Beauty and busy-ness

I think the autumn this year is the most beautiful I can remember since I have been here at Kew.  The first fall colours began to appear in September, but here we are in early November and everywhere I look I can still see spectacular leaves and berries.  What is more, unless we have a high wind, it looks set to go on a bit longer yet, for some trees are still green and unaffected.  Because of the weather has been mild and still for weeks, trees have held their colour.  Because we haven’t yet had a hard frost, every species has turned slowly, at its own pace, rather than all going over at once.  It has been a long, slow passage over from late summer into fall, and it has been as quiet and measured as the rising of the tide.

As I walk through the Gardens here at work I am surrounded by riches.  Scarlet and crimson, brick red and Indian red, chestnut brown, golden brown, golden yellow, ochre, Naples yellow, gamboge; everywhere  I look are these magnificent colours.  Every leaf of Virginia creeper is marked with brilliant patterns, like Venetian millefiori glass; the berries of a crab apple swing over my head like gobstopper-sized jewels, and the Grass Garden is a tapestry of pale golden seed heads and soft, feathery brushstrokes of colour...

Actually I cannot imagine, brushstroke metaphors or no, how on earth one could paint this.  It is staggeringly beautiful, but so much of the beauty is dependent on the immeasurably fine gradations of shade and the tiny details of structure.  One couldn’t use swathes of colour without losing all that delicacy; every tree looks like a mosaic with each leaf an individual fleck of gold or ruby glass.  Yet if one painted every leaf, compulsively, one would lose the sweep and scale of the view, and the result would look obsessive rather than beautiful.

Near the back door of the office I work in are a cedar that has been gilding the pavement with pale golden pollen; a camellia covered with bright early flowers in shell pink; a golden-orange maple, and one that looks as if it has been dipped in grapefruit marmalade.  Moving through the Gardens I am blessed by colour.  Dodging back indoors again as the rain starts, I can carry, held quiet within me, the beauty and delicacy of the autumn trees, and their grace.  Not just the grace of physical beauty, but the spiritual grace of yielding to autumn and flowing with the cycle of the year.  Trees are a model of grace.

Of course from a phenological point of view the cycle of the year is a little askew; here is a link to an article by Kew’s Mr Arboretum himself, Tony Kirkham (who knows a heck of a lot more about trees than me!) on the subject:

http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/arboretum-team/a-very-strange-autumn.htm

It’s been a hectic weekend; all the usual jobs like grocery shopping, going to the bank, running the washing machine, gardening and so forth, plus a heart-rending performance of “Manon” at the Royal Ballet (Marianela Nuñez surpassing herself as a subtle, tragic, ravishingly beautiful Manon, Nehemiah Kish partnering her beautifully as a devoted Des Grieux [& on a more carnal note I see with satisfaction that he still seems to be resisting the fashion for chest-waxing!] and Thiago Soares a superb, powerful, charming Lescaut [I have never cried at Lescaut’s death before]); plus tea with my stepmum Jane, plus an absolutely spectacular firework display.

Now I’m back at work, and the whole office is being plagued with computer problems.  Strangely the internet isn’t behaving too badly; but our office email system is really not doing well.  Ah well, these things happen, in the modern office; but sometimes I long for the days of handwritten ledgers and paper correspondence.  So much less liable to technical faults!

Sketching moving targets...

Yesterday evening I went to the "Insight Evening" at the Royal Opera House; the seats in the Clore Studio are vilely uncomfortable, but luckily the content made up for it. We started with a discussion between Barry Wordsworth and Brian Elias about Elias' memories of composing the score of Kenneth MacMillan's "The Judas Tree" - Elias was a charming, funny and articulate raconteur, and having sneaked in a sketchbook I managed to do a competent thumb-nail portrait of him. Then we got Irek Mukhamedov coaching Mara Galeazzi and Thaigo Soares in two chunks of "Judas Tree" - fascinating, and I'm glad they can laugh as they work on something this disturbing. Then Julie Farmer coached Nathalie Harrison and Michael Stojko on one of the numbers from "Elite Syncopations" - not surprisingly this was also funny. And I had fun drawing the dancers. Now that is a really challenging subject! Their bodies are so superb (sorry, I know how lecherous that sounds but I can't really phrase it any differently!) and their movements so perfectly controlled and so athletic; and they move, well, all the time. In the end I simply went for an overdose of the Zen Spaghetti; one or two of the resulting frenzied looping scrawls are quite evocative, too. Altogether a rewarding evening.

Of strange and happy things...

