I have just had a delicious lunch with a newish friend. She is about ten years younger than I so rather on the cusp of the mores with which I grew up. We talked about these and compared them with the way the young live, now. Not a lot of scope for originality in such a discussion but we enjoyed it and our personal examples of kicking over the traces. I remember my first break away from "the way things were done" in the parental home. I put a bar of soap at the wash basin and another at the bath. Imagine: no more leaning from the basin over the bath to reach the soap in its little dent on the far side and no more converse leaning precipitously out of the bath for the soap- dish which was, as you would expect, on the far side of the basin. Goodness knows why my Mother did'nt think it proper to have two bars of soap. It may have been to do with the war and rationing, but, logically, one wouldnt use more soap if there were two bars; just use the same amount more efficiently. My first rebellion outside the home was much more dramatic. I don't know how old you are but you have to be quite old to remember the hooded prisons that served as hairdryers until, what seems to me, comparatively recently. The hairdresser, having rolled one's hair, while wet, in to tight ringlets around a wire holder, would then place one under one of these prisons. They blew hot air, very hot air, around one's head, neck and ears and, incidentally, dried one's hair. I say incidentally, because that didn't seem to be the purpose the longer one was under the grill. I know, now, that, in fact, this method is not very good for the hair and dries it out rather than just drying it. I, being well-brought-up, for which read unaturally obedient, would wait, meekly, until the 'stylist' deemed me cooked. My neck burned, my ears hurt and I may have been living isolated from human voice inside this roaring monster for ever, but move: never. Then came the day, I must have been twenty five at least , when I thought ENOUGH, and, gingerly, heart thumping, slid from under the damned thing, craned my neck to reach its works and SWITCHED IT OFF. I sat there waiting for Nemesis, heart still thumping, and all that happened was that a junior came up, moved the machine backwards,and said "Oh, are you dry? Mr Davies won't be long" and, with a smile, left me to cool off. Dear Reader, I never suffered a burned neck again. Now one just has to put up with the roar of the hand held monster blowing dry ones hair but not ones surrounding body parts.
Which brings me to another simplification of rebellion. "Mr. Davies": to this day I don't know what Mr Davies's first name was. When I am in my home town, which, as it happens, I miss very much since I managed to sell the seaside studio, (see below), I drive passed his Salon and think about him. He and the salon have long since vanished and I regularly play with the idea of trying, still, to find out what he was called. His wife was Sheila. I know this because he would instruct her to pass him things or "see to the phone, Sheila" and she would do whatever with a professional nod and "Yes, Mr. Davies". My lunch companion had similar memories although she did know her hairdresser's name because it was over the door of the salon, "Ivan Downes, Hair Stylist". Of course, she never would have called him other than Mr Downes except, she was too timid to call him anything at all. Currently, the young man who washes my hair calls me Liz and when I wished to send a Christmas card to the man who cuts it I had to ring the salon and ask his surname. My friend's first remembered rebellion was to throw away the white gloves her school obliged her to wear whenever she was in uniform outside the school. She was worried that it wasn't really good enough as an example because she did it only on the last day she was ever at the school. Her Mother was really cross having planned that the gloves would be perfectly good enough for church for years to come.
Sadly, in my experience, leaving rebellion too long can result in disaster. For instance, it can be quite hard on a partner if you start, say, married life bland and compliant and during the course of it become sassy and opinionated. My friend and I decided the current young were truer to themselves much earlier. Whether or not that makes them better relationship material it's hard to assess. There may be potential for great pain in the diminution of the duty and obligation, the doing-what-is expected -of-you factor. What do you think?
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Shared love
Time flies when you are having fun. No, seriously, I hadnt realised how long it has been since I was at the computer, for nice things, like blogging, as opposed to nasty things like filling in forms on line. As I have told you before, it seems to be a favourite hobby of the Wizard of Cyberspace, stealing my posts before I have published them, but after I have got nearly to the end of writing them. It seems clear that he and I share an attachment to them. It started me thinking about what happens when more than one of you wants/loves the same thing in a way which is not compatible, Today's example is with my beloved cat. Now, she and I are in agreement that she is totally lovable and totally the boss; no dissonance there. To strangers, though, she is not always user friendly and has been dubbed "devil cat" by my son at whom she routinely hisses. The current problem is that we both like the same chair, or, anyway, the fabric covering it. I am very fond of its tweedy look and feel. So is she. However, while I am pleased by its feel and its appearance, she is pleased only by its feel and digs her claws in to it and kneeds and scrapes and tears and pulls and generally makes a meal of it. So, there are we, ad idem about the desirability of the same object but rather different in our approach to it. Indeed, her prediliction precludes mine: it now looks awful. Simarlarly, bed; we both prefer the same side of a bed which is easily big enough to accommodate me and her and several others. Naturally, if she is lying on the best side, I decamp to the other remembering to take with me a portable phone, a pen and some tissues all of which are readily available without moving or effort on THE side. Oh well, as someone once observed, all over the world people are undergoing extreme discomfort in order not to disturb the cat, so I am not the only one.
