My (Les) Miserable Journey

The first time I heard any music from Les Miserable was about 20 years ago, and I had no idea what it was.  I friend of mine was putting on a concert in Chorley and needed a few extra voices for some of the bigger numbers and "Do you hear the people sing" was one of them.  She sent over the music for me to practice and I fell in love with it the first time I played it, without knowing anything else about it.  It just gave me chills and nearly brought me to tears every time I sang it.

Shortly after this the stage production came to Manchester and I just had to go and see it.  I went on my own one night because no one else was interested in going to a musical.  This was the first time I had been to a theatre in years.  I was entranced from the opening bars, and I still say that the Jean Valjean in that production is the best I have heard.  I had never seen anything like it before and I still haven't. The way the barricades appeared on stage and the sound of the trumpets as the soldiers call to the young revolutionaires are two of my favourite moments.  Javert singing Stars and Valjean with Bring him Home.   I was in tears at the end, and I wasn't alone.  That final scene moved me so much.  The staging of it; the music; the feelings I had for the characters after watching them for two and a half hours.

The next time it really affected my life was about eight years later when the production came to Manchester again. Rebekah was ten years old and we heard about them having open auditions to find girls to play the young Cosette.  As you probably know, Rebekah has been a pretty good performer from a young age and jumped at the chance of being in a professional production.  The auditions were at the Bridgewater Hall and the first thing you had to do was pass the height requirement test.  There were people on the door with a height marker and as the girls entered the building they had to be below the line.  Some poor things got turned away because they were too tall.  Rebekah was just short enough.

There were several rounds of auditions on the day with successful girls getting called back.  Rebekah passed the first round and then we found out we needed a passport size photo to go on her audition form, so we had to leg it into Manchester centre to find a photo booth to have one taken.  I still carry that photo around in my purse.

She did very well and got down to the final six girls out of several hundred.  Unfortunately she didn't make the final cut.

When the production opened, Robert and I went to see it. This was our first theatre experience together. Something we didn't get to repeat until many years later, but now we go as often as we can.  Of course we scrutinized the performance of the young Cosette on the night, and I know my Bekah could have been just as good if not better.  Once again I cried at the end, and this time Robert was crying with me.

Four more years and it touched me again.  BASICS theatre school were putting on the school production for their show that year.  All my girls, apart from Kirsty, have been involved in BASICS, and Rebekah was thrilled to get the chance to be in it.  She didn't get a principal role, but even so she gave it her all in the chorus.  These are just teenagers, albeit talented ones, but not professionals and not fully mature.  Having said that, the show was wonderful with some excellent performances by these young people.  Yet again I cried at the end.  This time it was also because I was so proud of the kids that I knew.

I've had the opportunity to perform some of the music several times myself in concerts with different choirs I have been involved in.  I still find it some of the most moving and stirring music I have ever heard.

With apologies to my older girls, Katy has been quite spoilt since they left home, simply because we have a bit more cash available these days, so she gets to do things that they never did.  I do feel bad about this sometimes, but what can I do?  When they were young, we were pretty skint.  I mention this because we took Katy to London to see Les Mis, about 18 months ago during their 25th year in the West End.  The whole trip was a surprise.  We didn't tell her where we were going or why.  When we got on the train at Preston she figured out where we were going but still didn't know why.  We went out for something to eat in Covent Garden and then walked to the theatre, still not telling her where we were going.  We were a bit early for the performance so as we walked down Shaftesbury Avenue we went past the theatre and carried on walking.  Katy was very confused by this time as she had started to think we were going to the theatre but couldn't work out why we were going past them all.  Eventually we turned round and went back and in.  She was literally jumping for joy when she finally knew.  This time I didn't cry at the end.

When I heard that they were making a film of it I was very sceptical.  How could it possibly live up to the theatre experiences I had had so far?  Then I started to hear snippets of it and again thought maybe I would give it a miss as the singing was just not going to measure up.  But of course it was Les Mis. so I couldn't resist, especially after I found out that all the singing was done live rather than recorded in a studio and added to the soundtrack later.  The actors sung to a piano track as they were filmed and the orchestra was put in post production.  Of course it had to be experienced in Imax.

