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I see that too much information is all too easy to do, so I’ll to try and keep it short(er)… but so much water under the bridge…

After a couple of hard weeks of re-entry as solo carer (tho’ with some good hill walking and the occasional dip in a beck when the sun came out), along came a whole lot of sweet relief, to wit: 4 days up in the highlands of Scotland, visiting friends, which included a night on Loch Tummel where no-one in the world knew where I was; some loch swimming (Loch Vaa and Loch Ba!); the annual Lairds v. Beaters shinty match at Cannich (a game only played north of Loch Ness, sort of like hockey but with no rules); a glorious 20 mile hike, mostly in the rain (from Glen Affric, in the heart of one of the last virgin forests of Scotland, west through the mountains to Loch Duich on the Atlantic); and an evening of splendid dancing of reels at a local village hall to the tune of fiddle and accordion – heaven….

And then two cultural bull’s eyes: the first at Glyndebourne, the original country house opera (tho’ now much grander than when I last went in the ’70s), courtesy of my librettist and best mate in London. A Ravel double bill – L’heure espagnole, which was delicious musically, fun but lightweight (all about fucking), and then after the long picnic break, L’Enfant Et Le Sortilège, which literally took my breath away – stunning in every way. Ravishing music, great singing, but the production – the playing with scale, the wit, the imagination, the magic – when it ended you just wanted them to start at the beginning and do it all over again. Truly amazing… And then a few days later, the final performance of Théâtre du Soleil at the Edinburgh Festival – Les Naufragés Du Fol Espoir (Aurores). Ariane Mnouchkine is a magician, and still going strong almost 30 years since I first saw them at the Olympic Arts Festival in LA when we were doing Comedy of Errors, and they were then already at their peak. The company has evolved, obviously (you need some young for such physical theater, along with the experience of the elders) but she’s still at the helm, along with her writer and composer – I had a brief chat with her afterwards, she was hanging out by the dressing rooms which were in full view of the public, albeit behind lace curtains – she reminded me they were also doing Shakespeare back then – it was Richard II I saw… Nuafragés was 4 hours of total magic that just flew by – I was tired going in, having driven nearly 4 hours to get there (and taken an hour-long hike along the way) but I came out feeling totally refreshed and wide awake – a similar experience to seeing Peter Brook’s Mahabharata at BAM after flying in the same day… both L’Enfant and Naufragés were imbued with a sense of the limitless nature of the imagination, but in different ways – both all about illusion, the one making your senses reel from playing with scale and the perfection of the illusion, the other hiding nothing, showing you all the strings, literally, but thereby drawing you into the world in all its messiness and excitement in a more human way… both totally inspiring… thank you…

On a more mundane note, sis is still in menorca (lucky so-and-so) and there is still no word from the hospital on the date for mum’s next slice-and-dice – she’s waiting patiently, ever valiant, but ever frailer and slightly more gone… I can’t believe it’s been a year since I first came over to deal…

btw, I forgot to mention that an amazing ship docked in Mahon harbour back in July – an exact replica of the Na Victoria, which made the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519-1522, the only one of Magellan’s ships to survive the journey that proved the earth wasn’t flat. This replica, built in Spain, did the exact same journey a few years ago, and is now cruising the Mediterranean… the perfect pirate ship…
enough…

My, how the weeks fly by… it’s August, and I’m back in the land of green and gray and rain (and the Olympics – go Team GB!), the blue and white of Menorca but a memory. But it was a great month. Sure, we had our ups and downs – particularly the siblings – but families are complicated by nature, and we’ve got a lot of nature… The house is now in great shape, as is the garden, thanks to much hard work. Sebastian and his kids (particularly Xavi) planted a great huerto this year and our produce was really good – best tomatoes ever, so sweet – I hope he does a winter crop of potatoes and onions this year like Mateo used to do, they were the best… growing food is a Good Thing…

Many great gatherings, both at our house and at friends’, and many of the traditional forays – two of which involved mum riding shotgun in the 1960s Triumph Herald convertible – toujours gai, there seems to be a dance in the old dame yet… she was even offered a boat ride out to Isla de Colon, but she chickened out on the day – wisely, I have to say… don’t push your luck. She’s been doing really well, tho’ the number of folk wanting to wine and dine her, or hang out on the patio or under the olives with her and listen to her stories seemed limitless, which was quite tiring for her – but wonderful. She thrives in the company of friends.