I can see that there are rather more painful examples of shared love. I think about women who, married for decades, peacefully - apparently - tolerate living in a situation where the husband has a second life/wife running concurrently with her own. I realise that it is comparatively modern in certain circles, for marriages to be based solely on love and for exclusivity to be expected. Previously, marriages had an element of expediency, didnt they? Like, my lands adjoin yours or, between us we have such good genes we ought to propogate. In -loveness was reserved for outside the marriage. In other spheres, as I understand it, it was thought manly to have affairs. This is hardly original thinking, but I do, often, reflect on the potential for pain in the 'run of the mill' relationships where exclusivity HAS been expected and is not forthcoming.
As those of you who have loyally been with me all along may have noticed, I am interested - very - in the effects of sibling rivalry. Now there's an example of a shared love, or a shared love-object, anyway. As I have observed it, it can be one of the most formative of human experiences and usually comes very early. I know a little girl who has scarcely slept since the arrival of her little brother about six months ago. Her frazzled parents have tried everything except the one thing that would do the trick, to send him back from whence he came. You know, even cats feel it. In another life, I had the Mother and two of her little ones. One was clearly the mother's favourite. That did leave me in a special position with the other one, who was timid and quiet and glad of a lap where she was welcome. After the death of the mother, my timid friend came right in to her own. No more quiet naps on my lap or sitting by my feet while the other two cuddled up together on the settee. She fought for her position where she had never dared to sit before and even stuck her nose in to her sister's food if she fancied it. I was totally bowled over by surprise. You'd think Nature had endowed a mother cat with all those tits just so as to avoid the necessity of sharing and consequent rivalry. That could be a good idea for genetic engineering in human Mothers, too. Do you agree?
I can see that there are rather more painful examples of shared love. I think about women who, married for decades, peacefully - apparently - tolerate living in a situation where the husband has a second life/wife running concurrently with her own. I realise that it is comparatively modern in certain circles, for marriages to be based solely on love and for exclusivity to be expected. Previously, marriages had an element of expediency, didnt they? Like, my lands adjoin yours or, between us we have such good genes we ought to propogate. In -loveness was reserved for outside the marriage. In other spheres, as I understand it, it was thought manly to have affairs. This is hardly original thinking, but I do, often, reflect on the potential for pain in the 'run of the mill' relationships where exclusivity HAS been expected and is not forthcoming.
As those of you who have loyally been with me all along may have noticed, I am interested - very - in the effects of sibling rivalry. Now there's an example of a shared love, or a shared love-object, anyway. As I have observed it, it can be one of the most formative of human experiences and usually comes very early. I know a little girl who has scarcely slept since the arrival of her little brother about six months ago. Her frazzled parents have tried everything except the one thing that would do the trick, to send him back from whence he came. You know, even cats feel it. In another life, I had the Mother and two of her little ones. One was clearly the mother's favourite. That did leave me in a special position with the other one, who was timid and quiet and glad of a lap where she was welcome. After the death of the mother, my timid friend came right in to her own. No more quiet naps on my lap or sitting by my feet while the other two cuddled up together on the settee. She fought for her position where she had never dared to sit before and even stuck her nose in to her sister's food if she fancied it. I was totally bowled over by surprise. You'd think Nature had endowed a mother cat with all those tits just so as to avoid the necessity of sharing and consequent rivalry. That could be a good idea for genetic engineering in human Mothers, too. Do you agree?
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Magic
I am so excited. Looking at my site-meter, I see that someone has been along to the blogspot from Melbourne. I do hope they were interested enough to 'see a few below' and that they will come back for more. At this moment I don't know how many they read because I haven't the courage to move from here and have another look at the site-meter, and I was too excited to notice when I was there. Those of you who have been keeping up will remember my terror of the Wizard of Cyberspace. I know, and he knows I know, that the second I move he can swoop in and remove all trace of what I have been doing. Anyway, it is very exciting. It would be lovely actually to meet a reader from Down Under. Do you feel inclined to leave a comment so that I can find out how you fell on this particular blog? Not that I don't value all of you who bother to look at my view of life at 75 when you are quite definitely 30 years younger in your inner world. But I am old enough to see Australia as a very long way away; a different world. So please don't mind if I've been less enthusiastic in the past about, say, Clapham.
