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#182 Peter Gray A Beautiful Evening

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We sat outside and listened through the open window. It capped off what had been a beautiful evening.

Peter Gray

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated my eighty eighth birthday. We went to The Wetherby Whaler fish restaurant. All the family. My son and his partner had come up from Essex, my other son had come over from Harrogate with his daughter Anna, my grandson and his wife, who is expecting my first great grandchild. It was wonderful to see everyone together, because we haven’t been able to meet as a family through the pandemic.

My brother and I were telling stories of when we were young and living in Woodhouse.

Towards the end of the evening I received a phone call from Bernard to say he was at The Heart in Headingly where there was going to be a jazz concert and he invited me to meet him.

When my daughter dropped me off Bernard was sitting outside which surprised me because the concert had started. “There’s no room for us” he told me, but as it was a decent weather, we sat outside and listened through the open window. It capped off what had been a beautiful evening.

Precis

The beauty of being in a company of older performers is the kaleidoscopic range of real-life experiences that they bring to the table. These experiences cover everything from the vivid and strange world of childhood, to the unexpected late awakenings of old age. Take our newest batch of anecdotes, for example. These new stories are delightfully diverse: from the earthly, sensual joy of baking bread, to the cosmic dreams of outer space; from an unnerving encounter with a poltergeist, to the risqué glories of adult pleasure products and burlesque. Running as a rich theme throughout, is the possibility of love, and the simple wonder of human connection. As one writer tells us, in her story of funeral rites and flirting, “Amidst death, life goes on”, and indeed it does, delightfully so.

Edited by Barney Bardsley