Ivor Novello statue, Cardiff, July 2017
This statue in commemoration of one of Wales’ top musicians, is perched high on a plinth outside the Millennium Centre, with names of some of his songs decorating the base.
And here’s one of his songs that fits well with our current season (in the northern hemisphere, at least).
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Copyright Debbie Smyth, 28 April 2020
Posted as part of Squaretops
Travel with Intent 
Unusual not to have a gull or some other bird perched on his head! As for lilac, there is one flowering along my usual walk in Hayle at the moment and the perfume is divine! (I sneaked out for a walk before doing the shopping).
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Beautiful! Lilac doesn’t seem popular around me – I will have to go hunting for it. I was reading about Hayle last week, but not about the lilac, about the loss of all the last bank branch? Is that causing problems, especially during lockdown?
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We don’t have any banks open around here, nearest is probably Penzance or Redruth. I do online banking anyway and use ATMs at the supermarkets, but it is probably a problem for businesses who need to pay in cash each day. Not that that’s a problem at the moment as none of the small businesses are open.
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Love someone who can tinkle the ivories! 🙂 🙂
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Me too. I tried when Rachel was learning as a child and it is so difficult.
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I had a few lessons last year and decided I was wasting her and my time 😦
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I was forced to have lessons when I was very young – six – at a neighbours house. I hated it. I loathed playing scales, I didn’t like the man who was teaching me and I disliked his sausage dog! My mother had inherited a piano and I think she wanted someone to play it. Not me!
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Mick’s Mam was a self taught and he tried for a while but it didn’t come naturally. Not enough fingers! Or too many? 🤣💕
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I now that feeling! 🙂 🙂
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So appropriate! I’m looking out of the kitchen window at our white, mauve and purple lilac just coming into bloom. They’re bound to have their moment as Top Blooms before Becky’s Squaretops is over.
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I look forward to it – I haven’t seen any lilac yet this year.
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I’m always surprised to realise how much more south I live – our lilac is in full bloom (which in fairness, is a bit early but it has been very warm and sunny).
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Just coming out at bottom of garden . . although today’s weather will probably get rid of all the blooms 😦 thank goodness for Margaret’s top bloom plan!
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🙂
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Thank you for that Debbie. That’s down memory lane for me. Ivor Novello is hardly known in Germany but I wrote my final year thesis about a German/South African film and stage director, Leontine Sagan. She left Germany in the early 1930s like many other Jewish artists. Having spent her youth in Johannesburg, South Africa, she spoke English and could therefore continue working in her field in England. She directed several of Novello’s Drury Lane stage hits in the 1930s – at a time when women didn’t feature prominently in directing. She is better known as a film director and while in England she worked for Alexander Korda studios, directing one of the first films with Merle Oberon. Sorry if I’m gushing but it’s a subject I can seldom talk about.
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How fascinating, Elke. I can see why you gushed. She had a very interesting life, just judging by the places she lived in the time in history. And to work in London theatre was a phenomenal achievement. A great thesis topic, I can see. Women like that can still set an example for us.
I just went to read a bit more about her – a long chain of achievements, including an all woman play! I see the National Portrait Gallery in London has a photo of her with Novello
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I checked up but the photo is (currently?) not available. Sagan returned to South Africa and was instrumental in founding the National Theatre in Johannesburg. I was lucky to interview her niece for my thesis. I spent long days in the archives of the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria where her papers are stored but I just realised if I were to write my thesis today I would have access to much more material with the internet. – Back to Ivor Novello: he was such a gifted and interesting man, and also very beautiful (“handsome” doesn’t do him justice).
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