writing, not drowning

Is it safe to . . .?

. . . step out from behind the curtain, after such a long absence?

Of all the events that might have caused me to scurry back to the laptop, the one that I would not have predicted was the reappearance of someone else - Kate Bush, to be precise.

The Dear Daughter had tried to get tickets for Kate's re-emergence. I tried to get tickets. No joy; sold out in just 15 minutes. We had to settle for the Guardian live-tweeting throughout the opening night and watching old video clips on YouTube. 

And then, a couple of days ago, the DD sent me a link to an eBay page, where someone was selling a poster advertising Kate's first tour in 1979.

'Remember this?' said the DD.

'Would you like it for your birthday?' I asked, in a moment of madness.

'I've already got it,' she replied. And so she had. It had once adorned a wall of her bedroom.

'I think I've got one of these too.' Attached was a copy of a 1978 Christmas card, courtesy of the Kate Bush Fan Club. 

In the 1970s, Kate was a significant presence in our house; well, her voice was, along with various Kate-related stuff.  The DD was a HUGE fan; I was pretty much of a fan too. So we could not possibly miss going to see Kate on that first tour and we did see her - at the London Palladium. No frustrating hours spent endlessly reloading internet pages in those days; it was all very civilised: a phone call or a trip to the box office. And affordable tickets.

We loved every minute and, 35 years later, I was amazed at just how much I could remember of that concert. It was one of the high points of a year during which other things in our world were beginning to unravel.

'I think I've still got my ticket,' said the DD. 'I just have to find my Kate Bush memorabilia . . .'

I spent the rest of the day playing four of Kate's early albums (vinyl, of course). They belong to the DD but live here because I am the only member of the family who still possesses an ancient hifi with a turntable, so that I can play my substantial and much-cherished collection of LPs and 45s, not to mention EPs. I was transported back to our flat in Marylebone, still young(ish) at 31 - which seems very young when one is nearer 70 than 60 - and the mother of a daughter on the cusp of her teenage years. As Sandy Denny once sang, 'Who knows where the time goes?'

But I couldn't find Hounds of Love. I searched everywhere. I could see the cover. I emailed the DD. 

'I think I had it on cassette,' she answered. 'What year was it?'

'1985.'

'Oh yes, I already had a Walkman by then.'

Ah, the refuse heap of technology.

But the disappointment of not bagging any tickets this time round in no way detracts from the wonder of being there the first time and seeing my daughter's face light up when Kate appeared. It was, almost, unbelievable . . . 

There was one final email from the DD, normally a very private woman. 'You can blog about this, if you like.' So I did.

On a January Sunday, 60 years ago . . .

 

Richard Burton was in a BBC studio recording his inimitable performance as the narrator of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. It was broadcast on what was then the Third Programme the following evening. At the age of six, however, I knew nothing of Dylan Thomas and no-one in my family listened to the Third Programme.

My introduction to Thomas came five years later at my primary school, thanks to a Welsh student called - yes - Mr Jones, who was completing a teaching practice with our forty-strong form. One wet, chilly afternoon, at the start of an English lesson, Mr Jones announced that he had a treat in store for us. Out of one of the classroom cupboards, he hauled a wind-up gramophone, whose prior use had been confined to providing the music for our weekly country dance classes. (Our form teacher was a very keen member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.)

Then, from his briefcase, he produced a record . . .

'This,' said Mr Jones, in reverential tones, 'is something remarkable. We are going to listen to Under Milk Wood. Some of the finest words in the English language - and written by a Welshman, Dylan Thomas. The narrator possesses one of the finest voices in the English speaking world and he is a Welshman too, Richard Burton. So, I want you all to sit still, absolutely no fidgeting.'

I can't remember what my classmates did but, from the moment I heard the opening line:

'To begin at the beginning . . .'

delivered in those deep, rich, nut-brown tones, there was not the remotest possibility that I might fidget. I was somewhere else - hovering on the edge of Llareggub, looking down on Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, Captain Cat, Rosie Probert, Mr Mog Edwards, Gossamer Beynon et al. It was the first time that I can recall shivers running down my spine while listening to the spoken word. Mr Jones also had the look of a man for whom, in the words of Louis Macneice, 'time was away and somewhere else'.

