Blog post #34 Kate goes to Trinity (part 3 - final)

https://youtu.be/aR5TO2YdjeY
Of course I made some lovely friends there, many of whom I have reconnected with thanks to FB and some fabulous reunions hosted by one of our number, Chris Bracewell. 
There was one last weekend as it happens. Me, I was stuck here in chilly old Melbs while my mates quaffed beer and made music in the long summer evenings. FOMO! 

To my chagrin, looking back on my early Trinity years, I did “kiss the boys and made them cry” a bit, until I saw the light and got married! (If you read my mini memoir in January, you will recall how well that went!)
I was all over the map really, dumping this boy for that, take away the number you first thought of, vaguely trying to keep myself nice. Too young, too naive and too thrilled to be away from home, foot loose and fancy free. Apologies right now for anyone recalling that behaviour! 

But I digress. Importantly, my dad and his mate John Lowe put their heads together and decided that since I was going to Trinity and John’s daughter, Ally was going to the Royal Academy of Dancing it would be a fine plan if we were to be roommates.
Note “room” mates. Back then very few students in boutique academia (ie, very cute, but not big enough to warrant halls of residence) could afford their own room, so we all buddied up as best we could. 

Brendan and John pitched the plan for their daughters to perfection as Ally and I hit it off straight away when she turned up a just a couple of days behind me in that Margaret St hostel. 
Our connection, friendship and love was instant and she and her wonderful husband Peter remain the dearest of friends to this day. 
So many memories from that time. She and I climbing over the gate at Regents Park having been locked in after closing time.
Waiting at tables round the corner at an Italian cafe on Oxford St, Torino’s I think it was. She was much better at it than me, but I got by forgetting everything and tipping lasagne into furious laps, by cracking jokes. Yes, I was good at those to cover my silliness. Probably made me look even sillier really, but hey, you “haf to laf” don’t you? 
There was a pastry chef there who took a shine to us two skittish kittens, alive with the fun of it all. The place served a dessert called “Profiterole Surprise” - the “surprise” being a little baby profiterole filled with cream, dipped in chocolate, sitting on top of the main game profiterole, also filled with cream and drenched in chocolate! Yum! 
So this chef (sleaze bag if I’m honest) used to prep the “surprise” so when we came in to dump the dirties or pick up the doomed lasagna, he’d beckon us over and indicate in broken Italian to open our mouths and he’d pop in the surprise. 

Now I know what you’re thinking; just stop it! 

That really was all that happened, though I suspect a “me-too” moment could have come of it had we been on a late shift. 
All those “surprises” were ok for Ally because she could dance off the inevitable, whereas I was a buxom lass and singing wasn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference to my growing girth! 

One weekend we basically didn’t get any sleep at all! Upper slips at Covent Garden (recipe for a crick in the neck, but we saw Nureyev and Fonteyn so you know, mustn’t grumble) followed by a Trinity student party, followed by a busy Saturday waiting at tables (remember we’re talking Oxford St here - perhaps the busiest shopping centre in the world at the time), then another party, probably RAD mates of Ally’s, singing the whole of Tapestry on our way there and back and then we somehow got to church on Sunday morning (more of that aberration of judgment in a mo’!); did belated homework on Sunday afternoon and fell into bed, only to laugh so hard that the girl next door who we tipped as an old maid, although she was probably all of 25, thundered on the door for us to stop! 
We just laughed all the harder, of course! 

A couple of things it’s important to note here is that my sister Helen had been at the RAD, graduating in 1972, so she had left London by the time I turned up that September. She was no small talent musically and all the time she had been in London she had done the rounds of the gospel singing circuit. So when she vacated the scene I picked up her song sheet and went for the ride in her place. 
What this meant though, was that despite the woe of my solo studies at Trinity, I continued to sing with my guitar, apparently bringing many to the Lord through my voice; such that one pastor called me a “gem for Jesus!” (I know……..?)
It was so easy for me. Easy too to create this whole other raft of friendships from the rent-a-crowd that IS the church. 

That said, my voice loss in second year did effect that too. 
It was really terrible. 

By this time Ally and I had moved into a bedsit in Notting Hill Gate round the corner from Portobello Market. A grand old house, chopped up into mini-kitchened, two bedders; four rooms per floor, sharing a bathroom and toilet between eight people therefore, with nary so much as a “good morning” between them. Cold and so excruciatingly damp that when warming my clothes by the gas fire, in order to comfortably dress, steam arose from them. 
So I got sick and stayed that way. No wonder Dickens’ tales were littered with consumptives! 

Because of this Christianity on the side, I don’t think I really got stuck into Trinity as I might have done. All those bible studies and prayer meetings!
I loved singing with my friends, especially in the small ensembles, but overall my insecurities saw me sort of withdraw. Reconnecting with some of them has been a real joy, albeit mainly here on FB. But in that reconnection is the sense that I withdrew from something really important. A growing up that might have happened through music rather than the church, which I ended up dumping anyway a few years later. 
It would have saved me so much confusion! 
And in reality, because I felt unable to fully embrace the Trinity opportunity, I left with the feeling that I couldn’t really sing outside the safety of the Gospel. 

But we can’t wind back the time. I’m just so grateful for so much, then, since and now. 

In my last year I was elected Senior Student by the professorial staff. Heaven knows why! To me it was as much a miracle as that acceptance letter! 

When my baby marriage inevitably fell apart, the first thing I did was grasp my singing and hold it tightly to my chest in the fondest of embraces and all that I had subliminally known all along, began to flow again. 
I found a lovely couple who taught singing, friends of my folks. Their kindness restored me, their faith in me bolstered me, and their encouragement took me back to Trinity to present for my Fellowship in performance. 

Thank you for being with me. Thank you to my Trinity mates, to Ally, to John and Angela, those lovely singing teachers and to the many of you who have cheered me along my way through the years and through this little wander down Memory Lane. 

So we have to have Carole’s Tapestry don’t we? 
https://youtu.be/aR5TO2YdjeY
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