60 Going On 16

Ebb and flow, yin and yang, coming and going

I started writing this blogpost on 12 April and it is now the 22nd; blame it on the labyrinthitis, which, really, I could have done without. My GP tells me to expect up to six weeks of vertigo etc etc. Oh joy, oh rapture. She didn't mention that I would also get a streaming cold to add to the mix. Meanwhile, outside it is cold, wet, windy and grey - plus ça change - and it's almost May. Sometimes, I struggle, I really do, to love this country. Anyway, back to where I was ten days ago.

The spring holiday has been something of a bumper time for visitors at 60 Going on 16 Towers. The Dear Family (ie my daughter and her husband) were here until the morning of Easter Monday, leaving just enough time for a swift turnround before my Dear Friends, Mr and Mrs Gaucho, and their Border terrier, arrived from Scotland via the Cotswolds later that afternoon for a few days. They have now headed off to stay with a cousin in South Devon and I've been preparing one of the guest bedrooms ready for the arrival on Saturday of another Dear Friend, the Duchess. 

The Gauchos, the Duchess and I go back a long way. As Mr Gaucho said when we went out to dinner on Wednesday: 'You are my oldest friend . . .' And Mr Gaucho is most certainly my longest-standing male buddy. We first met c1970 at the architectural practice that he had joined as a newly qualified architect. I ran the practice library, ordered drawings, kept the accounts, did the PAYE, and grudgingly made coffee for the all-male architectural team (until I rebelled and the senior partners had to install coffee machines so that the chaps could make their own coffee). The Duchess arrived at the same practice c1972.

Mr Gaucho met the young woman who was to become Mrs Gaucho in the early 1970s and I just knew from the way he spoke about her that something special was happening. Which it was. Later, I was witness at their wedding and a proud godmother to their firstborn - a daughter, now a mother of four herself. 

'I'm trying to remember where and when we first met,' I said to Mrs Gaucho.

'You were standing at the top of the steps to your (basement) flat,' she replied.

That was here. (Not during the siege itself, you understand; that came later and there wasn't any hanging around at the top of the steps when that was going on. It was a matter of ducking one's head down and running as fast as possible, accompanied by a police officer, until one was safely inside the front door.) So we raised  our glasses to decades of a very happy triangular friendship. These don't always work but ours has, brilliantly, and I am proud to count Mrs Gaucho among my closest female friends.

For much of the year, I am entertaining canine guests, whom I love dearly, but conversation is, inevitably, somewhat one-sided. So the arrival of family and friends means proper, grown-up, human coversations about cabbages and kings, as well as the usual catching up.  In the past week or so, we have meandered, among many things, through writing, art, flowers, photography, politics, architecture, favourite blogs, and books, and food - in particular, food writers, most notably, a favourite food writer, Claudia Roden.

Mrs Gaucho, a fine cook herself, and I have both had the privilege of standing in Claudia Roden's kitchen, watching her at work, listening to her flow of stories, learning . . . For me, this was in the mid-1980s, when the company I was then working for published  a selection of recipes from A New Book of Middle Eastern Food. Watching, listening to, learning from and reading Claudia Roden changed the way I cooked and thought about food and Mrs Gaucho said she thought I might enjoy this recent post by Eat Like a Girl, who - almost three decades later - had also been standing in that same kitchen, watching, listening and learning. (I did enjoy it and I thought you might too.) 

Right, I have caught up; it is now - today.

While she was here, Mrs Gaucho and I put our heads together to create the foundations of her blog, something she has been wanting to start for a long time. I'm pleased to report that the running wave is now launched and I am looking forward to regular updates. Mrs Gaucho loves words and images as much as I do (and we like the same music) and I feel sure that you will find the running wave to be a source of delight.

Here's to friendships, tried and true, that stand the test of time. And to Claudia Roden. Why not?

"What a piece of work . . ."

I'm not referring to my poor neglected blog, of course. The muse has been on an extended vacation and other things have been happening, as things are wont to do, but I just took some deep breaths and trusted that all would be well, writing-wise, in due course.

