MEDITATION 91

As I sit here by my candle, I am recalling another candle, a candle in a church beside a grave. The church is Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-Upon-Avon. I was visiting there again a few weeks ago on a weekend break. I have been inside the church many times. It’s a kind of pilgrimage for me as the grave is where Shakespeare is buried.

His grave is inside the church behind the main altar. In a separate grave beside him is his wife Anne, who outlived him, and there are graves of other members of his family beside them. The church is situated by the River Avon and the large stained glass window behind Shakespeare’s grave looks out onto it. So, he is probably laid as close to the river as possible.

You might imagine a pilgrimage to be arduous, involving a long and difficult journey on rough roads but my pilgrimage isn’t like that. It’s a lovely walk from the Theatre along a shady pathway by the river, where the willow trees reach down to the water: a walk Shakespeare must have taken himself. Of course there wasn’t a theatre in the town then: performances took place in inn yards or in the Town Hall. The troupe of strolling players, the Earl of Worcester’s Men, appeared there quite regularly. Shakespeare probably saw them when he was a boy and got the acting bug.

Just before you get to the church there is a dell, which provides a grassy space where modern strolling players can perform: students, schoolchildren and amateur drama groups from around the country in shortened versions of his plays. You can make your way to the church through the graveyard and along the avenue of trees which leads to the church door.

Whenever I stand in front of Shakespeare’s grave, I reflect for a few moments. There is always a posy or bunch flowers on the grave. I always mean to bring some myself but never do. Perhaps I will next time. But I do say thank you. After all, he has enriched my life so much. As I have mentioned in these meditations before, Shakespeare is a stream running through my life, just as the River Avon runs through the town and ran through his own life too.

I remember visiting the church once when I was on a course with Royal Shakespeare Company’s Education department. I had stayed in an actor friend’s cottage in the village of Loxley nearby. I got to Stratford an hour before the course began, as buses were infrequent. So I called into the church which was quiet and empty – too early for tourists. The church had just opened for the day. It was very still and so very intimate standing there beside the grave: just Shakespeare and myself in the church, or so it seemed. Since then it has always seemed like that, just Shakespeare and me, even though the church may be quite busy behind me and visitors may be standing either side of me. Somehow despite that, I am able to zone in on him.

On that particular morning, I remember standing there and apologising for my production of ‘Julius Caesar’ at school a few months earlier. It was a good concept -a modern costume production – but a bit of a mess in places. This was partly because I was directed two other plays virtually at the same time. I was rather over ambitious that year. Of my three school productions of ‘Caesar’ over the years it was the second and the least successful. As I stood there, I wondered how many other directors (or actors for that matter) had stood there and apologised too: ‘Sorry for messing up your play, William!’ (I can think of a few that should have done!)

But then I thought: we did take the production to Hungary, where it did improve, and how wonderful that we did, along with four other plays of his we’d taken since we first went there in 1990. So I hope he was pleased. He never went there himself with his own company. As far as I recall, the first Shakespeare play to be performed there was ‘Hamlet’, in translation of course, in 1770.

I am sure he would have appreciated our Drama tours as he used to tour himself with his acting company, as well as appearing at the Globe on Bankside in London and at court. With him it was setting up in inn yards, with us it was setting up in schools (and eventually theatres). One thing I learnt from our school tours was that Shakespeare is so portable. You can perform him anywhere as long as you have some kind of stage, ideally a platform – and an audience.

I remember we once performed ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in a prestigious school in Budapest. It may have been prestigious but it was also a very old building and poorly equipped. This was 30 years ago so I am sure it has improved since then. We performed the play in a gym with a platform at one end and no lighting to speak of. We had to create the magic of the forest ourselves with Shakespeare’s words and our colourful costumes. However, Puck and the Fairies did ‘fly in’ from wall bars on gym ropes! I also remember some of their students sitting in the back row of the audience and following the performance with copies of the play in English, which I found very moving. I imagine Shakespeare would have quite enjoyed being with us on tour. He would have been an extra pair of hands in rehearsals if nothing else!

After I visited the grave a few weeks ago, I sat down for a moment in the quiet side chapel. A volunteer in the church came over to me and began to talk to me. She asked me if it was my first visit, so I replied that I had visited the church many times and told her a little about my teaching career. When I explained to her that Shakespeare was a major part of my life, it was as if I has realised it for the first time. It made me stop and think of the enormity of what I had told her. Yes he has been a major strand in my life. He has been an inspiration and an impetus and at the core of my teaching.

