By the time you read this I will be 79, but according to last week’s JC I am 75, which is amusing because for years, whatever my age, I have started my speeches by saying: “I am a 59-year-old actress – that’s 69 if you read the Guardian and 39 if you read the Jewish Chronicle.” It always got a laugh, but last week life reflected art and you lot really did knock four years off my life.
I mean, thanks for the nepo big-up but I never had a problem with age, and now that I can still peel my own satsuma whilst whistling ‘Yes we have no bananas’, I have become one of those biddies who proudly extoll their age at the slightest drop of a freedom pass.
“I’m 79!” I shout, waiting for the check-out girl/masseuse/ casting director to gasp in disbelief and coo, “Never! I don’t believe it! I’d have had you in your early sixties, tops. Here, Rene – come and look at this lady. How old would you think she was, eh?”
In Israel they give a card which entitles you to no queuing over the age of 80, in banks, in supermarkets, at airports. How about adopting that in the UK, Keir? Yeah - and throw the ruddy winter fuel allowance back in while you’re at it.
It all sounds so baby boomer, so post-war doesn’t it? The luckiest generation ever, we were (we are): what with the benefits and the free milk and free national health care, the never-never, rock and roll, the pill, Sunday night at the London Palladium, Crunchie bars and the 12 inch telly. It was all so good that our slogan was ‘We’ve never had it so good.’
To be honest, I got quite tearful watching the VE Day coverage. There was the music and the marching bands – whoever thought up the idea of a soldier on a horse banging kettle drums, I wondered. It is bonkers. What does he do when the charge takes off - throw his drum sticks at the enemy?
Then there were the survivors of Nazism, with their calm reason over madness, who kept stiff upper lips for fifty years, accepting their lot with ideal grace and fearsome flashbacks. These days, Gen Z is offered counselling for a stolen bike.
Ruth Kleber, age 101, smart as paint, articulate as an academic, wise as Solomon and utterly beautiful in her own skin, sat on the sofa opposite Sophie Raworth and made me proud to be part of the same DNA.
We do these occasions so well it’s like a warm bath, so Ruth Kleber’s warning that we must not celebrate war but get around tables and talk was never more prescient.
I loved the great Anne Reid, too, on the same sofa with her Last Tango in Halifax co-star Derek Jacobi, making an original point that her father and two brothers were away fighting in various parts of the world all the time she was growing up, so that one night she was woken up and brought downstairs to meet a man she didn’t know with the words, “This is your father, Anne.”
Then there was King Charles standing and saluting for an hour or more. Then his daughter-in-law, the flawless Kate. I realised that both of them were now survivors themselves. At the time, the man I love was walking in the New Forest with his Israeli university chums, which is a story of lasting friendship in itself, so, alone in the house, I murmured, ‘Hang on to this happiness, kid, because you’re in for a bumpy ride.’
Peace and reconciliation were on my mind when I visited St Ethelburga’s church in Bishopsgate in the City of London. It was founded in 1250, 775 years ago, and rebuilt after the Fire of London. In 1993 it was somewhat carelessly blown up by the IRA in an attempt to destroy a major bank.
It has now been lovingly rebuilt, saving the medieval pillars and original features and serves as an interfaith centre which can be hired. There is a walled garden with a raised garden of lillies, around a fountain and, most impressive of all, an actual Bedouin tent of cream canvas with traditional carpets, window seating all around and the words peace in many languages printed in a frieze all around. Shalom was right up there with salaam.
My son and I were there for a concert in what was the knave of flamenco percussive music by the Anglo-Turkish musician Jonjan. At the first chords my hair stood up on end. He told us that the name of the flick of fingers when strumming to make a percussive sound is called a rasgueado. Then he demonstrated at the precise moment that a church bell resoundingly rang out. Boy was that magic!
What’s more, it brought the whole audience together in a moment of live, shared joy. Such is the power of music allied to communal activity. The guitarist praised the ‘art’ of busking, which he had practiced all over the world, as a noble occupation, a simple exchange of money for art.
I feel so bad for beggars these days, when nobody carries money any more. A flat white and a croissant costs about seven quid, so I try to carry around at least the equivalent. There, but for seven decades and a change of direction by a lunatic despot, go us all.
I’m writing this in my evening gown, after a performance of jazz and poetry to raise money for the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park. In my company was my thirteen year old granddaughter Ava, a young poet; Thelma Ruby, a centenarian actress; Jacqui Dankworth and Charlie Wood, jazz royalty personified; and poets Jeremy Robson and Pauline Prior-Pitt. On saxophone was Art Themen, who used to double as an orthopaedic surgeon by day.
The theme was time passing and, yes, our audience were saga - but definitely not gaga. I learned, not for the first time, that audiences react with sheer joy when you don’t patronise them. They were pin-drop silent for the most complex poetry, laughed on cue at all the jokes and were really up for it for Jacqui’s wild, Moorish flamenco version of The Windmills of Your Mind. In a moment of madness, I leapt up and performed Sevillianos on my own, which sort of brought the house down. We were then truly mind boggled by Thelma who, at a hundred, was the only cast member not using crib sheets.
What’s 79 after all? Just a prime number waiting not to be divided.
