Amateur

The difficulty with'amateur' is that it has picked up a pejorative significance. I am thinking of it more literally, as something done for love. I do love Dylan Thomas's play for voices," Under Milk Wood". Recently, I took part in a rehearsed reading of it put on by a local amateur theatrical group. (I can't think why you are so surprised. Liz is not nailed to the computer thinking up blog posts, you know). Anyway,that is what happened, I took part. What wouldn't surprise you is that "Under MIlk Wood" should rank second only to Messiah in my must-have list. In case you have no reason to be aware of its provenance, I should explain that it is about a day in a Welsh Village inhabited by what this Welshman has always seen as typical Welsh characters. A harsher, more dispassionate evaluator, may see the characters as borderline stereotypical but, so what. There is rather a thin line between essence and stereotype, wouldn't you agree? Anyway, going with the essence approach, there are, represented, many figures only too recognisable from a life up to late teen-age spent among them. It's the gossip which springs primarily to mind. As a matter of fact, both gossip and Gossip. Even after I left my parents' home to go to University, during weekend visits I was expected to go to the local Cafe and rendezvous with my Mother's friends to hear and furnish the news. My observation was that these ladies enjoyed my news only when it was bad. Good news was greeted with a thin smile and an instant implication of 'let's move on'. Bad news was greeted eagerly, excitedly with a demand for more details. These were not basically bad people. After all, in our hearts, we all know that bad news is more gripping than good. They were just unconsciously innocent about letting it be seen that it were so. There is irony, meanness and also compassion in my experience of the Welsh character. They may gloat, not all that secretly, over your downfall but they would fall over each other with bowls of soup were you to be too ill to make it for yourself. The Welsh couldn't claim exclusivity in the area of compulsive, obsessive behavior, neither. However, there is rather a lot of it about west of Bristol and north of Chester. In the play, Mrs Ogmore Pritchard, widow, twice, of Mr.Ogmore and Mr Pritchard presents a portrait of obsessive, compulsive disorder which out-clarifies all the psychiatric definitions I have ever come across.For instance, "Put you pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas". "Before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes". Get it?
Sadly, the stock of the soup of Thomas's work in this particular production had nowhere near the intensity it not only needed but deserved. The several exceptions served only to unbalance the whole by pointing out how things could and should have sounded. It is hard when someone takes the ball of your passion and runs away with it to play a game foreign to you. I doubt I behaved as I would have liked. In fact, I gave up and detached myself, torn between my instinct and familiarity with the work, and the direction, which I allowed to take away my spontaneity so that I did neither what I was told nor what I had been able to do so often in the play in the past. The venue was icy and the outside temperature only a touch warmer. The audiences were, therefore, not huge and I am not aware of the presence of any that were Welsh. So, not that serious, then. There you are, you see: As I told you, news is interesting only if it's bad. Therefore, I must now add that there was fun in it and new friendships and I learned a great deal. For instance, amateur must always mean 'for love', not 'unprofessional'. I must do as I'm told. I must carry on blogging.I must be less obsessively compulsive about, well, everything, and I must name a drawer'pyjamas' so I can put my pyjamas in it. Prynhawn da
PS. I'd love to know more about my reader in Mountain View California. Would you add a comment or email to: liz.mountford@gmail.com Of course, maintain the mystery if you prefer!

Rehearsal

You will be sympathetic to know that Liz had been laid low with a lurgie these last few days. How bad it was, in reality, is hard to assess. The first day I got up and prepared for a normal day when I realised that I was still sitting on the bed pulling on a sock five minutes after that manoeuvre had been initiated. I reversed the process, removed my upper and outer garments, too, and got back in to the bed. The next day I reviewed my situation and realised that, were I to have an exam that day, I would certainly have been able to get it together and present myself as required. However, I have not had to take an exam for about fifty five years so there was no incentive in that category. I have, however, experienced similar situations. Fifty years ago, I had my first child. The day after his arrival was certainly comparable with the day after exams. There was the most delicious feeling of 'it's over. It's done. I 've got through' I'm not sure about flying colours but I am quite sure about blood and sweat; tears, too, of joy and relief that there were ten of all that should be ten and four of all that should be four and a complement of accessories, as in eyes and nose and the like. Today, I arose and prepared myself as if for a normal very-well-thank-you day. As it happens, I don't feel all that well but the spirit feels better upright than prone. There is no rehearsal for being three score and more than ten and, when I feel poorly, I am always wondering how much is due to virus and how much to antiquity. The Father of my children is four score. He would be a good reference point but he is in such robust good health that he is disqualified - unqualified? - from being a role model. There is no rehearsal for first time childbirth , neither. Several miscarriages gave me a clip but there was no way to pre-see the whole film. Fortunately, if one goes on to have more than one child, the first can serve as a good run-through of what to expect. How is it I can remember every moment of that birth from forty nine years, eleven months and two days ago when I can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning? (Yes, I can. It was just a poetically licenced way to put short-term memory loss).

