The right side up again!

At last the time has come…
I won’t say I’m ‘cured’ of the effects of that damned stroke and its sequels, for I’m not. I am no longer nimble of foot, and my shoulders and hands now work at 70% agility and 40% power. Typing is still a trial. Speech slurs sometimes for a few sentences. And fatigue is a problem. But I’m alive and kicking, and, I reckoned, fit enough to return to the top of the world for a gentle summer’s activity under the careful eyes of various friends… starting with brother, John, in Leicestershire.

The take-off was difficult. The day after I left Gerolstein and New Zealand, our dear little mother, in dreadful pain with a broken back for weeks past, was rushed to hospital with further problems. She died in the night, days short of her 90th birthday. Her final instructions (and she did love to instruct) were that I should not turn back, but continue on to Britain and John. She wanted us to be together. And here we are. Just we two, for the first time in decades.



The first stage of take-off was ten days in Sydney with veteran friends, Barry and Rosemary. I couldn’t have been in better hands. Alas, the horsey action was rained off – what on earth has become of Sydney’s weather? – but I met up with my partner-in-horses, Jack Dowie, with another veteran (young) theatrical friend, James Thane, and had morning coffee with a very colourful bird...



We dined at a splendid pizzeria, Via Napolitana, in Lane Cove, and on my last night in town we feted the second birthday of Harry, Barry and Rosemary’s gorgeous grandson. Harry is something else! and with showbiz parents and grandparents, naturally already developing (among others!) terpsichorean talents. Shimmy-shake, Harry!



The Emirates flight from Sydney was the best inter-hemispherical trip I have ever had. The airline staff looked after me wonderfully (thank you for seat 21D … even a place for my walking stick), I had splendid co-travellers – Craig the oil-rigger, heading for Brazil, and charming, handsome 82 year-old David from Wales – a lot of whiskey, slept six whole hours, and arrived at Birmingham airport in amazingly sprightly state.

Of course, I paid for it in the following days with my worst attack of jetlag (with a touch of hangover?) ever.

But those days were to be eventful. John had decided, now that he is a widower, to downsize his living quarters. Unlike me, who has still not found a new home in the five searching years of my re-singled state, he lighted on precisely the right place almost immediately. A tiny, end of terrace cottage in the delightfully rural Billa Barra Lane. It is now his, and by the time I return at the end of the summer he will hopefully have moved in.



Come the weekend, we hit the roads of the mass of counties which crowd this area. Through Rutland, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (in one order or another) to Market Deeping, Lincolnshire where John keeps a tiny Puck caravan with which, transporting his bicycle, he investigates the intimate corners of the Norfolk countryside. It is the cosiest wee ‘home’ and writer’s hideaway imaginable. Friend Liz had sewed some new curtains for the mobile palace’s windows, and we happily installed them.



Nearby Crowland is the place which Greg chose for his ashes, so we drove by the spot for me to pay my silent loving respects to my late brother-in-law, and continued to the town to see the sights: a remarkable three-sided 14th century bridge and a nicely battered abbey. And all the way, we passed through lovely green, English countryside, and charming villages where 20th century builders have barely laid a spoiling hand…





The next day, in heavy rain, we headed for the Norfolk coast. I have never been north of Great Yarmouth, so the part of the coastline from Hunstanton to Wells-near-the-sea was all new for me. Hunstanton is a typical English C19th working-class holiday resort. Sadly, the pier is gone, but the bingo halls flash their lights, the little bandstand watches over the waves, the ‘biggest joke shop in Britain’ sells fart-cushions and other similar delicacies … only the inroad of tandoori bars and the like tells us this is the 21st century. We chose the Hunstanton Bakery and Cornerhouse for a pot of tea for two, and a toasted sarnie. Brilliant choice. Thick white cups, strong tea, generous straightforward sandwiches with no poofy lettuce, cress, potato crisps or other clichéd ‘garnish’. Union Jack mats, lacy not-quite-unspotted tabecloths, old photos and endless instructive notices n the walls …



Outside, the rain dribbled down, the grey sea threw out its curly white bad-temper … ah! it does one good to see that places like Hunstanton still exist. Even with tandoori.



The coast, going eastwards along the Wash, gets progressively more picturesque. Arrived at Brancaster, we decided to essay a walk to the Coastal Path and the beach which John has oft tramped. The walk proved a tiny bit longer than intended. The wind had brought down an elderly tree on top of the electric wires and into the road. But we were not deterred! We pressed on, on foot, through the grey and damp fenland, the towering thatch-makers rushes, till we reached the seaside, where John took my picture in proof of the exploit accomplished. I had walked a staunch mile and a half, at my old pace … no stick needed! And I even remained (just) untoppled by the North Sea wind!



Onwards. through the endless number of villages named Burnham something – a peep inside a particularly fine church, St Mary’s, with some jolly windows and a beautiful 11th century font …



to the pretty port of Wells, where we sat by the drizzly estuary-side and scoffed our Sainsbury’s afternoon-tea, until it was time to turn back through the five counties (‘I hate crowds’) to Coalville, a warm ‘fire’, fish stew, red wine, a jigsaw puzzle, Match of the Day and the queen of the place, Tunis…



My northern summer has begun well. And now, Monday morning, the first sun I have seen in a fortnight has crept forth …
Let’s hope it continues this way ... life owes me a little kindness after the events of the last year and a bit...