That dealt with, I want to go back to something I was thinking about in the last post: the beauty of the performer. There were several comments posted. One suggested that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is a factor, but it doesn't go far enough as I understand it. I have spent so many years as an acute but detached observer I think I may be able to take in to account the eye of the beholder. A thought I would like to add, though, is that it may be something to do with concentration. It may be that signs of wear and tear, personal sadness, worry lines, even fun lines, expressons, are erased in the cause of the intensity of concentration required in performance, be it voice, or instrument or motor vehicle or the giving of life to a group of evidently lifeless wooden puppets. I saw the particular performance of the puppet opera which has so impressed me four times in a row. The wonder was never dimmed. Each time, taking a bow with the singers, the puppeteers brought the puppets on and held their hands and gave them obeisance: I doubt there was one member of the audience who didn't accept this as normal: we were acknowledging all the performers. I recall the adrenalin shock I felt, back stage later, to see these bundles of clothes, wooden limbs and heads flopping all over the place, suspended on a rail waiting to be re-humanised another time.
Perhaps I am talking about magic. Perhaps the Wizard of Cyberspace knows all about giving life to wooden dolls - and taking my work from me. When I was little, I used a device I'm sure you are all familiar with. If Iwanted to forecast an event I would say to myself that if a) happened it would be a way of indicating that b) would, too. You know the sort of thing: if the light turns green before we get to it then the letter I have been waiting for will be on the doormat when we get home. Not to make it happen, you understand, just as prior information. Ok, I'll come clean; I still do it. No, I'm not going to give you the ratio of right to wrong and I'm not even going to mention the prosaic word co-incidence.
There was another kind of magic in my experience, yesterday. I had tea, formal English tea-time tea, in a famous London store. (Never mind which one. You'll all want to go and then there will be a queue and no magic.) We had it all. A cake stand with layers appeared, sandwiches - no crusts - on one level, scones on another and pastries on a third. We were invited to choose from twenty two kinds of tea and offered a glass of champagne. There is no experience to equal it. Had my Mother been there it would have been hats and gloves. She wasn't but it was her scene and mine, too, until we all reached the age of discrimination and weight problems. There was one hitch: my companion found a hair in her scone. Torn between the reassurance that the scones had, really, been hand made and the natural squeamishness she felt at its presence, she called the Manager. A delightful lady appeared and offered her all kinds of compensation, more champagne - she hadnt had any - more scones, more sandwiches, the store. My friend was mollified by the care and the attention. It was enough to know they were mortified. The magic of the occasion was ultimately ratified by the annulation of the bill. Not a sous would they accept. Now, I hope I've done the right thing in telling you. There will be a queue not only for a table but for a stray hair as well. I should have kept quiet. Now everyone is going to want one. Never mind. You are welcome and I don't suppose you are really going to come all the way from Melbourne just to find a hair in your scone. See you soon.
That dealt with, I want to go back to something I was thinking about in the last post: the beauty of the performer. There were several comments posted. One suggested that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is a factor, but it doesn't go far enough as I understand it. I have spent so many years as an acute but detached observer I think I may be able to take in to account the eye of the beholder. A thought I would like to add, though, is that it may be something to do with concentration. It may be that signs of wear and tear, personal sadness, worry lines, even fun lines, expressons, are erased in the cause of the intensity of concentration required in performance, be it voice, or instrument or motor vehicle or the giving of life to a group of evidently lifeless wooden puppets. I saw the particular performance of the puppet opera which has so impressed me four times in a row. The wonder was never dimmed. Each time, taking a bow with the singers, the puppeteers brought the puppets on and held their hands and gave them obeisance: I doubt there was one member of the audience who didn't accept this as normal: we were acknowledging all the performers. I recall the adrenalin shock I felt, back stage later, to see these bundles of clothes, wooden limbs and heads flopping all over the place, suspended on a rail waiting to be re-humanised another time.
Perhaps I am talking about magic. Perhaps the Wizard of Cyberspace knows all about giving life to wooden dolls - and taking my work from me. When I was little, I used a device I'm sure you are all familiar with. If Iwanted to forecast an event I would say to myself that if a) happened it would be a way of indicating that b) would, too. You know the sort of thing: if the light turns green before we get to it then the letter I have been waiting for will be on the doormat when we get home. Not to make it happen, you understand, just as prior information. Ok, I'll come clean; I still do it. No, I'm not going to give you the ratio of right to wrong and I'm not even going to mention the prosaic word co-incidence.
