Post by postscript on Apr 25, 2006 9:46:54 GMT
Memories of Meeting Hayley.
Hi all, especially Richard, please note and pay attention!!!! It’s arrived.
Part 5 and FINAL
Well, here I am at last, again on ‘What was my first meeting with Hayley like?’ As I have already indicated, the emotion wrought by my first meeting with Hayley was a multiplicity of emotions and of other places and times all rolled into that one moment, both review and déj**SPAM? PLEASE REPORT vu. Hence, the four preceding parts to get here! In order to remind myself as to how and why it has taken so long I checked back on what I had written previously. Rather astonishingly I find I started by saying:
‘Hi all but, 'Oh boy!' Before I got the hang of the site I murmured aloud an intention to share my first meeting with Hayley. I’ve been pushed in the right direction by Richard, so there is no excuse now. However, having located the right thread . . and having read it . . . . I’m not so sure I have anything to say! So many seem to have already made grander introductions to Hayley than little me.’
I didn’t think I had anything to say? Then I take four parts to get here! I thought I’d get that observation in before Richard did! :2fun: Unlike Hayley, I am clearly unfocussed! But if I’m unfocused, how can I be clear? Oh well, I’ll get on with it!
For a diverse range of family reasons the last three or four years have been something of a blur of one crisis or burden after another, :ounlike the exciting times that must have made those years an equal kaleidoscope of colour and forms for Hayley. I was rather astonished to find that in fact it was March 2005 Hayley appeared at The Palladium.
Yet I was convinced it was summer and Richard did not correct me when he said he too had been there but had not seen me outside the stage door. Yet I cannot find any reference to Hayley being at The Palladium other than in March on the site and no reference at all to the event regardless of when in any personal diary! 
Perhaps March was moved or did she appear twice at The Palladium that year? If it was March it might have been an unseasonably warm night, hence the drizzle and the sense of inclemency I recall, my reason for not staying on as well as the erratic train schedules. 
No matter. The key point now is Derngate, Northampton and my actual first meeting with Hayley and shaking her hand. The sensible thing would have been to take the train but it would have been too long a day for me, so I had taken the car up and booked into an hotel. It was my first real journey following an illness.
Leaving the car at the hotel I walked a mile or so into town. Unfortunately, the weather had changed—unexpectedly, we actually had snow during the interval—and the only practical coat I had was in the car boot [‘trunk' to Americans], reserved for changing wheels or getting under the car in an emergency! 
The impractical son of a man who entered the army as a band boy (he was an excellent clarinettist) at 16 (lying about his age as his father had done before him!) then retiring as a Major, Royal Military Police to embark on a second career in the Civil Service, I had received some firm indoctrination into certain essential practicalities.
One of these was being early and reconnoitring the area first. Right to when my father ceased driving he would visit places a week ahead (on the same weekday to ensure he got a feel for traffic patterns) to check out the situation. Years before, when I was a child, days out to the seaside were organised as if we were in a convoy. If we did not arrive at precisely 10:00a.m., for an en route morning coffee from a thermos flask, at a map reference guaranteeing a superb view, according to the contours, my father was out of countenance for the rest of the day! 
For this reason, I arrived in ample time to look over Northampton generally and specifically to reconnoitre the theatre. The programme was the one I’d bought at The Palladium. The CDs on sale during the interval I already owned. The performance awoke with all its freshness the sensation I had experienced at The Palladium, when I realised I was witnessing someone who was on their way to being a great star. i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gifAt the end of the show we demanded three encores and then gave her a standing ovation. Something I can’t recall being personally involved in ever before.
It was one of those theatrical evenings where one resists the necessary return to reality. One lingers upon excuses. It was the emotion I frequently experienced as a younger man when, after two months of evening rehearsals and a one, two, or sometimes three week run at the local theatre, the company of newly rekindled friendships parts, as the closing show makes way for the next regrouping of associations. So, meandering around in the cold, the snow now turning into a wet slush, I found myself in a doorway opposite the stage door that was surrounded by a small crowd.
I mused, in my creative manner, that I could be taken for a Graham Greene character, such as Pinky in Brighton Rock or Orson Welles in The Third Man. i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gif Then, prosaically realising I was more than likely to be taken for one of the dirty mac brigade, being suddenly conscious that the coat I was wearing was intended for emergency wheel changes, it was time to do something. I crossed the street to join the crowd just as they were being invited in to the stage door foyer, not for our benefit but obviously to avoid exposing Hayley to the inclement weather. 
Suddenly, I found myself in the front line, without a pen or piece of paper, while all around me were waving programmes or CD covers for Hayley’s signature. There she was, just a few feet from me. This extraordinarily diminutive girl who was simply so nice. An over-worked word, too casually used in default of something more specifically relevant, yet in this context, the word has its rightful place and full meaning: it has no connotations of naivety, prissy daintiness, butter-wouldn’t-melt, Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes qualities. The word evokes pleasantness, decency, consideration, courteousness, an ‘I’ve-time-for-you-too’ gentleness; yet also practicality, down-to-earth commonsense, firmly rooted in the real world; someone who, as I was about to learn, was very aware of not only to whom she was speaking at the time but to what was going on all around her.
Suddenly feeling somewhat pointless in standing there, I half-turned to the people immediately behind me and said, ‘if you have something you want her to sign, push in front of me, I’m just enjoying being close to her’.
She seemed several feet away from me, concentrating on two people, one on each side of her and allowing for her diminutive steps she should have needed half-a-dozen paces to reach me. It seemed she took just two or three and there she was, standing in front of me, almost rubbing noses with me, her elfin hand thrust into mine, ‘Well, you can’t get any closer than saying ‘Hi!’ can you?’ She bowled me over completely and I have been permanently ‘bowled over’ ever since.
I babbled at her, aware that she was now signing other people’s programmes but that while concentrating on them she still had an ear for me. I told her I had noticed a difference in her voice in the three [but perhaps it was six] months I had last heard her, how much her voice had developed. I meant it in the sense her voice had matured, not that she had in any way been any less than she was before, to which she responded, ‘Oh good. I am improving then’.
In anyone else that would have seemed a sarcastic response but her tone was so extraordinarily neutral that I am sure it was merely a polite acknowledgement of an observation, which hadn’t come over quite in the way I had intended. I was in fact aghast. Just who was I to presume to tell her she was improving? I then said something about ‘a super performance and how wonderful to have had three encores and a standing ovation’. ‘Oh wow! Yes.’ She said, ‘That was really something’.
I did not then know what she obviously did, that some weeks before, the Sydney Opera House had demanded five encores and then given her a standing ovation. Rekindling that experience with Hayley with that acquired knowledge, I see an even greater depth to Hayley’s personality. Seasoned trouper ’though she is she does not see audience reaction in contrast or comparison. She sees herself through the eyes of each individual audience. She appreciates their response to her as their unique contribution at that moment. To her, the response of the audience in an abbey (where I think audiences are somewhat muted in their response because of their surroundings) is as important as the audience response in a provincial theatre and just as important in her eyes as the standing ovation of the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall.
I sum her up as a girl who simply sings her heart out because she loves doing it and if she has pleased an audience as well, she is even happier. She does not want to be fawned over, or placed on a pedestal and idolised. I think the best tribute those of us who have experienced the unique opportunity of attending several of her concerts and seeing her afterwards can pay her, as she gets to know us as well as we learn a little more of her, is to treat her like anyone else. Yet that is the most difficult thing to do. She is so nice, with so much talent one feels that in treating her ordinarily one is treating her too cavalierly.
Peter
Hi all, especially Richard, please note and pay attention!!!! It’s arrived.
Part 5 and FINAL
Well, here I am at last, again on ‘What was my first meeting with Hayley like?’ As I have already indicated, the emotion wrought by my first meeting with Hayley was a multiplicity of emotions and of other places and times all rolled into that one moment, both review and déj**SPAM? PLEASE REPORT vu. Hence, the four preceding parts to get here! In order to remind myself as to how and why it has taken so long I checked back on what I had written previously. Rather astonishingly I find I started by saying:
‘Hi all but, 'Oh boy!' Before I got the hang of the site I murmured aloud an intention to share my first meeting with Hayley. I’ve been pushed in the right direction by Richard, so there is no excuse now. However, having located the right thread . . and having read it . . . . I’m not so sure I have anything to say! So many seem to have already made grander introductions to Hayley than little me.’
I didn’t think I had anything to say? Then I take four parts to get here! I thought I’d get that observation in before Richard did! :2fun: Unlike Hayley, I am clearly unfocussed! But if I’m unfocused, how can I be clear? Oh well, I’ll get on with it!
For a diverse range of family reasons the last three or four years have been something of a blur of one crisis or burden after another, :ounlike the exciting times that must have made those years an equal kaleidoscope of colour and forms for Hayley. I was rather astonished to find that in fact it was March 2005 Hayley appeared at The Palladium.
Yet I was convinced it was summer and Richard did not correct me when he said he too had been there but had not seen me outside the stage door. Yet I cannot find any reference to Hayley being at The Palladium other than in March on the site and no reference at all to the event regardless of when in any personal diary! 
Perhaps March was moved or did she appear twice at The Palladium that year? If it was March it might have been an unseasonably warm night, hence the drizzle and the sense of inclemency I recall, my reason for not staying on as well as the erratic train schedules. 
No matter. The key point now is Derngate, Northampton and my actual first meeting with Hayley and shaking her hand. The sensible thing would have been to take the train but it would have been too long a day for me, so I had taken the car up and booked into an hotel. It was my first real journey following an illness.
Leaving the car at the hotel I walked a mile or so into town. Unfortunately, the weather had changed—unexpectedly, we actually had snow during the interval—and the only practical coat I had was in the car boot [‘trunk' to Americans], reserved for changing wheels or getting under the car in an emergency! 
The impractical son of a man who entered the army as a band boy (he was an excellent clarinettist) at 16 (lying about his age as his father had done before him!) then retiring as a Major, Royal Military Police to embark on a second career in the Civil Service, I had received some firm indoctrination into certain essential practicalities.