The weather stayed pretty much ideal the entire month, tho’ quite a lot of wind, which mum wasn’t keen on – luckily there’s always a nice quiet corner somewhere around the finca, no matter which way it’s blowing. And the sea was perfection itself – a vintage, entirely medusa-free month, which made for idyllic, care-free swimming in the big blue. Heaven. That’s what I store as a sense memory to get me through the winter. Not enough hammock time, what with one thing and another, and not enough writing (music) time, but this month was all about family (which isn’t, these days?). The last week sis finally gave me the space to sleep alone on the balcony, which I really needed – the price was almost too high, but I am not good company if I don’t get enough time to myself. I finally took an afternoon and evening off, a couple of days before leaving, and went up to the north coast to swim and watch the sunset at Cavalleria beach and on up to the faro for the full moon, stopping in Es Mercadal on the way home for a late dinner on a back street by the canal – a mini holiday… and my last night I couldn’t resist a couple of midnight dips in the sea by full moonlight, after going into Sant Lluis for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the molino (a guided tour at 11pm!), and that after we’d been out to dinner, having spent the day getting the house ready for the friends who were due to arrive the day after we left – that was a long day, and a short night, but as I was sleeping on the balcony under the full moon I wasn’t going to be getting much sleep anyway, so wotthell archie… [Arriving back in Cotherstone the next night, to a stone cold house at 1.30 in the morning, was not fun, but mum was a trooper – we just layered up with shawls, drank a large single malt and staggered to bed.]

The guy who used to run the music shop in Mahon (he got fired at the beginning of July, after working there for 17 years, sign of the times) started a Tuesday night “music in the streets” series during the summer, which sis and I went to most weeks. It’s a really great thing – all local musicians (if not actually menorcan, then living on the island) and really good – jazz, flamenco, classical, menorcan folk, african, you name it – outside cafes, in the squares… good to see something positive being created – the shops stayed open late and the whole community got behind it, with kids and grandmas hanging out, everyone listening to music, strolling around eating ice-cream – way cool. Tato asked if diana and I would do one, but in the end there wasn’t time before I left – next year? we didn’t play much this time ‘round…

The family dynamic continues to be problematic, but whose isn’t? I think we do pretty well, considering – and that’s the vital word, consideration… and tolerance… I’ve put down a deep taproot out there over the years, created a life for myself, but change is coming down the pike and I must open myself to it, embrace it, or it will do me in – what doesn’t kill you makes you strong…

Still no resolution to my sublet crisis in New York, but we bumble along… and it turns out the Gertrude Stein workshop that I’m going back for in September (hopefully) is not in town as I thought but way upstate near Canada… never mind, at least it is happening… I have much to be thankful for.

So far so good, although always precarious… As I write, the tramuntana is blowing in the pines (that’s the crazy north wind that usually blows in the winter and drives everyone on the island crazy; all the old farmhouses – including ours – had a central room with no outside walls and no windows where they would live in the winter to hide from it), but I have to say that aside from forcing me off the terrace to sleep indoors, and making the garden very thirsty, it’s not such a bad thing – my sis and I accomplished a whole lot today around the house because it was actually cool enough to work. It even rained for about 10 minutes – just enough to wash all the leaves and surfaces, and by late afternoon the sky was pristine again (tho’ the wind still blows), in time for my daily second commune with the sea (the first is in the early morning, usually at the big blue bathtub). An old Menorcan friend came for an early evening visit, with her 8-yr old daughter. They spent a winter in the house about 3 or 4 years ago – instructive for all for us – and Frida (the daughter) has an unbreakable bond with the place, and with Ratonera, our part-time cat (she – the cat – shows up unerringly within minutes of my every arrival on the island, and stays until we leave, but obviously has at least one other home because she is always healthy and well-fed when she shows up… cats…)

I had a week here by myself at the end of June, to open the house again, air out the bed linen, scare away the mice etc. before mum and sis arrived. It was stinkingly hot – 38 degrees with the wind in the southwest, which means humid and carrying the red dust from the Sahara – hard to get much done, but I did my best – both mum and sis had repeatedly said “don’t stress – take some time off” so I did…. And since they arrived, it’s been pretty much perfect – about 30 degrees, wind mostly in the northeast, which is cool and dry, and leaves the big blue bathtub like it should be… I’m a happy camper. (sorry, england…)

Mum is doing pretty well. She is so happy to be here – so what if she repeats herself occasionally and needs help with relatively simple things? she’s a marvel… so many people here so happy to see her… Sis had the usual tough re-entry, but after 2 weeks we seem to finally be on a relatively even keel – long may it last…

And then just when I thought I was in for a bit of smooth sailing, I find that my subletter in New York has to leave and I’m back in the “who will take care of the cat, who will pay the rent?” mode… oh dear, life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans – but I’ve been reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and it reminds me to live in the present as much as possible… what would you do if today were your last?

Much water under the bridge, both literally and figuratively (most of the country had a month’s worth of rain in the past 24 hours). Cousin Emily is here from California to visit with mum, which is great. We had been to see the surgeon at Durham hospital on Monday, and he opened up his chock-a-block schedule to squeeze her in on Wednesday, when he took out another 8 tumors – go, mum… [there was a slight blip when we discovered the hospital had her down for a general anesthetic which is way beyond her at this point, but after half a day on the phone I finally tracked down the surgeon and sorted it out, back to the local we had agreed upon – oops… ghastly, but I gave her my iPod and she listened to the Buena Vista Social Club and Schubert’s Quintet in C, while chatting up the surgeon – apparently he’s a vegetarian, and learning classical guitar. she is truly remarkable…] So in theory she’s good to go to menorca on July 2nd, kenahorah… and in theory I leave on monday to go open the house, with Diana coming down on Wednesday to do a hand-off with Emily – wish us all luck…

