The coach leaves at 10am for the airport sharp

"The coach leaves at 10am for the airport, sharp." Everyone groans. With the choice of staying one or two weeks, for many guests tonight is the last night. And tomorrow, a new busload of nervous novices are due to arrive, most of them female."The ratio is almost always uneven. One week we had 16 women, and one very happy man," sighs Tess. "Tell the men back home we need them out here."Is that because there's a surplus of available females in their forties? "No, I think it's because it's easier for a single male to go off travelling alone. When there's two of you, you can make a dinner last four hours On your own, fifteen minutes.

A blind date is enough to give most of us a sinking feeling, never mind the ordeal of sailing through a singles holiday. But Sovereign Small World, who hold what they describe as "private house parties", choose the style of accommodation and location with care.Offering an alternative to the anonymity of big hotel vacations, it is a clever formula that works well for solo travellers."I stayed in an ordinary hotel the holiday before this one, and it was a nightmare," says Caroline, 33, a library assistant "I felt like Shirley Valentine. Now, they were bonding tighter than the survivors of The Poseidon Adventure Not surprising, really. A week ago, none of the people staying in the Tuscan farmhouse "Villa Chiassaia" knew a soul. It's been grand." He raises a farewell glass to the ladies sitting around the courtyard table.

Over the past few weeks the papers have chronicled, the Maestro's rise and fall Little did they know how far the fall would be. Grigorovich will be in charge of formulating the ballet course at the projected World Centre for the Performing Arts, an ambitious venture that hopes to create centres of excellence in Belfast and London "I will give you your own Bolshoi," said the Maestro. Grigorovich's partners in the Cobham-based venture are his wife and two former administrators of the Italia Conti stage school, the august academy that produced Bonnie Langford.. Eric, 68, from Scotland, says: "I've been on a twosome, and a foursome - but this is the first time I've been on a twenty-six-some. The Bolshoi is strong enough to withstand upheaval." If Vasiliev can command the loyalty of the company he has known for more than 40 years and if his own choreography is enough to sustain them for the time being, then the Bolshoi should live to fight another day.Grigorovich is another matter. I think it'll take a year."Her company is bringing the Kirov to London this summer, would she consider bringing the Bolshoi, as she has in the past? "Certainly, give them six months and then think about it Not to do bits and pieces but to do good solid ballets.

They will have to work out their own modus vivendi but the name Bolshoi still has the ring about it. Fellow impresario Lilian Hochauser dismisses the success of this season of incom- prehensible ballet extracts or "suites" as "a masterpiece of marketing. At that point wherever the Bolshoi had been the public would have gone." Dazzled by the financial success of the five-week visit to the Albert Hall, Derek Block fondly assumed Grigorovich, "the Maestro", as he referred to him, possessed the Midas touch.Block's over-confidence led to the demented notion, in 1994, of "ballet on a summer's day". What on earth made Block think that canny north country folk would pay £55 to sit in the gardens of Castle Howard on a chilly Yorkshire evening to watch a bag of suites that had been critically crucified? Even Block, new to the ballet game, must have had a few doubts about the proposed al fresco fiasco.

The painfully late abortion of this absurd outdoor ballet season, which cost Block more than £1 million (not to mention his reputation for good sense), has meant that edgy impresarios will no longer regard the company as automatically bankable. And for the Bolshoi that really matters.If a major Western company goes through a period in the artistic doldrums it's an embarrassment, but it's not the end of the world. Loyal (or merely ignorant) audiences will continue to come in respectable numbers and funding carries on regardless. Since the collapse of the Russian economy and the ending of their massive state subsidy, the Bolshoi is literally falling apart and the restoration can only be acquired with hard currency. Unfortunately, touring (the most obvious source of revenue) is not an option for a company in chaos.However, the Bolshoi is bigger than any of its members It's certainly bigger than Grigorovich. Hochauser is optimistic about the company's prospects: "Obviously there will have to be a period of adjustment.