I have been re-reading the script of Once a Catholic. It's a rather dated take on a Convent Education, but it still bounces off the page and made me smile. I've never directed it, apart from a small junk when I still taught Drama at a gal's independent school in Cambridge. It's hard to imagine me doing all that now. Teaching in an independent school etc... Still a woman's got to live! I think the school must have been pretty desperate to have appointed me. I wasn't very happy there - but some of the youngsters who came through the system were truly outstanding and the small GCSE group who performed a scene from this play were exceptional. At least one has gone on to become a novelist.
Another life.
I tuned in this morning (any excuse) to a new comedy series set in a monastery on Radio Four. I had high hopes. It may warm up in future episodes now we have established the characters, but it sounded a little trite on first hearing. Very good to hear Roy Dotrice taking the lead. He has an extraordinarily rich voice and can capture diverse emotion with his cultured inflection. I'll listen again for him I suspect - but at the moment I won't be rushing out and alerting friends to tune in!
Couple of days to do housekeeping things and catch up with chores. Caught an interview with Barbara Pointon while I slurped my porridge this morning. Barbara taught music with her husband at The University of Cambridge.
Malcolm developed dementia and Barbara gave up her own career to care for him. I remember watching a very challenging documentary about their lives, coping with dementia, some years ago. It was profoundly moving - and I think at that point Malcolm could still occasionally sit and play the piano even if so many other aspects of his quality of life were very seriously impaired.
Malcolm died last February. At the time of his death it sounds as though a follow up programme was being made and in this documentary which is to be aired on 8th August, we will see Malcolm die on screen.
I knew them a little, in their academic life, as I was an undergraduate at the same college. I am pleased and utterly supportive of Barbara's honest and at times, courageous campaigning not just on her husband's behalf but to raise society's awareness of the actual emotional and financial cost of dementia. I am not sure I am so comfortable watching a person breath his last who has been unable to give his permission to be filmed. I am not sure if I do think a carer has the right or can be given the right to make this decision on behalf of the person they care for. It could be, and of course we are not privvy to this information in a short TV interview, that long before Malcolm became incapacitated, he made a Living Will - and his personal wants and needs as he approached death were fully complied with. I am surprised the relevant bodies who monitor the ethical implications of such documentaries haven't had more to say. Perhaps we are now happy to allow the media to decide on our social, emotional, spiritual and ethical values - and watching a person die who is no longer himself because of a degenerative brain disease is acceptable. I am not entirely sure it is to me.
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