60 Going On 16

Set in stone

As we're now into our third consecutive month of rain, a rare sighting of the sun is too good to miss. So the Edinburgh Boy (who is always ready for an outing) and I headed out across the south-east corner of Exmoor to the neighbouring county of Somerset and the village of Stogumber, where I had to make a call. 

Stogumber lies between the Quantocks and the Brendon Hills and there's a fine old church here, St Mary the Virgin. Parts of St Mary's date back to the 1400s; it was built, as so many Somerset churches, from the wealth generated by the county's flourishing wool trade. I would have posted a photo of the magnificent, 240-year-old candle chandelier or of the intricately painted vaulted ceiling but something went awry with the camera, so I shall just have to go back another time. 

What I can show you is just a small section of the painted wall and ceiling:

and the carved stone Green Man, a link to an older, pre-Christian, earth spirit time; most depictions are in timber - stone versions are a rarity:

 

To one side of the main altar, behind a wrought iron screen is the Sydenham Chapel, built in the 1500s, which enabled the Sydenham family to worship privately, away from the hoi polloi. And this is the tomb of the immensely wealthy, Sir George Sydenham, with his two wives tucked away, almost out of sight, beneath him: 

 

Sir George's daughter, Elizabeth, married Sir Francis Drake. (Yes, that Sir Francis Drake, circumnavigator, defeater of the Armada . . .)

 

 Elizabeth Sydenham

A nearby road, the B3188, is said to be haunted by Sir George's white-clad phantom, riding a headless horse towards the village of Monksilver. (Note to self: keep eyes peeled next time I'm driving down the B3188.)

Watching over parishioners and visitors as they enter the church are these two carved heads, known as Adam and Eve:

and then there are the gargoyles or, to give them their local name, the "hunky punks":

 

And, set into the ancient wall that marks the boundary of the churchyard, an old wooden door: 

 

Somerset may be the adjoining county but it possesses a completely different quality from Devon. Hard to quantify but palpably different. And very mysterious.

"A pair of star-crossed lovers"

 

 
There has been little time to write anything, let alone produce a half-way reasonable post over the past week. Just the odd Tweet . . .  

While this is not an excuse (2009 was supposed to be the Year of Dance on 60 Going On 16, after all), last week was something of a ballet-fest on the box for dance lovers, starting with BBC4's Margot, based on part of Meredith Daneman's superb biography. If you're still wondering, all these years later about the nature of the relationship between Fonteyn and Nureyev, this might fill in the gaps. On balance, I'd go with the biography - for the life in full and to put this brief period in Fonteyn's life and career into context.

BBC4 also screened the 1963 film of Marguerite and Armand, choreographed for Fonteyn and Nureyev by Sir Frederick Ashton. On Friday the same channel had a rerun of its 2007 programme, Nureyev: from Russia with Love, about the dancer's early years in the then Soviet Union, as well as  Kenneth McMillan's Romeo and Juliet, filmed not entirely successfully in 1966 by Paul Czinner. Ballet and film have an uneasy relationship . . . 

But, imperfect as the film was and remains, it still captured something of the essence of the Fonteyn-Nureyev partnership and the magic that they created when they danced together. Anyone who was fortunate enough to see them on stage, knew that they were watching something truly remarkable and that they would probably never see anything quite like it again. Nureyev was, well, Nureyev, and Fonteyn, while lacking the athleticism that is now the norm for so many ballet dancers, had a lyricism and musicality to her dancing that was unsurpassed. 

It wasn't simply their dancing that marked them out. As theatre director Peter Brook observed, they were: "Extraordinary actors who lend depth to every movement, which suddenly makes the most artificial of all forms become natural and human."

So ignore the poor quality, the frustrating camera angles and the judders and jumps: here's the balcony scene. It's the moment when he clutches at the hem of her dress that always gets me.

On positive thinking and appreciating the NHS

 

Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments and good wishes for my aunt and cousin. The latest news, via my cousin who loves Bruce Springsteen, is that Michael is now at home and doing well and that Auntie Rene will be coming home today. 

A combination of positive thinking all round and great (free at the point of delivery) medical care, which is one of the reasons we Brits love the NHS. It may not be perfect but, at its best, it is very good indeed. A lifesaver, in fact. And which bit of the NHS would we be taking about? There's a clue in that photo . . .  

Bah, scumbags

Various members of my family are going through tough times at the moment; some are too personal for me to write about but not all.

