My posting may be sporadic again this week as I have my sister with me and we are sorting out the last few things with my mum's flat and also will be scattering her ashes and that is something I really want done as soon as possible. I feel as if I am in limbo at the moment and unable to move forward and this has been emphasised by a long chat I have just had with Kathryn regarding her move to Sydney. She is, quite rightly, getting very excited about it all now that it is only a month away and much though I will miss her, I almost wish she was gone - cannot seem to plan or see ahead at the moment and it makes me feel very insecure and wobbly. Two of my main strands in my life, my mother and my elder daughter are both disappearing at the same time and of course, I have Helen and James and Florence, but things are difference and I have to regroup. I am used to this, two marriages, two divorces, children, moving, living in Australia myself etc etc and I know I can do it again, but as one gets older it gets harder.
Anyway, Elaine Get a Grip and no wingeing.
I have just watched a programme I taped a week ago - The South Bank Show revisited. One of the best, if not the best arts programmes on ITV, so of course they have axed it, as they did with Foyle's War. Quality programming is not what the directors of TV companies want any more it seems. Anyway, they are revisiting some of the earlier shows and updating them with new interviews and in the last few weeks they have shown one on Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose music I still find banal but he now seems to have mellowed and become a thoroughly nice chap, a really interesting one on Stephen Sondheim and last night, a gem, a programme all about Dame Judi Dench. Now I know she hates being categorised as a national treasure but whether she likes it or not, she is and seeing her chat and talk and laugh and giggle that infectious way she has, inter cut with earlier South Bank shows and watching excerpts from various plays and comedy shows in which she has starred, really beguiled me and such fun to see.
There was one marvellous scene showing her in rehearsal for Sondheim's A Little Night Music in which Dame Judi was playing Desiree and had that wonderful song to sing 'Send in the Clowns' She was rehearsing in what appeared to be an old school gym, she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a battered old upright piano was accompanying her and she produced a peformance of this song that reduced me, sitting at home, to tears and those in the rehearsal with her, to stunned silence. Quite breathtaking.
Last night I taped another South Bank Show revisited on Dame Kiri te Kanawa, never one of my favourite singers, beauty of sound yes but total lack of dramatic involvement I always felt, and will be most interested to see if I was being unfair to her and if I might revise my opinion. Watching these programmes begs the question why have they axed this show? Why? Answer comes there none...
Au reservoir
