Wise after the event

I've just served a rather hunky Australian who was getting tickets for the Beltane Fire Festival, a pagan celebration of the end of winter on Calton Hill which involves much naked cavorting. I'll leave you to consider what I wish I had said when he asked the following question:

"Is it illegal to get naked in this country?"

Adrenaline rush

Anyone who didn't know me would probably have thought, by the time we closed on Saturday, that I was on something. I'd been working at the counter for eight-and-a-half hours straight (with one toilet break), having refused a lunch break on the grounds that I was enjoying myself too much.

Among my first customers were a couple who said, as they sat down in front of me, that they hoped I'd be getting them their seats as they remembered how good I'd been last year (I didn't know them from Adam, but still, you don't reject compliments). It was just as well they were in a good mood because the software let us down in a big way, losing track of their entire booking - with the exception of the payment, naturally - so we had to start all over again ... Later on, two women were taken aback by the amount of detail I started going into with regards to their seating options ("if you sit on the right side, you'll see the two violins, as opposed to getting a great view of the viola and 'cello from the left"). With a few exceptions, most people were perfectly polite - there was a certain amount of relief at having reached the counter after sometimes as much as six hours' wait - but in retrospect, I wonder if I didn't start grinning inanely as my enthusiasm took over.

Put it this way: we stopped allowing people in at 3 o'clock and thus reached the end of the queue at about six. It didn't deter me, however, as I was telling anyone who would listen I wanted more customers ...

Then I had some coffee. As you do.

Fast forward to Monday, still plagued with a number of credit card problems, only this time on the phones, which didn't stop ringing all day - at least until the phone system stopped working and we couldn't make or take any calls. Tuesday was a slight improvement, at least as far as the hardware was concerned, but there were far fewer customers. Not to mention most of the best seats having long since been taken.

I've had the day off today and to be honest, now that I'm off that (however naturally-induced) high, I'm glad of the rest.

The joy of box office

Two years ago I wrote about the, shall we say, slightly eccentric customers I dealt with in my retail days. Now, one year into box office work, I'm building up a nice repertoire of similar anecdotes regarding a slightly different bunch of people ...

Before considering paying customers, however, there's a degree of repetition in queries from people who've come to the wrong place - above all, during the summer, those seeking tickets for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, whose offices are elsewhere. After informing them where they should try, we will let the nicer tourists know that tickets went on sale the previous November, so they probably shouldn't raise their hopes too much.

The puzzled question "is this the cathedral?", another repeat offender, at least has the benefit of being an understandable mistake. We, like the Festival admin staff, work in the Hub, a former assembly hall for the Church of Scotland which, despite all appearances to the contrary, was never actually used as a church. People tend to realise they've come to the wrong place the moment they step through the door (at the east end, incidentally, but if I've only just realised it as I'm typing this post that's the high altar would be, I can't expect a tourist to), but it's only reasonable they should come further to ask where St Giles is, if not here. (Answer: further down the road on the right, you can't miss it.)

"Is this the castle?" Er, no. I could go on, but my friend Peter's fantasy about adorning the outside walls of said castle with the spray-painted legend "it's over here, you American p****s" says it all.

(shudder)

On to customers who know what they're doing here. The request for leg-room in any of the venues used for the Festival is probably the most frequently heard, and certainly one we try to accommodate. It's the reasons they give us which are priceless, not to mention how they describe it: a gammy leg, "left leg out" (and your right leg in?) or, a couple of days ago, the sublime "I have terrible knees". We shouldn't laugh, but it brightens up our day no end.

Last year, tickets to the Berlin Philharmonic under Rattle were few and far between, even during the priority booking period. One man refused to believe the ticket we'd sent him was the best available at that stage and did not hesitate to tell us so, very aggressively. How he could think that treating box office staff with such disrespect would work to his advantage, I cannot imagine, but his customer record promptly gained the warning "VERY rude man".

Compare him to the lovely old dear who rang us constantly to ask if there'd been any returns for Abbado conducting The magic flute. We got to recognise her voice immediately and were invariably sorry not to be able to help, as she was invariably so optimistic. Imagine how delighted we were when, on the morning of the final performance, she finally got her ticket - worth £42, which (she said) was the number of times she had called. I only wish I could remember her name ...