The extended family can now be found in many different parts of the world but we - especially my cousins and I - are pretty good about keeping in touch with each other. If something untoward happens to one or other of us, the cousins are rock solid. And a bit of solidarity is called for right now as one of our number is in hospital  with a long list of injuries, not least of which is a fractured skull. He was set upon at night, by a group of thugs, as he made his way home after an evening out with friends. Michael is my second cousin (or first cousin once removed, never sure which is which - his mother is my first cousin) and is the kindest of young men. Why anyone would want to beat him senseless and leave him half dead is beyond my comprehension.

Michael is recovering, which is great news for everyone, especially his mother (my 'twin' cousin; we share a birthday.) But in one of those extraordinary coincidences that happen in life rather than in fiction, his maternal grandmother - my aunt - is now seriously ill in the same hospital. She collapsed on her way to visit him, suffered various fractures and was found to be suffering from a previously undetected heart condition. (And, yes, the joker in the family pack has already pointed out that, were things not so serious, this story has all the elements of a black comedy.)

To the cousins, she is our beloved Auntie (never Aunt) Rene, now 90, and the sole survivor of eight siblings, the eldest of whom was born in 1904. She is everything an auntie should be - warm, funny, thoughtful, and the guardian of the family memories of a generation. Apart from age-related deafness, she has always been remarkably fit, looks far younger than her years and still has - a genetic trait this - a head of extraordinarily thick, poker-straight hair. (Jet black when she was young, now a soft grey.) There's nothing we like better than listening to her recollections and stories of growing up in London between the wars.

All of which leaves my twin cousin, who is busy doing double shifts of hospital visiting. But she won't be alone. Apart from her immediate family, there'll be a steady flow of cousins, including me, making their way to the city where she lives. It's that solidarity thing.

As for the scumbags who put Michael in hospital, I can only hope that they will be caught, tried and put away for a stretch. A longish stretch. You never know, stranger things have happened. In the meantime here's a little something for them:

 

And I'm keeping everything crossed for Michael's grandma. Get well soon, Auntie Rene; we've not done with the stories yet . . . 

Sing out sisters

A dear friend was here at the weekend, just retired from a stressful career working in mental health services and now, as a recently qualified psychotherapist, about to embark on the next stage of her life. 

Our friendship goes back almost 40 years to when we were in our twenties and when, for various reasons, we and our then young daughters joined forces to share a flat in central London - life or love, or a combination of same, not having quite turned out the way we had anticipated. But, while not wishing to turn this post into a ghastly triumph over tragedy story, we travelled hopefully, learned to make something happy and positive out of our situation, and never looked back. We might not have been a conventional family but we were - and remain - a family, as well as staunch friends. 

The things we loved then, we still love: nature, art, animals, books, dancing, music, and laughter. We still have the tendency to burst into synchronised song at the least opportunity, which some have long found disconcerting and probably embarrassing. We have, however, given up the spontaneous tap dancing displays, although we did, during this visit, indulge in a few reminiscences about ballet classes and the wonderful world of battements tendus, arabesques, pas de chat and all that. The Aga rail is ideal for indulging in a bit of nostalgic barre practice while cooking dinner.

For the past year, my Psychotherapist Friend has been learning to play the piano and is doing rather well, which means that we can now look forward to a proper musical accompaniment to all those songs. She says that she's not quite at the Beethoven sonata stage but give her time; however, she can play a pretty impressive version of Paul McCartney's Blackbird. I say impressive because it means tackling the timing shifts in this Bach-inspired number and I think that's pretty good after a mere year. 

We rather like the idea of pianoforte-accompanied musical duets. "Sort of Hinge and Bracket?" enquired her partner. Maybe not. 

A repertoire that includes Irish ballads and songs would be good. We have a whole rattle bag of these from childhoods spent listening to the likes of Delia Murphy and John McCormack on Housewives' Choice and Forces' Favourites on the BBC's Light Programme: The Spinning Wheel, The Minstrel Boy, She Moved Through the Fair, Raglan Road, Carrickfergus and so on. I happened to be listening to theatre and opera director, Deborah Warner, on R3's Private Passions yesterday and was quietly chuffed when she included Down by the Salley Gardens, sung by Ian Bostridge, as one of her choices. A haunting song (music by Ivor Gurney, words by W B Yeats) and an exquisite rendition, although there's long been a debate as to who can and should or should not sing this song  - yes/no to tenors; yes/no to women . . .

I couldn't find Ian Bostridge's version on YouTube but I did find this: counter-tenor, Andreas Scholl, performing at the Last Night of the Proms and I do love a counter-tenor.

So that's it; that's what we should be having a crack at, although I obviously won't be singing tenor, counter or otherwise. A little bit mezzo, maybe? Who knows, this time next year we could be taking bookings for weddings, dances, parties, bar and bat mitzvahs . . .