He has energised me, indeed perhaps I have fed off his energy, even though his was spent 400 years ago. I was reminded of this by the production I saw that evening. It was the comedy ‘As You Like It’. The premise of the production was that a group of veteran actors were getting together for a kind of reunion in a rehearsal room as they had first performed the play together in 1978. Despite the age of most the cast, what energy they had dashing around the stage and doing a dance number at one point. What experience too on that stage: the lines were crystal clear and the key comic and emotional moments were too.Most of all the ‘young lovers’ convinced us despite their age. And the production created a warm glow in the audience at the end as all Shakespeare’s comedies should.

How did Shakespeare cope with being retired? I thought that in the church. As far as we know he left the London theatres in 1613 at retired to Stratford where he died in 1616. What were his last three years like for him, especially if he still had so much creative energy? Or was he burnt out, or sick? Or was he slowly losing his mind to dementia? I have a feeling that underneath his great tragedy, ‘King Lear’ lies his own fear of losing his mind. Perhaps he was done with theatre, perhaps he’d had enough. Perhaps he had walked away and quietly settled into retirement. It was so long ago. We will never know anyway.

I know that I have found it difficult to be serene about my retirement. But sitting in that church the other morning, I did wonder about his. While I sat there and when I talked with the volunteer, the thought came to me that my work is done. My work is done. I have retired from the teaching profession.

But I am still teaching: I am giving a course n a week’s time at Swanwick Writers’ Summer School. And Shakespeare is still with me.

Marcus Aurelius writes in his own Meditations, ‘ What is your profession? Being a good man.’ I would amend that to ‘Trying to be a good man.’ For sometimes it is difficult to be good. But it is a profession we never retire from.

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MEDITATION 66

The days are becoming shorter now and the evening air is chill as winter, in the guise of autumn, stealthily approaches. I have lit my candle earlier than usual to write my meditation as the skies are darkening earlier. As the season changes, summer travels seem a long way away, even if they were only a few weeks ago. They have receded into memory, memories enlivened hopefully by photographs.

As I gaze at the flame’s light, my mind has gone back to a very different kind of light and another memory of my stay in Castle Thirlstane in the Scottish Borders a few weeks ago. I am remembering a thin pale light in the dark, not from a candle or a lantern (as would befit a historic castle) but from a mobile phone.

The journey from the Castle to Lauder, the nearest village, is straightforward on foot. On our first evening, my friend Simon and I walked down the long drive, passing the field with grazing sheep I mentioned in my last blog and then another two fields with corralled horses on each side of the path and a field of cattle beyond. We then veered to the right and ascended a small but steep hill which took us into Lauder’s high street. What could be simpler? And a delightful saunter in the sunshine before supper, too.

However, the walk back after our meal was very different. As we left the high street with its street lights, we slowly walked down the steep little hill again but into enveloping darkness. It was pitch black ahead of us until we could see the lights of the castle in the distance as we tentatively turned the bend. I have often wondered what it would be like to be a character in a Gothic horror tale and now I was experiencing it: walking on foot in the sombre darkness of night, my only beacon, the light from a window in a looming castle as I drew closer. It was a scene worthy of Mary Shelley and ‘Frankenstein’, Charlotte Bronte and ‘Jane Eyre’ or Edgar Alan Poe. I was truly under the ‘cloak of darkness’ and at last I understood the meaning of that cliche.

Except that the lighted castle window wasn’t our only beacon. My friend Simon was using his mobile phone screen to light us on the pathway. Eventually we could see a glimmer of another little oblong light. It was as if this light in the distance was signalling or answering the little oblong light in my friend’s hand. The light was from the keypad which opened the wooden gate to the castle drive. Once we were there and put the code onto the keypad, the gate opened to us, in a very slow, eerie Gothic manner, to reveal the final stretch of our nocturnal walk to the side entrance of the castle, where our apartment was situated.