Liz has another reason for being up and about, today. There is to be a rehearsal of "Under Milk Wood" this evening. Adult for the last circa sixty years, but still influenced by maternal counsel, I am doubtful about staying in all day and then going out in the freezing night air to attend. I have to be particularly careful because, not having been assigned the part I aspired to and saw myself as best qualified for, my inner world may conspire to make me forget to go or raise my temperature back up so that even this matyr could not possibly go out. The fact that one is particularly well related to one's unconscious rarely precludes its doing what it likes to achieve what it really wants, no matter what, I've found, haven't you? Illness is a very reliable way to make an I-don't-really-want-to statement. I believe there is a way in which the inner world does offer the possibility of serving as a rehearsal for life. As in: I will try out whether this is the right thing for me and if I break a leg so that I can't proceed I shall know it is not. Someone I know quite well complained, for a long time, of a stiff neck. Movement was difficult and she was in constant pain. On top of that, she had a very demanding job and a toddler with the usual NO, WONT,SHANT, CANT MAKE ME position in life. She tried everything you would expect her to try and it was not until it was pointed out to her that her life was a pain in the neck that she began to feel any relief. Anyway, I shall apply my poorly self to my disappointed role. As in life, keep a sharp eye out for hidden signposts and hope, that in spite of poorly understood and under-appreciated rehearsals, it will be alright on the night. Prynhawn da.

Images

Have you noticed how your memory works in pictures? Well, anyway, mine does. What brought it to my attention, was that that particular camera appears to have a fault. The other day, I lost my handbag. It would, actually, be more accurate to say I had lost track of it. I had lunch with the Father of my children before going on to the cinema. A delightful outing, incidentally, to have late lunch and afternoon cinema, or early evening cinema then dinner. Three treats: a meal, a film and not too late a night. I digress. Normally, I would offer my passenger my bag to put in the footwell in front of him/her to have it accessible for extracting the Blue Badge which allows some freedom of parking in the EU. (Seriously, it works in every corner of the EU. Across the Pond, I would have to rely on luck, I suppose.)On this rainy occasion he had brought his own car so no impediment at all to the footwell. And I put it - where? Panic: I struggled to picture myself at the restaurant picking up what my Doctor, after a consultation when he gallantly bent down to retrieve it from the floor for me, called the weight of a small toddler. I could 'see' that. I could 'see' it, indeed, 'feel' it on my shoulder but there the film faded. Himself was in his car so there was I, alone, with the shutter gone and all the undeveloped film inside. At that point, The Good Lord send a blast of rain so I leaned in to the back of the car for my umbrella preparatory to crossing to where I could see my companion, to tell him I was going back to the restaurant for my bag. Well done! You've guessed. There it was in the footwell of the rear seats. Cross my heart, I would have sworn on my life it could not be there. I had no picture of putting it there nor any reason to. I suppose if a camera has been working more or less non-stop for more than seven score years and ten you would expect it to have faults. But that's the trouble - one of them - with age: one fails to anticipate the fallability of things as one use to. Does any other of you oldies say to her/himself: "I must be careful to capture the picture of where/what I have done with my bag, those bills,my keys,the butter, the cat."? No, I don't suppose you do.

Locally, my AmDram group is putting on "Under Milk Wood". Next to Messiah, it is probably my very favourite work of art. Well, it would be would'nt it. I am co-opted to help with Welsh accents. And pretty hopeless it seemed at audition. This is where what you need in your head is a recorder rather than a camera. I have the feeling that nothing can really teach an English man/woman the Welsh lilt but the words themselves are written in a Welsh accent so I have every hope that things will right themselves, Willy Nilly,when we get to the actual read, semi-staged performance. We shall be visible though it was written as a play for voices, unseen, on the radio. Thus the Director was put under some casting pressure. There were ladies of a certain age pointing out it was written for unseen voices, who wished to play the nubile Polly Garter, and very few looking as if they may pass for Welsh. It would be nice to have reached an age where I could stop 'yes-butting' and sacrifice the image for the substantial.
As it happens, I should very much like to know if image-making works for your memory,too. I cannot 'see' where I have put my special occasion jumper. It is bright red and border-line saucy. I shall need it for the land-mark birthday of one of my young in a few days. I started to look for it as soon as I realised I could no longer count on my inner-eye camera to tell me where, safely, I had put it. I can't find it. I can't see where to look, the forty-year-old has gone to sleep and it's too late to go digital. Help!