There was another kind of magic in my experience, yesterday. I had tea, formal English tea-time tea, in a famous London store. (Never mind which one. You'll all want to go and then there will be a queue and no magic.) We had it all. A cake stand with layers appeared, sandwiches - no crusts - on one level, scones on another and pastries on a third. We were invited to choose from twenty two kinds of tea and offered a glass of champagne. There is no experience to equal it. Had my Mother been there it would have been hats and gloves. She wasn't but it was her scene and mine, too, until we all reached the age of discrimination and weight problems. There was one hitch: my companion found a hair in her scone. Torn between the reassurance that the scones had, really, been hand made and the natural squeamishness she felt at its presence, she called the Manager. A delightful lady appeared and offered her all kinds of compensation, more champagne - she hadnt had any - more scones, more sandwiches, the store. My friend was mollified by the care and the attention. It was enough to know they were mortified. The magic of the occasion was ultimately ratified by the annulation of the bill. Not a sous would they accept. Now, I hope I've done the right thing in telling you. There will be a queue not only for a table but for a stray hair as well. I should have kept quiet. Now everyone is going to want one. Never mind. You are welcome and I don't suppose you are really going to come all the way from Melbourne just to find a hair in your scone. See you soon.
Monday, 15 June 2009
Managing
There is a problem. I am sufficiently computer literate to accomplish a number of things which seems to have deceived me in to thinking I can do it all. I can't. When I am not at home I have no way to publish a post on my blog because I wouldn't know where to start in an internet cafe or even in the warm and welcoming 'Business Centre' at an Hotel. The good news is that the Guru will spend some time here soon and it's 'teach me how to compute from elsewhere or go hungry'. Actually, threatening 'go thirsty' might make more sense: likes his tipple does my young guru. I know, I know, I am always making excuses when there has been too long a gap between posts, but they are always real enough to me. One of the things I enjoy most is writing this blog so over-coming technical hassle has got to be a priority. Last time the Guru observed me at the computer, he had a Damascan moment. It seems one of the reasons the Wizard of Cyberspace can get me is because I drop my wrists on to the front of the machine and cut off its blood supply, or whatever it is it needs to keep going. Instantly, I was transported back 65 years. "Wrists" would bellow my piano teacher. "Wrists; lift your wrists if you please". This would be followed by a sharp whack on the back of my hand if it were not the first time of telling. I swear my hands hurt even as I am writing this.
The gap occured because I have been away. I spent two days in Germany to hear my favourite opera conducted by my favourite musician. As those of you who have been kind enough to keep up will know, I do tend to find airports difficult. This time I was travelling alone and the journey required a change of flights, so, four airplanes in two days. That's an awful lot of manoeuvering and managing of bags in loos and so on, and so on This time, it was also in a foreign language so I was in constant danger of wrong- place wrong- time syndrome. I have, however, made a useful discovery. If one orders a wheel chair life becomes somewhat easier, even without a rugby player with a nice behind. (see beow) It is not unmitigated ease. The down-side is that one instantly becomes the subject of infantilisation. One's passport and boarding-card are confiscated, presumably on the assumption that, if one can't walk, then one's arms are too short to reach up to the relevant agents and hand over the documents oneself. Imagine: you have spent the best part of seventy five years managing yourself and other people very well, thank you, and suddenly you are not capable of managing two bits of paper and have to ask permission to go to the loo. The good news - and there IS, of course, good news, is that your bits and pieces are all looked after by Nanny while you deal with Nature's requirements and, a big AND, you can use the Disabled loos which are big enough even for Pavarotti and his carry-on baggage. In fact, I have taken to using those loos anyway when I have no baggage-guardian to help me. Now, you may have gathered over the blogspace that I can quite enjoy being in a 'special' position but it is certainly rough with the smooth if the stand-out quality involves a wheelchair and an airport.
Seriously though, there is a market niche for someone to train 'helpers' in the wheelchair world. I am humbled that this is not a permanent way of life for me but I still felt my gorge rise when two - yes, two -huge men strapped me in to a kitchen chair with wheels to wheel me from one section of airport to another. I did suggest, in the little German I could muster, that, even though this was not your conventional wheelchair, I was not going to fall out. I got a 'jobsworth' response that brooked no discussion. In the cold light of intellect I can see they had a point: their fault if the passenger fell out and, Heaven Forfend, might SUE the airline, but what has happened to discretion and taking circumstances in to account? It is fifty years since I worked for an Airline. What were the regulations then? Can't remember. Is it rose-colured glasses or were we more human, more flexible and less, well uniform, then? Maybe we just had more time.
