Mood Swings, from the Garden to The Swan

Those of you who have commented on my state of mind in the previous post are quite right. I do indeed sound sad and unhappy. Rereading the post has confirmed that I really must do something to retrieve my mojo before it is too late.

But, hang on a minute. Must I? However we happen to feel at any given moment, are we not free and entitled to do so? These feelings are our very own and are we not allowed to feel them? If not why not? Who says? Since Beloved's death six years ago now I have missed him tremendously and, in spite of being a person who enjoys solitude, I often feel lonely. Agreed, it is not good to overindulge in the "poor me" side of things; on the other hand I am not going to feel guilty for allowing myself a heartfelt, deep sigh now and then.

However, thank you for picking up on my unhappiness; it means that you gave attention to my post and felt close enough to say so. Thank you. I appreciate it.

If only I could get my hands back into the earth. August is a slow month in the ornamental garden, although spring and early summer have left gaps and tired patches, high summer brings exuberance and colour, and even though it is all a bit wild and woolly, I don't want to mess with it until September. I've been pruning the shrubs that flowered early, leaving them ready for next year . But the real hard work  must be left for now. In September hedges will be cut which means piles of bonfire material. From October onwards herbaceous clumps will have to  be divided and replanted. 

Hm, writing this makes me look forward to the work. Perhaps my mojo will return? I told you it is all a bit of a wilderness, very English cottage garden.

Have you ever allowed yourself to be shamed into reading a book? I have. The 2020 Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction was 'Hamnet' by the esteemed Irish writer Maggie O'Farrell and several friends were praising it to the skies. I had actually started to read the novel, the part-imagined life of Hamnet (Shakespeare's son) and the effect his early death from the plague at the age of eleven had on Agnes (Anne Hathaway) and the family. But I had given up  fifty pages in; although able to appreciate O'Farrell's  luminous language I simply found the casual violence and brutality of the 16th century hard to take; perhaps I was in one of my 'delicate' phases when only escapism would do. 

The review in The Guardian was glowing and I trust The Guardian's critic to get it right. 

"Hamnet is evidence that there are always new stories to tell, even about the most well-known historical figures. It also confirms O'Farrell as an extraordinarily versatile writer, with a profound understanding of the most elemental human bonds – qualities also possessed by a certain former Latin tutor from Stratford."

What finally persuaded me to read it was that friends and I had been lucky enough to get much coveted tickets for the adaptation of the novel  for the stage. The whole run was sold out and this was the show chosen to reopen The Swan in Stratford after two years of Covid closure and extensive refurbishment. Tickets were like gold dust and my friend had booked our seats almost twelve months earlier.

That meant I simply had to read the book. I picked it up and started from the beginning and found I could not put it down. I think I must have read it in maybe two or three sittings. It is a wonderful book. Even those whose interest in Shakespeare is less than mine will find something in it. The one thing you do have to have to read it is a an appreciation of good writing and a deeply human story.

We had quite a good time in Stratford, I'll have to get back to it. The first outing away from Valley's End for two years!

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.

The Happiness Factor - Can I get hold of it? Part I

`’Do you live here all by yourself?”

Micky was new to the German Conversation group. She hadn’t been to my house before and during her visit she went and stood at every window downstairs looking out on to the garden covered in gold, red and orange beech leaves, the dark shapes of the yews and hollies punctuating the afternoon gloom and the vistas of the hills beyond my hedges. “Beautiful”, she said, “it must be a lot of work.”

It’s only when somebody else remarks on it that you realise that, yes, you are all alone in too much space, that the space calls for more work than you could cope with if you had to do it yourself and that, really, could you be considered selfish? Apart from having it brought home to me in no uncertain terms that I am indeed completely alone now I pushed the thought away. Environmental footprints, paying others to do my unpleasant work, using up more resources than one person should are all genuine and valid concerns, but I don’t want to complicate my life more than it is. For now.

There has recently been yet another study into the happiness factor. Truly happy people are ‘people who need people’, who have strong bonds with friends and family and regular contact. As you all know I have no strong bonds with anyone, I don’t feel I need people, but there are periods when I feel lonely, dejected, depressed. So I am giving the happiness factor a chance to invade my world by accepting every invitation, grab every opportunity for social interaction, take up any cultural entertainment on offer, talk to people in the street and in shops and butt in to casual conversations of a general nature.

