Judith Johnson
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Visiting Mr Handel

29/3/2013

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We've never been the sort of family that asks for specific presents for birthdays, but these days, if I'm asked for a hint of what I'd like, I'm more likely to ask for a day out than anything material. I lived and worked in London for eleven years, but I could happily and fruitfully spend a whole year visiting places there I've always wanted to see but never got round to.
 
Last year my son and his girlfriend treated me to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy, and this year Martin and I took the train up to Charing Cross and set off for two museums that had been on my wish-list for years.
 
I have loved Handel's music all my life. Whenever I have heard a piece of music and found it going straight to my heart, it has nearly always turned out to be something by Mr George Frideric Handel. I heard with keen interest a documentary on Radio 4 some twelve years ago about the renovation and opening of the Handel House Museum at 25 Brook Street, and have been meaning to visit ever since. Handel bought the house when it was new-build, in 1723, and lived there until his death in 1759. He loved London and its vibrant life. 
 
The curators of the museum worked hard to re-create the house as it might have looked in his time. However, it's not one of those interactive museums that knock themselves out to present everything in glorious interactive/3D/audio-visual technicolour. I visited a renovated museum like that last year in Belgium, and I felt that all the newly high-tech, computerised, chip-activated displays and professionalised testimonials had somehow contextualised the heart out of the content. 
  
The Handel House Museum, on the other hand, allows lovers of Handel and his music to honour their devotion by wandering quietly around his home, soaking up the atmosphere. Okay, it's probably not his own furniture, paintwork, and canopied bed that you're seeing, but it is, as much as can be achieved, a faithful rendering of his house as he might have known it. I was especially moved to sit quietly in his bedroom, where he would have slept, and likely died. Next to this is his dressing-room, and downstairs the rehearsal and performance room. On the day we visited, we were fortunate enough to hear the group Le Jardin Secret, rehearsing for their concert the next day at Powis Castle in Wales, part of BBC
Radio 3's Baroque Spring season. The notes for the room inform the visitor that "watching the rehearsals was probably quite an experience, according to the hair-raising anecdotes. Those present would have witnessed not only the real first performances of Handel's works but also the spectacle of the composer swearing at the frequently headstrong singers - usually in several languages. Handel seems to have had little patience with his singer's egos."
 
There was also the opportunity to see the Composition Room, believed to be the room where Handel composed some of his most famous works, including Zadok the Priest, Music for the Royal Fireworks, and Messiah. 
 
In the adjoining rooms we found a fascinating exhibition about Charles Jennens, librettist of Messiah, and, intriguingly, a peep up the back stairs towards the flat where Handel's famous 20th century neighbour Jimi Hendrix lived!
 
Learning new things is food and drink to me. I'm the sort of person who studiously peers at information panels. Like my late Aunty Janet, I always have a notebook and pen in my handbag to jot down interesting nuggets for future reference! I read that the original production of Handel's Rinaldo included a flock of live sparrows; that Charles Burney, father of authors Fanny and Sarah Burney, wrote: "The figure of Handel was large and he was somewhat corpulent and unwieldy in his motions; but his countenance, which I remember as perfectly as that of any man I saw but yesterday, was full of fire and dignity; and such as impressed ideas of superiority and genius. He was impetuous, rough and peremptory in his manners and conversation, but totally devoid of ill-nature or malevolence." I also learned that Beethoven was a great admirer of Handel and had once said of him: "Handel was the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head, and kneel before his tomb."
 
I was most saddened though to discover that Handel, having gone blind by the end of 1752, endured a painful operation in August 1758 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent in the hopes of restoring his sight. This was performed by a man since regarded as a charlatan, the 'opthalmiater' John Taylor. Like Taylor's similar 1749 operation on JS Bach, it was not a success.
 
I beetled down to the Tunbridge Wells Reference Library on my return, and read in Arthur Brackett's Tunbridge Wells Through the Centuries that "Handel, when busy with oratorio work, occasionally came here to invigorate himself with a course of the waters".
 
