A weekend in Derby

As well as co-writing and performing this show, known to us, Ben and Will (our booker and PR respectively) for administrative purposes as SILLMS, I am also producer and tour manager. It's good that I'm naturally pretty on-it logistics-wise, or the tour manager would be sacked by the producer, and then the creatives would have to be told that the tour manager had blown their fees due to sheer incompetence. I have had my moments, though, some too painful to mention here, but others with which I have become reconciled.

We have spent the weekend in Derby with Cousin Will and his fiancee Milla. On the Saturday Milla had to work, but the rest of us go for a wonderful walk in the Derby Dales. It's so hot for early April, and it's beautiful here. Bartelt loves it, although we have the discussion about his leg before we go. He has had an infection in his right shin this year. He's been on intravenous antibiotics twice and is currently on his third lot of oral antibiotics, so it's kind of getting better-ish again, but he should probably be resting it.

In fact, Bartelt has such stupendously bad health that he should probably rest his entire body virtually all of the time, but he decided long ago that to pay too much heed to what his body says would be to curtail virtually everything he enjoys, almost certainly including breathing. What is more, he could make no kind of a living. He has dreadful arthritis, a host of allergies and a cow valve (not pig – he's allergic to pork) where his mitral valve should be. These are just a few highlights. I don't want to turn this into something about Bartelt, this blog is about me, but there's lots and lots more where this came from. There's the constant pain he is in, the three drugs he has to take every day (and the handful to deal with the side-effects thereof) to stay alive and the fact that he seems to be a lizard, heated and cooled only by his environment.

And so, despite it's redness, the swelling and, I'm sure, pain of his leg infection, he is determined to go for a walk. He has a disproportionate love of the countryside in general and trees in particular. Actually, all the things he feels are disproportionate, but more of that another time. We all have an utterly lovely time.

On the Sunday Bartelt cannot believe how hot it is in their garden and while the three of us go out round town, Bartelt gardens, which delights Will and Milla upon our return. He is a very gifted man is Bartelt and he loves to garden. He seems to know the name of every tree, flower and shrub we pass and is always asking me the English name of them. I have to resist the temptation to say “tree” or “big flower with little blue bits”, not because it would annoy him, though I like to think it would, but because he is so sincere, childlike and enthusiastic about things herbaceous that it would be cruel. I have to overcome my irritation that he knows all the names of all the green things we see in German, Italian, French and often, Latin, while I have to respond time after time “Sorry, I don't know” or “Well, I thought it was a beech/hydranger/dock leaf. If you're sure it's not then I don't know. Sorry.” Or “No, I don't recognise it from the German/Italian/French/Latin. Sorry.”