The cultural entertainment part has been a great success: Donizetti’s Don Pasquale with Bryn Terfel as the elderly bachelor conned into thinking he is marrying a supposedly demure convent girl, only to find her a domineering, even tyrannical wife the moment the ring is on her finger, was fun. Terfel was made for the role.


Then there was an excellent production of
A Midsummer Nights Dream with Titania being played by Gwendoline Christie. The theatre becomes the forest – a dream world of flying fairies, contagious fogs and moonlight revels.
Hammed Animashaun was a very funny Bottom.

I’ve seen ’The Dream’ a number of times, this production will stick in the mind and not only because of well known stars of small and large screens.

Lastly a new play ‘Hansard’ about the private life of a Conservative MP under Margaret Thatcher
who comes back to his house in the Cotswolds after a week of controversial debate in London. There are only two actors on stage, the MP and his wife, who start out sparring in a sort of routine way but as the day draws on the familiar rhythms of marital scrapping quickly turn to blood-sport.

Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings were excellent. Towards the end it became so harrowing I held my breath.

So, the cultural element of my past few weeks was a success, enough to let a chink of happiness through my anti-social armour. Now for human interactions.

"Have A Nice Day Out”,

my friend said. "Enjoy yourself, stop worrying, I’ll look after Millie for the day." The man who arranges such things in Valley’s End had promised a rip-roaring time at the Malvern Theatre for Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rough Crossing’, a play to make us laugh until we peed ourselves.

I took him at his word, booked the trip, paid an exorbitant amount of money up front for coach and ticket and looked forward to the entertainment. Except the nice day out turned into an (almost) unmitigated disaster.

It started as I left in the morning on the way to the bus stop, about 15 minutes walk away from the house. It was blowing a gale, with driving rain. All the way there my umbrella turned itself inside out, every few steps I had to stop and right it. No matter how I held it, into the wind, against the wind, sideways on, the damn thing flapped and creaked and dripped. By the time I got to the bus stop I was drenched, trouser legs sodden from the back of my knees to the hems. Did I say it was also bitterly cold? A little chap walking by on the other side of the road as I was struggling laughed happily. “A bit wet today, isn’t it?” Hahaha. Sadist.

Some of my fellow theatregoers assembled at the bus stop shivered but others were made of sterner stuff. The shelter would normally accommodate six or seven people but a man in a motorised buggy, who had been the sort who feels “entitled” long before he became slightly disabled, assumed that everyone else would gladly leave the shelter to him and stay exposed to the elements. I didn’t, I had been the first to arrive, and I stayed perched on my little seat. Make of that what you will.

The bus arrived and we climbed on board. Luckily, the heating was on and gradually, during the two hour journey, my clothes dried on me. When we got to Malvern the rain had stopped. The mass exodus from the bus duly effected, a large knot of people formed on the pavement, everybody was making arrangements for the hour before lunch and where to have it. Didn’t they have time during the two hour journey to do that? I needed the loo and made for the theatre, shouting to a couple of friends that I would meet them at ‘The Italian’ in an hour’s time, wanting to visit a posh supermarket first to buy some of their famous ‘cook’s ingredients’ to take home to my back-of-beyond-village where such things are only dreamt of, never available.

Of course, I bought too much, now being burdened with an extra load of groceries, my large handbag (purse), my wet umbrella. True, I can’t blame anyone else for this oversight. I am still not a good walker, still limping when I’m tired or when the effort of walking straight and upright gets too much. I no longer use a cane, though. Malvern is a hilly town, I frequently had to stop on the way to the restaurant to catch my breath and straighten up. Gosh, I am an old crock!

The next two hours were a pleasure, I enjoyed my Tagliatelle Bolognese and we all had a couple of glasses of wine, not something we usually do at lunchtime. Everybody got merry, greatly helped by the waiters who flung their ‘per favores’, their ‘pregos’ and ‘grazies’, their ‘signoras’ and signores’ around with wild abandon, who burst into song while sinuously weaving  and undulating between the tables and made much of their giant pepper mills. I bet they were from Roumania really.

