A very lazy time

Not like me at all, this laziness which is taking me over. I am not doing much, and what I am doing isn't much....

I think, quite a bit, not a bad way to pass the time.

It could be because of the weather, or because I have spent so many years as a teacher relaxing at this time of year that the habit has become ingrained. Good job I was never a ballet dancer, or else I would probably still be going around in a tutu....perish the thought!

Last night Paul, Dave and I went to the Botanical Gardens, here in Birmingham, to watch an open air performance of Midsummer Night's Dream, by an amateur theatre group. Regardless of the finished product- which in this case was , like the vicar's egg(?????) ,"good in places", I have unlimited respect for those who are prepared to give up so much of their time and to make so much effort to keep alive this  English tradition of theatre in the green.  But much more importantly, there is such a magic about the writing of the Bard that the words themselves grab you, even when all else fails. I found myself remembering all the many magical performances I have seen of this particular play,  not only Peter Brook's definitive version, with The King and Queen of the fairies on precarious trapezes and Puck with a wiry curly fishing thingamygiby, and Frances de La Tour running amock oh and everything else just about perfect! It was a long time ago (1970? 71? someone's bound to put me right), but also many others in less glamorous venues and the film with "Allie McBeal" as Helena.... But most of all I get lost in the eternal beauty and the easy wit of the words.

Just like fireworks, they are!With you for a few brief seconds and then pushed out as others come. And then there is silence. A few evenings ago I woke up to the sound of some terrific bangs. There was a firework fantasia in the public park not very far from my little cul-de-sac ( any excuse to use a French word, sorry!). I was too tired to get up, get dressed and get closer, but from my bedroom window, I managed a reasonable view of the bigger sky splashes. It is just bliss to sit on a comfortable chair and to see the sky come alive, unpredictably and yet with a great degree of symetry. When it was all over, I waited  quite some time before I realised that , yes, in fact, the latest  burst had been most spectacular and must be the last one of the night.

I love them, fire works. But not on TV. On TV they don't feel  right, because their very essence is their transience, their here now, gone now nature. Fireworks fit in well with a certain human sense of insecurity, they are a befitting image for  a species so acutely aware of its own physical impermanence and ever possibly  imminent demise.

But I don't care see,  'cause I am a soul travelling through time watching firework upon firework to my heart's content.

Love , and a myriad sparks scattering....

Jocelyne