I always think of January and February as my fallow time; nothing much is done, apart from the essential. The lack of light, the lack of sun, the wet and the cold all contribute to the slow smothering of creativity and then . . . and then just when I think I will be trapped in the cold, wet, grey creative fog for ever, somewhere and somehow a small trigger is pulled  (sometimes several small triggers).

Which is precisely what has happened in the past few days; e-mails from a patient reader, wondering where I had gone, and from a new reader, who had stumbled upon a recent post containing a U A Fanthorpe poem. Well, thank you for the nudges, dear readers; they were just what I needed.

And the next nudge came on Sunday. Friends were visiting and after we had walked all the dogs (theirs and mine) we tucked in to a proper winter fireside tea. The conversation turned to two television programmes from the previous evening: Sinatra Sings, which I had seen but they had not, and Lucian Freud: Painted Life, which they had seen but I had not. My love for Sinatra's music was pretty much on a par with one of the friend's love of Lucian Freud's work.' If money were absolutely no object, she said, 'he is the first artist whose work I'd buy.'

I caught up with the Freud programme that night and was struck by parallels in the lives of these two men who, on the surface, could not have come from more different backgrounds. Unless one starts with the family history of exile from another place . . .

Sinatra SIngs includes rare footage of The Voice in a recording studio. Sinatra had an intense dislike of being filmed when he was recording and yet this footage conveys so much of what made SInatra a master of his art. The concentration, the intensity, absolutely in the moment . . . and then, when the recording is finished, he slips seamlessly back into wisecracking mode. And then his face as the recording is played back . . . no words needed.

A Painted Life also included not simply rare but unique footage - Lucian Freud at work in his studio. And in his studio on the very last day that he painted. Contributor after contributor, colleagues, former partners, daughters, models all spoke of 'Lucian's intensity'.  That word again.

And all the other parallels: the women, a life lived on their own terms, the hordes of people wanting to press the flesh, the absolute dedication to their art. Awkward, difficult, challenging, brilliant men - with devoted daughters, who spoke of their fathers with love. Tina Sinatra fondly remembering her father sitting by the pool, listening to a ball game on the radio; one of Freud's daughters (Esther I think) is moved to tears as she remembers running her hands through his hair for the first time, when her father was already an old man.

I found both programmes fascinating and, yes, moving, although I appreciate that, in SInatra's case, the myths, the stories, the scandals all have a habit of getting in the way of the music. And there are those who find Freud's work offensive, not least the paintings of his daughters.

It will always be a conundrum. Do we allow the artist's (whatever the art form) behaviour to inform our reaction to their art? I remember once reading a very hissy-fitty comment about a well-known and highly regarded writer who, it transpired, had slept with people to whom they were not married at the time. If the words 'Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells' had appeared at the end of the comment, I would not have been surprised.

As to the conundrum, I rather think that Gay Talese got to the heart of things - as least as far as Sinatra was concerned - in this groundbreaking article, which originally appeared in Esquire in 1966.

I happened to mention Sinatra's vocal accomplishments to an acquaintance yesterday evening. She pulled a face, saying that she found it surprising that someone who so often hit a wrong note, managed to make his voice sound rather good. Wrong notes? How come I had never noticed?  'Not my sort of music. At all. But I do hope I haven't spoilt it for you,' she added. (Er, no; I think it would take more than that.)

Experience should have taught me that now was not the time to mention . . . Lucian Freud. The acquaintance made another face and mentioned the thing about the daughters. The conversation trailed uncomfortably away.

Ah well.

You, lovely readers, will have your own view about these things. Sinatra Sings has already been shown in the US; meanwhile, UK readers can still catch it here until 25 February. (And UK readers can also watch Lucian Freud: Painted Life here until the same date.)

Since watching both these programmes, I do find myself wondering what sort of world it would be if the only art that was produced, the only songs that were sung, the only books that were written, the only music composed, had emanated from people who led pure, blameless and spotless lives. (If I knew anyone who had led a pure, blameless and spotless life, I might be able to tell you.)

Meanwhile, I'll just leave you with Frank. In the studio. Doing what he did best. And, as far as I can tell, not hitting a wrong note. 

 

Jingle jangle morning

It was London, 1965; I was 17, in love for the first time, and passionate about, oh, all sorts of things. Dylan released this wonder of an album:

I heard this song and I experienced what I can only describe as a seismic shift of the soul. The boyfriend and I played it over and over. Nothing was ever quite the same again.

