Some enchanted evening

Is it old fashioned to love musicals? Maybe it’s the romance in them that catches me. Romance in the real meaning of the word – “a spirit of or inclination for adventure, excitement, or mystery” together of course with the joy and heartbreak you also associate with love. Who doesn’t like a fairy tale?

My mother loved musicals too. We had an old gramophone when I was growing up – one of those cabinet ones with two doors that opened onto a radio that you tuned with a knob and a pull-out shelf with the record player underneath! Slots in the side to store your LPs – and Mom even had some old Ivor Novello 45 RPM records. Don’t ask. I can’t possibly explain if you’ve never heard of either him or 45s.

And her collection of LPs of musicals was legendary. They were wonderful! We had Oklahoma, Gigi, and West Side Story, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, The King and I, South Pacific … And I knew just about every word to every song. No dvds then and nothing to download. Just songs and imagined pictures of what they meant.

Then Bulawayo got its first theatre. 1969 it was and Rainbow Cinemas opened with a surround sound theatre! The very first movie I ever saw was Paint your Wagon with Lee Marvin ‘singing’ I was born under a wandering star. After that we actually got to see many of the old favourites and they all lived up to my mind-pictures. And the list grew longer, with films like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Hello Dolly!, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Mary Poppins, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Wizard of Oz. Bugsy Malone, Grease, Cabaret and of course the Elvis movies, Cliff Richard and the Beatles.

Disney was a god-send as the musicals grew thin on the ground for a while. New doors were opened with his spectacular versions of The Jungle Book, Aladdin, Cinderella, Snow White, Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. By then I had a daughter but it never mattered whether I went alone or took her. You don’t need a child to enjoy animation! They do help to remind you how fantasy is food for the soul if you’re getting a little jaded, but I, luckily, have never had that problem.

And I was old enough too to take myself places (like Dr Seuss). London West End and the smell of an old theatre! Broadway still to come but it will never matter where I see the show. I’m just a sucker for a musical! Some enchanted evening indeed.

I will survive

Is there any woman who hasn’t air pumped at least once when this has started playing? How many times have groups of women swayed to the music, waving their arms in the air, or looked across at another woman while singing and grinned? Conspirators. All understanding just what it is like to wish you’d kicked the bastard out for good at the beginning.

Or maybe not the bastard. Maybe just the person who has brought you more heartbreak than joy. Or perhaps lots of joy but heartbreak too. Who knows and really, does it matter? There will always be that one person that you heave a sigh of relief to see the back of.

And of course, wish that you’d managed to deal with sooner. I have had the feeling often, to different degrees and in different situations. In the work place where I have walked the three sides of a square to avoid seeing someone just down the passage in the office just before the one I need to get to. At a party when I’ve been cornered by the very person I didn’t want to see, and who has positioned himself right by the fridge. Walking down a street, crossing the road to avoid someone, or in a supermarket where you cringe when you hear your name trilled across the aisles.

And even at home. Much as you love your nearest and dearest, don’t tell me you want to see them every day. Or at least, all day. And worse, what if your nearest and dearest are no longer quite so near and dear? Relationships start so well. We have such high hopes and then something starts to niggle. That old story about where do you squeeze a tube of toothpaste and does it matter? Well, yes it does.

Not necessarily the toothpaste, but small things become big things. The trick is of course to notice and to do something about their growth. But we’re not very good at that. Instead, lots of small things begin to add up and all of a sudden, the size of what’s wrong is overwhelming. It doesn’t seem possible to fix and often, you no longer have the will to fix it anyway.

Sometimes the heartbreak is much more sudden and you don’t see it coming. Your perfect becomes imperfect with the sweep of someone else’s stroke and you can’t believe it’s over.

At first I was afraid I was petrified

Thinking I couldn’t live without you by my side

But just like the song, we do get through it and often, get stronger on the other side

… I grew strong, and I learned how to get along

And now you’re back, from outer space

And I find you here with that sad look upon your face.

I should have changed that stupid lock

And made you leave your key …

And that’s the air pump place! You’ve done it.

The trick I suppose is to find someone who really likes you. Not just loves. It could be a friend, a colleague, a lover, a child, a partner. Don’t look for the perfect at all. Look for what is going to be good for you too. As a good friend once said to me “Be the star in your own movie!”