But, this being the 1950s and my primary school being run by a head teacher who was feared by all, our literary transports of delight were doomed. Half way through the lesson, our head teacher stormed in, red of face and teeth clenched. She almost wrenched the gramophone arm out of its socket.

'This,' she bellowed at Mr Jones, 'is NOT suitable listening for 11 year-olds. See me in my office at the end of the lesson.'

And that was the end of our introduction to Dylan Thomas and Under Milk Wood. And it was the end of Mr Jones's teaching practice at our school. But I thought at the time that he had been right  about the words and the voice. Sixty years later, I still think he was right and I have a much-read first edition of Under Milk Wood and a frequently-played copy of the BBC recording to prove it.

So thank you, Mr Jones, for that great gift. And here, to mark the 60th anniversary of Burton and the cast's magnificent recording, the opening of Under Milk Wood. 

You can find the rest of the recording on YouTube. Unless, of course, you have your own much loved and much played copy. 

The London collection

If you take the girl or, in my case, the woman of a certain age, out of London, what happens? In this woman's case, London is not forgotten; the binding ties are still there and if someone should ask me how I define myself, geographically speaking, I would have no hesitation in saying, and with some degree of pride, that I am a Londoner, voluntary displacement to Devon almost sixteen years ago notwithstanding. And, in the same way that Italians identify primarily with their home city or town, I think of myself first as a Londoner rather than, say, as English or British. (This continuing connection to London by no means detracts from my affection for my adopted county, Devon, much of which I have grown to love, although some aspects of daily life here continue to perplex me.)

These days, however, time and cost preclude frequent visits back to the old home town and an exchange of messages earlier this summer with one of my favourite London bloggers, rus in urbis, reminded me that it is two years since I was there last . That can't be right, I tell myself. But it is; two whole years . . .

But if I cannot visit London, I can, at least, read about it and I do. On my bookshelves, there is a growing collection of books about London or that feature London, a collection that feeds my desire to remain connected. Thanks to Jerry White's magnificent three-volume history, London in the Eighteenth Century, London in the Nineteenth Century, and London in the Twentieth Century, which I finished reading in June, that connection is tighter than ever. If you want a sense of the many layers and strands, the cultures and nationalities, the politics and professions, the energy and the entertainment - and so much more - that have contributed to the making of London in the previous three centuries, these are the histories for you. 

From a personal perspective, I gained a much deeper understanding of some of my own London family history; my great-great-great-grandfather William Gaunt (born c1782) was a watchmaker, as was his son William, and possibly his father, Joseph, too. In the 1841 Post Office Directory, William was listed as a watchmaker at 2 Bridgewater Gardens, Clerkenwell, (where the Barbican now stands) in the City of London. He was, more precisely, a watchspring maker and, as Jerry White states, watchmaking was 'perhaps the finest example of divided labour in London'. More than a hundred people might be involved in the production of a single watch. Would this explain why, as a little girl, I would spend hours at the workbench in our garage, carefully prising apart old, discarded, family watches, to see how they worked? I was convinced that I could get them to work again; not surprisingly, perhaps, I achieved a solid 100 per cent failure rate.

The maiden name of William's mother, Ann, was Silva, which suggested that she was of Spanish or Portuguese descent but unless or until I can get to the London Metropolitan Archives , I have no way of confirming this. But I do so want to know.

Alongside Jerry White's histories are Peter Ackroyd's London: the Biography, and the psychogeography of Iain Sinclair - Lights Out for the Territory - and Rachel Lichtenstein, including Rodinsky's Room, On Brick Lane and Diamond Street. Ford Madox Ford's (or Ford Madox Hueffer as he was then) The Soul of London, published in 1905, made a temporary appearance on the shelf, courtesy of Devon County Libraries, but free copies are also available online. Then there are the London-based memoirs, such as This Boy, by former Home Secretary, Alan Johnson. It is both revealing and moving without once slipping into sentimentality. Alan grew up in extreme poverty in a part of London I knew well as a child: Notting Hill before it was taken over by the rich and famous. (If we had more MPs of Alan Johnson's calibre and awareness, the House of Commons would be a far better and more enlightened place than it is at present. Just a thought.)

