Zebras at the Opera House

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Scribe Doll

Last night, I eagerly tuned in to the BBC Radio 3 live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot.  It’s one of my favourite operas.  I didn’t listen to it till the very end, though, because I wasn’t grabbed by the performance.  I found Nina Stemme’s Wagnerian soprano too heavy and too lacking in crystalline quality for Turandot.  I felt that her diction was a little sloppy and, on several occasions, I thought I heard her swallow consonants and leave out vowels.  Marco Berti’s tenor, for me, was too thin, too deprived of richness, too throaty for Calaf.  I also didn’t care for the pace of Paolo Carignani’s conducting.  I found it too fast and lacking in drama.

Some of the above comments are a matter of personal taste and preference.  However, when the Met audience applauded uproariously, sounding as though they were about to bring the house down, I suddenly realised something: the audience always applauds uproariously at the Met or Covent Garden.  It’s almost expected.  It’s totally predictable.  And I wondered: is it a matter of manners or lack of discernment? Does the audience take its cue from the critics? Does fame equal quality, equal wild applause?

There was a time when audiences would hurl tomatoes, boo and hiss at performances and performers who failed to live up to their standards.  I don’t agree with such abusive behaviour.  Of course I don’t.  My many years working in the theatre has taught me just how hard everyone involved in a production works, and their efforts should be met with respect.  But, surely, it should also be an audience member’s privilege to express disappointment with a show or a performer, if s/he feels that the quality is inferior to expectations.  After, all, shouldn’t clapping and shouting “bravo!” be like restaurant tipping, i.e. subject to the standard of service received? There are many respectful ways an audience can convey the fact that it doesn’t like something.  Not clapping, for example.  Another, more drastic, expression could be leaving during the interval.  I know some people do that, but then how come whenever I attend an opera or listen to a live radio broadcast, there’s always – always – such roaring applause? Sometimes I almost wonder if it’s pre-recorded.

* * *

I first started going to the opera when I was sixteen, in Rome.  The Teatro dell’Opera hadn’t been revamped yet, and much of the upholstery was the worse for wear. The place was drab. On the rare occasion when a famous singer was scheduled to appear, you would have to start queuing for tickets at the crack of dawn.  The first person to arrive would take it upon him or herself to tear up little pieces of paper with numbers scribbled on them, and hand them out to anyone joining the queue.

I have fond memories of many a Sunday afternoon spent in the galleria, surrounded by characters who lived and breathed music, and were not afraid to express their opinion, even in voices that carried across the  auditorium in the silence that preceded the opening bars of the second or third act.

A ticket in the gods cost less than admission to the luxurious Barberini cinema, where the latest films were shown first, so I went very often.  Moreover, since I mostly went everywhere on my own, I found it much less intimidating to go the opera than the cinema.  Nobody up in the galleria found it odd that a teenage girl should turn up without parents, friends or boyfriend.  Before leaving home, I would wrap a piece of milk chocolate in foil and put it in my coat pocket.  By the interval, it would have softened exactly to my liking, and I would snack on it while listening to the other music lovers provide an in-depth, no-prisoners-taken, critique of the performance.  Mostly, they were music students from the Santa Cecilia music academy, and other, older, opera aficionados who could not afford a seat in the stalls.

In any case, the stalls were where the fur coats sat.  And the fur coats, we galleria regulars all knew, would applaud at anything that moved on the stage.

I remember a Rossini Semiramide with a spectacular set, and a Massenet Manon (which, my galleria betters, assured me, sounded far better in Italian than in French) where Raina Kabaivanska’s dress caught on the banister of a staircase, preventing her from walking down until rescued by a slow-on-the-uptake Des Grieux.  Then, Italy being well known for its art, its fashion, but also for its frequent strikes, there was the time when I attended a chorus-free performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

My first opera was Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West.  My heart pounded at the opening bars.  The singing was excellent.  The set, however, was another matter.  At one point, the curtains swished open on several plywood or cardboard cut-out horses.  One of them had an unusual pattern of pink and orange stripes.  The conductor raised his baton.  The man next to me was watching through his binoculars. His voice carried loud and clear across the void.

“Look at that – they’ve even got zebras!”

The conductor lowered his baton amid a crescendo of shushing from the fur coats down in the abyss, and supportive giggles from the galleria occupants.

Now that‘s what I call audience power.

Please also read ‘Turandot – a Story of Redemption’

Scribe Doll

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Borzoi

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Scribe Doll

I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I dodged my way through the Saturday lunchtime crowds by the market, and strode towards him.  Two women were stroking his cream head.  When he saw me, he slid past them and lifted his long aristocratic muzzle to my outstretched hand, from which I’d made sure I removed my glove.  I don’t like to stroke animals with my gloves on.  Just as I don’t like to shake hands with my fellow humans except with my bare hand.  I stared in disbelief at the rounded bust, the sharply tapered, greyhound waist, the wavy, silky coat that formed a kind of fur collar around his neck, the tall, slender legs, the long, bushy tail, the elegant demeanour.  I hadn’t seen one for over forty years.  “Is this a Borzoi?” I asked the owner.

“That’s right,” he replied with obvious pride.

I stood caressing the Russian wolfhound, then crouched before him, and he immediately wiped my face, all the way up from my chin to my nose, with his soft tongue.

A Borzoi.  I could barely believe it.  In Norwich.

