Musicals

We went to Guys and Dolls last night at the New Victoria Theatre. We were over on one side of the stalls and it was terribly draughty to begin with. A girl in front of me put the hood up on her jacket/sweater and two or three people put their coats back on. I’d left mine in the car, so had to suffer. I also had problems with double vision, but that subsided too, in the second half, as my brain began to adjust.

M wasn’t enthusiastic at first. I think he was put off by the dull sets. There were some good ones, but some of the action takes place in a downmarket district of New York in the 30s with gamblers roaming the streets and putting on illicit bets on the side. M was disappointed because there was nothing as exciting as the helicopter in Miss Saigon, but there was a good dance routine in Havana. The second part was better than the first, I think, with the well-known number Sit down you’re rocking the boat almost a show stopper – certainly a scene stealer. (It was performed by a Welsh singer, with a really good voice.) But they didn’t do an encore, which the audience would have liked.

I suppose I wouldn’t describe Guys and Dolls as my favourite musical. Some very good tunes, but it suffers from its simplistic storyline. Gambler reformed and married to Salvation Army lady in three days. I don’t think so. The first musical I loved was South Pacific. When my friend Ruth and I saw it (the film) in the mid-fifties, we were in tears at the ill-fated romance and the death of the hero. But though people look back sometimes and describe such things as ‘patronising’, the film, at that time, was a brave attempt to look at mixed relationships. West Side Story in the sixties remains in my mind a wonderful musical with fantastic music and an important theme. Two other musicals which I have appreciated more, as time has gone on, are Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof. I was horrified by the former, when I first saw it. I have become somewhat less prim, as I have grown older. And the latter also hides some serious themes behind its light-hearted exterior.

Jennifer telephoned me this morning to tell me that I’d been awarded a Very Highly Commended in the H E Bates short story competition. I would have been happier, had I not known in the first place that I was in the finalists, because then I wouldn’t have had my hopes raised that I might have achieved a better place. Ah well. C’est la vie. Still writing-wise, it’s quite nice to have been commended, to have a story in the process of being tidied up (Park Keeper) to have just sent off an article, and to have received (this morning) the CD of my radio story.

I’m going to get on with tonight’s chicken dinner and concentrate on some ironing after that. I’ve left it for several days.

Complete story

A bleak and cold day yesterday. I was glad to stay in. I finished my three months’ worth of bookkeeping and the VAT, so that feels very satisfactory.

With all the office work behind me, I did a bit of work on my story about a park-keeper, and I continued it and finished a first draft this morning - or second in the case of the first 600 words, already read out to Guildford Writers. I’ve emailed it to them for comments. I heard from Wendy Lloyd who organised the competition with Radio Southern Counties to say that a CD is in the post. I assume this will have all the stories on it, and, as I missed hearing some of them on the radio, it will be interesting to listen to them. I will probably put the CD in the car and listen to the stories there, as I assume the player there is the most technically up to date.

In contrast to yesterday, it has been a beautiful day – once again the type of view you would wish to capture in a painting – the sun shining through the trees, the sky blue, contrasting with the still multi-coloured leaves. I collected up a few apples – this surely is the last of them – and my cleaning lady took a couple of pounds of the smaller ones as a treat for her horse. He has been sampling them for the past four or five weeks and they seem to go down well.

At lunch-time, I heard that The World at One presenter, Nick Clarke, had died of cancer. The whole programme was devoted to him, as he had been its main presenter for twelve years. It was very sad and very moving. I didn’t know his face, but his voice was a familiar one, as I listen much of the time to Radio Four. I remembered how I heard his journal on the radio one morning, as he described his apprehension when he faced chemotherapy after the amputation of his leg. I was taking M to the station, and I was quite tearful as I listened. I imagine that, faced with an amputation, one might be tempted to say – is this going to prolong my life? If not, perhaps I won’t bother – just make me comfortable for time that’s left. He obviously wanted very much to live and it is so sad that that terrible ordeal did not gain him more than a year of life.

Four thirty and it’s almost dark. I must make an early meal, as we’re going to see Guys and Dolls in Woking.