Anyway, I am safe back having had a really good time. After the performance I was invited to the 'pub' with the musicians. There is this strange phenomenon I have noticed before. On stage you are aware of great beauty and aura. In the pub, they look like the rest of us, good- or not so good- looking, ordinary people, plumbers, teachers, whatever. Once, I saw a puppet opera where the puppeteers were all on the stage, part of the performance. I remember wondering how the director had found such without- exception beauty in the faces of his cast; how much auditioning both for talent and for grace and loveliness. Later, in the post performance restaurant, there they were, normal, some good-looking, some, downright plain. It is fascinating. On one extraordinary occasion, I saw the late Ayrton Senna in his car in the moments before his visor came down: transformed. What is this radiant beauty, what causes it where does it go? Discuss. See you soon.
The gap occured because I have been away. I spent two days in Germany to hear my favourite opera conducted by my favourite musician. As those of you who have been kind enough to keep up will know, I do tend to find airports difficult. This time I was travelling alone and the journey required a change of flights, so, four airplanes in two days. That's an awful lot of manoeuvering and managing of bags in loos and so on, and so on This time, it was also in a foreign language so I was in constant danger of wrong- place wrong- time syndrome. I have, however, made a useful discovery. If one orders a wheel chair life becomes somewhat easier, even without a rugby player with a nice behind. (see beow) It is not unmitigated ease. The down-side is that one instantly becomes the subject of infantilisation. One's passport and boarding-card are confiscated, presumably on the assumption that, if one can't walk, then one's arms are too short to reach up to the relevant agents and hand over the documents oneself. Imagine: you have spent the best part of seventy five years managing yourself and other people very well, thank you, and suddenly you are not capable of managing two bits of paper and have to ask permission to go to the loo. The good news - and there IS, of course, good news, is that your bits and pieces are all looked after by Nanny while you deal with Nature's requirements and, a big AND, you can use the Disabled loos which are big enough even for Pavarotti and his carry-on baggage. In fact, I have taken to using those loos anyway when I have no baggage-guardian to help me. Now, you may have gathered over the blogspace that I can quite enjoy being in a 'special' position but it is certainly rough with the smooth if the stand-out quality involves a wheelchair and an airport.
Seriously though, there is a market niche for someone to train 'helpers' in the wheelchair world. I am humbled that this is not a permanent way of life for me but I still felt my gorge rise when two - yes, two -huge men strapped me in to a kitchen chair with wheels to wheel me from one section of airport to another. I did suggest, in the little German I could muster, that, even though this was not your conventional wheelchair, I was not going to fall out. I got a 'jobsworth' response that brooked no discussion. In the cold light of intellect I can see they had a point: their fault if the passenger fell out and, Heaven Forfend, might SUE the airline, but what has happened to discretion and taking circumstances in to account? It is fifty years since I worked for an Airline. What were the regulations then? Can't remember. Is it rose-colured glasses or were we more human, more flexible and less, well uniform, then? Maybe we just had more time.
Anyway, I am safe back having had a really good time. After the performance I was invited to the 'pub' with the musicians. There is this strange phenomenon I have noticed before. On stage you are aware of great beauty and aura. In the pub, they look like the rest of us, good- or not so good- looking, ordinary people, plumbers, teachers, whatever. Once, I saw a puppet opera where the puppeteers were all on the stage, part of the performance. I remember wondering how the director had found such without- exception beauty in the faces of his cast; how much auditioning both for talent and for grace and loveliness. Later, in the post performance restaurant, there they were, normal, some good-looking, some, downright plain. It is fascinating. On one extraordinary occasion, I saw the late Ayrton Senna in his car in the moments before his visor came down: transformed. What is this radiant beauty, what causes it where does it go? Discuss. See you soon.
Friday, 5 June 2009
Friendship
Yesterday, a friend I have known for exactly 50 years died. She died in another country and it was her wish to be cremated quickly and with only her blood relatives to send her off. My head is respecting that but my inner self is confused never having seen blood as a necessary part of feeling related. I had been in daily touch, except for yesterday. This is both irony and, perhaps, fate, so I found out only when her son-in-law telephoned, this morning, to tell me she had died and had already been cremated. Poor man has had to deal with the reaction of countless people when they realised they were being told after the event. Clearly, this was the only way to be sure the family was not swamped by those who have known and loved her as long and longer than I have. I am having to face two apparently divergent aspects of friendship: to offer up in sacrifice my instinct to say goodbye, in view of her wishes, or to see a natural and automatic expression of love in attending her funeral.