Side by Side by Christchurch, NZ

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All sorts of hats are coming out of my cupboard. Last night, it was the theatre critic’s one, as – with a little help from my NASDAlek friends – I headed for Christchurch to see the new, post-earthquake, Court Theatre and its production of Side by Side by Sondheim.



Its more than thirty-five years since I toddled down to Puddle Dock to see the latest in the run of composer-compilation shows (Cole, Cowardy Custard) being given to us in the guise of musicals. This one was a selection of dismembered bits, put together by vocalist David Kernan, from the shows of one S Sondheim, who was then little known in Britain save to a very vocal musical-theatre coterie. Well, it was an intermittently pleasant evening. Ned Sherrin did what Ned always did best, unobtrusively and wittily compering events from a seat at the front of the stage, and the three singers: Kernan, competent and cardboard as ever, deliciously maturing soubrette Millie Martin, and megastar-in-the-making Julia Mackenzie, shared their obvious enjoyment in their material. And some of it was splendid. The highlight and hit of the evening was Julia’s pianissimo ‘Broadway Baby’. The dead weight was (and still is) an irritating ‘Conversation piece’ made up of fragments and lines from here and there, and intended to be amusing. It wasn’t (and still isn’t). But the good bits were worth the others.

Side by Side by Sondheim 35 years later? A revue of just the early works of a man who has since become an adored icon of the American musical theatre? I have to say I was dubious, before last night, as to its effect in 2012. Was I right? Well, yes and no.

The piece was given almost every chance. The comfortable, modern theatre-in-a-warehouse is a grand place to watch a concert/compilation show of this type. The accompaniment (one visible pianist with a little assistance off-stage) was immaculate. The costumes were suitable, the part 2 set delightful (couldn’t we have had it for Part 1 as well, instead of nothing?), the direction and choreography just what they should be, effective because unobtrusive. Rightly, all the limelight was focused on the three performers. Well, three and a half.



Come back Ned! The personality (?) who compered the piece (I don’t know his name) was frankly appalling. Indistinct to inaudible in speech, out of sympathy with the style of the thing, and intruding on to the stage, rather than commenting apart, with ghastly joey-joeys and end-of-the-pier monologue (who wrote those camperies?) … He would be better suited as the narrator of Rocky Horror, who at least gets zapped. Zap him is what I would have like to do for his almost ruining my evening.

And then there were three. And here is where Side by Side Christchurch simply triumphed. And I mean triumphed. All three performers – Ali Harper, Juliet Midgley and Michael Lee Porter – were excellent. First class. And I don’t mean a parochial ‘excellent for Christchurch’, I mean ‘excellent for anywhere in the world’.

Porter has the toughest job. He has to be tenor, bass, dancer, pianist, actor, and pull off all the bits that David K put into the show for himself to perform, and which won him a Tony Award. That means he has to tackle that anthem of awfulness ‘Being Alive’, sung in my auditions by half the gay chorus men in London, till I banned it, and he has to deliver the cross-sex version of Follies ‘Leave You?’, which was a little saucy joke in 1976, but now is just a dimunition of a fine song. It’s not the least thing to his credit that he almost brought both these monsters off. And he succeeded utterly in everything else he did. A pleasing voice of wide range, an engaging personality – no cardboard here – and that priceless ability to meld into a duet or a trio as only a consummate musician can. Gold star.

I’ve heard about Juliet Midgley since before she was born. Last night was the first time I had heard and seen her perform. Wow! Talking of consummate musicians, here is another with bells on. I mean, I always admire a singer who can hit the high ‘doo’ in ‘Drive a Person Crazy’ bullseye every time (and boy Ive heard too many who can’t). But that is just the beginning with this young lady. One minute she powers out the church singer’s sopranoisms in ‘Not Getting Married’, the next is Maria in West Side Story and the next she has switched to the bottom line and is giving a rich chest voice to comic lines or to that blowtorch song ‘Losing my Mind’. Maybe there is something she can’t do: it certainly didn’t seem like it last night! Gold star.

And Ali Harper. Well, I have to admit I have heard Ali sing before. First as a student, and later in Tell me on a Sunday on my only visit to the quakened Court Theatre. I admired her talents then: boy, have they matured sensationally since. It is not in any way diminishing the other performers to say that she gave me my two ‘on my feet’ moments of the night. The first came in a desopilant version of that cabaret-queen number ‘I never do anything twice’. This number gets regularly overdone, and camped to death by ‘personality performers’: here, it was delivered with a mostly subtler humour and oh my goodness: sung! The second stand-up moment surprised me. A Little Night Music is my favourite Sondheim show. Bar none. But I’ve never really understood all the fuss about ‘Send in the Clowns’, especially out of context. Blame it on Frank Sinatra. And do YOU know what the words mean? I never have. Until last night. My abiding memory of last night’s show is Miss Harper, looking uncannily like Ingrid Bergman, lounging on her plush couch singing – yes, SINGING – that song in a beautiful soprano voice, and making its meaning absolutely clear. Actress, vocalist and, well, in never hurts to look like Ingrid Bergman, does it. Gold star.

So. Sum up. The show is, I think, ready to go into retirement. Too much has happened in the world of Sondheim and his music and lyrics in 35 years to make it relevant today. (Do Passion instead.) And the Conversation Piece is a pterodactyl. But with a trio of performers like this on hand, they could have sung the phonebook and I would have cheered.
Which I did.
Lustily and sincerely.

