"These violent delights have violent ends . . ."

Marek bought us tickets to see the ballet of Romeo and Juliet last night as an early birthday present. (All together now... 'aaaawwwww') It was fab!

I don't think I've been to a ballet since a Christmas viewing of the nutcracker when I was a girl with pigtails, but I enjoyed every minute.

The costumes were beautiful, the dancing was amazing, the music was stirring and we got two intervals for people watching (which was almost as exciting as the ballet itself - big groups of school girls trying to impress the boys in big boots and short skirts, older ladies dressed up to the nines, business men out for the night with their wives, young couples holding hands... it was fun).

I could never have been a ballet dancer (you have to be a chain-smoking tiny light thing with birdlike bones and bags of bitchiness according to a choreographer I once knew) but when the girls were twirling around with their skirts billowing around them, doing dainty turns and stepping about on their toes, I almost felt I was up there with them.

Everyone knows the story of course, and when the lovers died I felt more annoyed than sad (stupid boy, if you'd just waited five more minutes...) but it was all secondary to the visual effect of the music, dancing, costumes, set, lighting all together.

My favourite character wasn't Romeo (men in tights is one thing but men in suspiciously see-through white tights with enormous codpieces is just a little scary); it wasn't Juliet (yes yes love, you're lovely, and you love him and you have a lovely glittery white dress, and oh yes your life is hard. I imagine I'd have to pirouhette all over the place too if I were you); it was Mercutio, whose camp taking-the-piss-while-dancing-actually-quite-beautifully and tragic (long drawn out extravagent) death scene were the most entertaining and heartfelt bits of ballet the whole evening.

It was even better than the Russian-with-Polish-subtitles opera.