They were out there again today, the three farmers, while the icy north wind blasted the countryside. I stepped outside briefly to hang up the washing, and it was shades of Mrs Tiggywinkle as the shirts took on the shape of people and the sheet became a bloated white monster. But there were no little ones to hide fearfully behind my voluminous skirts: the last one left on the 6pm train on Sunday.
Sid called by, ostensibly just to check if I was still mole free. But something wasn't quite right as he mooched around, and eventually hetold me he hadn't been very well. Not the hip this time, which is still causing him gyp, but anxiety attacks. "I'm right for a coupla weeks, then that hit me again low in me belly. Worried, like, hurtin'." I commiserated with him, and then he said, "I can tell you, you're right nice and you won't think I'm cracked." And so he told me he'd met a woman who he liked very much, and she seemed to like him. Only she'd been in three abusive relationships, and he was worried that he might do something wrong and scare her off. She'd moved up from Berkshire to escape the last one, and he wasn't sure how to behave. He was worried half to death. All the time he talked his chin wobbled and tears welled in his eyes without spilling. Oh Sid! I told him he's a lovely, gentle man, and that's why she likes him. He should just be himself and let it take as much time as it needed. "Enjoy it," I suggested. "It sounds like a wonderful thing to have happened. Good for you!" He left at last, telling me it had helped to talk to a sympathetic friend. Oh Sid, I say again. Any time.
From Sid I went to Snape for an Andreas Scholl masterclass. I'd only been to one before, and that was Pavarotti. I thought it might be quite entertaining. Wow! Was it ever. The first two singers were sopranos, lovely, competent, moving. Andreas was very articulate and thoughtful, obviously full of musical ideas and suggestions. Then came a fabulous young counter-tenor who already seemed to be the full package, and his time with Andreas was creative and vocally glorious, his singing so expressive and beautiful. Lastly came a young Swiss girl, petite, dark, very attractive, so tense you could have bounced off her. She sang an aria from Handel's Tamerlano, her voice completely incongruous from such a small person, a mezzo verging on contralto. The music was incredibly beautiful, but her singing was dead, dull, awful, her face an agonised pantomime. I cringed, and wanted to leave it was so painful to hear. She must have been nervous. She held her right hand stiffly, fingers straight and stuck together. Oh god, what was wrong? Andreas knew. He got her to sway with him, to mirror him as he danced and she sang. The voice started to lighten, the throat open out, the chest expand and relax, then she began smiling, and suddenly you heard the full power and magic of her voice and it was like being wafted up to heaven and held in ecstasy there. I felt an explosion of emotion inside myself, but I managed to contain it. Afterwards I spoke to her. "You have a really great voice," I told her, like she didn't know. "I know I'll hear it again." She thanked me, and I walked away knowing I'd witnessed something special.
What a day. I ended it in the summerhouse with Sarah and a bottle of wine. It might have been the sublime to the ordinary, but don't knock the ordinary. It's the stuff that the days are made of, when the dreams are done.
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