Four years

Four years have passed since we moved into our house here in Villalobos. In some ways - as we all say - it seems to be only yesterday when we packed up our things yet again and drove out in the drizzle to the countryside. It was such an exciting day...

The lovely table didn't survive.....it collapsed sometime last year.

The garden in its original wild state

Romy happy in the silly little doorway...now reformed to full height!

Four years on and there has been a lot of work. It's involved digging up existing parts, adding new bits, rather a lot of concrete and huge amounts of toil, mainly by FR but with help from the boys on the more back-breaking things!

There has been a lot of planting, building of walls and the placing of strategic electrical points in preparation for summer living....
Lots of trees....walnut, almond, cherry, nectarine, plum, pear,,,,

There's still a lot to do but FR's vision is taking place. I keep putting bulbs every year - slowly but surely our garden is starting to bloom.

I don't have a lot of time for gardening 'proper' but Mateo is a good helper and a brilliant weeder...I'm looking forward to getting the front of the house done...it's still the original ugly concrete that was here when we moved in. In time, it will be a beautiful terrace and additional living space, with furniture and plants and nice things. In time. 

And today, I have just taken a walk down memory lane as I dropped Romy off at her friend's house, which is the house we lived in before we moved here! It's such a beautiful day that I decided to do my old, favourite walk (though sadly without my favourite little white ball of fur that was Darwin....) up through the pine trees to La Mota, glad that there was no one around to hear my panting and puffing as I plodded up the steep hill. About halfway up, I heard a band playing. Practising for Semana Santa. It was lovely to listen and as I got to the top, I could see that they were rehearsing carrying the platforms that in a couple of weeks will be topped with figures of Christ, the (various) Virgins, plus donkeys, flowers, other figures - making them very heavy indeed. Today though, from an onlooker's point of view, it looked like a large table with about 20 people underneath it, who from time to time, lifted it up onto their shoulders and 'processed' a distance to the music, then stopping for a break. 

The glorious view from the top towards the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the distance. The playground is new. 

As is this 'recontstructed', in a wonderfully minimal sense, church at the foot of La Mota. 

It really was a gloriously bright and sunny day on Sunday.

My photo is embarrassingly bad - I didn't manage to capture the 'table' or really even the people underneath - and you can't see the band that was just around the corner...I felt a little rude taking photos of a rehearsal. Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered at all!

Anyway - it was a slightly comical sight but will be impressive in a week or so from now once the processions start.

Four years ago, blogging was an integral part of my life. I could hardly carry out any activity without thinking how my blog post would accompany its description. Nowadays, I rarely write and rarely read blogs....and with a few notable exceptions, I think many of my blogging friends must feel a bit the same. It's too easy now to upload a photo to Facebook or Instagram and be done with it. I also have less free time than I had for writing. My free time is usually spent drawing my Zentangles. I am more addicted to this than ever! Partly, this is because every Friday evening, since last October, I have been sharing my passion with a class of, mainly, women in the Women's Association that I am a member of. It started out as the usual sharing of different skills, but very quickly after I did some Zentangle drawing for them, there is now huge enthusiasm and more than a little talent amongst this group and I'm going to show a little of our work here. 'Being Here', for me, is about being part of the town I live in and apart from my children, Zentangle is a thing that has brought me more into the community than almost anything else. It's important to say that I am NOT a certified Zentangle teacher ....yet! I am so determined that one day I will be so for now, we say we enjoy tangling. In Spanish, all those consonants together means that Zentangle is a very difficult word to say!

Our classes are informal and just for fun and we practice different patterns.
Outside the class, people also tangle - and bring in their various artistic endeavours each week. And each week, they are more impressive.

Note, for example, the beautifully decorated box on the right - absolutely stunning work by Aurora. You can see some of her 'practice' work, albeit a bit blurred, in the notebook she's working in.
She's really very good.

This is a final set of tiles, done in the last half an hour of the class. There is a peace and tranquillity that descends at this time that is incredible. A room full of women - Spanish women for the main - and silence. Beautiful, eloquent silence as we slip into a Zen state of concentration and creativity.

And this is in my English teaching classroom - sometimes the drawing creeps into an English lesson. I have one group of young teenage girls and it's a special treat for us all when we have a lesson devoted to the language of Zentangle!























And whilst I started off this post by saying that it seems like only yesterday that we moved house, looking back now, and seeing how life has changed and developed in these four years...it seems like we have done a lot and moved on even more, not forgetting those we have lost.

Life has changed in many ways for us all. What were you doing four years ago?

Axxx

Old friends....

It's been a while since I posted, hasn't it? Hello, anyone out there? .....Well, it's been a while since I read any one else's blogs too and I may appear to have done a runner.

But I haven't and after my lovely weekend, I felt driven to record a few things for posterity and for sharing and for capturing.

On Friday last - yes, the 13th - I unsurprisingly had managed to pick up some cheap tickets to travel to England. Since the summer, my friend Annie Relph and I have been trying to find a weekend to get together and it took us until November. But we did it and it was worth all the frustrations and impossibilities that had gone before. That said, the news from Paris the morning after I arrived was high on our list of conversation topics, even though we had a million and one other things that we wanted to say. And sadly, I don't suppose these events will be the end of the problems.

This probably about twenty nine years ago...

However, that aside; despite the six years that it's been since we last saw each other, no one would have guessed as we immediately settled into our non-stop ´stream of conscious conversation´. Lucky is the person who has such a close friend!!

Mid-morning conversation -
still in pyjamas..

Our plan - other than to talk and talk and talk - took an exciting turn just days before I set off when, through a facebook post, another old friend contacted us to say he wished he could join us.

So on Saturday afternoon, he did!

Not six years since we last saw each other but thirty. THIRTY!! And whatever amazing things have happened to us all in the intervening years, I immediately felt myself transported back to my youth.

We had a wonderful afternoon - not visiting the White Horse of Uffington as we'd intended - but curled up on sofas and chairs in my friend's lovely Oxford home, sharing reminiscences and bringing each other up to date.


In the thirty years since we last saw each other we have, between us, become parents to six children; been married just the once each; been on stage and tv, studied at Oxford University, started up two ongoing businesses, gained Masters degrees, become teachers and trainers and - I'm delighted to say - all confessed to being extremely happy and contented in our lives. There's obviously a lot more too....

(My friend, Annie Relph, is the most wonderful artist and now puts her talent into her business, Scattercake, making incredible (but edible) wedding cakes. She's just finished the most amazing piece of sugarcraft work imaginable and I have to share the photos here:




In case you were wondering, it's not actually a cake in its present format but Annie now has all the templates and ideas prepared should anyone order a 1.5m high cake.

It showcases her fantastic work perfectly.

Even more impressive in real life!

And as I have been writing this post, Alan has been delivering a TEDx talk in Leamington Spa!  The link leads to a summary of his very varied life and work and covers the thirty years during which we haven't seen each other. It also includes some things I didn't know - like the all-human  Circus Burlesque bit...! And I'm really looking forward to listening to his talk - 'Bringing Back the Licenced Fool'. He states that he started playing the fool whilst still at school and one over-riding memory I have is of him being sent out of the classroom....regularly.