Imponderables

As you will have gathered, since the Guru moved on and out, I have been living alone. No, of course I havent, I have continued to live with she-who-had-been the third member of the household, the CAT. ( Why capital letters? To signify her importance is why.)Now, you will also have noticed the increase in computer and, indeed, other- generated hassle since his departure. This category of learn-to-manage will be common to all of us who live alone so add the mobility problems of the elderly and you will have a clearer picture of the constant challenge of everyday life in Liz's current household. Example:I have a microwave oven. It is nicely built in to a special recess in the kitchen. Except it isn't. For some reason beyond my capacity to fathom, it has slipped backwards in to its recess.This has made evident that it is standing on a platform. The platform hadn't moved, at least until I interfered with it. The Micro is, therefore, balanced half on and half off its platform; teetering would be the word were it to regress even further. What is needed is one pair of hands to steady the platform - do I mean shelf? - and another to lift the oven so that the shelf can be secured in its staus quo ante and the micro replaced on top of it, flush with the surrounding fittings. I know, I know: too much information. Suffice it, then, to say that I am having to deal with the aesthetic discomfort and efficiency deficit in my kitchen every time I go in there. On top of that, a collection of many years of dust was exposed as the machine crept ever further backwards and the revealed space is thinner than the hand which wants to get in and clean it. There is good news. The machine, itself, continues to work so that I can defrost bread and reheat left-overs without interuption.

I am not sure that this situation qualifies absolutely under the thesis heading 75 going on 40. After all, the problem would be the same whatever the chronological age of the householder living alone. It's just that I didn't live alone when I was chronologically 40. Another thing that impacts on my life is a shortage of support. A few nights ago I went to a concert. The venue was not full and I was sitting in an aisle seat with a short empty row beside me. In front of me was a man in the same position, aisle seat, empty short row. He had placed his raincoat over the back of his seat and it was resting on my lap. With the utmost courtesy, I leaned forward and asked him if he would be kind enough to move his coat which was visibly resting on my knees. He swung right round, dragged his coat away and said " and that's a ghastly hat you are wearing. Thank God I don't have to look at it". I should explain that Liz wears a beret when her hair is not fit to be seen in public. The beret is black, innocuous and infinitely more appealing than elderly hair due for a wash. With presence of mind I would have given a month's salary for back in the day, I replied that it was, indeed ghastly - I lied - but better than what was underneath and, in that he didnt have eyes in the back of his head, he shouldn't be too worried. What I forbore to tell him was that my little heart was thumping and I was left feeling thoroughly nauseous. At this point, I could have done with a supportive companion to look-here-my-man him. Whatever button I had pushed to bring that on my head - literally - I can't imagine. The story has a happier ending than that of the microwave, as it happens. At the interval in the concert, the man turned round and asked me how I had enjoyed the second, potentially challenging, piece. This was one of the more innovative ways I have encountered in more than three score years and ten of saying "I was out of order. Please forgive me." Anyway, I did forgive him, though I was tempted to say that I didn't want to engage with a man who had shaved his head down to a micro-millimetre of grey hair and had the gall to talk to a lady whose evening he had done his best to ruin. There is a rather nice synchronicity between the microwave struggling to do its thing with some grave handicap and the 40/75 year old with a similar struggle. The microwave oven still works, though on a rocky base. Apparently, so do the manners of a well-brought- up lady on an even rockier base. Prynhawn da.

