Well, we’ve moved house. We packed for a good two weeks, left the rented flat in Fulham, and I left the Captain with Gentleman and a Van (yes that’s their name and they are cost effective, professional and brilliant) and scadaddled off to join my marvellous parents, for a few days, ending it with the mother at Grayshott where we saw Vanessa Redgrave looking distinctly cheekboney and immaculate. All of which sounds rather smug. It should. We had a great time. Massages, great food, a glass of champagne every night with our customary game of scrabble by the fire. I noted how stress shows itself, because on the first night I was very anxious about the game, trying really hard to win, but on the second night it did not matter a jot, as by that time I had been pummelled to within an inch of my life and felt like I could breathe again. Besides which, I never really beat my mother at scrabble, she is a wordsmith par excellence, while being German, her knowledge of English vocabulary is peerless.
We chose to watch a film in our room, since the nightly cinema ( a plush room with luxurious armchairs) had a choice that did not appeal. So I borrowed Sunshine on Leith from their library, and we wallowed in the brilliant direction of Dexter Fletcher. I had watched him play Baby-Face in Bugsy Malone, as well as his stints at the RSC and ensuing television career, but it was Alan Parker‘s influence that came across during his interpretation of this film. One of its most wonderful points was that while set in Edinburgh, with the music from The Proclaimers, the gap between talking and breaking into song was seamless, which it so often is not in most musicals. I thoroughly recommend it if you have not seen it already. I hope poor old Mr Fletcher wasn’t traumatised when as a schoolgirl on one of our school trips, I insisted on kissing him twice as he came out of the stage door. A whole coach of giggling school girls watched as I placed my lips strategically on his face and then ran before the coach sped off.
When I arrived at the new home, the delays that had taken place,( based on the one and only unhelpful neighbour insisting that he appointed the least helpful and most expensive Chelsea based quantity surveyor he could find) meant that the building works were about two weeks behind. The other neighbours had rallied together and helped in a way that took our breath away. One set insisted that while there were no tenants, we could use their place to stay in while the works were finished. The others offered their empty garages to store all our moved belongings. Without this exceptional assistance, we would have been well and truly stumped. In twenty-five years of living in London, we have both not come across such kindness before. This pocket between Chiswick and Hammersmith is proving to be a dream come true.
My journey to work takes me from my house, passing our local pub and across the A4 onto the glorious Chiswick High Street with its glorious cafés, antique shops and dangerously expensive pharmacies, which if you know me, you will know must be considered as perilous as an opium den to an addict where I’m concerned. I am a toiletries junkie, and have to control it. In fact I might start a group… Toiletries Anonymous. Hi, my name is Kate, I’m a toiletries addict… Anyway, I digress, so I leave for the city for my consultancy job via Stamford Brook. On my way home, I get off at Hammersmith so that I can walk along the Thames back past my local pub and home. I now call it my river, as I watch the tide ebb and flow, as the various moored boats tinkle and the light plays across it, the buildings at dusk silhouetted around it, I feel unspeakably lucky to live in my favourite part of London looking at the very water that the likes of Shakespeare and Hogarth and King’s and Queens saw.
Outside our bedroom window is a huge tree, perhaps forty yards away. I have silently greeted it most mornings and it silently nods to me. I know what you are thinking. She’s going mad. Well perhaps, but it is a nice way of doing so. Especially as a significant birthday takes place this week. I am spreading my celebrating of it right across the entire space of December. I began with a lunch with an old friend at J Sheeky’s Oyster Bar in the west end, with my favourite food, half a lobster and a glass of Champagne. In fact I had two, come to think of it. Sponge pudding followed, while my friend had cheese cake and I had coffee, and he insisted despite already having bought me a cashmere jumper, (a delicious soft cowl neck in taupe) to pay for the bill. I’m just a huge spoilt brat. We strolled around the west end, and I finished the day watching a fascinating homage to Gore Vidal, who now strikes me as the Bernard Shaw of his time.
Among all these events we attended a fiftieth birthday of the German Prince’s as well as a Spectre-themed party at the Gore Hotel courtesy of my brother, Ferris Bueller. We had the Captain’s mother to stay for a few days, as her birthday fell over those dates, which was a challenge, given that we had barely moved in, but we had arranged some brilliant outings with her, including dinner with all the neighbours at the local pub (I was offered and am now in love with our local gin, Sipsmiths), and her birthday was at the Villa di Geggiano which was so good, we have booked for my birthday this week, just for me and the Captain, as it is pricey but glorious. They have promised me a free Negroni and I’m going to hold them to it. We also went to see Lady and the Van in which Maggie Smith was at her best. That said, it is not the choice of anyone who is easily depressed. I cried throughout it, and did not feel joyful as a result of watching it. So you have been warned.
I also attended press night of the RSC Wendy and Peter Pan as a good mate invited me to see her husband, also a good mate, in it. My agent represents the good mate (I introduced them), and also two other actors who are at the RSC, so it was a tremendous night of both theatrical splendour and great chats. I had the pleasure of meeting many sparkling industry people and then stayed at the good mate’s cottage, directly opposite the theatre. I think he has a one minute commute to work. Puts the District Line to shame, really. One of my favourite parts of this whole event was the Brief Encounter sensation of meeting the good mate at Marylebone, which retains its old fashioned and sweet little nature as a station. The train journey was stuffed but we ran into a kind agent acquaintance who happily gave his seat for us to natter, only to discover that our natter had to be on the “down and low” as we were in the quiet carriage. A few giggles later we all disembarked at Leamington Spa. I am trying to think of the collective noun for agents, producers and casting directors but Leamington Spa was full of them. A Darling of Luvvies? A plethora of Darlings? Anyway, you get the picture. We all piled on to the chuggy-train to Stratford, having connected with my brilliant agent and a rather groovy producer, and chuckled our way along. Tremendous fun, all in all. Just what the doctor ordered when acting work has made itself a little spare.
Champagne has been the theme, it seems. My boss bought me a bottle to celebrate my move which was a joy as well as a surprise. It simply never loses its attraction, as far as I’m concerned, especially Veuve Cliquot and Pol Roget. Funnily one of my new young colleagues decided that I was very “Champagne” as a person. Remind me, if you see me soon, to do my Audrey Hepburn “Champagne Darling” imitation homage. I’m told it works. She also said that she really thought I should be in a Baz Luhrmann movie. I asked what made her observe this delightful fact. I suggested it was because I was possibly capable of being camp. She said I was more than that? Grotesque, I asked. More than that she said. So Baz, if you are reading this, give us a job. You heard it here first.
Kate Terence's Letters from London 