A double date to remember

Yesterday, Tuesday 27th September 2011, was a very special day for me. I spent much of this glorious autumn day sitting outside this hospital watching the world go by, the nervous parents arrive, weary ones leave. I shared my bench with smokers, lunch breakers and waiting relatives. I exhausted the batteries of two mobile phones.

Up on the first floor, behind the frosted glass of the little window on the right, my beautiful girl, born thirty years ago to the day, stayed strong through 43 hours of pain. After a final hour of will-she-won't-she and a little help from across the world, Rosy and Phil brought little Elizabeth into this wonderful world, my first grandchild, as deceptively dainty as her mother, as doggedly determined as her father.

She has the best of names and has come into a network of family and friends so strong that she need never be alone. Welcome, Little Miracle. You've come at just the right time to brighten our world. I wish you courage, serenity and wisdom. Shine.

A Dancing Star

This weekend I drove across country, across the border and across Wales to the seaside town of Aberaeron. I drove along winding lanes past fields and farms to the hidden mill house where my old friends Robert and Jo Killick Scott have lived for over forty years.

I lost touch with them for thirty years until I found them by driving the lanes, knocking on doors until I found again the corner of paradise I had visited when I was eighteen, when I bathed in the crystal clear icy river, in Penny's Pool.

People ask me why I go searching for old friends, driving across the country, flying across the world. I go to find a part of myself that only they and I know about.

Robert and Jo, retired actor and injured dancer, used to own the Dancers' Shop in Wimbledon. When I was fifteen I used to stop and gaze in through the bow window on my way home from school until one day I plucked up the courage to push open the door with it's clanging bell and I walked in. I asked for a chance to help. I didn't want pay. I just wanted to be able to handle the shining satin pointe shoes, feel the soft leather of the Greek sandals, smell the greasepaint, the Leichner greasepaint. I became the Saturday girl. They found me a Christmas job backstage at Wimbledon Theatre, then spotted an advert for a post as Assistant Stage Manager at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on Sea. There I met Keith, who eventually became the father of my children and husband for twenty-five years. The rest is our family history.

This weekend my journey was a sad one, and even sadder was my journey home. The usually effervescent Jo was lying in a hospital bed fighting an infection from a leg ulcer. Despite her exhaustion she could still just smile at the memory of the Dancers Shop and stories of the characters who peopled that stage. Now she is free of the pain of the ulcers, the crippling arthritis and damaged hips she endured for over half her life. She has slipped away to dance among the stars, ever shining.

Robert, at 85, must adjust to independence after forty-five years of togetherness. He is a working journalist and published writer of dog books. He writes despite impaired vision using some impressive gadgetry to enhance his computer. He has two dogs to look after and an adopted daughter on her way back from California after a six year absence. Life must go on.