Finally it was time to go to the theatre and take our seats, having left coat and groceries at the cloakroom. Stoppard can be a bit of an acquired taste but he has written some really good stuff. Sadly, ‘Rough Crossing’ is far from good, it has the thinnest of plots:

Two famous playwrights, one jealous composer, an unorthodox waiter, and a mistimed lifeboat drill… let the sharp Atlantic winds turn to gales of hysterical laughter as our colourful characters become tantalisingly tangled in a Stoppardian string of absurd events…

If only. The Art Deco set looked splendid and promised much. The moment the actors appeared the promise evaporated and within the first ten minutes several of our coach party were sound asleep. The sound was bad, the dialogue barely distinguishable, the action messy and incomprehensible. The cast (all fairly recognisable TV actors)was lacklustre and seemed tired and bored. We were all disappointed and two of my friends decided they’d had enough and left at the interval, as did several of the others. I had nowhere to go and, in any case, couldn’t face lugging my groceries around, so I stayed to the bitter end. The action perked up for the last ten minutes but by then I’d given up on the play and was simply waiting to be released from captivity. All I wanted was to get on the bus and go home.

But my trials for the day weren’t over. I couldn’t swear to it but I may have, in fact, actually peed myself, even if for quite another reason as the one promised. When I came out of the loo right at the end, before climbing back aboard the coach, I felt a dampish kind of warmth spread over my belly. Yes, the front of my trousers was wet. I had been hovering over the toilet bowl, being loath to sit on the seat which appeared a touch insalubrious. But I had also been sprayed with warm water as I washed my hands afterwards. Enough to cause a damp patch in my trousers? We will never know. Suffice to say that I kept my coat on the whole journey back to Valley’s End and the first thing I did back home was to take a quick shower.

I tried and

yes, it has helped.

It may have something to do with the weather or it may have something to do with a change in attitude, there is most certainly an occasional feeling of positivity. Strange how being told to “get your hair cut” and doing exactly that, can kickstart a new beginning.



Romeo and Juliet, a 'pair of star-crossed lovers’ who marry in secret and ultimately die because of their feuding families, at the RSC Stratford, was part of it. It’s not my favourite Shakespeare play but it certainly has some wonderful lines.

'Parting is such sweet sorrow.'

Are there lines more apt than these to describe the sadness at the loss of a loved one?

When we go to Stratford we often stop at a brand new upmarket supermarket for some choice foodie items on the way home. As we did this time.

In supermarkets many of the pre-packed things come in twos, two of fish filet, vegetables for two, puddings and pies for two, etc. I buy these double portions and put one in the freezer, but they just don’t taste as good as fresh. So, this time I decided not to freeze but share the largesse with a friend, from starters to main course to pudding, thereby renewing my pleasure in entertaining; (and not doing much of the cooking myself). Having just one chosen friend to a meal or a glass of something cool and delicious has boosted my confidence after two years of no invitations to the house at all. Sitting outside on a hot day, nibbling delicacies, drinking sparkling wine and gently discussing minor matters of the day, lifts the spirits of the gloomiest person.

Having single friends (not all widows) to a meal is not all I did, I also made dates with friends for meals at pubs and restaurants, common or garden ones in Valley’s End as well as some rather good ones further afield. And enjoyed them all. It still feels strange to do these things without Beloved and I still have the urge to tell him about them when I get home. It also still takes some time to realise that I can’t and never will again. Perhaps that will wear off in time?

There was a day out in Ludlow with a friend which was rather a success. Do you know these outings when everything falls into place? For months I had been saving up small jobs that needed a visit to a town of a size greater than the nearest one down the road. Really small things like a new watch battery, also a tiny battery for my kitchen timer which hadn’t worked for a good six months, a couple of visits to a bank and a building society, a particular kind of bath sponge only found at one particular chemist, a new pair of trainers, a drop off of a box of books at a charity shop, taking a poster to be framed, etc. I finally treated myself to some orange peel sticks coated in dark chocolate at the Chocolate Gourmet and came away happy that everything had been achieved. To top it off my friend took me to a pub for lunch. It doesn’t take much to rediscover that pleasure can be had for very little effort. If food is involved, it seems, my pleasure is almost guaranteed. I do rather mention food a lot.

