Updates

On the quest to improve my knowledge of recent music (well, of recent  classical music – I’ve given up on the popular front), I borrowed another Arvo Part CD, with pieces I didn’t know, and Hans Werner Henze’s Requiem.

The Part is wonderful. The music is minimalist in terms of its make up, but not minimalist at all in terms of its emotional meaning and impact. I’m not a musicologist, so I don’t know how to explain it any better. But the Henze had me well and truly defeated. Apparently he’s an atheist, so it’s a non religious requiem. He uses the traditional “movements” of the requiem mass, Dies Irae, Lacrimosa, Lux Eterna, etc, as titles, but there are no words and the piece is about life, death and grief as part of human experience. So the CD blurb says, anyway.  I have to say, to my ears it never got going at all. It sounded as though the orchestra was tuning up the whole time. I played a little of the CD for second son and son in law, and I am sorry to say we all got the giggles. Haken Hardenberger plays in some movements (not in Tuba Mirum, for reasons best known to Henze). But what’s the point of having a trumpet virtuoso playing, if all he gets to do is make parping noises?

On the theatre front, we’ve been to see One Man, Two Governors, which was a wonderful end of January tonic. We laughed and laughed. And then I went to see an Alan Ayckbourn, Joking Apart, which was quite depressing. The story hinged on a golden couple, for whom everything seemed to go perfectly, and the increasing jealousy and bitterness of their “friends”. But nobody has a perfectly successful and happy life. Everybody, unless they are a complete psychopath, has disasters and regrets and sources of sadness. Plenty of people put a on a brave face, and sometimes rather stupid or egocentric people take it at face value, and yes, they can get jealous. It would have been better, in my opinion, if we had been allowed to see that the golden couple did not have the perfect life that the others so envied. That would have been more truthful. It made me think of my godmother. If anyone got overly pleased with themselves, or showed off too much, or if you got jealous of anyone else’s good fortune, she would always say, philosophically,  “Everyone has their Gethsemane.”  Mind you, it took me a long time to understand what she meant, and even longer to understand its truth!

And we had a walk, in Leicestershire, a part I didn’t know at all, Burrough’s Hill iron age hill fort, which is a terrific place – very impressive ramparts, a huge enclosure, and quiet empty countryside. The views were super, but the wind made my ears ache. And there were snowdrops and lambs! Some of the lambs weren’t even that young, they were quite big and sturdy.  It was so cold and icy I couldn’t help thinking that the ewes must have got a bit confused.  One ewe had very young twin black lambs in Persian lamb coats.

It’s now comfortably into February. January is never a good month for me. The rheumatologist is pleased with my husband’s blood tests, the flower shops have daffodils, oldest grandson has to make a Roman shield, as have his classmates, and they are going to form a testudo, (I wish I could see that!) and spring is on the horizon.

Sharm el Sheikh 2

We’ve been back for a couple of days now, but I’m behind with the blogging, because there was one casualty of the trip – the screen of my laptop. It must have got bumped or shaken on the flight, but I didn’t notice anything untoward at the time. I haven’t lost the data, so I’m beginning to be mildly pleased at the prospect of a new laptop. Anyway, here’s my second Egyptian instalment.

The Egyptians are obviously aiming at slightly higher end tourism, and they keep this place really clean and well cared for. There’s only a little of the Middle Eastern / Asian failing of building something rather swish and then failing to maintain it in any way. It’s pretty international – we ate teppanyaki one night - but you’re still clearly in Egypt.

It’s been cloudier today so not quite as hot on the beach, but the evening is much warmer and we had a little walk, and I noticed a trend for Egyptian pop songs to use tunes from European classical music – I heard one clearly based on Fur Elise and a real oddity based on Orff’s O Fortuna. There was even a dramatic anthem, with an opening based on Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathrustra. It’s quite a strange sound because the tune is overlaid by Arabic wailing, and so to begin with I thought I was just imagining hearing Beethoven.

