May Items
15 May

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Well, I'm still playing catch up.

It took me a while to complete the final entry for March and the sole entry for April. And, of course, in the meantime more, life happened.

I'm working less from diary entries and more from memory as I get nearer to the present in which I am writing this.

Item - Weather

Possibly it's the weather that is helping.

As well as the length of the days (there are fewer than eight hours of darkness now so I'm heading for bed in twilight and waking to bright daylight), there's been a sudden upsurge of clement weather.

May started with one day hot and another day wet and then resolved itself into a glorious burst of early summer. It's as though we skipped from late winter to early summer with very little transition through a spring.

Consequently, the world of vegetation was gone into overdrive. Everything that was holding back through the cold of the preceding months has lurched into growth, leaf and blossom.

Throughout the region, hawthorn, wisteria, lilac, laburnum and chestnut are in flower. There's the pink of the cherry trees and the darker red of the flowering crab apple trees. And there's a blast of green around us all. The hedgerows have filled out with leaf and the farmers' fields have disappeared from view once more until late autumn scours the branches clear again.

Item - Gardening

It's been a spring of regeneration in the garden. The rhibes near my window which nearly expired last year has come back to life. The holly bush which had been moved two years ago and last year dropped leaves is now flowering and leafing; we hope for berries in the autumn. I've put some of last year's gladioli bulbs in the ground.

The centaurae, armeria and heuchera, which were bought last year, have survived but the agastache hasn't. We've bought and planted a broom with fiery deep orange flowers to replace the hebe that died last year. The African lilies which were a disappointment last year have really come on this time round.

The astilbe is thriving as is the spotted laurel. The rosemary has flowered and the lavendars are powering away. We've put cabbages in the bed at the bottom of the garden. One of the aubretias by the pond is thriving whilst the other has given up the ghost. In the pond itself, the marsh mallow must have begun making progress because I can already smell the tell-tale blasts of vanilla pods when I'm on my knees working at removing the build up of duck weed and blanket weed.

The hydrangea and the viburnum in the front garden are doing well after re-planting last year. The winter pansies which did not do well in the winter are positively thriving in the spring.

I've started the whole business of tidying up the rockery primroses which border our paths and patio. This involves hours of digging out, separating, feeding with compost from our wormery, re-planting, watering, etc. I'm also tidying and weeding the borders as I go around. It is time-consuming, back-straining and very, very satisfying. Next year, I know, there should be an abundance of purple the length of our garden and, the year after, it will be even more splendid before I have to do the separating again.

I'm so enjoying being out in the garden again. And I caught myself thinking the other day - this is what she stole from me (and stole is not too harsh a word); I've spent two years avoiding my own back yard to protect myself from Bev's antics.

Item - Eating

I'm still enjoying spontaneous cooking. My latest creation was a simple risotto with a twist. Usual sorts of vegetable ingredients plus water and rice. Then some tomato purée. And then the masterstroke... some peanut butter. Well I don't know if it was supposed to do this but it immediately thickened the sauce to the point where more water was essential. It also blended in adding a sort of coconut taste rather than simply peanut butter. Anyhow, it was good.

Item - Visiting

May Day Bank Holiday weekend passed pleasantly enough - the highlight was a visit from Keith. It is now five years since he was last year and a lot of water has been passed under the bridge since that time. Like last time, he was here for a College reunion and to see friends around the region and so, like last time, he was out of the house for large periods of time.

However, we had a pleasant meal together on the Friday night and managed an atmospheric and traditional picnic on the Sunday at Crosby promenade in full view of the Antony Gormley statues. I use the adjectives advisedly as it was cold, wet and windy and seemed to sum up a lot of Bank Holidays that I can remember from childhood.

As railway travel continues to be shot to glory through the continuing need for upgrade, maintenance and investment in an infrastructure which was abandoned after the political sell offs and sell outs of the 1980s, Keith travelled back to London on the Sunday evening by coach. The rail journey would have taken seven hours with detours via Sheffield and two cross country jaunts by bus; the coach took just under half that time.

And then an opportunity came up. The following weekend, Ross and I were supposed to be travelling to North Lincolnshire for a family event - his sister Megan's daughter, Emily, was due to be christened. Well, Ross's mum's uncle is sick unto death. It is a matter of time. Consequently, the christening was postponed.

And so I grasped the moment and went down to London for a live performance.

Not necessarily a big deal you might think as I have attended many a live performance in London over the years. This one was special as it featured son, Robert.

bgroup is a new company formed to showcase the work of choreographer, Ben Wright. Robert has performed a number of Ben's works over the years and is one of the five founder dancers in the company. Of the other performers, only Keir Patrick was someone who I recognised from performances with EDge in 2004 and from Robert's graduation piece at Laban.

Throwing caution to the wind I should say that I was mightily impressed. I think that the majority of Robert's good work has been done out of this country. What I've seen - Troika Ranch and Opera North's Dido and Æneas and Les Noces - has not been wonderful in terms of choreography.

Robert was in all three pieces - which makes a change as I've sat through whole evenings in order to see him perform for 5 minutes.