Pigeons

I am a conflicted person. Well, you know that. Anyone who is more than three score and ten on the outside and forty on the inside would be, would'nt she? To-day's conflict is between the advantages and the disadvantages of current technology. You'd think there'd be nothing new to say on the matter. There is. There is my experience of it. Yesterday, my computer decided to exclude me from my emails. Normally, after I have logged in, a red screen appears with the announcement that it is loading. Yesterday, there WAS a red screen. The announcement, however, was "Goodbye. Come back soon". I tried this that and the other thing. (No, I did not ring the Guru. Even I have some sensitivity about his availability some of the time - some of the time I'm sensitive, that is, not he is available some of the time). After a considerable and frutrating aeon, my older self clicked in. I rang my server. When I was a girl, as the saying goes, if an appliance went wrong, you telephoned someone. So I did. I found a number and I used it. It was an 0845 number which, on this side of the Pond, is very expensive But there is a system for finding cheaper alternatives. I used that. By this time, I was already considerably nearer meeting my Maker in terms of time passed, but I got through. There were 5 options. I pressed one of them. There were 5 more. I pressed another. There were 5 more. When I finally did reach a human, after repeating this process thrice, I had gone in to a trance and forgotten why my ear was stuck to the phone in the first place. However, this story is nearly over. As instructed by the human, I held on in an interminable silence waiting for the "someone will help you in a minute" and, 57 minutes from the beginning, was told the server's whole system had crashed in my area. Thank you very much. How about "system crashed" instead of "Goodbye. Come back soon"? A neat illustration of the two ages of Liz but draining, to say the least.

Which brings me to my printer. That has crashed, too. The Guru did mend it once and left me the 'Printer Test' sheet to prove it. Then it refused to use its ink tank nicely and started printing over itself. It told me it was 'offline' then it said it was 'online' when I had moved neither a finger nor a mouse. I put 'Printer' in to my search engine. Yes, I did. I'm not entirely without resource, whatever the poor Guru - and you - has come to expect. The problem with that degree of enterprise is that I then fall upon instructions for cleaning or testing parts for which I don't recognise even the names: stalemate. It's like knowing enough Portuguese to ask the way but not enough to understand the answer.
Were you to be familiar with my arthritic handwriting, you would know why the printer is important to me. Anyway, in his wisdom, the Guru has decided to buy me a new one. He didn't confer. He just did. More conflict: I like, where help is concerned, both to be me Jane: he Tarzan, whomever is helping me, but also I like to be asked to think before expenditure. However, I trust the Guru with my passwords and pin numbers so why wouldn't I trust him with making unilateral decisions on my behalf? Throughout the Christmas and new Year period, the post has been erratic, to put it at its politest. Thus, with 45 options and no printer I am beginning to regret having sacked the carrier pigeons. Happy New Year, even without a verb.

Adjustment

Too much time has passed since I found time to write a post: too much for me: you may well be quite satisfied with the interval. Anyway, like most householders at this epoch, I have been Yuletide-focussed. It's not my favourite time of year, for reasons I shall leave to speculation. I have, therefore, to plan carefully and do some loin-girding to get through this month of Sundays. I have worked out that today is Tuesday-Sunday, to-morrow will be Wednesday-Sunday and I have just to get to a week on Sunday-Sunday for it to have got to the eleven- months- until- it- happens-again-Sunday. (Is that Scrooge I hear whispering in the ether?) In trying to do things much as I always have, I have discovered that things are not as they always were. I can no longer knock off three menus with two or more main options, a handful of sides and a reliable selection of puddings and wines with the aplomb of yesterday. Boxing Day-Sunday I finished preparations for eight people only, and thought "Right: now I can go to bed". It was 1110 AM, so, no, not bed time. Considering it was precisely three times the time previously devoted to the same duties, I was seriously troubled. Anyway, after a little sit-down and a large water I did find the strength to stand up and carry on. Lessons have been learned. For instance, the folding stool, relegated to the garden shed since the Guru left to boil his own egg, was sent for so that this old lady could at least sit down to the peeling, chopping and what ever else-ing. Hopeless: damp, rotten, mouse-eaten, a threat to Health and Safety and a risk to limb and bottom (If I fell through it, of course. Why do you ask?) So nothing for it but to struggle womanfully on as before. Some positive lessons learnt, though. I have a rather lovely and not without value dinner service. Fear of dropping and breaking a piece has been with me as long as has the china. No more: with a surge of relief and a shoulder-dropping lightness, I realised that I no longer gave a Rhett Butler about breakage. Let it be someone else's concern. ]Think down a generation and let the young, for whom it probably has no sentimental value and for whose intrinsic value they have no concern, inherit eleven instead of twelve place settings and just eleven cups with nine saucers, and some of those a bit chipped on the rim.