Something else has taken up my time, requiring greater effort but easily achieved: the garden is once more on my agenda. Old gardener is back with me whenever the weather allows and the two of us garden companionably. We have our break, just as before, and gardener tells me about his adventures in his new home. His ‘missus’ seems to favour frequent house moves and he quietly - grumbling under his breath - falls in with her wishes. I think he is a bit scared of her. A couple of widows live near him and both have twigged that he does gardening. “I don’t want it known”, he said to me, “I wonder how they found out.” One of them he rather likes the look of. “She’s right tidy looking,” he said, meaning she’s attractive. An Italian lady, he thinks, with a name he can’t pronounce. He has now given up his bigger jobs like the one at the ‘Manor’ and only looks after me and another German lady. I can see him acquiring the Italian lady too. Possibly as an antidote to his grumpy wife. At seventy I feel he is entitled to a little light relief.

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.

Picking Up and Moving On . . .

. . . starting with a visit to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Marlowe’s play 'Dido Queen of Carthage’ which is based on Virgil’s Aeneid. It is a play of intense human passions.

SYNOPSIS
Fleeing a war-torn Troy, Aeneas is a refugee seeking new roots and a new identity in Europe. Queen Dido is ready to help him when meddling Gods intervene and turn help into an all-consuming love.

The goddess Venus complains that Jupiter has been neglecting her son Aeneas, who has been lost in a storm on his way to found a new Troy in Italy. Jupiter calms the storm, allowing Aeneas to land safely on the North African coast.

Aeneas meets with other surviving Trojans who have been receiving hospitality from Dido, Queen of Carthage. When Aeneas meets Dido, she agrees to supply his ships and he tells her about the fall of Troy.

In order to keep Aeneas safe Venus sends Cupid to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas to stop him resuming the dangerous mission to Italy. Venus and Juno come together to create a storm, forcing Dido and Aeneas into a cave together. There, they declare their feelings for each other and consummate their love.

Meanwhile, preparations are made for the Trojans to depart for Italy. Dido removes the sails from the ships so that they cannot go, although Aeneas denies intending to leave. Dido announces that he will be king of Carthage and they decide to found the new Troy there instead.

Hermes informs Aeneas that he has no choice but to leave as his destiny is in Italy. Aeneas reluctantly agrees and goes to tell Dido. She is horrified and burns everything that reminds her of him. Heartbroken, Dido takes fate into her own hands and kills herself while Aeneas’ s fleet, with him on board, sails for Italy.

I enjoyed the outing very much. No matter how convenient and stress-free live streaming to local cinemas is, a live performance, on stage, in Stratford-upon-Avon, is always a special occasion. There’s nothing like the buzz you get from the collective anticipation of a theatre filled to capacity.
My friends and I have already booked tickets for a series of plays starting from January. Additional excitement will be added to the trips by spotting that we were passing a branch of my favourite supermarket in a town on the way. We stopped on the way home and I indulged in some unnecessary and excessive food shopping, mostly treats and luxuries. OK, so I added a few vegetables to my cart for virtue.

There you are, something to look forward to.

Social life is picking up. I wonder if people round here are psychic? Or perhaps I am giving off more receptive vibes? For the past few weeks I have been very aware of the fact that my loneliness is always more intense at weekends. Beloved and I made something of them and sitting at the table in solitary state, no matter how tempting the food or palatable the wine, there’s none of the warmth of two people in perfect harmony sharing a meal. So I am glad to report that I have a Sunday luncheon invitation for tomorrow! I had an invitation to supper last night and last Sunday I had two invitations: one to drinks before lunch and one to lunch, at  two different houses. I will accept every invitation coming my way even those I might have turned down previously. On two occasions recently I met with people whom I liked very much, one of them a brand new acquaintance. Perhaps I’ll write about them presently.

It looks like life might be returning. In one of my prolonged bouts of sitting on the second from bottom step of the stairs in the hall after returning home from a walk with Millie I’ve been asking myself where I think my life might be going. Who am I, now that I am alone? I never did identify myself by my relationship with other people, i.e. wife/mother/grandmother. With Beloved gone there is now nobody who depends on me and, for the time being, I do not depend on anyone either. The latter will eventually change, of course, if I am unlucky. Decrepitude comes to us all in the end. Sans Eyes, sans Teeth, sans Taste, sans Everything, as Shakespeare has it. But not yet.

