Post 449. BACK AT THE COMPUTER.

 THIS IS WHAT YOU GIVE

A MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING.
For a man who has everything's birthday this year it was Stephen Hough's Dream Album CD and Madly Deeply the Alan Rickman Diaries: it was also, right out of the blue and our mad son's imagination, a fascinating Apollo Flexible Wooden Arm Sofa Tray that I never realized I needed. What? Oh, I still don't, but it makes me smile. For years I have been telling the family I am a man who has everything and neither needs nor expects birthday presents. It's nice they then spoil me with gifts I shall treasure. Mo will always remember from whom I received them, too. My memory doesn't stretch that far. Even old photographs can have me baffled. Who was that?
So how good is the Stephen Hough CD? Very good if you like beautifully played piano music. 
My late father, a decent pianist in the mould of Charlie Kunz, always said it was all down to 'light and shade' and I hope Stephen Hough would not be offended when I say I detected that touch in several of the tracks on this album (e.g. Songs My Mother Taught Me and Blow The Wind Southerly) and was transported right back to the days when I would say: "Go on, play Man In A Coffin, Dad." And he would smile and gently drift into Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor.
My respect for the acting prowess of the late Alan Rickman was first recorded in this blog way back in 2006 (Post 5) when I wrote: How can anyone help but admire a man who, in 1988, had Bruce Willis running barefoot through broken glass and in 1991 cancelled Christmas. What a worthwhile chap. If he'd never done anything else I'd still like him.

He did so much else in his acting career, both nuanced and bold, and I never stopped liking him.

So, following the news that his diaries were to be published in October, I cheekily hinted that I would rather like them as a belated birthday present this year. I got them.

I have just reached the end of 1993. Forget the fame and glamour, Christ didn't he work!
Would like to have met him, but doubt I would have found the courage to speak to him.

He was a star.

And that's it for now.