I'm sitting in the office and there's a wren singing in one of the trees outside, belting its tiny heart out like the hope of spring personified. Such a magnificent voice from so small a bird. Above him, over the richly textured grey sky, gulls float by, cruising on the mild, damp breeze. It has not rained once all day (so far), the temperature is well above freezing, and on Kew Green the muddy grass is starting to grow again...

Last night I was at "The Elixir of Love" at the ENO with my mother and my friend Alan. It's a lovely, happy production, full of neat details, very succesfully updated (ENO have a pretty good record on updating operas, going by those I've seen) and well sung. Sarah Tynan continues to be deliciously good, as she has been in everything I've seen her do; John Tessier was a sweetly-sung, credible Nemorino, and Andrew Shore was just marvellous. It was frivolous and touching and romantic, it had a happy ending, and it was just what I needed, after the angst and anguish of "Mayerling" a few days ago. Not that I didn't revel in the brilliance of "Mayerling"; but this was fun, and sometimes you need fun.

We were reminiscing during the interval about other things we've seen at the Coliseum; in Mum's and Alan's cases, going way back to pre-ENO days, in mine only to about 1976. My father took me and my future stepmother there to see English National Ballet in "Les Sylphides", "Graduation Ball" and "Le Tricorne". It was my first ever live ballet and I was so excited I felt ill for most of the day; I said nothing, for fear I'd be forbidden to go and sent to bed instead. We had Dress Circle tickets (gods know what it had cost him) and I can remember exactly what we all wore: Dad in his "orchestra suit"; Jane in a blue and white dress with a low neckline, and a white shawl with a silver lamé fringe; me in my best dark pink blouse and the long skirt patterned with elephants which Aunt O had made me for my birthday. Oh-my-god that's a long time ago! Oh, strange and happy memory. It was an enormous thrill; beautiful ballerinas in floaty dresses, and wonderful music, and colourful sets... everything an excited little girl's first trip to the ballet ought to be.

After that we got onto joking about the names of the characters in "The Elixir of Love" - Dr Sweetbitter, Sergeant Goodheart, Little No-one... Belcore is usually played as a bit of a jerk, and was here, yet the name implies he should be seen as essentially decent. It's like the way that Shakespeare's characters' names often give one a clue as to who they are: in "Romeo and Juliet", for example - Benvolio literally means "I mean well", while Mercutio evokes Mercury and mercurial. And of course the Italian name Tebaldo, which is what the character Romeo kills is called in the original source, is more usually anglicised as Theobald. Theobald Capulet; he just doesn't sound very aggressive, does he? Theobald Capulet is fluffy and a bit wet; a drunk Sloane Ranger throwing up on the stairs. Whereas Tybalt Capulet sounds tough, snappy and short-tempered, from the moment you hear his name. Short vowels and sharp dentals versus long vowels and soft, labial consonants; it's all given away in the sound. Theobald is an Old English Sheepdog; Tybalt is a Jack Russell Terrier.

Hmm. Hard to imagine Thiago Soares or Gary Avis as a Jack Russell Terrier... Very tall Jack Russells.

After the opera, I walked back to the car park on the South bank with them and we sat in Alan's converted camper van chatting for a few minutes. Out of the blue my mother produced a small bundle of tissue paper and handed it to me, saying "I've been meaning to give you this, it's just a little present to say how much I admire how well you're coping with this broken wrist". It was a very light package of hastily-folded white tissue paper; I unwrapped the paper saying "Oh Mum, you shouldn't have - " - and my great-great-grandmother's Victorian rose gold five-bar gate bracelet slid into the lap of my skirt.

I daresay a Victorian bracelet doesn't amount to much in some families; not so in mine. This is one of my mother's few pieces of "good" jewellery. It is a simple thing, almost plain in appearance, but it is the plainness of something that does not need fancy decoration. It has graced the wrists of all those beautiful and indefatigable McLaughlin/La Faunte/Smith/Dent women whose pictures hang in Mum's hallway; and now it slipped over mine and lay there heavy and shining while I gasped my stunned thanks.

"You'd have it one day anyway," she said. "I wanted you to be able to enjoy it now."

I didn't know what to say. I still don't. I will cherish it as I cherish Mum herself, and all the heritage of my blood. I'm proud of my ancestry, of the mixture of places and cultures, of the history of brave decisions and strong determined people, of risk-takers, crossers of boundaries, holders-together of families... If only I had a daughter to pass the bracelet, and the bloodline, on to in my turn.

Strange and happy, indeed.