It was better than I expected it to be, although I still don't know why on earth Russell Crowe was cast as Javert.  His voice was just not on the same level as everyone else.  Katy was unfortunately sitting next to someone who couldn't help himself from singing and whistling (yes whistling!) along.  I was singing along in my head and I think I noticed every time they had changed the words around or missed a bit out.  I didn't love everything about it and it had its faults, but on the whole it was a success.  I didn't cry, but I could hear people who did.

Am I at the end of my Les Miserable journey, or will it continue to be a part of my life?

A Subtle Shift

When my older three girls were little we didn't have cable TV, just the normal terrestrial channels.  There were many good and not so good programmes for them to watch, and for me to endure.  Then along came cable and a whole new world of children's entertainment.  This was fine for a while, but then Katy got older and discovered all the America shows aimed at teenagers.  I'm talking about iCarly, Wizards of Waverley Place, Victorious, Sweet Life of Zach and Cody, Sunny with a Chance etc, etc, etc.  They were loud and annoying and were on endlessly.

When I got home from work she would be watching them, one after the other.  Switching channels every half an hour to catch her favourites.  Now this is her house and she needs to have some freedom to watch her choice of television, but each day I would get to a point where enough was enough and I had to make her switch it off.

A few months ago, I came to realise that when I got home tired and hungry at 5:30 each night, I was no longer being bombarded with American kids being, well, America.  I'm not entirely sure when the shift happened as it was like when you suddenly realise that annoying headache has gone. You're not sure exactly when, you just know it's not there any more.

Now when I got home she was watching shows like QI, Top Gear or Friends, and a current favourite Man versus Food.  I feel this is a big step in her development and can only be a good thing.  Although I have to admit I did get converted to iCarly, and missed that one for a while.

Christmas and New Year

Two days before Christmas a friend asked me what we were doing this year. I said "nothing much", as I usually do, on the assumption that my life is uneventful and pretty hum drum.  Then I thought about it and realised that actually we were going to be quite busy this year.

Christmas eve was the Taylor family annual "let's eat lots of food and watch all the kids have fun" party.  This is always a good time.  All the cousins get to be together and us adults get to watch them being cute (even the teenagers), and have a laugh with each other.  This year my two bigger girls, Kirsty and Rebekah, were able to be there, and it was nice to see Kirsty connecting with Richard's oldest daughter Ciera.

Big Girls and little cousins

Katy and some little boy cousins

Katy and some little girl cousins

Christmas eve also saw the start of our advent calendars.  I had decided that I didn't want chocolate ones this year and when I saw the Lego advent calendars in the shop I couldn't resist.  I was supposed to buy one for the three of us at home to share, but I came out of the shop with two.  We really enjoyed opening these each day and adding to our Lego Christmas scenes. Although Katy was a little disappointed to be honest.  Her calendar was called Lego Friends but it only had two people in it.  Mine and Robert's was full of little people.

Katy's calendar day 1

Our calendar day 1

The completed calendars

Christmas day was a little different this year as Kim had decided to go to Australia with her boyfriend.  When Katy found out about this she declared that Kim had ruined Christmas.  Then it was my turn to have this accusation laid on me as we bought an artificial tree this year instead of a real one for the first time since I left home 29 years ago.  There was sound reasoning for this decision and all the girls did admit once it was decorated that it was a good tree despite not being real.

The tree that nearly ruined Christmas

Kim was replaced by Robert's brother Edward at our house on Christmas day.  My girls had been threatening to call him Kim all day but I don't think they actually did this to his face.

We started a tradition a few years ago to try and do something different with the labels on everyone's presents.  So far we have had baby photos, dates of birth, anagrams and dingbats.  The first thing everyone has to do is figure out what the labels mean and then decide which label is theirs before they can begin opening presents.  We stumped them for a while this year, and it was Edward who figured out that the labels were name meanings.

