I spent Wednesday evening, through the first part of the night until 2am, with Diana, Melly, recent widow of George Melly, the bisexual Jazzman, writer, raconteur, art lecturer, fisherman and British Institution. I was reading the last third of her book, Take a Girl Like Me, and was full of thoughts and reactions about the work when I woke in the early hours after only four hours of sleep
Wednesday had been a solid work day when I broke the back of the work backlog, although I did not complete all that I had intended. I also over eat which has put back the weight control and was unable to focus on anything after the evening meal until I made a determined effort to read the book and became increasingly impressed to the extent that I went back to the beginning to remind myself of several issues
The day commenced with finding out what had happened to Oxford overnight and because of the number of tributaries and the planned flood plain, the city appeared to be surrounded by water, especially to its south and to the west. Yet the number of properties and evacuee was small by comparison elsewhere in the country and in Gloucestershire and neighbouring areas to the rivers. It is difficult to obtain an accurate picture of the overall situation as the media tends to concentrate on particular areas.
Because I was devoting time to taking photographs of work and attending to registration and record making work it was also possible to keep one eye on television.
One of the earliest films I can recollect seeing in theatre is an Alistair Sim light hearted mystery Green For Danger made just after the second world war but set during the war and towards the end of the film a V2 rocket goes overhead and engine cuts out just as I remember. The film also starred Trevor Howard and Leo Genn. I believe I watched part of the film once before on TV, but taking account that I was between six and eight when the film was first viewed in theatre it is remarkable that I remembered the core of the plot, although I now realise that it would have contributed to my fear of anaesthetic and hospitals since.
I also switched between three films during the afternoon. Cattle Drive had also been seen on TV before but I could not remember aspects of the plot. The film achieve a sense of justice for its hero who loses his reputation, goes to prison for five years and loses his girl, on the basis of rumour, misrepresentation and falsehood. He regains his freedom and self respect by forgiving his enemies and deciding to move on physically and psychologically. You are given the feeling that he has a lot of life ahead of him, so it was an enjoyable fairy tale. I had also previously seen a horror film in witch a secret cult uses doll look-a-like to wield power over others. I only briefly kept an eye on this film to confirm that I could remember the main plot, which I did. The reason for deciding to switch between the films is that I had seen some of a two part four hour Sidney Sheldon epic Memories at Midnight staring Omar Sharif as an aged villain, and a mature Jane Seymour. The film is typical light TV drama where the story is predicable and where I was pleased to work out who had been sent to kill Ms Seymour in the second part, and who had not.
Even when I am fired with writing or other work, it has become rare for me to able to continue until exhaustion and on Wednesday, by doing work which did not fully engage, I was at a loose end for the first time in, well I could do not remember the previous occasion, so I turned to reading a book of which I had expected so much, too much perhaps, and where after only a few pages, I had to stop and think and reflect, so only about two thirds had been read over several weeks.
Diana Melly's Take a Girl Like Me is an amazing book, full of blistering frankness about herself, her relationships and about George. As one reviewer is quoted as saying it is a book about exceptionally good gossip but this is no more than a front to protect writer and reader from the pains of the reality of such an extraordinary life.
It is not a conventionally written autobiography written in chronological sequence and one receives significant information such as the relationship with her mother and father and her early life throughout the work. At the age of twelve she was picked up by a soldier and was upset when her father came upon her, upset because at the time, he did not appear to respect her privacy and sense of being grown up, and it was only years later that she was able to see his behaviour as that of a parent concerned for the welfare of his daughter. This incident as with countless others is written in the gossipy casual style previously mentioned but those who had similar experiences in their lives will know the intensity of the feelings arouse at the time, how they will have influenced subsequent being, and the somersaults in understanding and psychological processing involved in being able to understand the perspective of others, and therefore to forgive them and oneself.
I make this point because it is easy to dismiss the work as just the story of a amoral bohemian living a chaotic and picturesque life in the shadow of a man who became a national institution, to a greater extent because of the colourful excesses of his life which he also wrote frankly about. This is in fact a cleverly structured book by a remarkable person and merits closer attention than I originally devoted.
Diana met George when she was 24 in 1961 when I was on my way to Ruskin College. By then she been married twice with a child aged six and second aged seven months, he was thirty five and already developing his rotund frame which to the casually observer did not mark him out as a man likely to have two mistresses and a wife at the same time as other casual lovers, and where people would pursue him sexually and emotionally as much as he pursued them into his old age
self worth and desperate to have an enduring meaningful relationship. Despite her comparative youth to George and attractiveness to other men who continued to pursue her, some successfully, she devoted the first ten years of their marriage to trying to please and control him in everyway that she could, afraid that he would be taken away from her by one the affairs.
Despite the precariousness of being primarily a jazz singer the couple were able to have the kind of lifestyle which meant they eat well out at good restaurants, holidayed all over the world, sometimes to friends with homes in the sun, and commuted between London and Wales on at times a weekly basis. Yet this was also a woman who converted a building into a habitable home, created a garden and took in B B guests for the Welsh Tourist board on a regular basis.
It was one of their trips to the South of France which led to two decades of separate lives when their relationship continued through a flimsy single thread, as they both took lovers who were brought to their homes and on trips to friends both shared and individual. I will leave the complications arising from former marriages and children.
Because of his lifestyle and natural aging process George became increasingly dependent on Diana over the last two decades of his life, his hearing difficulties and poor sight deteriorating, developing the complaints of heart and lung and forgetfulness. Diana describes incident upon incident which sounds funny now, and perhaps were then, such as mixing up soup cartons with those of milk on breakfast cereal or confusing an electric razor with a vibrating pager after deciding that he would never be able to cope with a mobile phone.
My impression that as a consequence of the tragedies of failed relationships, and the death of her son and of close friends in their forties, as well as formal therapeutic help she became strengthened, more self reliant and resilient and therefore far from fighting against reaching the age when most women start to become sexually invisible to men, she embraced her new role, going off for example on an African adventure for several weeks, in which you were required to put up your own tent, and only to find there was one other paying traveller where they took instant mutual dislike.
In such a situation it may be considered surprising that she did not break from George. She provides the answer. Love, she agrees with a dictionary definition consists of great affection and attachment, but is also strong emotional and sexual attraction. The latter had become something of the past but she retained the memory, and which I am sure was as vivid and real now as the time and care she devoted to him and to countless others, human and animal.
There will be many who cannot comprehend let alone approve of the life led by Diana and George yet proclaim themselves as Christian or devout in other faiths based on understanding, forgiveness and love. I am still under decided whether it is better to have known and then lost paradise or to live in hope of its experience after death.
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