The last time I had seen a Borzoi was back in the mid-Seventies.  In Nice.  I was nine.  On sunny winter days when there was no school, my grandmother and I would often take a walk along the Promenade des Anglais, and sit on a bench, our backs to the glitzy casinos that remained closed until the evening and the domed entrance of the Hôtel Negresco, looking at the sea so blue it seemed to have been painted cyan by Dufy.  La Baie des Anges.  I had semi-chronic bronchitis and dark rings under my eyes, and my grandmother said the sea air would help cure my cough.

Among the other strollers, we would often see individuals who were clearly not French.  There was something proud and other-worldly about them, I thought.  Sometimes, as they walked past our bench, they would overhear us speaking Russian, and stopped to engage in conversation.  The men would tip their hats at my grandmother, sometimes even lift her hand and brush it subtly with their lips.  The ladies would sit next to us.  All were considerably older than my grandmother.  Distinguished, formal, their hats and coats sometimes a little the worse for wear.  All overjoyed at meeting another Russian speaker.  “Oh, such a pleasure! Have you been here long? When did you leave? Before or after ’17? And does your granddaughter speak Russian? Oh, good, well done.  It’s so important.  My own grandchildren hardly speak a word.  I keep telling my daughter and son-in-law, but they just speak French at home.  ‘Katia’? Oh, how wonderful, you gave her a Russian name! And your family? Yes, many of my relatives disappeared, too.  Terrible times.  How could they do such things to their own people? Yes, we also received letters with half the pages missing.  And now so many of us are here.  At least the climate is mild.”

After they had gone, my grandmother would impress upon me that these were Russians.  Russians – not Soviets.  And, back in those days, their accent was noticeably different.

Some of these Russian émigrés would stroll with their dogs.  Borzois.  There was something about these hounds’ genteel demeanour and their sad eyes which, in my child’s imagination, very much symbolised the vieille Russie of the books my grandmother read and the stories she told, as well as the conversations I overheard among these émigrés.  Long, snowy winters.  Fairy tales.  Ballrooms with crystal chandeliers.  Rhymes by Pushkin and Lermontov.  Tchaikovsky’s heart-wrenching music.

One of these, a tall, formidable lady with steel-white hair gathered under a sable hat and piercing-blue eyes, befriended us, and would often invite us to her flat in the exclusive Cimiez area of the city.  Somehow, she had managed to smuggle part of her wealth out of the USSR, so lived in relative comfort, and – if I remember – paid the occasional visit to a plastic surgeon in Germany.  She had an impressive collection of fur coats and jewellery, and took it upon herself to “educate” me in matters which she felt my family clearly lacked the means in which to instruct me.

“Now, Katia, this is important: look at this mink.  How can you tell that it’s of the finest quality? Hmm? Remember, I told you last time.  You look at the long hairs, thickly set, the sheen… Wouldn’t you like to have one like this when you’re grown up? Now this one here is cream Astrakhan – very rare.  And this is leopard, of course…”

I listened politely while trying to catch my grandmother’s eye and send her a silent plea.

Later, at home, I wrote a fairy tale about a leopard fur coat that comes to life whenever a lady wears it, roars and sinks its teeth into the owner’s flesh, mauling her to death.  Eventually, I also made up variations on the theme with alligator handbags and snakeskin shoes.

As I crouched by the silky, friendly Borzoi outside Norwich market, I wondered if he was the descendant of a line that came from Old Russia.  Whether any of his ancestors had ever  strolled along the Promenade des Anglais, in Nice.  Whether I had ever stroked them, age nine, more fascinated then by them than by their owners.

Scribe Doll

 

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“So What Brought You to Norwich?”*

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Scribe Doll

When I tell the truth, they don’t believe me.

I was brought to Norwich by a sheet of paper, a pen, and a china mug.

It was winter 2013, and I was at odds with my life.  There appeared to be an ongoing breakdown in communication, since my life seemed deaf to all my needs, and I was most definitely deaf to its guidance.  I had been living in London for nineteen years, although struggling to keep afloat would be a more accurate description of my existence.  I had been a theatre telephone box office clerk, a telephone market researcher, a theatre press agent, a reflexologist, a theatre producer, an English as a Foreign Language teacher, and an actors’ agent.  So, the previous autumn, I had finally reached the stage where, tired of swimming, I didn’t even care where or how far the next shore was.  I had no job, no home, no money, and only a moderate amount of will to live.  I was drained, shattered, off the grid.  I would fantasise about a friend – any friend – inviting me ’round for a bowl of hearty soup, a rich chocolate pudding, a glass of whiskey, then handing me a large box of tissues and being gently sympathetic while I cried my eyes out and wallowed in a bath of self-pity and self-hatred.  But friends, no matter how close, tend not to invite ’round folks who create black holes the size of asteroid craters in their living-room floors.  And that’s fair enough.

“I want to leave London,” I told a few people.

“But where would you go?”

I didn’t know.

“You must never run away from your problems.  You’ll only be taking them with you.”

Shame there’s no copyright on platitudes.  The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society would need to hire extra staff.

But where would I go?

My brain, of which I had up to then been inordinately proud, had not – I had to admit – served me all that well over the past four or so decades, so I figured I had nothing to lose by resorting to my instinct.  That was the point.  I had nothing to lose.  I was alone.  My misery was also my asset.

I took a sheet of paper, a pen, and a china mug.  I cut the paper into seven sections, and on each, wrote the name of a city at most two hours’ train journey from London.  Oh, yes, and it had to be an old, beautiful city.  I like to stroll amid buildings with stories to tell.  I folded each piece of paper, and put them all into my favourite china mug.  One with a black and white cat sitting on the windowsill of a house with gables, a roaring fire and comfortable furniture inside.  I placed my hand over the mug, shook it up and down, closed my eyes, and pulled out Norwich.

