Porgy and Bess at the Royal Festival Hall

To London's Royal Festival Hall last night for Cape Town Opera's Porgy and Bess, conceived by its composer, George Gershwin, as an “American folk opera.”

This semi-staged concert performance was stunning. While all the leads were good, it was Xolela Sixaba, as Porgy, who clearly captivated the audience. His voice was deep, rich and rounded, and he had enormous physical presence. Despite lacking the dramatic performances of fully staged operas, the cast were convincing enough for at least this member of the audience to care what became of their characters.

Bess, Kearstin Piper Brown, hit her high notes with apparent ease, and sashayed around the stage like the good time girl that she was. As for poor, doomed, Clara – played here by Pretty Yende – her “Summertime” echoed around the hall long after the baby son she'd been trying to sooth to sleep had been orphaned.

This is one of the most sensuous of operas, and well served by Cape Town Opera's chorus. Their background humming, although that seems too lowly a word to describe it, was mournful enough to send shivers up the spine.

What really stood out? So, so much. Porgy's sheer joy during “I got plenty of nuttin' “, with its lovely twangy banjo accompaniment. The chorus grooving as they backed Sportin' Life in “It ain't necessarily so”. The almost tangible sense of panic from the cast as the storm picked up and fear grew for Jake and his crew.

Just a couple of quibbles – particularly at the beginning, it was very difficult to make out the words being sung (a case of poor enunciation rather than any lack of volume). This performance was captioned for the hard of hearding, which at least meant that the audience had a reasonably good idea of what was going on – but of course, to a certain degree, it detracted from what was happening onstage.

And to the endlessly fidgeting “gentleman” in the seat in front of mine – you really are old enough to know how to sit still for more than five minutes. Like me, you are short, and like me, you need to accept that you won't always be able to see everything going on. Better to learn to live with it than to keep up the demented meekat act and risk a sharp jab in the back of the neck with a biro. You would have ruined a lesser performance.

Visited the magnificent Pere Lachaise graveyard on a family trip to Paris last weekend. I was last there 20 years ago, and wanted to revisit Oscar Wilde's grave, with its stunning Jacob Epstein sculpture. On my earlier visit, it had a few lipstick marks here and there, left by Wilde's fans, and I read later that they were destroying the stone. At the risk of sounding like "incensed of Tunbridge Wells" or some other such middle class citadel, I have to admit to being gutted to see the damage done by so-called "fans" in the intervening decades. So much so that I couldn't even be bothered to hang around long enough to take a proper photo. Whatever happened to quiet veneration?

Travel the old fashioned way

While I confess to being one of those urbanites who can't get on a train without a strong latte and a pile of good reading material, I am still bemused by just how excited I was about something I discovered at Leamington Spa station earlier this week. A waiting room. A rarity today, and, even better, kitted out with good solid wooden benches - and a sturdy matching table. What a treat.

I miss living in London

Leatherhead is a pretty town. It's friendly, and the surrounding countryside is beautiful, in a tame, home-counties kind of way. I'm reasonably content here, although I found the move from London hard.

But last night, just by chance, we caught a televised performance of Madness's latest album, The Liberty of Norton Folgate. It's a bit of an ode to London, north London in particular, and the stage set (at the magnificent Hackney Empire) involved a changing backdrop of Camden scenes.

It made me really miss London. Mention of Soho made me miss Bar Italia, and a shot of the French House took me back years. But it made me feel old, melancholy and exhausted. Thanks Suggs, and your nutty boy friends!

But I do get up to the big smoke now and again - I took this photo of St Pancras while waiting for the Simon Community soup van to pick me up last week.

Does free food keep people on the streets?

I've volunteered with the Simon Community for almost 4 years. It is, I think, the oldest homeless charity in the UK. Having spawned branches all over Ireland - which are now much bigger operations and linked to the London group in name and ethos only these days - it's inevitable that it attracts a number of volunteers from the Irish diaspora in England.

Almost every Thursday night since joining, I've gone out in a van with half a dozen other volunteers, several of whom have become close and trusted friends, stopping at 5 or 6 spots in central London to hand out soup, sandwiches, tea, coffee and sometimes warm clothes.

In my early days as a volunteer, we would see, in all, around 100 people. Now it's closer to 150, and sometimes more, the numbers swollen by recent arrivals from Eastern Europe, many of them unable to communicate at all in English.

Soup runs take a lot of flak - from all corners. One of the main accusations has been that by feeding people, we are convincing them to stay on the streets. I've always found this ludicrous. Good as our soup is, it isn't going to prompt anyone to sleep in a doorway.

But recently, as more and more well-intentioned soup runs appear along our route, I've begun to wonder if we really are helping people. And, more importantly, if we're helping the right people. Last night, I was on the receiving end of a fair bit of unpleasantness from some Eastern Europeans, all of whom have been abusive to me before. This was because I wouldn't give them a second cup of soup each. I don't know if they don't understand that at that stage in the evening we have another three stops, and maybe as many as 70 people, to go. Or if they just don't care. And certainly the most offensive of them didn't want any soup at all - he appeared just to want to have a go. I left the soup run and came home early - something I've never done before.

So now I find myself wondering whether we're doing the right thing. I suspect that more vulnerable people are staying away because of the changed atmosphere around the soup run. And should we be able to refuse to feed someone who is abusive but hungry? Or is feeding someone like this simply sending out the message that this behaviour is acceptable?