I am quite sure it won't be the last time we get together. And we're hoping a few more friends will be able to join us too.


From Oxford, I headed northwards to visit my family and arrived just in time to go out for a wonderful pub lunch with my parents, my sister and my brother-in-law. I confess to enjoying my food, whatever 'type' it might be but there was something super-delicious about the dinner we had - very traditional, a British Sunday Roast with all the trimmings and possibly the best Yorkshire Pudding I've ever tasted! And that's saying something.

Sunday night was a ScrabbleFest. I play online with both my mum and my sister, so it was only right that we had a face to face match, which I enjoyed very much. I was quite confused by my sense of time. As it was dark soon after 4pm. I found it felt incredibly late by around 7.30......we seemed to be playing into the small hours!














I have to confess that I didn't take many photos on my travels. I was either too busy talking or doing whatever we were doing - although for some reason, I took a Christmassy photo of the place Mum and I went to eat on Monday. It seemed so incongruous as Spain hasn't really started working up to Christmas just yet, whilst England is in full flow.





And then all of a sudden, it was over and I was on my way to Manchester airport, where my suitcase appeared to contain a host of suspicious items, (like soap and a glue stick!) but soon I was back in the air and heading for sunny Malaga again.

Just a few short days, but I felt years younger and so very pleased that a) I am lucky enough to have such great friends to play catch up with and b) that for me, life has been pretty good over the past thirty years, but 'being here' is almost as good as it gets.

Thanks for popping by - I do hope to find a bit more time to read my favourite blogs again soon!
Ax

Annieversaries...

March is the month of many of my own 'annieversaries' ...these are personal and important dates for me. And the pun is too good to resist!

At the beginning of the month, I realised I was coming up to the first of my 'Annieversaries' - my Wednesday morning Spanish Conversation class. I hold this with a group of English people who are keen to improve their Spanish, but who simply couldn't cope with the grammar-driven method often used by Spaniards to teach their language. Many had tried lots of different classes and given up - only to give another one a go a few months later and give up again. Most have some basic level of Spanish and many have a very wide vocabulary but lack confidence in putting it all together.
In my class - which is confessedly NOT a teaching class - I aim to help people with specific conversation requirements...things they can use with neighbours, at the market, in the bar, at a restaurant - and they have the chance to practice without embarrassment. It's not a large group - probably seven or so at the most and although I have had some 'drop-outs' for various reasons, including financial, health and returning to the UK, I am delighted to say that many of my class have stuck with me for quite some time - and Tony has missed only ONE class in all the three years we've been meeting!! Time to celebrate, I felt. So last Wednesday morning, I took in some splendid little cakes and biscuits and some fresh orange juice and bottle of Cava...and we celebrated in style (well, in plastic cups, but hey, it was lovely!)

I do hope we can continue this class - where our conversation wanders from the roots of English, to places to visit, to how to say 'I'm dying to go the loo', to condolences and good wishes - for another three years!
Thank you all for making Wednesday mornings such a pleasure and for remember at least some of the new words and phrases I try to teach you! You know who you are!!


Another little 'Annieversary' was actually an FR and Annie anniversary. On the 10 March - also the day of a good friend's birthday, which could be part of the reason why I remember it so well - we met! It was at a band reheasal in Bradford. FR had recently moved to Leeds and was studying at the Leeds College of Music. He met a flute player there who brought him along to the reheasal. I remember it as though it were yesterday. He was sitting in a big overcoat, looking half-frozen and studying his music, counting to himself (in English, I noted) even though he was clearly NOT English. I thought he was Italian. And I couldn't keep my eyes off him...though, unfortunately for me, he was directly in front of a trombone player, who thought I was looking at him and who was returning my 'interest' - that took a little sorting out later!

At the break in the rehearsal, I went to speak to the interesting-looking stranger - and I wasn't the only one! I was really surprised to discover he was Spanish as I didn't think the Spanish travelled much to the north of England...and they don't usually. I remembered that I had done a Spanish 'O' level whilst in the Sixth Form but sadly, could only remember two words, neither which were great conversation starters. (One was mantequilla, which is butter and the other was zapatos, which means shoes...) However, FR was keen to speak English and at the end of the rehearsal, a friend and I 'kidnapped' him and took him back to my flat where we spent an hilarious evening listening to FR's stories and thoughts in his enthusiastic and ambitious but still flawed English! I particularly remember him graphically describing how Beethoven's 9th Symphony made him think of Beethoven riding on a chariot pulled by six black whores....It was a powerful image and as I asked him why black whores, I realised he actually meant 'horsES'. Plurals can be tricky!

17 days later, he moved into my flat and we have been together now for 18 years. Feels like longer sometimes, but when I think of that very first day, I always laugh!


And as we move into the middle of March, one year ago, we got the keys to Casa Rosales! It wasn't officially ours and we didn't move in until the end of March but it was this time a year ago, that FR and I came over with our car loaded up with pictures, a bookcase and a sofa and began to establish ourselves here in our home. I love Annieversaries when they're so full of joy and happiness.

The only cloud on the horizon - the only Annieversary that I won't really celebrate this month -  is that it marks the return of our lovely friends, the Greers, to the UK - to David's native Scotland. We saw the New Year in with them, they helped us move here, they are there when we've needed them and I shall miss them dreadfully. Work here is sporadic and unreliable and when you still have mortgages to pay, it can make every day more difficult than it should be. Despite giving it their very, very best shot - and Sam has certainly done that - they are leaving Alcala la Real and their beautiful home here (with the best view in town) to take up 'proper' jobs again. I can't begin to imagine quite how much I shall miss them and Sam in particular. To find a really good friend is always special but to find one in one's chosen spot is really good fortune...I wish them all the luck in the world - we all do.

*******************************************

Pippin has spent a month with us and is now about 11 weeks old - during which time he has doubled in size and weight....

Pippin little...

Pippin after two weeks...

Pippin this morning...

We're able to take him out on walks now as he's had all his injections. This morning was glorious and I took the camera with me to capture the beginnings of Spring in Villalobos.

And I discovered that Pippin would like to go swimming...he was straight in the stream! He's proving a very headstrong pup and is taking up a lot of my energy and time! He is wonderful at 'Sit' - but pretty rubbish at everything else, preferring to run away than to come here; to force his way back inside when I say 'out'; and to chew every plant pot and plant he can find when he IS outside and to bite all the children's feet and trousers and anything else that he can get his teeth into....I'm working on him. This time next year - when it's Annieversary time again - he'll be a credit to me. (Oh, I DO hope so!)

Any special events for you this month?

Plot Night and Parkin Pigs

I thought I'd better check out my facts before I embarked on a story from a long time ago. Most people in England have heard of Guy Fawkes and know that he had something to do with Bonfire Night on 5th November. And they'd be right. In Bradford, where I grew up, we didn't know much more than that ...but we did call it 'Plot Night' and indeed, Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of fellow Catholics who planned - plotted - to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Guy Fawkes hadn't always been a Catholic but converted to this religion when he was about 16, probably due to the remarriage of his mother to a Catholic.... He had been a soldier in his early life, fighting for the Spanish against the Dutch - and at this time, chose to call himself 'Guido' - not sure why as this isn't a Spanish name.. The main target of the plot was to get rid of the Protestant King, James 1 and the year was 1605. The plot failed and it was Guy Fawkes who was the first of the group to be caught and taken prisoner, before being tortured to provide the names of his accomplices and then, as he was led to the scaffold, he jumped and broke his neck before he could be officially put to death. I always thought 'Guy' was an unusual name but I rather liked it. Until I met one in real life and that put me off the name forever! He was originally from York...