Norwich.  The country’s first UNESCO City of Literature.  The first city in the country where a female writer was published – Julian of Norwich.  The city with the ugly, sugar-cube castle over a slightly eerie shopping centre.  But a city blessed with temperamental, expressive, East Anglian skies.  I’d been there once, for a weekend, several years earlier, but could not remember anything much, except for the Castle and the Cathedral Close.  I didn’t know anybody there, and that was a point in its favour.  If you need a real, total change, no point in going to a place where familiar faces expect you to enact familiar patterns.

I told very few people about my plan.  I didn’t think many would notice my absence, anyway.  When I mentioned it to my dear friend P., he said it so happened his wife’s cousin lived in Norwich, and rented a room in her house.  I booked it.  I now had a home – albeit a temporary one.  Things were looking up.

A book I had been hoping to translate, and the rights to which the British publisher had been negotiating for months, was finally secured.  The day before my departure, the publisher rang to say my contract was ready to sign.  My first real translation contract.  Things were definitely looking up.

And so, one freezing February afternoon, as I dragged a suitcase crammed with dictionaries from Norwich Station, I discovered that Norfolk, despite what Noël Coward wrote, is not flat.  I also discovered that – as Northwickians are proud to point out – the winds here blow straight from the Urals.  Yes, that means they can be very, very cold.

I arrived in Norwich on Shrove Tuesday, and left again shortly after Easter.  Two months I would not trade for the world. Sometimes, when you’re drowning in problems, it’s useful to run from them just far enough uphill to get a full, panoramic view of them.  If you see how they’re laid out, you can plan your way out of them.  In a new place, where everything you react to is new and unfamiliar, you’re less tempted to react – and consequently, act – according to old patterns.

When he saw me off at Liverpool Street, my friend B. had said, “I wonder if, now you’re leaving London, things will unexpectedly unblock for you here.”

I remembered his words when I went back to London for the Easter weekend and, unexpectedly, was offered a wonderful, affordable room in Wimbledon.  A room with an old, wise oak tree outside the window.  A room where I knew I would be very, very happy.  A week later, I moved back to London.  Two days later, I was offered two well-paid teaching jobs, working for nice, appreciative employers.

Among my friends, Norwich became synonym of a gamble that pays off.  A re-set button.  A place to find yourself.

Two years ago, when H. and I were living in Brussels, and wondering where we could move since we couldn’t afford the obscene London rents, I joked, “There’s always Norwich.”

H. looked at me very seriously.  So seriously that, eighteen months ago, we moved here.  The friends I’d made here nearly three years ago welcomed me back.  The contacts I’d made and the knowledge I’d acquired here served me well.  Although I still miss London, I’m gradually learning to love Norwich more day by day.  One would think someone sent me here, three years ago, to lay the foundations of the home we’re making here now.

Perhaps that’s what life said to me, on that grim December night, as I was pulling a piece of paper out of a mug.  Perhaps I wasn’t completely deaf to its guidance, after all.

* If you would like to read about my 2013 Norwich adventure, please read from this blog post.

Scribe Doll

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– and that’s Jazz.

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Scribe Doll

It’s 7.45 and all the tables are already occupied.  The staff are carrying in more chairs.  Drinks are sipped.  The hubbub of chatter hovers over the room, an evocation of the cigarette smoke of yesteryear.

The jam session is advertised for 8 o’clock and, as always, I wonder why everyone arrives so early, since the music never starts before about 8.30.  8 is when the odd musician strays in, casual, as though he happened to be passing and decided to drop in.  He deposits his instrument on the stage area, then backtracks to the bar.  A couple of other musicians drift in and slowly start tuning up.  They catch sight of a familiar face in the audience, nod, smile, go and say hello.  Totally oblivious to the social convention of time.  Someday, someone will explain to me what makes jazz musicians think they are exempt from the professional courtesy of starting their performances on time.  Classical musicians manage it.  Actors manage it.  The audience don’t seem to mind waiting.  Maybe the fact that the performers are free to be themselves, faults included, makes the audience feel loved.

Eventually, the musicians start playing and the audience starts nodding and foot-tapping in time with the rhythm.  Everybody knows the drill: about two-thirds of the way into the song, it’s solo time.  The double bass player strums, pinches and boings, eyes closed, Dum-dum-dum-ing to himself.  It’s the cue for the audience to applaud.  Then it’s the turn of the bass guitar.  Eyelids scrunched up together, face tense, suggesting a painful orgasm.  Audience duly applauds.  Last, but not least, comes the percussionist’s exhibition.  It’s often the longest, with all the hide, wood and metal getting an extensive thrashing that culminates in another hail of applause.

The singer steps onto the stage, with perfected languor and stylised weariness.  She brushes her mane of hair from one side of her neck to the other.  Eyes closed, head slightly thrown back, the mic almost brushing her lips.  It’s just her and the song in a private, intimate space.  Shall we all tip-toe out and remove our voyeuristic presence?

I observe that everyone on stage has either his or eyes closed, or half-closed with a vacant, expression suggesting sense-altering, direct communication with an extra-terrestrial dimension.

A jazz trademark seems to be to cut the verse of the song and attack it straight from the chorus.  Maybe doing what the composer and lyricist intended for the song would be too banal, too conventional, too conformist?

Ah, jazz.  Jazz is life. Or is it life is jazz?