Either way, this time, it was never a real choice, just a philosophical one. English was not her first language and we laugh often at her response to my then six-year-old son when he corrected something she had said;"Hm, there vas a time I taught YOU English." She was good and wise and other-worldly in the depth of her awareness. Hand on heart, I can say I never heard a malicious or ill-judged word from her. Her serenity shone through adversity I wouldn't have room - or courage - to tell you about. What can I say? We had her a long time. It makes it harder to imagine a life without her.
Her death set me thinking about friendship in a wider way. How would I measure it? For instance, looking at myself in the mirror as I dried my hair, to-day, I wondered how many of the people I think of as friends I could consider submitting to a sight of me wet and bedraggled and, worse, without make-up. An elderly lady without make-up is not a pretty sight. You should know that I wear very little, I add, hastily, just enough to even out the colour and give myself eyes. On reflection, (oops, pun just spotted), there are not as many people as I have fingers whom I would subject to the experience. The poor Guru is here so often it's unavoidable for him. He is so young I suspect he can't see any difference between 75-year-old me and Methuselah. Old is more than thirty, no degrees , no sub-divisions. Poor lamb: not much of a positive role-model in me with my creaks and wobbles, whatever age I may feel on the inside. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that greater love has no elderly woman than she may lay out a sight of her naked face for another. (I'm not sure of the propriety of plagiarising the laying down of ones life for another, but, myself, I enjoyed the allusion.) Anyway, should we meet in the street and I am not wearing make-up, you will know I love you.
Either way, this time, it was never a real choice, just a philosophical one. English was not her first language and we laugh often at her response to my then six-year-old son when he corrected something she had said;"Hm, there vas a time I taught YOU English." She was good and wise and other-worldly in the depth of her awareness. Hand on heart, I can say I never heard a malicious or ill-judged word from her. Her serenity shone through adversity I wouldn't have room - or courage - to tell you about. What can I say? We had her a long time. It makes it harder to imagine a life without her.
Her death set me thinking about friendship in a wider way. How would I measure it? For instance, looking at myself in the mirror as I dried my hair, to-day, I wondered how many of the people I think of as friends I could consider submitting to a sight of me wet and bedraggled and, worse, without make-up. An elderly lady without make-up is not a pretty sight. You should know that I wear very little, I add, hastily, just enough to even out the colour and give myself eyes. On reflection, (oops, pun just spotted), there are not as many people as I have fingers whom I would subject to the experience. The poor Guru is here so often it's unavoidable for him. He is so young I suspect he can't see any difference between 75-year-old me and Methuselah. Old is more than thirty, no degrees , no sub-divisions. Poor lamb: not much of a positive role-model in me with my creaks and wobbles, whatever age I may feel on the inside. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that greater love has no elderly woman than she may lay out a sight of her naked face for another. (I'm not sure of the propriety of plagiarising the laying down of ones life for another, but, myself, I enjoyed the allusion.) Anyway, should we meet in the street and I am not wearing make-up, you will know I love you.
Thursday, 21 May 2009
More Adapting
Those of you who have been loyally keeping up and are more numerate than I will have noticed that I had numbered my 'Retirement' blogs incorrectly. There are really user-friendly options for editing blogs so I have been able to rectify my mistakes and would even have got away with new readers not even knowing how stupid I am if the habit of confession was not so intrenched in my guilt-ridden character. But there you are; I feel obliged to acknowledge my failure of pagination and promise to do better in future. Indeed, I have taken the softer option of calling this blog "More Adapting" just in case I have already adapted more times than I can remember telling you. What comes to mind as I write, is the occasion I was driving along Knightsbridge in search of Blue Badge Holder disabled parking spaces. If you are on the other side of the Pond or even on this island but not familiar with London, Knightsbridge is a broad thoroughfare going roughly east to west. (I only know which is west if a route could be headed towards Wales. This one is.) It is always very busy, indeed, with Hyde Park Corner at one end and Harrods at the other. (Now, wherever you are, you can't pretend you haven't heard of Harrods). Anyway, I was driving east along this road with the Blue Badge spaces on the other side of the road. I was just toying with the idea of doing a 'U' turn in the road, as had always been my wont, to reach Mecca, when a young man, in what I am reliably given to understand was an open-top Porsche, did just that, but from west to east, so that he ended up cutting in front of me with just about enough room to avoid a collision. Giving me a very cheeky grin, he pushed on regardless, regardless anyway, of the effect on me of his audacity. The effect was life-changing: I was forced to see that it would not be a good look on an elderly lady in an ancient saloon to swing across the stream of traffic as he had done. For one thing, given sexism and ageism, I risked being dubbed dotty- in- charge- of- a- motor- vehicle and even losing my right to drive. So, Dear Reader, I proceeded sedately east to Hyde Park Corner, drove round it and continued demurely back west towards my goal, the disabled parking bays. Or, as my English teacher would have corrected, the parking bays for the disabled. You may not think an extra five or seven minutes of' 'comme il faut' driving much of an adaptation, but, sh, I have been known to drive much less than sedately in my youth, which lasted, in driving terms, pretty much until the day before yesterday.
