On Wednesday one of my friends came down from Jaffna for an evening in Colombo.  We had one glass of wine, before going out to the Gallery for dinner, and joined my mum and Shamalee, her carer, who were watching South Pacific.  We almost had to be dragged away – watching those old musicals these days, it’s amazing what they managed to get away with.  The songs definitely have variety: from the haunting ‘Bali Ha'I’ which I still l can’t get out of my head, to the classic ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and the raucous ‘Bloody Mary is the Girl I Love’. The setting is gorgeous – in reality a fusion of Hawaii, Fiji and Ibiza topped up with glorious Technicolour. And the story has it all – a romance set to the backdrop of World War II between a nurse and a mysterious Frenchman who the allies are trying to recruit for a dangerous military mission.

I would never have described either myself or my mum as lovers of music or as romantics. In fact if anything I would say if asked that I was not a music lover and I would describe both of us as complete cynics where romance is concerned.  However, incongruous as it may seem, something that we both have a penchant for is musicals. I was reminded of this forceably during what was to be the last time I visited my mum in her own home. As a result of a fall from the loft in my mum’s house, I ended up with a smashed ankle and broken leg (in 3 places) and in plaster, which meant I was stuck in Scotland for the longest time since I had lived there in my late teens. Mum coincidently had a broken arm at that time as a result of a fall while she was out walking.  We made a fine pair and could only really handle the kitchen with a combination of our good limbs. I was there for 6 weeks and luckily being freelance I could work from anywhere.  Frequently I would be working away to the sounds of Mama Mia at full blast coming from the living room or the music of Strauss from Andre Rieu concerts. This was back in the days when mum could still make the DVD work and neither of us really appreciated the toll of the alzheimers.

So when she came over here I had both pieces in stock. Now unable to work the TV/DVD/satellite, I put the DVD on for her and she becomes immersed in the music. So immersed that it is only after I begin hearing the same loop continually that I realize the DVD has in fact finished.   She used to be a lover of spy and detective stories, police and detective series on the TV; she could always work out who had done it long before the plot had unravelled. However since alzheimers, she really cannot follow a storyline anymore so most DVDs and tv series just don’t work for her.  We have taken to watching the Lifestyle Channel (TLC) with its cookery programmes, its top 10 hotels/beaches/festivals etc., and travel destinations. We watch the BBC News which I’ve now discovered actually confuses her – she convinced herself that people were going to break into the house and kill us both at one point and when probed this stemmed from watching too much news about Syria. She has though developed a liking for George Alagiah.  Mama Mia and the many Andre Rieu DVDs however are the old faithfuls when nothing else works. She especially loves the concerts from Vienna where she spent a magical summer one year with her friend. But after 6 months of Andre Rieu and Mama Mia, we were both getting a bit tired of them all.

This is how I rediscovered musicals. They have music, dance, colour and the storyline is not really that important. Music seems to be retained in memory for a longer time than stories. Amazon is wonderful. I quickly found a Rogers and Hammerstein box set with such classics as South Pacific, Oklahoma, The King and I and Carousel.  This arrived in Colombo and I dashed to the apartment to put one on the DVD there, only to find that it was ‘the wrong region’ so we had to wait till we came south to my other DVD which has been set to ‘all regions’ before we could actually play them.  These have proved a big hit. She can’t really follow the plot but she loves the music and the dancing. She also recognizes the music and realizes that she has seen them before and sometimes even remembers where and when. For example she remembers going to the stage version of South Pacific in Glasgow with my brother and his wife. So I now have the ‘good’ box set down south and a pirated set bought in Colombo which will play on my DVD there. The pirated set also has the words at the bottom so she can sing along - it was also a lot cheaper than the 'good' set.

I then started remembering my childhood. When I got badly stung by wasps all over my face, she took me to the cinema to see South Pacific;  Sound of Music was one of the first albums we had in the house; wet Glasgow Sunday afternoons were often spent with the feet up on the couch watching old musicals.  As a young woman she enjoyed Scottish country dancing and was always proud of her “Smith” legs. In fact both her and my dad did a lot of Scottish country dancing.   She had a season ticket for Scottish Opera and used to go with her friend to every opera of the season. She went on a bus trip to Vienna to listen to the music. So why do I think of her as not musical. Maybe she should be described as, deep down, a lover of music and possibly also a romantic at heart.