Finally, the relationship with my daughter has broken down again, for good I think. She won’t say why. Marlowe has a wonderful line spoken by Aeneas to his friend and fellow Trojan about his disappearing mother, Venus:

Stay gentle Venus fly not from thy son

too cruel! why wilt thou forsake me thus?

or in these shades deceiv’st mine eyes so oft?

why talk we not together hand in hand,

and tell our griefs in more familiar terms?

But thou art gone and leav’st me here alone,

to dull the air with my discursive moan.

Strikes me it works the other way round too. Or for anyone left by someone they love. Whichever way, in life or in death.

If I come up with an answer as to how I see my remaining years go I’ll let you know. Does anyone out there ask themselves a similar question?

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.

Reporting Failure

I knew I would regret starting a week-long series of posts on positivity. It’s just not like me to go searching for 'reasons to be cheerful’, (as in Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ song), or ‘Looking on the Bright Side of Life’ (Monty Python and the ‘Life of Brian’) or ‘Counting my Blessings’ as the hymn tells me to do.

Don’t get me wrong, the attitude of looking at life through positive spectacles is to be welcomed; perhaps one needn’t go as far as Pollyanna and play the Glad Game whatever happens. Finding a pair of crutches in the Christmas stocking would make me cross enough to hit the giver over the head with them. At the other end of the spectrum, Ambrose Bierce in the Devil’s Dictionary writing off ‘positive’ as ‘mistaken at the top of one’s voice' is just plain unkind towards people whose philosophy tends to embrace certainty, tiresome though these people can be.

There have been plenty of good things happening this week, which ended in the first Sunday in Advent and with it the first pheasant dinner of the season: a live screening of Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ at a local theatre, a pleasant meal at a cosy pub, some clothes shopping, and the poetry evening and beauty treatment already mentioned in the previous posts. Actually, it’s been an exceptionally good week. It would be hard to see it in anything other than a positive light. But these are not the cosy things bloggers praise when they write about appreciating humble, small joys. Heart-warming stuff, good stuff. For my week I needed leisure and a reasonably well stocked wallet. Bragging about it in detail would be bad taste. Of course, at times I am a smug git, but I’ll try not to show my true colours here.

I am profoundly grateful that I live in a peaceful country, that I am not one of the desperate people fleeing torture, bombs, destruction, hunger, disease and the horrors of civil war.  Not for me the undignified queueing up on Europe’s borders, begging to be admitted to shelter, food, work, and a life free from fear. Not for me the fate of being called a terrorist, a scrounger, a welfare tourist. Winter is coming and too few European nations seem to be aware that help is urgently needed to prevent chaos and save lives. Although in the UK we are spared pictures of the footsore and shivering crowds making their way across Europe from East to West - compassion fatigue sets in quite quickly here, the subject seems to have been swept out of sight recently - I have access to European TV channels and find myself utterly fascinated by and unable to look away from so much misery.

Being aware of my good fortune and counting my comfortable little blessings seems almost shameful in the face of suffering humanity. Therefore, rather than listing a week’s worth of pleasures, small or otherwise, I shall try to emulate those of you who find unexpected joy in the moment and, if I think about it in time, perhaps share it here.

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.

How To Build A Bomb

Tom McCall as Hans Bethe, John Heffernan as J Robert Oppenheimer and Ben Allen as Edward Teller in Oppenheimer. Photo by Keith Pattison

From The RSC Production

Seeing the same play many times is like re-reading a favourite book: there is always something you missed before;  with Shakespeare’s plays I would go so far as to say you must see them as often as they come back to a stage near you. It will take several productions before you can stop concentrating on every word - and so miss the performance. Only when you know what comes next will you appreciate the depth, colour, drama, the layers of humour and tragedy, the sheer genius of the works, whether written by one man or several.

But sometimes the first performance of a play is all you need to get goosebumps. It happened to me yesterday with a brand new play by a relatively unknown dramatist called Tom Morton-Smith, namely, “Oppenheimer.”  

