Sunday with Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179)

my ornamental Japanese cherry tree in full autumnal splendour

 

This morning I woke up a little subdued - I don't want to make my mood sound darker than that; subdued is a good enough word for now. I have been very aware of the days getting shorter, the nights drawing in and leaves turning colour prior to tumbling off the trees. Loneliness is so much worse in winter. Time to beware of the black dog.

So, what to do to make today, Sunday, a little special? It is all too easy for me to let one day run into another without any marker, and time at this time of life speeds up and before you know it, another month has passed. 

Let's start with breakfast, maybe a couple of slices of fruit bread and marmalade? Some ham and a sliver of mature Welsh cheddar? During the week I eat muesli and stewed fruit and nothing else; it's quick and easy and fairly healthy because of the dried fruits, nuts and seeds that I add myself.  And how about a large mug of fennel tea to wash it down. The main thing is to eat consciously, taste every bite and savour the hot drink going into my stomach. 

And while I am eating breakfast I have chosen to be accompanied by Hildegard of Bingen's heavenly sounds. Instead of almost deliberately depressing myself - I know what happens when I read the daily news reports - why not refresh my knowledge of this early medieval polymath, visionary, composer, writer, poet, botanist, philosopher, medical writer and practitioner and abbess of two convents, which she founded. Hildegard was born into the Rhenish aristocracy in 1098, she spent the remainder of her eighty years as a nun.

Hildegard von Bingen. Line engraving by W. Marshall

Hildegard became very powerful in a male dominated Church. She prevailed against various abbots and bishops and even attracted the attention of the pope in Rome who gave her permission to record her visions. She completed her great musico-poetic work around the year 1150. Seventy-seven songs and a music drama are extant today, more than of any other single medieval composer. When the mood takes me I will happily spend an hour in her company.

Hildegard was not universally popular in her time, powerful women were not then and are not now. Nothing much changes. It is said that her nuns, all noble ladies, wore jewellery and extravagant headdresses, and pursued an active life of the mind - without spending too much time in hair shirts, or on bread and water in freezing cells. (I made that last bit up.)

In spite of a lifetime of poor health Hildegard had a vast output of work. She has become important in our time for many reasons. The Feminist movement has embraced her and her ideas on holistic natural healing have been incorporated into the New Age canon.

On Oct. 7, 873 years after her death, the Vatican finally gave her the highest recognition for her considerable achievements. She was elevated to Doctor of the Church, a rare and solemn title reserved for theologians who have significantly impacted Church doctrine. There are 34 Doctors of the Church, and only four are women (Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Ávila, Thérèse of Lisieux and now, finally, Hildegard von Bingen).

I admire her but most of all I like to listen to her music. Nothing can soothe the anxious spirit like her music can. for today the black dog is banished.

Old Ladies

Just now I finished a phone call with a very old lady friend. Old in years, not so much old in friend years. One of these sweet old dears who rarely, if ever, have a bad word to say about anyone, gentle and mild, a white halo for hair, small in size, frail and delicate. Articulate, educated, well-mannered, a lady. Sometimes I have wished that she might drop the sweetness, even if just by accident and join the rough, crude, occasionally cross and sweary world I inhabit.

We got talking about Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. Is there anyone cognisant who doesn't? I said I want him dead, shot, eliminated.

"Shot?", she said. "Shooting is too good for him, I want him hung, drawn and quartered", she thundered, "I want him torn limb from limb". To my great delight the old lady was spitting nails. Obviously, I agree with her and told her so and it gives me hope that old does not automatically have to equate to lacking spirit.

Life is slowly, in minute increments, resuming pace. A well attended garden club meets monthly again in a village hall a twenty minute drive away. When I heard that two ladies (yes, oldish) from my neck of the woods were on the committee and would therefore go I asked for a lift. The driver very kindly agreed. These meetings take the form of a paid speaker giving an illustrated talk on their subject of choice with open questions at the end. I have in the past attended many such meetings elsewhere and enjoyed them and sometimes I didn't.

What is wrong with non-professional speakers? You'd think that, as they get paid, they'd get the basics right. The speaker that evening started by getting her microphone upside down, she then sat with her back to the audience staring down at her laptop, and mumbled her way through a very uninspiring talk with few and mainly boring photographs presented on the screen. How many beds of snowdrops can you take, how many pictures of men at work and heaps of earth waiting to be turned into flower beds? And finishing off with a picture of more old ladies crowding the cake counter in the cafeteria of the garden she was supposed to delight us with simply made me even more cross. All this and when you go to the rather famous garden's website you get some beautiful vistas.

As I had been given a lift by two friends active in the club I thought I'd better not say anything on the way home. Imagine how pleased I was when one of them said that the evening had been a waste of time, the speaker quite poor and not to be invited again. One of them asked the other if they should not point out to potential speakers that they should face the audience and speak clearly. "Not really," the other one said, "they might be offended". Such very good old lady manners, spend a boring evening rather than give offence.

The entire audience consisted of nice old ladies with just a sprinkling of old gentlemen. I didn't see anyone above middle height, under 65, and with any colour hair other than grey. I have a friend who says I am incredibly negative; she's right, of course. I must learn to stop being so judgemental and keep shtum, unless I find genuine cause for praise. I have my doubts, however, that I will succeed.

I have mentioned the German Conversation group before, well, we have commenced face-to-face meetings again; we are slowly working our way through "Die Deutsche Seele" (the German Soul) a many-paged book with essays on such German terms as Fussball, German Angst, Bauhaus, Wanderlust, all the way from A through to Z. Alternatively, we watch DVDs on German history, starting with the 9th Century and ending with the Weimar Republic, a thousand years later. That should keep us old ladies busy for some time to come.

All in all, life is picking up. 

Midlife Crisis

 It’s only now, when midlife has long passed, that my midlife crisis is hitting me. ( Google says that Midlife crisis” may be another name for the grief, exhaustion, and anxiety that can affect people for a prolonged period between ages 40 and 60. The origins may be physiological, emotional, or societal.) When I was in early midlife my attention was on surviving. Now, in old age, for the first time, motivation is lacking, targets and goals have vanished and there is a panic-stricken feeling that time is not only passing too quickly but also being wasted. Could that just be the effect of Covid? 

I would love to be able to boast that all the idleness under Covid has encouraged me to broaden my horizons, to give serious time to serious reading, to watch critically acclaimed TV programmes, to catch up on concerts, plays and philosophical discussion, documentaries and improving lectures, all widely available digitally. What riches there are to be sampled, what depths to be explored.

