Compare the Marvels: Simples (From Bucks Free Press)
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The perfect wife and mother, Rebecca runs a home, a village magazine and is working on her novel. She does not visit the gym or jog but is in amazingly good shape. She enjoys photography, playing the piano and arguing with the TV. She lives in Amersham with her husband and youngest child (aged nine). Her eldest, now 26, lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
Compare the Marvels: Simples
8:32pm Sunday 4th September 2011
I’ve had a misdirected and sometimes wild youth. Led down dangerous paths, influenced by people even sillier than me; at other times choosing unwise/ (‘exciting’) activities of my own free will. I thought at the time they were the right things to be doing to ‘live life to the full’ Some time in June, my daughter planted some straggly-looking strawberry and tomato plants, (10p each on the reject shelf in Tesco). I took home a couple of fuchsias and she planted lettuces and carrots from seed too. We didn’t have high hopes.
We began watching Gardener’s World. By late July the tomatoes had been re-potted twice and the strawberries gave their first fruit. My squeals must have grated on the quiet maturity of our neighbourhood. After all, I am a grown up. And they were only strawberries.
We returned after two weeks away to find small modest bunches of green tomatoes on her plants. This time she squealed. To add to this, the cuttings I’d taken from around Amersham had taken and were (are) looking ravishing.
Whilst away, I would watch the fishermen go out at 4.00 in the morning and sat after dark on our balcony to watch the sky. I saw the full moon rise three nights in a row and saw numerous shooting stars.
And the icing on the cake, on 8th October, the newly-discovered (to me) pianist Alexander Ardakov is returning to perform at Dr. Challoners Little Chalfont). Chopin, Liszt and – who could ask for more – Beethoven.
All this in the space of a couple of months. The lyrics of the duet from The Sound of Music come to mind: ‘Somewhere in my youth or childhood / I must have done something good’ I feel it’s all too splendid and someone better than me should have all this.
I didn’t have the same reaction when I got my degree result though or when I’ve secured various ‘important’ jobs. Or even at my two weddings.
You could argue that the plants are just doing what plants do or that the sky is always lovely and so on. But that doesn’t detract from the true joy I felt on seeing edible things bursting from horticultural runts my daughter had selected. The glory must be hers.
So have I gone through a large chunk of my life aiming at the wrong things? Celebrating the ordinary, toasting the mundane? It’s possible.
When I saw Ardakov for the first time last year, I promoted him in the newsletter I was producing. As a postscript, I added that as I was learning a specially arranged version of Chopin’s Nocturne, I knew I was going to be impressed by his playing.
As an encore to the evening featuring (Tchaikovsky and Scriabin), he played Chopin’s Nocturne. I was humbled and silenced with awe and not a little infatuation. How couldn’t I be? I’ve since convinced myself he played it for me!
Land, sea, sky and music. It doesn’t get more primitive. Yet I don’t think there’s much more spectacular or more moving than all this.
Alexander Ardakov Piano Recital alexander-ardakov-piano-recital
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The perfect wife and mother, Rebecca runs a home, a bad temper and is working on her novel. She enjoys photography, playing the piano and likes almost anything that's out of fashion and uncool. She lives in Amersham with her husband and youngest child (aged ten). Her eldest, now 27, lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