Let’s just drop all that jazz.

Scribe Doll

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Welcoming In The New Year*

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Scribe Doll

Raid all the cupboards and drawers.  Throw into the charity shop bag anything you no longer want, toss into the bin liner anything nobody would want.  Make room for the beautiful, the useful, the new.

Vacuum the carpets, remove the old footprints, that old and new friends may walk in and leave their footprints, instead.

Wash the windows, that golden sunlight may stream into the house, bringing strength to your enterprises, and the silver moonlight may permeate through, carrying inspiration into your dreams.

Scrub the kitchen, chase away stale old smells, that the stove, pots and pans may be ready for new, tasty dishes to bring together friends, and make the body healthy.

Tidy the clutter from the living room, light the fire, that its glow might kindle sparkling conversations, its magic inspire storytelling, and its warmth encourage laughter.

Clean the bedroom, erase all tiredness, that rest may become refreshing, chase away all nightmares, that happy dreams may take root, dispel all doubts, that pleasure may enter smiling, sweep away any anger, that love may flood in.

Put order in the study, that good ideas may find their way in.

Clear the desk, that work, creativity and good fortune may have a place to land.

Burn frankincense or sage, clap your hands, ring bells, make the bowl sing, that all goblins may flee and fairies fly in.

Take all dead and dying plants out of the house, to the nearby wood.  Nature knows better than the rubbish bin what to do with them.

Write down on pieces of paper the names of all men and women you no longer want in your life.  Say “Thank you”, “Sorry”, and “That’s all right” and drop the pieces of paper into the river one by one.  As you watch them being carried away by the stream, wish them well, that they go on to be gifts in other people’s lives.  Let them float away, that they may make room for new people to come into your life.  People who bring love, wisdom and laughter.

Stand under the shower and think rainbows flowing through you.

Fling open all the windows, open the front door, that health, wealth, inspiration, love, laughter may pour in.

And may 2016 sweep into your lives with fulfilled dreams by the armful!

You might also enjoy A Broom To Sweep Out The Old

Scribe Doll

 

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There’s no Santa Claus but…

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Scribe Doll

Tamsin wrote the letter with her favourite pen.  The blue and gold one she had got for her birthday.  She formed all the letters carefully, so Santa Claus would be able to read her handwriting.  Her grandmother said good children had clear, neat handwriting.  She folded the sheet of paper, slipped it in the envelope, licked the flap and pressed it down hard.  Then she wrote “To Santa Claus” on the front.

In the living room, her grandmother had laid the table for afternoon tea.  She smiled at Tamsin. “Come and have some cake, darling,” she said.  “Have you finished writing to Santa Claus?”

“Yes.  I hope he brings me the teddy bear. I put him at the top of my list and I did say I want the brown one with the yellow paws and a green bow.  Do you think he’ll bring it for me?”

The grandmother cut a slice of chocolate fudge cake and put it on Tamsin’s plate.  “I’m absolutely sure he will,” she said.  “Now give me the letter so I can post it for you.”

Tamsin handed her the envelope.  “Can’t we post it together when we go for a walk after tea?”

“Oh, no, my love,” her grandmother replied.  “Santa Claus’s letters have to go into a special postbox.  It’s a bit far from here but I can post it on my way home tonight.”

Tamsin put a forkful of cake into her mouth and frowned.

“Don’t you like the cake, sweetheart?”

Tamsin nodded.  “Yes.”  She swallowed.  “Grandma, is Daddy coming for Christmas this year?”

The grandmother had been dreading that question for the past three Christmases. This year too she gave the same answer.  “No, my love. I’m afraid Daddy isn’t coming.”

The little girl toyed with her fork.  “He’s never coming back.”

The grandmother fought the impulse to contradict her.  Of course, he is, she wanted to say.  After all, that’s what she had said last year and the year before that, but there seemed little point in deceiving the child any longer.  Someday, someone would have to explain to Tamsin that her father had walked out on his wife and two-year-old daughter but, for the time being, the grandmother opted for silence.

“Is Mummy coming back tonight?” the child asked.

“Of course, she is. Why wouldn’t she be?”

Tamsin put her fork down.  “She won’t never come back from work, will she?”

The grandmother pulled her down from her chair, sat her on her lap and kissed the top of her blonde head.  “Your Mummy and I will never leave you, my darling.  We love you so, so much.”

Tamsin was fast asleep when her mother unlocked the door to the flat.  The grandmother was reading on the sofa.  She closed her book.  “I’m afraid she waited up for you as late as she could, but she fell asleep on the chair, so I put her to bed.  You’re late, again.”

The mother took off her coat and hung it up on the hook by the front door.  She slipped off her high-heeled shoes and went to join her mother on the sofa.  She sighed.  “I’m sorry, I had to finish a report.  I didn’t dare say no.”

“Tamsin hardly ever sees you.  Breakfast time and weekends.  That’s about it.”

“I’m doing my best, Mum.  I’m doing it all for her.”

“I know.  Are you hungry? I’ve made some stew.  It’s still warm.  I’d better get home now.  It’s late.”

She stood up from the sofa and looked at her daughter’s drawn face.  Then she leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.  “Eat something,” she said.  “It’s Saturday tomorrow, so you can sleep in.  Then you and Tamsin can spend the weekend together.”

*   *   *

Tamsin  bounced onto her mother’s bed.  “Mummy!  Where are we going today?”

Her mother’s eyes opened with a start.  “What time is it? Oh, darling, why don’t you cuddle up here and let Mummy sleep a little longer?”