No, sadly, what I have done is broadened my bottom instead, sitting for hours, watching endless repeats of ‘Midsomer Murders’ and ‘Morse’ and ‘Poirot’. Yes, I have spent many hours reading, book after book, mainly novels, but of the calibre that needs almost no engagement of brain cells :’Mary Stewart’, Angela Thirkell’, 'Georgette Heyer’, ‘Marcia Willett’, ‘A. Mc Call Smith’, ‘Barbara Pym’, and others, whose names I have forgotten. Whenever that diet of 'warm bath’ literature has become too cloying I have picked up slightly more demanding non-fiction but for the life of me I have not been able to choose the option of reading Kindle-downloaded writers like Hilary Mantel, H. Jacobson, Garcia-Marquez, Sebastian Faulks, or Ian McEwan. I have a highly acclaimed production of Checkhov’s'Uncle Vanya’ recorded, ditto several series of ‘Deutschland’. They are all awaiting less fraught times. For now I need that warm bath escapism. 

I recently had an email from a former blogger who still reads blogs but no longer writes herself, saying that she felt a little intimidated by me, because: " You are so articulate, possessing an air of intellectualism and, with your considerable and impressive knowledge of literate, poetry, art and theatre; your husband, a Classical musician; your friends, most of whom seemed to be cultured and well educated, made it a little daunting to leave a worthwhile comment.”

Well, did you ever! Dear commenter, I don’t know if I am flattered but, if you are reading this, you will have been disabused of your false impression of me for good by this post. Intimidated, Goodness, Gracious Me.

As for further reading material, I picked up my March 81 diary last night, which had the following gem:

“A silly clot from the Gas Board came on Monday. He pronounced our Ascot Boiler unsafe for use. It is now an offence to use the thing. We know all about the danger from gas fumes and we are all quite careful about using the bath or shower, always leaving the window open. Nobody wants to die there, after all. Still, I suppose there will be a letter soon, giving instruction on future use. The silly fool trod in Kavli’s (the cat’s) toilet tray and tipped the whole mess over his shoes. He wasn’t particularly friendly when he came, he was even less friendly when he left."

I found some good advice easily adaptable to pouring over old diaries in "Finding Henry Applebee” by Celia Reynolds:-

"If you want my advice, kiddo, Uncle Frank once told him, you’ll do as I do and think of the past as a casual acquaintance: warmly, but not to the point you want to invite it over for a beer every other night of the week. “

Well said.

And Now For Something Entirely Different.....

the end of culture as I know it, for the time being anyway. I hope.

Creativity is in short supply in my household, all I can think of doing is unravel the rugs and knit face masks with the proceeds. That is if I knew how to knit. Years ago I gave away all jigsaw puzzles, half finished embroidery tablecloths went down the charity route and painting by numbers has never appealed. Reading is a habit I won’t tire of anytime soon, unfortunately the last book I picked from the long list of “waiting to be read” is Isabell Allende’s “In the Midst of Winter”, too good to be put aside but also too deeply harrowing to be read without frequent recourse to a sip of wine and a piece of chocolate. I really need to forget about the improving kind of reading material and go back to the shelves of old favourites for a laugh. For a little light relief I watched the first two episodes of the new Sunday night costume saga “Belgravia”, Downton Abbey in the time of Waterloo; Mr. Fellowes, do you really need more dosh that badly?

However, to culture, the high brow variety.

Have you ever sat among an audience, clinging to the armrests of your seat, trying to prevent yourself shouting at the players? That’s what happened to me during “The Whip”, a brand new play about the abolition of slavery in 1834. On the surface, the achievement appears to be a heroic victory for human decency, in truth, slavery was followed by the appalling 'apprenticeship scheme', slavery by another name, with worse punishment. Slave owners were compensated for the loss of their ‘property’ with a multi-million pound Sterling windfall; in 2015 the money borrowed for this ‘bailout' was finally paid off by the British taxpayer. What made me want to shout and climb the stage was the naked greed, the inhumanity, corruption, mendacity, portrayed by the actors. I believed it all, and it reminded me forcibly of our own times.

How different was the National Theatre’s “Cyrano De Bergerac”. Until quite late into the first scene I was still waiting for the play to begin, confused by a lineup of actors rapping at a fast and furious pace. This is a radical reboot of Rostand’s 1897 ‘wooing-by-proxy’ romantic classic and, once I understood what was going on, I loved it. James McAvoy was a fierce, proud, word-intoxicated Cyrano, never stumbling, never missing a beat. Yes, I loved it.

And that will be that for the time being. All theatres are closed, as are all cinemas. No more live shows, no more streaming. Tickets already bought and paid for are invalid; I have no idea if the Royal Shakespeare Company will make refunds. The probable loss of money is not my first concern, I am more saddened by the loss of one of my favourite pastimes. My friends and I have tickets for performances at Stratford for two consecutive days in May, with an overnight stay at a fancy hotel.

Ah well.

By no Means a Surfeit of Culture (part 1)

Surfeit: (noun) an excessive amount of something

or , acc. to Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night Act 1, scene 1"

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.


Well, for me it wasn’t an excess of anything, just enough, more like, and there’s more to follow yet, and certainly not enough to sicken the appetite; rather, let me call it a sufficiency.


The Sleeping Beauty is a grand, formal and very human ballet. It's packed full of radiant dancing and touches of observation, often both at once; it is danced with great depth, contrast and warmth.

 Magnificent scenery, exquisite costumes,
Tchaikovsky’s exuberant score, and a huge cast, what’s not to like? And, of course, it all ends happily-ever-after, Princess Aurora is awakened by Prince Florimund and wicked Carabosse disappears, never to be seen again.


Nobody speaks, is betrayed, dies or goes mad in Jerome Robbins’s ballet “Dances at a Gathering,” but this hourlong, pure-dance work, set to an anthology of Chopin piano pieces, is nonetheless a multilayered masterpiece of theatre.

"Within months of its 1969 premiere (with New York City Ballet, which revives it this week), there was so much talk about its characters and narratives that Robbins (the choreographer)sent a letter to the quarterly Ballet Review written like a telegram: “THERE ARE NO STORIES TO ANY OF THE DANCES IN DANCES AT A GATHERING. THERE ARE NO PLOTS AND NO ROLES. THE DANCERS ARE THEMSELVES DANCING WITH EACH OTHER TO THAT MUSIC IN THAT PLACE.”

You make of it what you will. You could, like I did, simply watch and follow breathlessly, as Chopin’s various pieces unfold, with music and dance merging into one brilliant experience.

As good as Sleeping Beauty and Dances at a Gathering were they came nowhere near the brand new ballet 'The Cellist', the story of the life of Jacqueline du Pre, who died, at 42, 30years ago. The story is told through the instrument, which is danced by Marcelino Sambe, and goes from her childhood and first lessons through her years as a player of extraordinary talent to her illness and death, the cello falling silent at last.

It was a breathtaking performance, inspirational, powerfully affecting, utterly moving. I rarely go overboard for a ballet, but see this if you can.

So what a huge difference the film of ‘Downton Abbey’ was compared to anything else I’ve seen during the first two months of the year. Firstly, the theatre was crammed full of old people, many on sticks, in wheelchairs, pushing walking aids, accompanied by carers. Chatty and lively, excited to be 'out on licence’, humming like bees in a beehive, they were shepherded to their seats, where they stayed, relatively quietly, waiting for their favourite show to unfold and Maggie Smith’s acerbic comments to tickle their funnybone. There was much laughter at the appropriate moments and quite a few satisfied sighs when Downton’s ‘belowstairs’ got one over on the Royal entourage.

