THE WINTER'S TALE

It is almost March. Half an hour to go, and we are in the middle of a snowstorm. My toes were frozen in the car a few minutes ago but our lovely warm house is heating me up nicely. In 27 countries around the world, across 927 screens, audiences just witnessed Shakespeare transformed once again into a different mode of art. Ballet this time. Our auditorium in Saffron Walden wasn't full because of the snow, but for those of us who were able to attend the screening, a cup of hot coffee or a glass of white wine eased us into our seats. Some of us may have had a chocolate brownie as well... hey, it was gluten free! Surely that's healthy?

Ryoichi Hirano burst on to our stage (well, our screen) and we were, to a woman, transfixed. His presence, his beauty, his actorly ability to transmit jealousy (the most potent of our emotions?) was unrivalled by any of the other dancers, even though every other dancer was obviously perfection embodied.

The youthful delights of spring and first love in Act Two contrast with the winter and storms of imagined betrayal in Act One. But Ryoichi disappeared and so Act Two was a bit meh for me. I mean, amazing, of course, but I drifted... do you drift when you watch the ballet or the opera? Or while listening to classical music? I am often distracted by the presence of all the other minds in the room, bodily with me, but each of us entering our emotional worlds, separately.

I was glad to return to Ryoichi in the final act. Hair whitened by grief, he was still magnificent, and when Hermione, the wife he thought was lost to him, is revealed to him in a dance of forgiveness, I felt almost as shocked as he was. And glad. I had missed Lauren Cuthbertson too - the ballerina who co-created her own role. A statue coming to life wasn't the only moment that stunned me - a doll masquerading as a baby, with arms and legs moving (ah, modern technology) almost made me miss the bear that wolfs down a poor courtier...

In the outside world, snow flurries awaited us, but the thrill of the performance had us on a high long enough to grab a frozen selfie... I hope you are all keeping warm and finding something to smile about. Google the gorgeous Ryoichi!! Or if such superficial things as a beautiful Principal dancer don't appeal, read Shakespeare - the ballet made me want, made me need, the words that began the dance.

AUNT ALICE AND THE MARSHMALLOW FLOWERS

Dear Aunt Alice,

Somewhere, in other worldly places, you must surely know that I have inherited your perfect signet ring. Initials AJ carved in pretty curving script. I have been wearing your ring from the moment I received it from your niece Mary, because she thinks I am an aunt worthy enough to be in your mould. I thought of taking it off before a jaunt into London to keep it safe, but decided I wanted to take you with me since I suspect the last time you tripped around London as a young woman was, perhaps, a hundred years ago.

Liverpool Station was freezing cold, but once we were in London proper - Oxford Street proper - I warmed up. No snow to offer you this Christmas, but the lights! An assortment of charities paid towards these giant leaping angel figures. Beautiful for the crush of humans below to behold.

Shopping commenced. I'm not sure you would have approved of my purchases, but they were safe enough - a cosy camel turtle neck sweater, a leather bag and a pair of sunglasses. All on sale! Mind you, the prices, even on sale, would probably shock you. To ease the shock, my sister Angelina ordered cronuts and hot chocolate from a famous bakery called Dominique Ansel. Now this would have impressed you - a marshmallow cut like a crown was dropped into steaming hot chocolate, instantly blooming into a flower...

Later, on Great Marlborough Street, we stood outside Liberty and admired the Tudor Revival frontage. Did you know the timber was built from the ship HMS Hindustan? Or that in 1885, Liberty brought forty two villagers from India to stage a living village of Indian artisans? These handy facts are available from an extraordinary web of information us global villagers dive in and out of 'online'. I wonder what you would have made of Wikipedia? Here is something Wikipedia doesn't know: my father had three of his watercolours exhibited and sold by Liberty in the 1970s. Wikipedia you may have been on the fence about, but my father you would have loved.

I did feel a trifle faint in Liberty - so many people! - so was glad first to plop onto an inviting bed in Anthropologie, and then to mesh our way from Carnaby and Kingly Streets towards a Japanese restaurant, which also served my favourite Korean dishes, and to my delight, a delicious plum wine. For a nineteenth century Englishwoman, I suspect your gastronomic tastes possibly didn't stretch to the Orient, but maybe Mary will surprise me and tell me you loved experimenting with the new!

I got muttered at by a stranger for temporarily blocking the entrance to the tube - did I mention this was the day of the human crush? At these moments I am very much the hokey local from a tiny Cambridge village. By the time our train was hurrying us home, we were shattered and ready to slide, submerge and otherwise disappear into sleep. I hope you enjoyed the day out. Today is the last day of the year 2016. Soon 2017 will be upon us. 2016 has been a truly difficult year, for most of us, not least your beloved Mary. If you possess any magic, wield away. We need some magic. I can only be sure of one thing in the new year - I will continue to be the most loving and creative aunt it is possible to be. Keep your spirit beside me!

With love,
Your new friend-in-auntyhood across the century,
Shaista

Photos courtesy Debra Edward

HANAFUBUKI

I rarely cry, because I cried so much in the early years post diagnosis of this and that. But yesterday at the hospital the gentle kindness in a friend's 'how are you?' sent me to the tissues. I've been having a rotten time with the disease acting up, which always makes my world narrow, my fears bloom. Meanwhile April is coming to an end and our cherry tree has stretched from white glory to a brown study. 

