MICHAEL FENTON STEVENS

MICHAEL FENTON STEVENS
Ready to go on

Thursday 3 March 2011

I belive in miracles?

IVOR NOVELLO
I've just noticed that I am in the Ivor Novello room at the Theatre Royal, Bath. How lovely. I played Ivor Novello once in a radio play for BBC Radio 4. A very sad piece about him being imprisoned, during the Second World War, for cheating on his petrol allowance. He apparently fell apart whilst in prison and never really recovered form the experience. Perhaps that is an omen?

Actually, I don't believe in omens. Or miracles. Or magic. Or prayer. I believe in coincidence. There are a lot of things happening all the time, aren't there. so it is not surprising that, quite regularly, extraordinary things occur? Why wouldn't they? To see in these coincidences some external power manipulating people's lives is a bit daft, in my opinion. It also doesn't make sense that us just wanting something a lot, or wishing for it, or, as Americans seem to suggest, it being our right or something that we 'deserve' or 'believe' will actually be the cause of the thing happening rather than it just being one of millions of things that happen all the time. If enough things happen then eventually ev erything will and many will coincide with what people were actually hoping for. 'I did the lottery and I knew those numbers would come up because I dreamed about it.' That's rubbish, isn't it? Did all the other winners of every lottery and raffle and toss of a coin dream about it? Would it have made any difference if they had, really? No, is the answedr your looking for.

If you want to see a miracle then look in to the night sky at the stars. The light left some of those stars thousands, if not millions, of years ago. The light radiated out from them in all directions and travelled across the universe, only to end up hitting the back of your eye. Many of that light beams fellow travellers spent just as long rushing through space only to tragically hit your eyelash or your cheek or the ground around you, ending their journey in what could be seen as a pointless way. You seeing the light seems to give it a point. You are a witness. It is only the very few that managed to end at your eye that were noticed. Amazing, really. I mean, what are the chances of that happening? And yet, it happens all the time. The odds against are huge, surely? Far greater than winning the lottery. Far greater than most of the other things that people genuinely regard as miracles.Still, it doesn't really matter. Certainly not to the star. That's possibly not even there any more? And it is just a coincidence. Not 'meant to be' or 'significant' or 'pre-ordained'. Just chance. There are so many things happening all the time that, in fact, the chance of anything happening is very nearly certain.

And this blog was going to be a light hearted chat about my visit to the baths. Hey ho.

For anyone interested, I didn't use the filthy old pair of swimming trunks that I have in my car. I bought a new pair from M&S and very smart they are too. It was a really lovely, two hours of self indulgence. Steam rooms, plunge pools and an open air, hot pool on the roof of the building with a big bubble machine. Well worth it if you ever find yourself in the neighbourhood.



Chris and I went. No, that's not us two in the foreground of the photo.We very nearly ended up going in to the Roman Baths, which is the wrong place and not suitable for swimmers. We had paid to go in and only realised it was the wrong place when I asked the cashier if we would need towels. She laughed as she thought I was just joking. Imagine if we had actually gone ahead with it and stripped off in an ancient monument then plunged in to the hot sulphurous water. It would have been a bloody miracle not to be arrested. Or would it!? Ha, ha!!

I'm going to have dinner tonight with an old friend, the lovely Tony Head. How are you going to do that, Mike, I hear you ask, when you have a show to do? Well, I have been making a note of the times when I generally do things like get ready and go to the wings during the show and, with an eight o'clock start, it seems that I will be able to be in the restaurant at 7.30 and will not need to leave to get ready for my entrance until 9.30. It might even be later, but I want to give myself plenty of time. And yes, they are paying me for this. I apologise to all nurses, doctors, miners, office workers, traffic wardens - in fact everyone else with a job. Surely this will come back to haunt me, I will have to spend time in purgatory to repay the debt and my Karma will be badly dented? Yeah, bollocks!

1 comment:

  1. I am quite curious to know just exactly what you have been imbibing Mr Fenton-Stevens????

    'Bath water' me-thinks?

    ReplyDelete