The Wayward Daughter.

Friday 27^th June

If you were going to be given a surprise would you want a few hints about what it might be or would you prefer it to be secret until the time it happened?

That was the question I asked my beautiful girl on Friday when we got home from work to find my Mum waiting at my house. (Mum was in on the surprise…) Laura chose the latter so I told her to follow my lead in getting changed then Mum would drive us away. I put on my favourite black dress, the one with the embroidered bodice and ruched bustier. It is lined with skin tone fabric so it looks as though I am naked underneath it! Laura put on the red mini dress she knows I love. It has a tulip shaped shirt and makes her look like a film star.

We piled into Mum’s car and she hit the M1 heading south. Eventually arriving at the very same car park we went to when we visited Nottingham Playhouse earlier in the year. “We are going to see a play!” Laura said.

“No, we are going for a bite to eat,” said Mum. After parking up she led us to a smallish restaurant a few hundred yards away from the car park.

I had a really nice piece of turbot (you don’t often see turbot on a menu) Laura and Mum had scallops. Laura asked a couple more questions about what we were doing but we skirted round the answers telling her she had said she didn’t want to know the surprise until the time so we weren’t going to play 20 questions.

After the meal we strolled across Nottingham’s city centre and finally headed up at the Theatre Royal. Laura read the signage and went “Fille mal gardee? What’s that?”

My Mum said, “It’s Vic here. She has always been a wayward daughter!” Thanks Mum!

I am of the opinion that if you want your children to appreciate something which you like the best way is to start them on it early. I was taken to the theatre as a toddler, to a pantomime (which scared the hell out of me in one section, I add) this fostered my love of going to the theatre. The reason I listen to Classical Music is probably because I was played Mozart in utero and then over and over again as a babe in arms. (Mum had read about Classical Music helping your child’s mental development before it was even born.)

If you want someone to appreciate ballet the very best one ever to take them to see as a child is “La Fille Mal Gardee”. Mum took me to see it in Norwich when I was still a toddler and I have been a visitor to several other versions of it over the years of my childhood and adolescence. I would go so far as to say if you took a little boy to see it (I know I am being horribly sexist in my gender stereotyping here) he would also end up being a ballet lover too!

This isn’t Laura’s first ballet, it is about her fourth or fifth (the last three were with me) but I definitely wanted her to see this one. I do own a copy of it on DVD but I haven’t watched it with her as it bears no relation to seeing the thing in the flesh. This version was by the Birmingham Royal Ballet and it was using the much acclaimed Frederick Ashton choreography. It was wonderful. Funny, touching, energetic, catchy. It was the perfect ballet to bring Laura to as a surprise and to show her how much I had missed her while she was at her Mum and Dad’s.

Mum’s comment that the title referred to me was something she had said as a joke when I was still a pre-teen, maybe I decided to live up (or down) to the billing she had given me. I don’t try to be deliberately wayward but I think my upbringing has made me look at the world and my place in it in a rather different way than most people do. I also think being a Wayward Daughter has made me a much better person that I otherwise would have been.

The Ballet: Nao Sakuma (Lise) and Cesar Morales (Colas) danced very well but to be honest they weren’t a patch on the two dancing the parts on my DVD version -  Carlos Acosta (Colas), Marianela Nuñez (Lise), then again I wouldn't have expected them to be. They were believable and that is all that matters. As always it was Lise’s Mum [Simone – Michael O’Hare] who brought the house down, it is a brilliant part for a male dancer who wants to get away from the more “serious” roles in Classical Ballet. In fact the whole ballet is a good excuse for anyone who wants to escape more “serious” ballets to find a huge comic escape.

There was one gasp out loud moment (even though I knew it was coming) when Cesar balanced Nao on the palm of his hand in a technically awesome lift. I have seen this done quite a few times now but I can still remember my childhood astonishment at the feat. Laura was gobsmacked by it, too!

I can’t mention La Fille without talking about the Clog Dance, possibly the most well-known piece of music from the whole ballet, if not from the whole world of ballet. O’Hare managed to make the complex routine look so simple anyone could do it. That is the mark of a true expert, I feel, making the impossible look achievable by everyone. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, so did Mum and Laura was totally blown away by the whole thing. As a newcomer to the show, everyone is. People think ballet is so stuffy and po-faced. La Fille is neither.

We got back to mine at about midnight and I invited Mum to spend the night rather than driving back to Holmesfield but she wanted to be up and about in her garden in the morning so she declined. Laura waited until I had walked Callie for her shower which we shared. After a tumble in bed before sleeping she told me, “I love you so much!” [Obviously I reciprocated!]

Saturday June 28^th.

We regaled Sarah with tales of the Ballet after our swim this morning. She said it sounded marvellous and wanted to know how long it was on. She also thought it was playing in Sheffield. I had to disabuse her of those two misconceptions and she seemed really disappointed. I said I would look up the BRB website to see if it was going to be playing anywhere else but no luck. I did say she could borrow my DV which made her smile.

