Harrogate Flower Show

A coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers

A sunny day, a birthday voucher for Sally, a day out at the Harrogate Flower Show. Who knew that the world of flowers could be so competitive and cut-throat? Thousands, clearly, judging from our visit to the 2017 Harrogate Flower Show.
Away before me to sweet beds of flowers;
Love thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers
Occupying a section of the show ground for the Great Yorkshire Show, the event featured plenty to see (and smell and experience) in the way of garden designs, plants, flower arrangements and creative interpretations. Northern colleges produced weird car bonnet floral displays. There was an awesome section called HortCouture which presented fabulously unique costumes in flower and nature designs. New Zealander Jenny Gillies’s creations were stunning. A night at the Oscars was celebrated with platforms inspired by particular films. Historical themes were interpreted, specific challenges were offered, fashion designers were celebrated. Food and drink were easy to come by and, being in Yorkshire, typically eclectic. We enjoyed champagne with sausage rolls and pie. The comments of the judges were left for people to see and it was fascinating to hear visitors argue with each other about what the judges had written. I went with few expectations really, just a pleasant day out, and came away with the sense that flower shows are gladitatorial and epic.

These flowers are like the pleasures of the world

“Here’s a few flowers” says Belarius in Cymbeline planning a forest burial for a dead boy that he has known only for a short time. As ever in Shakespeare there are depths and complications with this flowery event. We know that the boy is a girl and that she isn’t dead but drugged with a potion that simulates death. We also know that she is the sister of Belarius’s two sons, reared in the forest wild. We also know that Belarius effectively kidnapped the boys so he is nobody’s father, just a good man who made a drastic decision and has now become a solid and beloved (adoptive, woodland) father. And to tighten the spring even further, in comes the two boys to add another body to the grave, a headless corpse of someone that, given the chance, would have raped the boy/girl. But now he’s (literally) lost his head. “Here’s a few flowers” – a simple line but concealing a world of passion and drama. “Harrogate Flower Show” – a simple-sounding event but containing battles and creations and inventions and judgements and tears and laughter. Who knew? (I do, now.)

And each man have enough

Greg Doran's RSC production of King Lear

A play for our times

I have seen Shakespeare’s King Lear on stage over a dozen times and it is always a harrowing experience (sometimes for negative reasons but often for powerful and profound reasons.) The recent Royal Shakespeare Company production by Greg Doran, in Stratford-upon-Avon (soon to be in cinemas and in London,) reveals fresh ideas about particular lines and characters but, more than I’ve ever felt before, it strikes me as a play that needs to be understood by the current government. An elderly audience member from Liverpool sitting next to me, a man I didn’t know, was moved to turn to me at the end and say “all politicians who favour austerity as a policy should be forced to see this.”

Oliver Johnstone as Edgar, Antony Sher as Lear, David Troughton as Gloucester, Antony Byrne as Kent, Paapa Essiedu as Edmund, Natalie Simpson as Cordelia

Reason not the need

As Lear’s power is stripped away, literally and metaphorically, Lear begins to see humans for the “poor, bare, forked” animals they are and he realises that, as the king, he has “taken too little care of this.” The trajectory of Lear’s journey on stage is from the pomp of his court where he controls land and distributes wealth to the blighted English countryside where he is a broken, homeless, poor and hungry beggar looking for shelter. From king to beggar in two hours…. Doran's production charted this journey vividly. 

Faithful (disguised) son Edgar leading blinded (deceived) father Gloucester

Enough

How much is enough? How much (Money? Shelter? Clean Water? Food? Safety? Entertainment?) is enough to live a civilised life? How much money does a banker need to live a happy life? How much welfare does a disabled veteran need to survive with dignity? What about a rich and generous benefactor who gives plenty to charity? Or an unemployed drug addict who is suffering because of parental abuse? Who has the right to make judgements about what rich people do with their money or who can judge the vulnerable person who relies on the state to keep them alive? Well…. Governments claims the right by taking and using taxes from workers and loans from financial institutions. Governments make judgements and then create legal and financial policies based on those judgements. The government distributes the country’s revenue as a result of the judgements they make. Like King Lear. Lear makes judgements in the first scene of the play and the consequent unfolding tragedy destroys the kingdom and his three daughters as well as himself.