A Night at the Addington races … eating

It’s eighteen months now since I hung up my restaurant critic’s hat, and dived into the depths of New Zealand and the inconvenience of ill health. But last night I fished it out of the cupboard for another whirl.
Well, it was almost a challenge. The advertisement for the Raceway’s ‘fabulous new cooked-to-order menu’ popped up on my facebook, and then in my e-mails. Well, I thought, they must really want to know what I think! So my friend Simon and I cancelled our barbie and bottles on the terrace at Gerolstein, and headed for town.

Now, racecourse food is traditionally mediocre. Well, on the public levels anyway. You eat reasonably enough in the posh part where I usually go with my club. And Addington has been renowned for its awfulness in the past. Last week I dared a sandwich. $5.90 for a slab of supermarket bread with a 50c sliver of dubious looking ham and something like diet cucumber. Why can’t people make a decent sandwich that hasn’t been grown in a triangular plastic box? And tastes like it.
They should take lessons from the ladies at the North Canterbury OTB. The sandwiches on workout days at Rangiora are real food.

However, on to last night. The menu looked ideal (remember, I’m a no lettuce, no fries man) and happily there were surprisingly few of the risible adjectives of menu-ese in its nicely precise descriptions (what is ‘ground beef’? Mince?):



Prime aged sirloin, crushed rosemary potatoes, seasonal vegetables


Individual homemade ground beef lasagna 


Grilled chicken & bacon ciabatta, tomato relish, with fries & aioli


Beer battered snapper fillets, crisp salad & fries


Sautéed prawns, creamy penne pasta with Spanish onions & capers


Baby back pork ribs, tangy BBQ sauce & onion rings


Thai beef with crispy noodle salad

Someone was going to be busy cooking that lot to order!
So after we had purchased my small beer (advertisedly $3) and Simon’s house white ($9.50!!!!), we ordered. I challenged on the prawn pasta, Simon was brave and went for the steak. Medium rare.

And I gathered my team of tasters. Three trainers, four owners, one temporarily unoccupied driver. They were a bit unadventurous and mostly went for fish’n’chips or steak.

The food arrived correctly swiftly (time enough to be cooked to order, but not too long) and I thought I’d made a bad choice. My prawns looked ill. Simon’s sensibly-sized steak looked good, and the fish looked splendid. Appearances aren’t always right. My prawns (2 large, 4 small) were tasty, the pasta perfectly cooked and the sauce very agreeable. I didn’t find a caper – but I’m not complaining about that.
The steak was tender and, since this is New Zealand, a tad less rare than we would call rare, and the accompaniments fine.
All the fish eaters were pretty happy. Comments ranged from ‘OK’ from the youngest, to ‘hugely better than last week’.
And from the one venturer into chicken and bacon ciabatta: 'excellent except for the old knife being too blunt to cut the crust on the ciabatta'.
At $13, all a good bargain.

Only one person was unhappy. A member who sat by us. He went to get a drink, and while he was away the efficient waitress brought his food … and took it away! He demanded a refund. :-(



The races were enjoyable, my Seppl finished a slightly weary 7th in a very good trot and is being given a holiday, and Jan’s Rehab got knocked over … but that’s racing. And we had a good time. I’ll go back soon, and I will now – which I would never have done before – have a $13 meal at the track. I want to try the mince lasagna, and the Thai (does it really come from Siam?) beef…
Perhaps they could paint the prawns with fingernail polish to make them LOOK as appetising as they taste?

PS I took my camera to photograph the meal, but I ate everything before I remembered to do so, so here’s a photo of Simon and Seppl instead.

It's Time to Get On With Living

2011 ended, and 2012 has begun in a manner I can only describe as ‘more of the same but mostly not so grim’.
But 2011 had one more brutal kick in the vitals to deliver before it finally sank, hated, quaken and reviled into the first stages of the past.
In December, we lost my very dearly beloved brother-in-law, Greg, who finally succumbed to a stomach cancer, which had been forecast to take him several years ago. So, brother John is now, like me, a widower at little more than sixty years of age. After 38 years of communal life and ultimately of marriage.



A brother ought to be around at such times, but I – enmeshed in my own health miseries – didn’t fly north. I just wrote and rang. Nevertheless, I started thinking. It was and is time to yank myself out of my drooping invalidism and to get back on the road. It was and is time to get out of the self-pitying groove I’ve made for my ailing self in New Zealand and get back to Europe, where, let’s face it, I’ve spent the better part of my life.
And yesterday I booked my ticket. I’ll leave just as soon as Easter is out of the way: and I’m trusting myself, my cabin-bag and my walking stick to Emirates airlines, who (apart from their all-night call bells) have treated me kindly in the past. They will take me back to Barry and Rosemary in Sydney, and they together will launch me forth towards Birmingham airport, and Johnny…
I’ve got a lot of catching up to do in 2012. The dear friends in Berlin, Jersey and Wight … Paris, where the DIVA musical-theatre festival is being staged in May, Vienna where Kevin and Marie-Theres’s grand Operette Exhibition will be showing, the Netherlands, too, or maybe Spain … the events and people are crowding my schedule deliciously already. Can I do it? Well, I’m bloody well going to. With a little help from my friends.

They’ll find me a little changed, those friends. Instead of a lively young 64 year-old, rather a rather baggy-eyed ageing slowish 66 year-old, but maybe they can change all that!



I’m not going to give a health bulletin this month. Simply say that I had my cataract done and now see so brightly that I have to imitate Harry and wear sunglasses. Clarity is longer coming, but that may be my specs. Teeth (such as remain) are done. And I’ve been acupunctured till I’m like a sea-urchin.

