Home Diary 2013

November

On Tuesday 5 Helen moved again to a flat in Hendon, just round the corner from Middlesex University, where she has just started a degree course in mental health nursing. Teresa went to London for the day to help. In contrast to her previous move in July, the ‘man with the van’ (two of them in fact) turned out to be slow and grumpy – to be fair, parking was tricky – but eventually she was installed in a newly converted studio flat, just five minutes walk from the campus.

Helen’s living space (above left) and the en suite shower room (right)

Last year Teresa joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as an associate member, which provides certain advantages in booking, and hence had obtained tickets for this year’s production of Richard II, which quickly sold out owing to David Tennant’s appearance in the title role. We went on Thursday 14, taking Helen with us.

We arrived in time to look round the recently refurbished theatre, before taking our seats in the stalls, not too far behind the ‘super seats’. David Tennant gave an unusual reading of the part, not least in his appearance, which contrasted strongly with the down-to-earth manliness of the other main protagonists, notably Bolingbroke himself. We thoroughly enjoyed the production, though could have wished the seats had been more comfortable, as the interval was almost two hours into the play. Teresa suffered her usual fate of having two unusually large people in front of her – they also were the only people in the house who gave a standing ovation, thus completely blocking the view of the curtain call for those behind.

Our only discordant note was once more going wrong on the way home. Mindful of the fact that our satnav had taken us a long way (albeit a fast way) round after our last visit, we overcompensated by ignoring one instruction and ended up on a very long way (and also a rather slow way) coming home this time.

Above (left to right) Roger and Teresa at the entrance; Teresa makes a ghostly contribution to the costume display; Helen has a drink in the bar

The curtain call – Richard is the shimmering white figure centre stage; the three a capella singers are visible top right

Otherwise, we continued to visit Oxford, where Jay skated regularly and Teresa occasionally, while closer to home Roger played bowls, both short mat in the village hall and the longer game at Littleton.

Towards the end of the month we harvested our first crop from a recently planted apple tree (see left). But, from a kind neighbour, we also had a more substantial gift of Bramleys which made exceedingly good pies.

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