Today
Summer wouldn't be complete without my regular visit to Holland House at Cropthorne. This year the Laetare Singers gathered again, under the able baton of Ralph Woodward. One of the aspects I enjoy is the opportunity to sing a solo or two.
Now, I'm no professional and otherwise rarely have the chance. And it doesn't seem to matter that the "performance" is actually a little run through with an audience of about six camp-followers; I still feel as nervous as though I was about to perform in the Albert Hall.
This time I sang the solo in Ravel's ravishing "Trois Beaux Oiseaux" and hope I sounded OK
In My Day
Apart from the chances offered me by Gregory Atkin when I was a teenager I never developed a solo singing career. In 1988 I joined Cantilena Choir and discovered two things. Firstly, a longish "dry" period in which I'd done little or no singing, had left me struggling to reach top notes that had once been easy. Secondly, our Music Director occasionally asked me to do minor solos, something I found pretty scary.
To help rectify these things, I decided to have some singing lessons, something I'd never done before. After some trial and error I found the perfect teacher for me. Viola Nagel, a charming Canadian singer, lived in Glastonbury and we already knew each other, having sung together a couple of times in a local occasional chamber group. She sympathetically helped to bring out my natural qualities and I discovered that those top c's were still there! With her help, I attained my Associated Board grade six & seven and performed at local festivals.
I didn't pursue any possibility of local solo opportunities; simply using what she's taught me to improve my day-to-day singing and any little solos I'm asked to do. Even now, if I have anything more than the shortest piece to sing I will often contact Viola for a lesson to help with the best delivery.
None of this, I'm afraid, takes away the anxiety before and during performance which may explain why I've never aspired to become a second Emma Kirkby! And I hope I'll know when the advancing years finally wreak their havoc with my voice and have the grace to stop.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Home, Sweet Home
Today
House-hunting seems to be all the rage right now. Becky & Richard seem at last to have found a suitable flat to live in. Paul & I have decided that, much as we love the flat, we are tired of being so cramped at home. So the flat has to go to pay for a bigger house where the Bentley can come in out of the rain, Paul can house his model railway and I can have a permanent workshop. We've spent hours browsing property websites and fantasising about our next home.
In My Day
Paul's dad was of the opinion that having a mortgage was a "millstone around your neck" and actually turned down the offer of a private mortgage to buy at a ridiculously low price the 17th house he was already living in, thus depriving Mum of an asset that would be worth about £1.5 million today.
I, however resented every month's rent, knowing that that money would never come back to me, and when we had an opportunity, in 1975, to buy a house in Eastbourne, I jumped at the chance. Even though the monthly mortgage repayments were £106, compared to rent of £45 I knew it was the right thing to do.
This was a new build house on a brand-new estate. The Levetts had already bought one and we were able to secure the other side of the semi. We had to rely on the pictures in the brochures as the actual house was only foundations and a few half-finished walls. Eastbourne Borough Council, anxious to attract younger people to the town, were offering 95% mortgages, based on total joint income. As this was back in the days when lenders normally either discounted the wife's income or included only part (you were going to have lots of babies and give up work, you see!), this was an offer not to be refused.
Daddy coughed up the deposit of £400 which we paid back by standing order over the next five years and the house was ours!
It wasn't yet a home, being supplied with only the most basic of fitting, but during the next seven years we made it into one and a good place in which to start our family. And when we were ready to move to something better, the price we got for the house outstripped the remaining balance on the mortgage by such an extent that we already had a very good deposit.
For so much of our lives we have juggled within such a narrow margin that it will be fun to have so much more scope. But I think that I'm going to miss little no7 which has been a real home to us for twenty-five years.
House-hunting seems to be all the rage right now. Becky & Richard seem at last to have found a suitable flat to live in. Paul & I have decided that, much as we love the flat, we are tired of being so cramped at home. So the flat has to go to pay for a bigger house where the Bentley can come in out of the rain, Paul can house his model railway and I can have a permanent workshop. We've spent hours browsing property websites and fantasising about our next home.
In My Day
Paul's dad was of the opinion that having a mortgage was a "millstone around your neck" and actually turned down the offer of a private mortgage to buy at a ridiculously low price the 17th house he was already living in, thus depriving Mum of an asset that would be worth about £1.5 million today.
I, however resented every month's rent, knowing that that money would never come back to me, and when we had an opportunity, in 1975, to buy a house in Eastbourne, I jumped at the chance. Even though the monthly mortgage repayments were £106, compared to rent of £45 I knew it was the right thing to do.
This was a new build house on a brand-new estate. The Levetts had already bought one and we were able to secure the other side of the semi. We had to rely on the pictures in the brochures as the actual house was only foundations and a few half-finished walls. Eastbourne Borough Council, anxious to attract younger people to the town, were offering 95% mortgages, based on total joint income. As this was back in the days when lenders normally either discounted the wife's income or included only part (you were going to have lots of babies and give up work, you see!), this was an offer not to be refused.
Daddy coughed up the deposit of £400 which we paid back by standing order over the next five years and the house was ours!