The Kobo E readers the children gave us for Christmas are a great success. The only difficulty I’ve encountered was that I couldn’t make out the maps in the copy of Antony Beevor’s  “Stalingrad”, which I borrowed from the library. It really benefited from concentrated reading – at home, reading in short spells, I’d have constantly been having to look back to remind myself who Schmidt or Chuikov was – but the maps would have been a great help, I’m sure.

It felt slightly odd to be reading about Stalingrad while surrounded by Russians, or Ukrainians, I can’t tell the difference. But they are instantly recognisable as one or the other. They’re usually very badly dressed and the women have badly coloured hair. To protect the dyed hair from the sun they wear headscarves, but there’s nothing stylish about them – they all succeed in looking like those statues of “The factory worker (holding hammer aloft) and the collective farm worker (brandishing sickle)” which seemed to be everywhere when we went to Russia in 1972. The pretty women tend to spend a lot of time having their photographs taken in soft porn poses, and all seem to favour thongs, whatever sex or figure. A woman with the figure of a shot putter run to fat, in a diamante thong, will stick in my memory for ever.

One of the tour boats is rigged up to look rather like a Nile barge, curved with thick, heavy posts shaped a little like lotus stems and flowers fore and aft. It makes me think of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, but there aren’t any rowers, just an engine – a bit disappointing. And it doesn’t seem to have perfumed sails, either.

We’ve got a routine of going into a café for a drink and a sandwich for Phil, otherwise he goes all weak and weedy, and using our phones to check emails and the news. We seem to have missed some bad weather. But the exciting thing was getting an email from our older grandson – how quickly they grow up!  It was nice to hear from him and be able to reply – I always send the postcards, but we usually get home before it arrives.

We came down to earth with a bump, arriving home! Waiting for the minibus to take us to the car, the cold was awful, and by the time I’d scraped the snow off the car, I could have cried at the pain in my hands. Then when we got home, the flat was freezing. But it is nice to be home again and to see everyone.

Sharm el Sheikh

I had a very enjoyable Christmas, but a bit odd because we didn’t have anyone to stay. So I kept feeling at a loss, and that I must have forgotten to do something, because I had so much time to relax. Normally I don’t stop working for several days, except to sleep, and I don’t usually do that well, because I know I have to be first up and try to get things done (say, cleaning the loos or sweeping the kitchen floor) before everyone else gets moving and wanting breakfast, and then coffees, and then lunch………. It sounds as though I don’t enjoy it and of course I do really, but not having it to do is quite a change.

So now the Christmas holidays are over and we are having our first holiday in Sharm el Sheikh. We chose it because it’s the place that’s the shortest flight to guaranteed sunshine, and my husband felt in need of warmth because of his rheumatoid arthritis. I must say we felt some trepidation – it’s not at all our usual type of holiday – but so far it’s a big success. We’re in a big resort hotel, with a lovely large room, with settee and table and chairs so we can be comfortable passing time in the room. There’s a big swimming pool just outside and I had a swim before breakfast, but it is cold (12 degrees according to the blackboard), so I really needed a hot shower when I came back. There are two heated pools, but they are too small for serious swimming.

The gardens are beautifully cared for, with hibiscus and bougainvillea in blossom, all the colours from white to deepest reds, purples and blues, and busy lizzies,  and some other flowers that I can’t identify. There are egrets pottering around the lawns, very bold, and sparrows, and we saw a kestrel (or something pretty much identical to one) sitting on the beach volleyball net. When we got back after breakfast the first day, our room was made up and the duvet was arranged into a heart shape, heavily decorated with fresh bougainvillea flowers. Surely they can’t think we’re a honeymoon couple? Or does everyone get the treatment?