There's another Spanish link too - in 1603, Fawkes went to Spain to seek support for the removal of King James, but the Spanish weren't interested.  I put this down to the fact that Spaniards really don't like to eat anything with ginger in it - and ginger is a key ingredient of Parkin and a must for Plot Night - and also they never set off fireworks on November 5th. They only get to hear about the Plot from their native English language teachers...and most of them never mention the Pigs!

That is my official, historical explanation, with some chronology and my take on cause and effect....

Now onto my memories of Plot Night...

Just before Plot Night itself, the children I went to school with would talk about going 'proggin'' (we're famous up North for not pronouncing the 'ng' at the end of 'ing' words...we stop short at the 'n') which was a sort of scavenger hunt for bits of wood and things that could be burnt on our bonfires. I wasn't allowed to go proggin' but didn't really need to as we always had Plot Night at my grandparents' house and my grandpa would build a pretty good bonfire out in the 'croft' - a piece of shared land at the back of our houses. We would sometimes have a 'Guy' - a comical thing made by my granny from Grandpa's old clothes - and we'd always have a selection of fireworks like Catherine Wheels, Roman Candles, Snow Storm and a few rockets - but I always loved sparklers the best of all. I loved trying to write my name in mid-air before the image faded. And the smell...what a smell it was! Apparently it's sulphur residue though I'd always been told it was cordite...not true. Whatever it was, it hung in the air and made everything seem exciting. I really loved Plot Nights.

We ate pork pies and baked potatoes followed by parkin - an oatmeal-based ginger cake - and my Granny's special Parkin Pigs. Again, it would appear that this particular thing was quite local to Bradford and nearby areas of Yorkshire - unless of course, there is anyone reading who can tell me differently. I don't have any photos of our pigs - my mum now has 'the' cutter and she reckons it must be at least 100 years old as it's passed through generations of her family. The pigs themselves must have a currant eye and are thin, crispy ginger biscuits - the recipe is almost foolproof and I'll share it here...I guess it will be OK to make other gingerbread things out of it if you don't have a pig cutter...I do. And because the recipe is very old, it's in imperial measures...

4oz golden syrup                 }
10oz sugar                          }  - melt together in a large saucepan
4oz butter                           }                


Then add:

16oz self-raising flour
2tspns ginger
1 beaten egg

Stir into a soft mass and roll out as quickly as possible. Cut into shapes and bake at 120 degrees (low heat) for 10 to 15 minutes. It's easiest to work with when the dough is warm and slightly soft - I've found a quick blast in the microwave softens it again to make the shapes in batches - stops the cracking that happens when it's cool.

We're going to make some tomorrow when I've bought some golden syrup...I have a wide range of shape cutters but sadly, no pigs...

I am still none the wiser as to why we used to eat Parkin Pigs on Plot Night but we did and my mum still makes them at this time of year and gives them out to 'Trick or Treaters' in Knutsford...who won't have a clue why they've been given a gingerbread pig biscuit (unless they read this blog).

When we lived in Huddersfield, our Plot Night treat used to be a drive up to Castle Hill which overlooked all of Huddersfield and beyond, where we got a real bird-eye view of all the different bonfires and fireworks parties that were going on. Inevitably, there would be other families and groups there and we would always set off a few rockets from this vantage point - nothing too much but always with a sense of community spirit. Since 2009 though, fireworks have been banned on Castle Hill.

Funny to think how customs come and go - if I ever inherit the pig cutter, I shall most definitely continue the tradition. Whatever that might be!

Body and mind bending

I know I've said it before, I never said I didn't repeat myself. I do. But here I go again...

Isn't the internet amazing!!

I logged onto my blog yesterday and as usual, had a look at my twirling globe to see where my visitors might be coming from...who was I virtually connected to. And someone was visiting from Woking. (Hello, if it's you from Woking reading this post!) It set my mind back to my University days when my circle of friends included a trombone player from Woking.

A thumbnail sketch...many weekends spent drinking, playing music, going out and more drinking often led to this friend sleeping on the sofa, floor or just against the wall of the house we shared then with four others. He was long-haired, bespectacled and bearded at the time and one of the most laconic and taciturn creatures who would suddenly burst into spontaneous and infection laughter. He drove a red 2 CV and we once met him and his girlfriend whilst on holiday in the north of Spain - by complete accident - and when he got out of the car to greet us, it was just as if we'd met in the local supermarket.

One of my overriding memories of him is going to Bognor Regis one summer's day. He and my ex had taken their euphoniums with them...as you do...and the pair of them waded out to sea, with their instruments and proceeded to amuse the promenaders with various renditions.They drew quite a crowd. I remember 'Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside' went down very well, but probably not everyone appreciated 'For those in peril on the sea' quite as much. I laughed until I cried. And am laughing now as I remember.

I didn't find many links when I googled him - as you do - (oh, don't you? I do!) but came across quite a lot of 'Upcott' references... his rather unusual surname. And then I found a photo of an Upcott family - and there was a clean-shaven, smiling friend! And a few of his sons and daughters...two of whom are WORLD CHAMPION ACROBATS!! Not just good acrobats, not just British Champions but both Edward and Alice are or have been World Champions. And both were in the group, Spelbound, that I now know won 'Britain's Got Talent' in 2010. Just take a look at this amazing young man - I can't believe half of what he does is physically possible!





I was able to contact his father and he wrote back very quickly - he has five children and lives just half a dozen miles away from where I used to live. I do vaguely remember that his shoulder used to dislocate very easily - I wonder whether this loose-jointedness in his children comes from him? I have never seen body control like Edward's before though. Do watch and be wowed.

This post is called body and mind bending. Well, I certainly can't and don't body bend very much these days but I've been bending my mind with a new thing I found (guess where...on the internet) called 'Zentangle' which takes doodling to another place entirely. I have always been a doodler and always done quite complicated patterns. But I haven't been doing it properly....not until this week. Now my head is full of wild and wonderful repeating patterns and no piece of paper is safe...in fact, I've even doodled on some nice flat stones I found in one of my collections and I gave Ruy a wonderful temporary doodled tattoo the other day.

So, what does serious doodling look like?

This...

I started top right and there are nine squares, which I completed from right to left, top to bottom and I think my last square, bottom left, is my favourite...

Well, I've finished bottling fruit and making jam. I had to do SOMETHING!!

How do you doodle?

Humerus mistakes

Language is such a wonderful thing. And I love it when it comes out a bit wrong and a new word is made, a new image created or an unintended moment of hilarity enjoyed.

I bought Mateo a t-shirt like this -

 and I laugh every time I see it!