I can’t get no satisfaction

Have you ever sung along to a song and only realised much later that you had it all wrong? You were absolutely sure that Bruce was belting out “I got my first real sex dream…” and you were delighted because you were pretty much having yours right there and then, and then he followed it up with

Bought it at the five-and-dime

Played it ’til my fingers bled

It was the summer of ’69

Hmm.  Well, good to know where you could get one but a bit of a tough act to follow.

Madonna and her “touched for the thirty-first time” was another classic and not at all difficult to imagine either! Although honestly, if one really is still a virgin, what had been wrong with the first thirty times?

A long time before those realities even entered my mind, I was at a school and going through the just-learning-about-sex stage and loved the impropriety of inappropriate lyrics. Only inappropriate of course if anyone any ever heard them but this was all in my own head and I think I would have been hard put to explain what they really meant if asked.

I can’t get no sexual action

‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try

[But] I can’t get no, I can’t get noooo [satisfaction]

Who better than the Stones to talk about sex of any sort?!

And then there was “Walking back to hap-penis I shared with you, woo-pah” which was just plain silly but I didn’t often get the chance to say the word out loud (no brothers!).

In my youth there were certain pop stars who were deemed “acceptable” and others definitely not. My mother loved Cliff Richard but found Elvis Presley too raunchy. All that hip rolling was unnecessary! The Beatles were odd and very loud but fairly clean cut – in comparison with the Rolling Stones who were just plain dirty. She really just liked “a nice show tune” and I grew up knowing every word to the songs in movies like Paint your Wagon, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. All jolly good clean fun. West Side Story was also a favourite but was much darker – much more what we might have analysed at university, if we had bothered to look below the surface. ‘Somewhere’ is still hauntingly beautiful to me and remains my dream song

There’s a time for us

Someday a time for us

Time together with time to spare

Time to learn, Time to care

Going back to the different words story, at university, one of the songs of the day was PP Arnold singing ‘Angel of the morning’ on her album, Kafunta. A powerful voice and one which we did spend many late nights listening to, high on our perceptions of our own invincibility and visions of the many ways our world would be a better place. Many years later, singing along in a pub we all changed the words to

Just call me angel of the morning angel

Just brush my teeth before you leave me, baby

which definitely lowered the tone. Probably akin to our by then lower aspirations and better understandings of how much more difficult it was going to be to achieve what we first thought possible.

We should have listened to Elvis when he crooned “Wise men say, Only fools rush in” but then again, even the King didn’t escape our wit

Take my heart, take my hand, take my whole leg too

For I can’t help falling in love with you

Misty blue

Recently, a number of my friends have been having issues with aged parents – either illness, senility or death. This has never been a part of my life because both my parents unfortunately died when I was young. My mother had terrible cancer and died the year I turned seventeen. She was younger than I am now. My father lived longer, re-married and died aged seventy-two, now more than twenty years ago. So I have experienced illness and death at close range but nothing is so devastating as sudden death.

My daughter’s boyfriend was killed in a car crash. That was it. Just gone. She was overseas and came back the next day. This song played in the car as I drove to the airport to fetch her. Not a dirge at all but a song about lost love

Ohhhhhhh, no I can’t no I can’t

I can’t forget you

My whole world turns misty blue

I felt that as I drove – a kind of haze in front of me. But in it I could imagine him quite clearly, see his face and hear his voice, see them together and remember the very last time I saw him.  It really is almost impossible to believe you’ll never see someone again. A life turned misty blue.

I think now far more often about my own parents. I can’t imagine them older yet I visualise them with my daughter, the grand-daughter they never knew, and perhaps even her children, my still-to-come grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. What I am most sorry about is not taking more notice of them when they were alive.

My parents were of pioneer stock in what was then Southern Rhodesia. My dad owned a gold mine and then a cattle ranch and through our early years he would tell stories about prospecting for gold, hunting, living in the bush, and running the farm. We heard about the buck he shot, the dogs he owned, we knew the names of all the cows he milked and the men who had worked for him over the years. They were superb stories but we took it for granted that would just always be there. No blogs then.