Angelina (my sister) had some friends over for tea, and their daughter, quiet as a mouse in the house, blossomed into a mixture of Ariel and Puck under the cherry tree. Painstakingly, she gathered individual sakura, collected them into her hat and then poured them over our heads. 'If only,' she mused, 'the petals could fall all at once!' I have since learned this is exactly what happens in Japan after the hanami festival: the sakura falls thick and fast and the word for this is hanafubuki. 

After hospital, coming home to little girls who hand me petals and feathers, is a delight…

I like the floophing, flumping feel of sakura. And so do my nieces who carry the fallen delicates across to me and fix them in my hair. Today I feel more alive than yesterday. Everything that was not good yesterday is better today. Angelina whipped up some baking magic and delivered apple roses to my door even though she is sick with the streaming cold that has beset the twins. I am being kept at arms' length for my own sake.

With that special evening light streaming in this evening, my nose dusted with icing sugar (a hanafubuki of the baking kind), I feel hopeful again. And so it swings. Apparently this is what creative types do. But even in my despair and even in my hope, I am aware of the stories round the globe, and since there is little I can do, for now I shall try to keep up morale. Blow down cherry blossom if you must, I am standing in the sun.

Nativity... or Why Birth Is Worth the Fight!

Ballet in front of our Christmas tree, Bbay, Dec '89

I have had so many of you chiding me for questioning if 'earth is worth the fight' in my last post. It is! It is!! But sometimes Yes it is!! So to make up, I shall sing you a Christmas carol...

Long time ago in Bethlehem,

so the Holy Bibles say,

Mary's boy child Jesus Christ

was born on Chri-istmas Day!

Hark! the herald angels sing, as we gather round our fires. Impossible that it is really snow on the trees outside, and not the cottonwool we used for our Christmas tree in India. We had a real one growing in our garden, and a little rubbery one for Santa (and our presents) inside. On Christmas Eve, a softly gathering chorus would wind its way up the gentle slope where we lived. It would fall silent, and coins would tinkle, and then the music would drift towards us again. The Salvation Army singers. How I miss the sounds of hush and harmony, and the lantern that lit their journey for them, and lit them for us. And on Christmas day, we did the strangest thing. We went to Breach Candy Hospital, and mooched around from ward to department - each one more heartily decorated than the next. There were delicate mangers and tinsel and baubles and food! And we were three little kings and queen, the children of Dr and Mrs Tayabali, who were both adored by the staff, and we basked then as we do now, in their reflected magic.

I am basking now in the reflected magic of my big brother and trying to absorb as much of his life experience and brisk global summary as I can before he heads off to new lands, new skills. And contemplating the turns in the roads awaiting us. For just around the corner, my little brother and his wife, five months pregnant, feel far away, and yet so dear. The blanket is knitted and awaiting its owner. I think Aunty Shaista is ahead of the game, for now, but let's see what Uncle Riz comes up with!

Do you remember my brother's wedding took place on an island called Nikoi? Well, there were only 40 of us gathered in that jewelled setting of sun and sea... and five of the couples are now expecting babies! Five! So on that happy note, I wish all of them safe deliveries, with stars colliding and magic manifesting; and wish you, dearest of readers and writers, Merry Christmas!!!

A Cup of Snow

Last night while I was putting the paper bag out, the scent of snow re-awakened a memory. Not my own memory, but the memory of my favourite Uncle when he was 17 years old.
He was deeply in love at the time, and his misfortune was to be torn away from her for a family holiday in Kashmir. What could he do to prove his fidelity and steadfastness? He would bring back snow!
So on the last night, he trudged up to the highest part of the mountain in Gulmarg, and filled a bottle with fresh scented snow. He capped it, and on his return to the houseboat in Srinagar, tenderly tucked it into the fridge, awaiting its long journey home to Bombay. That night he slept the sleep of the valiant, victorious lover.

The next morning, to his utter horror, he discovered the bottle contained a mere quarter of its contents. A dribble of water. "Who touched my bottle of snow?" he bellowed. And my grandfather, equally horrified, confessed with deepest apologies. He had been terribly thirsty in the night, and discovering a bottle of cold water in the fridge, had thankfully glugged it down.


Image from the bbc website of a Kashmiri boy in Srinagar, India, carrying a bag of sand...

Sleigh Bells Ring (are you listening?)

I am home... and it is snowing!!!

The windows are inches thick with flakes, arriving in a hurricane, passionate kisses against the panes. Not the silence of snow, but the singing and howling and winging of snow...

Hospital was a breeze this time ;) I think I may have swaggered home tonight. Human Immuno Globulin is the only medical treatment which is sublimely kind to me. And I, in turn, adore it. The needles were placed in the crooks of my elbows gently by Clarence, and I made two new friends across the IV drips; a girl from Denmark with an astonishingly complicated love life, and a girl from the borders of Afghanistan, merrily chatting about the dastardly Taliban nearly ruining her cousin's wedding...

Next week, when the registrar rings with the blood test results, we will have a better idea about how depleted my B cells are and when/if I need to be admitted again.

But until then, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Illustration: another one of Maia Chavez Larkin's pieces, entitled Candace and the Clocks