“But it’s eight o’clock!”

“Just give me a few more minutes, love.  Why don’t you go and set the table for breakfast?”

Putting out the cereal bowls, Tamsin wondered if her grandmother had remembered to post her letter to Santa Claus.

The morning was spent in Tamsin’s least favourite place:  the supermarket.  She hated food shopping.  It always took ages.  After lunch, however, her mother took them into town.  All the shops were decorated with tinsel, baubles and fairy lights.  Tamsin loved it.  Whenever she stopped to look at a dress or a box of paints, her mother asked, “Do you like it, darling? Do you think you might like to have it someday?”

“No, thanks, Mummy,” she replied.  After all, there was no point in her mother buying her anything when Santa Claus already had her wish list.  Imagine if she got two of the same!

When they entered Tamsin’s favourite department store, her mother directed them to the toy floor.  “Why are we going there, Mummy?”

“We need to buy something for our neighbour Timmy,” the mother replied.  “What do you suppose he’d like?”

“Oh, Timmy only likes cars,” Tamsin said with a huff.

If ever her grandmother could not pick her up from school, she went home with her neighbour, Timmy and his mum.  They lived in the flat opposite.  Timmy was a year younger than Tamsin, and his mother’s cakes weren’t nearly as good as the ones her grandmother made.

“Oh, look, Tamsin, isn’t this the teddy bear you like so much?” her mother suddenly asked.

There they were, arranged in a pyramid atop a velvet puff: the teddy bears Tamsin had seen advertised on television.  Black ones with the red paws, and white ones with blue paws.  She tried to look away from the brown ones with the yellow paws and green bows.  “Er, no… not really,” she said.

Her mother picked up a car that was a model of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  “I think Timmy will like this.  Look, you can pull the wings open.”

They joined the queue to pay.  Tamsin was bored and hot.  Why were they buying a present for Timmy, anyway? It’s not as if it was his birthday or anything.

Tamsin’s mother suddenly took a sharp intake of breath.  “Oh, darling, don’t forget you mustn’t tell Timmy we bought him the Chitty car.  He’s younger than you and he still believes in Santa Claus.  You’re a big girl now, you don’t believe in all this silly nonsense any more, but don’t spoil it for little Timmy.”

There were suddenly red blotches before Tamsin’s eyes.  Everything went quiet, as though she was in a dream.

“Tamsin, did you hear me? I’m talking to you.  Darling, you’ve gone all pale.  Are you not feeling well?”

“Yes, Mummy, all right, I won’t tell Timmy.”

“Good girl.”

The rest of the afternoon was a blur.  Tamsin’s mother thought they had been out too long and that her daughter was tired.  It was unusual for her to be so quiet.  She even went to bed straight after dinner and did not insist on watching television.

*   *   *

On Christmas morning, Tamsin did not wake up with the usual excitement.  After breakfast, she sat by the tree and unwrapped a brown teddy bear with yellow paws and a green bow.  She wondered whether it was her mother or her grandmother who’d gone to buy it at the department store.  It was a beautiful, soft bear.  She hugged it and decided to call it Mr Brown.  She kept it with her the whole day and when it was time for bed she put him next to her on the pillow, and stroked his velvet nose.  “Shall I tell you a story?” she whispered.  She felt silly as soon as she had said it.

“Yes, please.  I love stories,” came the reply.

Tamsin sat up and turned on the bedside lamp.  There was no one else in the room.  She switched the lamp off again and hugged the bear closer.

“So, are you going to tell me a story then?”

Tamsin was astonished.  “Is that you, Mr Brown?” she said.

“Well, who else is here?” he replied in a soft, gentle voice.

“But toys don’t talk,” Tamsin said.

“I do,” said the teddy bear.  “Only don’t tell anyone.”

“It will be our secret,” Tamsin whispered.

Then she pulled the duvet over their heads, so her mother would not hear their voices,  and began telling him a story.

Scribe Doll

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Socially Impaired

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Scribe Doll

I am brusquely jolted from my mellow, Sunday morning slumber.  I’ve just remembered.  I have to go to a party this afternoon.  Oh, heck.

“I wish I didn’t have to go,” I tell H. over a plateful of French toast.

He’s heard this before.  Many times.  Every time we’ve been invited to a social event involving more than two or three other people.

“Oh, I’m really looking forward to it,” he says.

H. is shy at large gatherings.  I turn into a social butterfly.  He spends a lot of time examining the host’s bookshelves.  I flit about, trying to impress as many people as I can.  He is relaxed.  I have a nervous clump in my stomach.  When we first met, H. remarked on how perfectly “in (my) element” I was at parties.  He knows me better now.

I get dressed, paint my face and grumble,  H. tactfully avoids pointing out that, had I not been invited, I would be sulking and complaining that “nobody ever invites me anywhere”.  He knows me well.

We arrive.  H.’s attention is drawn to the books lining the living room walls.  I dive into the fray, flashing smiles, joining in the conversation, my brain on overdrive.  Everybody I speak to is very pleasant, interesting, easy to to talk to.  I enjoy the conversation.  So there’s no reason why I should be constantly aware of the clump in my stomach.