It may be that this next thought is not so much an adaptation as a giving up. (Adaptation is tantamount to Giving Up: discuss). Anyway, I thought you would be struck by an irony that distracted me from my German for Absolute Beginners lesson. Next door to the room where the class is held is another class. Each week, during my class, I have noticed vaguely Eastern music which can be quite intrusive and definitely not Teutonic. This time I asked a fellow student: Belly Dancing: yes, really, Belly Dancing. Something rather optimistic, to put it mildly, to teach in the University of the third age wouldn't you agree? Although, as you know, I love to dance, my inner eye boggled. Since I am just about the youngest in this class, and, certainly in the Advanced French class, though probably less mobile than some, it was very hard to visualise the possible candidates for a class in Belly Dancing. Can one Belly Dance with a zimmer frame, I ask myself? Next week I am going to find the courage to peer through the door and give my inner eye some peace. I hope I can maintain a proper respect for what I see. No, seriously, I do not want to be tempted to mock or feel superior. I don't. My 40 year old self never saw herself as a Belly Dancer and it has to be too late, now. Hasn't it....... ?
It may be that this next thought is not so much an adaptation as a giving up. (Adaptation is tantamount to Giving Up: discuss). Anyway, I thought you would be struck by an irony that distracted me from my German for Absolute Beginners lesson. Next door to the room where the class is held is another class. Each week, during my class, I have noticed vaguely Eastern music which can be quite intrusive and definitely not Teutonic. This time I asked a fellow student: Belly Dancing: yes, really, Belly Dancing. Something rather optimistic, to put it mildly, to teach in the University of the third age wouldn't you agree? Although, as you know, I love to dance, my inner eye boggled. Since I am just about the youngest in this class, and, certainly in the Advanced French class, though probably less mobile than some, it was very hard to visualise the possible candidates for a class in Belly Dancing. Can one Belly Dance with a zimmer frame, I ask myself? Next week I am going to find the courage to peer through the door and give my inner eye some peace. I hope I can maintain a proper respect for what I see. No, seriously, I do not want to be tempted to mock or feel superior. I don't. My 40 year old self never saw herself as a Belly Dancer and it has to be too late, now. Hasn't it....... ?
Friday, 15 May 2009
Reunions
You may well have had the experience. If you haven't, believe me, there is little stranger than walking in to a situation where there are 130 people you haven't seen for 55 years! I have been to a Reunion of my college year and a few years on either side. Dear Reader, unadulterated grey hair and stooped backs is not a good look nor did I relish the realisation that I looked just like that. To be fair, my hair is not grey, just mousie and I am fairly straight backed, but there is always the jolly old stick and the tell-tale humping and heaving if I want to get out of my chair. It was a solar-plexus- shock situation, I have to say, but I fixed a smile to my face and tried to recognise the better known by extracting the middle section out of their shapes and form and concentrating on that. It helped that we were issued with name badges, although not all the women had both their maiden names and their current ones printed on them. (I was one who didn't, but then, one of the reasons I married Himself was to acquire a surname that didn't need spelling: yes, really)
I have never been tempted to attend such a meeting before. That is, I have been tempted but never given in to temptation. There was always the excuse that I was working and not able to spare the time. Well, I am not working now and I have the time. I was also attracted to the thought of lunch on a Thames cruiser. It was a glorious day and the auspices all in place, so off I went. Bus to the nearest point to the pier and then a taxi. 75 year olds don't often walk briskly from Embankment Station to Savoy Pier and I was not about to set the record. Before long, I saw a known face; not a former student but the girlfriend then wife of one I knew well. Soon, my well-known friend appeared, too, and recognised me. Then, Dear Reader, I did something I would never have had the courage to do 55 years ago, I found out where I was placed for lunch and set about changing it! Without even asking my recognised friends I had myself added to their table rather than sit with the total strangers to whom I had been assigned. I knew I would have to deal with the guilt at some later point but at least I was not going to have to spend the whole cruise a foreigner on a table of those foreign to me.