On that first walk home to the castle, we were so intent on finding our way that we hardly noticed the night sky except it’s gloomy pall as we commenced our descent from the high street. Walking in that darkness and trying to see the ground under my feet made me feel a little vulnerable despite my friend at my side. I felt uneasy as I couldn’t see the path ahead of me clearly. One of my foibles is that I have a fear of falling, and fear of failing too, if truth be known. The answer is to slow down and take one step at a time, as I have had to do over the last eighteen months, indeed, as we all have had to do. We haven’t been able to see the path ahead clearly in the pandemic gloom. Fortunately we now seem to be emerging from it slowly.

I cannot remember when I last walked in such complete darkness without street lights. I do have a vivid memory of walking in the dark in the countryside when I was a teenager. I was a member of Teeside Youth Theatre then, when I was in the Sixth Form. A group of us were on a weekend to Stratford – Upon -Avon in the summer holidays. We saw two plays in two days, I remember. Some of us also wanted to go for a midnight ramble along the streets of Stratford and ended up in some barely lit lanes till there were no streetlights at all and we were in a small wood or field. The place is probably all built up now as my teenage years were a long time ago! It was a magical walk, a kind of enchantment. I had a sense of Shakespeare whenever we ambled. Perhaps it was my youthful excitement at being there, along the lanes and paths and fields he may have trod. I was every impressionable then. No – I still get that sense of Shakespeare in and around Stratford at times when I visit. I had no fear of falling then, wandering around in the dark with my fellow actors. But of course youth was holding me up.

We had supper in Lauder again on the final night of our holiday. So, once more we had to make our way back to the castle in the dark. This time I was more relaxed about it. We stopped to look at the night sky sprinkled with glittering stars. Simon pointed out to me the Plough constellation and some of the others. He gave me quite an astronomy lesson as we looked up into the clear night sky. He pointed to the North Star, which I found interesting as it is mentioned in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’. ‘I am constant as the Northern Star,’ says Caesar ironically to the Senate, a few moments before he is assassinated. I remember the line well, having directed the play three times. I also played Caesar myself in the second of those productions and remember enjoying the speech. It suggests total confidence based on absolute power. So different from keeping order in a classroom – or trying to!

Looking up at the North Star in the night sky, it was larger and grander than the other stars clustered around it: like Caesar, at that moment in the play, surrounded by the senators. Perhaps Shakespeare gazed up at it in Stratford, as I was doing now in Scotland, and perhaps it gave him the image he needed to describe Caesar’s power and total self-belief. Perhaps, he stood in that field where I stood on my Youth Theatre ramble.

Looking up at the night sky made me realise, of course, that I am not in my own universe, another trait of mine! I belong to a far more expansive one, beyond comprehension. I am one tiny being in a huge cosmos. I did not feel vulnerable this time, but I did feel finite, in the face of the infinite. Just as Caesar, in his own universe, is very definitely made to feel finite when the senators stab him to death a moment after his speech.

Buddhists engage in sky meditation, looking at the sky for a length of time. I found this very useful when I was in the throes of lockdown. It helped me come out of myself, as I stood gazing at the sky from my garden. All those months in lockdown made me even more self-conscious than I usually am, and self-consciousness can be debilitating. Sky meditation is also an act of humility, reminding us of who and where we are in the cosmos; of our finiteness as one tiny being in a huge universe.

It can also be comforting. Our dear friend, Marcus Aurelius, had that same sense of being part of the Universe. The Greek Stoic philosophers called the Universe, ‘to pan’, which means ‘the All’. He writes, ‘Think of the universe as one living creature, comprising one substance and one soul: how all is absorbed into this one consciousness.’

The poet Dante (1265-1321) in his poetic masterpiece ‘The Divine Comedy’ gazes at the stars and sees, like Marcus, the unity of creation. He sees it as a volume whose pages are bound together by divine love:

‘In its depth I saw that it contained,

bound up by love into a single volume,

the scattered pages of the universe.’

He is seeing beyond the universe to a divine author behind it, binding the pages together: to a loving creator, which, those of us who are religious, also see. Again it is a comforting thought: we are not a random scattered page, blown hither and thither, or a mere cipher on it, but we are bound to the rest of the universe in grand design. In other words, we have our place. It is our role in life to find out what or where that place is.

So because of its stellar beauty on the final night of our stay, the sky did not seem bleak and foreboding like the first night. The stars and their little glittering lights, observed by Marcus, Dante, Shakespeare and countless generations as well as ourselves were warm and reassuring in the deep impenetrable blackness of the night sky. Burning thousands upon thousands of miles away, they were little flames in the darkness.