A couple of hours later, like a cat that’s just noticed a chink in a fence, I detect an opportunity for a socially acceptable exit.  I dart in search of H. and can barely repress my irritation at seeing he has just helped himself to cake.  I bristle.  How long is it going to take him to finish that cake? I whizz around kissing, thanking and wishing a happy Christmas.  Oh, good, H. has finished his cake.  Quick, the coats.  Anyone would think I was having a miserable time, yet nothing could be further from the truth.  I fly out of the front door like a bat out of hell, and walk fast along the pavement.  All the time, I’m thinking about how much I liked the people at the party, and how much I’d like to see them again.  At the same time, I can’t wait to get home.  I know exactly what I will do once I’m there.

The second we’re back in our flat, I rush into the kitchen and put the kettle on.  In the living room, I light the fire and all the candles and night lights.  I don’t want the lamps on.  Not yet.  I change from my skirt and blouse into my leggings and oversized lambswool man’s cardigan.

Within five minutes of coming back home, I am sitting on the floor, staring into the wavering blue flames of the gas fire, sipping almond tea from a bone china mug, listening to the yearning violin of Von Biber’s Rosary Sonatas.  The fragrant tea and the music soothe my frantic soul back into my body.  H. comes to sit behind me, on the sofa, and picks up the mug of tea I’ve left for him on the low table.

We sit in silence, except for the shooshing of the gas fire and the soulful baroque violin.

The clump in my stomach slowly dissolves, and I feel whole again.

“It’s all right, we can put the lamps on now, if you like,” I say to H. as I get off the floor.

Scribe Doll

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Advent Carols at Norwich Cathedral

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Scribe Doll

“We should get there at least half an hour earlier to get a decent seat.”

“Half an hour!”

“Bring a book.”

“I don’t know… reading a book in church?”

“Other people chat before the service, which I find infuriating.  At least quietly reading a book doesn’t disturb anybody else.”

Convinced by my logic, H. stuffs a book into his coat pocket, while I slip the usual A4. brown, spiral notebook into my bag.

We are greeted at the entrance of the Cathedral by ladies and gentlemen who hand us an order of service with the usual, upstanding citizen smile of church wardens all over the country.

We notice a large proportion of seats in the nave being marked Reserved for Ticket Holders.  “So much for the democracy of the Church,” I say out loud.  “Are we becoming as exclusive as King’s College Chapel now?” I think that even at the Temple Church, which I regularly attended in London, and where every molecule of the congregation oozes a sense of almost aggressive hierarchy, seats were occupied on a first come, first served basis, whether you were a QC, a court clerk, or just me.

“I don’t know if we’re King’s College Chapel,” says an elderly gentleman with a Cathedral badge on his lapel, “but you can go beyond the organ screen, in the presbytery.  It’s great to sit there.”  He gives me a half smile to which I beam a sincere “thank you.”

We take seats in the second row of the Mediaeval presbytery seats, wide and with comfortable rounded backs to support you.

I peruse the order of service.  On the first page, I read:

Since the effectiveness of the service partly depends upon hearing from a distance, you are invited, when standing, to turn to face the direction from which the sound is coming.

I remember reading this in last year’s order of service too and, then like now, stifling a giggle.  I wonder if there is really anyone above the age of six months unable to work that out for him or herself, or why special authorisation is needed to turn your head towards the sound.

As the organ pours notes of Bach and Brahms into the air, the lights are switched off one by one, until we are plunged in a darkness disrupted only by the golden half-light of the outdoor illumination floating down through the arched windows and gently lingering on the stone pillars.  I hold my breath in marvel.  In the darkness the Cathedral seems to come into a life of its own, and find the voice of its history, of all the Benedictine monks that prayed here, eight centuries ago.  During that – sadly brief – moment of silence, I think I hear them gossiping, discussing theology, begging forgiveness, reading the Rule of Saint Benedict, or uttering a prayer to the Almighty.

The clergy gather under the Advent wreath, the candles flames casting flickering shadows over their faces.  After the blessing of the light, they process past us to the West end of the Cathedral.  Last, walks the Bishop of Norwich, wearing a mitre.  I find myself wondering if he knows the ancient reason for the pyramid shape of his headgear.  The same reason why  in early churches, the altar was always beneath a dome.  The same reason why wizards’ hats are traditionally conical.  A reason of physics.  Yet another piece of ancient wisdom that’s been widely forgotten.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

Redeem thy captive Israel (…)

 

My favourite Advent hymn.  There is something arcanely wise and full of longing in its tune.  I belt it out, hoping I’m not going off tune.  I haven’t sung in a very long time, and my vocal cords feel somewhat stiff and uncooperative.

“… the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”

“And also with you,” is the response printed in the order of service.  But I cannot speak those words.  I have never been able to.  They always sound so mundane to me.  Instead, I mutter under my breath, “And with thy spirit.”

I suddenly recall the religious fervour sometimes bordering on intolerance that I witnessed at my old Durham college.  Where many viewed “thee”s, “thou”s, the King James Bible and especially incense with frowning suspicion.  A college in whose Norman chapel the first Catholic mass since the Reformation took place in 1989, after much campaigning with the College Council.  I was at that mass, one of the majority of Anglicans come to support the triumph of our Catholic fellow students.

The voices of the choir are carried over from beyond the organ screen.  The rich voices of the men, the limpid, crystal-clear voices of the girls, and the vulnerable, moonbeam-like voices of the boys.
Advent Sunday is when I give myself permission to start indulging in a Christmas activities, such as listening to carols.  Also when I start feeling the atmosphere of Christmas.

After the solemn blessing, the choir sing a Vesper Responsory.  Its melody is full of mystery and hope.  It spreads throughout the Cathedral and rises up to the fan vaulting.