Synopsis:

1939: fascism spreads across Europe, Franco marches on Barcelona and two German chemists discover the processes of atomic fission. In Berkeley, California, theoretical physicists recognise the horrendous potential of this new science: a weapon that draws its power from the very building blocks of the universe. The ambitious and charismatic J Robert Oppenheimer finds himself uniquely placed to spearhead the largest scientific undertaking in all of human history.

Struggling to cast off his radical past and thrust into a position of power and authority, Oppenheimer races to win the 'battle of the laboratories' and create a weapon so devastating that, with the detonation of a single device, it would bring about an end not just to the Second World War but to all war.

As the political situation darkens, Tom Morton-Smith's new play takes us into the heart of the Manhattan Project and explores the tension between the scientific advances that will shape our understanding of the fabric of the universe, and the justification of their use during wartime, revealing the personal cost of making history.

The play left the four of us rather subdued and in need of a fortifying cup of tea before tackling the long   journey home from Stratford-upon-Avon back to Shropshire. To break the spell I decided to pop into the theatre shop for some cards. The merchandise at the RSC gift shop is undoubtedly overpriced but tasteful rather than tacky, as in so many other gift shops where a bit of additional cash is raised for an attraction.

As I took my purchases to the cash till I overheard one of the assistants say to the other :  “Is Oppenheimer out yet?”  Being a helpful sort of person I butted in and said “ O yes, quite a while ago.”  Whereupon the second assistant said, deadpan and with no discernible trace of irony in her voice or facial expression: “Good, they’ll have had time to build another bomb then.”

Reader, I fell for it. Blame the play and my continued preoccupation with it or blame my natural slow wittedness. All excited and breathless I said : O, do they build a new bomb for each performance?” (a large bomb-shaped object is suspended from girders and slowly appears above the stage in the final part of the play, culminating in darkness and the noise of an almighty explosion)

“O yes,” the assistant said, “of course they do.” She kept her eyes firmly lowered, it doesn’t do to make fun of the paying customer too obviously.

I felt a 'proper Charlie’ but when I stopped being embarrassed the spell the play had cast over me was broken. Which was not a bad thing. 

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.

Culture on the Doorstep

Titania and Bottom
in Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe Theatre
on screen

Everyone in the audience enjoyed this performance of Shakespeare’s battle of the sexes. The woman sitting right behind me enjoyed it so much that she tittered and sniggered and giggled at every innuendo and visual gag, often before they were fully born. Shakespeare’s comedy play is peopled with confusing and confused characters, mortals and spirits, a secret night-time forest, magic potions, a band of amateur actors, the Rude Mechanicals, performing a play within a play, who brought the house down every time they appeared, and the darkly mischievous world of Oberon and Titania with Puck and a band of faeries. It’s great fun - unless you are bored by the unlikely story, like Beloved said he has been every time I’ve forced him to see the play. Even he laughed during the second act, but only were laughter was appropriate. The woman sitting behind me drove me to distraction and I frequently braced myself for her next onslaught. 

Unfortunately, I mentioned my irritation to the friends we had come with. We half-heartedly wondered if we should move, but that would have been excessive. I should have kept my complaint to myself, in the interval I saw them stand with the giggler and her husband, having a conversation. Only then did I recognise her as a Valley’s End inhabitant who is a leading light in the Amateur Dramatic Society.

So often nowadays directors feel they need to freshen an old play by dragging it into a more recent century. It so rarely works. This production stayed firmly where it was meant to be, in a magical, unreal Elizabethan world with a fictitious Athens at the centre; the actors were dressed in the most astonishingly beautiful costumes, even the ones who were semi naked.

I am enormously glad that the National Theatre and now the RSC at Stratford and Shakespeare’s Globe in London transmit so many of their productions digitally. You can see the whole of the action clearly, hear every word and see the acting up close and doubled in size. Although I love it when we go to live performances in actual theatres, with their noise and buzz and the smell of backstage, I am very happy not to be driving for hours and paying high ticket prices every time.

Blogallimaufrey

I just walked past a mirror and saw my dad reflected in it.

Now my dad was not an ugly man as looks go; tall, broad, grey haired, with deep grooves running from crooked nose to the corners of his mouth and a naughty twinkle in his eye, when he wasn’t frowning or being choleric. I was always aware of his distinctive face, without ever studying him too closely. His doctor once said that he had the head of a ‘Caesar’. To me, of course, he was just dad. Annoyingly himself. Always.

