always

It’s the word I wish my ex husband hadn’t used on our wedding day because by then (I was  34) I thought I knew there was no always.  Nothing – nothing – is unchangingly forever as  always  suggests. 

You hear people talk about the mountains and the sea – always.  But the mountains and the sea change – often affected by  humans – sometimes not –  but change they do.

Tastes change.  There was a long period in my life when I couldn’t get up without a cup of tea – actually a mug.  I am currently right off tea. 

There were a couple of women of whom I was aware when I was growing up, who had shoulder length hair with a roll at the front and the back, 

flowery dresses in a shape I didn’t recognize, hard red lipstick and  (if they used it)  powder  blue eyeshadow.  She who took no prisoners  (Ma) snorted.  “Still dressing late forties” she said.  “Think they haven’t changed.” 

I asked – of course I did – first of all, because she was my mother and secondly because  she obviously meant it – and from my mother (young as I was) I learned that skin changed colour, that hair changed texture, that what  became you at one age wouldn’t necessarily work at another.

My mother could see and she could think and  she inspired me to  do likewise –even though the evolution of personal taste wasn’t a given and certainly not an always.

For years actors (all sexes) 

were what I concentrated on.  I wasn’t really  interested in sport, heaven knows I was clumsy.  I loved films and later theatre.  Occasionally as time went by, I noticed set design, or through costume the look of the thing but not coherently.  Not for years.  I was seduced by stardom as many of us are.

There was what I learned to call an aesthetic in all this  – I liked a certain way of looking or moving or being – what I came to perceive much later in life as a “line”.   Which became as I grew older a greater perception like being sure that Audrey Hepburn as the lead in War and Peace 

wore the wrong shoes … not that they weren’t pretty,  but historically wrong.   Not  even with a budget of millions was there an always. 

And  as I grew up  (a slower process than I could ever have imagined) I have realized increasingly the importance of the script.

I don’t go to the cinema – I probably stopped when it became less accessible and people talked and ate and used their phones there.      Theatre is  gobsmackingly expensive – I pass.  So what I see is what is on terrestrial television – yes.  I am one of the reliable forkers-out who keep it going.

And if you had told me that I would watch the  English version of Maigret (1960s) with Rupert Davies and Ewen Solon  as respectively Maigret and Lucca

– I would have doubted it.  But I have – with real appreciation because of the shape of the scripts.  Makes you want to stand on a chair and cheer.    I won’t try to sell you on it because what became my Saturday evening always is coming to an end.   Next weekend’s episode it says in the usually reliable tv guide is last in the series.  

I could never have said before either that I had come to believe in the permanence of a tv run, no matter how long, nor that I now knew  that I was deluded – ends come, things pass, other things emerge.

Here is an always:  whenever I write  annalog, I long to be funny and witty and upbeat  or passionately intense and impressively serious.   Neither of which come under always.    I get what I get, and you get it if I can accept I have done my best this week …

The song says “… and I  will always love you.” And there are people from whom my love is an always until I am gone.  I will always  be interested in – yes I could give you a long list which of course changes focus as do I and you and the times we live in.  

I have such respect for that little word always –  it has a kick like a mule.  Makes you think.   Always.