Personally, I thought the film was harmless fun, nothing to get excited over, rather painting-by-numbers and predictable; I watched the TV series and this was in much the same vein. I expect you’ve all long seen it and enjoyed it. I did too, finally.

Allegiances

It is time for all the heroes to go home

if they have any; time for all of us common ones

to locate ourselves by the real things

we live by.

William Stafford

It’s quite unbelievable, we have had the fourth flood! Five, if you count separate floods on two consecutive days. And it’s not over yet, there is more heavy rain to come by the end of the week and showers in between. Shrewsbury town centre is still under water. I was supposed to go to a funeral in the town yesterday. I’m afraid I chickened out, together with three friends who were going in the same car. We went to the local pub instead and drank a toast to the deceased. We weren’t exactly proud of ourselves but we felt safer and quite relieved once we had come to a decision. It doesn’t do for the old and infirm (one of us was in a wheelchair - one in her early nineties -  one disabled and only me reasonably mobile) to be foolhardy.

My image as a high-flying, brainy, intellectual and altogether smartypanty, (yea, sure) if foreign, pillar of our particular society is taking a thorough beating. There I was, at a party for people on the losing side of the Remain/Leave partition, every member an academic, artist, engineer and professional, all vocal and committed to our joint cause. All talking absolute sense (that is, if you are on our side of the argument), with the debate hotting up a bit as the evening progressed. This was the first party I had been invited to since I’ve been on my own, all previous invitations have been to small groups, lunches and dinner parties. Whenever I find myself in such company I instantly feel like an impostor, a fraud, somebody who shouldn’t really be there. My reaction to such discomfort? I talk, I argue, I debate, tell stories, until many eyes are on me. Afterwards, at home, I feel utterly embarrassed.

This time there was an additional embarrassment: my frequent attendance at the 'Ladies who Lunch’ was brought up by a gossipy guest and it seems that it is by no means a secret that I have truck with Leavers and right-wingers. There were nods all round when I asked if everyone in Valley’s End knew. Luckily, this was cause for good-natured hilarity and I was teased mercilessly, rather than shunned and berated. Having felt uncomfortable about the Ladies’ conversation a few times now, I will try and see less of them, although I have no wish to offend them. Yes, their opinions can drive me mad, but they are kind and welcoming every time.

Like I said, this was the very first larger party I attended on my own. I knew a few of the guests and the hostess is a fellow foreigner and we therefore can get together and vent about ‘the English and their quaint customs’ and find we have a lot in common.We’ve both been here for decades. But, I did miss Beloved, all the others were coupled and went home  two-by-two. No matter how welcoming and friendly people are, it takes quite an effort to find your personal shaped niche to settle into by yourself.

I am off to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford with two friends tomorrow - both eminently able-bodied. That means I won’t have to look after anyone but myself if we get stuck in a flood somewhere. The play, “The Whip" is brand new, not sure that I will enjoy it. “Electrifying, compelling”, says the blurb.

Happiness Factor? It’s a joke, right?

So there I was, aiming for human interaction resulting in happiness, or at least a semblance of contentment.

Fat chance.

Not that it was all bad. A friend and I went off to see a modern re-imagining of John Gay’s 1728 work "The Beggar's Opera" by Mid Wales Opera Company, a production for small spaces and therefore very intimate. Renamed “Mrs. Peachum’s Guide to Love And Marriage” it is a splendidly bawdy, ballsy take on relationships and the relative virtues of virginity. We enjoyed it and, what’s more, my friend and I didn’t fall out in spite of getting into politics.

Another event was a Spanish Evening set up by a local group. There was tapas, Spanish wine, some haphazard music and three short, separate, talks about the painter Joaquin Sorolla, Spanish food and how the speaker liked to cook it and wine talk. The wine talk was the only professional talk, which means that the whole hall could hear that speaker. The other two never remembered to speak into the microphone, in spite of an audience member begging them to do so. What made it worse for me was that I had chosen to sit at a table towards the back of the hall (ready to scarper?) just in front of the wine table where the volunteer wine server chose to use the time of the talks to rearrange his crates of bottles, picking up each bottle, checking it for dregs and plonking it back into its hole in the crate. He took absolutely no notice of my anguished looks in his direction and clinked on busily. Not the most enjoyable evening all told.

You can simply not rely on people to do as they say. I took a very wheezy chest to my doctor; yes, he examined me, asked a few questions and came up with the idea that my childhood asthma might have returned. And yes, he was going to investigate and consult another doctor. "So, should I make another appointment,” I asked. “O no, I’ll ring you later this afternoon.” That was two weeks ago. Not a peep out of the surgery since then.

Gadgets aren’t a whole lot more reliable, either. The whole area had a power cut. When the power came back on after several hours I mentally congratulated the electricity firm and settled down for a cosy evening. By and by the room cooled down, quite considerably by the time I bestirred myself to check on the boiler. One very dead boiler. This was Friday evening of the coldest weekend this year with frost and freezing fog forecast. I fiddled around and tried to relight it but it just grumbled and coughed at me. I spent some time online trying to find the nearest engineer but gave up and rang the manufacturer's company itself - Worcester-Bosch - who are many miles away but have always seen me right in the past. Many miles away also means an expensive call-out, of course. “Yes, we’ll come, On Monday.” Between Friday evening and Monday morning I wore thermal layers, several pairs of thick socks, my pyjamas under trousers and jumpers - who is going to undress completely in a freezing cold bathroom? - , carried around two small fires, and forgot about personal cleanliness entirely. What on Earth do people do who do not have immediate access to the wherewithal necessary to pay for an emergency like this? I had ice flowers on the windows, for heaven’s sake. The female engineer discovered that the power cut had blown the circuit board. She replaced it, serviced the boiler and made sure that all was back in order before she left.

Next stop a major building job. I had my windows on the South side of the house replaced, all eight of them. I was pleasantly surprised by the result. Beloved would have been livid, several years before we debated if we should swap wooden windows for plastic. “Absolutely not,” was his conclusion. "Wooden widows are so much more attractive.” No they’re not, says I. They require constant repainting, repairing and splicing, none of it cheap. So now I have perfectly fitting, draught excluding, plastic windows on the weather side. I was also pleasantly surprised by the workmen doing the job. They were relatively quiet, cleaned up after themselves and caused minor disruption, allowing me to escape to a different room with each window. Even so, there was a moment when the boss man and I almost fell out. Over Brexit, what else. He was a fervent Leaver who trotted out all the long-discredited lies we were told three years ago. There is no getting through to some. I wished him Good Luck and left the room quickly.  I had learned my lesson from a previous experience, much more painful and embarrassing, which I’ll come to next.

You see, there was this dinner party at a very good friend’s house, the guests being a couple from London, a couple from Valley’s End and me. We have met at this house in previous years, always get on well and usually have a splendid evening, with lots of wine, food, good conversation and a general feeling of goodwill to all assembled. Except this time I related my experiences and feelings about the need to apply for Settled Status after 50 years of living the UK, once Brexit has become reality. O dear. It appeared that the couple from London and the host, with whom they were staying for the weekend, had already had a falling-out the previous evening. So my remark simply stirred the flames all over again. It was most unpleasant for a while, a lot of wine had been consumed and tempers flared, in a quietly genteel way, neither bad language nor insults were employed, but tempers flared. I know that families have fallen out, co-workers have fallen out, friends have fallen out over this wretched business but I never imagined that a genial host and his guests would suddenly, in the middle of a most enjoyable dinner party, stage a mini-war. At the moment the UK is not a friendly place.

So, human interaction is all very well, but it does not necessarily lead to happiness.

Sheer Escapism

Fully autumn soon, the nights are drawing in, there’s a chill in the air and the leaves of the Japanese ornamental cherry show just the faintest tinge of burgundy. Millie is still with me, she seems to be having a reprieve in her general health - not the arthritis, alas - and I have decided to shut the back door at night. It keeps the warmth in and she has a more comfortable time of it in the scullery. If I have to clean up after her, so be it. It won’t be forever. And it doesn’t happen every night either.

The hedge cutters are here, another sign of autumn. Raindrops are dripping on them but they are hardy young men; “it’s only water”  said the one I took round the perimeter of the garden to give instructions on what needed trimming. True, but I myself still sheltered under a big umbrella. And I needed his arm to help me over a very steep slippery grassy bit without falling over. He promptly fell over himself, should have asked me for my arm in return.

There is so little that is pleasant in this world at the moment that I am seriously keen not to add to the misery for myself. Yes, I am still obsessed with current affairs, yes, I still shout curses at politicians whenever they appear on TV spouting barefaced lies, yes, I still dread what is happening to our climate and the environment. What to do? Withdraw from the whole unholy mess of it? Could be. Escape at least occasionally. Evenings start earlier, earlier evenings require indoor activities rather than balmy nights spent outdoors. Reading, TV and maybe closer attention to this blog of mine again, after several years of neglect.

Which brings me to another question: are you old enough to indulge in bad taste books, films, TV shows without embarrassment? To my surprise quite a few of the ‘ladies who lunch’ admit to doing so. Well, in that case, so do I. Not exclusively, of course. I couldn’t possibly live on a diet of sweets and chocolates, burgers and ready meals, neither can I feed my brain exclusively on pap. However, a Georgette Heyer Regency romance, a cosy mystery from the 'Golden Era', a Mary Stewart adventure, a Robin Hobb fantasy, even a Scandi noir thriller insinuate themselves on to my Kindle now and then. (I am too embarrassed to put hard copies on bookshelves). All of the foregoing have one thing in common, they all end happily-ever-after. As for TV, well, the ladies admit to switching on certain channels which run endless repeats of British and American sitcoms, British country village thrillers and long running soaps. I have to be very tired before I give ‘Midsomer Murders' another go - it’s too much like painting-by-numbers - but it’s been known to fill the odd otherwise sadly depressing space. Morse, Endeavour and Shetland are more to my taste. I can take Agatha Christie's Miss Marple or Poirot as well, if needed. I am not so good on films, but a romcom would hit the spot nicely too.

So, there you have it, Friko’s image as culturally high-brow is shattered. I always knew it and now that escapism has become ever more urgent I am old enough to blow a raspberry at anyone who feels judgement coming on. Not you, obviously.

For those who like natural history and the science of it here’s a recommendation which is neither pap nor instant escapism: Peter Wohlleben’s ’The Hidden Life of Trees’, an informative study and fascinating look into the enchantment of trees that can talk and sometimes walk - no it’s not a fairy tale. You’ll gain a whole new perspective on the amazing processes of life, death and regeneration of woodlands. The better sort of escapism.

One year on . . . .

. . . . and last month I hit rock bottom. Just as that heart specialist (how apt, ‘heart 'specialist) told me a year ago, that the end of the first year would be hardest to cope with. I’ve barely been able to rouse myself to do anything at all, off my own bat, that is. When other people have encouraged me to do things I’ve given in and done them. But as soon as I’ve been out from under their well-meaning efforts I crawled back into my cave. The weather was awful too, cold and damp and wet, with snow and ice for a week twice, which meant that I couldn’t even get out of the garage and drive to a supermarket. Did I feel sorry for myself? Not really, it was more a dull ache, a feeling of loneliness and abandonment. TV, books, chocolates and wine were my constant companions, but even they didn’t do much to lighten the mood. I wonder what I’d’ve been like without those crutches.

What I need is a passion. I have friends who sing in choirs, work in spite of being in their late sixties and seventies, endlessly help with grandchildren, work on village committees and church affairs, run all sorts of do-gooding charities. None of these activities tempt me. Not for the moment, anyway. I’ve said it before, I am not a joiner. My voice is a croak, proper work has long left me behind, my grandchildren are grown up. I’ve been on committees in the past and hated it. Quiet, behind the scenes charity is more my bag than noisy, front of house, ‘look how hard I work and how marvellously I run the show’ charity. I have to admit, if anything were down to me it would probably not get done. Or get done without fanfare.

So, how do I get a passion? Gardening was once one, I’d love to start again when the weather improves. In fact, last week I already did a full morning’s work and several short spurts and paid for it. No matter, easy does it. I have gone back to the gym after a break of a couple of weeks, worked out and paid for that too. Aches and pains are the natural outcome for sudden onset of physical jerks by the elderly.

I kid myself that going back to college would do the trick, retrieving my failing memory of Medieval European history, for instance, but blame living in the sticks for non-availability of any academic, interesting courses. Perfectly true. Online courses don’t quite answer the need for human interaction.

It’s only been a year, perhaps it’s still early days and I should not feel guilty for my lack of enthusiasm and my inability to ‘look on the bright side’. Positivity, Arghh.

There is the theatre, of course. I had a couple of injections of stage dust. First, "Imperium, The Cicero Plays," a seven-hour, two part version of Robert Harris’ trilogy about the rise and fall of Cicero, the Roman lawyer and politician. (Robert Harris described it as ‘like the West Wing in togas’). We stayed overnight at a delightful boutique hotel dead opposite the theatre, which allowed us to do some shopping in Stratford, an interesting town quite apart from the Shakespeare connection.

Then came ‘Macbeth’. Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy of greed, ambition and lust for power is everywhere at the moment. We saw the RSC version with Christopher Eccleston (ex Dr. Who) and Niamh Cusack.




Both plays are gripping, of course, but hardly a bundle of laughs. What is it they use in theatres for blood? There is such a lot of it in Macbeth. Barely anyone left standing at the end of the evening. Sitting in the front row I got sprayed with what I assumed was meant to be snowflakes during the final fight between Macbeth and Macduff; the stuff stuck to my black cashmere jumper and wouldn’t come off. It has now, without any brushing. Clever people, back stage personnel.

