Page 39 - Through a glass brightly

Better stop - you shouldn’t have got me started! And you and I, Mags, shared the coalman, the milkman and the rag and bone man! Down Sherrards Way in the 1940s!
Monday, 20th April
From Ann at 22.20
I enjoyed the bird symphony (a video circulated by Glenda). The overgrown straggling white rose in the corner of my little garden is just bursting beautifully into flower. In the foliage, a blackbird has built her nest. She probably chose my garden because most of the other gardens in the terrace are paved over - and one day when I was doing a little gardening, she found a juicy worm where I had been turning over the soil. This is the first time a bird has nested in my garden, so is rather special for me. But not without anxiety, as the rose bush stands near to the wall which runs along the backs of our gardens along the terrace, separating our gardens from those of the next street. It is used as an autobahn by the local squirrel(s) and cats. So I fear one day they may spot the nest in the foliage and attack..... Fingers crossed.
And on a separate theme, did any Paris lovers (I address this particularly to Ruth and Val M., who once visited to me when I lived in Paris - those were the days!) see the BBC4 programme last week about the restoration process for Notre Dame? Amazing - but a gigantic work.
Wednesday, 22nd April 2020
From Ann at 09.20
I see that the National Theatre is screening Twelfth Night from this evening. This play has a special place in my heart. I (along with Ruth, Val M. and Pat, I think) studied it in extra lessons on Wednesday afternoons for O-level English literature. Also, it was the school play in our lower Sixth Year, produced by Miss Iliff and Mrs D'Arcy.
The National Theatre has one similarity with our school production: Malvolio is played by a woman.
From Ruth at 10.27
Thought you’d like to see the programme for that well remembered production of ‘Twelfth Night’. What year was it? They never put the year on programmes. I remember us all changing in the laboratories next to the main hall – since burnt down, of course. I also remember the fun of producing the Pyramus and Thisbe wall scene at the end of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in one of Mrs Darcy’s English lessons. She was a fun teacher, wasn’t she? Used to give us debating classes in the lunch hour, but left to have a baby, I think. Not many of our teachers left to have babies. Were we in the Upper IVth then or Lower V?
We’re celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday today! How appropriate to be remembering that performance. Will definitely be watching the NT performance tonight. Try the BBC filmed version too. Quite a contrast, and ultra-modernised.
From Pat at 10.36
Thank you, Ann, for the National Theatre info. What memories
you've sparked... I well remember those Eng. Lit. classes. My
father (as an English specialist and teacher) was incandescent
when he heard that Eng. Lit. wasn't an option on our timetable.
Whether it was his intervention or not, I don't recall, but 4 of us
(I think) ended up in the extra class. Who taught us? Val M.'s diary would no doubt reveal all. We did ‘Hard Times’ too, didn't we?
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