Staid and skittish

Continuing on the birthday theme, my birthday, and that of elder daughter, have prevented me from watching the National Theatre's 2017 production of Twelfth Night, one of the productions made available for free each week as long as there's a lockdown in the UK, I guess.


Orsino is played by the impossibly good-looking Oliver Chris, who was posh and funny in the National Theatre's One Man Two Guvnors in 2011 (which was also shown for free three weeks ago, although I saw it in a cinema last November - when you could do that).

I have until Thursday morning to see Twelfth Night, and intend to see it this weekend, as I address birthday cards for my fellow Taureans, and prepare for younger daughter's birthday in early May.

Leaving out the whistles and bells

This Twelfth Night, I look at a string of blue Tardises shining against the curtain, and our tree, gradually decorated by our daughters in the week leading up to Christmas.

The presents underneath have gradually disappeared; we opened the last gifts this evening.

Tomorrow, as was our tradition before leaving Victoria, and is becoming so again, a couple of long-time friends will come to dinner and help us put away the tree for another year. We may leave up the other lights until Candlemas.

This evening, enjoying the quiet glow for one last time, I stumbled across an old favourite song, by a group that takes its name from one of my favourite movies. The song is about another blue light, a canary-shaped nightlight which is and isn't your friend, and muses about a lighthouse, its ancient ancestor.

I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am...

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch,
Who watches over you,
Make a little birdhouse in your soul.
Not to put too fine a point on it,
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet.
Make a little birdhouse in your soul.

I have a secret to tell
From my electrical well.
It's a simple message and I'm leaving out the whistles and bells,
So the room must listen to me,
Filibuster vigilantly.
My name is "blue canary", one note spelled l-i-t-e.
My story's infinite;
Like the Longines Symphonette, it doesn't rest.

There's a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry,
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free.
Though I respect that a lot,
I'd be fired if that were my job,
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts.
Bluebird of friendliness,
Like guardian angels, it's always near.

(And while you're at it,
Keep the nightlight on inside the
Birdhouse in your soul.)

There wasn't a readily available internet when this song was first popular, and in checking a few details, I discovered a cover in an equally quirky television series of the aughts, Pushing Daisies. This fan video captures a few seconds of it, along with a number of other old favourites sung by Kristin Chenoweth, who played a smitten pie-shop proprietor named Olive Snook in the show. Her singing partner for "Birdhouse in Your Soul" is none other than Ellen Greene, the original Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. (Their eye-patched driver is Swoosie Kurtz.)

"Candle on the Water", which we hear briefly later in the fan-vid, also has strong memories for me. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. Maybe I already have...

The twelfth day of Christmas (cheating just a bit)

Younger daughter bravely went to school this morning and even greeted her teacher cheerily. So far, those hippy-dippy creative visualizations and affirmations seem to be working. At least I haven't been resorting to the Sleep-Relax or Valerian to escape the gremlins.

Twelfth Night is tonight, and I've promised younger daughter chocolate chip cookies to celebrate her getting through the first day of the new term. This means cheating a little, as I fob you off to two items that have amused me on other blogs.

First, I occasionally like to look in on Angry Who Fan. The humour is (how shall I put this?) a wee bit puerile and scatological at times, but this morning made me giggle and if you too have been joining in on the New Doctor debate, maybe this will tickle you too.

Second, a pal of mine in Vancouver sent me a link to this, so I'd better post it while it's still the twelfth day of Christmas. It's a bit American-centric (but what isn't?):

I need to have the house smelling of chocolate chip cookies by the time I leave the house in three quarters of an hour, so I leave you with this from Steeleye Span: Oh, Christmas is past; Twelfth Night is the last, so we bid you adieu, pray, joy in the new...

The whirligig of time

And the grey afternoon slips away to Twelfth Night. This evening will be the last full evening that the lights glow outside our porch and the Christmas tree shimmers in the study. My mental view of the year is a physically impossible oval: The months I like the least, January to June, make a straight line east, through the summer months of July and August, with a hairpin turn back into September which leads west to the gently curving haven of Christmas. No matter how good or bad a Christmas is (this one leaned toward being one of the better ones, although a Christmas spent in Ottawa will always be far from perfect), it's still a sort of brightly lit harbour where the demands of the school year are kept at bay temporarily. Now it's time to pack a lunch, prepare the spelling lists, set up an evaluation with the developmental psychologist. Elder daughter has already been typing up school assignments due mid-week. I stick stickers and write notes in younger daughter's bedroom calendar to help her slip out of Christmas and back into the perils and struggles of her school day, a bit like she slipped down a snowy hill yesterday, sometimes on a red plastic saucer with yellow edges, sometimes just her own body along a grey chute prepared by other children: steep, slippery and a specially-created bump at the end to send one flying. She dragged her mittens in the snow to control the inevitable descent. I can't cushion her fall.