I am reminded of some words of St Francis, ‘All the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the light of one single candle.’ We too must be little flames in the darkness like the stars.

I mentioned that quote in my first meditation, which was exactly three years ago. I would like to thank those of you who have followed my blog over the last three tumultuous years and those who have joined the journey along the way. In particular, I would like to thank Henry, one of my former students, who set up the blog and who posts the meditations, even though now he is very busy as a producer on LBC radio.

Because he is having a holiday, the blog will be taking a break too for several weeks.

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.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 63

As I sit here gazing at the candle beside my tablet, I am recalling a different light, or rather lights from a visit I made last week. They were not candles but little electric lights and they were glimmering in trees in a park on a balmy eveningas darkness was slowly descending. The park was situated in Chichester, where a friend and myself had made a return visit after a rather rainy one last autumn. I noticed the lights when we came out of the Festival Theatre after a performance of a new production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, ‘South Pacific’. Just as the lights were glowing on the branches, so we were glowing too after a wonderful and rather emotional performance.

To my shame, I have never visited the Festival Theatre at Chichester before. It is one of the items on my retirement bucket list. I guess I can cross that one off now! My friend and I seemed to have fallen in love with the town and its environs on our visit last October so we decided to have an overnight stay as well as visiting the theatre. It was an opportunity to revisit the Cathedral and its beautiful gardens among other places.

What could be better than a big musical with big tunes for a first live theatre outing after the asperity of the last eighteen months? The performance was quite an emotional occasion precisely because it was our first live theatre outing since lockdown. It was probably the same for most of the audience. Because of this, I sensed that the emotional moments in the show were somehow heightened, more potent than they might have been in a performance under more usual circumstances.

I knew the songs but had never seen ‘South Pacific’ live before. It was a highly imaginative and at times beautiful production, by artistic director Daniel Evans, with wonderful singing and dance numbers. It was one of those productions that never puts a foot wrong from curtain up to curtain call.

I must admit to being a little uneasy when I entered the theatre. As with everything else at present, there were rules to follow about moving around in the building. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I have never been in Festival theatre before. Activities I usually never think twice about, such as walking into a restaurant or catching a train have become a little complicated because of the restrictions, hence my unease. However, the front of house staff were very welcoming and helpful and once I was in my seat, I felt at home (as I always do in a theatre).

I was also a little apprehensive about how the performance would be received. After all the theatre was half-full because of social distancing and we were all wearing masks in the audience. Would the performers be able to achieve a rapport with the audience? Would the audience feel restricted in their response because of their masks. As soon as the orchestra struck up and the lights went up on that stage, I forgot all that. Mr Rodgers and Mr Hammerstein began to weave their spell. More than that, jaded theatre-goer that I am, I felt a visceral excitement as if I’d never seen a theatre performance before. This excitement seemed to pervade the auditorium. There was an eagerness to be entertained, no, more than that, a hunger.

In the end, the fact that the audience were socially distanced and masked didn’t matter. We were totally with the show. The silence and attentiveness of the audience were palpable. The final applause was genuine, heartwarming – an act of love from us to the company. I suppose we were so acutely aware that we were so fortunate to be able to experience a big live show in these times. I think we also appreciated just how difficult rehearsals must have been, judging from the rehearsal photos in the programme with everyone in masks and visors, and not to mention the endless testing of such a large cast and necessary absences that must have taken place, which has been true of all work places. We were applauding to show our appreciation of not just the performance, but of the company’s struggle to get it on the stage.

I remember that in one of my early blogs, I mentioned seeing performances of Wagner’s epic ‘Ring’ cycle of four operas at the Royal Opera House. This would have been in autumn 2018, I think. In that meditation, I mentioned that just as the evil Alberich and his brother Mime forge the Ring on stage, that a ring was also forged between the performers and the audience over the four operas. The mark of a successful performance is when the performers and audience become an invisible and indivisible ring or circle. It may not happen for the whole performance but when it does happen, those moments are magical. That was true of the performance of ‘South Pacific’ which I experienced last Friday. The experience was doubly magical because the ring or circle was somehow created in the midst of our common adversity. Theatre is at its most sublime when it renews the audience and the cast too, hopefully. The performance I saw was an act of renewal for all of us who saw it or performed it. It has reminded me of just how important theatre is. It is a crying shame that our present government fails to see this.

