My birthday weekend started with a visit to the Festival Hall on London's South Bank on Friday, to see Joan Baez. I hadn't seen her live since the 1970s, when I went to a concert at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on a night when she had to apologise for having a bad cold and not being able to hit the high notes. (Actually, she did very well, considering.)
As soon as I heard she was appearing in London, I rang to book four tickets. "If there are four of you, why not have a box?" suggested the box office lady. I gulped at the price - £180 - but decided to go for it, as we are all ladies of a certain age who might need to shuffle out to the loo, or the bar, and a box gives you the freedom to do that, and to take in drinks in plastic beakers. So I told my friends the normal ticket price and they paid me, and I stumped up the rest in secret, as a treat.
On the night, one of my friends who is a real Baez fan, was unfortunately ill. I was still suffering from the tummy bug I'd caught the previous weekend, but I knew I'd have to go as I had all the tickets! So my friend G's husband came with her to fill the empty seat and I was glad, because he had almost died from blood poisoning and heart trouble a year ago, and he and G had treated us all to tickets for Sharon Gleiss in A Round-Heeled Woman in December.
Joan Baez is 71 now and looks very good, the long black hair now a grey crop and her figure slim, straight and neat in a trouser suit. Her large gay following were out in force - we got quite a shock when we bumped in a man in the ladies' loo, and are still discussing whether or not he/she was male or female. If the latter, the drag was very convincing indeed! However, when she started to sing, I wondered if I'd suddenly gone deaf. Everything was dampened and subdued; the volume, the emotion, the voice.
The chap on percussion was tapping so softly, you were straining to hear him at all and Joan's voice was no longer a clear, bang-on-the-note soprano with that thrilling vibrato, but a soft, husky, slightly wavery contralto that missed notes and forgot words. The emotional power that once pushed the words from her lips and into our minds was missing; she was singing the same words, but without conviction and her chat between numbers was such a mumble that none of us could catch what she was saying. There was a mixing desk there, with two sound engineers. Why couldn't they have pushed the volume levers up a bit?
It was a nice evening out, but a disappointing concert, though the place was packed out and fans were on their feet applauding. However, Saturday night made up for it. Mr G had organised me a party and spent all day coooking four different curries in varying degrees of spiciness. I didn't know who was going to turn up and was thrilled when two old mates arrived who I hadn't seen for a year. However, just before the first guests were due, a catastrophe occurred: the communal drain blocked up, which meant nasty things suddenly emerged into our toilets and we couldn't flush them. And as for the smell...
Ours is the last in a row of six: all the drainage pipes go into a right-hand bend outside out house, where they join the main sewer. House number two in the row has a very large family in it with lots of small children and they keep shoving nappies down the loo, which blocks up everyone's pipes. Mr G has the manhole cover in his drive, so the council insist it is on private land and they won't come out and fix it. If he hadn't equipped himself with a set of rods, we would be calling out Dyno-Rod three times a year at £200 a time! So he had to drop his curry-stirring duties and turn himself into Mr Sewage Disposal Man. He manage to move the blockage and came in covered in... well, you can guess. The bathrooms stank, I had to spray perfume everywhere (I'd been right in the middle of doing my eyeliner and mascara when the disaster happened) and he had to rapidly change his clothes and rub his hands with antibacterial gel. It must have worked, as none of us got e-coli poisoning, thank God!
I was inundated with gorgeous presents and had a truly wonderful time - and somehow managed not to have a hangover yesterday. That's what I call a miracle! And Mr G is definitely my hero of the moment. I tell you, girls, always go for a guy who's handy with a rod - and I don't mean fishing!!!
