Monday, July 27, 2015

Fly my Kite

Today

My Nephew posted a picture this morning of his family flying kites on the beach.

In My Day

I don't think I had much experience in flying kites as a child but we did have a brief dalliance when the girls were small. It was about 1979 and Paul and I had spent a very good day Christmas shopping in London. Among the things we had bought was a beautiful silk and bamboo chinese kite shaped like a butterfly, which we'd bought in Liberty's Oriental department. This was duly given as a gift to Lizzie for Christmas.

On new Year's Day we and our neighbours Beverley and John decided that the best way to cure our hangovers was to take all our children up to Beachy Head and fly kites. I think they had a kite as well. We unpacked the butterfly and
constructed our beautiful kite. This picture shows the type of thing that it was.

Off it went! How lovely it looked, with the wings flapping realistically and its eyes revolving in its head! How quickly it came down again; Paul & I not being the world's best kite experts. Off it went again! This time we managed to keep it up for some time. When it did come to rest it did so in the middle of an enormous thorn bush (there are lots of these on the Downs), and we had to try to retrieve it. We couldn't simply pull it; that would rip the silk. The answer seemed for me to climb onto John's shoulders and lean in to gently disentangle it. I succeeded and we were off again. That kite must have had a particular love of thorn bushes as this sequence was repeated time and time again.

Eventually, John couldn't take the strain anymore and the children were starting to freeze. So we wrapped up the kite, never to fly it again and went of to the cinema to watch Snow White.

I guess kite-flying is a skill like any other, but it's probably wise to keep away from trees and bushes and stick to the beach.

Friday, July 17, 2015

The Power of Dreams

Today

Nobody really knows, even today, why we have dreams and what function they perform. Last night I had a trivial dream, involving finding a pair of knickers for a small child, from which I awoke with a pounding heart, the effect of which hasn't gone away in over three hours.

In My Day

I think it would be true to say that my dreams in childhood formed a sort of night-time country which I inhabited. Some I even remember today - fish with huge blue eyes that swam around close to my face, great swollen visages that seemed to press onto me.

Falling asleep with my light on always resulted in nightmares and I found myself with a dilemma. Reading my books at three a.m. was a way of helping me get back to sleep and getting up to turn the light off would break that drowsiness. But I began to dread the awful visions of the nightmares and struggled to keep awake. Often it was only with the dawn that I allowed sleep to overtake me.

Often these light-on dreams involved my trying to walk or run, but finding that I couldn't lift my feet up or that the way became steeper and steeper, or I was trying to run in treacle-like mud. Sometimes wild animals were roaming around the house and I spent the dream in attempting to conceal myself. Then there were the dreams in which a half-naked me was trying to hide the fact of my inappropriate dress.

Once I dreamt I was being strangled and actually awoke to find the pillow on my face. How had that happened?

My parents slept on another floor from us and would probably not have heard if I had cried out (and sometime I was forced out of a dream by trying to shout or scream). By morning I was keen to enter the daylit world and rarely mentioned what my nights were like. Maybe my Mother half-guessed which is why she later called me "secretive".

If dreams are a way of processing daily experiences, what were mine trying to do? They mostly had the effect of exhausting me and making me anxious about sleep altogether. Even today, I submit to sleep, rather than welcoming it. 

Do you know, there are some people who say they don't dream, despite what the scientists say. And I say, happy for them if they can lay down their heads and wake up seven hours later without a thumpy heart or tearful eyes. Ah! If only!

Sunday, July 12, 2015

The Art of Lute

Today

Last night was Cantilena's Summer concert, We entitled it "the Art of Love" which we explored through Italian and English madrigals and the poetry of Johnson, Marlowe and Spencer. We also had a lutenist who gently played some English and Spanish tunes to set the 17th C mood.

In My Day

I'm not sure when it was, about 1993, I think, when I was approached by someone who told me that a friend of his was learning the lute and would I like to sing with him. I was very interested and contacted this person.

He told me that  he was a widower, formerly a dentist, who had been a semi-professional guitarist. He had now decided to take up the lute and was working on Dowland's Lachrymae. He lived at Lydford near Shepton Mallet and one sunny Sunday I drove off to meet him.

He was a tall, rather raw-boned man, probably in his mid 60s and lived in a modern shambolic bungalow, the ground floor of which was full of  furniture and unused. He himself lived in a little attic annexe. Thither he took me and offered me a delightfully prepared light lunch. He fluttered around anxiously, offering me tea, wine, water etc. 

Eventually it was time to start and he took up his lute and I began to sing. About 3 bars in he stopped to replay a missed note, which slightly threw me. We started again. This time he faltered at the 4th bar and replayed a couple of notes. We started again. Things got worse and worse with him constantly stopping to go back. I said to him, "When you are accompanying you can't really do that; you just have to keep on going, otherwise I won't know where I am, We can tidy things up afterwards." He started again, getting more and more flustered. "I've practised and practised!" He cried despairingly.

We agreed that we would meet again, a week or so later, to give him more time. Each meeting was a repeat of the first. We never got past the first 20 bars and he would lament (rather like Dowland) that he had been practising until the small hours and then he would go all to pieces when we tried to put it together. I even tried singing the whole song without him so that he could hear what it sounded like. He was always so upset and flustered and I began to suspect that he was a little in love with me.

Finally, I decided that I couldn't sacrifice any more Sundays on this fruitless enterprise and we parted. I saw him occasionally at Cantilena concerts when he always sported very loud jackets in citrus shades.

Embarrassingly, I can no longer remember his name. I hope he eventually played the Lachrymae without any tears of his own.