A Gerolstein bulletin? Nothing unusual. The regular number of breached fences and broken water pipes, the death of our jogger car ($100 a new one from the best local garage in the world) and yesterday a burst water main. My limpened hand will no longer undo a crusty pipe joiner, so that wonderful garage had to be called on again. Only one new invalid: Agnes (above) took fright at one of our periodic 5.0 earthquakes, ragged her cover and whacked her leg. Two weeks off, a month’s delay in her programme. Par for the horse, in the racing world.

That racing world has been, yet again, our main source of joy. Livia has run two thirds in Victoria, and Seppl … well, Seppl has done it yet again!



At the Banks Peninsula track at Motukarara … where I’ve never succeeded in wining a race … Sepp lined up on a 20 metres handicap against a full field of trotters, ranging from some rather ordinary 1-win types to several open class horses. (Open class is ‘higher you cannot go’). I watched alarmedly as he sat back in 13th or 14th place while the other better horses scooted round the field to do battle ... into the final straight, he was still almost last. Oh, dear. And the leader had dashed clear. But Murray pulled Seppl to the outside and pressed the turbo button. Down the outside he powered – eating up the ground like Livia on her most dramatic days. It was impossible: the distance was too great, the leader was too far ahead! But it wasn’t, and he wasn’t. Little Seppl notched up his fifth win with one of the most exciting performances a horse of mine has ever put up. Oddly, I didn’t get very excited. Till after. Because I was so sure he couldn’t—no one could – close that gap. But he did.
Last night, Seppl ran again, at Addington. He’s a multiple winner now, so he has to race the best. And last night’s field were all top-rated horses. He ran an honest race, and finished 5 lengths from the winner. I reckon soon he’ll be competitive at quite a high level. Whee! And Livia runs Monday at good old Yarra Valley ..

So it’s January. The sun is shining, we have the delightful company of our latest ‘farm workers’, Yasmine and Hermine from Ghent, the peachick count remains at five (Trixie 2 out of 5, Dixie 3 out of 3) until Miss Ing hatches in the days to come, Mr Cocky has given up courting, and pulled his tail feathers out to mark the end of the mating season …

Well, I’m not pulling my feathers out! I’m packing them (not that you can get many in a cabin bag, and I can’t carry a suitcase) and going into training for the Big Return. The gradually unfreezing north, here I come…

When you come to the end of an imperfect year ...

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A month? A month has gone by since I blogged? And quite a lot has happened in that month.

I am still somewhat handicapped by the sequels of my nearly nine-month old stroke – so, thanks a heap all those pundits who said I’d be ‘totally re-established in one to six months’. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that folks of the medical establishment don’t know very much about strokes, or that every cerebral incident is different.

My reaction to this impuissance was to give up on pundits, expensive specialists etc, and only then did I start noticeably to improve. With, I should add, the help of my faithful acupuncturist and chinese herbalist. Brett Walker, take a bow.

So what’s wrong with me now? Well, my right arm, hand and frozen shoulder have regained most of their movement, but they lack singularly in strength. Lifting anything heavier than a small bucket of horse-feed, or opening a tricky bottle of wine, are out. But finally my typing is getting back to normal, which is a major fact of life for me.
Strength all round is the big thing … and weariness ... but when the sun shines and the horses win, the world is a less painful place. So, now, I just have to get rid of my neural twitch (only evident when lying down), get through next week’s cataract operation and dental adventure… and. well, post-stroke I’m on the blood-thinner clopidogrol (sounds like something a pooch would eat), so I guess I just have to put up with being covered in bruises and blood-marks, and bleeding ridiculously every time I knock myself or touch a rose-prickle.

That’s enough of the health bulletin. Except to say the sun HAS been shining and, yes, racing win number 43 came up last night.

I forced the issue with the sun, and took ten days with Barry and Rosemary in Sydney again. Training for my 40-hour flight back to Europe at the end of summer. We had a lovely lazy time, and I didn’t lift a finger (except to walk Holly the dog), so it was a limited ‘rehearsal’. I wonder how travelling and living on my own will go. We celebrated my dear friends’ 36th wedding anniversary (I was at the wedding!) with dinner at the Via Napolitana in Lane Cove (delicious) and I got to know the latest of the dynasty, grandson Harry. At 18 months, he has already developed a taste for Prada sunnies.




Babies and young things are everywhere at Gerolstein, too. But we have had our share of drama and disaster. Duchess’s stunning foal fractured a sesamoid at two weeks. He doesn’t seem to know it, though, for when he is let out for a few minutes from the pen where he and his mother are immobilised, he kicks his heels in the air!



Yearling Thomas tried out for a showjumper and jumped a double oxer wire fence. Somehow he landed on the other side, but the trailing leg … So he’s a sad and sorry boy and on bute today. Lucie also jumped two fences, and broke through a lot of tape – what a girl will do when she’s in season, and there’s a man down the block! Straight back into training for her. And Agnes, and Pattie.

The foals continue to be a joy, but give us regular frights. Little Johnny, who is to be christened Johnny Molecule after my brother’s new book, is growing up nicely at a month old, but has been left with a curious stub of umbilical cord …!



There is a lot of worry and incident in having horses, but when they win … well, last night was my ninth win of 2011. Something has gone right in this otherwise ill-starred year.

