Hiccups and Hickox
The untimely death of top conductor Richard Hickox is a terrible blow to English music-making in general and Fiona Shaw’s imminent ENO production of Vaughan Williams’s setting of J M Synge’s Riders to the Sea at the ENO in particular.
The performances later this week will be dedicated to Hickox’s memory. I heard this melancholy news on my car radio at lunchtime yesterday as I was driving down the M1 from Leeds.
I should have been at the Evening Standard drama awards, sharing a table with Alex Jennings, Lia Williams, Gawn Grainger and Arcola director Mehmet Ergen. Instead, I was paying a high price for an act of stupidity exceptional even when measured against my own high standards of practical incompetence.
Setting off from Leeds after a weekend-long family function on Sunday afternoon, I had inadvertently filled the petrol tank with diesel. Easily done, but I’d never done it before, and I’ve ticked most boxes on the fully paid up idiot’s malfunctioning check sheet.
Such as: trying to paint an outside wall with brilliant gloss emulsion; or travelling abroad without my credit cards; or losing my passport on an aeroplane; or turning up at a surprise birthday party one week early (which rather spoilt the surprise).
Half a mile along the mortorway, the car started grinding to a halt at an alarming pace. I pulled over to the hard shoulder just before the engine expired completely. We were stuck on a terrifying bend. The road was wet, the traffic supersonically fast.
But then, amazingly, things started to improve. Our insurers managed to find a pick-up truck within half an hour. The truck fellow got a quote for a repair job on Monday morning (the car had to be kept in Leeds overnight) and cheered us up mightily with his merry Yorkshire banter and care and concern in taking on the car and delivering us back to city centre. We took a packed train to King’s Cross with a full stock of Sunday newspapers to read, and were home in time for Songs of Praise on the television.
There was the small matter of our train fares, of course, and my return to Leeds first thing yesterday morning, and the garage costs, which were fairly hefty. But hey, look at this another way: instead of the trauma of a short break in Malaga, we’d spent the equivalent amount of money on learning to cope with disaster and huge inconvenience. We’d emerge as stronger human beings in the long run.
And then again: my better half now had a blisteringly good topic of conversation at the awards ceremony, with the added bonus of laughter all round at my expense. And I had a productive working train journey back up to Leeds, a pleasant interlude in the Queen’s Hotel with my sandwiches and my laptop, and the pleasure of listening to three hours of Steve Wright on BBC Radio Two as I drove home; Steve’s guests were pop star Lemar and, even better, Paul McCartney, in two revealing and brilliantly conducted interviews.
So I really didn’t mind missing the Donmar crowd, or David Tennant, or Kenneth Branagh, at the awards ceremony. Or the baked halibut or the blackberry compote in what sounds to have been a far more enjoyable occasion in the Royal Opera House than we’re used to in the more cramped confines of the Savoy Hotel.
I did miss the chance, though, to continue a conversation with Gawn Grainger, a fascinating actor and partner of Zoe Wanamaker, whose career has led him into close associations with Laurence Olivier, Bill Bryden and Ivor Novello (he was a boy actor in Novello’s last stage appearance). Gawn helped Olivier write his autobiography and has been keeping his own diaries for many years now. These will be worth reading one day when he’ll be Gawn but not forgotten.
Twelve hours after the Standard awards we learn of more native triumphs at the Emmys in New York, where the Brits have won seven of the ten major prizes, including best actor and best actress for David Suchet (as Robert Maxwell) and Lucy Cohu (in Channel 4’s Forgiven). Lucky I wasn’t due in Big Apple for that ceremony. I’d have probably gone to the wrong airport.