Pumpkin Trail to Bolsover

The Pumpkin Trail
It’s Autumn:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.…

(sonnet 73)
People who know me, know I love Autumn: a fresh start for the new academic term (still feel it even after retiring from teaching); birthday month; ravishing colours in the world outside; wearing jumpers; lighting fires; wandering along the atmospheric Pumpkin Trail at Bolton Abbey estate (pictures above and below)

Metaphor of Autumn
The traditional poetic view of Autumn is that it represents the dying of the year, the Autumn of life, the descent into decay and transition towards Death…. Winter is coming.  I agree there’s something in the metaphor, though my Libran Pollyanna rose-tinted specs also sees and feels the following:

• Autumn leads to Advent to Winter to Christmas to New Year and it finally leads to Spring = good;
• the Autumn colours red, burgundy, purple, gold, orange, yellow, green, brown and beige scattered across a landscape = good;
• falling leaves like nature’s confetti = good;
• warmth of a real (controlled) fire = good;
• Bonfire Night and fireworks = good;
• cosy knitwear = good;
• snuggled up indoors, hunkering down with food, drink and TV = good 

Golden Age of TV?
Everybody has an opinion about pinpointing the golden age of TV. In the 1960s I was breathless with excitement at the cliffhangers at the end of each Batman episode and had many a dream of Cathy Gale and Emma Peel in The Avengers. Was anybody as thrilled as me in the 1970s at being allowed to (once a week) stay up and watch Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R or Derek Jacobi in I, Claudius? Or the camp excesses of Dynasty or the stately poignancy of Brideshead Revisited in the 1980s? Was the 1990s the Golden Age with the first run of (weekly) showings of Friends or the weird compulsive cult of (the first season of) Twin Peaks? I could keep going, but it’s clear to me that this Autumn, in Covid Full-Semi-or-Partial-Lockdown, I’m grateful that there is so much choice on TV that it is easy to find something to while away the hours, conversing with the flowers, consulting with the bees. No such thing as a Golden Age since creative talents have always produced good stuff, but today there is a (happy) glut of choice.

How can all these things happen to just one person? 
My “birthday season” viewing has included the glorious 1938 Bringing Up Baby (from which the sub-heading above is one of a hundred quotable lines) with the astonishing Katherine Hepburn at the top of her game, and Cary Grant in one of his finest unfettered performances. I also chose to watch Tom & Kelly & Val & Anthony & Tom taking breaths away in the retro jetplane-porn of 1986’s Top Gun. And for binge-watching I'm watching Goose from Top Gun (that’s Anthony Edwards aka Mark Greene) leading the ensemble cast of the early seasons of ahead-of-its-time ER; but as a bedtime digestif, to reassure myself that everyone can adapt to change, I like to visit Schitt’s Creek, where Moira is proving to be my touchstone of taste and dignity….

Jigsaws, Meals out, Walks
I continue to puzzle through Autumn. For me, jigsaws have been a lifelong activity, not just a lockdown one. And Katherine Hepburn appears on my current jigsaw with Peter O’Toole in The Lion in Winter along with my own face and snapshots of selected loved ones from “The Harry Potter Film Club” and beyond. Above also features snaps of The Terrace in Saltaire, another local venue for lovely grub. And below our socially distanced birthday walk with our adopted family from Badby, this time meeting at Bolsover Castle for a wet and misty meander through muddy Derbyshire.

One man in his time plays many parts

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth.

And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances.

And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Diamond Birthday

Waterside Restaurant in Shipley, some birthdays past and Sally's caramel cake

Older and wiser?

I remember, aged about 8, praying in the toilet (where else?) to St Bernadette (who else?) to grant me such a long life that I would live to the age of 48. I can’t remember why I thought 48 was such a marvellous age to reach, but I do remember the number. I also remember aged 18 thinking “thank goodness I’m now an adult and I finally understand what’s what.” And then thinking the same at 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24…. Every year I thought “blimey, I was so immature last year, it’s such a relief to get to this new age of enlightenment. NOW I’m finally grown-up.” And at some point, in my late 20s, it dawned on me that there was NO SUCH THING as being “FINALLY grown-up” – just another year, month, week, day, hour, minute of…. change. Everything changes. And as each year goes by it becomes obvious how much is still left to learn, how understanding Life As We Know And Imagine It is an infinite process.

Pandemics and presents

In the weird year of 2020, it’s been fascinating to read about the pandemics that reached England in 664, 1346, 1485, 1510, 1563, 1592, 1603, 1637, 1665, 1775, 1847, 1918, 1957 and 1981, not to mention the outbreaks of, for example, influenza, cholera, smallpox and encephalitis that have swept through populations periodically. Did Covid-19 take the shine off my 60th birthday celebrations? It did and it didn’t. On the one hand (in one of the Libran pans of justice) I couldn’t see groups of people in places (theatre, cinema, restaurant) I often choose. But on the other hand (in the other pan of justice) it meant that everything that happened (socially distanced in the open air) and every message I received and every book, sock, toiletry, chocolate, bottle of wine, fat rascal, jigsaw – everything that came my way felt Valuable Beyond Measure. It felt like Birthday Blessings fit for a Diamond Occasion – rare, precious, glistening.

Thanks, Mademoiselle Soubirous

A tasting meal and wine flight for two at Shipley’s Waterside Restaurant, a homemade caramel cake (with crushed Crunchie on top), a walk across the local moor, surprise visitors, surprise presents. It felt like a “0” birthday. It was unusual, thanks to Covid-19. Merci, St Bernadette, for giving me 12 years more than I prayed for…. How about another 12? My rose-tinted glasses imagine a future birthday without social distancing….

No Time Like The Present

 

Approaching 60: Carpe Diem.

Whatever gets you through the night

Carpe Diem has had a new potency in these unstable times – seizing the day, appreciating the moment, living in the present. (As someone once said….) Plan like you’re going to live forever; live like you’re going to die tomorrow. The Covid-19 pandemic and its fatalities, casualties, pressures, ripple-effect economic blights and uncertainties conspire to to drag hearts and souls into the abyss of despondency. On the other hand, Captain Tom Moore, Marcus Rashford, Jacinda Ardern and millions more people have lifted our aspirations towards a better world. In some ways, I have no idea where Time has gone since the middle of February 2020 when Coronovirus started being publicised internationally. Pre-Covid seems like 10 years ago. Copying Dickens’s opening to A Tale of Two Cities, (as I have done more than once in this blog) the past year has been “the best of times…. the worst of times…. wisdom…. foolishness…. belief…. incredulity…. light…. darkness…. hope…. despair…. we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way….” And when I publish my next new post, I’ll be 60 years of age. Carpe Diem. In 1790, John Trusler, compiling proverbs, glossed the title of today’s post with “No time like the present, a thousand unforeseen circumstances may interrupt you at a future time.” So true.

Rainbows to Trumpkin, Sense to Nonsense

Return to Live Theatre

Krapp's Last Tape

Earlier this evening I had my first experience of live theatre since March via the one-way system, temperature checks and socially distanced seating at Leeds Playhouse…. It felt appropriate that the first play I saw since lockdown was by Samuel Beckett, the master of tragi-comic nihilism. Krapp's Last Tape takes place on a “late evening in the future” when Krapp reminisces about his earlier life, in particular an audio record he made 30 years ago on the spool of an old tape recorder and in the pages of a tatty ledger…. There but for the grace of God go I…. Niall Buggy played the banana-eating Krapp with a mixture of wistful vulnerability, frustrated rage and a poignant desire to interpret and make sense of his shifting, distorted memories. Was the past exactly what he remembered? Was his 39 year old self a truer version of Krapp than his 69 year old present self? Time to make one last tape.... Terrific performance of a thought-provoking monologue.

Orpheus in the Record Shop

In the second piece, rapper Testament  (a William Blake fan, so he's OK by me!) fused beatboxing, myth and poetry to present a tale of love lost, dreams dreamt and future journeys imagined with help from pianist and composer Taz Modi and nine live musicians from the orchestra of Opera North. The 75-minute tour-de-force showcased Testament's human beatboxing talents with a huge variety of sounds blended into the overwhelming soundscape of the classical instruments gradually introduced by Opera North, including a soaring female singer  The stage space of the Quarry Theatre was used spectacularly with atmospheric lighting but my long-term memories of this piece will probably be less technical than personal. During Testament's monologue he conjured a cast of characters that came in and out of his record shop - there were many identifiable laughs on the joys and pretensions of vinyl, record collectors, music tastes and the precarious existence of trying to run a retail business with love but little economic sense! Of all the characters weaving in and out of the narrative the dominant presence (though painfully absent) was Orpheus's own Eurydice, in this case named Justine. Though the story, whilst funny, was often tear-jerking, there was a depth charge of hope at the end. Music is everywhere. Love is everywhere. And it was a great thrill for me, at Leeds Playhouse, that twice one evening in October 2020, I sat again in a live audience, the anticipation was immense and the house lights dimmed to darkness before launching Krapp's Last Tape and Orpheus in the Record Shop. (Back next week for La Voix Humaine.)