It was Seppl yet again. After his win at Kaikoura, he proceeded to the New Zealand Cup meeting. He ran an enormous race off 20 metres handicap on Cup Day (5th), and on Show Day got run down in the last bit for another 5th. He came home with a dirty nose, but it soon cleared up, and on he went to Geraldine. That is a race I prefer to forget. He was disqualified for allegedly interfering with a notoriously breakable horse … which meant his almost impeccable formline got a ‘0’ to it.
Perhaps that was why, against a large field of horses ,many of which he had already beaten, he went out, last night, tenth favourite at 26-1. Or was it perhaps partly because Murray elected to drive Pammy’s Boy, which had defeated Seppl twice this season. Seppl’s new driver – his fourth in 14 starts – was Jeremy Anderson, an enormously talented junior reinsman who I will always be pleased to have behind any horse of mine.
Seppl had drawn three – all but three of the front-markers were ’unruly’ and condemned to outside starting positions! – and, while a lot of the ‘unrulys’ showed just why they are classed ‘unruly’, Jeremy got him away from the barrier like an Exocet. Straight to his favourite place, in the lead.
But the driver of the favourite, Mamselle (I haven’t yet worked out why it was favourite, but someone knew something), had the same idea. Jeremy calmly let him past, and tucked our boy into the trail. A good decision. No one was game to take the favourite on, and she and Seppl came to the home straight in front. Seppl headed for the passing lane and my heart sunk. He has shown aversion to ‘passing on the inside’ before. But not this time! Jeremy kidded him through the gap and, as the two leaders drew clear of a field where nothing but Pammy’s Boy seemed to be coming forward, Seppl confidently took the lead and carried on to a comfortable ¾ length victory. 4 ½ lengths ahead of the third horse!
He had been given a perfect run, and responded perfectly, in his fastest winning time to date.
These were some of the best 2-4 win horses in the country. I’m beginning to wonder if our Sepp isn’t the best trotter I’ve owned and bred! So far. Watch this space.



The other babies round here have been avian. While I was in Australia, Trixie hatched five adorable peachicks. But nature is cruel, and peahens are not very good mothers it seems. After two weeks three have gone -- lost, stolen or strayed -- and our baby count is now down to two. Temporarily, I should say, because now Dixie is sitting secretly on another bunch of eggs … as for Mr P he just crows, doesn’t help at all with the babies, fans his tail and looks for more available hens …



Now, can something nice please happen in the last four weeks of my annus pretty horribilis...

Kool Kiwi Kittens

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Very original cats in dress rehearsal 1981


Cats, performed by students? Hmmmm. I wasn’t sure. I was around in the West End musical world when the show was originally produced in 1981. It had, from the start, the buzz of a British A Chorus Line to it. Elitist, elegant, superior, snobbish even. Only the very best dancers in the country would be up to performing this show. When I first saw it, I wasn’t at all sure that its style and its tone, its almost self-conscious classiness, would gain it popularity. Well, I was wrong to doubt. A hundred thousand times wrong.
And wrong about it being suitable for students. These ones, anyhow. In this version.

As it moves into its fourth decade, from the professional stage to the amateur to the collegiate, Cats has changed. Like other shows of great originality, its individuality has become smoothed down, its quirkiness ironed out, finally it has become, in the nicest meaning of the word, more ‘popular’, more conventional.
As I sat there at last night’s premiere in Ashburton, I felt as if I was seeing a version of the show as re-done by Ralph Reader or Busby Berkeley. Huge, colourful, glamorous. Did it work? In a large part, yes. Why not? There are lots of students available—and, the best thing, capable – of taking part, so why not have squadrons of tapping cockroaches and Siamese Cats in colourful costumes, why not have 42nd Street echelons of dancing pussies pounding energetic moggie-steps to the accompaniment of a hugely voluminous vocal sound. Why not? It gives everyone plenty to do, thoroughly pleases the audience ... and much of it thoroughly pleased grouchy, jaded old me, too. OK, I’ll tell you what, give me back ‘Billy McCaw’ and cut ten minutes of all that Jellicle Balling off the end of Act One, and I’ll even go with the fiddled-about-with-since-1981 version.

Anyway, Cats in its 2011 version – with its large proportion of young, lively characters -- is thoroughly suitable for students. On one condition. That they are technically, choreographically and vocally, capable of correctly performing its series of stand-up character numbers and ensembles. And the Students of NASDA proved, last night, that they were decidedly capable. Each and every one of them could Dance with a capital D (and if anyone couldn’t, he was a bloody good faker), the volume of sound and the zing of half a dozen sopranos hitting top Z together, in the big ensembles, was im-press-ive …

When all were so good, large part or small, you aren’t supposed to pick out individuals. But, of course, I’m going to.

I’ve seen endless student shows over the last 35 years, in my old job as a talent-spotter, and I didn’t expect to find one of the best vocal performances of those years in Ashburton. Grizabella, as so unforgettably created by Elaine Paige, is necessarily in the show’s spotlight, as she has the one take-away tune of the affair, the soulful, yearning ‘Memory’. And not much else. Without a superb ‘Memory’ and a fine Grizabella, the show loses its ‘heart’. Last night, it had all the heart in the world. Shaan Antunovich, aged 21, a tiny figure drowned in a huge Miss Havisham costume, sang the famous song to within an inch of its life. I have never heard it sung better, except – of course -- by Ms Paige. It was a stunning vocal performance. This young artist still has learning to do, and her very lowest notes will gain the necessary richness in a year or two ... but, my goodness, if she can sing like that now … I hope I’m around to see her fly. Because she will.