Faces of Antony Sher: as Richard III, as Tamburlaine, as The Roman Actor, as Macbeth with Harriet Walter, as Falstaff, as Leontes with Alexandra Gilbreath as Hermione

Sir Antony Sher

Sher played Lear as a horribly vain tyrant at the beginning summoning curses from an ancient religion at which the younger characters rolled their eyes. By the end he became a vulnerable dad who had seen into the abyss and realised his part in its creation. The ancient religion no longer produced a drum roll on cue, just silence and a bleak "Nothing." Sir Antony Sher’s line delivery of Shakespeare always sounds to me as if the play he is performing had been written yesterday and his character is working everything out there and then. Sher makes me hear the play as well as see it. A great performance, I think, all the more remarkable since he was in the first production of King Lear I ever saw playing The Fool to Michael Gambon’s Lear.

Antony Sher's own painting of himself as The Fool and with his Lear, Michael Gambon, as the modern tragic hero-fool, Willy Loman, and now, as Lear, with his own Fool, Graham Turner

Gwynne, Williams, Simpson

Where is a girl’s mother when you need her? The three sisters (Nia Gwynne as Goneril, Kelly Williams as Regan and Natalie Simpson as Cordelia) all suggested complicated back stories of the need to be loved by their omnipotent (but old-fashioned) father. The elder two daughters were definitely more “sinned against than sinning” in the first half of the play. Goneril’s anxiety and Regan’s desperation were more affecting than Cordelia’s rather steely “I know I’m right” attitude in the opening love trial, which made the arcs of the three sisters more complicated than usual. By the end Cordelia broke my heart and the emerging viciousness of Goneril and Regan was palpable but the opening scenes of this production didn’t foreground the final destination of the sisters. Excellent interpretations.

Nia Gwynne as Goneril, Natalie Simpson as Cordelia, Kelly Williams as Regan

Byrne, Troughton, Essiedu, Johnstone

Antony Byrne was a convincingly loyal (“blunt and saucy”) Kent. The magnificent David Troughton was a tough, vigorous and then traumatised (blinded) Gloucester and his sons were memorable: Paapa Essiedu fresh from Hamlet, was an insinuating and attractive Edmund and Oliver Johnstone, topping even his sensual Iachimo in Cymbeline, was a gullible and then truly heroic Edgar, both in his Poor Tom disguise and his knight-protector role, duelling his half-brother Edmund to Edmund’s death. (“The wheel is come full circle.”) Sometimes at the end of King Lear I feel that the remaining world will not be safe in Edgar’s hands but at the end of this production I felt Oliver Johnstone had taken his father’s words into his heart:

So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.

Long Live King Edgar!

Lears: Brian Cox (with David Bradley), Timothy West, David Calder, Wu Hsing Kuo, Frank Langella, Nigel Hawthorne, Warren Mitchell, Pete Postlethwaite, Jonathan Pryce (with Phoebe Cox), David Warner, John Shrapnel (with Trevor Cooper), Greg Hicks, Tom Courtenay, Corin Redgrave (with David Hargreaves), Derek Jacobi, David Hayman (with Owen Whitelaw), Simon Russell Beale, Nonso Anozie, Ian McKellen, Tim Piggot-Smith and David Haig

The readiness is all

Alex T with Paapa Essiedu after another stunning performance as Hamlet. 2016 RSC Summer School memories: Cymbeline, Dr Faustus, Hamlet and The Alchemist and, in the Birthplace, a Chinese musical version of Coriolanus....

The readiness is all

It’s time to account for the title of my blog – The readiness is all. The internet address is actually “the readiness is all – let be” – without gaps and without the dash. Yes, it’s a quotation from Hamlet. Yes, Hamlet himself says it. Sometimes the “let be” is cut from productions (it’s only in the Second Quarto) but I’m convinced it’s a crucial line. I’ve always thought his “let be” was his hard-won answer to his earlier anxiety over “To be or not to be,” despite that notion not being favoured by scholars. The idea is simple – que sera sera – what will be will be – if he is going to die he will die. The time is ripe – or will be soon – or maybe tomorrow or another day. You could say it is a fatalistic and pessimistic world-view; or adopt my view and believe he means that he is going to live for the moment, live in the present, live for now, be mindful of existence and smell the roses. A similar sentiment occurs in King Lear (which I’ll see in a couple of weeks) when Edgar persuades his father, Gloucester, to struggle on for a few more minutes (despite being blinded and betrayed) – Edgar says Ripeness is all.

"The readiness is all" says Hamlet to Horatio in Hamlet - a school production I directed and Hamlet and Horatio in the RSC Simon Godwin production. "Ripeness is all" says Edgar to Gloucester in King Lear in the RSC Greg Doran production.

