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Tuesday 14 June 2011

Wow Wow I did it!!!!!!

Thanks to the combined efforts of the greatly esteemed Vernacular Curate and my equally highly valued singing teacher (may the Lord reward their patience), I have actually managed to do this without the physical presence of either of them.

It had to happen sometime!

One million minus one to go!

This picture reminds  me of an opera I was involved in back in the late 70's.  It was called "Goyescas"
and the music was by the Spanish composer Granados.

The music is beautifull and so were the costumes.  Wardrobe however was unable to supply the ladies of the chorus with fans.  We were told to beg, borrow or steal black or white lace fans.

I was loudly (my usual decibel level) lamenting the lack of said accessory when the tenor lead said, quite without prompting, "My wife has an antique black lace fan on a tortoishell frame, it was  my grandmothers, you can borrow it"

To cut a long, embarassing story short, I did borrow, decided as it was very dusty I would wash it before returning it, and taking, I thought, very great care to hand-wash in soapflakes and rinse carefully, this lovely grubby thing I found upon drying it carefully with a hair dryer, that the lace had parted from the frets.

I think I went into every antique shop in London trying to discover what I could do to rescue the fan, without success until someone backstage suggested I try a few tiny drops of superglue.

Heart in mouth that was what I did, and to my amazement it worked very well indeed, so much so, that when I returned the fan without of course owning up to what had happened, the response from my tenor friend was "I don't know how you got it clean but it looks great, you can borrow  it again any time"!

I'm afraid I never did own up but since that day I have never borrowed anything of value from anyone.

12 comments:

  1. Yay! You did it! Congratulation! And now we will be seeing all sorts of interesting things to go with your reflections! Way to hang in there, Ray!

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  2. pictures and confessions!! all the ingredients required for successfull blogging :))

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  3. Thanks Penny
    Yes it does seem to have 'registered' tis time (I think).
    Time will tell!

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  4. Hi Judy
    Hmmmm Confessions only on a severely limited level I fear. But will try to find lots of relevant piccies.

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  5. Jane
    Thanks. Well it's a start. More to follow I hope.

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  6. Wow!! Well done, Ray. There'll be no holding you now. Love the story about the fan. We've all done something similar, or at least I have....

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  7. Thanks Perpetua
    Nice to know I'm not the only unrepentant reprobate in existence.

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  8. Lol! Do you know Guy de Maupassant's story, "The Necklace." Thankfully, yours turned out a lot better than that.

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  9. Feel I should Anita must re-read!

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  10. Your experience of inadvertent harm coming to the fan is the very reason I try not to borrow! Glad it is fixed.

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  11. Yes, there is something to be said for learning the hard way. Those sort of lessons tend to stick Freda.

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