The auditorium of the Festival Theatre is based on the shape of the Ancient Greek and Roman amphitheatres, with the audience as two thirds of the circle and the stage completing it. Therefore, the configuration of the auditorium no doubt helped the company to achieve that magic circle with the audience.

I mentioned earlier that I hadn’t been there before. However I have been to its successor many times – the Olivier Theatre on London’s South Bank. Its auditorium is based on the Chichester one. Initially Laurence Olivier was involved in establishing the Festival Theatre which opened in 1962 and, together with complementary performances at the Old Vic theatre in London, it was the genesis of the National Theatre. When the National Theatre finally developed its home on the South Bank, one of the three auditoriums, the Olivier, was given a similar design to the Festival Theatre.

I have also been to the Festival Theatre’s predecessor several times. The design of the Festival Theatre auditorium, in turn, was based on the Festival Theatre at Stratford, Ontario in Canada. They have an annual Shakespeare Festival there, which I attended several times in the early 1990’s.

I was thinking of those two theatres, the Olivier, on London’s South Bank and the one at Stratford, Ontario, while I sat waiting for the performance of ‘South Pacific’ to begin at Chichester. Here I was, sitting at last in the third of the trio, the Festival Theatre in Chichester, or rather the middle one as regards their opening.

How many theatres have I attended in my life? How many magic circles have I been part of? Not in every theatre or every performance I attended. But when it happens, you know you have experienced something special. How many productions have I directed or appeared in that have succeeded in achieving that circle with an audience? Again, not every one. But when it happens, you know you have been part of something special. It is nothing to do with the price of the ticket or with your hard work as director or performer.

And it is not guaranteed in every performance. It just happens. It is magic, the circle is magic. A magic which streaming at home cannot provide.

I am looking forward to being part of that magic again in the future. Certainly as an audience member. Perhaps as an actor or director – who knows?

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

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Neilus Aurelius

I am still staying here on Vancouver Island in my aunt’s apartment and I am once again writing by lamplight and not my usual candlelight. My aunt goes to bed early so there is a stillness in the apartment and there is much of the evening left. I have been out on her balcony looking at the sky. The sky always seems more open and expansive here than in my little garden at home in the UK. Of course the sky is open and expansive everywhere, but here there are less houses to block the view. Tall spruces and pines on the horizon add to the sky’s grandeur. High as they are, they are dwarfed beneath its immensity.

A full moon has already appeared, even though the sky has not yet darkened and is still a light azure. Streaks of pink twilight clouds try in vain to hide the moon from view. I am reminded of Shakespeare’s line from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’: ‘the watery eye of the moon.’ The moon does look like a watery eye tonight. Its shadowy contours look like tears forming. So as I gaze at the sky, I am at one with Shakespeare again. Those moments have been magical in my life. I am sure he was a sky-gazer himself in his youth in rural Stratford and in London for that matter for there were fewer tall buildings then to block his view.

As I look at the moon, I wonder what it would be like if could see two moons from the earth in the night sky. What if they were in orbit close together – like two great eyes shedding tears for the woes of our world? My reverie is broken as a flock of crying seagulls, presumably on their last flight of the day, suddenly dart through the sky beneath the moon as the chill night breeze rustles the leaves of the pines.

I sit down and admonish myself for not sitting in my own garden enough so far this year and looking at the sky. Marcus would have spent hours gazing at the sky on the Danube plains on his campaigns, helping him to reflect, as much as gazing at the fire in his tent would. Sky-gazing is an ancient form of meditation and no doubt it was practiced by the indigenous communities on this island as it was by indigenous communities across the world.

I am now thinking back to a little ceremony I was privileged to witness this evening. It was conducted by Bruce Underwood, a representative of the Salish nation. The Salish are one of the Canadian First Nations. They are the indigenous people of this particular part of Vancouver Island. The Pacific Ocean on this coastline is also known as the Salish Sea, being named after them.