We have all seen those films and TV programmes where an effect is created by the means of Flashback. Well, you may take it from me, this is a phenomenon which actually occurs. As gradually I recognised more and more past friends and acquaintances, so a vignette of something we had shared ran over the screen of my memory. There was potential for discomfort. Not all the recall would have borne public re-telling. Looking at an elderly gentleman, lean and good-looking, sparse grey hair brushed to one side, presumably to hide a multitude of no- hair, leaning on a stick, I saw us locked in a room in his Godfather's house, lent to us for a party, going "as far as young people went " in those days, with my future - had I but known it - husband invigilating outside. I had had no idea how he felt about me until we tripped over him when we opened the door. It was rather touching, then, and strange to remember, now, because I think he may have spent much of our life together punishing me for that episode. He had been a thousand times better known than I at college. He was President of this and Chairman of that. I spent much time giving updates about his life. It was strange to be remembered, to some extent, as an adjunct to him. My daughters would not have relished that; it's not the way things are for women now is it?
The screen of ones memory must be in black and white, ideally, because what struck me most about that afternoon, was the change of colours. If, with my inner eye, I recoloured the faces in front of me, making the hair blond or brown or dark, the cheeks pink,the eyes bright then I could truly see my friends of more than half a century ago. I needed, too, to carve a shape from the middle of the forms and to erase the flesh excessive to the jaw and cheek and there they were, as they had been. On our table there were no questions about certain ones of us who had been significant at the time. Several I knew had died. Others I didn't dare ask after. Some had found fame and some infamy. The river was beautiful. But it kept moving and changing, as had all of us. There were buildings on the banks new even since I fled from Neil Diamond on to the river bus with no ticket, as you will remember if you have been keeping up. Those of us who had been helped in to the 21st Century exchanged email addresses and those who hadn't ,exchanged cards. Will we keep in touch, now? What do you think?
I have never been tempted to attend such a meeting before. That is, I have been tempted but never given in to temptation. There was always the excuse that I was working and not able to spare the time. Well, I am not working now and I have the time. I was also attracted to the thought of lunch on a Thames cruiser. It was a glorious day and the auspices all in place, so off I went. Bus to the nearest point to the pier and then a taxi. 75 year olds don't often walk briskly from Embankment Station to Savoy Pier and I was not about to set the record. Before long, I saw a known face; not a former student but the girlfriend then wife of one I knew well. Soon, my well-known friend appeared, too, and recognised me. Then, Dear Reader, I did something I would never have had the courage to do 55 years ago, I found out where I was placed for lunch and set about changing it! Without even asking my recognised friends I had myself added to their table rather than sit with the total strangers to whom I had been assigned. I knew I would have to deal with the guilt at some later point but at least I was not going to have to spend the whole cruise a foreigner on a table of those foreign to me.
We have all seen those films and TV programmes where an effect is created by the means of Flashback. Well, you may take it from me, this is a phenomenon which actually occurs. As gradually I recognised more and more past friends and acquaintances, so a vignette of something we had shared ran over the screen of my memory. There was potential for discomfort. Not all the recall would have borne public re-telling. Looking at an elderly gentleman, lean and good-looking, sparse grey hair brushed to one side, presumably to hide a multitude of no- hair, leaning on a stick, I saw us locked in a room in his Godfather's house, lent to us for a party, going "as far as young people went " in those days, with my future - had I but known it - husband invigilating outside. I had had no idea how he felt about me until we tripped over him when we opened the door. It was rather touching, then, and strange to remember, now, because I think he may have spent much of our life together punishing me for that episode. He had been a thousand times better known than I at college. He was President of this and Chairman of that. I spent much time giving updates about his life. It was strange to be remembered, to some extent, as an adjunct to him. My daughters would not have relished that; it's not the way things are for women now is it?
The screen of ones memory must be in black and white, ideally, because what struck me most about that afternoon, was the change of colours. If, with my inner eye, I recoloured the faces in front of me, making the hair blond or brown or dark, the cheeks pink,the eyes bright then I could truly see my friends of more than half a century ago. I needed, too, to carve a shape from the middle of the forms and to erase the flesh excessive to the jaw and cheek and there they were, as they had been. On our table there were no questions about certain ones of us who had been significant at the time. Several I knew had died. Others I didn't dare ask after. Some had found fame and some infamy. The river was beautiful. But it kept moving and changing, as had all of us. There were buildings on the banks new even since I fled from Neil Diamond on to the river bus with no ticket, as you will remember if you have been keeping up. Those of us who had been helped in to the 21st Century exchanged email addresses and those who hadn't ,exchanged cards. Will we keep in touch, now? What do you think?
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