Of course not everyone is so lucky. Even when a performance is sold out, people after a single ticket find it difficult to accept that no, we really can't fit them in anywhere, and woe betide you if you have a pantomime booker who simply refuses to go in January when all the performances in December of nigh on full, even when you point out it'd give the children something to look forward to in the New Year. As for not having a performance on Christmas Eve this year - it falls on a Monday, which is invariably their day off - let's not go there.

Given the international flavour of the Festival, there's the usual inevitable round of mispronounciations. Don Quixote was spoonerised into Donkey Toxey, while there was an incredible number of people going on about die Zorba float last year. This time round I predict references to the Emperor Nero's lover Poppy-a, umpteen manglings of Euripides (Yuri Pieds?) and the funky Rameau ballet On danse being pronounced with a lisp owing to the forte-style F used instead of an S.

I'll keep you posted ...

Confidentiality clauses

I started to write something about the difference between this year's and last year's bookings, but however much it makes for interesting reading, I'm not comfortable with it. It's not the sort of thing which should be divulged in such an open forum as the internet and as it is, I'm hesitant about going into any further detail just in case some enterprising journalist or media pundit should come upon this post. I've long been a victim to a strong code of personal ethics, of which is this just one more example.

No such qualms need assail me about the EIF programme now it's been publicised. Luke sent me a text message on the launch day saying he'd definitely be up this year, which is as good an indication as any that the line-up is manna to the early music enthusiast. Jordi Savall is doing what amounts to a residency, taking in opera (Monteverdi's L'Orfeo), concert performances (more Monteverdi - the 1610 Vespers - and music inspired by Cervantes'Don Quixote) and a solo recital on the viola da gamba. Then there's a whole series of choral music from the 11th to 18th centuries in the spacious acoustic of Greyfriars Kirk, not to mention chamber music of the Italian baroque.

Which is not to say the post-Classical periods are overlooked. Anyone who likes Sibelius' symphonies is well catered for, while continuity is assured by the return of Festival favourites such as Ian Bostridge and Alfred Brendel. For my part, I'm particularly looking forward to seeing Thomas Adès conduct his violin concerto, while others will be delighted by programmes of Strauss and Mahler.

(If I've said nothing about drama, bear in mind music is very much my forte. There's only so much I can tell you about the various adaptations of Greek tragedy, even if one does star Alan Cumming!)

Overall, though, I'd say this year's programme is characterised by a sense of fun. Berstein's Candide and Poulenc's organ concerto bookend the Festival and with anything from the Tiger Lilies' take on Monteverdi and hip-hop dancing to Rameau in between, there's definitely a healthy dose of the joyous (not to say pleasingly bizarre) to look forward to.

Important though it is to give a flavour of what I'm involved with to those who might not otherwise hear of it, that's enough blatant self-promotion, no matter how great my enthusiasm. On to other things.

After Thomas had to pull out of a couple of things we had planned - a concert of American classics and stand-up comedy courtesy of Jo Brand, both very enjoyable - I asked him to make sure he does not get booked up for the couple of days around my birthday. Now we just have to work out what we'll be doing (assuming he's not working on a surprise, which I wouldn't put past him).

On her last visit, Mother brought with her the family set of mah-jong for me to have. It's been a joy rediscovering it, if slightly confusing when it came to the practicalities of playing against others whose rules differ slightly, all the more so when there are complete novices involved. Still, it's good to introduce new players to such a good game, though I'm well aware that as the days get longer, the potential for games nights is rather reduced, so it may not see the light of day again for a while.

In the meantime, it's the Easter weekend and I've a fair amount of singing to do. As far as the Church is concerned, Lenten music beats the rest of the year hands down - from Ash Wednesday, things get darker and darker aside from a brief respite on Palm Sunday, and suddenly light bursts forth on Easter Day. Christmas may have usurped Easter as the feastday in the public consciousness, but there's no doubting the steady build-up of good cheer over Advent is no competition for the sheer drama afforded by Lent.