Coalescence

Good Morning. I would have been here the day before yesterday but, just as I was about to click on Publish Post, the entire post disappeared. I tried everything, I promise, from backward arrows to 'drafts' to shaking the laptop, plus things I'm not prepared to tell even you; anyway, lost for ever. So, if any of you is wandering about in cyberspace and sees a post entitled "Coalesence" looking rather aimless, please scoop it up and return it to Liz. I promise not to be cross, although I was very cross when it went awol. I shall have to re-write it before the subject matter goes passed its sell-by date so it will just have to deal with the sibling rivalry.
I am not sure about the title . On reflection, 'coalescence' is probably more about the coming together of eggs, oil and mayonnaise than fits what I have in mind. But there has been a coming together: of my 75 year-old self and my 40 year-old self . I went to hear Neil Diamond. He said "I have been doing this for nearly 4 decades" and I can certainly testify to that because I've been there through them all. Neither of us has changed all that much - in a way, she added, hastily. I had feared he would sing mostly new songs, to promote a new album, but all the oldies were there, too. And yes, I did stand up when he asked us to, and I did jig about and wave my arms and even sing along (my companion turned away, slightly at that point. I wonder why). My current 75, in essence, reacted to him just as my 40 self had done. He was on stage, non-stop, for 2 hours and 10 minutes. Only 8 years younger than I. I have difficulty sitting down at the dinner table for that long. His kindly, American voice-over marshal had told us Mr Diamond would perform without"remission", which I took to be a Freudian slip for "intermission" What he meant, I supose, was that Pit Stops would be at our own risk and on our own time. If ND could go through, then so could I, I vowed, but I couldnt, so I have to confess I did miss 90 seconds of the performance.( 'Remission' also makes it sound like he was inside for something for which he wasnt going to get remission: murder? of the English language, perhaps, because his rhymes and images are not always without query - see Carol King, for example. But I don't care; I don't need my idols to be perfect.) I might have missed one last song, too, because, after the third encore, I began to feel a huge daunt at the thought of leaving the O2 Arena, which is not too far from the end of the Thames in London, with 19,998 other people, all heading for the same underground station at the same time. I dragged my seriously reluctant companion away to find that several thousand others had had the same thought and were all wasping towards the station, which mollified him. On a whim, we turned the other way and ran - picture it, old lady, stick, propelled by excitement and her companion's decisive arm - to the quay where we just caught the water bus back to Waterloo, running past the Jobsworth trying to stop us, ticketless, while he tried to work out whether to run after us and lose some other prey or put it down to experience. My heart was thumping, not only with euphoria but also from an atavistic fear of authority shouting. But it was all worth it. (We must talk about Jobsworths another time).
Lovely, and, yes, since you ask, we did pay on the boat.

L