4 min read
Up north by train, Friday, to a warm, drizzly Manchester for the bar mitzvah of the son of Simon, my first cousin once-removed, a conundrum of family relationships that my fiance David explained – with diagrams – to my ten-year-old grandson Sacha. My family is small and disparate so the names and connections had to be learnt – and not just by the kids. When Uncle Percy is also Pinchas and Uncle Issy is Isadore, Auntie Golde is also Gertrude and Anna is really Chana and the cousins removed from Israel are Omri and Yariv and Galit, but apparently emerged from Auntie Pamela from Leeds, the family tree becomes a form of Jewish Sudoku. It engaged Sacha and David totally, from Stafford to Stockport.
Let’s deal with the train first. More seats are crammed into a compartment than is physically viable, rendering the aisle so narrow that your hand luggage on wheels hits every splayed knee from coach F into coach U, which is, inexplicably, adjacent. The journey was uneventful save that the woman behind us had a robust conference call for one hour, ten minutes of it. We had reserved tables for four and were relegated to three single seats in two compartments. We were 17 minutes late getting into Manchester but the words “see it-say it-sort it” accompanied us throughout.
We lit candles and broke bread in room 1904 on the 19th floor of the glamorous Hilton Hotel and Manchester has never twinkled more. Dinner was unexpectedly delicious. Next day was a Reform shul service and, in boxing terms, “the boy done well” – “sh’koyach Calum!” The kiddush was lavish and was followed, dangerously soon, by family high tea at the Hilton, where we all got to know each other better and the conflict back in the heim was barely mentioned.
Saturday night was free so I checked out the entertainment and, lo and behold, there was proper Spanish flamenco at the Institute Cervantes, a mere two minutes from the hotel.
Ava, 13, myself and David wandered over and took our seats with 45 quietly like-minded people. It was jaw dropping! Alejandro Rodriguez, the much-vaunted flamenco dancer, had only met his guitarist Adrian Sola and singer Mónica García the night before, having stepped off an aircraft. The resulting display of improvisation, mystical communication, listening and passion, had our eyes out on stalks. I stopped breathing for centuries.
Something resonates in a Jewish soul to the sounds of those beats and that soaring sound. I am 80 per cent Ashkenazi but I am only too aware that the Spanish Inquisition led to a coming together of the musical traditions of Sephardic Jews, Moors and Roma in Andalucia that ultimately shaped flamenco. Moors, Roma and Jews lived their lives communally in secret in the caves of Granada. Even the Ashkenazi chazanut or high cantorial style reminds me of flamenco, being both nasal and filled with deep loss and dramatic longing. Every song comes with built in grief and even one called Happiness almost broke my heart.
The word flamenco relates to the songs of exiles and those who fled persecution to formerly Spanish-occupied Flanders. The word may even derive from both Flemish and flamingo. The concept of duende, an spiritual passion that the dancer must allow to enter their body to inspire them, seems like a Kabbalistic quality and I relish the Federico García Lorca quotation: “Flamenco is when your body thinks to be your heart.” In flamenco, the older you get the more you bring to the dance. I wonder why I like that?’
I once starred in a short TV play, written by Richard Harris, called Searching for Signor Duende. It was one episode of my series, About Face, and concerned a dull and timid office worker who is transformed out of recognition by enrolling in a flamenco milonga. I was so enthusiastic about practising my Sevillanos that I cracked my kitchen floor open to the cellar below. You can stuff Oasis – I say ole! to that wondrous night out in Manky.
On Sunday, the family toured Old Trafford, the ground so beloved and despaired over by my late screenwriter husband Jack, their father and grandfather. Then we made a pilgrimage to Jack Rosenthal Street, off Deansgate. His wonderful photograph and plaque was scored with white paint so we all reverently scraped it clean with our nails. We were moved and proud of this tribute to his legacy. “Me? My own street? That’s bloody unbelievable,’’ would have been his words. He was, of course, aware of his incredible success but always quietly modest about his place in Manchester history. The brilliant bronze statue he sculpted in his spare time of Bobby Charlton had pride of place in the great man’s home. I wonder where it is now?
Then came Sunday and OMG, were show-boats pushed out. A whole warehouse had been decorated and filled with music, DJs, breakdancers, electrifying dancers, solo saxophone, rock band laser beams, basketball, table soccer… four kinds of kosher food stands and a drinks bar with a juggling waiter. PT Barnum plus yiddishkeit. Maybe Barnum’s initial P stood for Pinchas not Phineas. He was certainly a philanthropist and definitely went mechullah more than once. He was affiliated to both Democrats and Republicans in his time and coined the phrase: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Sound like one of us? His maternal grandfather’s name was Taylor – sounds like a Schneider to me – and coincidentally, that is also the surname of my barnstorming cousin Simon, so who knows?
The train back was equally chaotic but we were too over- stuffed and over-stimulated to care. We had an appointment at Camden Registry Office to finalise our nuptials so we schlepped all our documents in there to be surveyed by the clerk. She sent me out and told my future husband that there was no proof on Jack’s death certificate that I had been his wife. We needed the marriage certificate. David said we would go home and get it but it was the clerk’s lunch hour and we had overstayed our prescribed time. I explained to her manager that if he googled Jack Rosenthal he would see 2,014 photographs of every year of our 33-year marriage but it cut no ice. Rules are rules. Jobsworth.
The duende is rising in me. Watch this space. Seenit, saidit, sortit.
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