My mom was always in the background but at the same time, really important. She ran the house and grew the most amazing dahlias. She hand-made all our clothes and taught us to sew and bake. She was there for us when we went to school and came home and she and Dad sat talking together for hours in the evenings. I would like to think she was an equal partner in all he did. I’ll never know because I never asked.

I remember them both in the same haze. It’s just fainter.

Hey baby!

I’m sure we’ve all had a pure midlife-crisis-reaction experience at some time. Some perhaps less or more than others but don’t tell me that if you’re over a certain age you haven’t felt this just once?

Mine happened the year I turned 50. I went to a party and met a 34 year-old man who for whatever reason really liked me. And we happened to dance to this song.

When I saw you walkin down the street

I said that’s a kind of gal I’d like to meet

She’s so pretty, Lord she’s fine

I’m gonna make her mine all mine

Did it make me feel good? Did it make me feel young? Of course. Was there any possibility of a long-term relationship coming out of it? Was there any reason I didn’t feel this good with myself anyway? Nope. None at all.

So, a completely unfounded gut reaction but to this day, the moment I hear

Heyyyyy, hey baby!

I want to know if you’ll be my girl

I smile.

Why is it that we are hard-wired to seek approval? We seem to need others to accept our decisions and choices. We want people to like us and to seek us out, praise us, even ask our opinions. Why is their approval of us so much more important than our own? And their disapproval so devastating?

I’ve only come to see all this as I’ve got older and am very conscious of the times I look for approval or validation. I’ve learnt that looking or thinking differently is okay. Accepting others as they are is all a part of it too. But learning to take criticism isn’t easy, nor is realising that actually there are people who don’t like me at all!

There is a quotation that goes “In your 20’s and 30’s, you worry about what other people think. In your 40’s and 50’s you stop worrying about what other people think. Finally in your 60’s and 70’s, you realize they were never thinking about you in the first place!” So true – although I hadn’t quite got the stopping worrying part down pat in my 40’s, I assure you!

I continue to read self-help books or articles and try to appreciate myself, win friends and influence people, de-stress my life and think positively. I try to understand what planet a person comes from and am constantly looking for my cheese.

But in the end, I still have to admit, I do get a kick out of being noticed and however much I try, I will look around if someone shouted “Hey baby”!

There’s a kind of hush

I had no idea what unconditional love was until I had a child. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it? But honestly, someone once asked me that ridiculous question “would you throw yourself under an oncoming car to save someone?” I mean, really. Why on earth would you if they were stupid enough to run into the road in the first place? But, if it is your child? Then it’s completely different. Yup, I would. No question.

I had my daughter when I was a bit older. 34, which doesn’t sound too old now as so many woman wait to have babies much later in life, but there’s always more of a risk. So I was pregnant in the summer of a very hot 1986 and spent most of my days over Christmas that year wallowing in a pool like a very large hippopotamus.

Then one night in early January my waters broke – honestly, all I felt was relief because it was cool! – and off I went to hospital. Four hours later and I was induced. Ha. I had taken meditation classes during my pregnancy (remnants of my hippie days) and set off with a book, determined to breathe through it all and come out the other end glowing and unscathed but with a beautiful bundle to show off. Ha again. It was agony. My husband fainted and was rushed out and offered tea by the nurses. No tea for me. I simply pushed on (literally) and was finally delivered of a little girl.

I wrote a diary while in the hospital and it tells of my first breath of Katrine. A warm, musty smell and a whimper from a scrunched up little face, and that was it. I was in, for life.

All though her early years I would sing her to sleep. I knew every word of the song …

There’s a kind of hush all over the world tonight

All over the world you can hear the sounds of lovers in love

You know what I mean

Just the two of us and nobody else in sight

There’s nobody else and I’m feelin’ good just holdin’ you tight

And that really does say it. It was just so good holding her. Over the years she grew and I hated it. I loved holding her body and feeling her skin. Now she’s 28 and taller than me but still has the most incredible soft, silky skin. I put it down to her rich and fertile breeding ground and the sheer force of my love for her!