I remember a family dinner - must be about twelve years ago because it was summer and I was heavily pregnant with Ruy - he'll be twelve in a month's time. We ate outside with my parents and my sister and her family at our little terraced house.  Knowing my mother spoke a little Spanish and having the habit of speaking it to my sister - who doesn't - after the plates had been cleaned the first time, FR asked 'Quieres mas?' - to which my mother with some enthusiasm answered 'Oh yes, please!'  Judy's face was a picture of shock and horror for a moment before she started laughing. She had no idea what FR had said but presumed it wasn't what she'd heard - which was Kiss my ass? - and my mum had meant something completely different with her Yes please! No need to explain our sometime unusual offer of seconds!

Last night, we had a lovely evening with friends and we drank rather more than either FR or I are used to. Sam is English and Dave is from Glasgow originally and we'd been talking about making mistakes in Spanish - and we've all made some howlers! Around midnight, we saw a headlamp (and I mean a lamp on a headband) at the gate and recognised it as Sergio with his dogs and a nephew in tow, so FR jumped up and went to greet him, shouting in English - 'Would you like a drink?' A chorus followed him from the table in the garden that he was speaking in English...whereupon FR switched to Spanish but didn't quite get it right. 'Quieres un vaso' is what he meant to ask...and remember in Spanish, the 'v' is pronounced exactly like 'b'...and this means 'do you want a glass (of something)'.

However, this is not quite what he said. He asked Sergio if he'd like a 'beso' - which is a kiss! And Sergio, without missing a beat, wiped the back of both his hands across his mouth in an exaggerated gesture of preparation - for a kiss. Beautiful timing! We did laugh.

And then, later on, just before going to bed, I read a comment left by Janice (in Caunes or is she now somewhere else?) in which she'd made a simple typing error. But it was one that had me pondering for ages! Remember I had been drinking Cava and Oporto -  rather than my usual cup of tea - before coming to this - and I quote:

The beetles, cigales, and toads have visited us in their hoards this year. We think it might be the same toad who keeps coming back to join us at dinner under the pergola....perhaps we should drop a bit of paintonto him to see if it really is him making return visits, after we carefully take him back to the far end of the garden.

It was the word 'paintonto' that confused me. I read it as some special sort of bread used for marking toads. Not so daft on my part as I know 'pain' is French for bread - and Janice is in France...and 'tonto' is a Spanish word for 'silly or daft' but could also be French or Italian... OK, silly pain, I am! It may be quite obvious to everyone else that there is a space missing between 'paint' and 'onto'.

Oh dear, and now it's got me started - thinking about other little mistakes and how a letter here or there can make all the difference. Possibly my very favourite one is absolutely true and a mistake that I made myself in a letter to all 191 Primary School secretaries back in the 1990s. We had just been putting computers into schools for administrative purposes and in those days, we had to send updates out on a floppy 'disk or disc' in an envelope though the snail mail. I remember typing a little note to go out with these things but being momentarily undecided whether to type 'disk' or 'disc'. I obviously couldn't properly decide but my unconscious 'solution' was quite outrageous... the letter eventually went out included the following line:

"Please find enclosed a 3" floppy dick with full instructions for use..."

I should have recorded some of the responses for posterity...especially as some of the secretaries at this time were the blue-rinse dragons of days gone by!

Any good howlers to share??

Wrong fellow for 'Othello'

I was indulging in my favourite Saturday morning pastime this morning, having got dear old FR back in bed with me and the children still fast asleep - zonked from a week by the sea - oh yes, it's nice to get things back to normal.

I was, of course, listening to Radio Four with my earphones in to block out the snores from my bedfellow and thoroughly enjoying listening to Lenny Henry's inimitable enthusiasm and vocal range, when the host of 'Saturday Live' - the Reverend Richard Cole, (a man who can match just about any guest's anecdotes with one or more of his own) shared a memory that made my sleepy eyes fly open in amazement. 

The two men were talking about being in their 50s and chapters of their lives. Lenny Henry has done a wide range of things and I've always rather liked him. He started out as a stand up comedian, is a wicked impersonator and has a big, unmistakable personality but he has acted as well, recently taking on Shakespeare a few years ago with Barry Rutter's Northern Broadsides theatre company with whom he played Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse to considerable (and quite surprised) critical success. He's now playing in 'Fences', an American drama set in the 50s ... I haven't seen it or heard about it, so I won't even attempt to describe what it's about other than to say it sounds interesting. He is a wonderful chat show host because he can really talk... 

Richard Coles is a true Renaissance man, giving even Stephen Fry a run for his money, I would say. A quick glance at his Wiki page indicates the range of his talents and interests. Whereas I almost always like everything Stephen Fry says, sometime, the Right Reverend's tone grates on me a little and he tends to talk as much as the guests and I sometimes think he should just stop being clever for once.

However, his little comment this morning made me immediately awake and at the same time, back in the 70s again. They were discussing how things had changed in the theatre during the last 35 years...Richard remembers going to Stratford-upon-Avon to see a performance of 'Othello' where *one of the very last actors to be 'blacked up' to play the title role was Donald Sinden. Lenny, knowing - and impersonating - this plummy, hammy actor to a tee, asked what the performance was like. With heavy understatement, Richard Coles said 'let's say it was memorable'. 

Well, I was there in the audience when Donald Sinden played the part. We'd taken a coach from my college in London to see a couple of plays one weekend. And Richard Coles is quite right. I have no idea what the other performance was, but I will never forget the gasps from the whole audience as 'Othello' pranced on stage and uttered his first lines in a voice that almost took our breath away. Talk about over-acting...the following sounds were of stifled giggles. It was unsupportable and, being a dreadful giggler, I had tears rolling down my face and ate about three tissues in my attempt to establish some self-control. Eventually, there was no alternative - I had to leave. 

I remember spending a pleasant few hours in Stratford after that before come coming back on the bus to London. The general impression seemed to be that it was **'an amazing' performance - no one else had left and I remember feeling a tad ashamed of myself at the time - as if I lacked the critical facilities to properly judge a professional performance. But now, of course, being older and more confident, I wonder that the whole audience didn't start booing and laughing until this travesty was off the stage. The Emperor's New Clothes springs to mind...

But memorable indeed it was - and how NOT to do 'Othello'....or anything else for that matter in my opinion!

What's the worst or most memorable performance of a play you have ever seen?

Post script.
* Ben Kingsley was blacked up by the RSC in 1985 too...
**Having thought a little bit, a few more memories have emerged and I have to admit that the rest of the cast were pretty good. I liked Suzanne Bertish as Desdemona and Iago was played with real grit and daring by Bob Peck. It was just Donald that spoilt it for me.

In the 70s...

For many reasons this last week or so, I should be feeling very, very young. This is despite having had a birthday which proves I have clocked up well over 50 orbits around the third rock from the sun (as Mateo might put it). I'll tell you why in a moment...

It's definitely summertime here. It's very hot. The living is rather easy as long as you know how to manage the day. It has been around 38 degrees centigrade today ( that's just topping 100 degrees in  fahrenheit) and all jobs where we have to venture out have to been done before the heat of the day really kicks in and definitely before about 2 o'clock. And then, we have to come inside our nice cool house, batten down the hatches and chill out indoors, with windows closed against the heat until around 8pm. And then the children go outside and have water fights until it goes dark and we continue with whatever jobs we have to do that require going outside. We are eating lots of watermelons, drinking gallons of water and enjoying tzatziki, couscous and gazpacho most days for lunch.

