Another cold morning, another raging morning fire. I had no Zoom call, no appointment, no need to go into the village yesterday, so I felt wonderfully relaxed from the moment I rose. I looked forward to our morning walk and then getting busy with cleaning the loft and disposing of as much as I could.
Our morning walk was a fairly long one as it wasn’t raining but rain was forecast for the day, and so our afternoon walk had the potential to be short. With absolutely nothing pressing, it was a pleasure to walk a long route and to take it slowly.
During the Summer when I was four years old, I caught Scarlet Fever. Our house was quarantined and I was kept in bed. My bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking the front lawn. It was a hot Summer, so Connie opened my bedroom window and drew the thin white curtains that allowed lots of light into my room.
I remember lying in bed, wide awake, and listening to life outside as people and cars passed our house. What I remember most, was the sound of Robins chatting endlessly. I don’t know how long I was in that bed, but the sound of Robin song was burned into my head and my heart. Every year, when they return and I hear their chirping, I am reminded of those days in bed so long ago, and I am thrilled by their song. It is the sound of Spring for me.
Once back home, up went the ladder, and up the ladder went the vacuum and an old man. I had no idea what was on the loft. I hadn’t been up there for a couple of years, but the cats are up there every day, so I was prepared for mouse carcasses, and destroyed bits of cardboard. No one was going to see the clean loft, but my work yesterday was intended to make my moving from here much easier when the day comes.
The work sucked, but the vacuum didn’t. I took it apart and when I put it back together it worked excellently for a minute and then lost its sucking power. So, instead of vacuuming, I began carting the heavy boxes down the ladder.
When I’m up there, I’m just below the ceiling, so it is the hottest place to be in the house, and there are bits of cardboard everywhere. Either my cats or rats have chewed the large cardboard pieces into tiny little bits. But the worst thing about being up there is that I cannot stand up. I am always either sitting or on my hands and knees, and that causes me to have a lot of cramps.
It’s going to be very slow work. I find it hard to know what to keep and what to jettison. Some finds are extraordinary: I found several original paintings of costumes that were likely done by someone working for Françoise (my birth mother). Françoise founded her own theatre company called L’Egregore; she was its artistic director. I have several programs that I cannot discard—partly because they are hers, partly because I am such a theatre fanatic, that to discard them seems shameful. Photos of the drawings are below.
After my first round of work, it was lunchtime and I valued having a rest. Then, rather than returning to the attic, I went through two large boxes of memorabilia that I inherited from Françoise. (Every time I write that classic French name, it thrills me. Although I am culturally English, I am so, so proud to be the son of a Québecoise woman, and not just a woman, but an actor!)
Thankfully, I had several really nice and empty boxes into which I could put all that I wanted to keep. Anything I didn’t want, went to the studio to join all the rest of the stuff that Gabe Disposal will come to fetch.
Processing all the bazillion letters, postcards, photographs, programs, posters, slides and newspaper articles that filled two enormous boxes, sorting them into the right boxes or the garbage took me 2.5 hours. And I was diligent about the work, but I could not face climbing the ladder again to do anything other than to fetch the vacuum (that I think is dying).
Next to deal with, is a box of photo albums. I hope I feel I can just chuck them because they’ve been in a box in the loft for almost 9 years. Obviously, I don’t need them. But photographs are powerful triggers, good and bad. I found two photos of Aleck, my first and very powerful love. He was a gorgeous white part-Persian cat with yellow eyes. I am so glad to have the photos.
I quit at 15:00. I was done! Her Highness and I went for our afternoon walk—it wasn’t raining—and then I came home to assume the position for the evening. I was dead tired when we got home, but I’m thrilled about my motivation to work and my capacity for work. I can’t say enough good about Tezspire. It has truly renewed my life.
I took photographs of several photos that I found as I was looking through the contents of my boxes, and I sent them to old friends. I sent one photo to my friends Gilbert and Mike. I met them when I was a teacher.
Our school had an outdoor club that was massively popular, and when I began the first year of my two-year career as a teacher, the club lost its teacher sponsor, and an official club could not exist without one. There were 90 teachers at our school, and not one of them stepped up. Coincidentally, I was in a state of despair because I was contractually obligated to put on plays and conduct all the work outside of work hours. When I put out an announcement for parties interested in acting or crew work to assemble in room 204 to establish a drama club, the attendees depressed me.
I’ll be blunt. They looked like people from a psychiatric waiting room. There were eight of them. When I heard about the outdoor club problem, I sought out the chairman, Gilbert, to whom I sent the photo yesterday. I made him a deal: If twenty people from the outdoor club would join the drama club, I’d sponsor the outdoor club.
Sidebar: On my first hike with the club, it was straight up a mountain to Singing Pass. When we got there, we were tired and hungry, so everyone set about putting up their tents, and making dinner. When I did a head count while they were eating, we were down one person. I counted twice.
As light faded, I saw him. David Milner had slid down some ice into a rock and broke a vertebra. We didn’t know that till evening the next day in the hospital. It’s an amazing story, but I digress.
That’s how I met Gil and Mike. I quit teaching as soon as I legally could and started working at the Arts Club Theatre. It was the debut season of the company. It was the second-best year of my life. (Living in Nice for a year is number one.) Oh, the people I met. I made family there.
On Saturday nights, we did two shows: one at 7:00 and the next at 9:00. That Winter, we had a long Christmas break and our last show closed on a Saturday night. And on that night, after the second show, we struck the set, tidied up, and then I went outside to be picked up by Gil and Mike, another Mike, and Burt in my van. We drove non-stop to Mazatlán, Mexico.
Two years later, when I moved to Nice. Soon after I settled, Mike came for an extended stay. And when I came home, Mikel and I were roommates for at least a year. I became very attached to Mike. I’d had few friends since I was a child because of things at home, Mike was my first experience with a close friendship with another fellow. (I was closeted at the time. This was a platonic friendship.)
Gil and I stayed friends. I don’t see him anymore, but we email now and then. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the six of us who carried David down the mountain the day after his accident, on a makeshift stretcher. We found a ladder on the side of a park staff hut, and we lined it with down sleeping bags. Gil is a very responsible guy, and he was head of the club, so he could have easily been part of our team. (Another teacher came along: the art teacher, also as green as I was about hiking. He stayed with the rest of the club on the mountain.)
I suspect Gil was part of the team because something made us stay friends after I quit teaching. He was one of two lads I “befriended” at the behest of the school counselor. I was only five years older than Gil and Mike, but I was a teacher, and they’d both suffered the death of their father while students at our school.
Today is, of course it is, cold! It’s 2° and there’s naught but rain and dark skies in the forecast for the coming week. Until the official arrival of Spring, we may be cold and damp. Pooey! I’ve loft work to do today, and we’ll walk with our friends this morning.
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