We also went to the opera: the Mid Wales production of ‘ Eugene Onegin’. The opera combines Pushkin’s compelling and heart-breaking story with Tchaikovsky’s sweeping lyricism in a stunning exploration of love, death, (more death) life and convention. Filled with breath-taking arias including Tatyana’s great letter scene and one of my personal favourites, Prince Gremin’s aria, the tale contrasts the simplicity of country life with the sophisticated excesses of Russia’s pre-revolutionary court and tells of the fated love between the innocent Tatyana and the world-weary cynic Onegin.

 



In spite of Mid Wales Opera being very much a provincial company and the orchestra being reduced to one representative of each instrument for lack of space in the pit, the evening was a success, as we told a lady with a pad and pencil taking notes of what we said. Is that how reviews are written? Get hold of audience members standing around after the performance and take down their freshly received impressions? We didn’t realise we had attended the first night.






Although the opera made for a pleasant evening, much more memorable was the meal beforehand in a pub/hotel in the centre of this small Welsh town just over the border from England. The place was heaving, very noisy, with beefy young men milling about everywhere. One giant TV screen was
showing an important rugby match between Scotland and England, (The Six Nations Championship is an annual international rugby union competition between the teams of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. The current champions are Ireland, having won the 2018 tournament.)

These for the most part young Welshmen bellowed their approval every time Scotland had an advantage,  (I don’t know the rules of rugby) and their dislike of and disdain for the English team couldn’t have been expressed more clearly. We were just barely half an hour away from the English border; amazing how much animosity there exists between some Welsh and the English. I had a taste of that myself once when an elderly Welsh lady pushed me and Beloved off a bench on the promenade at Aberystwyth by shuffling closer and closer, first to the middle, and then to our side of the bench. We gave in gracefully.

Some Cultural Pursuits

Did you know that? Do any of you live in or near one of the Stratfords mentioned here?

Do these Stratfords have theatres similar to the Royal Shakespeare Company in the original Stratford-upon-Avon in the UK?

I had no idea of any of it until we went to see King Lear the other day. Isn’t that a splendid Bottom?

Titania isn’t half as grand.

Every time I see King Lear I hope that this time he isn’t going to fall for his conniving, dishonest, fawning daughters’ flattery and that he sees them for the grasping, treacherous witches they are. No, Lear remains blind to reality and favours appearances over truth. Cordelia is silent and he throws her out. Goneril and Regan are free to pursue their evil machinations. Lear goes mad, Gloucester has his eyes gouged out and lots of people die.  That’s the trouble with Shakespeare tragedies, once they’re written they stay written, no matter how many centuries pass.

Tristan and Isolde with the Potion (1916) by John William Waterhouse, oil on canvas

As for Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the whole disaster hinges on a love potion. If Isolde’s handmaid Brangane hadn’t swapped a poisonous tincture for a love potion the whole five hour music drama would have been over in less than one. As it was (again, once written, a thing stays written), misunderstandings, secret trysts, honour and skullduggery abound and are thoroughly demonstrated by thunderous music and dramatic voices. Practically everybody dies here too. If Brangane had at least come clean a bit sooner rather than at the end when death was but a foregone conclusion, Tristan und Isolde might have lived happily every after.

Okay folks, seriously. Both King Lear with Antony Sher in the title role, one of the greatest parts written by Shakespeare, at the RSC in Stratford, and the transmission of Tristan und Isolde from the Met in NYC were experiences I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. Beloved didn’t come to Stratford, he’s seen King Lear many times; he finds the journey tiring now and will only undertake it “if it’s worth it” for him. Although it was sad that he stayed at home it was also a bit of a relief for me. For once I could enjoy a theatre visit without having to have half an eye on his wellbeing.

Wagner was a different matter. The transmission came to the screen at a small local theatre, which takes less than twenty minutes’ drive. He sat through the five hours’ performance without a murmur.  Actually, that’s not quite true, he once snorted a loud ‘Nonsense’ and another time he complained that the interviewer made it look as if the English horn solo in Act III was to be played by a cor anglais. But he had nothing to complain of in the orchestra or even the singers. Not many can do these roles justice but the Met ensemble did their very best. Although he detected a slight wobble in Isolde’s voice he praised her accuracy. That’s the trouble with musicians who have spent their life playing at the big houses, for world famous conductors and have had the privilege to hear the greatest voices for over forty years. They do tend to have an opinion!

Luckily the audience was small, seating was ‘cabaret style’, that is small tables for individual parties, wine, cake and hot drinks were served during the two intervals and, in spite of some minor niggles, the music was simply overwhelming. We are lucky, almost the entire Met season is to be transmitted; Wagner was only the season’s opening.

A Mixed Bag of Inconsequentials

It’s really hard to come up with a worthwhile blog post when your mind is preoccupied. I may also be suffering from writer’s block, all my writing, even my diary, remains ignored for the most part. But I love reading. I can’t get enough of that; books have always been my bolt hole, from a very early age I felt the need to escape into someone else’s life when I didn’t like my own very much. I’ve just finished two books, Emma Healey’s 'Elizabeth Is Missing', a story about an old lady’s Alzheimer’s-coloured obsession with her friend’s whereabouts and buried secrets of her own past, and Kate Atkinson’s ‘A God In Ruins’ about a bomber pilot in WWII, a kind of second half to her ‘Life After Life’. Neither book is light escapism, but well written and easy to read in spite of the subject matter.

The weather has been filthy, there’s been little gardening; the picture of Paul and Beloved having a tea break was taken on an exceptional day.  I am very glad we have stopped opening for the public. The tallest and most impressive flowers are the white umbels of the pernicious ground elder, an absolutely destructive thug whose roots get into anything and are very hard to eradicate. The bane of my life, second only to the dreaded dandelion.

Millie has recovered from her crise de nerfs; luckily we have had no further violent thunderstorms round here, although other parts of the country have been  inundated. We were invited to a birthday lunch at a very grand and very rich house, not by the owners, who were not in residence, but by their dog and house sitter, our good friend Jay, who is neither grand nor rich.

The dogs in question are pugs. a small black one and a beige-brown one, a little larger. (The picture is from the net pets-for-homes.co.uk). They were in a spacious enclosure behind a wire fence. Apparently the owners are terrified that they could escape and get run over. They are never allowed to leave the premises.

Surely pugs are among the ugliest dogs ever? I am sorry if you are the proud owner of one, I mean no offence, although, no doubt, you are offended now. When I went up to the two of them to do my usual silly impression of a dog-besotted idiot they barked at me. Well, barking is exaggerated. They wheezed and snuffled at me in a hostile manner. The small one was pathetic: every two wheezes and he had to take a laboured breath before he could squeeze the next wheezy bark out. He had no tail at all, not even a stub end. His rear end was smooth, he’d been docked until there was not even a smidgeon of tail left. Poor little blighter, no wonder he was in a bad temper. The other one was older and seemed resigned.

How can it be good for a dog to be bred until he has a completely flat face and no nose to breathe through? Give me a Millie, with a great big wet hooter and a solid tail to wag any day, even if she’s the result of an unfortunate liaison between a collie and a lab.

We took her to the pub where she found shelter from the storm after she escaped and were told that she rushed in like a bat out of hell and shook herself all over the guests sitting at the tables. Well done Millie, they’ll not forget you in a hurry.

Millie’s been to the dog groomer. I swear that girl moults more than other dogs. She hates it when I leave her there and if I should stop and chat to Tina, the groomer, and Millie is already in her pre-wash and brush up cage, she growls and whines and weeps bitter tears. ‘Mummy, how could you’, she says. Two hours later when I pick her up, she pulls like a train to get out and away. Dogs just don’t appreciate a pampering session. Not like me, I went to Helen’s for a delicious facial and I didn’t growl or whine once! Instead, I purred.

Beloved hasn’t got any worse, in fact, he’s perked up a bit. I treated him to a couple of theatre visits: the RSC’s almost all black ‘Hamlet' with the rising star Paapa Essiedu in the title role and the Globe’s 'The Merchant Of Venice' with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock. Both productions were excellent. “The seats are too hard”, Beloved said of Hamlet (his bottom is skin and bones now) and when asked about The Merchant he flatly stated that he didn’t like it. My friend Sue, who had asked, was rather taken aback. “What don’t you like, the play or the production?” "I simply don’t like plays whose entire action revolves around prejudice”, he said. Okay, Hm? Are there any plays that don’t have some form of prejudice? In fact, isn’t human frailty the whole point of Shakespeare? I agree to some extent, though, The Merchant is tragically nasty throughout.

Anyway, I have booked tickets for three more productions; I shall be going by myself.

Sinister and Dexter

Laburnum in June

Good foot is still needed to go to heaven, but bad foot going to hell is already miles better; it was ever thus, the road to perdition is so much less stony than the way to heavenly bliss. 

It was sheer bliss limping to the theatre, though. First to a Live Screening of the National Theatre's performance of Shaw’s Man And Superman and then to Stratford and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Merchant Of Venice. No two plays could be more different.  The Merchant with its ‘Bond of Flesh’ plot is truly sinister. It’s a disturbing story, even today, more than 500 years after Shakespeare wrote it  - or perhaps particularly today when anti-semitism appears to be on the rise again.  Suffice it to say that neither the Jew nor the Christians come out anything other than morally obnoxious.

The stage at the end of the play, taken from the front row.

(We are very fortunate, Jeremy being disabled

gets us excellent seats at reduced prices)

Synopsis:-  In the melting pot of Venice, trade is God. With its ships plying the globe, the city opens its arms to all - as long as they come prepared to do business and there is profit to be made.
When the gold is flowing all is well - but when a contract between Bassanio and Shylock is broken, simmering racial tensions boil over.
A wronged father, and despised outsider, Shylock looks to exact the ultimate price for a deal sealed in blood.


Shaw’s Man And Superman is a sharp comedy, philosophical musing and surreal drama, a philosophical comedy of manners, if such a thing exists. A bearded Ralph Fiennes was excellent as John Tanner, who unwillingly accepts guardianship of a sly and manipulative young woman who is out to snare him in marriage. Fiennes rolls across the stage, slightly bent and swaying, apparently propelled by the fountain of his own words. Never once did he falter - there are over 57,000 words in the play and the majority of those are spoken by its intensely loquacious anti-hero. The play lasted the best part of four hours; I was never bored and laughed like a drain.

I have a new crush: it’s Ralph Fiennes; he may be ageing and his hair may be thinning but his triumphant vigour and versatility, not to mention the perfect delivery of his lines, have won me over. It is so refreshing to be able to understand each word; TV actors mumble and stumble through their lines as if they’re ashamed of them.


Finally, let me recommend to all of you who are interested in theatre (and now, opera) to make use of Live Screenings if you have the chance. Most of us can’t get to London, Stratford, Glyndebourne, or even New York - the Met does transmissions - but many of us can see performances locally at vastly reduced cost. The recordings are for the archives, so the actors are on top form. Performances feel intense, you know that all around the world people are watching the same show as you. And as you are seeing the show on a big screen  instead of from a cheap seat at the back of the Stalls, you have the added thrill of being the first to notice a  fluffed line or an actor corpsing.

We’re off to ‘Julius Cesar’ tonight, which won’t be a bundle of laughs.

Meditations On A Rainy Day III

The difference between these two pictures is 20 hours

and an awful lot of rain.

It’s the same stretch of river and the same willow tree.

For tonight the forecast says dry and very cold.

2014 has been good to me, or perhaps I have been good to myself? They say “Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied”, or ‘Life is what you make it’. Even the ancient Romans knew that. Appius Claudius Caecus told us that  ‘Every Man is the Architect of his Own Fortune’. I expect everybody has their favourite proverb but do we all follow the sentiment?

Well, I think I’ve cracked it. For the whole of the year I was determined that apart from the odd stumble here and there my path would be smooth, that I would not let indifference, unkindness or bare-faced lying on the part of others, no matter how close the connection, push me into unhappiness or illness. And I’ve done it. Two separate relationships have made me very unhappy in previous years; one is severed completely and the other is cooling. So, that’s that. I am amazed at how easy it was in the end. I feel regret, but accept what is and cannot be changed. Both situations have been fraught with unease and pain in the past, in both cases a catalyst caused me to stop and examine my motives for continuing with them, when there was no profit and all loss. It feels good.

Half the young ladies in London spend their evenings 
making their fathers take them to plays that are not 
fit for elderly people to see.               G.B.Shaw

All the pleasures and happinesses of 2014 have been modest, play-going chief amongst them. Thanks to a good friend we have had many trips to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford; many more are planned for 2015. That wonderful new institution, Live Streaming from the foremost theatres in London, as well as the Royal Opera House, have meant that we hardly had to miss anything we crave. As well as going to poetry meetings in Knighton, over the border in Wales, we have resurrected poetry readings at our house once a month; wine and poetry in a circle of like-minded friends make for wonderful evenings which require little effort but give an inordinate amount of pleasure.

A Book Is Like A Garden Carried In The Pocket.

Chinese Proverb

Aren’t I lucky. I have both. An endless supply of gardens on my shelves and an outdoor garden for work and play. The balance has been shifting, I’ve allowed myself far more reading than gardening time during the year, partly due to the ease with which I can, thanks to a Kindle app, read for hours without stopping. Gardening has been important too but I’ve relaxed my harsh policy of eradicating every weed that dared show its face; or if a plant wants to lean over, muscling in on its neighbours' space, so be it. I will not chastise and imprison it in a rigid corset of stakes. Besides, I’ve dug up and given away many clumps of herbaceous plants this year to replace them with easily cultivated shrubs. But best of all is to be out in the garden in summer, drag a chair into the shade of a tree, fetch a drink and open a new book. Bliss. 

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

Pat Conroy: My Reading Life

To my great surprise, I’ve continued with blogging throughout the year. Had you asked me five years ago I would have said that this is an activity destined to last but a short time. I am posting less, reading fewer blogs, leaving comments only once or twice a week. I have made absolutely no effort to gain new followers and have cut down on the numbers of those I follow. But I am still blogging. It’s my only other addiction apart from a craving for chocolate. Will I give up either next year?

I often think that the night is more alive 

and more richly coloured than the day.

Vincent van Gogh

Leaning out of my window last night, breathing deeply to get rid of stale central heating air in my lungs before bed I looked up into a clear, cold, starry night. The swollen river hummed monotonously, deeply soothing to the spirit. The night was calm and so was I. Counting my blessings is not for me, but appreciating the joys of the simple life is. 

Whatever happens in the new year, I will be kind to myself. 

Brain Boxes

What comes first: a great intellect or a great memory? Can you have one without the other?

We have just waved goodbye to a couple of visitors, family, who are doing a tour of the UK and came for a flying visit lasting less than 24 hours.  Eve is of ordinary intelligence, artistic, Adam's the brain box.

It’s impossible to have an argument with Adam. He’s read every book on every subject remotely connected with natural sciences, history, the environment, literature, etc. etc. He remembers them all and can quote every argument expounded in them. It’s most tiresome.

Not every book written is worth the pulp it’s made from, whether wood, cloth or grass. New research unearths new facts and findings all the time; some last, others are overthrown.  My mum used to say “paper is a patient medium, you can tell it anything, it never complains”.

We were talking about the theatre. Beloved and I are enjoying a particularly rich period of play-going, mostly Shakespeare. We love it.

“Ah”, says Adam, “ did you know that there are great doubts that Shakespeare wrote the plays?”

Yes, we had heard. Theories as to who wrote ‘Shakespeare’ are as old as the hills.

Most people are content to accept that an Englishman with that name was born in 1564, died in 1616 and wrote plays, sonnets and poems in the interim that changed English literature forever.

Some, however, see things differently. They don't doubt that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon existed, or that the plays attributed to Shakespeare are foundational and sublime. But elements of the Shakespeare canon are incompatible with his known biography, they say. An intimate knowledge of court affairs. Fluency in French. Familiarity with Italy. Shakespeare, they claim, was not written by Shakespeare.

Not only that, but  no hand written manuscripts are in existence and his signature appears only twice, with different spelling.

It seems that a Stanford Physics Professor has developed a scientific way of evaluating Shakespeare.

Adam had obviously either read the new book or detailed reviews of it. We hadn’t and aren’t likely to do so. He had us silenced pretty quickly. I couldn’t even work out if Adam himself believed in the theory he threw at us, or if he was merely playing Devil’s Advocate. Don’t you just hate it when somebody’s superior intellect and phenomenal memory grind you into the dust?

There were other debates and arguments, none of which we won. We are exhausted.

Eve spent a lot of the visit texting and phoning.

Not so much Wordless (Wednesday)

as speechless.

This is a picture of the clock tower in the little Welsh market town of Knighton, just over the border from Valley’s End.

Speechless might not be a suitable word either, for the good burghers of Knighton have had plenty to say since it’s become known that a new inhabitant of the peaceful town has made an official complaint about the clock, under noise nuisance regulations.  Every fifteen minutes, day and night, there’s a ding, and a dong, and a ding dong, just like it’s been for 142 years. “It may be an irritating clock”, the townsfolk say, “but it’s our irritating clock.  Besides, you soon stop hearing it going on about its lawful business; and we’d all miss it if it weren’t there any more. It’s part of our heritage.”

God help those who interfere with tradition in a sleepy, openly old-fashioned, slightly batty Welsh market town, which has a fair sprinkling of ex hippies, poetry and violin and book group lovers and a flourishing young farmer’s drama society.

The new inhabitant is a writer from Ireland. She has bought a large house in the square and opened a B&B for nervous writers who need a retreat to concentrate on their muse and whose delicate sensibilities suffer from the noise a clock makes.  Did it seriously not occur to her, that the chiming clock tower, that is barely 20 yards from her window, might be a slight drawback? It’s not as though she can’t have noticed it, what with the thing going off every 15 minutes, night and day. And walking up and down the high street to the ‘narrows’ , that warren of small streets and higgledy-piggledy houses on the border of which the writer’s house stands, you have to step sideways not to hit the tower. It’s large, it’s ugly, it’s unmissable, a typical Victorian monstrosity.

I went to see Helen in Knighton for a facial treatment this morning and this story was the first she told me. “It’s gone viral,” she said. It’s true, I’ve since googled ‘Knighton Clocktower’ and it’s all over the media. One thing’s for sure, whether the lady silences the clock or not, and I don’t believe she will, the Welsh are nothing if not bloody-minded, she’ll have had some very good publicity.

The Wonders of the WWW

or How to Spend a Profitable Afternoon. (It’s still raining)

What started me off I no longer know.  I remember I was idly looking for poetry by Wilhelm Busch, to enliven a meeting of the German Conversation Group next week.  Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) was a German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter. He published comic illustrated cautionary tales from 1859; the one most people know is the tale of Max Und Moritz, a Rascals’ History in Seven Tricks:

Ah, how oft we read or hear of

boys we almost stand in fear of.

For example, take these stories

of two youths, named Max and Moritz

. . . . . . .

Busch was a wise old bird and I enjoyed my trip down memory lane. How Busch led to Tannhauser I have no idea now, but Tannhauser was the next port of call. I am frequently surprised that the obscure subjects which interest me can be found on the internet at all;  I am duly grateful, nevertheless.

Wagner’s Opera Tannhauser is well-known; I wasn’t after Wagner, I was after the legend on which Wagner based his libretto. Tannhauser was a knight who,  based on his Bußlied, (song of atonement) became the subject of legend. The story makes Tannhäuser a knight and poet who found the Venusberg, the subterranean home of Venus, and spent a year there worshipping the goddess. Not from afar, either. As these things go, he duly became aware of his sinful behaviour, left the Venusberg, asked Pope Urban for forgiveness but was told that forgiveness was as likely as it would be for the papal staff to burst into blossom. Which it promptly did, it’s a legend, after all. But Tannhauser had already gone back to ground with Venus and was never seen again.

Tannhauser wasn’t only a legendary figure, he was an active courtier at the court of Frederic II in the 13th century,as I found when I clicked on a learned text, the Codex Manesse, the single most comprehensive source of Middle High German Minnesang poetry. The manuscript is famous for its colourful full-page miniatures, one each for 137 minnesingers.The Codex was compiled in the first half of the 14th century and lists the names of Minnesingers of the mid 12th to early 14th century, Tannhauser among them. (How he became the stuff of legend is not immediately apparent. I expect somebody somewhere knows but I’d have to go on clicking for a lot longer to find out.) The Codex itself has had a very turbulent destiny, having changed ownership in many wars, disputes, a succession of rulers and even for filthy lucre at times. Now it’s back in its spiritual home of the University Library of Heidelberg.