There is a tide in the affairs of men

I quoted Ripeness is all in my first blog (I will survive) and the blog before this one (To every thing there is a season) reminded me of the whole Readiness is all concept. Every year since about 1976 I’ve seen most Royal Shakespeare Company productions, increasingly so since 1986 when I started attending the RSC Summer School, the year the Swan Theatre opened (and the year I married Sally.) Every year the RSC re-inspires me to delve again into the work and context of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre and find comfort in the ideas and themes that exploded into English Literature throughout those years (about 40 years from around 1585 to 1625.) At the most recent summer school I was lucky to see Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus and Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist alongside Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Cymbeline, the former in a stunning production starring Paapa Essiedu and the latter in a production that contained many fine moments and performances though, like the play (one of my favourites incidentally), was sometimes a bit weird.

Surviving RSC Summer School programmes from past 30 years and gadding about in Badby and round Stratford-upon-Avon

From Hamlet Act Five Scene Two

Horatio:

If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.

Hamlet:

Not a whit, we defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all, since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.

From King Lear Act Five Scene Two

Edgar:

Away, old man, give me thy hand, away!
King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter taken.
Give me thy hand. Come on.

Gloucester:

No further, sir, a man may rot even here.

Edgar:

What, in ill thoughts again?
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all. Come on.

Gloucester:

And that’s true too.

Would Shakespeare want us to leave Europe?

Great Britons

Shakespeare is one of the greatest Britons ever to have lived. He seems to be in the Top 20 of most lists I can find and in the huge survey conducted by the BBC in 2002 he sat comfortably at Number Five (after Winston Churchill, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Diana Princess of Wales and Charles Darwin.) Other writers who (in my opinion) make the list without question are Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens – I think of Those Three as the writers who forever transformed Poetry (Chaucer), Drama (Shakespeare) and Prose (Dickens.) Nudging them (in alphabetical order) I would include the following writers for a variety of reasons: Jane Austen, William Blake, the Brontës, Agatha Christie, Caryl Churchill, CS Lewis, JK Rowling, GB Shaw, JRR Tolkien, Oscar Wilde and William Wordsworth and there are, of course, many more vying for attention. We have a truly great national tradition of writing that changed the reading and literary habits of the world, as did, I think, the ones I’ve mentioned.

Great Britons

Would Shakespeare, as a Great Briton, vote Remain or Brexit on June 23rd 2016?

I saw Cymbeline at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre recently and (one of) the villain(s) in that strange Romance is the thuggish Cloten who is definitely a Brexiter as he stands up to the Roman Empire by refusing to pay them tribute:

                            Britain is
A world by itself; and we will nothing pay
For wearing our own noses.

So is Cloten speaking for Shakespeare when he wants Britain to stand alone without paying out any money to any foreign power for trade rights and protection?

Current RSC Cloten Marcus Griffiths singing to Bethan Cullinane's Imogen, Anton Yelchin in the 2014 film of Cymbeline and Thomas Gorrebeeck's portrayal as the nationalist Cloten

Confirmation bias

As in the whole of Shakespeare’s work you can usually find a contradictory opinion because Shakespeare seems to see both sides of every human dilemma. The history play King John ends with lines that might well echo Cloten’s sentiments:

This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror….
….Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.

The King of France and two King John Philip the Bastards: Pippa Nixon and Rikki Lawton

But these words are spoken by a cynical (though appealing and persuasive) character, Philip the Bastard. Conversely,  in the final scene of the more popular and potentially patriotic history play, Henry V, Shakespeare writes about England and France ceasing their hatred and hopes

                     ....this dear conjunction (will)    
Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord
In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance
His bleeding sword 'twixt England and fair France.

So does Shakespeare wants us to stand alone (“England to itself”) or work together in a group (with “neighbourhood and Christian-like accord”)? Perhaps we hear what we want to hear when we listen to Shakespeare, just as we tend to read newspapers or go to websites that already confirm what our opinions are.

Henry V with Donato Giancola's painting of Agincourt, Olivier and Branagh - a Shakespeare king as patriotic hero, senseless warmonger or bringer of peace to Europe - potentially all three

European settings

As well as locations throughout England, Shakespeare presented many European locations on the Jacobethan stage, even if there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever travelled abroad. In the plays we travel to Actium, Agincourt, Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Bohemia, Cyprus, Elsinore, Ephesus, Florence, Harfleur, Illyria, Inverness, Mantua, Marseilles, Messina, Milan, Mytilene, Navarre, Orleans, Padua, Pentapolis, Philippi, Rome, Roussillon, Sicily, Tharsus, Troy, Tyre, Venice, Verona, Vienna. (Those places cover Europe and north Africa pretty widely: modern-day Austria, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Macedonia, Turkey, Scotland, Spain, Wales, Yugoslavia.) Shakespeare’s imaginative landscape was definitely outward-looking.

from Shakespeare Fangirl's Pinterest page

Just My Bill

1616

The top picture is of one of my top happy places – Top Withins on the moors above Haworth where I was on Thursday. Inside my imagination I have a top happy place and his work is my BBF. I’ve been aware of today’s date approaching (23.04.16) for many years. Cervantes died 400 years ago. Every year it’s St George’s Day. Every year I celebrate it as Shakespeare’s probably birthday (we know he was baptized on 26th April and that was traditionally 3 days after the birth.) What we DO know for a fact, though, is that Shakespeare died on this day in 1616, probably dying without ever realising how globally recognised his work and ideas would come to be 400 years later.

The James Plays by Rona Munro

Weirdly, but somehow aptly, I’m spending a marathon day at the Lowry Theatre in Manchester watching three modern history plays about James I, James II and James III, three medieval kings of Scotland. I’ll be catching up on the radio and TV recordings of the Shakespeare celebrations in the coming weeks. Later in the year I’m looking forward to the RSC’s Cymbeline, Hamlet, King Lear, The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Tempest. And Lily James, Richard Madden, Meera Syal and Derek Jacobi in Romeo and Juliet.  But that’s later in the year.

Lily James, Richard Madden, Meera Syal and Derek Jacobi in Romeo and Juliet and images from The James Plays by Rona Munro

For today I’ll blog my favourite sonnet and a guilty secret. My favourite sonnet speaks for itself – and I’ve recited it internally and externally on many occasions. My guilty secret is that whenever I see or hear a particular song from the ground-breaking musical Showboat, a profound piece of theatre, in my opinion, I don’t think of vulnerable Julie’s lost heterosexual lover, Bill (click here for Ava Gardner singing it brilliantly), I’m thinking of My Bill, Mr Billy Wobbledagger (William Shakespeare – thanks for being in my life, Bill.)

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
        For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
        That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Ava Gardner as Julie in Showboat

Bill – music by Jerome Kern, original lyrics by PG Wodehouse, revised lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

I used to dream that I would discover
The perfect lover someday
I knew I'd recognize him if ever
He came 'round my way
I always used to fancy then
He'd be one of the god-like kind of men
With a giant brain and a noble head
Like the heroes bold in the books I've read

But along came Bill
Who's not the type at all
You'd meet him on the street
And never notice him
His form and face
His manly grace
Are not the kind that you
Would find in a statue
And I can't explain
It's surely not his brain
That makes me thrill
I love him because he's wonderful
Because he's just my Bill

He can't play golf or tennis or polo
Or sing a solo or row
He isn't half as handsome
As dozens of men that I know
He isn't tall or straight or slim
And he dresses far worse than Ted or Jim
And I can't explain why he should be
Just the one, one man in the world for me

He's just my Bill
An ordinary man
He hasn't got a thing that I can brag about
And yet to be
Upon his knee
So comfy and roomy seems natural to me
Oh, I can't explain
It's surely not his brain
That makes me thrill
I love him because he's, I don't know
Because he's just my Bill

Burn, bonfires, clear and bright

Bonfire night at Bolton Abbey in 2015

Fire burns and cauldron bubble

No sooner does Bowie die, but so does the elegant and gorgeously-voiced Alan Rickman, an actor I’ve long admired on both stage and screen. And both aged 69. Uncanny. Coincidental. I first got to know Alan Rickman in the RSC season where he played Achilles in Troilus and Cressida and Jacques in As You Like It. As Jacques says to conclude the “All the World’s a Stage” speech:

                             Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Alan Rickman in As You Like It and Troilus and Cressida

One fire burns out another’s burning
Memories of last November have leapt into my blog. Something about burning as a ritual of moving on, purging, cleansing... When Benvolio says “One fire burns out another’s burning,” in Romeo and Juliet, he goes on to say that

One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish....
One desperate grief cures with another's languish:
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.

Can we forget and burn away sorrows?

Ozymandias
Does Alan Rickman’s death mean Bowie’s is less painful? Should the deaths of famous people affect an ordinary person at all? The ending of Shelley's short but perfectly formed poem Ozymandias captures the sense of life's futility:

                                     Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Why pictures of 2015 bonfire night at Bolton Abbey?

Why not? Everything turns to ashes. Ashes to ashes. But from the ashes new life can spring. And will spring. A phoenix will rise. Come on, 2016, flame on!

The Human Torch from Marvel's The Fantastic 4

They shall have good luck

Chris, cousin Ann and Mum, December 2013 and December 2014

White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits

I said it on Tuesday 1st December, of course, prompted by my brother’s reminder on Facebook…. It’s become a regular thing. Something that my Mum used to always say. And now Chris does. Every month. On the 1st of the month. I wonder how many people say it. And why they do.

Lost in Legend

There are other variations of “White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits.” Some people insist on “Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits.” Or “Pinch, Punch, First of the Month” along with a pinch and a punch. And in the West Country, apparently, you can retaliate to “Pinch, Punch….” with a swift and well-aimed “A Flick and a Kick for being so Quick.” But I grew up with the triple White Rabbits. So where did the phrase come from?

• The internet reveals the uncorroborated claim that RAF pilots would always say it before every flight, though not why rabbits and not why white…. 
• Some scholars think it’s connected to the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and the fact that Lewis Carroll knew some Hebrew and the Hebrew saying “Have a great month” when transliterated verbally sounds a bit like “White Rabbits.” 
• Some believe it’s connected to fertility and wishing parents would have good luck getting pregnant because rabbits are notoriously fertile.
  

Double Double Toil and Trouble

As a child I thought it was something to do with guarding against the power of witches. I think the “Pinch, Punch….” saying might be connected to this too, as a pinch of salt was used in medieval times to ward away witches. I thought white rabbits were something kindly magicians made use of (appearing out of top hats, for example), so rabbits, I reasoned as a child, would be a good charm to counteract the creatures that I understood witches used. My primary knowledge of witchcraft came from the Weird Sisters in Macbeth and they make use of cats, hedge-pigs, toads, snakes, adders, blind-worms, lizards, owlets, dragons, wolves, sharks, goats, tigers and baboons, not to mention the body parts of Jews, Turks and Tartars or a "finger of birth-strangled babe"…. Three times White Rabbits was the very least protection you needed, I imagined….

Was there ever man had such luck!

Cloten says "Was there ever man had such luck!" in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline but a few scenes later Cloten has been beheaded. He needed some more potent signs of luck: a black cat, a horseshoe, a money spider, a 4-leaf clover, maybe? Touching wood, knocking on wood or shaking hands with a chimney sweep? Seeing two magpies or admiring a rainbow? Catching falling leaves? Crossing your fingers? Throwing salt over your shoulder?

Now, by the gods, I pity his misfortune

King Simonides pities the misfortunes of Pericles and within a few lines the unfortunate guy is rewarded with a new bride and (eventually) a happy end. Plenty of misery before his happy ending but no tangible signs of bad luck: new shoes on the table, for example. Opening an umbrella indoors. Seeing one lone magpie. Friday the Thirteenth. Cracking a mirror. Walking under a ladder. Spilling salt (before throwing some over your shoulder to counteract the misfortune.)

Just to be on the safe side

So it could go either way, it seems. Cloten thought he was a lucky man and lost his head; Pericles suffered blow after blow and got a happy ending. Better just say “White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits” in case. And try to remember to say it first thing before you say anything else…. Here’s to good luck for all in December!

 

Small acts of kindness

Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh, Miranda Raison in The Winter's Tale

Paulina in The Winter’s Tale

Last weekend I saw The Winter’s Tale at the Garrick Theatre in London (to be broadcast this evening in cinemas.) The character of Paulina is one of the most extraordinary in literature and I wanted to see the show live because one of my favourite actors, Judi Dench, is currently playing the role. Paulina behaves without regard to her own safety, life or convenience – and Judi Dench catches her sense of humour, her courage, her loyalty and, when needed, her blazing anger. It is hard to behave with absolute conviction the whole time. Most of us (me certainly) regularly compromise, regularly miss opportunities, regularly see both sides of an argument.

Forgiveness

The end of The Winter’s Tale is suffused with redemption and forgiveness (like those other great Late Romances of Shakespeare, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Tempest.) Hard-won lessons are learned, families learn to forgive and the future, though potentially painful, is a bit more hopeful. We are all in charge of our own reactions and responses to everything that happens. It astonishes me when suffering family members forgive terrorists and murderers who have slain their loved ones. In doing so, though, they are controlling their own futures, so I can appreciate why they choose forgiveness rather than revenge. I don’t know if I could.

Even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you

Khalil Gibran’s quotation above is from a lengthier one on “Love.” The idea is well-known – if you love someone you open yourself to being hurt. Why does anyone do it? Victor Hugo in Les Miserables promoted “small acts of kindness” as one of the keys to happiness:

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. A great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.

Book illustrations, stage and film versions of Les Miserables

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts....

In George Eliot’s Middlemarch Dorothea is the heroine that, like Paulina in Winter’s Tale, is a model for our time. Do one good thing. Then another. Then another.

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women, feeling that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better….
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

How many small acts of kindness have we had done for us in our lives? Who did them? How many small acts of kindness can we do tomorrow?

Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea in the BBC version of Middlemarch

Ruby Wedding

Rubies

Kublai Khan, the Chinese Emperor, wanted to swap a whole city for a magnficient ruby. It is the stone of kings and the queen of stones, the symbol of love and faithfulness, protection and prosperity. Ringo Starr and the other Beatles are chased around the world in the film Help! because Ringo is in possession of a sacrificial ruby ring. And ruby is the stone that commemorates 40 years of being married.  40 years! The current UK statistics are that 42% of marriages end in divorce, 34% of them by the 20th wedding anniversary – so 40 years is not insignificant and definitely worth celebrating.

Ringo Starr in Help!

Two of a pair

Mick n Jan, yin and yang
Antony, Cleo, Juliet, Romeo,
Tarzan and Jane, Venus and Mars,
Eric and Ernie, Adam and Eve,
Bed and breakfast, bread and butter,
Salt and pepper, fish and chips,
Rock and roll, in and out,
Up and down, twist and shout,
Cheese and pickle, pie and peas,
Day and night, left and right,
Hot and cold, brave and bold,
Give and take, an arm and a leg,
Near and far, high and low
Now and then, push and pull,
Forty Years On, They’re Going Strong,
Owl and pussycat, Lady and the Tramp,
A party gal and a bit of a scamp,
G and T, a pint or three,
Sun and moon, yin and yang,
My brother n his missus, Mick n Jan.

Family and friends at Mick and Jan's Ruby Wedding Party

"O my gentle brothers, Have we thus met?"

(from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline)

Worshipping older brothers was a feature of my childhood. My over-riding memory of Mick, my second brother, is of his kind and generous nature, his honesty and integrity and his modest calmness. Nothing’s changed. It was to Mick and Jan’s Ruby Wedding Anniversary Party I went last Saturday night.

Blasts from the past....

Families

Families are extraordinary. There is so much shared history, so much shared joy and pain, and when you assemble in a big group – often for celebrations but occasionally for funerals – you want to ask everything and ask nothing, you want to tell everything and tell nothing. It almost doesn’t matter what’s said because the family is part of you and you are part of it. Family exists as a community concept – the blood relations who are connected by marriage and birth. And then there are other people who become part of the family by marrying in, or people who become part of the family because they spend so much time with you they are almost like family anyway. They are all “part of the furniture” of your heart and brain, your guts and soul.

Timelines

One of my favourite retirement hobbies is creating a timeline for everything that has ever happened. Ever. It is a bottomless pit of a hobby but I am enjoying seeing the historical connections between things.

• The first item on the list is 13.7 billion years BC – the Big Bang.
• In 1960 I record that I was born.
• In 2015 I note that on 12th September Mick and Jan held their Ruby Wedding Anniversary Party

Mick and Jan are on the same timeline as

• the French Revolution (1789 – 1799)
• the death of Shakespeare (23rd April 1616 – and of course I’m over-excited about the 400th anniversary commemorations of Shakespeare’s death next year) and
• the first Olympic Games in 776 BC

We’re all on each other’s timelines, muddled in with Emperors and Clowns, Popes and Vagabonds, Warrior-women and Mothers of Messiahs, simultaneously important in immediate personal terms and insignificant in cosmic terms.

Synchronicity

It is a bit haphazard the way I am adding to the timeline but I suppose the focus is on Major Historical Events and how they relate to Literary and Cultural Landmarks. Who knew, for example, that there were three major extinction events before 1 million BC? Or that Captain Cook was exploring Australasia when David Garrick was initiating the first Shakespeare Jubilee celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon? Or that Jane Austen’s Emma was published in the same year as the Battle of Waterloo?

Does anyone care?
Probably not, but “doing my timeline” keeps me out of trouble, off the streets. And in keeping my brain and imagination ticking, I hope I’ll be celebrating a Ruby Wedding Anniversary one day…. Ten years to go…. Pearl for Sally and me next year in 2016….