Weekend Away

Saturday was a day of gruelling donkey work. I have reached the stage where even overcoat is heavy. A travelling bag and mini case was just about manageable, but the stairs!

Owing to a body on the track at Nuneaton all West Line trains were re routed via Birmingham adding an hour. A taxi to the theatre was just right. Theatre Royal , Haymarket, A Lion in Winter, with ," Lyndsey and Lumley .......Terrific.

Thence to a charming apartment in Pimlico loaned to us by friends and accompanied by friends' charming daughter and quite adorable granddaughter doubling as a rider from the Vienna Riding School, and the only person to talk to me engaged with the text -to -talk machine, a memorable encounter. She enrolled me as a temporary child," Just a moment I will go and ask the adults." In response to a question. We exchanged views on the moon. I thought it was a new crescent moon. "It's a banana moon." She said. It will be ever so.

Sunday afternoon the the Royal Festival Hall to a very English afternoon concert. It began, where else, with A Lark Ascending and so with it, did the spirit, held in high ecstasy upon a fine thread of sound. I have heard it many times. This time however, be it the chemistry or some magic, the final phrases came clearly home. The trilling apex of notes resounding the lark song so often heard in years gone by across a meadow or high above the sand dunes by the sea.

This was followed by the Delius cello concerto, soloist Lloyd Weber, played beautiful and gently. However this piece tends to lose it's way in the middle section. It suffers from fatigue. The Brig Fair had more life.

Of course the Elgar Enigma Variations was a defining English moment. I cannot hear the melodic middle variation without seeing black and white screen depictions
of the wounded bomber safely over the coast or a Spitfire gliding onto the tarmac. It's not as triumphalist as the Pomp and Circumstance nor should it be, it is more forgiving, a thanksgiving.

Then after the lark ascending to be constrained into watching the final episode of "Birdsong", descending into tragedy and loss.

A wonderful weekend despite the uncertainties and therefore a heartfelt "Thank You" To all who helped it along especially Nora who magnificently engineered it.

And blow me down someone did a Monday morning jump onto the line at Leighton Buzzard. They managed to achieve a complete shutdown of the west coast network so there was a diaspora across country. We took the tube to Paddington to catch a train to Reading and then wait an hour for a connection to Manchester and hopefully thence to Blackpool North.

Arrived four hours late. The whole rounded with an Oh twas good.

JL Jan 30 18: 49