It was here that the Tunbridge Wells Ladies' Music Circle gave a disastrous performance of Handel's oratorio Messiah , at which point Handel is reported to have said "God rot Tunbridge Wells, its waters, and all its damned sawing fiddlers!" He took to his bed and lived only seven days more, passing away on 14 April 1759.


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Food for Thought

16/3/2013

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I moved to London just after my nineteenth birthday in the mid-1970s. I turned up at my brother Jeremy's flat in Finsbury Park, and he took me  under his wing. He treated me to a meal at his favourite Greek restaurant in Green Lanes, introduced me to Centre Point in Trafalgar Square, a haven for lonely young people new in the city, and escorted me to the Alfred Marks Bureau to find a job.

One of my first temporary jobs was as a messenger for Terence Conran's firm in Neal Street, Covent Garden. And it was whilst working there that I encountered the wonderful wholefood vegetarian cafe Food for Thought, when they laid out a table for the neighbourhood street party.
 
When I returned to Covent Garden a few years later to work as a theatrical agent, I often bought my take-away lunch from Food For Thought, and ever since, whenever in London, we've often eaten there. It's also a firm favourite of my son's, and as he says, you always come out feeling that your body is grateful for the nourishment.
 
It's a tiny premises (not for those who need a lot of personal space when they eat), but it has great charms, which include really fresh, wholesome, tasty salads, quiches, bakes, soups etc at a decent price, and ever cheery staff. There's generally a queue, but somehow you always get a place once you've bought your food at the counter. The diners eat at wooden tables in the basement, surrounded by multi-lingual conversations. The clientele is always interesting!
 
We bought the Food for Thought cookbook when Thorsons published it in 1987, and it is possibly the best-used cookbook on the shelf! It's been sellotaped where it's fallen apart, it's blotched with past spills and fingerprints, several pages are torn and scribbled on (eg Minestrone Soup: "Did it with no aubergine, but large red pepper. Tom likes extra grated cheese - used Cheddar"). We still use it, and several of the recipes have become Johnson family Old Reliables - one of my favourites being Shepherdess Pie, made with aduki beans. Their potato salad also goes down a treat at parties - there's never any left!
 
We ate at the restaurant last weekend, in between museum visits (blogs to follow!) and we commented on how it hasn't changed in any fundamental way over the last three decades. No need, obviously - as the saying goes: If it ain't broke, why fix it?


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Snow snow snow!

11/3/2013

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Wow! Seems like the north-easterly wind blowing in from Eastern Europe caught quite a lot of us by surprise today, in spite of our hard-working weather forecasters! This was the view from my workplace today. I had what was possibly the scariest drive ever getting home on the unsalted High Weald B-roads - even the 4-wheel drives were taking it very slow. There were cars getting stuck on hills, sliding into hedges. I feel grateful to have got home safe, and hope the same for all my compadres out there! 

Thank goodness for
Kent Wildlife Trust, whose bird-feeders were attracting a lot of business today! These blue-tits were so busy eating they took no notice of me!
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Running the Half Marathon

2/3/2013

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PictureComing up to the Finish
Last February I wandered up to London Road in Southborough to watch the Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon go by. I cheered and clapped and was enchanted by the sight of almost 2,000 people running along. I came home and said to my husband, "I've got to do that one day!" About a week later I pulled on my walking shoes and ran up to David Salomons' House and back (about a mile round-trip!), and a week or so after that I happened to mention to an acquaintance that I was thinking about running, but wasn't sure how to go on. 
 
I have a sedentary job at a computer, and apart from a quick walk in my lunch-break, and yoga once a week, I took no regular exercise. I was a tom-boy in childhood and knocked around with my brothers, going for bike rides, climbing trees, tadpoling, fighting - that kind of thing! But I didn't take to sports at school, in fact I was a sports-avoider generally. We walk and go swimming on our annual holiday, but I was feeling, more and more, that in my mid-50s, the body-clock was ticking.  Plus I saw on the faces of those runners that day something of their sheer exuberant pleasure in what they were doing.
 
