Since I’m approaching fifty I suppose it’s legit to be slightly falling apart. I ground a tooth in the night and it chipped and the jagged bit is cutting into the root of my tongue every time I swallow, which is making me much more mindful of eating, breathing, talking and so forth. In many ways it’s good to do things with awareness, but when the payoff for forgetting is a constant low level dull pain then it’s not so good. This didn’t stop me from going out for a lovely meal, but any excuse for that as you all know by now.
Lou came to town. Last time I’ll see her before my birthday as she’s off to Mumbai to tell actors what to wear for a week. So she brought me my birthday present early. It was quite emotional to receive just as she had evidently taken a lot of time and thought over it. She knows I like to have something heavy on me when I’m sleeping and she knows I don’t really have any decent blankets. So now I’ve got a quilt.
Being Lou the materials are all great, and it is patchwork. She spent ages thinking about the patches. Mushrooms, owls, seasons, insects, big cats… There are reflections in it of the patchwork of some of the curiosities I’ve built into my interests in this life. I’ve hacked things together for almost fifty years now and assembled a motley collection of interests. Some of them are built into this warm heavy linen quilt. It’s beautiful. We sat in Battersea Park, next to the pagoda I can see from my bedroom, on a little hill where I’ve had a birthday party before. A little bit of evening sun in the smoke by the river. She made a cushion for me too. Now I have comfy things to bring with me to Stratford in a few weeks. Personal and thought through things. Such a lovely present to receive. I’ll treasure it.
I’m worried my tooth isn’t going to get any better quickly – I might need to get a dentist to file off the sharp bits. For now I’ll likely have a very restless sleep and then find or make the time out of rehearsals to get someone to sort it out for me. If it’s nasty dental work I need then at least I have a lovely comforting quilt…
AlBarclay 