Googling their names.  You can see Katy's arm going up as she found out her name
meaning.

Opening presents always takes a while at our house, and some of the presents are well packaged/disguised with bubble wrap.  This delighted Kirsty and Edward in particular and produced one of my favourite photos this year.

Never mind the presents that people spent money buying us, just give me some bubble wrap.

Katy has a little bit of a penguin obsession at the moment, and I think it's fairly safe to say that this was her favourite present this year.

Awesome penguin onesie.

++++

The oldies at Christmas

Bekah.

We managed to speak to Kim via video chat on Facebook.  It was about 9:30pm in Brisbane and she was all full of Christmas dinner and nearly ready for bed as her body clock was still struggling to adjust to the time difference.

Boxing day was Jim and Liz and the boys day.  I had made the mistake of buying Robert presents he actually wanted this year, one of which was Risk Lord of the Rings edition, so the boys spent quite a large chunk of the afternoon playing it.  Liz, Katy and I retired to the lounge for a girly chat and had a go on one of Robert's other presents which was a quiz that you could play on his iPad with individual buzzers for each player.  It was pretty good, and we got quite competitive.  We also went back to their house to take their dog Copper out for a walk and when we returned, the boys had just finished playing their game. 

Kim's present to Robert was a magecube which is basically a cube made up of little magnetic balls that you can manipulate into all sorts of shapes.  It comes in a tin in a perfect cube shape, but when Kim got it, she couldn't resist playing with it and then couldn't get it back into a perfect cube shape.  She gave up and just rammed it back into the tin in a cubish shape.  I think we all attempted to get it back into a cube, but Matthew succeeded (with advice from Jim). Good times.

The next few days were something quite new for us.  Robert's sister Sarah and her husband had been given the chance to go away for a few days for free, and she asked us if we could look after her three year old, Darcy.  Being the youngest of five children and not having any little cousins around, I've not had a lot of experience of looking after other peoples children.  Now, I know what to do with a three year old, it's not like I'm too old to remember, but it's something different when the three year old doesn't belong to you, and she's never spent so much time alone with us before.  As it turns out it she was a delight to have around.  We raided the loft to see what toys we still had up there, and a large box of Barbie dolls and various Barbie paraphernalia went down a treat.

Katy and Darcy and Barbies

Apart from a couple of meal times when she declared she didn't like the food before she had even tasted it, and having to use some bribery and distraction techniques, all was good.  When coming down stairs on the third day she declared "this is the best Christmas ever". OK so she's only three and doesn't have a lot to go on, but it was just so darn cute.

After Darcy went home we had an evening to relax before heading down to London on New Year's eve.  Ever since they started doing big firework displays from the London Eye we had wanted to go down and finally decided to do it this year.  Thanks to Rebekah working for the IHG hotel group we get a discount on rooms, so can afford to stay in some of the nicer hotels without spending too much.  I know this is only a job while she is at university, but she can never leave.

The drive down was no fun as it rained quite heavily most of the way, but by the time we left the hotel to get in place to watch the display it had stopped, and despite the forecast saying it would rain again later, it stayed dry for the rest of the evening.  We didn't manage to get down to the riverside as we weren't there early enough, but we still managed to see most of the display and were next to Big Ben to hear the chimes at midnight first hand.

It was about 1:30am by the time we got back to the hotel and we were all feeling a little peckish, so decided to indulge in a little room service.  We had some very nice burgers.  Proper beef with shredded bacon and cheese, cooked like a burger should be cooked.  

By the time we woke up later that day it was nearly time to check out.  It was a little colder than the day before, but it was a beautiful sunny winter's day, and although we were tired on the drive home and had to make a few stops, we still managed to arrive safe and sound just after 6:30.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that Christmas and New Year were a lot of fun.

Resolutions for 2013?  To carry on being awesome, and blog more often.