Enter Owen

The Capacity for Love

It’s not an original experience, I know, but I did spend some time feeling bewildered about whether or not I would be able to love a second grandchild as much as the first. Bewilderment is now in the past, faded to nothing, evaporated into a faraway haze. Reader, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the chambers of the heart expand mightily when love comes a-knocking.

Hello there, Owen Thomas                                                      

Fortune has smiled upon this baby. He arrived and we learned his name, second son to Harriet & Chris, brother to Samuel Miles, nephew to Emily, grandchild to Sally & Tony. Plus he has another family of cousins, an auntie and a grandma in the Midlands. And there’ll be a whole tribe of neighbours and friends around to create “Owen’s village.”

The basics

It’s easy to forget how, for a good number of weeks, it’s all about the food, the poo, the wee, the comfort, the sleep. Oh, the sleep, please Grant Them Sleep! And this time around there’s a 2-year-old to care for, keep entertained, and integrate into the newly fresh routines.

The future – the hope and the promise

Eleanor Roosevelt said “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” I know I can be irrationally sentimental, but it is hard not to see Hope and Promise in the presence of a little baby – no cynicism, no worries, no knowledge of evil, no pressures from social media or society – just survival and growth. Potential.

Two brothers

Sam has already shown tenderness to his younger brother, talking to him, reading to him. What kind of relationship will Sam and Owen develop as they live together in the same house for at least sixteen more years? So much potential for silliness, skirmishes, support and love.

Reach for Shakespeare

Sam can already identify the image of Shakespeare and he has a couple of books with characters from the plays. So far he has enjoyed Extracts from The Sonnets, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet (minus the stabbings.) What came into my heart when I held Owen for the first time was Ophelia’s line from Hamlet:

"We know what we are but know not what we may be."

Worse b4 Better

61st Birthday One Week Later Than Planned.....

Birthday Redux

And so, dear reader, my previous blog explained that I contracted 

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2)

aka Covid-19

and that I hijacked a Craig David song to explain the Week 1 journey which largely involved coughing and a sore throat. Well, Week 2 has not been the same and involved silent hypoxia (ie low oxygen levels without realising) and a feverish temperature. Floppy boneless limbs applied to both weeks. Covid is a peculiar disease:

• Some, like me, have an “OK” first week, a shocking second week and then recover
• Some people are asymptomatic and hardly know they’ve had it
• Some people deteriorate rapidly and die
• Some people become very ill for a long time
• Some people, like me, develop silent hypoxia from which you can recover (as I did) but which can alternatively lead to a sudden plummeting of health, becoming desperately breathless and hospitalisation 
• And there are many variations and gradations between.

I’m in the recovery stage now, building up stamina, breathing consciously and deeply, increasing the walking distance each day, resting between exertions….

Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif

It is written…. Nothing is written….

A highlight of sofa-flopping has been indulging in long movies – like the widescreen version of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a still astonishing feat of cinematography, editing and design with pitch-perfect performances, overwhelming music, and iconographic moments like the above entrance of Omar Sharif in the far distance, like a shimmering mirage; and the jump cut below between a burning match and the rising sun. Lawrence’s epic journey(s) through the burning deserts were a good match for how I felt dredging through my body’s responses to Covid-19. When William Potter burns himself extinguishing a match between his thumb and forefinger, he challenges Lawrence to explain “What’s the trick, then?” Lawrence answers: “The trick….is not minding that it hurts.”

Silenzio, Bruno

An altogether jolliier experience was the film that capped my delayed birthday – the Disney-Pixar film Luca, ravishingly animated and charmingly told. The themes were clear as an Italian blue sky: helicopter-parenting, family – both blood and constructed, unconventional-friendships, deceit, bullying, outsiders, prejudice, escape/freedom….

Self-Isolation Birthday

Of Mice and Men

Wise poet Robbie Burns observed in 1785 that it is a shame when little mice construct their shelters, carefully, lovingly – but unwittingly – in the path of the plough. And so I, dear reader, had planned for my 61st birthday to be at Castle Garden in Sissinghurst staying in the Priest’s House with the family. (If I’m still blogging and you’re still reading in the Spring of 2023, pop back to hear all about it.) Any road up, last year, I was condemned by government regulations to spend my 60th birthday outside and this year I have mostly been having Covid….

