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Peter Sarah evening
26 June 2005
One of the things I love about living up here, it’s eleven o’clock and the sun’s only just got around to setting. It’ll be back by three. Party animal, it never can sleep in the summer.
And how is it that I saw the sunset tonight, me who’s been so sick so long and should have been abed? ‘Cos I was out, that’s how, and walking home. Two whole days without regurgitation, and today I have actually been taking solids: toast and honey, specifically. Can’t work out whether this is a convalescent or an adolescent diet, but I think the two are pretty much the same thing anyway (I seem to have spent the bulk of my teenage in recovery, mostly from being a teenager), and certainly both take their inspiration from the nursery. Besides which, I like toast, and I like good honey.
So, with all that energy & fibre inside me and seeming to plan on staying there, I did venture forth tonight to Peter Sarah’s memorial concert at the Theatre Royal. Something of a mixed bag, inevitably, Scenes from the Shows and you’re never going to be excited by all of them; but the Northern Sinfonia gave us a lovely Brandenburg 3 (with a link: Bradley the first violinist was also playing at Joe’s celebration last week, which only really underscored how many people the arts community in Newcastle has lost this year. Peter, Julia, Joe, Keith - it’s enough, already...), we had a fabulous pas de deux from the Rambert and Barrie Rutter was as witty, as charming, as loud as always. And I made it there, I made it through and I made it home; which is good news, because it’s Keith’s funeral tomorrow and I wasn’t going to miss that anyway, but I’ll be glad not to be playing invalid or spewing all over the Assembly Rooms floor. Attention-seeking behaviour, we really don’t need it.
© Chaz Brenchley 2005
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.