The Hotel garden

Our chamberman is obviously well trained but a bit OCD, if you ask me. He’s always arranging tubes of shaving gel, toothpaste and such in strict size order, and brought a special napkin to arrange the leads of all our electronic gear. He always refolds my pyjamas (evidently I don’t do it neatly enough) and I wish he wouldn’t. I wouldn’t put it past him to tidy our drawers. They could do with it – I tend to work on the principal that if it’s in a drawer, then it’s been tidied, no matter what state the drawer is in.

The beach is great, lots of sunbeds and shade. There were some people with snorkels, so I took my goggles and blow me, there are loads of fish and corals! This is just off the beach, as you get out of your depth in the sea!  Actually you can see fish in water that’s only knee deep. I thought you’d have to get much further away from the busy beach. They aren’t a bit bothered by swimmers. The best was a ray, I suppose about 2 to 3 feet long, sand coloured, but with bright sky blue spots and bright blue stripes on its tail. There are some elegant bronze coloured fish with very fine  yellow/green stripes. Yellow seems to be a popular colour, and stripes are obviously in – horizontal, vertical and even on one fish, chevrons. It was silver white with fine black chevrons and a  brilliant yellow tail. There are spots as well. One fish is all leopard spots in brown/grey, very smart. I’ve even seen a pipefish, pale silver blue and about a foot long. (I know things look bigger underwater, so I am trying hard not to exaggerate.)

The coral isn’t quite as interesting as the fish, but there is quite a variety and it’s really colourful. There’s quite a lot of sulphur yellow, growing up like a fan, and there’s some nubbly purple stuff which reminds me of thyme in flower. There’s some just like boring stones, but with weird sort of lips that are bright blue. There’s red and orange, and I did manage to identify brain coral, not that that’s a great achievement.

There are loads of Russians here, escaping the winter, and the first thing that greeted us at the airport was an extremely drunken Russian, shouting at the top of his voice. The police had got him in a glassed off sort of room, but you could see all that was going on, which was a good arrangement. I have to say the police seemed to be being quite patient, because he was really annoying. The taxi driver we’d arranged to meet us said he’d been yelling like that for about an hour, and of course the flight he should have been on wouldn’t take him, so the Egyptian police were stuck with him.

Possibly a worse Russian offence is that of fat middle aged men with substantial beer bellies, hanging over budgie smuggler swimming trunks. Actually I don’t think any man, other than Olympic swimmers, can get away with that sort of swim wear. There’s an even more revolting version which involves a thong back.  In fact, there are some  truly hideous sights on the beach – I really never imagined that bikinis were obtainable in size 24.  And however slim you are, when you reach a certain age,  remember that your skin is not as it was, and cover up the soft,saggy, crepy bits. Please, have some dignity. Having said that, there are some lovely girls in bikinis and a few nice looking men.

There are lots of Italians here, too, which I didn’t expect, all cheerful and noisy. The one man I’ve seen who is really well dressed is –guess what? Italian. There were some dodgy British types on the plane, but they have disappeared. Why won’t British men grow up? Why do they think behaving like half witted  teenagers  into their thirties is appealing – or even acceptable? And why do they wear those short trousers, which are obviously meant to end mid shin, but because their wearers are fat and have had to buy a big size, end just above the ankles, at half mast? I could have a whole section on shockingly ugly tattoos, but I’ll spare you.

The days are quite short but the middle of the day is really hot. The evenings are comparatively chilly, but we’ve brought jumpers and I have tights and shoes as having cold feet makes me miserable. The first night we ate at an extremely good Lebanese restaurant – the fattoush had pomegranate seeds in it, which I thought was just to look pretty, but it really added to the flavour. So we went back and had the grilled meats. I couldn’t quite name the spice used in the chicken kofta, and it was gorgeous, so maybe we’ll go back again, in the interests of research.

There are lots of shops but they all sell the same stuff that you don’t want. So really, there’s nothing much to do. I expect it’s livelier in the season, whenever that is. Egyptians are very jokey, and it takes a bit of getting used to, but they obviously mean well.