When we got home I dug out my Royal Ballet version and we spent almost two hours watching it again. If we had seem the Royal Ballet last night it would have knocked the BRB’s version inot a cocked hat but as we were only seeing it through a small TV rather than being immersed in the whole experience last night’s was definitely better.

We went off into the Peak District next and I took Laura on a circuit from Edale that went across the ridge from Winhill, round to Seal Stones on the eastern edge of Kinder and then over onto the plateau. We lunched, where I had a fortnight ago, at Kinder Downfall, and then did the same orienteering on a bearing across the mass of peaty streams to Grindsbrook. We took much longer than I had because at the bottom of one of the hags I was assaulted by my companion who decided she wanted alfresco sex and wanted it now! We knew the chances of discovery were pretty remote up on the barren top of Deryshire’s highest mountain but there was one point where an enterprising Laura had just managed to hide her hand inside me that we heard voices which seemed to be heading our way.

Instead of stopping what we were doing and covering up, we just stood like rabbits caught in the headlights until we heard the voices recede. Phew.

We didn’t have a meal in the pub, like I had, but we did stop for a pot of tea – which was just what was needed. I then drove us the windy back way to home past the three reservoirs in the Bradfield Valley.

Our evening meal was cooked and ready when we got in and we had a hot chili on one of the hottest days of the year. Mad or what?

Sunday June 29th

Had a lie in until 7.30 this morning. Callie was so disturbed by this alteration to her routine she came up and nudged my ear several times and then pushed her nose under the quilt to nibble my hand! I decided that I had better get up and take her out.

When I got back Laura had got up and broken the first rule of camping (one of Dad’s silly rules, that is) no cooking bacon on a campsite. It drives every other camper mad with desire for bacon. It certainly made me mad for bacon. She had cooked enough for two bacon baps each. Rah rah rah!

Suitably fortified we drove up to Leeds to visit my illustrious brother and family, we had been invited to spend the day with them because the aforementioned brother had snagged my ticket to Hetty Feather and I was a bit miffed to say the least.

I was able to quiz Angela and Peter about the show and they had enjoyed it no end although listening to their garbled and confused accounts did make me wonder if they had both seen the same thing at all! It is fascinating what children will focus on, compared to how adults view things. Jane, for example, gave me a clear plot summary; a description of the set and the characters, the songs and the feel of the whole thing. Children just zoom in on what interests them at the time and ignore the other stuff.

I mentioned Fille Mal Gardee and Jane went into raptures about it and how she had loved seeing at as a girl. I explained how the three of us had gone to Nottingham on Friday to see it. Phil was scathing about travelling to another city to see a show until I mentioned the fact he’d stolen my ticket to see a show in Sheffield! Point to me I think. The little pillock then started moaning that Mum and I always did stuff together and she hardly ever came up to Horsforth. Even Jane came to my defence and told him, it’s different for girls and their Mums. He stopped bleating when we all pulled silly faces at him. I think he does it deliberately to see if I will take the bait. I told him he was just jealous that I had a ballet named after me. He didn’t know what the idiomatic translation of Fille Mal Gardee was. Point number two to me!

We had a super lunch of lamb. It was so sweet and succulent. I even had seconds despite the fact there was a dessert too.

In the afternoon we went to the local reservoir and we messed about on their boat. It is an 18 footer but held us all fairly well, if a little squashed together. Sophie was dropped off at Jane’s mum being too little for sailing. Phil and I haven’t sailed together for ages and we had a whale of a time – we even managed to forget to snipe at each other at every verse end.   

Phil told the tale of how we had taken Dad’s skiff from the University Broad all the way down to Great Yarmouth but then chickened out of going to sea proper. Plus by the time we go there, we’d used up all the diesel and ended up stuck in Gorleston until a very angry Dad had come and collected us. Phil blamed me for the idea and I blamed him. (It was me goading him that had led us to doing it to be honest!)

He is thinking of trading up and getting a sea going yacht which he’ll moor somewhere along the Humber or Ouse. I think he is jealous of Suze and Pete’s 42’ pilot house yacht and is trying to keep up with them. He is stupid enough to think they will be bothered. I rubbed salt in the cut by telling him we’d be out in their boat during the summer, we are going to use their mooring off Rottnest Island for a few days rather than rent a cottage on the island. I thought that would be more fun for Laura.

We left after having a cold collation tea, claiming to have pressing work that we needed to get done by the morning. Never having been to University I guess the older brother can be fooled easily like that, especially if he thinks term is still going at the end of June!

Laura says Phil reminds her a bit of her Dad.  I didn’t know how to respond to that one. At home the only pressing thing we had to do was cuddle on the sofa and listen to the even concert on Radio 3. It was Music of the Great War; quite appropriate for the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.