The first, which used all four men in the company, was a collage of interplays between solos and group work cross cut using highly effective stylised lighting. Every so often I was minded of the friezes of warriors on the sides of Greek pottery, such as you get in the British Museum. It said more about masculinity, male bonding and male groupings in 16 minutes than Aletta Collins managed all evening for Opera North.

The second piece was a duet for male and female dancer. Clearly there was narrative and there was development concerning a relationship or relationships. But, once again, the narrative was cinematic and cross-cut and mediated by the lighting. There was no formal music; only the sounds of the performers' breathing and movements. It was very gripping and not very healthy. I wonder how much personal material Robert was channelling during the performance.

The final piece involved all five performers and, once again, felt very cinematic - a sort of Friends for London held together by a sort of Peter Greenaway Drowning by Numbers counting device. I liked the humanity of the piece. And Robert was a star. And he was as naughty as a star can be by stealing a scene with a glance to the audience. He's a true performer not just a dancer - he's an actor, a mime, a clown as well. He knows the value of simply "being" on stage.

I'm hoping these performances come to Liverpool - maybe for next year's Spring Dance Festival at the Liverpool Playhouse - but I'm certainly on the lookout for something more local so that Ross can see them.

Item - Watching

There's been a fair few movies to mention.

Enchanted was not as good as Stardust - I always feel that you can't beat Robert de Niro in a frock to make a movie go with a swing. Yes, it was arch and post-modern and had some good visual jokes at the expense of the Disney back catalogue. But I wasn't captivated.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets was complete hokum, helped pass a couple of hours and then fell out of the back of my memory.

Feast of Love appeared to be really good when I looked at the trailer. Literate, intelligent, well acted by a good cast. And it was all of these things. But it was also dull and fifteen minutes too long.

The Invisible was in the same spirit. Good, engaging trailer. Poor in the execution. Lop twenty minutes off and you might have had a taught little thriller.

Which brought us to Iron Man. I didn't really want to see this at all. I'd not liked what I'd seen of any of the trailers. But Ross insisted. And so... Well, it was really quite good. It had pace and brio and a sense of rock and roll about it. It's probably the first Marvell Comics spin-off which I've enjoyed for many a year.

Item - Reading

I've completed A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss. It's an amazing piece of synchronicity. Having completed Patrick Dillon's The Last Revolution early in March, I felt that I had a better understanding of the history of 1688 and its aftermath. What this book does is to give an imaginative sense of what it was like to live in the times. Much like the Matthew Shardlake novels do for the late reign of Henry VIII. And like those books, it is cast in the form of an investigative thriller. I hope to read more by the same author.

I also tried out Ian McEwan's Atonement. Having endorsed the film as my cinematic treat of last year, I was uncertain about reading the book. Usually it's the other way round isn't it; you don't want the film to spoil the book. And I found the book difficult at first. It seemed to be very over-written. Only later did I realise that this was deliberate and was part of entering the world of twelve-year-old Bryony. Ultimately, I thought that it was a magnificent achievement with the scenes set in and around the Dunkirk evacuation full of the same sense of human catastrophe and controlled madness as the film evoked.

Item - Listening

For a long while, I've been saying to myself that I don't really know the classic texts of the Bible so I've bought myself a talking book of the Old Testament and I'm starting to listen through it at bedtime. Admittedly, it's abridged but it's still fascinating to be aware of how much I knew and didn't know its contents. I'll be returning and listening to study as well I feel.

The RLPO's season brochure came out and, whilst it wasn't full of as many immediately attractive concerts as last year's had been, there are quite a number of concerts which I feel drawn to. Among the works on offer is Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto which I don't really know. Anyhow, in another piece of synchronicity, I happened upon this set of 4 CDs at bargain price and so, since it included the opera King Roger which is on my list of operas I'd really like to see for a second time, I bought it. It's good. Imagine a cross between Bartok and Ravel with heavy hints of Byzantium.

I've also attended a Phil concert which included Beethoven's Egmont Overture and his Symphony No3 Eroica. The concerto was Mozart's Clarinet Concerto featuring Liverpool's Young Musician of the Year, Mark Simpson. He opted for the basset clarinet version which gives you the original key of the work and all of the bass notes which the modern instrument cannot reach. Petrenko also opted for historically informed performances in the Beethoven.

I'm fairly sure that he was following the original metronome markings - something I've only ever heard Roger Norrington do on recordings. I could hear Haydn in there and then foretastes of Wagner and Mahler to come with occasion bits of Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann. You could hear why the Eroica is such a pivotal piece in the Austro/German symphonic tradition.

I'm not sure I liked the result but I understood why Petrenko was doing it that way and he clearly has a vision of how the piece goes and why it goes like that. I think it's fascinating to watch him mature before our very eyes.

I've also just completed the six part Radio Four Classic Drama A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. I suppose that compressing some twelve novels into just six hours of radio drama was bound to lead to a hiding to nothing. I stuck with it but felt very dissatisfied. Even if I didn't rate it, I don't feel that I really that I can comment on the original for so much of it was not there.