It wasn't yet a home, being supplied with only the most basic of fitting, but during the next seven years we made it into one and a good place in which to start our family. And when we were ready to move to something better, the price we got for the house outstripped the remaining balance on the mortgage by such an extent that we already had a very good deposit.
For so much of our lives we have juggled within such a narrow margin that it will be fun to have so much more scope. But I think that I'm going to miss little no7 which has been a real home to us for twenty-five years.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Skinny Minnie
Today
I recently read a jubilant status update from my niece who at last, with the help of surgery, some determination and a following wind, has lost over ten stone to make her weight at last "normal".
There's no doubt that one of the ills of an affluent society is overweight. It's a rare person who is able to say "I never think about it". The obesity epidemic is visibly with us. Programmes such as "Supersize v. Superskinny enliven our evening's TV watching. Celebrities punish their bodies to stay superskinny.
We seem to have lost the knack of knowing how to regulate our eating to match our energy output and many of us are unable to judge whether we are too large or too small.
In My Day
In 1972 I worked for the Inland Revenue at Barrington House in Worthing. This was a large building housing a range of Revenue departments. I don't know how I got chatting to a lady called Hazel. I used to see her on the station platform and wonder with slight envy at her extreme skinniness.
We used to meet up in the canteen for lunch and sometimes popped out to do shopping together. I quickly discovered the inner world of the anorexic. Hazel talked about nothing but food. Her first remark upon sitting down would be, "I can't think what to have for supper tonight." Her lunch would consist of a single sausage and a spoonful of peas. She would spend her lunch skinning both food items (and skinning a processed pea is highly skilled labour, believe me) and poking the remaining mess around her plate for half an hour. I generally feasted more rapidly on soup or fruit as I was trying to lose my post-pregnancy fat.
She described with joy her discovery that she could make an adequate supper out of a jar or two of Heinz baby food. She also described her life, her revulsion at having to engage in sex with her large and jovial (ex) husband and her fury when he had left her for another woman. She told me that she had decided to stop eating to punish him, but it seemed to me that she was punishing mainly herself and her nine-year old daughter.
This daughter was a strapping lass, clearly taking after Dad. Hazel shared a one-bedroomed flat with this child who presumably was given her share of baby food to eat. As Hazel's condition became worse, she told me how her daughter would get up in the night to make hot-water bottles to ease the persistent cramp. She used to say to her daughter "I wonder if I'll wake up in the morning?" I did protest at that; clearly mother-daughter roles were reversed and I felt for this game little girl. But I had no skills or experience that could be of any help to Hazel and, as my own daily life became more complicated, the relationship dwindled to nothing.
I wonder whether Hazel is still alive and whether she got the help she was crying out for. What I do know is that knowing those who carry ten or more stone too much or those whose body and soul are linked by a slender thread has helped me to put my two stone "excess" into perspective. Not that I'll give up the fight!
I recently read a jubilant status update from my niece who at last, with the help of surgery, some determination and a following wind, has lost over ten stone to make her weight at last "normal".
There's no doubt that one of the ills of an affluent society is overweight. It's a rare person who is able to say "I never think about it". The obesity epidemic is visibly with us. Programmes such as "Supersize v. Superskinny enliven our evening's TV watching. Celebrities punish their bodies to stay superskinny.
We seem to have lost the knack of knowing how to regulate our eating to match our energy output and many of us are unable to judge whether we are too large or too small.
In My Day
In 1972 I worked for the Inland Revenue at Barrington House in Worthing. This was a large building housing a range of Revenue departments. I don't know how I got chatting to a lady called Hazel. I used to see her on the station platform and wonder with slight envy at her extreme skinniness.
We used to meet up in the canteen for lunch and sometimes popped out to do shopping together. I quickly discovered the inner world of the anorexic. Hazel talked about nothing but food. Her first remark upon sitting down would be, "I can't think what to have for supper tonight." Her lunch would consist of a single sausage and a spoonful of peas. She would spend her lunch skinning both food items (and skinning a processed pea is highly skilled labour, believe me) and poking the remaining mess around her plate for half an hour. I generally feasted more rapidly on soup or fruit as I was trying to lose my post-pregnancy fat.
She described with joy her discovery that she could make an adequate supper out of a jar or two of Heinz baby food. She also described her life, her revulsion at having to engage in sex with her large and jovial (ex) husband and her fury when he had left her for another woman. She told me that she had decided to stop eating to punish him, but it seemed to me that she was punishing mainly herself and her nine-year old daughter.
This daughter was a strapping lass, clearly taking after Dad. Hazel shared a one-bedroomed flat with this child who presumably was given her share of baby food to eat. As Hazel's condition became worse, she told me how her daughter would get up in the night to make hot-water bottles to ease the persistent cramp. She used to say to her daughter "I wonder if I'll wake up in the morning?" I did protest at that; clearly mother-daughter roles were reversed and I felt for this game little girl. But I had no skills or experience that could be of any help to Hazel and, as my own daily life became more complicated, the relationship dwindled to nothing.
I wonder whether Hazel is still alive and whether she got the help she was crying out for. What I do know is that knowing those who carry ten or more stone too much or those whose body and soul are linked by a slender thread has helped me to put my two stone "excess" into perspective. Not that I'll give up the fight!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)