Seve Ballesteros

The Spanish golfer, Seve Ballesteros has died aged fifty-four. With my dad, I used to watch him play on television. He shone, both his golf playing and personality. People who knew nothing of golf knew about him.
He had brain cancer and I was still shocked to hear he was dead.

Living

Lizzie has been through the wringer. At first she was just out for herself. Then she was all over the place, one minute she felt this, the next that, who could tell what she'd do next?
When would she snap out of it?

There's supposed to come a point when we all snap out of it, isn't there? Everybody's turning point, moment of revelation, when we say, 'enough is enough' comes in our own time.

The difference is, Lizzie is a character in a book. She has to be real, but a distorted real. At some point in the pages she must change.

It has taken a long time to get to know Lizzie. I knew Tessa in 'Meeting Coty' immediately. Lizzie is different. She had no goal. She didn't have many redeeming qualities. She didn't have people around her who could define her.
And then there are people. Stangers who accept her immediately. And Jez who seems to see another side of her that no-one has recognised before.

Is that what all of us are looking for? Someone else to see where we sparkle inside? This isn't confidence I'm talking about, this is the recognition that we are here to interact. No show, no prestige, no one up manship, no gloss, just the basic needs we have.
I read a book years ago which I must re-read about a journalist who travels to the Amazon. He's an intellectual, he comes from a wealthy background, he thinks he knows everything. He meets a woman and this goes out of the window as only she and he exist in the Amazon.
He is happy just living day to day and then a rescue party arrives. He is elated. He can go back to civilisation. She doesn't want to go. He goes and almost straight away regrets his decision. He tries to refind the place where they lived. He cannot find it. I can't remember if he eventually does and she is living happily with someone else.
That doesn't make a bad ending, it's actually better because it shows that she lives by her needs and is happy with that. He was doing the same until his brain kicked back into gear.
So. And I've wondered this before. Would we be better off not intellectualising everything and just get on with living?
Ha. The irony.
I'm digressing too. I know what's going on in my head, well, sort of. And I'm wasting time talking about it. And making excuses. Start again?
No-one is an island as my mum would say. How do we become an island? Break off from the mainland? Mmm. Lonely. Where's that other island?

And then

South Riding

I read in the Radio Times that the BBC are airing a more contemporary costume drama called South Riding this year. It is set in the Depression-era North. No not now, but in the 1930's. Andrew Davies who has adapted the novel by Winifred Holtby's 1936 novel says,
"I feel as if we've rediscovered a forgotten masterpiece."

Well, it is a very very good book. A forgotten masterpiece? Have the BBC and he forgotten the brilliant Yorkshire Television Series of the 1970s starring the wonderful Dorothy Tutin and equally well-cast Nigel Davenport?
I received this book as a Sunday School Prize from Hawksworth Methodist Chapel, a village in Yorkshire. This is a very Yorkshire based book. I still have it.

There are many series that I wish I could see again. I would love to see this series again. I still remember the girls in it and their struggles. The faded state of Robert Carne's (Nigel Davenport's) home. The weather. Loving Sarah Burton (Dorothy Tutin)
Why remake a classic series? Yes, it is still relevant today. Has this original series been lost? Where is it now? I dare you to reshow it Yorkshire Television, if it still exists, though Yorkshire Television hardly exists now does it? Find it someone.

And Mr. Davies. Who rediscovered it? Someone at the BBC department that recommends
novels to be adapted...have any of you seen this original series from the classic book by the Yorkshire born writer who died at the age of thirty-seven?

I don't know why exactly but I feel very territorial about this book. I will watch the adaptation. Makes me feel sick because what I want from the BBC is for them to reshow classic adaptations and dramas from past years for new audiences while concentrating on adapting novels and new dramas that have never been made before by them or any other company.

Of course audiences now may find a series from the 1970s too slow, too faded, too whatever they think it is but when my daughters have watched a film from this period they have been impressed by the realism of the cast. They like the fact that the actors don't look airbrushed and perfect and more attractive than the person they are portraying.

The good thing from this article in the Radio Times has made me take down my copy of South Riding from the bookshelf, with Dorothy Tutin on the cover, and I'm going to reread it before watching Andrew Davies' adaptation.

Dilemmas

Not getting much right at the moment. I think I know what I've got to do, but one person's 'right' is another person's 'wrong' isn't it?
Seems that books have to be plot driven more than anything else. I can work with that.
But do we follow our head or our heart?

Oliva, Oliva, Oliva

Simplicity, paring down to what we need. The Lost Steps, a tatty book I found on a charity shop bookshelf. Who was it by? Alejo Carpentier. A revelation about what we need, enjoying it and then thinking we need more than this and finding out to our loss, that we don't. Lesson learnt? What do you think? We're human beings living in a world surrounded by 'things' and I mean, that because they are merely things. And proving ourselves, to ourselves, by striving to do this, that, and why? What do we need to prove to ourselves? Why do we need to prove anything to ourselves, putting the whole, proving things to other people, aside? Why isn't it enough just to be?

September

I love September when the weather is so warm and sunfilled mellow and ripening the apples, brightening the leaves to red and orange and gold-brown. Lulled to sleep and yet the cool morning air means action. New beginnings. Farewell to the summer, but this month holding the relaxed air of the word 'summer' so it doesn't quite feel like goodbye.
Possibilities. That flutter in the stomach. Hope. Maturity. Peace. And the smell of cider and berries.

Calle de la Hoz

I'm missing Oliva. It was a superb week. Felt as if we had all of the time in the world and then it was over. And we filled our time well without rushing, feeling as you do, that you belong more and more in that space, place, time.

On waking the first morning, slightly cloudy, I thought that I'd seen the view from the terrace before. It was the same view I'd seen in Brazil, in Sao Paula and Rio. It was a view of the favelas. Chickens in cages on terraces, lines of washing, chairs, tables, higgledypiggledy, bricks and stones, white washed and rough, cracked and flaking, builder inducing sucking in of breath, shaking head and calculating rebuilding.
This is what I love about European buildings. Non-UK buildings and attitudes. Let the walls crumble, it's what's going on inside that matters. And as we explored the old town, more each day, it was clear that this wasn't anything like the favelas of Brazil. It was spanish, from the clapping, guitar playing, wailing group, to the sunbaked streets, the dark shadows, the geraniums, ornate doorways, the church with the passionate priest (more about that Sunday service later)the breezes, the smell of a sweet flower at night, the sense of humour.
Let me find another photo.