As we come out into the cold, starry night, I realise that, unlike other years, I do not feel a sense of Christmas.  Not yet.  But as I look up at the starts shimmering like diamonds in the black-blue sky, I feel a sense of hope.

Scribe Doll

Please also read my piece about the Temple Church.

 

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“Thank You” Isn’t Just About Etiquette

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Scribe Doll

I’ve started dropping friends and acquaintances who fail to thank.  Be it for a present, a favour or simply for having had dinner at my home.  It’s my choice and although it may appear as unforgiving, I have good reasons for acting this way.

For me, “thank you” isn’t just a formality, or something old-fashioned to be dispensed with in this world where every rudeness and disrespect justifies itself with the word “busy”.  After all, what makes the other person’s time more valuable than mine? If I have found the time to buy a present, do a favour or cook a meal, then surely the other person – unless suddenly physically incapacitated – has the time to express his/her appreciation of my gesture.  Because for me thanking isn’t just two words to throw at someone as casually as the used, over-used and abused British “sorry”, but a full acknowledgement of the giver’s act.  It’s communicating to the other person, “I take full responsibility for accepting what you give me by acknowledging both it and you.”  It’s allowing for interaction, for dialogue, for energy to flow both ways.

Yes, I think accepting something carries a degree of responsibility because it is an exercise in choice.  You have a choice in whether you accept something from someone.  A gift is a form of engagement with the other person, and failure to thank means a failure in engaging in turn, a failure to make the gift a living thing, effectively by allowing it to fall down a black hole.  I don’t buy the cop-out “They did that for us because they wanted to – it was their choice”.  It was equally your choice to accept and denying it is deeply disrespectful and tantamount to telling those people, “You’re invisible”.

Many of us remember huffing and puffing while dutifully writing thank-you letters for Christmas and birthday presents.  I even remember a time when a couple of days after a dinner party, your guests would send you a thank-you card.  Only last week, I received one such card from a couple we’d had ’round for dinner and it was such a pleasure to see that they’d taken the time to choose and write a card.  In these “busy” times, this is a precious little nugget, and I’m usually happy with a ‘phone call, e-mail or even a text message.  Something that says, “I see you”.

Time and again, I hear friends who haven’t been thanked by their own friends, relatives or children, excuse them by saying, “Oh, they’re very busy” or, worse, “I know they’re grateful, even if they haven’t actually said it.”  I don’t think telepathic thanks count.  It’s too easy.  Too passive.  Gifts, favours and food are not given telepathically.  Gratitude, like love, isn’t a state but an action.  It’s what distinguishes us from plants.

So, if a friend or acquaintance does not acknowledge my gesture of kindness towards him/her, they are saying, “You’re invisible.  You don’t exist.”

And an invisible person cannot express him/herself.  A person who does not exist cannot possibly keep in touch with you, right?

Scribe Doll

 

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A Little Black Number Called Genie

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Scribe Doll

I’d grieved over the meaninglessness of my first cat, Pyewacket, going missing and now felt I was ready for a new feline room mate.  Kittens in London are like gold dust, since most people have their cats neutered and spayed, but I was determined to get a kitten, this time. Pyewacket, an attractive brown and white tabby with green eyes, had been rescued from the RSPCA as a grown-up cat, and her early life had been so scarred by unknown traumas that it had taken six months before she would allow me to stroke her, and although every bit of effort I made in our relationship was definitely worth it, this time, I wanted a yet unconditioned animal I could accustom to having its claws trimmed, going out into the street with me (since I didn’t have access to a garden), and living with some of my lifestyle quirks without too much of a battle of wills.

One Easter Saturday, I took several means of public transport from Fulham to a pet shop in Hackney, where there were two kittens on sale in the window.  The first was a postcard-pretty male, ginger and white, plump, with big blue eyes.  I picked him up but he pushed against my hands, clearly not finding me very simpatica.  There was a small heap of spiky grey-black fur curled up next to him, fast asleep, the heap rising and falling with every breath, totally impervious to the world around it.  I picked it up and the furry heap unfurled into something with a big head, small body, short but undulating tail, sparse fur clumped in poo, and a pair of saucer-size, sleepy, grey-blue-green eyes.  It curled its tail around my hand and began to vibrate in something resembling a purr. When  I handed her to the shop owner, the eyes grew even wider and a little bald mouth began to open and close, making no sound but clearly miming “Miaow!”, digging its tiny claws into the woman’s hand, trying to free itself, its body language suggesting it wanted to come back to me.

So I guess it would be accurate to say that it was Genie who picked me, rather than the other way around.  On the way back home, I stopped to buy a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.  There was no way I was going to cuddle all that caked poo.  We had our first disagreement over a sink filled with lukewarm water and baby shampoo, into which I simply immersed Genie, and proceeded to rub with my fingers, while holding her to prevent her from exiting the sink.  More miming of “Miaow!” without any sound being emitted.  Then I wrapped her into a towel, and dried her.  No sooner had I finished than she bolted out of my hands, across the room and scrambled up the curtains.  She remained up there, upside down, surveying the large window and the room, before coming back down, leaping onto my futon, taking a spot in the very centre of it, taking several minutes grooming, then falling fast asleep for over an hour.

