I’m going to be a granny yet again
GENTLE reader I’m having problems writing this column. It’s tough to type when you’re floating several feet above the ground, walking on air and reclining with colossal comfort on Cloud Number Nine. The pneumatic cushion of ecstasy upon which I currently abide comes courtesy of Daughter the Younger, Saskia, and her delightful husband Marc. Week 12 is well under way so I am finally empowered to confide in you the loveliest, jolliest, most grin-inducing news of all. They – for these days it is most definitely both members of a couple who fall – are pregnant.
The scan picture featured my baby gazing fondly at her own baby in utero. Both were captured in profile and, so phenomenal is technology in 2018, they looked virtually identical. Saskia’s fond maternal smile illuminated her features. She was certain the baby was waving right back at her. The proud fatherto-be described the hours spent patiently waiting in the queue at their local NHS hospital as “the most glorious morning of our lives”.
YOU will by now be familiar, perhaps to a fault, with the antics, achievements and all-round charm and irresistibility of Daughter the Elder’s offspring Zekey (4) and Neroli (2). You will be aware of my fascination with their feelings, fancies and foibles. You will, in fact, have realised that – bang on about them though I may – nothing whatsoever distinguishes my grandma-hood from that of every other besotted granny in the land. I am, quite simply a walking, talking cliché.
Did I forget to mention praying? Yes, I walk and talk but boy do I pray fervently all the while. Francis Bacon was right: “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.” I thought I grasped worry in all its profundity when I became a mother. Lord, I had no idea. True anxious hand-wringing, insomniacausing worry kicks in with a vengeance when the grand-babies appear. Suddenly visions of calamity engulf your every tranquil moment.
“Dearest Almighty, please, please, I entreat you, keep these tiny scraps of life safe and healthy so they may live to be 120 years old happily an actor. That’s the whole thing,” says Tovey with commendable calm. All fine and dandy until you remember many openly gay actors are excluded from playing straight parts because when the public is aware of their proclivities it refuses to “accept” them in a heterosexual role.
Acting is indeed acting but if in practice gay actors can pretty and be a beacon to their family and society at large.”
That’s my private, personal prayer and I’m glad to let you have it. I know it’s insular and I should be praying for world peace and a cure much only play gay parts it seems more than just a tad capricious to award one of the juiciest gay roles ever to a straight chap who has his pick of the entire roster.
Jack will perform superbly but, as someone still smarting from the choice of gentile Ali MacGraw to play Jewish Brenda Patimkin in Goodbye Columbus, I wish they’d given Tovey a chance. for cancer and I do get round to it eventually. There’s something infinitely precious about your youngest child, who will forever be your baby, becoming with child. Granted that’s how the world replenishes its population but it feels a heck of a lot more dazzling and dramatic than that. I just wanted to share our excitement with you and confess I still haven’t learned how to knit an acceptable matinee jacket.