Post-viral fatigue. Wouldn't you just know it. I'm more exhausted now than I was at the height of the bug. Was asleep in the summerhouse earlier when Nigel, my sweet, lovely Halesworth bridge partner rang me to say he and his wife are available if I need anything at all doing. Was tempted to mention the towering laundry basket, but just thanked him profusely. He's hardly a stranger now, but oh! the kindness.
Because I'm an old trooper I decided last week to behave as if I were better - "act as if, and it'll become reality", as the psychotherapists say. Not a good idea. Now that I'm a pukka Snape volunteer I've done my first two stints invigilating at the John Cage exhibition in Aldeburgh. It features his 4.33, the silent piece, and many were the bemused and disgusted expressions of people hoping for something more interesting. Several people up for the Festival seemed to enjoy it though, and the blank score was a particular draw. Cage's idea are interesting philosophically, though his insistence that the composer should not impose himself on the music and the audience seems a bit contradicted by him naming the piece and setting any parameters at all. Roland Barthes' "The Author is Dead" was a topic of much irritated amusement when I was at uni, and books continue to be published at a phenomenal rate notwithstanding. Someone has to stir up debate I suppose.
I used my free ticket for Owen Wingrave on Wednesday, and chatted to an old lady in the seat behind me who had been to see the film of the same the night before at Aldeburgh Cinema. It was wonderful, she told me, to see a young Janet Baker and Heather Harper sitting on the floor in Mummy's drawing room in Aldeburgh with Benjie and Peter, all so happy. My mind struggled to take in what she was saying. Who the hell was Mummy? Imogen Holst? Alas, the performance began before I could ask her, and by the first interval I was feeling so unwell that I quickly scuttled out. It can't have been Holst because she never married, though she was a fulcrum for the Britten gang in those days. Who then? Perhaps I'll never know.
I've got the message now anyway. My body has finally collapsed under the strain of the past year, and I really need to let it recover. I'm going to do my other four invigilations, at Snape this time, but otherwise I'm crawling under the metaphorical blankets and hibernating for a while. I'll be a new woman when I emerge, one a bit more like Meryl Streep I fancy.
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