Madame Galina's Doings Diary

Lac To Basics

Pre-Rupes

I’m relearning Odette/Odile for some shows in Aldeburgh, wiping away twenty years of accretions.

Back in the early eighties, I began work on what is now Madame Galina The New Forces’ Sweetheart with Odette’s mime, rehearsing with Stella in the foyer of the Royal Opera House during curtain up. Nowadays I work to backing CD’s. Back then my accompaniment was Alex and Harold calling one another stupid, big cows in the stalls buffet, Irene Garfield BA Hons dishing out bananas from her shopping bag on wheels and threatening to draw a picture of anyone else who laughed at her to take to house management, and Heather Pearl mounting banshee guard over the foyer ladies’ loo. Washing her tights at a sink, she would shriek at anyone she didn’t recognise,

‘This loo is for bona fide ballet lovers only."

Shades of ‘This is a local shop. For local people.'

When she had finished her laundry, she would go into the stalls circle to ‘help’ the dancers.

‘From my mind,’ she explained, ‘I help them to move, and to avoid falls.’

She never forgave herself for being away from the Opera House the night Wendy Ellis fell and broke both her wrists during Fille.

But you know, I struggled for two years or more to be able to finish the thirty-two fouettes. I’d give them a good go four times a day, at home and in the foyer, get to sixteen, usually, and conk out. A few times I made it to nineteen and once to twenty-four, but never to thirty-two. And one night, when Heather was out in the foyer telling us about her affair with Anthony Dowell, I had another try at them. I got to nineteen, had another go: sixteen, had another go: ten. Knackered, I gave up.

‘Do them again,’ Heather said, ‘and spot on me.’

‘I can’t,’ I said, ‘my leg’s had enough.’

‘Do them again. You’ll get through them this time.’

I did. And I did. Touch wood, too, I’ve done thirty-two fouettes ever since. Ask the marines…

Red letter days. And here I am relearning Odette. The main thing I’m doing just at the moment is working out a version. I used to do the run, split jump, and the arabesque posees stuff with the back bend and jerky head movements.

‘She’s preening delicate feathers,’ Stella would correct, ‘not shaking most of Loch Ness out of her ears, please.’

Now, I’m keeping it simple. First arabesque, drop into fourth, and small head movements. It’s what Fonteyn did. And if it was good enough for her…

Like prose, as I was explaining to Rupert Farquharson, an extremely gifted young writer I know: not using longer words when shorter ones will do. For example, I told him, when I recently edited the written content of burlesque male stripper Sexecute’s website, the first thing I did was change,

‘If you have a fantasy-based scenario you would like to discuss, contact the above telephone number with your query’

to

‘Whatever your fantasy, ring and ask.’

Margot would have been proud.

The Old Curiously Once A Fishmongers Now A Book Shop

It’s all been terribly Nancy Mitford, darlings: during my summer holidays in Aldeburgh, I looked after my mate Julius Reed's second-hand bookshop – Reed Books, natch - when he needed to chase girls.

Minding the shop brought back memories of my bookstall in the foyer at Covent Garden. In my first few months there back in ninety eighty six, I was asked all the time where the lovely lady (Stella Beddard) had gone. Reed Books used to be Harvey’s Fishmongers and I had a lot of people in asking where the lovely lobsters had gone. Well, they say people get to look like their pets…

Julius is very old school. A greeting and a Can I Help You Or Are You All Right Just To Browse? for every customer, and passing of time with people. The three old ladies that live in the cottages up the lane behind the shop come in nearly every day. Mrs. L’s husband died last year and for months she laid out a pair of his pajamas in the bed next to her. Whenever she washed them, she had to dry them inside on a chair in front of the fire. She couldn’t peg them out because Bee – next door, they haven’t spoken since nineteen sixty-eight – would have told people she had a fancy man.

A Glaswegian professor, who has spent the same two weeks in Aldeburgh every year for the past thirty-two, contrasted Julius’s perfect manners with a number of habitually rude sales people up and down the High Street and wondered where the present day disease of the seller behaving as though they’re doing the buyer a favour has come from?

“And as for the price of everything…”

I know! Aldeburgh may be known as Chelsea-On-Sea, but, just for one example: instant Horlicks, with or without the chocolate in it, costs three pounds twenty-five in the Coop, almost a pound more than it does in the Camden Road Sainsbury’s. And I went into Sue Ryder for some formal trousers as my mate Jess was trying to talk me into going to the Yacht Ball, and you’d think from the prices I’d wandered into the Armani shop in Knightsbridge by mistake. I mentioned this to councilor Graham-Enock and he said it’s a case of if you don’t want it, don’t buy it. Well, I did want chocolate-free instant Horlicks, thank you, but not at that price. (I changed my mind about the ball: bit of a No Fun Zone). And don’t tell me I can drive to the Martlesham Tesco’s, either. I don’t drive. And neither, for that matter, do the three old ladies at the back of Julius’s property. How are they supposed to pay Aldeburgh prices on a pension?

See? This typical Aldeburgh old person can't afford a dog lead, let alone Instant Horlicks from the Co-op.
Photo: Toby Keane

Talking of the Yacht Club, one night I was in the garden of the Cross Keyes being entertained by comic genius Rupert Macdhui Farquharson, one of the three finalists along with Henry Huntingford and Maximilian George Mortimer Turner in the Babe of Aldeburgh contest, when Roland Walker bumpted up and began a lecture on sailing. After maybe three minutes Rupert, aware that I don’t know a bow sprite from a bow and arrow, tried to steer the conversation onto more general topics, but Roland was having none of it. After maybe half an hour, I asked him could be please stop talking about sailing?

Yachties. Where's an iceberg when you need one?
Photo: Toby Keane

“Remember what Nancy Mitford said about hunting?" I said. "It applies to sailing. Do it but don’t talk about it”.

Roland said I had to realise that I couldn’t be centre of attention the whole time, and maybe I didn’t like sailing but all the “hotties” in the Cross Keyes garden that he had his eye on did. I smiled at him thinking: too old, too weak chinned, too bald - and desperate is never attractive. I said, “More of these girls by far would have done ballet than sailed, but I’m not banging on about entrechats and lame duck diagonals”.

“I so doubt that”, he said.

But bless them, the three “hotties” Celia, Tin Tin and Emma came rushing up just then, kissed Rupert and me, nodded in Roland’s direction.

“Iestyn, Iestyn! We have to go through the positions. We haven’t done them today”

“Thumbs!” I had to correct Emma yet again, “you’re spoiling the line of your arms in fifth”.

After the ballet lesson, we made Rupert go away and discussed whether or not his bobble hat (which looked as though it were made of ice-cream) got him plus or minus points in the Babe contest? Plus. Did Maximilian’s moodiness count against him? No. Did James Dean’s? And would we have to disqualify Henry because his family sent out postcards of their stately home, asking all their dear friends to forgive them but for the next eighteen months they would only be contactable by e-mail as they were having to move into (horrors!) rented accommodation until their next pile was ready? No. Too funny.

Henry has since stream-of-consciousness e-mailed to say that the rented place is “wicked. There’s a Thunderbirds garage underneath it. Oh, God, here comes the cat. She drives people mad licking their arms and shit, for which she is a slut, so I’m not playing with her”.

Just like my Great Grandmother’s letters. This one came with the photographs of me as a baby she had paid to have colour tinted in her home town of Bargoed.

“Dear Terry and oh now Mrs. Williams is just walking past she must be better haven’t seen her since last Thursday oh Terry you’ll remember more than one Mrs. Williams won’t you well she’s the one moved here from Bethesda had her hair off to that woman that Thursday during the war because she caught her stealing her milk not the other Mrs. Williams who used to let her children hang on the back of the rag and bone man’s cart even when he asked her to stop them and Eirwen,

I hope this finds you well. I am and can’t complain although the hang on a minute now the coal delivery’s here be right back god he can talk all about his wife’s lumbago she had another collapse outside the Co-op just seized up it did and lucky her shopping bag on wheels had forty seconds toilet rolls you just have to accept one ply might come away from the other in the unraveling process and broke her fall if only a little shelve had to have a new one in red now from Ponty Market. Did you ever get the blackcurrant out of Iestyn’s welsh tweed blanket you got there that Saturday? Those mushy peas were definitely off. I’ve had the photos tinted as I said I would and I think they look oh god not again Bert from next door is here hang on a minute I’ll hide in the cupboard where the china cat Dai’s mother gave me is nowadays that you wouldn’t think it was that I’ve never been able to stand all these years but don’t want to insult her memory as I got fed up with having to reach around it for the Jeyes Fluid from him blast the bugger he knew I was here saw the paper and pen on the table came in and looked straight in the cupboard sometimes I wish I had upstairs but it’s a bungalow isn’t it and he said that he had a phone message from our Kay wondering if I remembered I put that chicken in my handbag from Sunday lunch or forgot again like the last time when I opened it for a hankie on the bus to bingo in Aber and she says the maggots were out over the top of it like lemmings and that it must have a hell of a clasp yes I remembered I told him to tell her which I hadn’t so I better go and check hang on a minute again God will I ever get this bloody letter finished here I am back again and no chicken so Kay've had the expense of a phone call for nothing and Gerald won’t like that short arms and long pockets as he is and I hope you like the photos spruced up a bit. I kept one and it’s got pride of place in the album on a left hand page starting of its own”.

In the colour photo, my dark straight hair was blonde and curly, my white christening gown was turquoise with an empire waist; and instead of being barefoot as I was in the original, I was wearing ankle socks and navy blue stripy sandals

“She've made him look like she do when she’s dressed up for a Saturday down the social,” my mother commented.

Answers a lot of questions, I reckon…

One day in August, Julius put on display Antony and Araminta Hippisley Coxe's Book Of Sausages. Less than half an hour later, a couple walked by and one of them pointed it out, saying, "Oh, look, daddy's book!"