The Downside of not taking Selfies - Janette Miller

The UK Guardian had an excellent article on the excessive taking of photos explaining that taking photos is not living but taking your own obituary 

As you point your phone at everything from Notre Dame to a slice of chocolate cake, remember these images will take on significance only after you have gone - by Rana Dasgupta

There is a lot to be said for not taking photos but doing this does have a downside. My husband, who I loved dearly, hated taking photos. He said one should retain the moment in the memory, that this was far more valuable than having a photograph. He was extremely persuasive in his argument. Consequently we never took a camera with us all through our 30 years of a very happy marriage.

Then suddenly he died well before his time. It was that moment and really for ever after that I discovered he was wrong. I have very few visual memories of our time together or with the time we spent with our daughter when she was growing up.

Fortunately he relented, once, and I was allowed to take three rolls of Kodak slides on my box camera when we went to Greece. My parents took a few including a couple of out of focus on our wedding day. Only one video and on that occasion it was a song of which my husband did not approve so he started to lampoon it and make faces, very funny at the time but not now. In fact it is grotesque but it is his only visual memorial. He had the most wonderful voice and that too is missing. If only I had a recording of him saying "I love you darling" or "Hello, darling" as he did whenever I opened the front door. I could have done this if he had let me. I produce TV.

However we did sing every day for 30 years and right at the end of his life we decided to record a Schubert Song Cycle, Die Winterreise for our daughter to have something to remember us by. We recorded the first 12 songs but then before we were ready to do the second 12 he got his death sentence. With great courage he played and I sang the last 12 and this is really the only thing I have to remember him by as you can see in the video I have a few seconds of him playing the piano on video and I had to slow motion that to get enough and one small photo that shows how happy we were. Mark you what a way to go!

Miles Heffernan Appreciation - YouTube

Yes, I have a few photos of him left, from his youth, our Greek Trip and photos others have taken but not enough, not mine and few together. So the lesson is everything in moderation. Personally I'd go for it because you are a long time dead and I do miss him, funny faces or not.

Jackie Collins, my old school friend - Janette Miller

I had the luck to be at school with Jackie Collins who has just died of breast cancer. We were in the same class but it appears she was much older than me. We became students together at Aida Foster and we all knew her as the sister of Joan Collins who had been at the school and that, secret, secret, she had been expelled from her previous school.

I arrived at the age of 15 at Aida Foster Stage School in Golders Green. My ballet school AES which I loved was threatening to close down and my mother loathed the headmistress there because she felt she was cruel that I was taken away and dumped at Aida Foster as mother wanted me in musicals not ballet. There was nothing I could do.

Adia Foster was not academic. I was put in the GCE class to find that they were on page one of the arithmetic book and I am not joking. My education came to a full stop. I knew I was good at English and could put myself through GCE English with not too much problem and I decided to have a go at GCE English grammar, literature and history as I reckoned I could do those myself.

I was seated beside the only other two girls who it was thought might get a GCE, one was called Anne Flack and the other Jackie Collins both became firm friends although I had little hope of either being able to actually take the exams. Jackie had a penchant for yellow legal pads which were covered with a large childish handwriting and never seemed to do any work at all. I never thought anything of it at the time but I pitied both.

They might not have been good at English literature but both were good at life. My education began at the local Italian restaurant where we were allowed to go for lunch. Yes, we were allowed out for lunch and introduced to Italian Food for the first time spaghetti bolognaise of which I became particularly fond either that or my other and really best friend Marti Webb but she took me to the Wimpy Bar in Golders Green.

The restaurant was next door to the local police station but it was where the local flashers held out. Stupid really but they did and each day the three of us ran the gauntlet of the flashing gentlemen. Jackie had a thing about flashing gentleman and I see even to this day one of her last Tweets was on this subject. She used to yell at them not too subtle remarks, Like Ooo what a little one put it away. I was sort of shocked but these gentlemen did not shock Jackie Collins.

Jackie did not take the exam when I was there. I did. I got 87% for English Lit but was helped for 3 weeks by the most brilliant teacher I have ever met. A Mrs. Payne, who was tough and beautiful and taught me how to learn.  I have a blog on her too. Jackie was beautiful and was a great model.  I liked her. I left soon after as I was sexually assaulted by a student and just could not face going back. My father was furious with the school. I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and never gave Jackie Collins another thought.

Then years later I saw an article about this well known author in a New Zealand magazine and I saw the yellow legal, pad and the childish handwriting and I thought Hey I know that  writing! I should recognise it anyway. As I went on a read that Jackie Collins had become a bestseller of lurid novels and one thing Jackie described in detail was our encounters with the flashers of Golder Green and I knew it was her. She was a million dollar writer without a GCE and I was an impoverished opera ballet producer with one.

Such is life. Nowhere in her biographies does Jackie mention her stint at Aida Foster although the Fosters were Joan's first agent and in fact one of the Baker Twins a student of the school and a friend of mine ruined Joan Collins's marriage to Antony Newly.

Maybe it was all too painful. It was for me. I am grateful  to the Fosters for giving me confidence and make the best of myself. The Fosters did this for all their students and we all did well considering none of us had an education. What we all could have achieved if we had had one. Jackie Collins knew about life and her father could help her get started which was a great advantage. I admire her courage.

Brian Sewell witty, acidic, misogynist but a unforgettable character, Janette Miller

“There has never been a first-rank woman artist. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Women make up 50% or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it’s something to do with bearing children.” Guardian

The above quote is taken from the UK Guardian obituary for the art critic Brian Sewell. (pronounced Theweul). He was a one off, a character who had the most witty and cruel repartee that was administered with a spoonful of sugar that no one could take offence. It was almost an honour to be criticised by him unlike Bernard Levin, the theatre critic in the 1960s who was generally hated.

Sewell is so witty and sharp as a razor that I can almost forgive him for being a misogynist. Almost but not quite.

Like Sewell my mother at the age of 9 took me to The National Gallery to look at art and when I got home I announced to my Major in British Army father that I should like to be a fine artist like Rembrandt.

To this day I can still recall his answer. He said, Look at history, there has never been a great woman painter. Women are not great  painters! I became a ballet dancer. In my day women were the best at that.

But  my father was wrong. Women were not great painters because they were not given a chance. Michael Angelo would not have done a thing if he had been a woman. Time will tell but the world of art is still biased against women.

Still Sewell will be missed. He had a delicious and amusing way of being horrid that sort of appeals to the worst in us. We are all so glad it was not us at the end of his very acidic pen.