We did try an Egyptian restaurant, but it wasn’t good, either for service or food. There was a large party of Egyptian women and children and they seemed to be complaining, so I don’t think it was just us. It’s a shame, as we’d like to sample good Egyptian food. It was quite entertaining, though, because the TV seemed to be showing a “Strictly Belly Dancing” competition, where the audience seemed to vote for the girl they liked best.  I would have voted for the girl in black – her breasts were amazing – they had a life of their own. Then it switched to MTV or similar with the sound off and Egyptian pop playing on a tape or something. That was quite confusing until we worked out 

that the pictures and sounds weren’t related. - I'm having a lot of trouble with  and apologise for the weird punctuation - it will keep working from right to left.the Arabic 

The run up to Christmas.

This has been a really fraught couple of weeks. We had quite a bit on anyway, and then I got some sort of bug which laid me out for three days. So now my preparations are all behind. It all gets done in the end, and if it doesn’t get done no one notices except me, so I don’t know why I’m worried.

I’ve been to see younger grandson as a person living in Bethlehem who visited baby Jesus, and older grandson as a wise man, with a turban and a huge moustache, so that I had trouble identifying him to begin with. They both were really good and I was proud of them. There’s something about nativity plays and young children which still brings a lump to my throat, in spite of sitting through so many of them.

I’ve painted four huge pine cones I brought back from the Sierra de Gredos, in June, and hung them up with ribbon to disguise the  eyelets they’re hung from, and I’ve nearly finished making a string of fabric sort of flags, using different colours of Christmas material and a bit of gold satin. They’re all sewn with beads and I’m very pleased with them, but I’m a bit worried that I’m turning into Kirsty Allsop, so I’ll stop with the home made Christmas stuff now.

Eat your heart out, Kirsty.

I’ve brought the little tree in the pot on the balcony inside and decorated it – it hasn’t grown much since last year, which is good – and assembled the big artificial tree and decorated it. Assembling it is the most tedious job imaginable, but I enjoy decorating it – at least, I do once I’m sure the lights are working.

We’ve been out to the dairy at Long Clawson to buy the half Stilton. They always have the latest flavours on the counter to taste. There was a gingery one which was nice, but by the time we’d got the Stilton, some white Stilton with cranberries, and some mature proper Red Leicester, we decided we had enough. The amaretto and raisins was too sweet, and so was the Christmas pudding cheese.

I’ve done the Christmas cards, and only once been caught out by a card from someone to whom I hadn’t sent one (so far!) And I’ve done most of the shopping and avoided Amazon. I’m quite proud of that. Blackwell’s do books on line, where you have an excellent selection and can get second hand and out of print books, so it’s not been too difficult. I never go near Starbucks anyway, the buckets of warm milk masquerading as coffee see to that, but how to avoid Google?  It’s got to be my project for the New Year, even if it means the end of the blog. Which is sad, because I’ve enjoyed writing it. But I am very conscious that anyone can read it so I have to be careful what I say, particularly about others, even though I’ve very few readers!

The best bit so far was the older grandson telling his mother that he didn't believe in Father Christmas. She warned him not to say anything to his little brother, and then asked, who did he think brings his stocking? Very seriously, he replied that he'd been thinking about that, and had decided it was the government. 

Oxford and too much choice

We’ve had a trip to Oxford, which is somewhere we hadn’t been for about forty years. Last time we weren’t impressed, because it was completely choked with traffic, and we much preferred Cambridge. Now, of course, the traffic is under control, though we each nearly got mown down by a bike. It brings home to you how much you normally rely on your hearing when crossing streets.

Some of the rather horrible insectivorous plants
the botanical gardens seemed to specialise in.

Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We had one lovely autumn day and at least it didn’t rain the next day. We visited the Ashmolean, Christ Church picture gallery, the Natural History Museum, and the Pitt Rivers, so I had four opportunities to choose my one object to take home.

