~7~ The Dream

Last Friday was a busy day indeed. Even as I finished my espresso I felt myself lifting away, making the transition to my other life for that evening was family visit to see Judi Dench's Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose in Kingston.

pic by JoséPedro

Emmeline didn't want to go but I said to her

Be advised fair maid
To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.

Astonished, she got in the car straightaway.

The production was not wholly excellent but neither was it poor and most laudably it was clear and afterwards in the bar I asked the children - as is my wont - whether anything in particular had caught their attention.

"It was a happy ending", said Gabriel, the youngest and most idle of the three.
"It was a happy ending", said Emmeline, the middle one, and sharpest of the three "but only because Demetrius was never disenchanted - he ends up with Helena because he still has that flower-juice in his eyes"
"Poor Helena", said Ernestina, the oldest and most romantic of the three
"Not necessarily: flower love is bound to be stronger than the normal kind"

I smiled, for Emmeline is sharp. Sharp but also wrong; Helena had explained it herself three hours before

How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.

Rough translation -  true love is a meeting of minds. two minds, true minds.
So Demetrius enchanted is Demetrius no longer: no soulmate he, who has lost his mind, who has lost his soul.

"Is that right?", said Gabriel after some pause, "he never got disenchanted?? Do you think Shakespeare forgot?"

~6~ Lunch

Sophia's Restaurant

I don't spend all of my time mooching about dreaming of imaginary lovers and boat-building in my garage......

For instance last Friday I went out for a long lunch with an old friend from university whom I hadn't seen for what felt like ages.

Men are fom Mars and women are from Venus: I talked about bankers' bonuses, the prospect of a hung parliament, the implausibility of homeothapy and the unexpected expense of unversity tuition fees.

She told me of her worries about her children and amused me with stories of embarrassing and humiliating illnesses afflicting her high powered and wealthy husband whom, she knows, I find intimidating.

Then we discovered we had both recently read and cried over the same book, and on that subject our minds connected and briefly we remembered old times, things past and might-have-beens and our words unspoken hinted at still-could-do's, for we are much older than we once were, and therefore far less sensible.

When I got back to my desk my co-worker Pardeep intercepted me gleefully.
"I saw you having lunch in t'window", he smiled (he's from Yorkshire), "don't worry tha secret's safe wi' me" (yes, actually, he does have a pantomime accent)

"What do mean?"
"Don't worry, I won't tell your missus th' were 'aving dinner wi' a young lady"
"Lunch", I said automatically "and she's the same age as me"
"Aye, right, that's why tha were fawnin' all over 'er"
I told Pardeep that anything untoward existed only in his imagination.
"Ay, and in your imagination too, I reckon"

What's the chances of ones imaginary lover being rumbled?

[Some accents in this blog have been changed for reasons of comedy]

~ Another Lunch

I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground and there was a tiny, priggish, warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collins told me it was seemly to hold back. But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.