Faint line (top left) day one and not so faint (top right) day two

With fevered apologies to Craig David

Was it for real? Damn sure

What was the deal? Let me update

Sunday a tickle or two

Then got a lottta hotter on Monday

A faint line – so fine – real deal so hit me with a PCR

Results by Tuesday – possessed by heat and coughs

Smooth talker Covid they told me

They’d love to unfold me all night long

Cheesegrater throat and hacking hawking

From back to front I flipped it back

And breathed it big

Wednesday was a hell but

Thursday felt more me
Friday was my birthday and love came down the line
And stood at the end of my garden table
We chilled on Saturday and hope to do the same through Sunday

Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Until isolation ends on Thursday....

Last supper with taste and smell for a while....

Unlucky for some
Having been the most cautious person I know since March 2020, I feel as if the Tories’ confusing and contradictory strategy was designed – specifically and personally – to smite me just when I was about to relax. I’m double vaccinated (thanks, NHS) so have been fortunate and I hope I’ll have some natural immunity for a time at least. And I have a loving support system so had a smashing birthday anyway. Smell and taste seem to have departed (hopefully for a short time) but thankfully not before I enjoyed delicious stuff on the day of my nativity. I was also allowed to control the remote so resorted to an old comfort watch with the (to me) magnetic Vanessa Redgrave. The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, but as Robbie Burns points out, mice have it easier than men because they don’t know their ultimate destination…. Here’s to a few more birthdays, wee, timorous beastie!

Coral

Garden Cottage at Nun Monkton

Garden Cottage

For our (Coral) wedding anniversary we returned to a tiny AirBnB where we stayed in 2019 (when visiting the Yorkshire Heart Vineyard). The oasis “Garden Cottage” is not far from York along a road going only to a remote village where cows graze freely on the village green, a green skewered by the fattest, tallest maypole I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few, madam. Nun Monkton is the name of the village. The garden hummed with insects and wrapped us in its verdant peace. The dawn chorus was full of beauty.

Alice Hawthorne Inn

Alice Hawthorne

Nun Monkton is also home to the Alice Hawthorne Inn where we ate two nights in a row, the first with long-while friends, Sue and Brian. Stoked by delicious food (Crab Mayo, Roast Beetroot, Popcorn Prawns, Yorkshire Dales Lamb, Waterford Farm Steak, Sticky Toffee Pudding, Crème Catalan, Mini Sundae), the venue felt safe and welcoming.

Beningbrough Hall Estate

In The Moment

Our anniversary hike was around the nearby Beningbrough Hall Estate, alongside the River Ouse for much of the time, picking over gnarly roots and picnicking on tree stumps. Cooling forest sections on the walk provided welcome shelter. The house had an indoor exhibition (In The Moment: the art of wellbeing) aimed at reminding viewers to stand and stare, to pause, to slow down, to reflect, to be in the moment. Some of the pieces achieved that (for me) more than others but, on a hot day, it certainly slowed down the old heart rate.

Food and Nature

Amidst medical/political uncertainty and the competing noises of the media, some constants Remain True. The sights, sounds, smells and colours of nature continue to enchant. And eating, drinking and being merry all continue to drown out the stresses of the age. The messages about the “roadmap” towards “Freedom Day” Remain Confusing: Be Free/Be Cautious, Be Released/Continue Shielding, Do/Don’t/Maybe Wear Masks, Do/Don’t/Maybe Socially Distance, Go on holiday to a Red/Amber/AmberPlus/Green/GreenPlus Country/Staycation in the UK but Don’t Go to A Crowded Place (unless it’s a nightclub), Go Anywhere/Go Certain Places Sometimes/But Don’t Go There (small print = we might change the rules overnight and we’ll bury our heads in the sands about the understaffed, underpaid, overwhelmed NHS until we “beg” private companies to swoop in with greedy shareholders….)  But Nature and Food Remain True. And so do New Arrivals.

New Kid(s) On The Block

Welcome Earnest, my latest great nephew. Welcome Gertrude Jekyll, our climbing rose. Welcome Gabriel Oak, our potted rose. New things happen. Children grow. Roses bloom. Another day begins.

