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.
