Yes you have to agree. Quite a coincidence.

I think I should declare this chapter of poorlyness over. I would love to know what’s working but I don’t suppose anyone knows. Painkillers, chemo increased dose, radiotherapy, natural settling down of damage from a Covid like cough three months ago – any or all could have helped but I am super super glad something has.

I am moving and sitting for short periods. I stay awake most of the day and I am only on two regular strong painkillers and one instant fix. I can do things again. I am not going to wait until I am as good as I was 3 months ago to declare I am sorted, although I have no reason to believe that given time I will get even better. This is good enough to no longer warrant my outpourings of self pity and I have to admit concern that i was going to be permanently prone. So no more regular health updates from now on. If I have anything to report, you know me, I won’t hold back. Thank you to everyone who has been so kind and particularly those sending me late night/early morning reading/thinking  matter, please keep that up. Whatever treatment I get next, almost certainly long nights of bedentertainment are ahead. (See what I did there).

A and L chose the coldest weather we have had in years to stay in a remote cottage on the Northumbrian coast. On the way back to London they popped in to deliver me a birthday gift. The story of said gift is

Mooching idly round a second hand bookstore, I think it’s quite famous, near Alnwick I believe – I don’t have much grasp of the detail and it doesn’t matter. They chanced upon a book, I guess a book in the media, film, music, theatre section. An unpublished review edition of a book about a touring opera company in the 1980’s. Would Dad be interested in this? Opens it and behold.

Yes probably the only book in the whole world that has a mention of me. Not only a mention but a mention that frames me as one of the ‘Peter Brooks’ of directing the  lightweight Viennese operetta repertoire.  It’s positively guru like in its resonances. The Newell School, the Newell method, short residential courses in Newell. On the scale of extraordinary coincidences this has got to be up there. I was delighted, spooked and moved in one go. Now it is a fixture on my bedside table, to be read at night, like a Gideon, to be memorised sufficient that for the duration of at least one short very camp (I was very camp then) operatic, nostalgic dream I will be that person.  Of course I could, I should, burst the bubble by providing context sufficient to make it clear that the illusion of genius posited by Freddie Stockdale is only that, a misplaced illusion, but I am enjoying the ban on self deprecation imposed on me, so just for now  – what a brilliant director I was and it seems a pretty good looking young man to boot.

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