Bruce Underwood, the Salish representative was performing a ‘blanketing’ ceremony. In the ceremony, someone receives a blanket as a symbol of high regard and respect from the Salish nation. The blanket, which has a clasp to turn it into a cloak, is placed over the person’s shoulders, like a ceremonial robe. Before he did this, Bruce gave a speech explaining that we are all people of the spirit and that our own spirit speaks to the spirit in another person. Just as the spirit of one nation can speak to another nation, one community to another community and needs to in these fractured times.

Then he chanted a song, a blessing, while slowly beating a small drum. The slow beat of the drum reminded me of the slow beating of the heart. The chant was haunting, strong and resonant in his baritone voice, yet gentle and beautiful. As soon as he begin to sing it, I was aware of the echoes of distant times and places. It reminded me of the soaring of the human spirit through the centuries, as simple as a sea bird in flight.

Through this simple chant, this Salish man’s spirit spoke to my spirit and perhaps the spirits of his ancestors did too. For there is more to us than our physical selves and our cognitive selves for that matter, our critical and analytical faculties. Our minds are never still, forever processing the endless bombardment of different media. It is only in stillness and silence that our own spirit can speak to us and the spirits of others too, as his spirit did to me. We are mind, body and spirit and the chant was an integrated expression of all three: the drumbeat signifying the body; the words of the chant, the mind and the music of the chant, the spirit. So his slow dignified chant helped me to listen to my own spirit and to experience the spirits of other times, of other ages.

It also prepared me for the blanketing ceremony that followed. There is nothing regal about a blanket yet the ceremony was as dignified as a coronation. A coronation robe is a symbol of power and therefore of finest gold cloth and bejewelled. A blanket is a piece of woollen cloth after all, but it is warm, protective and comforting over the shoulders. I could see from a distance that the blanket had a special woven design. What it signified I do not know. But it was lowered on the person’s shoulders with great dignity.

There have been times when I have felt lonely, apprehensive or lost and it has seemed as if my shoulders were covered with a blanket of snow. But there have been other times when I have felt surrounded by love – the genuine love and affection of friends and family, the respect of colleagues and students. The ceremony I witnessed tonight has made me realise that I am more than surrounded by love – I am blanketed by it. This is what covers me, keeps me warm, protects and comforts me. It invests me with a special dignity. We are all blanketed – it is just that we don’t stop and listen to our spirit to realise it.

By now I imagine you are wondering who was ‘blanketed’ at this little ceremony and where it took place. You may even be thinking it was myself! Well it wasn’t. Although, as I have just explained, in a highly personal way, I did feel ‘blanketed’ myself.

The person who was ‘blanketed’ was a priest, Fr Rolf Hasenach, at the beginning of a party at his church to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of his ordination. The ‘blanketing’ was a sign of respect which the Salish nation have for him as he does for them. It was an acknowledgment by Fr Rolf and his parish community that the celebration was talking place on the sacred ancestral lands of the Salish people. So Bruce Underwood, their representative was invited to give a welcome and a blessing before the great ‘potlatch’ – the great feast – to celebrate the anniversary. Hence his chant with the drum.

It was a wonderful occasion with 350 parishioners and I felt privileged to be invited and especially to witness the blanketing ceremony at the beginning of the festivities. Some of Rolf’s brother priests were present and the local bishop and yes, prayers were said too. I felt that he was also blanketed with the deep and warm affection of all the guests in the room. As was I being only an annual visitor.

But as the Salish representative said, we are all spirit and our spirits speak to eachother. Fr Rolf’s celebration was a witness to that. In the Christian church we speak of the ‘communion of saints’, of being one, through prayer and through silence, with the holy men and women who have gone before us. Perhaps there is also the ‘communion of spirits’: of being one with the spirits that have gone before us. They may not be people we have ever met or even read about or know about. As I listened to the Salish chant, I was experiencing this, as much as when I listen to ancient plainchant sung by monks in a monastery. There is a unity of spirit which binds all humanity together. Any attempts at uniting peoples is an expression of this.

At the celebration, I felt myself wanting to stand up and recite a toast written by Noel Coward for a one act play of his called ‘Family Album’.

‘Here’s a toast to each of us
And all of us together.
Here’s a toast to happiness
And reasonable pride.
May our touch on life
Be lighter than a seabird’s feather
And may all sorrows in our path
Politely step aside.’

May our touch on life be lighter than a seabird’s feather, indeed, and may our own spirit circle and soar like a seabird too.

Ave atque vale 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.
I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.
Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius