My siblings and I, all had to do Speech and Drama when we were growing up. Something I never showed any real aptitude for, being the type of personality who is too rooted in my present to ever be able to indulge in the flights of imagination necessary for good acting. I have however developed a voice which carries, sometimes inauspiciously so, especially when I'm discussing something at the restaurant, that I don't necessarily mean for other tables to hear. Sotte voce is not a concept I ever grasped especially well.
Our speech teacher, Mrs Northcote Bade was a special delight - a grandmother figure for me, when I was otherwise deprived of one. My mother never really understood that in those last few years, she was paying more for me to go and sit in Mrs Northcote Bades gorgeous antique filled den( she lived in a Chapman Taylor house ), and discuss my woes and anxieties, more than I was learning to modulate my voice and diction.
That den was lined floor to ceiling with wood and glass bookcases - it is buried deep in my pysche as a place of emotional nourishment, and is a look that I tried to describe to the designers when we were working on the bar for the alterations at the restaurant, some years back. ( And something I thought we'd achieved very successfully, until shortly after we reopened, post alterations, when one of our old customers walked in, looked around, and told me with a distinct twinkle in his eyes, that it reminded him of an upmarket bordello!) Our shelves here are filled with wine , whereas Mrs Northcote Bades were old books, but walking into it often evokes her for me, regardless of Mr Eriksons opinion!
I was thinking about her this afternoon as I sat patting our heavily pregnant dog, and remembering a poem I did at some stage in my short career: 'Waiting, waiting ,waiting for the party to begin, waiting, waiting, waiting for the laughter and the din...'
It always had special resonance that poem, becos it evoked that childhood despair brought on by how painfully slowly time could pass when you're waiting for something special to occur. Something I haven't felt in a long time, becos these days I have the reverse problem, where life is so busy, that the days flit by, rapaciously quickly, and I'm often left staggered by how far thru the year we are already.
So I haven't felt that sense of time dragging slowly in a long while - and yet here we are now, as we wait for our dog to retreat to a quiet corner and have her babies. Her tummy is a round drum, and shes getting aggressive and territorial with the other dog, who's always up until now been queen bee - and we wait, and we wait, and we wait some more..Aware that we are not running this process - it will happen when she is ready, and we just hope to be around to capture the marvel of the creation of new life. I thought today at one point, that it was iminent, but she has gone of the boil, and decided she isn't ready as yet, so we wait, and we wait...
Caesars are beginning to make sense! None of this being at the mercy of nature - in, out and sorted. Much more business like! I jest!!!!! Honest... But it is novel, being so not in control...and just having to go along with the process.