Anyhow, my friend told me that she belonged to a very friendly group called Sarah's Runners, which met twice a week. I went along the next week. There's no regular sub - you just pay £2.50 a week whenever you turn up. The first time before you go out running you have an initial chat with Sarah Russell, its founder and guiding light, about your health and sport history etc. Sarah's Runners is the exact opposite of my youthful sporting experiences. Sarah, a seasoned competitive athlete and trainer herself, set this group up over 9 years ago specifically to encourage people from all walks of life to come along and run 'for fitness and fun'. She has recently been honoured for her contribution to others' lives. She is helped by a team of experienced volunteers who come along and run with newcomers and regulars alike, offering friendly support and encouragement. If you're new you can join the 3 mile walk and jog group - going at a very gentle pace and running for short distances before slowing to a walk, then another short run etc. After a while, if you like, you can choose to move on to the mostly-running 3 miles, then 4 miles and 5. 
  
In September last year I ran the Tonbridge 5K organised by Tunbridge Wells Mental Health Resource, an enjoyable easy course round the flat grassy playing-fields of Tonbridge School, and a few months back I signed up for the Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon, downloaded a training programme for beginners from Sarah's website, bought myself some more high-vis running gear and a headlight from the Running Hub, and got out there in the evenings. Sarah's Runners initiated a regular Sunday morning long slow run to build up stamina for distance, and we had some great runs in Bedgebury Forest (great tea rooms) and the Groombridge Trail (tea rooms in the planning!). 
 
These gave me the confidence to believe that I could actually keep going, if I paced myself, and didn't attack hills as if they were the enemy. I missed the last practice run of 10 -12 miles two weeks before the Half Marathon as I was in bed with a virus for several days, but I was still very much looking forward to something that a year ago seemed a very distant possibility!
 
The joy of running has become a part of my life: the getting out of breath in the fresh air, giving my body the exercise it was born for, and watching the world go by as I run are huge pleasures. The Half-Marathon was exhilarating - the route itself, through Bidborough, Penshurst, Fordcombe and Langton Green, is part of the High Weald I love so much, and the kindness and enthusiasm of those volunteer marshalls and onlookers who came out on an extremely cold winter day was heartening. 
 
After the first couple of miles my 'posse' from Thursday nights run was beginning to draw away from me, but the experience of the last year and the wisdom and advice of Sarah Russell and her helpers was in my mind. I knew I needed to run for myself, not listen to my ego or try and compete with others at the expense of what my own body could reasonably take to get round the course. Occasionally someone would run alongside or overtake, or I would overtake them again, and we'd have a few friendly words, but generally I was concentrating on keeping those legs going! I probably dropped to a walk for several miles all in all, including the famous Spring Hill, and by the time I got to Langton I had already run further than my previous longest distance of 9 miles. My legs were beginning to hurt and I was running out of energy, and thought I might have to walk the last 3 miles or so. At this point another of Sarah's Runners, around my age, who had been following me in my bright yellow beany up till then caught up with me, and it was thanks to her companionship and encouragement that I ran/walked the rest of the race. I got in at 2hrs 39 minutes 25 seconds chip-time, which was good enough for me! I'll be 57 years old shortly, but I fully intend to keep going as long as I can. The oldest competitor in the Half was a gentleman of 81, who ran the first TW Half 30 years ago! 
  
Tunbridge Wells is a running town - there are always runners out on the streets here - and up until last year I thought running was only for compulsive exercise nuts, but now I know better. It's fun! I'm looking forward to having another go at the Half Marathon next year, and perhaps knocking a few minutes off that finishing time!
 
Thanks, Sarah's Runners!


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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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