Tag: King Lear

MEDITATION 81

The days are getting shorter again and autumn has arrived with its blustery winds and changeable weather – ‘sunshine and rain at once’ as Shakespeare comments in his play ‘King Lear’.  Fallen leaves are strewn across my front lawn. A sign that summer is over. I am reminded of the transience of all things as I sit here by my candle. Perhaps this is appropriate as I have a birthday approaching at the weekend. Another year in my life is fast ending.

 I have reached the autumn of my life. As Shakespeare says in Sonnet 73:

                ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

                 When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

                 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

                 Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

 As I approach my 69th year, I realise that I am leaving the autumn of my years and nearing the threshold of winter!  But I should not be thinking of my future. As my dear friend Marcus writes in his own ‘Meditations’: ‘Confine yourself to the present.’ In other words: live in the moment. He also encourages me when he writes, ‘There is nothing to fear in the termination, the pause and the changes of your whole life.’

Change can sadden us however. I was reminded of this recently on a visit to Stratford-Upon- Avon.

Whenever I go to Stratford, one of my rituals is to frequent Anne Hathaway’s Tea Room in the High Street. It is a historic building dating from the 17th Century, with wooden beamed ceilings, oak floors, a baker’s shop at the front and a large garden at the back. It is named after Shakespeare’s wife of course.  The tea room originally opened in 1931 and has been a fixture of town life ever since.  I have often brought friends there on my visits for breakfast or tea and cake, generally in the beautiful garden.

However, on my most recent visit, in conversation with Sarah, the new owner, I learnt that the establishment may have to close. The previous owner fell foul of the lockdown and had to give up the business and sadly, despite Sarah being an expert baker (especially in Tudor recipes), business hasn’t picked up again so well since she took over. The proliferation of coffee shops in Stratford obviously hasn’t helped either. Coffee shops have become highly fashionable now. If you happen to be in Stratford soon do go and visit. It appears to still be open at present!

As I sat in the garden that morning after I chatted to her, the idea that the Tea Room may not be there on my next visit quite upset me. I will probably not return to Stratford  until next year and by then it may have gone.

You see, the Tea Room has been a constant in my infrequent visits over the years. I first went there in 1964, when I was 11 years old. 1964 was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.  I was on a day trip by coach with my mum and my grandmother from London (where we were having a week’s holiday). I was very excited as I had lapped up everything about Shakespeare so far that year. There were a lot of programmes on the TV because of the 400th and some of his plays too. I remember there were several Shakespeare posters in my primary school as well, including a huge poster of the imagined interior of the Globe Theatre, where many of his plays were performed. Strangely, many years later, I found a copy of this poster at the school where I taught and in pristine condition too.  Nowadays of course you can see a reconstructed version of the theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe, at Bankside, near to where the real Globe was sited, by the river Thames, on London’s South Bank.

I  also remember borrowing a copy of ‘Tales from Shakespeare’ from the public library. The book was illustrated with photos from productions at the theatre in Stratford.

Sadly we didn’t have time to see a play on our visit, but I remember we did see the theatre by the river and I picked up a brochure about the performances, which I greatly treasured later. We also went to Shakespeare’s birthplace and Anne Hathaway’s cottage. Then we had high tea in the Tea Room.

The Tea Room made a real impression on me as a child. We sat upstairs overlooking the street.  I remember the dark but warm interior with its beamed ceiling and the large fireplace and the brass plates and horse brasses adorning the wide mantelpiece. I don’t think there was a fire burning in the grate but then it was summer. The stairs and oak floors creaked as we walked on them, despite the old carpets. The tables and chairs looked old too, like being in a farmhouse. It was all very atmospheric, like stepping back in time. I imagined Shakespeare himself might walk up the wooden stairs at any moment.

High tea seems to have disappeared from menus now. Perhaps because we are in the age of ‘all day menus’.  It was different from afternoon tea with sandwiches and cakes and scones, which is now very much in vogue. High tea could be sandwiches but could also be a light meal such as Welsh rarebit, scrambled or poached egg  on toast, or beans on toast, or a pasty or pie or even fish or fish fingers and chips or cheese flan, our British version of quiche. I can’t remember what I ate but everything in the Tea Room was cosy – the cosiness of childhood.

You may be asking yourself why I am waxing lyrical about a tea room. After all I can’t imagine anyone waxing lyrical about a Starbucks or a Costa coffee shop. Although a friend of mine did develop an affection for a Costa coffee shop at a service station near her during the lockdowns. She would go there in the car and buy a coffee and a newspaper and sit in her car with them. It was her daily excursion, her little ritual, to break up the monotony of the day.

Along with watching productions at the theatre, strolling along the river Avon, seeing the historical sights, a few drinks in the Dirty Duck (the actors’ pub) and sharing all these with friends, the tea room has always been part of the Stratford experience for me, part of my Stratford. My visits have been very infrequent over the years, though more recently, they have been an annual event, but as I mentioned earlier, the tea room has always been there. I also have happy memories of taking friends there over the years.. Most important it was there when I was a child,  at the source of the Shakespeare stream which has flowed through my life.