Christ Church picture gallery was the most difficult. The picture that really gripped me was Annibale Carracci, “The Butchers.” I liked the way all the characters are concerned with what they are doing, so it’s like a snap shot. I liked the faces, intent and busy, not posing at all. But in spite of the realism, you could read meanings into it, for example the sheep at the forefront awaiting slaughter – was that a reference to Christ? So even after we’d moved on I kept returning for another look. BUT – if I’m going to take it home, am I going to enjoy living with a picture of butchered carcasses?  I don’t think I’ve properly worked out the rules of this game.  Have a look at the link and see what you think. It’s a pretty big painting, so the carcasses are not far off life size, too.

www.chch.ox.ac.uk/gallery/the-collection/paintings/carracci-butchers-shop

Anyway, in the end I decided that I was going to have to choose something else, because you wouldn’t want the Carracci in your lounge. It reminded me of the story of how Frith, of the Frith collection in New York, chose his paintings. They had to be things he liked to live with.  It sounds kind of anti-intellectual, art as interior decoration, but he has a point. You might like a Lucian Freud nude in your picture gallery, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to look up from your dinner and see it. So in the end I chose a Tintoretto portrait of a young man, but although liveable with, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the Carracci. So not a great decision.

Blackwell's - book heavn

The Divinity schools. Duke Humfrey's library is even better, but I haven't a
good enough camera.

In the Ashmolean, it was easier, although I was torn between a Turkish plate, decorated with carnations, and a set of Indian bird pictures, very accurately done as a natural history rather than as art. I went for the birds, although really nobody much has a house big enough to display the set.

And in the Pitt Rivers, I fell for the Inuit clothing, which was just amazing. I hadn’t realised that a new set was made every year – it wasn’t tanned, because if it was tanned it froze completely solid in the winter temperatures and was unwearable, but that meant it rotted in the summer. The work that went into it!

I really liked the Pitt Rivers; you could spend hours and hours in there, and make hundreds of visits, though there was quite a lot of gruesome stuff, which Phil really didn’t appreciate.  I think I’ve got a childish enjoyment of the gruesome – the cases on head flattening and scarification held me gripped. Surely, scarification occasionally caused septicaemia? I read that Montgomery’s wife died of septicaemia following a mosquito bite, pre antibiotics of course, so surely cutting people all over and rubbing ash and other stuff into the cuts to make sure they produced keloid scars must have killed people, too. It wasn’t discussed in the museum –a rare and disappointing omission.

In the natural history museum, of course we liked the dinosaurs. Our younger grandson spends quite a lot of time being a tyrannosaur, a spinosaurus or a utahraptor. We couldn’t help thinking of how thrilled he would have been to see all this stuff, although we probably shouldn’t encourage him to spend even more time chasing me around the flat, being a velociraptor while I have to be a lamb. He can’t say “l”, so it comes out as “You be a yam, granny.” At first I thought I was in for an easy afternoon, lying on the floor being a vegetable, but no such luck. So it was an easy decision – we’ll take the tyrannosaur skeleton, please.

Swimming and music again.

Going swimming, I’ve been trying to improve my crawl. My style isn’t so bad, but I run out of breath too soon – I am only breathing on one side (the right) and not deeply enough.  Well, how hard can it be to unlearn the habits of a lifetime? Much more difficult than you can imagine, I’m telling you.

After a time, I decided I needed some support in habit breaking, and booked four lessons. My teacher is just about young enough to be my grandson, but I’m not letting that bother me. So after much flogging up and down the bath with floats, either legs only or just one arm working, I have made the following important discoveries.

• My legs are pathetically weak.

• I can’t get the timing right on my left side, and try to breath far too late in the arm movement, with the result that I swallow large quantities of water.

• Swallowing large quantities of water is really unpleasant, and tends to make you feel below par for the rest of the morning.

• It’s really hard to learn to swim, and I have more sympathy than previously with people who’ve never managed it.

• If you don’t breath out under water, after two lengths you  get to the point of being so short of oxygen that your fingers tingle.

• There’s nothing like swimming for making you really starving.