Meanwhile, last weekend was the Cotherstone village fete, or “fun weekend” as it’s now known. The weather is almost invariably lousy, and this year was no exception: after a couple of lovely days earlier in the week, the heavens opened on friday afternoon, right on cue, and it poured steadily almost all weekend – the 1K run in the fields behind the pub was done in a total downpour, quoits and country dancing were cancelled… Saturday didn’t fare much better, altho’ at least the stalls, cream teas and raffle were in the Village Hall and therefore impervious to the weather (I picked up a portable cassette player for £2.50, to replace the one I’ve been borrowing from Mick all these months, and a beaded lampshade for £1.50 that Diana will make good use of – and Auntie Liz won a splendid Diamond Jubilee tin of biscuits in the raffle). Saturday evening was the Kids Bands, also in the Village Hall, but on Mick’s advice I opted to take mum to the Bowes Museum for a classical guitar concert – well worth the effort, Giulio Tampalini was great (altho’ the string quartet who played with him in the second half had intonation problems that made it somewhat less enjoyable) – Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Capriccios based on Goya paintings were very cool…

Sunday was the all-denominational thanksgiving church service, which I would have happily gone to in the spirit of co-operation, except that it was at 10.30 and the Duck Race was at 11 – I mean to say…. bad planning…. , apparently it’s normally held from the Tees Bridge to the island, but there was so much water in the river that it was moved to the beck on the first green, which turned out to be absolutely perfect, as the kids could run along side the ducks and really be up close and personal… when they told me they threw the ducks off the bridge and then folks netted them down by the island, I was a little puzzled as to what would stop them just flying away, but when I saw them on the green I realized – aha, little rubber duckies… all 250 of them! (I bought 4, one for each of the family). They raced in heats of 40 or 50 at a time, with the first 5 from each heat going on into the final. It was absolutely splendid, and tho’ it threatened, it didn’t actually rain (not that the ducks would have cared).

I raced home to cook an early Sunday lunch for Mum and Liz, and then headed to the kids’ park up past the church to hear the Middleton Silver Band – oh yes… playing under a marquee while kids played on the swings, and everyone scarfed hamburgers and sausages from the barbecue… a multi-generational hang – really cool… the band sounded great, 15/20-odd brass players, mostly pretty young, a couple of older ringers – the last tune they played must have been the inspiration for the Monty Python theme song (I found out it was “Death & Glory” by R.B. Hall). Best of all, the sun came out – in fits and starts at first, graduating to a beautiful stretch of blue sky… oh sun, how I’ve missed you! As the band wrapped up and the games (races etc.) began, I took off to stretch my legs in the afternoon sunshine. I ended up following the old railway lines almost to Barney, coming back up the Teesdale Way – lovely… everything thick and green and flower-decked – an actual June afternoon…

Another great walk the evening before the solstice – I took a post-prandial stroll after supper that ended up being a 2-hour hike across the moors to the sound of curlews and lapwings – stunning. Home at 10 o’clock, with plenty of light left in the sky, feeling quite all right thank you…

Back in Cotherstone with mum, who has survived my almost two-week absence pretty well – what a trooper… (she did have a carer coming in every morning, plus friends and neighbours…) I took her to the hospital for a check-up the morning after I got back (Durham University Hospital, great folks, particularly the nurse specialist, Anne Irwin, who is wonderful). Not great news, in fact rather dire, but hey, what was I expecting? We are still planning for a July sojourn in Menorca, somehow – she says it’s what she really wants – fingers crossed, send all good wishes our way… If it weren’t for the arrival later this month of cousin Emily, who’s coming from California especially to see her, I’d take her out there right now – apart from wanting to seize the carp, the weather here is filthy – constant pouring rain, set to continue for the foreseeable future – but hey, how else is England such a green and pleasant land? In desperation I took a walk this afternoon in wellies, rain gear AND an umbrella – all the impermeables in the house are ancient and not so impermeable… Mum’s garden is luscious, if somewhat bedraggled, and the trees, hedgerows and fields are thick, thick, thick – shoulder high queen anne’s lace, carpets of buttercups, knee high lush green grass (where it hasn’t been cropped by the obliging and ever hungry sheep). If only it weren’t cold as well… the heating is still on – actually it won’t go off, the thermostat seems to be broken – put it on the list… welcome home…

While temporarily packing away my life in NY, I managed to miss all the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations here, but did manage some of my own over there: a splendid picnic in Central Park with the 2 Claudias; a gig at the Stone (Doug & Kenny) and another at Barbes (Karen Mantler, love her songs, and her mom, my hero, who was there); several meals with friends, a walk on the High Line with Evan L, and another, solo, down the red carpet at the Drama Desk Awards at Town Hall (pipped at the post by another Brit – the score for One Man, Two Guv’nors, from the National, so I don’t feel too bad). And NYU has agreed in principle to take my archives, so no matter what happens, the work at least won’t disappear. That feels good… onward…