Three Puds and a Train…

 

A train of coincidences that is.

On Sunday night I watched the last episode of ‘Downton Abbey’ - Laura Carmichael was playing Lady Edith.  On Monday night – with nothing new to read, dipped into my old copy of Sir Peter Hall’s autobiography ‘Making an Exhibition of Myself.’

Last night I read in the Daily Telegraph that Sir Peter, as a member of the audience, had interrupted Laura Carmichael’s speech in ‘Uncle Vanya’ by calling out:

 

‘Stop, stop stop!  It doesn’t work and you don’t work.  It is not good enough.’

 

Yesterday – according to a report by Anita Singh:

‘The 81-year old issued an apology.

 “I am mortified that I unintentionally disrupted the final scene of ‘Uncle Vanya’ and I have sent a personal note to Laura Carmichael offering my apologies. I enjoyed the evening and her performance immensely and my remarks were in no way directed at her or the production.  Being rather aged, I dropped off for a moment and on being woken by my wife I was briefly disorientated’.

 Sir Peter Hall is six months younger than I am and I have followed his career for decades and seen many of his productions.  Some time ago we went with the Art’s Club to Bath to see his ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan. ’ To my shame I fell asleep during a scene with Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson.

Post prandial is often a snooze time for me, but the killer was a glass of wine at lunch.  So from then on, matinees were prefaced by no alcohol and strong coffee.

 I’m just so thankful that my lapses were comparatively quiet - apart from the odd snort.  I wonder if Sir Peter had had a hearty dinner.

 
The girls and I had lunch at The Bistro yesterday and the puds – we each tasted all three - were worth mentioning.  Jackie had an apricot and chocolate roulade with cream, Joy had white peach shortcake with cream and I had apple and cinnamon crumble with ice cream.  One is always given the option of cream, clotted cream, ice-cream or custard.
 

With the first course, in addition to the normal vegetables there is a choice of rice, mash, roast potatoes, chips or new potatoes.  The girls had a special pensioner’ lunch of chicken and leek pie but I wanted to try a dish which the charming owner had been describing.  An African beef stew with lots of herbs and cocoanut milk.  It was very tasty but more meat than I could manage so the girls tried it also.  So useful to have such a good place at the bottom of the lane.