I know that England is due a heatwave right now and that temperatures are well up in the high 70 degrees fahrenheit - 24 degrees centigrade -  in some parts. And that brings me to my blast from the past.

Who remembers the heatwave of summer 1976? It was a wonderful summer for me as I was in the Lower Sixth at school - which then meant the year with no exams - a teenager with a fantastic group of friends and lots of amazing parties. And that summer before I went into the Upper Sixth and my last year at school really was a hazy, lazy one.

By pure coincidence, my children - and Mateo in particular - have a strong preference for music from the 70s and our days are ringing to the sounds of Queen, Supertramp, Camel, Deep Purple, Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd. It's an absolute joy to me! Although much of my youth was spent playing in orchestras and that I am serious lover of orchestral music, the progressive rock bands of the 70s were more than just a backdrop to the parties I went to. I really love this stuff and am delighted that Mateo has found it for himself and taken it so much to heart.

Whilst a lot of rock music is loud and the vocals are often high and 'tense', it's not all inaccessible stuff - just try a moment or two of this extract from 'The Snow Goose' by Camel - it still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it...stick with it until the wind quartet starts! An excellent live performance all round.




Ah yes, takes me back!

And in addition to finding a shared love of music from the 70s, our new television - via YouTube - has been providing us with a lot of laughs as Ruy and Romy have been indulging their great pleasure in watching old episodes of 'Dad's Army' of all things!

I thought I had probably seen every single one of these programmes, either at the time of their original screening, which I watched with my Granny and Grandpa on the evenings when my parents were out working in the fish and chip shop we had when I was young. And if not then, surely I had seen all the repeats during the 80s and 90s...but no, there have still be a few gems that I hadn't seen before and today has had me sniggering and laughing at the Home Guard playing a cricket match against the ARP wardens. It's been a useful starting point for a history lesson too - at one point, Romy asked if Hitler was an American...

Life in the 70s was great fun as I remember it in general. For me, there was a freedom as I grew up and a feeling that the world was my oyster. There were grants to go to University and I never doubted that was what I would do. There were Saturday jobs for teenagers in the shops in Bradford city centre. I had friends with cars and we went all over and did all sorts of things - including things that we probably shouldn't have done. There were also strikes and black outs and racism; there was Edward Heath and James Callaghan; David Bowie and Bay City Rollers and Disco; there was a lot of hair and some bizarre fashions - and towards the end of the 70s, in the year I went to University in London, there was Margaret Thatcher, Arthur Scargill and the miners.

What do you remember?

Of Salt and Silver

Image taken from this blog post....

My friend and fellow blogger, Janice, wrote recently about Saltaire Village. She discovered it about 30 years ago and it is obviously a very special place for her. Her piece was so evocative and well-written that it brought my own memories of this place flooding back. I wrote briefly about it in one of my early posts, when we were still living in England. Saltaire was a place I had to visit before we moved away.

My earliest connection with Saltaire was as a little girl when I would go every Saturday morning to Victoria Hall to Saltaire Ladies Gymnastics Club, which, in its heyday in the 40s, had representatives in the Olympic Squad. When I went, it was run by a funny little lady called Carrie Pollard - who it turns out was the founder member of the club and one of those Olympic gymnasts herself - a fact I have only just found out! She was good, very strict and we had to work really hard. I eventually made it onto the 'top mat' by pure fluke as we had to demonstrate we could do all the moves necessary - and on the day I was tested, I did my one and only successful handstand-into-crab without collapsing immediately. I never did it again and I'm not likely to try either! There must have been about 60 or 70 young girls, all with different skill levels, all pushing themselves and their various ligaments and joints to the extremes. The friend I went with was much better than me and particularly fearless on the parallel bars. What few people saw were the awful bruises she had on her hip bones.

A most impressive building

I stopped going when my music interests developed and I preferred to play in an orchestra on a Saturday morning - and glad to say, my friend also stopped gymnastics and joined the orchestra - though I also noticed that playing the violin gave her a nasty bruise under her chin too. Perhaps she bruised easily - maybe it demonstrated her determination at all things!

But my involvement with Saltaire didn't end there. No, a little later, I was part of a Symphonic Band made up of students from all the schools in Bradford and rehearsals were held on Fridays at Victoria Hall in Saltaire. I loved playing in that Band and we played during the Queen's Silver Jubilee year, 1977, during which time the Lord Mayor of Bradford was Tom, David Hockney's brother.

The rather overgrown tramway.
Last year saw record visitors so perhaps
it looks a little better now...

At this time, the mill - Salts Mill - was still manufacturing fabric and textiles. Saltaire Village itself always had a quaint appeal with its impressive Victorian buildings, straight, orderly streets and close proximity to the River Aire. Not far from the village centre there is a cable tramway - one of the oldest in Britain - which runs from near the Grammar School in Saltaire to the nearby beauty spot at Shipley Glen. We spent many happy hours exploring the Glen when we were younger but we never went on the tram. I don't think my dad could see the point of stopping and parking in one place, paying to take a tram to arrive at another that he could perfectly easily drive to in the first place. He had a point, I guess, but I had always hankered to go on the tram. And did, eventually, taking my own children one lovely day where we made the tram journey, spent the afternoon clambering over the rocks in the glen before catching the last tram back again.

After a period of living in London and Surrey (though we called it Middlesex) I eventually returned to Yorkshire. We very nearly bought a house in Saltaire - it was actually my first choice - but the houses there, although made from good, solid, millstone grit, were nearly all terraced and without gardens and the thing I'd promised myself when we moved back north was a dog - a Border Collie, no less. I needed a garden and we eventually settled on a lovely end Victorian terrace in Farsley, between Leeds and Bradford. (My wonderful, never to be replaced, dog was Bodley - a Border Collie cross of incredible intelligence and character. Sorry Darwin...)

Soon after settling, I began making chocolates and attended many a craft fair held at... Victoria Hall in Saltaire! This was around 1985. The mill closed in 1986 and just a year later, Jonathan Silver bought it and began his amazing transformation of the place. Janice may have discovered Saltaire, but I must have been one of the first through the doors of the new mill complex to enjoy the overwhelming scent of lilies, which were delivered in in their hundreds every week. I adore the smell of lilies and so strong is the memory of the scent of Salts Mill that I can conjure it up almost at will and be transported back to looking at David Hockney's paintings, browsing through the books and postcards - and on the subject of David Hockney, did I ever mention that my mum went to college with him? (I doubt he'll remember her though!) On my 30th birthday one of my celebrations was meeting up with lots and lots of friends for breakfast at Salts Diner. It was excellent - the scrambled eggs with salmon was my favourite!

In 1995, I entered a brief period of being footloose and fancy free and lived on the ground floor of a big Victorian house with enormous fireplaces, high ceilings and generously proportioned rooms. It was a perfect party house and I had rather a lot of parties in the year that followed. It was also situated just five minutes away from Saltaire, which had, by this time sprouted some wonderful clothes and shoe shops as I remember. And I bought rather a lot of nice clothes and shoes...the excuse being that my ex, in a ridiculous cliche, cut up all the clothes (and shoes) I didn't immediately take out of the house with me when I left. He dumped them in three black bin liners on my parents' driveway. I could never ever replace some of the fantastic shoes I had...though I tried quite hard to.

