THE show, as the old saw has it, must go on. Come hell, high water or hot volcanic ash a duty, once undertaken, must be completed.
Sez who? Well, my Daughter the Actress for one: dedicated to her art, she once gamely dragged a theatrical surgical boot upstage and down throughout a Tennessee Williams play, ignoring the torn knee ligaments her dedication brought on early in Act Two.
Fans of Queen, Pink Floyd and Three Dog Night understand the maxim, too; it booms out of their soundboxes through the eponymous singles those bands respectively produced.
Carrying on regardless may be courageous but it’s not always comforting. At the high point of one cultural expedition to the Hackney Empire to hear the Moldovan State Opera play La Boheme (a contest La Boheme won hands-down) ’Er Indoors and I suffered agonies for the lead tenor who missed his top notes and coughed over the lower range throughout the first act.
”I so sorry,” he pleaded, after stepping bravely through the curtain at the interval. “Haff sroat veddy bad, much hurt.” The politely sympathetic ovation that followed dried to a slow, horrified handclap when he added: “But neffer fear, I carry on!”
I find myself in a similar dilemma. For two months I have eagerly anticipated interviewing Baroness Williams of Crosby (Shirley, as was) tonight at the Queen’s Hall, Hexham, as part of the town’s book festival.
Last Sunday I was laid low by a chest infection, a hacking, hurtful cough bad enough to cause me to miss my dominoes at the Red Lion. On Monday I visited the doctor then took to my bed, popping antibiotics and sucking on a lung-clearing inhaler.
My contact with humankind has been limited: I bumped into the Byreman at the chemist’s shop in Coldstream and he directed me out into the street “where we can talk in the fresh air and not surrounded by your bloody germs.“ What a friend!
My old agricultural pal Ronald ‘Demon’ Barber didn’t even notice my spluttering discomfort when we met as I travelled home via the Cornhill shop,
“Cereal prices are on the floor,” he growled. “Thank God for the EU money.”
Doubtless he’ll still be voting Conservative next Thursday, however!
Anyway, on the eve of my theatre date with the noble lady - and despite a second visit to the surgery for a change of medication - I’m still wheezing like a steam engine and scaring the local sheep with my bark.
So here’s my dilemma: we have a full house turning up tonight (so much so that Mrs B and her old school friend Mary Clegg will have to perch on chairs backstage), it’s too late to brief an understudy and I’m determined not to let anyone down, particularly Baroness Williams.
Besides, ‘Shirl the Pearl’, as we tabloid types used to label her, has a fascinating life story to tell.
The woman many believed would be Britain’s first woman prime minister abandoned the security of the Labour Cabinet to join the Gang of Four in setting up the Social Democrats, forerunners of today’s Lib-Dems. Easy to see that 29 years later - and one week from tonight - she might finally witness the breaking of the political mould.
But there‘s so much more to Shirley: for instance, did you KNOW she once worked as a waitress in Whitley Bay? Or that the one-time tomboy’s ambition to become an MP was, at 20 years of age, acerbically dismissed by Lady Astor with the words: “Not with THAT hair!”
So say a silent prayer that my tonsils hold out and that my coughing fits don’t drown out Baroness Williams and drive her audience to distraction. For this is one show that MUST go on.
Who, after all, could let a little thing like a chest cold cost him his front row view of history?
First published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne, April 30, 2010
Sez who? Well, my Daughter the Actress for one: dedicated to her art, she once gamely dragged a theatrical surgical boot upstage and down throughout a Tennessee Williams play, ignoring the torn knee ligaments her dedication brought on early in Act Two.
Fans of Queen, Pink Floyd and Three Dog Night understand the maxim, too; it booms out of their soundboxes through the eponymous singles those bands respectively produced.
Carrying on regardless may be courageous but it’s not always comforting. At the high point of one cultural expedition to the Hackney Empire to hear the Moldovan State Opera play La Boheme (a contest La Boheme won hands-down) ’Er Indoors and I suffered agonies for the lead tenor who missed his top notes and coughed over the lower range throughout the first act.
”I so sorry,” he pleaded, after stepping bravely through the curtain at the interval. “Haff sroat veddy bad, much hurt.” The politely sympathetic ovation that followed dried to a slow, horrified handclap when he added: “But neffer fear, I carry on!”
I find myself in a similar dilemma. For two months I have eagerly anticipated interviewing Baroness Williams of Crosby (Shirley, as was) tonight at the Queen’s Hall, Hexham, as part of the town’s book festival.
Last Sunday I was laid low by a chest infection, a hacking, hurtful cough bad enough to cause me to miss my dominoes at the Red Lion. On Monday I visited the doctor then took to my bed, popping antibiotics and sucking on a lung-clearing inhaler.
My contact with humankind has been limited: I bumped into the Byreman at the chemist’s shop in Coldstream and he directed me out into the street “where we can talk in the fresh air and not surrounded by your bloody germs.“ What a friend!
My old agricultural pal Ronald ‘Demon’ Barber didn’t even notice my spluttering discomfort when we met as I travelled home via the Cornhill shop,
“Cereal prices are on the floor,” he growled. “Thank God for the EU money.”
Doubtless he’ll still be voting Conservative next Thursday, however!
Anyway, on the eve of my theatre date with the noble lady - and despite a second visit to the surgery for a change of medication - I’m still wheezing like a steam engine and scaring the local sheep with my bark.
So here’s my dilemma: we have a full house turning up tonight (so much so that Mrs B and her old school friend Mary Clegg will have to perch on chairs backstage), it’s too late to brief an understudy and I’m determined not to let anyone down, particularly Baroness Williams.
Besides, ‘Shirl the Pearl’, as we tabloid types used to label her, has a fascinating life story to tell.
The woman many believed would be Britain’s first woman prime minister abandoned the security of the Labour Cabinet to join the Gang of Four in setting up the Social Democrats, forerunners of today’s Lib-Dems. Easy to see that 29 years later - and one week from tonight - she might finally witness the breaking of the political mould.
But there‘s so much more to Shirley: for instance, did you KNOW she once worked as a waitress in Whitley Bay? Or that the one-time tomboy’s ambition to become an MP was, at 20 years of age, acerbically dismissed by Lady Astor with the words: “Not with THAT hair!”
So say a silent prayer that my tonsils hold out and that my coughing fits don’t drown out Baroness Williams and drive her audience to distraction. For this is one show that MUST go on.
Who, after all, could let a little thing like a chest cold cost him his front row view of history?
First published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne, April 30, 2010
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