So listen very carefully

Closer now and you will see what I mean

It isn’t a dream

The only sound that you will hear

Is when I whisper in your ear

“I love you forever and ever”

 

I wonder

I wonder how many times you’ve been had

And I wonder how many plans have gone bad

I wonder how many times you had sex

I wonder do you know who’ll be next

Do you remember the 70’s? Were you even born then? Amazing days – probably should have been 60’s if you lived in America or the UK but we were always a few years behind here. I was already 10 in then-Rhodesia when we got out first black and white TV. 1963! Britain had had TV since the mid-1930’s and we were only catching up nearly 30 years on. We only got colour television in 1984. And the shows – who remembers Dr Kildare, The Flintstones, The Dick van Dyk Show, Dr Finlay’s Casebook – and Dr Who! Who knew that he too wasn’t a ‘real’ doctor!

Can one even admit to having some affinity with Rodriguez’s lines these days? University days seem so long ago now but I know every word of this song and it never seemed inappropriate then. Woodstock eventually rolled onto our shores in 1970 and with it came free love. So cool. All at once I was introduced to dagga, political activism, sex, rock n’ roll, red wine … being part of a counter-culture and riding a wave of change. I wasn’t a true hippie but still felt like a part of a community. I loved the idea of shocking my parents (even if I had to do it quietly in case they stopped my allowance or brought me home) and reveled in the feeling of being able to make my own decisions and choices.

In South Africa, as we now know, I was definitely on the outer edge of the revolution but it still felt important, and the odd nights when you drank too much and woke the next morning not really remembering why your door was no longer to the right of ‘your’ bed were all part of those times.

When people ask me today if I was “in the struggle”, I have to say no, as you can’t count being chased by police dogs for taking place in a protest march to the Town Hall, or having my phone tapped because I was friends with someone who had been banned for being a member of ARM. There were so many bigger issues and bigger players in the field and I am just grateful to them today for making me so much more proud to say I am South African. Not however when I live through yet another xenophobic attack though, and then

I wonder about the tears in children’s eyes

And I wonder about the soldier that dies

I wonder will this hatred ever end

I wonder and worry my friend

And in the end you carry on your life, with good memories and bad, good experiences and not. It was an incredible time and I am inextricably part of that revolution. Some serious partying was had, and some important lessons learnt.

Perfect 10

The body beautiful. Just the words evoke such a range of responses. What is, what isn’t, who is, who isn’t, the best, the worst … All really so subjective. That’s why I love this song ..

She could be sweet 16, bustin’ out at the seams

It’s still love in the first degree ….

The anorexic chicks, the model 6

They don’t hold no weight with me

Well 8 or 9, well that’s just fine

But I like to hold something I can see

Of course, it helps that I am definitely no size 6 and struggle to get back to a 14 most days, but am also fairly middle of the road, average, in weight and looks. But I am still really aware of size, despite trying my utmost to not pass on my feelings and paranoias  to anyone else, especially my daughter. I’ve talked about body image with almost everyone I know at some stage, whether about a new diet, a comment on someone passing, a revelation, an admission or an apology. Man or woman, old or young, there are very few people I know who don’t have a preference for appearance. Some are open about what they like, others will say they are not concerned about the outside “it’s what’s inside that counts”, but when push comes to shove and you’re on a dance floor or in a pub with someone standing in front of you asking you to dance or go out, you can’t tell me that there isn’t a little part of you that assesses appearance? Surely?

Maybe you do but put that aside to get to know the real person first. Well, good for you. I can’t. I have no doubt this has made me miss out on some experiences but I’ve accepted over time that I am hot-wired to like a certain type. One has to know one’s limitations (despite yearning for just one more close-up look at a washboard stomach!) but I’ll always go for what I deem to be a general ok-ish type.

I am fascinated by the differences that the human body is capable of generating. Just think of it – two eyes, one nose, one mouth – and it can be put together in literally millions of ways, Identical just isn’t a word in the language of looks. One of my musings involves the possibility of a ‘twin’ somewhere in the world. I simply can’t believe that there are just so many variations. And the fantasy goes further. If there is someone just like me, how different would their life be? Would just the face be the same? Would she (he??) too have aches and pains and cheeks that slip in the night?

Would she have someone who loves her unconditionally?

‘Cause we love our love,

in different sizes

I love her body, especially the lies

Time takes it’s toll, but not on the eyes

Promise me this, take me tonight