Almost every Sunday would see me at Salts Mill and Saltaire either with friends or alone. There was a gorgeous fabric company, called Skopos, that had a mill shop there. I don't know what's happened to them since but at the time, they made wonderful fabrics, furniture, sofas and chairs. It must have been New Year's Day in 1996 when I staggered in there with a whopping hangover from my party the night before; slumped on a huge cream sofa and when someone came over to see if I needed any help... I said I wanted to buy the sofa - partly because the thought of moving was too painful - but within a short space of time, I'd handed over a deposit and committed myself to it. It cost me an arm and a leg but for years, it was my pride and joy.  It was big enough to seat about five people and had feather-filled cushions and was almost as wide as a single bed from front to back. My excellent sister bought if from me when Cesar and I moved to Spain (the first time) and it has served her family well too. And it's still going strong in the student home of my niece and I get a glimpse of it now and again on her Facebook photos. It could have come from anywhere, but it didn't - it came from Saltaire.

Of course I've been back - on two out of the three times I've been home since we moved out to Spain. We had planned to go this time but as we had so little time with family and friends, we gave it a miss. Shame.

It could have been left to fall down, it could have been made into offices - there are some there - it could have become a museum. But it's become something new and alive in its own right - and last year, celebrated its 25th Anniversary. Sadly, Jonathan Silver died young - just 10 years after he opened Salts Mill. During those 10 years, he was always there - mainly on the ground floor where the Hockney pictures were exhibited - working as a shop assistant selling postcards, books and artist's materials. His brother, Robin, ran one of the upstairs areas that was filled with the most amazingly wonderful things for the home and he and Jonathan's widow, Maggie, have maintained and developed the momentum created by Jonathan. Don't assume I'm on first name terms with any of them, but my regular presence in those early days was recognised and acknowledged and even when I didn't visit much when the children were very young, on my last visit in 2010, the manager of the Diner greeted me again as if it was just days since he'd last seen me. Attention of this sort feels very personal because indeed, the place is so huge and there are so many visitors, that to notice any individual is quite a feat!

My children will still wax lyrical about the milkshakes they had in the Diner and we would lose Mateo for hours in the vast bookshop. I loved the smell, the space, the echoing, talking walls, the light and the worn floors. I loved the art, the music, the attention to detail found in Salts Mill. And of Saltaire itself, it epitomises all the good things I love about Yorkshire - Victorian architecture, stone-built, straight-rowed  houses, cricket pitches and big parks, Methodist and Congregational chapels, wonderful food and antique shops, gift shops and charity shops, tea shops and toy shops...is holds an important place in my memories.

(I know this happens to old people because they've told me...but I worry that I've already reached that phase in my life where I can't remember what I just did, but these old memories are as fresh as ever.)

Saltaire - a real memory lane - thank you, Janice, for tripping it for me!

Almost France

Once upon a previous existence, pre-children, pre-FR, I was a serious Francophile. Every possible holiday was spent in that beautiful country, eating wonderful food, visiting châteaux, stunning rivers, sleepy villages and speaking rather elegant French.

With friends, I'd visited the Loire Valley, the Dordogne, Avignon, Arles, much of Normandy, the Carmargue - the Lot (ha, enjoyed that one!) I knew people - proper French people, I mean - in Nevers, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse and Brittany. In 1991, I got a promotion at work and knew exactly what I wanted to do with the extra money - buy a house in France.

At the end of that year, with my then partner, I bought a little cottage in the Creuse Valley in a small village called Lurais. We bought it from a wonderful French couple  who lived in the next village on, one of the most gloriously beautiful villages in France, called Angles sur l'Anglin. Buying was ridiculously easy - we saw it, fell in love with it, signed for it and it was ours on Friday 13th December 1991. After a superb meal provided by  Mme and M. the Sellers, we very nearly spent our last night on this earth at our cottage, as we lit a fire in the huge fireplace, fell asleep in front of it and nearly asphyxiated ourselves on the smoke that poured forth from the chimney. But we didn't - obviously - awakening in time and opening the door onto the freezing winter night, which soon brought us round.

We spent every holiday there over the next few years. At first, it was difficult as there was no bathroom. I guess it didn't occur to us to go down the bar in the village first thing in the morning - though we went there last thing at night - so we went every day to a rather wonderful Abbey called Fontgombault where there were toilets - henceforth known as going for a 'fontgombault'.

On the way back, we'd stop in the village and buy fresh croissants and make our own coffee on the little stove we'd brought with us.

Our next extended visit was at Easter and we travelled all the way with my sister's toilet and washbasin on the back seat - she was replacing her bathroom suite and we couldn't miss the chance of moving towards a 'fontgombault' in our own home! That meant we had to dig a hole in the garden and put in a septic tank. I will never forget balancing a huge (relatively) tank on top of Pru (my 2CV; yes, I really was a Francophile!) - I couldn't remember the word for 'rope' in French and asked the man for 'string' - his face was a picture.

It was jolly hard work, digging through solid rock, bit at a time with a hammer drill and lots of clearing out of stones and gravel, but eventually, the septic tank was in. We turned a door into a window, fitted pipes and tubes and plumbing things, bought a shower tray and a hot water heater - and before long we had a working bathroom. My parents and their friends came to visit and were absolute stars - sorting out electrics, helping with the digging, preparing food and making it feel as though we were on our way to making a home.

Our neighbour, Jacques, was a lugubrious Frenchman, who'd watch us over the adjoining wall, tutting and shaking his head a lot. He was horrified that we ate our lunch late, in the garden - sometimes as late as 2.30pm! He never ate lunch after 12.00. One day, he came running to tell us something. My parents and their friends (always called Auntie Doreen and Uncle Bob) were in the garden with us. Despite thinking I spoke good French, I couldn't understand him - sounded like 'Beneel est mort' - so we knew that someone was dead but had no idea who it could be. Eventually, after watching Jacques running around and around the garden like a complete idiot, Uncle Bob twigged. Benny Hill!  Benny Hill was dead. It was 20th April 1992. Some things you never forget! Especially as this was the birthday of my lovely French teacher mentioned in a previous post.

In the summer, some other friends came out - one of whom was a talented artist and gardener. He had made us some unique and individual tiles to put at the back of the sink in the kitchen. He also spent the week transforming the garden - filling the place with colour and scents. We painted all the walls of the main room and as we sat down on the last evening of our visit, we thought we were doing pretty well. That is, until we all had a sensation of having wet feet. One of our pipes had sprung a leak - it was under the floor and we had to lift all the tiles, fix it and get them all back again before setting off to catch the ferry home!

We eventually got an upstairs floor in, doubling the space and making it possible for more people to stay. Everyone who came helped us to do a little more work. However, it never got to be completed as the relationship with my partner broke down and came to a sticky end. And just over a year later - oh why not give you that date too - 10th March 1996 - the same day as my friend Karen's birthday -  I met FR and everything changed, including where I ended up living. Not France!