If we consider London as a whole, that is Greater London, then we must include its suburbs, such as the one in which I grew up, at what was then one end of the Piccadilly Line. For memories of a 1950s suburban childhood and teenage years, look no further than Michele Hanson's excellent What the Grown-Ups Were Doing. Michele grew up in Ruislip, which is not that far from where we lived, and almost every page had me smiling in recognition, not least the references to dinner dances at the Orchard Hotel, where cocktails were served decked with tiny paper Chinese parasols. The Orchard Hotel is where our family reunions were always held. Adults only, sadly, although my mum always brought one of the paper parasols home for me, as a souvenir. My cousins and I all have black and white photos of one particular reunion in the early 1960s, organised to welcome home my Auntie Jess and Uncle Jack, who were in London on holiday, having emigrated to the USA after WWII. My blonde mum and sister-in-law and my ebony-haired aunts are all wearing slim-fitting sheath dresses (mostly black) and heavily-lacquered, helmet hairdos; the Brylcreemed, dark-suited menfolk are standing behind them. Everyone smiling for the camera, with not a hint of the sibling rivalries that simmered away just beneath more than one surface. The Orchard, which seemed impossibly glamorous in the 1960s, is now a Beefeater Grill. Enough said. Thanks for the memories, Michele.

But some books about or set in London do not hang around here for long. One doesn't need to be a Londoner to write welI about the city - and many have - and I was, initially, charmed by the quest to discover literary London by a well-known, prizewinning American writer. But the book contained so many factual errors about my city that I promptly recycled it. I'm not sure if anyone checked the text for geographical accuracy before it was published but, if so, they lacked the requisite knowledge of London. Such a shame. 

Still, let us end on a high note and give honourable bookshelf mentions to Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day, and  Hanover Square by Patrick Hamilton, all set in wartime London; Brick Lane by Monica Ali, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins, the memoirs and many of the short stories of Julian Maclaren-Ross and, above all, to Charles Dickens, the great chronicler of Victorian London.

And lest you should think I have overlooked poetry, Poems on the Underground is a good place to start. Although by no means all of the poems are about London, every single poem it contains has been read by any number of London Underground's long-suffering passengers. Sweeteners to ease our subterranean pain and something else for us to look at apart from the shifty character sitting opposite.

Do you have a favourite London book? If so, do tell.

(I could not close without saying thank you to Spitalfields Life, the London blog par excellence, whose Gentle Author reminds me daily of where I am from and what made me. Spitalfields Life is four today and every single blogpost has been a gem. Here's to many, many more.)

Not your average Christmas and New Year

It is inevitable, I suppose, that as we get older, memories of Christmas past tend to merge, until one ends up with something vaguely resembling a generic memory. But Christmas 2012 was so different in so many ways that it will probably stand out. For a start, I've never spent December in a whirl of rehearsals and performances, while trying to juggle end-of-year accounts, work, dog care, Christmas preparations and all the routine domestic stuff that has to be done. Not to mention the dead Aga, which I just have. And no, it was not rescued in time for the Great Midwinter Feast. By Christmas Day I was running on empty.

Meanwhile, the Grown-Up Children were installed half a mile away at an organic smallholding owned by family friends, caring for the livestock (rare breed pigs and sheep, plus a dozen hens) while the Smallholders were away for a couple of days. The intention had been that they would head up here for meals and general Christmas jollity. Another family friend and one of her relations, whom none of us had met before, were expected on Christmas Day to join us for dinner. . .

The Smallholders came to the rescue and offered us the use of their large farmhouse kitchen, while they were away, which did indeed save the day. The Great Midwinter Feast was prepared, served and enjoyed, although we spent the last hours of Christmas night returning everything in the borrowed kitchen to pristine condition.

The Grown-Up Children returned to the Chilterns a few days later and before I knew it, New Year's Eve was upon us and my Salad Days Friend arrived with her husband and their two new rescue lurchers - Queenie and Duke. The Edinburgh Boy and Miss P, pictured here

were much taken with their new friends; the youngsters racing around the field, while the the now elderly Boy looked on contentedly. Come the evening, cue another feast, this time Indian and vegetarian, with the evening devoted to music, comparing choir notes - they sing with Sammy Hurden's Freedance Choir - and discussing Buddhism. After almost 40 years of friendship, our lives still run on parallel lines.

Their choir recently took part in Sammy's specially commissioned work The Hare and the Harp (sponsored by Johnnie Boden; yes that Boden) at Dorset's ancient Powerstock Church. You can catch it on YouTube here - a marvellously sonorous, deeply English piece that seemed to reach back through the ages, while still sounding entirely new.

