You would think that someone on Easter holidays would manage to find a moment to blog…but my week has been full of people and places: cramming two weeks worth of ‘catch-up’ into one week, more than took care of the time allowed to me.
The highlights:
100: that coffee became lunch in one of my favourite places, with a friend who makes me laugh and that my Tuesday night was about the friend who visited, the stories told and a drink in my local rather than my continued fascination with the TV characters I usually depend on for Tuesday night company.
101 & 102:
Team D are my therapy. They have the grace and generosity to include me in the daily details of their lives when I come to visit. My friend G apologised that my visit was mundane, trips to Tesco and prescription collection, play parks and feeding the ducks: but he forgets that his company, that of his wonderful wife and his changing with enchantment by the second daughters, make their mundane my privileged special. In the two days I was there, I got: an Irish history lesson, and one on the bombing of Dresden, endless beer, great food, a favourite movie, hooked on a book, the promise of a night in with Matthew McConaghy and too many moments of genuine love and friendship to do them justice to in a continuing list.
103: lunch and a afternoon with a favourite friend in her truly idyllic little corner of a world. There was endless and entertainment from her 4yr old daughter and snuggles from her bubba son; there was wine ( which I managed to knock across the wonderfully pretty dining table and all over my non-drinking friend) … And there was enough sunshine, flowers and calm in her garden to make summer seem a promised thing.
104: I needed a day at home. I’d decided post London et al that school had claimed more than enough of my free time this Easter (and all of my half term) so I cleaned and scrubbed, folded and ironed, tweeted and text.
And I wondered what I’m supposed to be doing with or at the National Theatre. Sometimes a book, a song, a word, a person keeps presenting itself to you; fate or the universe or whoever is on charge demands that you give whatever it is some attention; and rarely, very rarely it’s a place.
I got the same feeling walking into the National as I had when I first stepped on the quad at Queens and into the apartment I now call home. It’s a sense of belonging: a premonition of significance. I dismissed it as my regular desire/ feeling as a wannabe lovey but then I read James Corden’s autobiography, in less than two days.
(an aside: I’m supposed to be reading Religion for Atheists : a book I suggested for book club, in the hope of pleasing my soul sister Belle, igniting discussion and quite possibly continuing on my quest to prove to the others that despite all appearances, I do have a brain. And because part of my whole: join a book club thing was to read things I wouldn’t normally give head or shelf space to…
But I’m hating it, no that’s unfair, I’m just not getting it- at all. It’s become homework. Something I have to do. I am not doing it. And, I stubbornly refused (until M insisted I read James Corden) to allow myself to read any other book until I’m done… So I read magazines, I watch TV, I deny myself the pleasure of ‘real’ writing as a punishment for being too ignorant to appreciate non-fiction. I will read it. I must. But next time, I will pick a page turner piece of popular fiction and enjoy it.)
Back to JC and the NT: he wrote of the theatre and his experiences there with passion. He wrote of its significance to him personally and to British drama. He accepted his role in the award winning ‘One Man, Two Guvnors because of its director and that it was a National Theatre production.
Maybe I’m meant to see something amazing there, and it’s that simple- although it has been fun this past week to imagine, a play I’ve written or am staring in opening there, or a career and/ or a romance there. A girl can dream, especially when given such an inspiring and promising place in which to dream in.
105: and so it’s Sunday night; and school, coursework marking, the exam cram, the AS performance, endless paperwork, the annual timetable battle await. Today, I had coffee and a walk with Mum at Mount Stewart in lieu of dinner at home. I told Mum I’d stuff to do for work and I do. I just knew I wouldn’t do any of it. I tweeted, I blogged and I watched TV: fighting of the Sunday night blues.
It’s been a great Easter: filled with people and places I love. May my summer be seven weeks that are just like this one.