Someone, whom I should recall but can't, wondered, while retrieving his dropped paper from the floor, what else he could do while he was down there. It took me six years to lose the funny side of that. It is not funny: it is practical labour-saving, back-saving, heartfelt advice. Never drop a pepper pot unless you have a collection of let-it- wait-for-a-moment other things to pick up. I now walk over the same mis-placed cat toy forty four times before a dropped tissue and an unidentifiable scrap of rubbish make the bending down efficiency friendly. Buying in bulk has lost its purpose, too. Taking its place is 'if I'm spared.' Why would I leave a cupboard full of Buy-one get Three Frees for someone else to have to rent a skip.. I don't know if they are called 'skips' in Mountain View California. Explanation: when one has an exceptional load of rubbish at any one time one rings a builder to hire one or more of these large open tanks which are then treated as your own personal disposal unit. Illustration: I answered the phone to a nephew at a moment when I was attempting to clear the back log on my desk - and around it, if I am honest.I explained my waste-paper based task. In response to his polite wish not to be an intrusion, I said that, in the fulness of time, my young would be well advised to order two skips even before they rang the Undertaker. His rejoinder: "if they order two skips, they may not need an Undertaker." Quite.

Anyway, the Festive Season has left me with a great deal of previously unacknowledged respect for my former self. I did all that, in triplicate, and danced through the night after it. "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" I ask myself. Down there melted on the floor where I can't bend down to wipe them up. Prynhawn da,

Unmentionables

The other day, I read that research has uncovered an interesting phenomenon. I can see them now, po-faced, without irony, a slightly puzzled frown, bending over the statistics, coming to this startling conclusion. (Unsurprisingly, my picture is of a pile of papers on a desk: yours is of a bunch of computers, blind pulled down to shield the screens from the sun). The phenomenon?: Ah yes, that sex tails off after the birth of a/some children. The astute - and diligent - among you will have noticed that sex has been rather a pre-occupation in recent posts. First, I have to tell you, at my -any? - age, sex IS somewhat of a pre-occupation, and not only in recent posts. (This is where the Guru decides he has no obligation to read on.) Anyway, some people have noted and published findings that, once women become Mothers, sexual activity declines seriously in a high proportion of cases. Exhaustion, and, even extreme exhaustion, were put forward as reasons. An awareness of the loss of, or, at least, a change in the woman's looks, leaving her feeling unattractive, was another. However, I noticed that the article constantly referred to the woman as 'the Mum' and therein hides the clue. Men are not necessarily set up to find 'Mums' attractive. What's more, women do not readily respond, sexually, to the Mumness in them. You will note, I have spoken didactically although I did not take part in this research. But, more than three score and ten years of life as a female, many of them spent entangled in the complexities of relations between the genders, does give me a bit of a license to didact. At any rate, I have assumed it. Here goes: incest, one of the last taboos, you will agree, does not exactly rear its ugly head so much as give us a sharp prod from the inside. A man lying with a woman who has now joined the mysterious community of 'Mother' may find his inner world confused as to whose Mother. He may even lie in the land of Motherdom under a covering mist which obscures his sight, and be disinclined to make a mistake as to exactly whose Mother he is with: his own? The woman, in the meantime, is immersed in her primaeval role. What with one thing and another, which of us should be astonished at this failure of events to turn? "Oedipus, Schmoedipus," as the Jewish joke goes, "What does it matter, so long as he loves his Mother". And let us not forget Electra.

Despite an attempt to be anodyne and, even, careful, I suspect I have been somewhat contentious. Liz is never comfortable with that position, preferring to be cosily lovable, so I await your brickbats with some tension and some apprehension. As to pre-occupation, it may amuse you to know that, not long ago, I went with a friend to a One Man Show in a theatre in the heart of London. We had seats in the very front row with a raised stage immediately before us. This brought our eye levels just about to the top of the actor's legs. Need I say more? That was an occasion when the forty-year old was rather more in evidence than she of greater age. Mesmerised, I doubt I took in much of what else went on on stage. I was too cowardly to ask my friend her view - no pun intended - but, when, as an acquaintance of his, she suggested we went round to see him, I did feel my imagination might boggle over. What would I say, "I did enjoy my view of....?" As it happened, the queue for this pleasure was long and she decided we'd be better off going home. A contemporary asked my thoughts about sexuality and the likelihood of sex in older age, believing she was the only one plagued with a platonic partner. I asked the one candidate of the right age to whom such a question might be acceptable. He laughed. 'Res ipsa loquitur', as the lawyers say: that speaks for itself. Hope springs eternal.... Prynhawn da