We all agreed that once you start making music - playing an instrument, singing - you begin to listen to music in a different way. And you begin to appreciate types of music that, at one time perhaps, you might not have been drawn to. Take The Student Prince, for example. Operetta. Hmm. Film starring Edmund Purdom, his voice dubbed by Mario Lanza. Hmm. We were once forced to watch this at my convent school; it was deemed suitable viewing for Sixties girls. 

But this Christmas the BBC kindly reran the enormously popular Proms concerts given by the John Wilson Orchestra in 2011 and 2012. John Wilson has probably done much as anyone to make people sit up and take notice of musicals, with his superb orchestrations of classic Hollywood and Broadway showstoppers. I confess that, in the past, I have had a patchy relationship with musicals; I loved Rodgers and Hammerstein, West Side Story and anything with Fred Astaire but not much more. The list certainly didn't include The Student Prince. And then I watched the 2011 Proms concert in which tenor Charles Castronovo performed Serenade.  I played this clip for my friends on New Year's Eve; in the 1970s, we would have been listening to Bowie together, or Dylan or Joni and we listen to them and love them still. But this song, this performance, had us spellbound.

Back to the lost domain

When I first visited Cothay Manor in Somerset last year (and which I wrote about here), I was reminded of Alain-Fournier and the lost domain of Le Grand Meaulnes. I went to Cothay again today and this wonderful house and its beautiful gardens worked their magic once more.

It was a glorious day, with proper sunshine and a cloudless sky, and I was with my Dear Friend, the Only Other Blonde in the Village (who, strictly speaking, is now the Only Blonde in the Village, since I stopped highlighting my hair - after 40 years or so - and discovered that I was no longer any sort of blonde, merely a light brunette). The Dear Friend is off to France next week and, as she will be celebrating a milestone birthday while she is away, we thought that a brief escape from the Village that Time Forgot would be in order, before she goes en vacances.

Cothay was the ideal spot: not too far to drive on a hot day and an antiques and decorative arts fair taking place all weekend. Tickets were extraordinarily good value at £5 a head and, as many of the stands were in the house itself, we were able to step across its ancient threshold for the first time. (And, yes, the interior is as magical as the exterior.)

I was sorely tempted by this vintage silk sari length:

but commonsense prevailed and I held back. And then I spotted this tiny chap:

while the Only Blonde was rather taken with the cricket print, propped against his chair.

We were transported back to a 1940s childhood by a Margaret Tarrant vintage print (think elves in pointy hats, anthropomorphic woodland creatures . . . ). But there was more. This dear old dog on wheels:

and then this fellow, ancient and one-eyed and, presumably once loved:

I want someone else to fall in love with him and take him home. The fair runs until tomorrow (27 June) so there is time; there is hope! 

Cothay still feels very much like the family home that it is; there is a quality of intimacy about it. Sheep wander across the drive:

and dogs (witness this properly Golden Retriever; NB golden, not almost white)

and hens are always in evidence outside the cafe. The hens are not a bit shy and are very well fed; they know just how to endear themselves to visitors:

We didn't do badly either. Large coffees and excellent rolls (ie delicious and very generous fillings). I treated the Dear Friend to a birthday special: a Coronation Chicken-filled roll, which seemed appropriate and which is probably the nearest I will get to anything vaguely Jubilympical. (See how I cunningly avoided using the 'O' word? I have no desire to be clapped in irons or carted off to the Tower or dragged through the courts by any of the sponsors . . .) Coronation Chicken is all the retro rage at the moment. Apparently.

After lunch there was still time to wander round the gardens. We had been talking about Monet's garden at Giverny, which we had both visited, when we spotted this:

and, for a moment, we truly could have been 'lost in France'.

But no visit to Cothay is complete without a sighting of the resident unicorn, which - of course - has magical powers, so I make no apologies for including another photo this time round.

It will take all my willpower not to return tomorrow. But I will be back, hopefully on 9 June, to see Richard III al fresco and, on 16 June, for a garden, plant and food fair, which is raising funds for The Daisy Garland, a charity that provides vital and pioneering support - focusing on the Ketogenic Diet - to children with epilepsy and to their families. You can read more about this year's events at Cothay here.

Meanwhile, an idea that came to me during that very first visit has reappeared; perhaps I should discuss it with the unicorn.