As you may have gathered, Stratford is a special place for me. I am always excited when I go there. I have even sometimes considered moving there. I said this to one of my students on a trip to the theatre there a long time ago. He made the sensible comment that Stratford wouldn’t be the same if I lived there. It is good that there are places that we always enjoy visiting, that we like to return to, that give us ‘a shot in the arm’, as he put it. 

I would add that it is good to visit places that always speak to us, that not only refresh us, but also speak to our soul. The poet W.H.Auden called such places ‘numinous’, meaning ‘a place that is spiritual’ , that takes us to another plane, that speaks to our spirit.

A place that speaks to us, even over a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 60

I have been thinking about the stained glass window again, as I sit here by the steady flame of my candle. In my last meditation, I mentioned a visit to the beautiful church of St Pierre in Montmartre in Paris several years ago. I explained how the panes of different colours in a stained glass window which I saw there reminded me of all my friends and loved ones. The window also reminded me that I am not alone. Isn’t this one of the positive features of these long months of lockdown and uncertainty, that we have been reminded that we are not alone, and that we have all been working our way through this most difficult of times together?

However, as I reflect upon it now, that stained glass window has taken on another meaning. The window is me. It is myself in all the different facets of my life, including my relationships and friendships of course. I have also come to realise that at certain times in my life, I have been polishing one pane in that window at the expense of others.

This is certainly true of my career, enjoyable and fulfilling as it has been. Because I have had a long career in mainly one school (with only one year in another one!) and especially because for over two thirds of my thirty- seven years there, I ran my department on my own,  I came to be defined by my career. There were times when work was in charge of me  rather than the other away around. It is a common mistake if you are committed to your occupation to a high level: call it a vocation, if you will. Perhaps this was exacerbated by living alone, without a partner. In other words, I was polishing that one pane in the window until the glass was wearing thin, or rather I was. It was part of my mid-life crisis when I became 50 years old, and I am sure others have had a similar experience too.

At that time, during the crisis, I became aware of being too consumed by my career and then I began to polish a few more panes of glass in my window and to lead a more integrated life. I was able to develop this further in my final years at the school when I relinquished my role as head of department and became a part time member of staff and, as a result, had more spare time. Then, after my retirement, I continued directing and going into school as necessary with more spare time still.

Nevertheless, I still felt defined by my role in school. I was still polishing that pane of glass to some extent. I couldn’t stop myself. It was a habit with me. Moreover, it had become an image of myself. It is a difficult image to shake off. I did not realise how ingrained it was in my consciousness until I finally left the school last February.

I call it my ‘King Lear’ syndrome, after Shakespeare’s tragic hero, who though he gave up the throne, could not give up being King. ‘Aye, every inch a King’ he says in his madness on the heath in the storm. I do not think I am slipping into madness or have been guilty of his rages for that matter, but the problem remains: retirement can be tough if you are defined by your work role or become aware that you are and then try to divest yourself of it, to start a new life. A friend said to me, ‘It is difficult to live in the shadows, when you are used to the limelight!’

You may remember that the window I described in my last meditation was of a modern, abstract design. It was not dominated by a scene from the Bible or an incident from a saint’s life, as stained glass windows in churches normally are. There might be intricate foliage etched around the edges of the scene or in a bigger window, smaller scenes from the Bible or the saint’s life in squares or roundels might decorate the top and bottom of the main picture.

Perhaps my own personal window would also be dominated by one scene in the centre: Neil, with a large copy of Shakespeare in his hands and a group of totally attentive students at his feet. Or Neil, holding a script whilst directing a couple of eager students in a scene.  It wouldn’t be a window of Saint Neil – I am definitely no saint. Neither would it be a stained glass window of a school production when I played Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s ‘Importance of Being Earnest’!

But no: the window that impressed me was not dominated by one image. In fact there was no one image at all: it had an abstract pattern and the glass was multi-coloured and of different shapes and sizes.  It was multi-faceted as we all are, if we really look at ourselves.

I have recently been enjoying a beautiful pink camellia shrub in my garden. It is near my kitchen window. The flowers tend to last for a month or so and are fading now. Their pale pink blooms will soon be gone for another year. So I have been savouring them in their delicate glory. I inherited the shrub when I first moved in, 27 years ago. The flowers look pink from a distance, but when I look at them more closely, some of the blooms are a hybrid of a lighter and a darker shade, so dark it is almost red. There was one flower this year that was completely dark pink.

I pick them and put them into tiny vases on my kitchen table, which gives me the opportunity to really examine them. Actually, the petals are not completely pink. They have a thin white border and, if you look really closely, behind the pink of each petal is a white membrane making an intricate variegated pattern. At the centre of the flower is a deep golden stamen. So they are not just pink at all.

Just as we are not just one thing as individuals. Hopefully this last year will have enabled us to sit back and reflect on ourselves a little and may have led us to appreciate that there are many different facets to our lives, other than the persistent drives that fuel our interior selves; that make us deaf and blind to the truth of ourselves in all its stained glass splendour.       

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

 If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neilus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. 

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius