A Night

Earlier in the week I saw a performance of Lear (and a very wonderful performance it was too) with my dear friend and soul sister Emma. We were out very late (10pm, so very rock and roll) and the respective babies were parented to sleep by their loving Daddas, and oh it was such an amazing evening for us.

Ten years ago we saw Lear together last, up in Buxton, including a hysterical hour wait for the bus home at midnight in a town we didn't know too well. We were invincible and joyful, and midnight seemed early enough to us then.

How those ten years have flown, positively jet speed, and for all the changes we are still so much unchanged. The freedoms are different, and the responsibilities, the passions and the tests. But at my core, I feel myself still young and free and idealistic, still so much that fifteen year old I left so far behind. To share this, all these times, our deepest thoughts and shallowest, everything in between. If nothing else, it's humbling to have to hand someone who sees all your faults - and who remembers almost every embarrasing thing you ever said or did as a teenager.

I wish, for all mamas, such a sister.

So, Lear. I could rave some more about the acting, the staging (though I did wonder a few times how easily the fake blood would come out of the whitewashed wood) and the words singing in my soul. The costuming was, um, overall very steampunk, all velvet bustles, tones of black and grey, sashes, mixing of genres, asymettry, minimalism and military jackets. I liked it very much. Messing with Shakespeare is, after all, rather in the spirit of the thing.

For a few hours, my regular life was on pause.

Babba has been very limpet-like since, I think although she went to sleep contentedly in Daddy's arms, not even a wimper or a shout for me, she didn't exactly relish being without milk for her bedtime. Either that or teething, or something else, but whatever it is I need to honour it. Sometimes puzzling a cause distracts me from the cure, which would be so much the same whatever it was bothering her. She is signalling "keep me close". So I do.