And now I am him. Oh dear. Not bad for a man but for a woman, not so good.

o-o-o-o

I have been a tardy blogger for weeks. Not that I’ve lost interest, it’s just life being contrary. I may have two gardeners, but one of them, Paul, is one of those people who only need to look at a tool, or swat a wasp, for it to jump up and bite them somewhere painful. Since I’ve employed him he has had blood poisoning from a rose thorn, a swollen arm and near collapse from a poisonous spider bite, something totally unheard of in this region, and now he has cut half his finger off with an electric saw. And lately it’s done nothing but rain on old Gardener’s day, giving him a perfect excuse not to turn up.

o-o-o-o

Then there’s Millie. You’d think an old girl like her would stay away from confrontations. Not Millie. Good-natured and sweet though she is, she is curious and forever sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted. Last thing at night she strolls down to the paddock to see who else is around. Whoever it was she met gave her a thoroughly bloody nose, deep gashes over both eyes, and a small round hole in the side of her face. The first night it didn’t look so bad, but by morning the wounds had became infected and inflamed. She developed large, angry red blisters in her armpits and groin and both ears are lined with pebble-like lesions along the edges. It’s impossible to say who attacked her, fox, badger, a cat, but she certainly didn’t come away victorious. A course of antibiotics was prescribed and then treatment with steroids, to reduce the inflammation. We are back and forth to the Vet’s.

 o-o-o-o

But May has had good aspects too. Social life is picking up. It’s never right though, is it? When people invite us I complain that I’d much rather stay at home, and when they don’t, I complain even more.  Shades of my dad? Theatre outings are high on the list of diversions. Three so far this month; Simon Russell Beale as the National Theatre’s King Lear; then Henry IV, Part I, (Part II still to come), and Roaring Girl at the Swan in Stratford.  There is much to be said for going to see familiar plays; you know them well enough to concentrate on an actor's interpretation of his role and the differences between productions, rather than straining to listen to every word.  But I’d never even heard of ‘Roaring Girl’ before. This Dekker and Middleton comedy written in 1611 is the story of Moll Cutpurse, a cross-dressing protofeminist 300 years ahead of her time. Updating the play to the Victorian 1890s didn’t altogether work; the verbal filth, smells and sounds of Jacobean London which permeate the original play didn’t match my idea of prim and proper Victoria’s city. No ‘ruffianly swaggering and lewd company' in her time. If you believe it.

Just one more play to go before the end of the month.  I’ll try and turn up here a bit more often than once a week too.

Walking With Luciano

Black dogs are everywhere. 'Be More Sociable', a University study says.  Another one says ‘Fake It ’Til You Make It’; or there’s the one that advises you to ‘Compare Yourself With Someone Who is Worse Off Than You’. As if I cared about someone else’s misery when that black dog has me by the throat. ‘Listen to some sad music or read a sad book’. Weep. Apparently, that’s catharsis, about which the ancient Greeks knew a thing or two when they invented the concept. Guaranteed to make you feel better.

So there I am, one black dog scampering at my heels, the other one firmly clamped atop my shoulders, pushing my head forward and down. The blackthorn is in full bloom. I have a smile on my face, a rictus grin to split the atom, but I still can’t ‘Make It’. That one is a waste of effort. The sociable bit is better. Luciano* is with me, pretending to be Cavaradossi waiting for his execution in the morning, but admiring the bright stars anyway.  E lucevan le stelle. Yes. He is definitely worse off than me, particularly since Tosca, the one he loves, is going to throw herself off the battlements, although he is spared that knowledge, since he's dead by the time she jumps. I once saw her do that and bounce back up. They’d made the mattresses too springy.

The company of Luciano/Mario and his sad story should, according to the professors who research such subjects, have had me gambolling like a new born lamb. Instead of which I plodded along. Perhaps Pete** would help.  He might not have been the most cheerful folk singer but he was wise enough to know that the seasons must turn, turn, turn and that there is a time for every purpose under heaven.  He also says that We Shall Overcome, aiming this splendid mantra specifically at people with a pessimistic outlook.

