a good 15 minutes before we found him again.  We left him at home in the garden whilst we went to the opera, and he reached his head through the catflap and pulled through and shredded a new rug.  He's not always naughty though, he joined us at the Indonesian Street Festival at Victoria market and won a free Javan bandana for his dancing.  A busy week for a dog who is meant to be convalescing.  His stitches are now out and it is like nothing ever happened.




Dancing Goofy

We have been very cultured this month, going to the Opera twice in as many weeks.  The first was a Tchaikovsky work, Eugine Onegin.  I had never heard of this opera before, and it was an extremely melodramatic tale of a young man who rejects the advances of a girl and dances with her sister.  The sister's boyfriend just happens to be his best friend, but jealousy makes him challenge Onegin to dual.  Pride forces Onegin to accept and so he ends up shooting and killing his best friend.  He then goes a little off the rails and travels around aimlessly for a few years before returning to St Petersburg where he finds the girl he rejected at the start of the opera is now married to the prince.  He decides now that he wants to make a go of it, and she tells him where to go.

The second opera could not have been a bigger contrast.  The Turk in Italy by Rossini, but modernised, well brought into the 1950's, a ridiculously riotous romp tracking the love life of an Italian woman, bored of her husband and sleeping with pretty much every man in town.  When a Turkish boat lands she goes straight after the womanising Selim.  Selim himself has another admirer a concubine that had fallen in love with him.  After much farcical partner swapping and mistaken identity the woman finally reconciles with her husband and the Turk returns home with his concubine.  The whole situation is constantly being overseen and manipulated by a struggling poet looking for a good story to write a play about. 

Slightly less cultured than Opera last weekend was Eurovision time again.  As Sam and Athina are currently crossing the border between China and Kazakhstan, they were unable to join me this year.  Instead Cameron came over and I cooked a Lasagne for dinner.  This years entries were much better than last in my humble opinion and I couldn't decide on a favourite between Hungary, Ukraine and a few others.  That's not to say there weren't a few duds  Belarus with the Cheesecake song and Poland with the butter churning.  Still it was no surprise when the Austrian bearded lady Conchita Wurst won, with her song about a phoenix, an allegory for her own sex change.