Enjoyment of a performance is always tempered by enjoyment of the material. And I have to admit to having favourite bits in the score. And unfavourite one. I never liked the Kenn Wells and Wayne Sleep bits, and I adored Susan Jane Tanner (whom I snapped up as a client!). All my ‘best bits’ got yeoman service last night.

I especially liked Monica Hope as the Gumbie Cat tripping about in front of her Chocolate-Soldier cockroaches, truly comical and never overstated, and I was most impressed by a third player in an ‘old’ part – Tainui Kuru, suffocated in an even bigger costume than Grizabella’s, as Old Deuteronomy. Mr Kuru has the famous knack of appearing to do little, and riveting your attention. When he stepped forward, to sing his solos in a rangy and ringing baritone voice (I’m sure Brian Blessed never sang a top G), the storm of activity which had whirled relentlessly upon us suddenly calmed. There was just the big, still cat, and the fine singing … ‘beaut’, as they say down here.

Danica Brbich and Dayna Dodd were Sharon Lee-Hill and Geraldine Gardner (I’m sorry, the naming of cats isn’t one of my talents, and anyway the parts are all differently cut up) to a ‘t’, dancing and singing swingeingly about ‘Macavity’ in what was one of the best moments of the original show, and still is of this.
Jason Parker and Kelly Mahoney made a tasty meal of the highly-coloured Growltiger sequence, and played and sang the cod Italian aria-duet inserted for the show’s American version with OTT bravura.
Edwin Beats strutted his stuff splendidly as the sexy Rum Tum Tugger .. I spy potential there, if he remembers to stay in character when he is not soloing! – Nathan Tunbridge made excellent characters of Gus and Bustopher (when did that become a combo?), unlike enough Messrs Blessed and Tate to leave an agreeably clear memory of his performance with me ..

And, oh, there were so many more.

Of course, the largest star made by the original production of Cats (not counting those who already were stars) featured in one of the smallest roles. One of the smallest, but the best, roles. I can still see and hear the largely unknown Sarah Brightman, up on the rubbish heap in the starlight, joining Ms Paige in duet …
Manuao Ross sang the little part beautifully, with all the sweetness that it calls out for, and recalled for me perhaps the best moment of all of Cats 1981.

So, all in all, an extremely enjoyable evening, gingered up by some really grand performances and especially by a most memorable ‘Memory’ ..



Its quite a few years since I first saw a NASDA show, and they seem to be increasing in quality every time I see one. I wouldn’t have picked Cats as a suitable vehicle for these young men and women, so bravo! to whomsoever had the foresight to do so. THIS version. Bravo, all round.

What’s next year?

PS Hey, I just remembered, what happened to the Pekes and the Pollicles? When did they disappear? And wasn’t there a rather dull solo spot for W Sleep? And I see that disastrous Rumpus Cat is gone. Seems there’s rather a lot to say in favour of this version!

Seppl at the Seaside

There’s been a ‘false quietness’ about our little horsey world during these last weeks. Livia and Fritzl working themselves up for a return to the tracks, D’Arcy jogging, Lucie and Agnes resting, Seppl taking five … Instead of racing horses, we’ve been rearing them. After the glamorous Franco

  came Sally’s son, a lovely leggy Righteous Hanover colt, whom we have called Johnny

  Next, was Annie’s little boy (also by Righteous Hanover), - so we have 'The Righteous Brothers'!

 

and Erin’s Badlands baby and dear old Gwen’s Monarchy foal – she is coming back to us to have it – are in the works. But this weekend was the annual race meeting at Kaikoura. A festival of sunny seaside racing, featuring some of the best horses in the country, in the lead up to next week’s New Zealand Cup. I’ve only once had the delight of winning a race at Kaikoura – with Il Campione in 2002 – although Master Ado ran a mighty third a year or two later in the one-win trot. Well, this year Seppl went to the seaside, to run in that very same one-win trot. Sixteen trotters in the field, and guess who opened favourite! Our wee boy! Gulp. As you know I get nervous when my horses are favourite, and today all sorts of wayward things were afoot: our Lawrence, Fritzl’s driver, won race one on a 113-1 shot, two hot favourites galloped hysterically out of contention, and there had been two scary-looking crashes, one involving Seppl’s last-start driver, the great Jimmy Curtin. Well, by the time the race started the powers that punt had decided to go for the Purdon-trained horse, unfortunately named Contador, doubtless on the ground that the maestro could have another favourite blow up, and a North Island visitor. Seppl was third favourite. He had drawn eight, the extreme outside of the front row, and, with a heap of shoving and manoeuvering on the part of those drawn inside him (if eight horses won’t fit across Kaikoura’s track, make it less), he was practically hung out on the post where the tape zings and slaps when released. When the tape did go, he didn’t make his usual flying beginning. He gasped a moment at the horrid machine … but then, where another horse would have galloped, got his mind back on the job and launched himself in pursuit of the best beginners. Three back on the outside when they settled round the first bend, he waited only for the back straight, where Murray zipped out of his trailing spot and took Seppl straight to the lead. ‘He grows another leg when he’s in front’ the commentator once said. He does. He strode deliciously along in front, unchallenged, as, in the last 400 metres, the survivors of the pace and the gait lined up for the attack. Wham! Contador galloped on the tricky home turn, wham! Royearl’s Quest, running parked, left his feet instants later, wham! Ruby and Diamonds, the original leader, flew to bits at the straight entrance and didn’t stop galloping until after the post … and Seppl? Murray glanced over his shoulder, saw he was well clear, and eased to the line more than two lengths clear of the field. Seppl’s tenth start, his third win, and as Mr McNamara, the commentator – or was it Mr O’Connell, the link man – said, there will doubtless be more. The little boy with the most unfashionable breeding on show has turned out to be a distinctly nice racehorse.