I was humming along to Luciano and by the time I got to Pete, I actually sang a verse or two. Things were looking up until i remembered that I was walking with dead men.

Visiting Llareggub (try reading it backwards), the sleepily subversive Welsh town of Dylan Thomas’ play for voices Under Milk Wood which, according to the (also dead) actor Richard Burton is ‘entirely about religion, sex and the idea of death’ suited my mood perfectly. We went with friends, both alive, which made my grumpy rude mood unforgivable. I should wear a warning sign round my neck : Beware Of The Dog.

The play was brilliant. Polly Garter, the ever pregnant girl who scrubs floors and sweetly sings about her lost love, little Willy Wee, and sleeps with everybody who asks, almost made me cry. I covered it up by concentrating on the pure and pitch perfect voice of the singer. Then there’s Gossamer Beynon, the schoolteacher who thrills to the ticklish sensation of a sailor's "goatbeard"; Bessie Bighead "kissed once by the pig-sty when she wasn't looking"; and Dai Bread who dreams of "Turkish girls. Horizontal". And has there ever been a more poignant image of spinsterly unfulfilment than Myfanwy Price's "lonely, loving hotwaterbottled body”?

If you can’t make it to a performance - it’s coming to the States too in this, the centenary of Thomas’ birth, and the 60th anniversary of the BBC’s posthumous premiere of his final, never-quite-finished masterpiece, at least read it. The language will blow your mind. It’s sheer poetry.

Catharsis guaranteed.



*Luciano Pavarotti
** Pete Seeger

Cornering

Give me a corner and I’ll back myself into it. I’ve had years of experience. Allocating two mornings a week for the services of two separate gardeners is a case in point. Both are keen and willing,  and perform different functions -  Paul, the expert, gets to prune and do the careful weeding round delicate plants, and Gardener, who’s been around for ten years but has still not learned that to chop a choisya ternata aurea in half just before flowering will severely limit the attraction of said shrub, does the digging and mulching and tickling and lawn tending, as well as cooking up a mean compost heap. However, at only a third of an acre the actual garden area isn’t big enough to provide ongoing work for two gardeners and their gofer. i.e. me.

Two mornings a week gone on gardening,  a season ticket to hospitals and doctor’s surgeries for all sorts of routine treatments and tests for Beloved as regular as a mum’s school run and a day all-told for housework,  plus shopping and afternoon walkies with Millie, leave little time to  stand and stare. There’s hardly

time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

The cherry tree almost went unadmired until it blazed at me one evening at dusk and I simply had to take its picture. With an old camera, there’s not been enough time to learn the intricacies of the fancy new one.

Paul doesn’t know yet that he will feature in my blog, this picture was taken on the sly while he’s weeding the fernery. Ferns haven’t unfurled yet, so clearing the bed now will avoid trampling them into the ground later.

But nobody can live by work alone, there has to be leisure.


A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Can you call theatre visits ‘stare’? Sure, I can.

Sixteen visits to be exact, just to be getting on with, between now and February 2015.

Will we still be alive? There’s another corner ready to pounce.

I’m only asking the ‘being alive’ question because we went to another old friend’s funeral today. We’ve been climbing that hill to church far too often recently. I’m beginning to recognise the hymns.
And only four weeks ago we went to her birthday party.

Man muss die Feste feiern, wie sie fallen, my mum used to say. Loosely translated ‘make hay while the sun shines', or 'carpe diem’.

This was brought home to us quite urgently at yesterday’s poetry meeting. A member who hadn’t been attending for a while turned up with his wife. He sat very close to her on the sofa. She read, but he just sat, listening. Not long ago Donald was an excellent reader of poetry, very knowledgable, erudite, an ex Oxford classics scholar and long-time grammar school teacher and clergyman. Now he clings to Audrey, frets and fusses when she’s out of his sight. What is left of his first class brain is rapidly fading and after a life of respectability and courteous good manners he is turning into a coarse vulgarian. Audrey herself is frail and, for the life of me, I can’t see how she copes. But she does. It terrifies me.

I need to get back out into the garden this weekend;  hands caked with dirt and a sore back from bending are marvellous means of dispersing  morbid thoughts.