The house in Lurais did provide me with some wonderful memories though - not just of hard work - but of hours spent listening to music, playing board games, reading books, talking and eating some excellent meals. Of picking our grapes last thing before leaving and travelling back to England with various bugs and other insects flying around as they escaped the fruit on the long car journey. Of Fontgombault, Le Blanc, Angles sur l'Anglin and some of the glorious countryside nearby and on the journey to and from the UK; of Jacques, our neighbour, and the inimitable Mme Gautier, who wandered past with her goats and her knitting every day; of spending a brilliant week with Lucinda (my Uni and Kentwell companion) and of lying in the garden listening to the hum of bees and the buzz of insects under glorious blue skies. Of long walks and cycle rides and picnics. Of midnight swims in the River Creuse and watching episodes of 'Tintin' on the little television we bought. Of my gorgeous green-shuttered old windows and the smell of the place.



I loved that little cottage. Precious few photos have survived. Apparently, it is cathartic to cut up photograph albums (and clothes and to smash guitars) when a relationship ends...not for me, though - the loss of my photographs will always rankle.

And half of the place is still mine because although the relationship ended over seventeen years ago, the problem of the shared house in France was never resolved. I offered either to buy my ex out, or to sell him my share. He wouldn't sell but didn't have the money to buy either. He still insists he will buy me out. I'm still waiting. And will continue to wait. After all, it's not everyone who owns half a house in France, is it?

Allegory on the Nile

I received an email from a dear friend this morning. Last time we exchanged notes, both she and her husband were suffering healthwise. He was having an operation for prostate cancer and my friend had a suspected collapsed lung and was waiting to see a specialist.

I was naturally quite worried and concerned. I have never met anyone quite like Susan and am very fond of her. She was my boss's secretary and joined our workplace just before I returned to work after my first maternity leave. She is perhaps the most dotty person ever - full of fun, helpful to a fault, kind and considerate - and... well, dotty.

As cuts were made and secretaries were shared instead of doled out one per manager, all the secretaries were pooled together and I'm sure that Susan's dotty presence and her droll sense of humour were much appreciated. She never forgot a birthday, always found just the appropriate gift (and I have been the recipient many a time, most notably, my wonderful mug) brought flowers from her garden to brighten up the office and generally made work a jolly place to be most of the time.

What has all this got to do with allegories on the Nile? Well, Susan was a Mrs. Malaprop if ever one walked this earth - so much so, that the other secretaries kept a book in which they wrote many of the little 'pearls of misrule' that fell from her lips. How I wish I could get my hands on that book now! It deserves publishing, so funny it was. 'Susan's Antidotes', we'd call it, of course.

As it is, without access to that book, I can only clearly remember one of these gems - her describing a phone call she'd taken from one of my staff -

"X has called in sick. Again. He said he's pulled his Hercules tendon - I don't know what that is but he said he did it in bed, so I didn't like to ask."

True to form, her note to me about her husband said he was 'having the operation to remove the prostrate'. Her email this morning reported on his recovery - which is great news - and went on to reassure me that she too is getting better and her specialist thinks it is nothing worse than 'chronicle bronchitis'.

There is always the possibility that her idiosyncratic speech was carefully planned to amuse. There were times when I was sure it must be. If there's anyone out there reading who can remember any more from that little book, please do share!

What are your favourites?

Entropy - or why I can't get organised

As a student in the late '70s and early '80s, I lived in a shared house in Ashford, Middlesex. It was always called  'Ashford, Middlesex' to distinguish it from the more important 'Ashford, Kent' even though since 1965, (when Middlesex as a council disappeared with the creation of Greater London) it was 'moved' to Surrey - no one ever said (or says) 'Ashford, Surrey'. Despite its Twickenham postcode, all letters I received arrived with Middlesex in the address and I suspect this is still the case.

I got a lot of letters then, some of which are so precious to me that despite several moves of house, county and country, I still have with me.

Note that not one has the postcode and not one says 'Ashford, Surrey' but all which clearly reached me from their various starting points.
A rather nice example of mixed-up-ness - more of which in a moment.

It was here, in Ashford, (not Kent, but Middlesex or Surrey), most appropriately, that I was first introduced to entropy. I took to the concept like a duck to water and have been seeing it in action ever since. It helps me to understand why, however hard I try, some things always seem to go wrong. I lived in a house shared with five men, one of whom was my boyfriend at the time - and he and I were the only students. The others were an incredible mix - a real odd bunch - who found themselves together by pure chance rather than choice as the house was their first meeting place.

The phrase 'camp as a row of tents' was probably invented to describe Andrew, one of the lodgers. He and I became absolutely best friends within a short space of time and stayed so over many years. He had a degree from Cambridge in Mathematics, worked at an important computing job at British Airways and also played the piano rather well. He is without doubt one of the most intelligent, interesting and amusing people I have ever met. He and two of the other lodgers, Bill and Richard, were very competitive chess players and many an evening was spent in silence apart from the slap of a hand on the clock that timed their moves. These three men were highly qualified scientists and mathematicians - all three very eccentric in their own ways. The fourth lodger was an attractive, lanky guy with a taste for leggy blondes and a strange, obsessive interest in rank and pinion railways.

It was Andrew that explained entropy to me. With hindsight, I'm sure he was having a gentle dig at my lack of tidiness and general disorganisation but it was so gentle that I didn't pick up on it then. He used a phenomenon of the time, the Rubik's cube, to explain it to me, (though you may, of course, be more aware of entropy as the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Richard had stayed up very late one night doing the cube and had proudly left it for all to see on top of the television when we came down in the morning. To my shame, I picked it up and twiddled it a bit - meaning to nonchalantly pick it up and put it right again when the next person came into the room. And then got into a panic when I couldn't redo it and that it got worse at every turn. Andrew came in and found my distress very amusing. He kindly explained that once something reaches a stage of complete organisation, it could only ever disintegrate or become disorganised - this was entropy. He wrote a big note and put the cube and note back on top of the television saying 'Entropy Happens'. What a shame he didn't copyright the phrase!

That phrase was used over and over during my time in that house - usually as an excuse for leaving my washing up in the sink or other undone domestic chores. I've continued to use it to this day to excuse my children's mess or to try and make them feel better when things haven't gone right and the glue has stuck to the wrong side; or the scissors inexplicably cut off the feet/sword/head or whatever of their picture, instead of following the outline; or when they have started writing in a brand new notebook, only to find they had the book upside down. Anything, in fact, where perfection or order was the goal but the result was mixed-up-ness.

'Mixed-up-ness' is a real word - a lovely entropic sort of word - coined by J. Willard Gibbs in 1903. Shame it was for something unnecessarily complex and scientific. However useful entropy may be as a means or measure for scientists to explain certain phenomena, I think it is so applicable to those things in our daily life that seem to go wrong or awry without any clear reason. Like socks - how is it that despite drumming it into my children to put both socks into the washing basket at the end of the day, I always end up with a selection of odd ones when I've done the washing? Like pens and pencils - we buy hundreds of the darn things, but the moment I need to write down a message following a phone call, I can never locate anything to write with. Like despite constantly picking up toys, papers and small items and putting them away or in their proper place, they will inevitably find their way into a messy heap on the table, sofa or floor? Like when I have a really good clean up, the mess will have gone somewhere else when I turn around? Like in trying to be organised and always having things like pegs, scissors, sellotape and envelopes in a single, accessible place, I end up with nine rolls of sellotape in different places, no scissors, the wrong sized envelopes and never enough pegs?


