Not going quietly

My mum has always been energetic and hates sitting around.  She’s still the same, even with dementia and in a care home.   The staff say she's always wanting to help.    

Currently her calling is to clear the plates at meal-times.  Except she starts doing this as soon as she has finished, even if no one else has.  This results in a plate tug-o'-war, with other residents loudly complaining that they are still eating.  

It doesn’t make her popular at table.

This week, for reasons unknown, she decided to collect clothes (wash-day memories?)  from  rooms on her corridor and dump them in a huge heap by the front door.  It took someone all day to sort it out.  

It might be easier for staff to have residents who snore in armchairs.    But I rather admire my mum’s spirit.  

Wagnerian blubber

What is it about certain pieces of music that instantly touch a nerve?  And, frequently in my case, the lachrymose nerve?

I drove along this morning quietly blubbing to Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde on Radio 3.

Is there a more heart-searing hymn to unrequited love?  It's almost unbearable to listen to at times.  Such magic from a man who I find difficult to like in terms of his views and attitudes.  The fact that Hitler was a fervent admirer doesn't help.  But this only adds to the paradox of the emotion and beauty of the music.

If you don't know the piece, then buy it and keep listening.  And, perhaps, a box of tissues.

Music and tears

“We all need to laugh more, cry more and sing more.”  The words of conductor Charles Hazlewood; and he wasn’t just referring to his performance at Strode Theatre in Somerset yesterday evening.  Or at least I don’t think so. 

It was a workshop of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Wells Cathedral School brass ensemble.  It’s a fascinating piece and Charles Hazlewood’s interpretation and explanation added hugely to the enjoyment of the evening.  The brass ensemble were excellent, and especially the flugel horn player, who regrettably did not get singled out for applause at the end. 

What shone through was Charles’s passion for music as an integral part of life, rather than a snobbish art form.  He spoke of his experiences working in South Africa, where singing is as vital a human function as eating and sleeping.  We know exactly what he means, having spent a short time living among ordinary people in Zambia.

Why is singing often such a stilted and embarrassed experience in the UK?  Except – as Charles mentioned – on the football and rugby terraces where it’s unusual not to sing.  The value of singing in choirs is well-recognised in terms of well-being, and I really miss it when I am not able to make the weekly rehearsal of my own choir.

So well done to ambassadors like Charles Hazlewood and Gareth Malone for trying to spread the song.  

Alive and kicking

I’m approaching the age where I start to fear the worst with any new medical problem.  The time when the doctor’s expression, if not words, says “what do you expect, at your age?”  The time when contemporaries start to fall ill and exit, stage left, for ever. 

So when I came to the conclusion that the small lump on my head really was growing, then I began to contemplate that this might be it. 

Trawling through the medical pages on the internet didn’t help, of course.  All sorts of sinister explanations were thrown up under the general heading of cancer.

I began to wonder why I had treated life so casually, and taken so much for granted.  This, after all, might be my last Spring…

The doctor was swift and incomprehensible in his diagnosis.  Seborrheic keratosis.  It sounded awful.  But in reality it’s a harmless, if unsightly, wart-like growth.   

So I can carry on living without hardcore medical intervention.  At least for the time being.

The question is:  will I live my life even more fully, now that I have been (temporarily) pardoned the grim reaper’s scythe?  I can only hope so.