I was buying a book in a charity shop, as you do if you can, when I saw a face I knew, an actor I admire.
And I paused because he was with friend/wife/partner and it was private time. But as I left the shop I said his name with a question mark. He said “Yes” and I said “Thank you for years of pleasure.” The woman said “What a lovely thing to say”, he shook my outstretched hand and asked “But don’t I know you?” And I said I thought not and left. This was not AR discovery day, this was my tribute to him. He is what we used to call a character actor and I learned his name because I enjoyed his work.
A “you and your clothes” column has to be about some sort of celebrity (to increase the chances of your reading it) this week features Jason Isaacs,
again a very good actor and no I have never seen The White Lotus, and he sounds delightfully hurt paw/ leave me alone/who’d be an actor? / let me get on with it but he is quoted as saying he doesn’t understand why people buy clothes on line. Oh my hero! And he talks about the magic of suits made to measure by Chris Kerr among others as “they look better and you look better and people comment all the time.”
No I do not fancy Jason Isaacs, I do not want him in my bed (you leave my bed alone). I do not plan to stand in the rain to tell him how much I admire him. I just think he is aesthetically pleasing and an interesting person. And as Desmond Morris (surrealist painter and zoologist) says of his long long friendship with David Attenborough (you remember him) “we are still working and we are still interested.”
I couldn’t have read this at a better time. Morris is 97. Attenborough 99 and neither one of them diet, exercise beyond common sense and comfort but they are passionately interested in the world.
When you say this, people look at you sideways and hunt for a reason to excel. Why should anybody talk to you ? Occasionally you meet somebody who doesn’t want to talk – so you withdraw gracefully after a couple of sentences. I haven’t got a reason in the world that anyone should talk to me except it is the world, my world, full of people. Some I meet again, some I know in different gradations of knowing (if I cared to categorise and I don/t, much) and some I discover.
Like the attractive young woman in the bus queue yesterday, from Bangalore
(she told me). I notice the scar on her forehead – you couldn’t not. And I asked about it and then apologized, I didn’t mean to be tactless. “You weren’t” she said. “You wanted information.” She is a doctor, she is studying to specialize in treatment of the liver.
We sat on the bus, she asked questions, I asked questions. We were joined by one of my bus/shopping friends who had been ill, pressed my hand and left us to talk. When we parted, the doctor I had met shook hands with me, and I wished her every success.
Of course somebody has to begin this dialogue and nowadays, many people are nervous of that. Josh the gardener (a mere 32) said he liked to speak to people when he is working in a park but they are wary. There is a long long list of why wary – the state of the world (geographical), ditto political, fear, inhibiting technology and doubt in your own social ability.
But as Josh has everything going for him including verbal ability – he’d probably get away with it as he did with encouraging an OAP whom he met while working to the delight of his boss.
But it is to do with feeling you can get in to an exchange and if you don’t like it, you can get out again. For this, I bless my mother. I have put my foot in my mouth (you do) . But I can apologise/retreat/retrieve and shut up if I have to. No shame, no embarrassment. Still interested in everything. Don’t you like the idea of Attenborough and Morris as fairy godfathers?
Annalog 