Madame Galina's Doings Diary

Sympathy Curry

Can I just say, I started toasting the cumin seeds and cardamom pods in the iron-bottomed pan c 1989 when I made Galina an orphan, brought up her grandmother.

“My grannoschka paid for my first ballet lessons, sews my pointe shoes, comes to all my first nights at the Bolshoi. And I am now, with the great career, able to give back something and pay for her suite at the Cherry Orchard Rest Home in Moscow. When I’m home and can visit her each and every day, she’s happy: in the day room, painting pictures of Ghandi, Buddha or The Daily Llama. (She suffers from religious adoration mania, you know, but can’t paint hair…)”

Now they’re all at it. And though I’ve lost count of the dead grandmothers that Katherine Jenkins has In Memoriamised in Classical Brit acceptance speeches: the main culprits at the moment are contestants on X-Factor. The last time I saw so many people eagerly announcing that they were orphans was in the Toads Little Theatre Pirates Of Penzance. *

During the piece to camera relayed live before she sang last night, Beverly snivelled that her mother abandoned her.

“And she died when I was six, before I got a chance to ask her why she had left me. I’ve never felt that anyone put me first. And now how can I go and stand at the graveside and ask mum’s help in winning the competition?”

I rather wonder how she will face the grandparents that took her in and brought her up.

Nicky, having lost only one parent (go on: have an Edith Evans moment on me) needs to bring something else to the Sympathy Curry mix - she’s an expert, by the way, as:

“Two weeks ago I was a dinner lady, and now look at me. And I know that dad’s up there watching over me and is amazed, and proud of me.”

What? Doffing your tabard, fishnet hat and ice-cream scoop to perform All That Jazz wearing what could be bondage from British Home Stores, hair out of a catalogue, trying to self-fellate with a teenage trumpeter in the middle eight?

As an antidote to last night’s X-Factor, I had to take a Maria Callas biography.

“Mother, you are a young, healthy woman”, Callas writes. “You can work to keep yourself, same as I do. And if you can’t, then you can just jump out the window.”

*The prettiest of the boys, Andy, has both parents. So he keeps reminding us that he worked as an asbestos remover and that if we vote him out he has to go back to doing that. I’d be first in the queue with liniment to rub into his chest, frankly, so nothing doing sympathy-wise there.

Posted by iestyn at November 11, 2007 03:08 PM