Vaccinated Diamond Birthday

Six Months Later

So, six months after I was born in Wakefield, Sally Anne Allard was born on St Patrick’s Day in Bradford. March 2021 marked Sally’s Diamond Birthday. It wasn’t “normal” in that there was no meal out and no trip to the cinema or theatre…. But it was normal in keeping up the tradition of getting together with our daughters (even if we were walking two by two) and eating and drinking (a picnic in the open air, socially distanced.) Last March we began locking down before the government asked us to and this year we look forward to restrictions being lifted. So in the weeks and months to come I hope we’ll have a series of further birthday-style events….

St Patrick’s Day over the previous five years

• 2016 – Anomaleesa at The Everyman Cinema in Leeds
• 2017 – Gardening course and the live action Beauty and the Beast at The Everyman
• 2018 – Icy walk, wintry views and meal at home with (Sally’s choice of) Minority Report on the TV
• 2019 – The RSC touring production of Matilda at Bradford Alhambra and Green Book at Showcase
• 2020 – Almost UK-wide Lockdown, hikes (on different days) to the Druid’s Altar and Top Withins

No cinema, no theatre, but plenty still to enjoy

In the bullet-points above, I’ve mentioned cultural events that made 2016-19 distinctive, but all years have still included cards, a cake and presents revolving around themes of gardening, glamour, reading, flowers, food and drink. This year a parade of visitors passed by the garden gate to wish Many Happy Returns and delivery folk turned up at a steady pace…. Unusual gifts this year included a phone call from Australia, a home-knitted cardigan and a kit from Dishoom to make Naan-Bacon-Rolls. (After nearly 35 years of marriage we are learning to be cooperative in the kitchen!)

Birthday Talents

It’s easy to celebrate birthdays with Sally (or spend Christmas, or go on holiday, or do Bonfire Night, or do anything really….) All that’s needed are messages of love from family and friends and some time together making human connections. All the Lockdowns in the world can’t squash Sally’s talents for being generous and open-hearted to whatever can be achieved with whatever resources are at hand….

Spring in the air

The birds are nest-building, the daffodils are out, the buds are budding, the daylight hours are longer – these are all signifiers of Sally’s birthday every year – the Spring of the year. And in 2021, the Covid vaccine rollout continues apace…. A Spring-like birthday present from the scientific and medical community. What will St Patrick’s Day in March 2022 bring? We’ll be a year older. Will we still be socially distancing? Wearing masks? Time will tell.

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me. 

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Three Households One Day

Three households….

…. All alike in dignity

In fair Saltaire where we lay our scene

In troubled times break to new jollity

Neath patio heaters, waiting for a vaccine….

Advent gives way to Christmas Eve.... Stocking One to Stocking TwentyFour…. Christmas is Go!

Tier Three Walks

Thankfully, walking in the open air is not yet prohibited so it is still a joy to tramp around the woods and dales and moors and fields of West Yorkshire on the days leading up to Christmas.

A mince pie in the forest, anyone?

I think, on average, I must have walked more miles in 2020 than in any previous year of my life. If I decide on any Resolutions in the New Year, I think it will be to Keep Walking amongst the local trees and alongside the canals and rivers and up and down the hills, mountains and dales of Yorkshire.

White Christmas Eve

A crisp and frosty (and at times blizzardy) walk on Christmas Eve above the town of Oxenhope brought Yorkshire horizons of every type: black pendulous clouds, misty snowscapes, bright blue expanses and boiling pink sunsets – the sky was as mad and varied as 2020 has been.

Al fresco

Although the latest rules allowed us to be inside on Christmas Day, bearing in mind Emily’s work in the NHS, we summoned our inner Carry On Campers with patio heaters and fairy lights to feast outside.

Penultimate post of 2020

My 50th post of the year will be on New Year’s Eve so between now and then I’ll scour my memory banks to see if there’s such a thing as a clear summary of the last year. I know we won’t be doing what we usually do on New Year’s Eve.…

Clear and simple

What’s true now – and it always has been and always will be – is that Connecting with loved ones is the most important human impulse of all…. whether that’s by card, letter, phone, text, a friendly wave, a doorstep chat, friendly small talk in the woods, WhatsApp, Email, Zoom, Skype, Teams – or, if you’re lucky, sitting down with others to share festive food and drink…. only connect.

Talking Shakespeare Kaksi (Two)

Like a potter’s wheel (Coasters, Stockings and Nativities)

My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel:

I know not where I am, nor what I do.

The valiant Talbot’s words in Henry VI Part One are a potent reflection of what my mind has felt like during 2020. At times, the effects of the pandemic (on me) have produced clarity, joy and hope but more often confusion, frustration and despair (the negative emotions mostly caused by the UK government, I have to say.) Time has seemed elastic so pre-Covid times feels like two months ago and also two years ago. 

• Local walks continue on most days,
• jigsaws keep the left brain/right brain synapses twanging,
• freshly-baked mulled wine and mince pies have now been sampled and
• posh takeaways from La Rue restaurant provide a once-a-week luxury oasis, providing a time to scrub down, dress up and light candles.

Whatever it takes to cope in this strangest of times…. In the collage below there is evidence that our Advent Stockings (from Sue) have continued to yield treasures at morning coffee time. You can also see the creative endeavours of our Badby friend, Alex Thompson, honorary daughter and sister to the Allard-Johnsons, who has used some of her time at least to design beautiful coasters. These are all evidence of “clarity, joy and hope” – as is the glimpse of an ambitious Nativity scene (see collage above) constructed in a neighbour’s garden, along with child-friendly story sheets telling of those days in May or September (likely) between 4 and 6 BC (probably) when a stable in Bethlehem became the centre of the universe. The centre of my imaginative universe at the moment is re-reading, re-listening to and re-watching Shakespeare plays – it stops my thoughts whirling and helps me avoid becoming frustrated by the news bulletins. I introduced the RSC Talking Shakespeare series in an earlier post (here). PS Kaksi is Finnish for Two so the information below is my record of the second “batch” I enjoyed.

Paterson Joseph and Sir Simon Russell Beale

• Paterson Joseph almost became a chef before turning to acting. All of the interviewees were asked about their earliest introductions to the national poet and Paterson Joseph delivered a classic line that chimed with my own experience: “I didn’t come to Shakespeare – Shakespeare came to me.” I first “noticed” Joseph in 1990 as Oswald in King Lear, and suddenly realised – because of his performance – what a brilliant and significant role Oswald is. I was also lucky to see his shattering Othello (with the evillest Iago I’ve seen in Andy Serkis) at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. I loved Joseph’s Patroclus in Troilus and Cressida and, most jaw-droppingly, his tormented Brutus (pitted against Ray Fearon’s Mark Antony) in Julius Caesar. He didn’t talk about his many non-Shakespearean roles (including the recent Kamal Hadley in the BBC’s Noughts and Crosses and one of my favourites, his role in Survivors; plus on stage his compelling Atahualpa in Shaffer’s Royal Hunt of the Sun at the National Theatre) but then the point of the series is to talk about Shakespeare and I’ll never forget the Channel 4 documentary in which he directed a group of disaffected teenagers in London in a moving production of Romeo and Juliet.
• Simon Russell Beale first exploded into my theatrical knowledge in a series of Restoration plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company playing gut-wrenching comic grotesques with painful vulnerabilities. He has spoken to the RSC Summer School a couple of times and it became obvious that comedy was not his only skill. Seeing him in Ghosts and The Seagull made it clear that he was “one of the greats.” He extracted every moment of impact from his appearances as Edgar in King Lear and his Thersites in Troilus and Cressida was truly disgusting. Then as a toad-like Richard III, an extremely strange Ariel in The Tempest and (at the Donmar) a heart-breakingly buttoned-up, pinched and pained Malvolio from Twelfth Night it became clear he could tackle anything Shakespeare wrote with clarity, intelligence and heart. He triumphed at the National with Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet and surprised (inevitably) with his Cassius in Julius Caesar and Macbeth at the Almeida. I thought he was tremendous as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale at the Old Vic but it was his Timon in Timon of Athens at the National (and broadcast to cinemas) that blew me away, reinventing the play anew as a Play for Today in these no-such-thing-as-society Thatcherite times. Of course he’s done Falstaff on TV (a more vicious one than usual) and (brilliantly) King Lear himself at the National. But his Prospero, on his return to the RSC, in a multimedia Tempest was a revelation – here was a guilty Prospero, as tormented as Ariel and Caliban, struggling to forgive himself never mind anyone else and finally breaking the audience’s hearts as he parted from the island.

Paterson Joseph in Julius Caesar, Othello, Noughts and Crosses, Royal Hunt of the Sun, Simon Russell Beale in The Tempest (as both Ariel and Prospero), The Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida (with Paterson Joseph), Juliet Stevenson in Measure for Measure, As You Like It, Truly Madly Deeply, Troilus and Cressida, Antony Sher in King Lear (as both The Fool and King Lear), Falstaff and Richard III

Juliet Stevenson and Sir Antony Sher

• Juliet Stevenson confided that she peed on stage during a spear-carrier scene (alongside Ruby Wax) in her first appearance at the RSC in a production of The Tempest. She paid tribute to early mentors in her acting career (well known like Peter Brook and less well known like David Perry) – sometimes by saying or doing things that she reacted against. Her insights into language and space were marvellous to hear as she discussed in detail her approach to Isabella in Measure for Measure, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida and Rosalind in As You Like It. The season in which she played the latter two roles was a significant one for me as I was living in Stratford-upon-Avon during that year teaching English as a Foreign Language to groups of adults who I would accompany to the theatre so I saw those two productions a great number of times, each time spotting more and more depth and detail, especially in Stevenson’s performances. Of course in later years I got to know her screen work such as Truly, Madly, Deeply and Life Story in which she played Rosalind Franklin, the scientist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA.
• (Sir) Antony Sher, one of the most powerful presences I’ve seen on stage in plays like Tartuffe and Tamburlaine the Great, had a plethora of breakthrough roles to discuss, not to mention aspects of his own biography (growing up a Lithuanian-Jew in South Africa, being gay and working at the Liverpool Playhouse.) His famous Richard III (on crutches with a prosthetic back), Shylock (in Merchant of Venice), Titus Andronicus (in a production which started in South Africa where audiences were unsurprised by the anarchic violence in the play which was given a contemporary political context), Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (where he researched and brilliantly portrayed the psychological condition of morbid jealousy), and the warrior-like Macbeth, in a Swan production that he and Harriet Walter infused with a palpable and terrifying sense of panic - all these performances were memorable and mesmerising. In recent years he famously portrayed Falstaff with equal doses of bonhomie and arrogant cruelty in the History sequence of Henry IV and a monumental King Lear arriving on an elevated wheely-throne.

Greg Doran Talking Shakespeare with Paterson Joseph, Simon Russell Beale, Antony Sher and Juliet Stevenson

Sighing after swallows flown

La Rue, Saltaire, posh takeaway

Lockdown 2.0

Another week, another jigsaw. This time, a birthday jigsaw featuring “The Harry Potter Film Club” named because we started the club to watch the Harry Potter films one after the other and have since graduated to Oscar-winners, foreign language films, strange comedies, cheesy romances, macabre crime movies and everything in between. The week has also seen the successful ordering and whole-stomached consuming of a posh takeaway from local British/French bistro La Rue – a new way for businesses to try and keep afloat in these challenging times. I’m assuming the UK Prime Minister has an excellent plan for dealing with the 2020 pandemic; I can only hope that upwards of a million infections and over 50,000 deaths were part of his vision. Otherwise, why would he keep trying to tell me it was all looking promising (me, with the rose-tinted spectacles)? To be honest, I wouldn’t want to be a member of the cabinet at the moment; though next week might feel better without Dominic Cummings who many government insiders describe as malignant and mendacious. Just saying.

Sever from my lot your lot

I can usually conjure something from Shakespeare or poetry to fit the times and Lockdown 2.0 brought to mind the Autumnal poem below. It is by one of my top ten poets: Christina Rossetti, author of the soulful In the Bleak Midwinter and the wild Goblin Market. The voice of the poem “live(s) alone, (and) look(s) to die alone” having ordered all her friends to stay away and “sever” themselves from her. “I have hedged me with a thorny hedge.” There are many interpretations of the identity of the character inside this Petrarchan sonnet, and why exactly she is in her own personal lockdown. But, in November 2020, the last four lines catch my mood during the latest Covid-19 national restrictions. (Incidentally that mysterious last line is a gift for teachers trying to demonstrate the technique and effects of assonance (on the “u”) and alliteration (on the “s” and the “t”….) God and Gaia bless you, Christina Rossetti. I thank you for your gifts.

Hirst Wood, La Rue Puddings, My homemade Chicken&Mushroom Pie, Christina Rossetti - all good things....

From Sunset to Star Rise

By Christina Rossetti

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.

From Sunset to Star Rise

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….