 

Here he is, courtesy of Race Images, snapped hooning down the home straight with – look!—in the background, the famous Jack Litten colours, which I used to punt on decades ago in Julie Hanover days, here worn by runner-up, Game as Ned Kelly. Colours? I know. Murray copped a $25 fine. He forgot to change his shirt, and went out wearing his colours instead of mine. But this picture will still be going on my wall. A lovely souvenir. Win number 42!

"I'm about to be a mother..."

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It seems only a year or two since I brought home the gangling yearling filly with the giraffe neck and the wonderfully haughty stare, from the Sales. Well, my beautiful Elena de Gerolstein had a little racing career, won one race and ran some fine placings, and is now retired. But, dammit, talk about the glamorous older woman! She looks better than ever, at seven years old ..



So it's time to become a mother. Hello, Mr Rob Roy Mattgregor ...

Duchess, meanwhile, has delivered us of her fifth baby: and after three girls in a row ... a baby brother for Fritzl!

Ganzl - the 21st Century

Ganzls of now! Here are Régis and Segolène's daughters: Elena 7 and Lucie 3




And, well, I'm not likely to have human children, am I? But I have an Elena aged 7 and a Lucie aged 3 as well!

ROBIN HOOD ... back from the dead!

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When England's Victorian Opera brought out their recording of Lurline, I hailed it as a double success: both as an historical document and as a jolly good listen. Now the organisation has followed up with Macfarren's opera, Robin Hood, and I can only repeat my former comment. Only more so.

Robin Hood is an absolutely English opera, written by a proven and sophisticated English playwright, and composed by a successful English composer, on the most wholly English of subjects. It looks English, it sounds English, it simply couldn't be anything else ... it just smells English.
It is also utterly typical of its time, conventional even, and in no way tries anything new in its music. We have a Florestan-cum-Fairfax prison scene for tenor, we have a Henry Phillips distraught father scena for the baritone, oodles of Malibran bravura for the prima donna, who in time-honoured fashion puts the denouement on hold while she does her vocalises, touches of English part-singing, a little bit of buffo, and there is a lilting take-away Sims Reeves ballad for ... well, for Sims Reeves.

And it's all absolutely splendid stuff of its kind.



Robin Hood is a star vehicle. Robin and Marian dominate the show and the score, and Macfarren has made their roles long and hard. Producer, E T Smith, who always did things in grandiose fashion, cast them with England's megastar tenor, Sims Reeves, and one of the best coloratura vocalists on the European concert scene, Helen Lemmens-Sherrington, who, I am quite sure, both vocally had their parts tailored to fit. He got Charles Santley, too, to play the Sheriff, who was duly made into a nice chap rather than the nasty henchman of Prince John we are used to. Top English singers Josephine Lemaire and William Parkinson took the little parts, but really, the show is all Robin and Marion, with occasional interludes by Santley. And a chorus of many. Since the Robin and Marion were huge public favourites, and the piece a fine one, lavishly staged, Smith had a splendid hit on his hands.

Victorian Opera had a task on its hands. Having had to cast Malibran and Louisa Pyne for its last two discs, now they had to cast Sims Reeves and Mme Lemmens. It can't be done, of course, but they have had a darned good try. Nicky Spence (Robin) lilts and thrills nicely. He drives the show's big hit, 'My Own, My Guiding Star', along in a ringing way that shows why it was a hit, and I particularly liked his moody prison scene. Kay Jordan (Marion) flings herself bravely into the hectic bravuras, but I liked her best when she joined the delicious mezzo Magdalen Ashman in the merry 'To the fair'. Miss Ashman also started things rolling with the grand 'The hunters awake'.
Geoffrey Hulbert sang the Sheriff's show-off scena ('My child has fled') vigorously, Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks was a merry Allan, and I found perhaps the most unalloyed joy on the discs in the ensembles and part-singing. Macfarren really could write for English voices, and English singers -- as proven here -- can sing his work a treat. With hardly a modified vowel.

If all this sounds a bit uncritical ... haven't I any complaints? Well, one or two of the Sims Reeves solos are a bit too conventional to be true -- their titles give it away: 'Englishmen by birth', 'The grasping Norman' -- but they were well liked in their time. So was buffo 'The Monk within his cell' -- created by comedian George Honey -- which I feel should rollick more. But it comes down to this: if you like the conventions -- the ballads, the scenas and the bravuras -- of 19th century English opera, and I do, very much indeed -- and the utter Englishness of it all, with its round and glee singing, it would be hard to find a more enjoyable opera than Robin Hood.
And unless you can raise Reeves and Mme Lemmens (to listen only, not look -- they were both vastly unheroic and unromantic-looking), I can't imagine it being more pleasingly and effectively presented than it is on this disc.

Next one, please, Victorian Opera.

Gänzl

Or Ganzl. Or, it seems, Gansl. Or, I've just discovered .. Gánsl. For a man who spends a large part of his life, delving into the genealogy and personal facts and figures of other people's lives, I've always failed signally when it came to my own family history. My brother and I had resigned ourselves to 'never knowing', since, years ago, my paternal grandmother told us -- and I was in my mid-twenties, already! -- that her husband, who had died before we were born, had been Jewish. Central European Jewish records ... after the war ..? Well, I didn't know. 

