Perfection is subjective.
This thought occurred to me at about 9.21 on Friday evening. We were at the National Theatre’s production of Follies, and the opening bars of Losing My Mind were seeping into my ears.
I’d geared myself up for it. It’s a song that without fail makes me cry. You have those songs, I’m sure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Losing My Mind was one of them. It is a perfect song, and Imelda Staunton gave a perfect rendition of it.
At which point there will be those of you who start saying ‘Oh but Barbara Cook’ or ‘Oh but Julia McKenzie’ or ‘Oh but Bernadette Peters’, or even ‘But I don’t like Sondheim’. This is missing the point – I said ‘a’ not ‘the’.
And therein lies the problem. Perfection is, as I said about fifteen seconds ago (depending on your reading speed) subjective.
When I say that Imelda Staunton gave a perfect rendition of the song, I don’t just mean that it was superb – the whole thing was superb – but that it gave me exactly what I wanted from that song, at that precise moment. (Incidentally, among the many superlative things about this production is the important detail that there is no interval. Up with this kind of thing! Intervals are awful. Don’t come at me.)
So perfection, in my view, it was.
Here, then, is a completely subjective list of perfect things, or at least things that are, to me, as close to perfect as makes no difference. Feel free to add your own. But don’t come at me.
A small wheel of soft cheese, at that point of ripeness where it is sliding towards the door but not sprinting, presented unadorned on a wooden board with a sharp knife. There might be a really good chutney, and oatcakes. There will also be a single glass (oh go on then, two) of a decent, but not expensive or fancy, red wine, shared with someone you love while talking of nothing much.
A cover drive I played in August 2004, the memory of which is frozen in my whole being.
Twenty minutes on a winter afternoon, dark gathering, cat on lap, cup of tea, book.
That time on a golf course in Scotland when I chipped in from a tricky lie in some rocks twenty yards off the green, and as I saw the ball bobble down the slope and pick its way across the green towards the hole I knew it was going in and that this moment was for me and me alone because nobody would ever believe me, and this was fine because I knew and that was all I needed.
A sea trout stuffed with herbs that I cooked on a barbecue in 1993. Honestly, it was that good.
Hummingbirds.
The happy conjunction of food and place: fish and chips on a beach, panzanella on a Tuscan hillside, bouillabaisse in that little place in Marseille the tourists don’t know about (never admit that you, too, are a tourist). These are not interchangeable: fish and chips on a Tuscan hillside is a bad idea.
The first Alfonso mango of the season, as long as you pick the right one out of the box – if you don’t then your whole year is pretty much ruined.
Owls.
That country walk, you remember the one. There was just the right amount of mud and frost; trees silhouetted against crisp blue sky, views across the valley; stiles and kissing gates and a dipper by the rushing stream underneath the bridge; a climb stiff enough to make you out of breath but not totally done for, and just long enough to yield a view across the valley that the other people, the ones who carried on along the river, didn’t get; the cows stayed on the right side of the hedge (the other side) and you said hello to them, and then you had an improbable discussion about Mozart, cocker spaniels, cassoulet and Glenn Hoddle with someone you’d always been wary of but who on that cold afternoon became a friend for life. The walk was followed by tea and butter-oozing crumpets in the kitchen with the wonky Aga and someone, someone who wanted to and for whom the cooking wasn’t a chore, made the best stew you’ve ever had, the kind of stew that wouldn’t have been anything like as good without the walk and the company of half a dozen fine people, and you peeled the carrots and made yourself useful, and you left the washing up till the morning and sat in front of the fire instead, playing board games and drinking red wine, and everything glowed and you fell a little bit in love.
A damn good breakfast.
The Two Cathedrals episode of The West Wing.
https://vimeo.com/56378248
This sheep’s timing
This Is Spinal Tap, and especially this scene:
While we’re at it, Best In Show, and especially this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGmNqzbsuiY
(All credit to Tom Cox for pointing out the perfection of these two films.)
The prelude to Act Three of La Traviata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg220mK2DlQ
The wit and brilliance of Dudley Moore’s song parodies, played to an audience that understood.
Harmison v Clarke
Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsV-d0_IH0Y
Broad v Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrnZmnXTfzU
This geranium
Bathers at Asnières
Ronnie O’Sullivan’s 5-minute 147.
Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire
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Perfection may well be subjective, but I suspect many of your readers will share a good number of these – I know I do; and, which is more, many of them. Lovely reminders.
Thanks – I just started my own mental list…again