Skip to the end

Well, it’s been a while and I would like to be able to say that it’s because my life has become correspondingly more exciting and busy. I like to, but it wouldn’t be true.

My daughter’s life, on the other hand, has become more exciting and busy than I could possibly have hoped for when she embarked on her gap year travels in March. She spent two months on a language course in Granada and after a shaky start, I would have been satisfied if she had found a couple of friendly faces to help her through and make her time there tolerable at the very least . Instead she quickly became part of a close-knit group of people, who got on so well they’ve already arranged to meet up again in Amsterdam this September. She’s grown in self-confidence to a degree I wouldn’t have thought possible in such a short period of time. The change in her is so marked that when she recently set off on the second leg of her trip (a French language course in Rouen) she coped with moving in with her host family and the chaotic administration of the language school with a maturity she simply hadn’t possessed before going to Spain.

What I hadn’t bargained on however was the hole all this growing up would leave in my life. Yes, of course I’m proud of her – tremendously so – and I always knew that some day she’d leave home. I knew I’d miss her and no, I’m not jealous. Not even I am that mean-spirited. What I’m trying and failing, sometimes spectacularly badly, to cope with is a feeling of pointlessness. I mean I still know WHO  I am and WHAT I am, it’s more a case of no longer knowing what I’m for. I feel as if I’ve been made redundant from a job I didn’t even know I had.

As Chris Stewart put it in the most recent edition of his book ‘Driving Over Lemons’:

‘This has been a tough rite of passage, and nobody tells you about it. You spend eighteen years living your life around, and for, your offspring in the most unimaginably close and intimate way…and then they’re gone. Of course, we get a lot of pleasure from Chloe’s happiness in her new life, and we’re proud of her independence and her making her way in the world. But it’s an odd stage nonetheless.’

(Apologies to those of you who have already been subjected to the above quotation via Facebook, but it sums up my feelings on this subject like nothing else).

I’ve been tagged by GSE over at Really Quite Useful.

I have to say which character from a book I resemble most closely.  I’ve given this some thought and decided that I am an eclectic mix of the following:

1) Bryony (as a child) in Atonement by Ian McEwan;

2) Dorothea in Middlemarch by George Eliot and

3) Delia Grinstead in Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler

because I:

1) Obsess over the unimportant and am easily frustrated;

2) Tend to confuse the pretentious with the intelligent and

3) Find myself tempted to run away and start again (occasionally).

Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps I am King John in King John’s Christmas by A.A. Milne.

I tag: Tim Footman at Cultural Snow, Lisa at My Salad Dressing Days, BiB at Broke in Berlin, Sylvia at Milena Delle Fortezze and Valerie at In the Mirror of Ultimate Wonder

What do we think about the word “vanillary”?

Is its use:

1. Proof that the world as we know it is hurtling ever faster towards oblivion?
2. An admission of the fact that, asked to descibe something which is vanilla-flavoured, many people would use the word ‘vanilla-y’ , which is difficult to say, not really a word and, in some accents at least, pronounced ‘vanillary’ anyway?
3. A spelling error.

I ask because M&S have recently launched a new range of cakes, one of which is a triple layer white chocolate and raspberry cake made up of three layers of ‘moist vanillary sponge’ (poor quality photo below)

Any thoughts?

For a 13 year-old girl who likes computers, science and gadgets generally, thrillers/whodunnits/crime, fantasy and science-fiction.

Thank you.

Listening to the Today programme yesterday, I heard something in the news bulletin which reminded me of this post of Tim’s.

 The story in question was the ‘Mandelson doused in green custard’ affair, but I reckon the press have missed the real story here.  You see, according to the Today newsreader, the low carbon summit that Mandy was attending when Plane Stupid campaigner Leila Deen threw green custard at him has been dismisssed by the shadow cabinet as nothing more than a ‘talking SHOP’

Now, I’d pay money to see that.

Happy New Year from Edinburgh!  

Are you still wondering, at this late hour, what to serve for Christmas dinner?  For the carnivores among you I’d suggest a bird of some sort, but which one?  Turkey can be a bit bland,  goose has more flavour but it doesn’t go very far and game isn’t to everyone’s taste.

Well, wonder no longer.  A very reputable Edinburgh butcher is apparently selling everyone’s favourite Christmas bird:

Have a peaceful and relaxing day.

Up til now I’ve resisted  the temptation to comment on David Tennant’s back injury and his replacement as Hamlet by understudy Edward Bennett, for fear of looking like a Tennant-obsessive.

However, this headline made me laugh so much that I had to share it.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark?  Ah, that’ll be the silage…

I think I’ve always liked to have my preferences and prejudices confirmed by what I watch or read.  ‘I wish I’d written that’ I might think while reading a particularly incisive piece of prose.  I hurl abuse at the television and radio when a speaker I disagree with comes on and enjoy a quiet satisfaction when a TV drama accurately reflects my own experience.  The fact that, for me at least, Jonathan Ross will never be the film critic that Barry Norman is has nothing to do with the recent media storm surrounding ‘Sachsgate’ and everything to do with their respective tastes in films.  I’m not sure if what I watch and read defines who I am or if who I am defines my preferences and I’m not even sure I want to spend time unravelling a piece of psychobabble like that.