Still, cheering news – today I managed two whole lengths, breathing on alternate sides. I can only manage it if I swim slowly, but, there you are – you can teach an old dog new tricks.

And here’s another update, this time on music. I saw that the Broadway cinema was showing Thomas Ades’ opera The Tempest, as part on the New York Met live series. I’m a bit of a snob about these filmed performances – it’s a lot of money for something that’s a long way from the live experience. But, if I’m going to see The Tempest at all, it’s going to be a filmed one. I can’t see us getting to Covent Garden again, and Opera North isn’t at all likely to put it on.

So I bought myself a ticket and went off, alone, as nobody I know felt they were likely to enjoy it. I wasn’t at all sure I would enjoy it, to be honest. I’ve only listened to Ades’ Asyla and had rather a mixed impression. I’d even promised my husband that I wouldn’t be proud and would leave half way through if I really hated it.

Well, it was great. I loved it. I thought the acting was really good, which is important when it’s filmed because you’re getting much closer to the action than you would in the opera house. Simon Keenlyside (whom I rate highly anyway) was particularly good. He’s hardly off stage. He has an impressive presence, and a wonderful physique and face for Prospero.

I think the music must be very hard to sing, and sometimes I didn’t quite “get” it, but the love duet, Ariel’s music, the trios and quartets, and Prospero’s renunciation of his powers, were gorgeous. The end was really moving. 

So, well worth the ticket, and I shall keep my eyes open for other opera screenings, but what I really want, is to see The Tempest  again.  No chance, I fear.

Nostalgia and remembrance

I went to my grandson’s church parade for Remembrance Sunday today. The cub pack he belongs to meets in the local barracks, so the wreath laying on the monument and the service seemed extra relevant with all these young soldiers present.

I thoroughly enjoyed singing the hymns – they were the old ones that we used to sing every morning in assembly in school. I always enjoyed singing the hymn – usually it was the best bit of the day, because frankly I hated school. I was always bunking off – how I got my O Levels, I don’t know.

Anyway, I heard Alan Bennett on radio 4 and he was waxing nostalgic about hymns in school, and, it seemed to me, the past in general. But I’m sure that children enjoy singing the tunes they sing today, just as much as we enjoyed singing the old hymns, and they may well understand the words better.

I’m very suspicious of nostalgia, which I tend to regard as a particularly English vice; I don’t know that it is especially English, but it seems very prevalent.  In spite of enjoying the hymns, I can’t forget that we were controlled at school by being humiliated and belittled. At my junior school, there was an older boy, who was always kind to me and perhaps not that bright, and often in trouble. I think he was the only one daft enough to get caught. He was caned. I shall never forget my indignation, and how I couldn’t get anyone else to share it. “Well, he must have deserved it. It won’t do him any harm.” But it did me harm, if not him.

When people get nostalgic about days past, when people were more honest and you felt safe on the streets at night, and no one had heard of paedophilia, it drives me mad. It just wasn’t reported. We might have lost some good things, but we’ve also lost an awful lot of horrible stuff. I don’t believe in trying to hang on to what’s past. Things change. Even the best things don’t last forever. But good things are ahead of us too, and changes can be greatly for the better. Let go, and move on. That’s my motto. Not in the American sense of “moving on” after the loss of someone loved. That’s a weird idea, as though you could move on and leave them behind. Of course, that’s just what you can’t do; they are part of you, they helped to make you what you are, even if their life was brief, you can never be the same as you were before you loved them. So that brings us back to Remembrance Sunday.

When I was a child, people were always saying to me, “Of course, you never knew your uncle. He was lovely.” He was killed in 1942, and twenty years later, people who’d known him only slightly were still remembering him. My mother and my granny never got over his death. At least he died in the war against Hitler’s Germany, a war for survival, with few moral complications. How would they feel if he had died in Afghanistan?  How on earth can politicians think they can ever be forgiven for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, when every loss causes such irreconcilable grief?