We had our second strong disagreement that first night together – about the sleeping arrangements.  Genie had decided that she would sleep under the duvet, i.e. inside the bed, with me, while I was quite adamant that her place would be at my feet, on top of the duvet.  The tug of war went on until the early hours of the morning.  She crawled into the bed, I picked her up with one hand and put her down over the duvet.  She crawled back in, and I took her back out.  When I finally fell asleep, I woke up because something was tugging at the strap of my nightgown.  Genie was finding it highly entertaining to bite at my strap, pull it away from my shoulder, then let it go so it would spring back against my skin.  Over, and over again.  I grabbed her and put her down at my feet.  I fell asleep again.  Something was tickling my back.  I was lying on my side and Genie was fast asleep, curled up against the space between my shoulder blades.  As she breathed in and out, her sparse fur tickled my skin.

The pet shop owners had told me Genie was eight weeks, but when I took her to her first visit to her vet, a few days later, he said she was barely more than six, which accounted for her lack of voice, her tiny size, and the sparse fur.  He thought she was a Siamese or Burmese mix.  He threw a crunchy on the couch.  She pursued it, grabbed it with her teeth but it was too hard for her.  She insisted, turning her head to one side, then the other, until she finally crunched it, chewed it, and swallowed it triumphantly.  The vet smiled.  “Most other kittens that age would have given up because it’s too tough.  Strong personality.”  Then he smirked at me.  “I foresee a tempestuous friendship.”

For the following six months, I went to teach every morning with dark rings under my eyes, yawning and confused by yet another sleepless night, kept awake by Genie’s nocturnal games.  My colleagues teased me and suggested that perhaps I should have a baby instead.

Then, there was the challenge of training her to use the hooded litter tray.  She would spend ages playing with the litter, pawing it out onto the carpet, then, tired from all the exertion, she would sit on the edge, her bottom on the outside, and pee onto the carpet.  I was going demented, seeing the stains multiply no matter how much Dettol I used, picturing what my landlord would charge me for the damage.  It was a friend more au fait  with the family traditions of cats who came to my rescue.  “After the kittens have eaten, the mother cats lick their bottoms to stimulate the toilet reflex.”  So I folded up a square of kitchen paper, wet it with warm water, and did what mummy cats otherwise do with their tongues.  Hey, presto! Genie didn’t need to be told twice and, from that moment on, used the litter tray as her loo.

As time went on, Genie turned into a sleek, glossy black number with a white smudge on her breastbone and a perfect white triangle on her lower tummy.  Her eyes turned into a bright amber, and she began forming a loud, protracted, modulated “Miiiaaaaaaooowww!!!!” like that of a Siamese cat.  She also began to chatter to me, responding to everything I said, sometimes even starting a conversation of her own accord.  When I came home from work, she would run up my leg, to my chest, her paws around my neck and her face buried into the back of my neckline.  I would walk around with her in my arms like this for a good few minutes, while putting the kettle on and starting on dinner.  At night, she slept next to me, on top of the duvet, or sometimes at my feet.  To this day, years after she passed away, whenever I turn in bed, I automatically wake myself up, worried I might roll over her.

At the weekend, we would go and have coffee at our local Café Tinto, on the Fulham Palace Road, with Genie in a white sports bag over my shoulder.  We would seat on the bench, I’d read The Guardian while she tore up the sports pages next to me.  The Colombian owner would offer her a saucer of milk, which she always declined.  She didn’t care for milk, but for yoghurt, thick, Greek yoghurt – full fat, of course, none of that low fat rubbish.

Genie had very definite likes and dislikes as far as humans went.  It was simple.  She either liked someone, or she categorically did not.  And one of the people she did not like, was my mother.  When, for a few years, we had to move in with her, Genie declared psychological warfare on her.  Strange, seeing that my mother is one of those genuine animal lovers to whom every cat and dog in the street flocks.  Whenever she tried to stroke her, Genie would hiss, growl and eventually strike my mother’s hand, though always with her claws sheathed.  She would also engage in provocation games where she would sit on the floor before my mother, still as a statue, staring at her, unblinking.  After a while, my mother would grow nervous.  “Why is that cat staring at me?” at which point Genie would open her mouth wide in a loud, protracted, wailing “Miiiiaaaaawwwwwww!!!!!!!” My mother would leap up from her chair.  “Oh, sweetheart, would you like some food? Oh, darling, how about some yoghurt?”  She’d rush to the fridge, pull out the carton and dollop a spoonful into the cat dish.  But the cat was nowhere to be seen until another wail was heard from the room next door, where she sat looking up at the balcony door.  My mother would hasten to open it.  “Oh, pussy-cat, you want to go out on the balcony!” But Genie would turn around and slink away, out of the room, leaving my poor mother standing there, with the door open.  “Your cat is screwed up,” she’d say.  No, not screwed up.  Manipulative.

There is so much more I could write about Genie, but how can you express in words – so limited and limiting at times – the respect, admiration, love and perfect understanding you can be so lucky, so blessed to have with an animal?

How can you describe the oneness you feel with him or her when staring into his or her eyes, and your absolute certainty that this animal knows things about Life that your brain, however developed, is just too rudimentary to perceive?

How can you explain the powerful impression you have that this animal sees parts of your soul that your fellow-humans aren’t even aware of?

How do you convey the anger, the rage, the sense of injustice, and the wish to inflict emotional suffering on an emergency vet who gives this animal the wrong injection? The heartbreak you wish this vet to experience because, at that moment, when you could howl and slam your own head against the wall, you think it’s the only way she will realize just what she has done to you? Do people ever understand other people’s pain unless they feel it themselves?

Genie understood more than either that vet or I.  It was the first and last time she ever hissed at a vet, when the needle went into her flesh.  The injection that was supposed to keep her alive.

Genie on desk

IMG_0100

Scribe Doll

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