Seventy eh? Who'da thought it? Just hope you're dancing somewhere beneath the diamond sky today, Bob. We're still following you . . .

Mad dogs and Englishmen . . .

go out in . . . all sorts of weather.

Above and beyond . . .

Some days do their very best to convince you of the innate kindness and compassion of the human race . . .

We had been told not to expect snow, at least no more than light showers of same, but when I awoke at 6.40am, I looked out on at least three inches of the stuff. My first thought was - how on earth would I be able to get to the next village by 8.00am to pick up my canine daycare guest, a young Patterdale terrier? I tried to contact his owners but they had already left for the day, access in and out of their village and the route to the nearest town and beyond being relatively easy. But my house, indeed much of our village, is 700 feet above sea level, via a steep hill, and access and egress, in deep and falling snow, is precarious, even with a 4x4. Which I have but I don't feel especially brave in this sort of weather and particularly not at the moment, given the effects of the daily radiotherapy grind. Our contingency plan for such weather, let's call it Plan B, had failed, as plans so often do, at the first hurdle.

But this is when the day's first fairy godparent waved her wand. One of my neighbours, whose own dog is a regular guest here, runs a rather fab little café in the village where Mr Home Alone was waiting. Being younger and braver than me, she was about to set off in her 4x4 to start cooking. I gave her the keys to Mr H-A's house and asked if she could check on him during the day. But she did better than that. She drove to his house, collected Mr H-A, his collar and lead, his coat and his food, and then drove all the way back to my house so that he wouldn't have to be alone.

Meanwhile, I had realised that none of the trusty volunteer drivers who had been ferrying me to and from hospital each day would be able to get their saloon cars into the village, so I rang the regional ambulance service, which co-ordinates the volunteer driver programme, to alert them. They rang the hospital to check the urgency of the appointment. High priority said the hospital. The ambulance service said they would do what they could. And then hardly a minute later the phone rang.

'It's Dave; I'm just leaving Credition. I thought I'd set out early to allow plenty of time to pick you up and get you to the hospital and back before the snow worsens.'

Dave had been my driver for the previous two mornings. I warned him that he probably wouldn't make it into the village. 

'Well, if I get to the foot of the hill, have you got a neighbour with a 4x4 who could bring you down?'

One of my neighbours, Mr M, is the sort of person who would do just that, if asked.

'OK, yes, we could try that, if you're sure.'

'Fine,' said Dave. 'I'll ring you when I get there.'

I trotted round to see Mr M and he immediately went into standby mode.

A little later, the phone rang again.

'Dave here; I've made it to the village hall.' (The village hall is halfway down the hill.)

'OK, I'll be with you soon as.'

But before I even had time to knock at Mr M's door, Dave was outside my house.

En route to the hospital (which meant yoga breathing -yet again - as we then went down the hill, very, very slowly, in first), Dave explained that he had driven in reverse up the hill from the village hall. In the snow. In a saloon car. Dave is an ex-police officer, trained to do that sort of thing, while - apparently - maintaining a state of absolute calm. It's not a manoeuvre for those of a nervous disposition and you should not try this at home.

We arrived at the hospital two hours early and the radiographers had me in and out of the treatment room, X-rayed and zapped in no time, to ensure that Dave could get me back home without delay. Which he did.

So, that'll be the 60 Going On 16 Award for Dedication to Duty (first class) to Dave Killick, volunteer driver with South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

At 2.00pm, Mr M, who had, by now, been relieved of standby duties, turned up with a snow shovel and cleared and gritted the path and steps to my front door . . .

Overnight temperatures are set to tumble again and there may be more snow but here at 60 Going On 16 Towers, all is calm. The Edinburgh Boy is fast asleep and snoring, alongside his comatose little terrier chum, who will be staying here until the snow and ice has gone. (Which was always part of Plan B and which has now been carried over to Plan C.)

Tomorrow is another day and all that. Two elderly collie guests are due to check in at 10.00am. But their owner is on the qui vive and, besides, he has a serious 4x4. And then it will be hospital appointment time again . . .

Piece of cake, that hill.