 When you don't know, you invent. And when I came upon another Ganzl (no umlaut, that was my mistake, and I'm stuck with it!), Régis by name, and French, of Swiss descent, we immediately decided we must be some sort of distant cousins. Well, I was sure Switzerland came into my tale somewhere.

Two things then happened. My mother dumped upon me a vast plastic bag of photos and stuff which had been the property of said grandmother. I glanced in. Holiday snaps. And put them on a shelf. Then I came in contact with Marie-Theres Arnbom of Vienna, operetta historian. I wrote a piece for her new book, and she mentioned her husband's forthcoming work: on Viennese Jewish families. 'Hah!', I laughed. 'Find mine!' And she did. She found me a great-grandfather and mother, and ... there was grandfather Pepi, and his boring but long-lived brother Fritz, and the mysterious Onkel Max ... and three sisters, great aunts of whom I had never suspected the existence! (It was brief). Great-grandfather was Adolf Gánsl, born in Mór, Hungary in 1844. Great-grandmother was Julie Rosenbaum from Königsberg, Bohemia, daughter of Adam Rosenbaum - great-great-grandfather .. how did they meet? Great-great-grandmother was Katharina Schweizer .. oh dear, is that how the muddle with Switzerland got into my head? All this only came on us 24 hours ago, so I've got a bit of ordering and tidying to do, but I did cast a more careful eye at Nana's plastic bag. And there they were: great-grandfather Adolf (b Mór, 1844; died Schulgasse 8, Währing, Vienna 8 April 1889). So young.

 

And great-grandmother Julie, died 8 Schulgasse, 5 June 1888. Oh dear. So the stories about Fritz and Max being brought up in an orphanage -- they really were five and two when their parents died. Why did I think it was a car crash. Cars were hardly invented.

 

And here, look, Pepi and Max. Photographed by Grillich in the Währing Hauptstrasse. Before they were split up. Max to the orphanage, and Pepi to be brought up, as we knew from my father, by Tante Rosenbaum ...

 

And Pepi on his wedding day, with his bride, Rudolfine Josefine Stojetz. Our Nana. Goodness, she was pretty. But strong .. and that's another story.

 

Here's the certificate, too, which confirms much of all that.

 

Well, we've opened the box of tricks now. We'll have to delve a little more into it. I mean, why were Adolf the Hungarian and Julie wed in Franzenbad (where the hell, IS Franzenbad ..), and why did they come to live in Vienna's Zirkusgasse, Antonsgasse, Mosergasse, Buchfeldgasse and Schulgasse? Come to that, why were they always moving! And .. Oh dear, I'll have to put aside Miss Matilda Florella Illingworth, soprano, of Yorkshire, and spend a little time on the Gánsl family! Maybe Johnny and I aren't the end of the family -- by any of its variant names ... as we thought we were!

Drama at Gerolstein, or Oh! Minnie!

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The wonderful Woodend Fire Brigade powers down our driveway at dawn after a frantic phone call ...!



Are we burning?

No. But Minnie has got herself up a very large gum tree and can't get down. This time her choice of time -- Saturday night -- wasn't so hot, and she spent 14 hours perched 15 metres above the ground until I could ring the sapeur pompiers!



Her descent was somewhat undignified



And after giving us a sleepless night, she's prancing around the place as if nothing had happened.
Oh, Minnie!

Please, it must be spring soon ..

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A month has gone by since last I blogged ..
Not like recent years, eh?
No theatres, hotels, restaurants in 2011
The overwhelming topics of the day are my wretched health, and the pets.

I'm not going to rabbit on about my health. Although I should, because it might help someone else in a similar plight to understand a little what is happening to them. Suffice it that I'm bearably handicapped, with a few unpleasant side effects, and that from being a 'carer' I have rather become one who needs somewhat to cared for.
We shall see what the spring and summer bring. Because the recent burst of slightly warm sunshine -- after violent snow, and in spite of regular earthquakes in the 4-5 register -- has cheered and lifted me enormously.



I've also been muchly cheered by the pets. Little Livia didn't make the grand final of the Breeders Crown, but she ran what the racing press called a 'massive' race for a close fourth in the B Final, and then, on the last day of the season, easily disposed of a so-so field at Stawell. Her seventh win. Now she goes for a very well-earned rest, and the baton is taken up by Seppl, returning to NZ racing after a year out for growing pains. I actually made it to Rangiora raceway for his re-debut, thus we have 'Photograph' of him lining up in the birdcage after a nice third placing.



The next week, he ran a much closer third at Addington, and I think a win -- it will be my number 42! -- is very near.
The next up to the plate will be the beautiful Agnes, followed by Lucie and D'Arcy who, grown to manhood, feted his third birthday this week, before shipping out from Gerolstein to trainer Murray Edmonds to go back to work.



And, of course, foaling time is coming near...

We may see some breeding action n the avian world too. Mr Peacock has made the acquaintance of Dixie (Miss For Ward) and Trixie (Miss Back Ward) and has been parading his tail and making threatening motions with his nether areas non stop for a week



And there is just space for my special little pet. Minnie. She is eight years old -- and I remember as last week, the day she wandered on to my doorstep saying 'it's Easter holiday weekend, so you can't take me to the homefinder vet because he's closed for three days. And in three days, I'll get you ..'. She did, of course.