Things are hotting up for summer in the city. The Tooting Lido is getting uncomfortably warm (time to ditch the neoprene and dig out the bikini!), and the new season of Rivals is out on Disney+. Disney, that well-known source of family entertainment, going decidedly adult in the full-frontal first episode, where Rupert Campbell-Black rejoins the Mile High Club as Concorde breaks the sound barrier. And it strikes me that there is something so very circus about Jilly Cooper. For a start, "circus people bloody love taking their kit off" as Celine observed way back when (see post on GDIF - click here).
I've only just come across the series this May half-term, and have already binge-watched my way through two seasons to the latest episode. It is all so reassuringly familiar. I grew up on Jilly Cooper novels as a teenager, speed-reading on a sunlounger in the garden through the lives of Bella, Julia, Octavia and the Rutshire Chronicles, and not a little star-struck by my über-cool best friend whose father trained polo ponies and told tales of strip poker with the grooms (allegedly?!), as well as knowing The Twins in real life (season two). And so I absorbed concepts like "a chukka" and "nine-goal Argentine polo player" by osmosis. Maybe that had a little to do with my choice of Spanish A-level too, and my coursework on the phenomenon of the "novelas rosas" or Jazmín (the equivalent imprint of Mills & Boon), the magazine ¡Hola! with all the celebrity gossip, y todo el tango.
What do I love about the current Rivals series? The 80s soundtrack of my teenage years, the banter, the cast. The cameo of Felicity Kendall as the agent out to lunch with romantic novelist Lizzie (could be a Lucy!) and Jilly Cooper herself, eavesdropping on the next door table, delighted at the sex scene being read aloud. God she was fun.
All this is influencing my Instagram captions. My latest refers to the cloak-swirling antics of Norvil (see previous post) as proof you really can take the matador out of Málaga, and the thought has crossed my mind that with all the material from my award-winning sailing blog (thank you ARC Atlantic Rally!) and my love of word puns (missing my vocation as headline writer for the Sun), perhaps a Cooper-esque bonkbuster on crew cavorting in the Caribbean might be a little money-spinner to fund my circus passion. Watch this space...
I hadn't known Jilly Cooper had died until a neighbour mentioned it on the doorstep, mid-conversation, the other day. Maybe that's what set me off yesterday morning at the Lido, before going to Giffords. I had clambered out of the pool, ten laps at break of dawn, soaking up the sunrise with my thermos of coffee on the side, that particular post-swim high, skin still tingling, the whole day ahead. And then, out of nowhere, Mum. The salt water slipped out silently behind my sunglasses, mercifully large ones, having grabbed my husband's pair on the way out the door. The tears mingled with the drops of chlorine, indistinguishable one from the other, and soon evaporated in the morning sun. The only thing Jilly Cooper and my mother would have had in common was a love of horses. But inhabited quite different worlds. Jilly's was all Polo and Riders, Argentine ones at that, a chukka before cocktails. My mother loved Goodwood: still glamorous, still an occasion, but there entirely for the beauty of the horses themselves, completely disinterested in anything or anyone else on the social merry-go-round.
And then a third woman came to mind. Nell Gifford, equestrian, founder and Queen of Giffords Circus, taken in her prime. My heart always lurches at the thought. Though I knew her from her writing and the circus world she created over the years, our paths crossed only once, briefly, a glancing. My son, now an adult, then a toddler, had slipped my hand and snuck through ropes behind the back of the tent cordoning of the horses... that irresistible gravitational pull of small children towards things absolutely out of bounds. And out of nowhere appeared a vision on a horse. Nell herself, who took in the scene and smiled, understandingly: not remotely judgmental, just empathetic. Mother to mother. It gave me the good grace to recover both my child and sense of humour.
Rutshire, of course, is the Cotswolds, where the TV A-listers hang out with the landed gentry, and the home of Giffords Circus, itself a gloriously unapologetic celebration of equestrian glamour. If Rupert and Taggie were to have children, Giffords is where they would spend the Bank Holiday. And if Rupert were still playing the field, he would have a field day with the usherettes in their burgundy leotards, fishnets and riding boots, and velvet hunt caps sprouting a burlesque crop of feathers. The siren call of the big top, and a show this year fittingly called Waterfield, is, it turns out, not so very different from the siren call of the Lido on a hot summer morning: all sequins and saltiness and the irresistible pull of something larger than life.
(Giffords Circus: the main act, to follow. Cue band...)
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