I've just been to the cinema with Siobhan to see A Single Man. Andy's away this week, you see, so I'm doing things he wouldn't enjoy. That film is definitely one of those things, but I liked it very much. What a beautiful, beautiful film - beautiful clothes, beautiful buildings, beautiful music, beautifully shot. I left the cinema feeling like I'd just been to an art exhibition or something.

On the way I popped in to the Coliseum to book tickets for Satyagraha with my new Access All Arias card which gets me very cheap tickets to the opera because I'm under 30. The man at the ticket desk was extremely irritating, pompous and patronising. I asked for Upper Circle tickets, and he told me there were no AAA tickets left, explaining that there is only a limited allocation of AAA tickets for each performance. So I asked if there were tickets for other tiers, and he spoke to me very slowly, like I was stupid, saying, "That's what I'm trying to explain to you, there are no tickets." He 'helpfully' told me that if I turned up 3 hours before the performance, in person and with my student ID, then I could join the standby list. Thing is, right, it's not a bloody student privilege, it's for under-30s. There are people under the age of 30 who want to go to the opera who have JOBS. Which means we can't turn up at 4pm just on the offchance that there might be a ticket. You also can't book AAA tickets online, and nobody answers the phone if you ring. I thought he rather undermined ENO's efforts to make opera accessible and friendly to young people by being so patronising and making it so very difficult to actually purchase a ticket.

Do you think it's okay to only have popcorn for dinner? It's just, I ate so much of it at the cinema that I'm completely full. But it doesn't seem like very healthy sustenance. I do have some asparagus in the fridge, but I had asparagus soup for lunch and I don't want to turn into an asparagus.