I’m not sure either that I want to see my life reflected in what I watch anymore.  Let me explain.

The other night I was watching an episode of Friends which, since it aired for the ‘last ever’ time about four years ago has been on one TV channel or another every day since.  This particular episode was one I hadn’t seen before (I’m not what you’d describe as a die-hard fan) and involved Chandler having to tell Monica, his new bride, that as he’d just lost his job, it may not be the best time to try for the baby she wants so much.  Monica, for those of you unfamiliar with the show, is a slightly neurotic, housework obsessive – about as different from me as it’s possible to be, I’d say and yet as Chandler’s explanation unfolded I began to feel a little uncertain.  To console Monica, Chandler appeals to this very obsessiveness.  A baby, he points out, would need a lot of kit and slowly it begins to dawn on Monica that having a baby might not be without drawbacks.  What if, she speculates, the baby got into the ribbon drawer and messed up all the ribbons?  What if, oh horrors, there was no room for a ribbon drawer because the baby’s stuff took up so much room?!

And there it was.  The ribbon drawer.  Clearly, to emphasise the fact that Monica is neurotic, obsessive and just a leetle bit crazy, the scriptwriters had chosen to give her a ribbon drawer, surely something only a sad Jenny-No-Mates would have?

So, now that I’ve tidied my own ribbon drawer and the ribbons are all in nice, colour co-ordinated bundles, I’m off to watch Adam Sandler’s entire back catalogue while reading the Daily Mail.

I’m a worrier by nature and, having booked tickets for the RSC’s most recent production of Hamlet eleven months in advance, I’ve had plenty of time to worry about whether my trip to Stratford with Daisy (her birthday present) would be a success.

First things first.  My worries about the travel arrangements and accommodation were unfounded.  Stratford is not the easiest of places to get to from Edinburgh but, if you don’t mind changing trains twice in central Birmingham and the whole thing taking longer than it takes to get from Edinburgh to London, its painless.  We lucked out with our choice of guest house – I’d unhesitatingly recommend White Sails to anyone visiting Stratford, especially for a special occasion.

However, as the man himself says ‘the play’s the thing’ but, here again, my worries were groundless.  Gregory Doran’s modern dress production was presented with minimal set (although many of the props were lavish) so the performances really had to stand up.  And, my God, they did.  Patrick Stewart as Claudius is a study in urbane restraint.  His style of rule is contrasted with Old Hamlet’s, showing that whereas Old Hamlet was a warrior king, Claudius is a politician, resolving conflict through diplomacy.  In an age where British politicians are allegedly less trusted than at any time in history, this approach to Caludius’ character, upon whose deception and treachery the play turns, gives a fresh, contemporary relevance to the proceedings.  Humour is not something immediately associated with Hamlet but Oliver Ford-Davies’ performance as Polonius, which plays on that character’s long-winded wordiness, is genuinely laugh out loud funny.  In Act 1, while doling out advice to Laertes on how to dress and conduct himself abroad, he plucks a gaudy silk handkerchief out of his son’s breast pocket and, shaking his head, hands it to Ophelia.  At the end of the speech, he presses some money into Laertes’s hand as a final farewell before turning away.  There follows a lovely little bit of business between Ophelia and Laertes, her giving him the handkerchief and him giving her the money, smiling knowingly at each other all the while.  The fact that this takes place behind Polonius’s back neatly underlines the amused affection they have for their father.  I have read some comments from other theatregoers suggesting that Polonius is presented as a diminished figure of fun, but I have to disagree.  As someone in her mid-forties, I thought that the attitudes of the younger characters towards Polonius (everything from amused affection to sarcastic disdain) rang all too true and that far from diminishing Polonius, presented him in a sympathetic, humane light.

As for David Tennant, he is, quite simply, superb.  I know, I know, as a long-time fan I would say that but he truly is.  His Hamlet is tortured by his grief but in no way over-played – I swear the tension in the auditorium was palpable – and manic in his ‘madness’.   His powers as a mimic – he is after all an actor who has built the bulk of his reputation playing in an accent other than his own – are also used to good effect.  He apes the speech patterns and affectations of those around him in a way which is simultaneously funny and incisive. He is possibly never better than during the ‘play-within-the-play’ – while most of the court looks on in bemusement, Hamlet needles and provokes Claudius until we see Claudius realise that the game is up but, ever the consummate politician, he holds things together (just) until the end of the scene, leaving Hamlet exultant.  For me, David Tennant has always been an actor who could provoke the full spectrum of emotions in an audience and he didn’t disappoint although I didn’t actually shed tears (I was in the company of my daughter, who frowns on such behaviour!)

As for those who say that Tennant’s casting is just a cynical attempt to appeal to those reviled groups: the young and the ‘light-entertainment’ audience, I would like to point out that ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, which we also saw and is a TFP*, had a much higher proportion of youngsters in its audience.  Quite frankly though, anything or anyone who can entice the young and non-theatre-goers into theatres is a Very Good Thing, in my book.

Oh, and Daisy had a wonderful time too!  My only problem now is: how do I top this next year?!

*Tennant-free production.