One of these was being early and reconnoitring the area first. Right to when my father ceased driving he would visit places a week ahead (on the same weekday to ensure he got a feel for traffic patterns) to check out the situation. Years before, when I was a child, days out to the seaside were organised as if we were in a convoy. If we did not arrive at precisely 10:00a.m., for an en route morning coffee from a thermos flask, at a map reference guaranteeing a superb view, according to the contours, my father was out of countenance for the rest of the day! For this reason, I arrived in ample time to look over Northampton generally and specifically to reconnoitre the theatre. The programme was the one I’d bought at The Palladium. The CDs on sale during the interval I already owned. The performance awoke with all its freshness the sensation I had experienced at The Palladium, when I realised I was witnessing someone who was on their way to being a great star. i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gifAt the end of the show we demanded three encores and then gave her a standing ovation. Something I can’t recall being personally involved in ever before.
It was one of those theatrical evenings where one resists the necessary return to reality.
One lingers upon excuses. It was the emotion I frequently experienced as a younger man when, after two months of evening rehearsals and a one, two, or sometimes three week run at the local theatre, the company of newly rekindled friendships parts, as the closing show makes way for the next regrouping of associations. So, meandering around in the cold, the snow now turning into a wet slush, I found myself in a doorway opposite the stage door that was surrounded by a small crowd.I mused, in my creative manner, that I could be taken for a Graham Greene character, such as Pinky in Brighton Rock or Orson Welles in The Third Man. i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gif Then, prosaically realising I was more than likely to be taken for one of the dirty mac brigade
, being suddenly conscious that the coat I was wearing was intended for emergency wheel changes, it was time to do something. I crossed the street to join the crowd just as they were being invited in to the stage door foyer, not for our benefit but obviously to avoid exposing Hayley to the inclement weather. Suddenly, I found myself in the front line, without a pen or piece of paper, while all around me were waving programmes or CD covers for Hayley’s signature. There she was, just a few feet from me. This extraordinarily diminutive girl who was simply so nice. An over-worked word, too casually used in default of something more specifically relevant, yet in this context, the word has its rightful place and full meaning: it has no connotations of naivety, prissy daintiness, butter-wouldn’t-melt, Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes qualities. The word evokes pleasantness, decency, consideration, courteousness, an ‘I’ve-time-for-you-too’ gentleness; yet also practicality, down-to-earth commonsense, firmly rooted in the real world; someone who, as I was about to learn, was very aware of not only to whom she was speaking at the time but to what was going on all around her.
Suddenly feeling somewhat pointless in standing there, I half-turned to the people immediately behind me and said, ‘if you have something you want her to sign, push in front of me, I’m just enjoying being close to her’.
She seemed several feet away from me, concentrating on two people, one on each side of her and allowing for her diminutive steps she should have needed half-a-dozen paces to reach me. It seemed she took just two or three and there she was, standing in front of me, almost rubbing noses with me, her elfin hand thrust into mine, ‘Well, you can’t get any closer than saying ‘Hi!’ can you?’ She bowled me over completely and I have been permanently ‘bowled over’ ever since.
I babbled at her,
aware that she was now signing other people’s programmes but that while concentrating on them she still had an ear for me. I told her I had noticed a difference in her voice in the three [but perhaps it was six] months I had last heard her, how much her voice had developed. I meant it in the sense her voice had matured, not that she had in any way been any less than she was before, to which she responded, ‘Oh good. I am improving then’.In anyone else that would have seemed a sarcastic response but her tone was so extraordinarily neutral that I am sure it was merely a polite acknowledgement of an observation, which hadn’t come over quite in the way I had intended.
I was in fact aghast. Just who was I to presume to tell her she was improving? I then said something about ‘a super performance and how wonderful to have had three encores and a standing ovation’. ‘Oh wow! Yes.’ She said, ‘That was really something’.I did not then know what she obviously did, that some weeks before, the Sydney Opera House had demanded five encores and then given her a standing ovation. Rekindling that experience with Hayley with that acquired knowledge, I see an even greater depth to Hayley’s personality. Seasoned trouper ’though she is she does not see audience reaction in contrast or comparison. She sees herself through the eyes of each individual audience. She appreciates their response to her as their unique contribution at that moment. To her, the response of the audience in an abbey (where I think audiences are somewhat muted in their response because of their surroundings) is as important as the audience response in a provincial theatre and just as important in her eyes as the standing ovation of the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall.
I sum her up as a girl who simply sings her heart out because she loves doing it and if she has pleased an audience as well, she is even happier. She does not want to be fawned over, or placed on a pedestal and idolised. I think the best tribute those of us who have experienced the unique opportunity of attending several of her concerts and seeing her afterwards can pay her, as she gets to know us as well as we learn a little more of her, is to treat her like anyone else. Yet that is the most difficult thing to do. She is so nice, with so much talent one feels that in treating her ordinarily one is treating her too cavalierly.
Peter