The www is a wonderful tool, but rather lonely. Beloved and I used to do this sort of journey of exploration via books in the old days; ending up with piles of them, each reference leading to another, until books and time ran out. So, come suppertime, I told him of my researches and we instantly fell into the old habit, minus the pile of books. Wagner’s Tannhauser came first, Beloved being knowledgable about opera, but then we went off at a tangent, confusing Tannhauser with Lohengrin, who is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, is a version of the Knight of the Swan legend known from a variety of medieval sources. Wolfram was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry. (The miniature is taken from the Codex Manesse, as is the one of Tannhauser above.)

Naturally Elsa, the maiden whom Lohengrin rescued and who became his wife, asked after his origin, which made Lohengrin take up boat and swan and disappear back down the Rhine, never to return.

We hadn’t quite finished with our exploration; having been to Kleve (Cleves) and the Schwanenburg with the tower from which the legendary Elsa espied her knight in shining armour floating down the Rhine to rescue her, we briefly revisited our memories of the trip but soon got back to more ancient times, i.e, Anne of Cleves, the Flanders Mare, who became Henry VIII 4th wife from January to July 1540. They clearly didn’t hit it off and the marriage was speedily annulled. Holbein’s painting of her is said to be more flattering than realistic.

Having arrived at Henry VIII, about whom we know far too much to feel the slightest interest in exploring him further than in theatrical plays on the stage, we finally gave up.

I had a lovely time, we both did. I even enjoyed writing this post.

January 2014 - nothing new, the story as before.....

                                                                                          .....and evermore shall be so.

There are times when I envy the adventurous of mind. The ones who will go out of their way to find a mountain to climb or a molehill to kick, to swim the Channel or pee in a pool. Just for the fun of it.

Not me. For me it’s more of the same. Green grow the rushes O.

Curtains drawn, lamps lit, Millie dreaming on the rug by the fire, the remote within reach, remains of supper congealing in the kitchen sink, wind and rain howling and rattling like all the Hounds of Hell  have been released at once.

But I’m not complaining. Neither is Millie. Good things are happening too.

The notoriously fickle River Severn, which frequently doesn’t know if it’s coming or going, is merely lapping the terrace of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon, instead of overflowing it. We are among the lucky owners of tickets to both Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, which are playing in rep and were sell-out hits even before the official opening night. And not a film star or boy band in sight!

Such is the Hilary Mantel effect. 

We went to the matinee last Saturday and, lo and behold, the lady herself was there, sitting in the row behind us. I looked over just the once. The show was a triumph, Mantel’s treatment of the ruthless machinations and political intrigue at the court of Henry VIII and the rise and rise - so far - of Thomas Cromwell had me spell-bound; I might even say ‘swooning with admiration’, but then I’m the unadventurous kind, who doesn’t do much swooning. I am already looking forward to the second play later this months. O Joy!

And yet more joy: the first snowdrops have been out for a week, bravely nodding in the atrocious weather conditions. I suppose it’s their job to ring in the New Year, and proclaim, with the Welsh Twelfth Night carol :

Now Christmas Is Past,

Twelfth Day Is The Last,

To The Old Year Adieu,

Great Joy To The New.

PS:

Much later, next morning, hanging my head in shame: 

There you are, letting me re-route the River Severn to lap the foundations of the RSC Theatre when all the time it’s the Avon. THE RIVER AVON - SHAKESPEARE’S AVON! Are you all too polite to put me right or could it be that one river in a far-off country is much like any other, as it obviously is to me. It took my friend Frank to point out my mistake. He is good at that. 

"David? David Tennant?

is that you?

I like your hair extensions."

D.T. is not only famous for having been a splendid Doctor Who but also for his work on stage. His Hamlet, for instance,  was a revelation. By now everybody who is in the least interested in serious theatre knows what a huge success the current Richard II at the RSC in Stratford is. We booked our tickets last winter, when the box office opened. I think tickets for the whole run were sold out within a few days.

Written almost entirely in verse, Richard II is a story of power and plotting in which the king’s vanity and weakness threaten to drag his people into civil war. Tennant’s performance is mesmerising, growing in power as Richard’s authority declines. Richard only begins to value his kingship as he loses it to the usurper Bolingbroke and achieves tragic dignity only in his own downfall. I was spellbound throughout.

I didn’t take this photo during the performance or in the auditorium itself. After the show Tennant and fellow actors came out into the foyer with collecting buckets for a Theatre Workers Benefit Society and, as luck would have it, we left the auditorium exactly through the door behind which David was standing, still in costume, rattling coins. Crowds of teenaged girls were mobbing him - they had obviously been to the play as part of their year’s syllabus -, creating a bottleneck, and there was a fraught moment when the situation could have become dangerous. Theatre staff cleared the mob and David took his bucket and was manhandled out of the way; but not before I had taken several photos of him. Cameras were going off all around him, adding to the unreal situation.

During the performance I learned how theatres cope with an emergency in the auditorium. In the row next to us a member of the audience collapsed and a commotion ensued. The house manager calmed things down; she checked the situation in the auditorium, arranged for assistance and finally appeared on the stage, stopping the show and informing actors and audience of the incident. The person who had been taken ill was removed and once the doors had been closed the play continued, the actors returned to the stage,  instantly taking up their previous positions and continuing with the scene almost exactly where they had left off. Not in mid-sentence, obviously, but, seamlessly, at the beginning of their line.

For anyone not able to see the RSC in the flesh, it might be of interest to know that they have, like the National Theatre, started to take their productions to a cinema near you.

Messing About On The River

While inside ‘The Swan’ theatre at Stratford 

The Bard is being worshipped,

outside, in glorious sunshine,

Shakespeare’s common man is doing what he loves best:

Messing about on the river.

When the weather is fine then you know it's a sign

For messing about on the river.

If you take my advice there's nothing so nice

As messing about on the river.

There are long boats and short boats and all kinds of craft,

And cruisers and keel boats and some with no draught.

So take off your coat and hop in a boat 

Go messing about on the river. 

There are boats made from kits that reach you in bits

For messing about on the river.

Or you might want to skull in a glass-fibred hull.

Just messing about on the river.

There are tillers and rudders and anchors and cleats,

And ropes that are sometimes referred to as sheets.

With the wind in your face there's no finer place,

Than messing about on the river. 

There are skippers and mates and rowing club eights

Just messing about on the river.

There are pontoons and trots and all sorts of knots

For messing about on the river.

With inboards and outboards and dinghies you sail.

The first thing you learn is the right way to bail.

In a one-seat canoe you're the skipper and crew,

Just messing about on the river. 

There are bridges and locks and moorings and docks

When messing about on the river.

There's a whirlpool and weir that you mustn't go near

When messing about on the river.

There are backwater places all hidden from view,

And quaint little islands just awaiting for you.

So I'll leave you right now to cast off your bow,

Go messing about on the river.

Song by Tony Hatch
a popular hit in 1961

The occasion: The Stratford-upon-Avon River Festival
by the banks of the river Avon. The photos are taken from
the theatre terrace above the river.