Entropy is the natural tendency of the organised to move towards the disorganised. It leads to mixed-up-ness.  
Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

A most unusual orchestra

Grand old man: Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) conducts the Halle Orchestra in rehearsal in 1956.

From a very early age, I loved classical music - orchestral music, chamber music, (proper music) - and my weekends were spent rehearsing with two different orchestras that I had joined when I was 13. One was the Bradford Symphony Orchestra, rehearsing on a Saturday morning with a mixture of young and older musicians.
It was with some of them that I went to the Subscription Concerts, performed by the Halle Orchestra at St. George's Hall in Bradford, shown here in it's Victorian glory.


We heard some truly wonderful music played at these concerts and I have kept all my programmes - over a three year period - in an old-fashioned scrapbook, which is currently in a barn in Leon. The concerts were usually on either a Friday or a Saturday evening - sometimes, oh joy, on both! Usually, I went with my friends, Anne and Elaine, and we sat up high in the 'gods' and waved at friends below us, opposite us and to the side of us - no one was higher though!

The Halle isn't the unusual orchestra of my title though.

This is the second orchestra I rehearsed with between the age of 13 and 18. It really was the most unusual group of musicians who rehearsed at the unlikely - but oh-so-appropriately named - Oddfellow's Hall in Cleckheaton. (I tried to find a reference to this on Google, but so far haven't managed to - probably no longer exists.)

I was first taken by my then clarinet teacher, Jack Whitaker, who was probably about 70 when I first met him and the most bandy-legged person I had ever seen - but he could really play the clarinet. He and a group of older men (and I mean, older than him!) met every Sunday morning to play through music together. There were never more than 12 or 13 of us in total and the numbers dwindled as time went by. The Hall had the most amazing and wide library of orchestral music and each week, the two excellent violinists, Alfred and David, took turns to chose and then conduct a selection of different pieces whilst the other played. Alfred had a wonderful, generous tone when he played and he conducted with elegance, whereas David was less sophisticated and probably less technically brilliant but his phrasing and control won me over immediately. He was a more demanding conductor too!

Stanley played a very reliable 2nd Violin and to be fair, Stanley was probably no more than 40 years old at the time - though his wide handlebar moustache, swept-back sandy hair, and chest-high trousers gave him  the air of a WWII pilot - he seemed incredibly old-fashioned to me. Occasionally we were joined by a cellist - an excellent player - whose name I don't remember but whose face I can still see in my mind's eye. He wasn't a well man and I suspect he died within the first year of my going to rehearsals, though no one specifically told me and I was too shy to ask. When he didn't come, George filled in. George filled in a lot - more of which later.

Getting to rehearsals required an early start and a lift from one of my parents to a meeting point in Queensbury. From there, I travelled with Mr Whitaker to the outskirts of Cleckheaton where we would stop and collect Herbert the Bass. I then had to sit in the back of the car with a double bass across me - the end of which poked out of the window by a foot or more. Mr. Whitaker wasn't the best of drivers - bless him, he was getting on a bit - and the first time he hit another car with the end that stuck out, it almost broke my  jaw. In time, I learned to keep a very vigilant eye open and sit at a safer angle behind the neck of the instrument.

The rehearsal room was up a flight of steps and I always followed Mr Whitaker and Herbert and the bass up these steps with some apprehension as there was much wheezing and several halts for breath. Then we'd enter the room to see who was still alive from the week previous. Despite being only 13, I was aware of the incredible energy these strange old men gave out - many must have been in the First World War, almost all in the Second, had lived most of their lives already, yet were still full of life; laughing and joking in the broadest of Yorkshire dialects which I often did not understand.

Herbert the Bass positioned himself on the piano - he didn't have a stool, so he perched on the closed keyboard - to play. George the Trombone was one of my favourites and he'd almost always request that we played 'T Derx Pidgins Sweet' - almost never granted until one day, the music was brought out and I discovered that this piece of ballet music was actually called 'Les Deux Pigeons' by Messanger. George always had three music stands in front of him, playing the trombone, 'cello and any other bass part that was required in our small ensemble.

We were blessed with two trumpeters - Herbert the Trumpet, a cheeky octogenarian, who liked to amuse me by tap dancing on the old wooden floors. Then, next to him was the rather bad-tempered Ted, an excellent trumpeter who I much later learned was riddled with cancer. He smoked all the time - as did George and David. Herbert the Trumpet had a pipe.

We sat next to the trumpets, Mr Whitaker playing first and me second clarinet. I played very quietly, especially if we had to transpose - sometimes from Bflat to A and sometimes into C - which required us to play different notes to the ones that were written - or fill in the flute part. Absolutely fantastic training for a young musician. I don't think it mattered that I couldn't be heard too much - it was the exposure to so much varied music that was such a good experience for me.

I sat next to Eric the Oboe - a man with such a dreadful stammer that I dreaded having to converse with him at first - though as time went on, I remember us chatting quite normally as both of us found a way round expressing our thoughts and ideas. He smoked too. The air was thick with smoke.

We would almost always start with an Overture - be it Beethoven, Weber, Rossini, Mozart or even Tchaikovsky - and then do at least one symphony in the 'first' half. Then, changing conductors, we'd sometimes do another symphony or a tone poem or a selection from a ballet or opera - in particular, I loved Bizet's 'Carmen Suite' and Ralph Vaughan William's 'The Wasps'. I think my favourite of all was Mozart's Symphony No. 39 as the clarinets have so many wonderful little passages to play - often in thirds - and in my lessons, Mr Whitaker and I would practice these, so on Sunday mornings, I could play out with confidence. I used to be able to sing the whole of the symphony from beginning to end, just the second clarinet part!

Here is the third movement - listen out for the clarinets in the trio - I used to love playing the supporting, lower-registered arpeggios, but in later years, particularly if David was conducting, he would play the whole of the third movement again and make me play the solo.





Occasionally, very occasionally, Alfred's daughter would come to play flute with us. She was older than my mum but I was always rather resentful of her presence. Being painfully shy at the time, in my early teens, I loved my old men with a passion but couldn't express myself very well to them, very often doing little more than blushing and smiling at their jokes and banter, but Alfred's daughter came and made them laugh. I preferred it when she didn't come.

I must have truly loved going. I rarely missed a week in five years despite having to get up early on a Sunday to go and travelling with the increasingly scary driving of Mr Whitaker and I have never been an early riser. These were special musicians and I learned over the years that many of them had in fact been in service together; David and Alfred had played in a British Army orchestra and Alfred, later played professionally. David had, in fact been a wire-drawer - a skilled job but not one that would normally be conducive to violin playing, I suspect.

If we'd lived then in the world of technology as we do now, I would have been able to record some of our Sunday morning rehearsals for posterity. As it is, I suspect even young Stanley is long gone and Alfred's daughter too, so I am the only vessel left who witnessed and took part in those hours and hours of wonderful music making.

I can hear it now as clearly as ever.