Dame Judi Dench hasn't forgotten her roots - Christa Ackroyd
You know, the invite you nearly turned down but then accept either through sense of duty or because you have already said yes. And on reflection you are so glad you did.
Then there are the events you are so looking forward to, have planned weeks for that turn out to be something of a damp squib. It is how to differentiate between the two that is so often the issue. And the truth is you can’t, unless you happen to be in possession of a crystal ball.
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Hide AdLast week was one of those happenings that could have gone either way. I wanted to go. I had said yes because trust me I only accept invitations these days that I want to accept.


I have been to too many corporate back slapping, hand shaking, self congratulatory do’s to not be able to distinguish between those which will enhance my life or enhance that of others and those which are there to simply put on a show.
And the joy of getting older is that you have the power to pick and choose as well as, hopefully, the knowledge to differentiate between the two.
Actually if truth be known, I am uncomfortable in large gatherings of strangers. Although I am gregarious by nature and entirely confident in work mode I absolutely hate walking into a room full of strangers. A handful or a host. Always have.
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Hide AdSo in those scenarios I plaster on a smile, take a deep breath, stand tall and just go for it. I tell you this because so often I hear stories from people who turn down opportunities through fear, which turn out to be wasted opportunities.


And they are mostly women, especially women who have to walk in alone and would far rather run for the hills.
We overthink things and the what if’s become a negative which prevents us from doing something rather than viewing everything in life as a possibility.
And yet some of the best moments, the most unexpected friendships, the most life enhancing encounters have happened when I have least expected it. And have felt I would rather stay home.
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Hide AdLast week was one of those occasions. Not that I didn’t want to go. Neither was I alone. If I am being truly honest it was more a case after a crazy busy week of can I be bothered? And that attitude as my father would tell me if he were still here, gets you absolutely nowhere.
I wanted to go to the theatre to see Giles Brandreth in conversation with Dame Judi Dench. Who wouldn’t? But the thought of driving 50 plus miles on a motorway full of roadworks through torrential rain was not filling me with joy.
But oh how different was the drive home. Because joy was exactly what I found. It was quite simply a few of the best hours, family and friends excepted, I have had in a long, long time.
Why, because it was filled with quiet, life affirming emotion and an atmosphere so tangible, so calming, it will stay with me amidst the noise of life.
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Hide AdAnd yet is was brought to us by two people sitting alone on a stage without effects, without props with one exception which I will tell you about later and without even a script.
Dame Judi is a national treasure.
At 89 years old she is still working at something she has loved for a lifetime. Would that we all had health and opportunity as well as the ability to do so. She is among our most decorated actors.
Oscars, Golden Globes, Baftas, Oliviers and any other trophies you can name adorn her home in the south. Or I presume they do.
She has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Shakespeare, which as we discovered, means she can simply and quite beautifully recite his words making them both totally understandable and stunningly perfect. Who knew that an iambic pentameter, so often used by the bard, was in truth the rhythm of the heart?
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Hide AdI do now, thanks to Dame Judi and that and Giles’s comment that ‘maybe that is where the phrase speaking from the heart comes from’ will stay with me the rest of my days.
But what will also stay with me is the fact that underneath, if we are lucky in life, we are all the same. Dame Judi and Giles have performed this show on many occasions, even filling the Royal Albert Hall.
Yet never will it be as special as it was for the subject and the audience, I suspect, as it was in York at the Royal Opera House last week. Because Judi Dench was coming home.
It is so easy to fall into the trap of believing that when someone finds a new place in life, be it a place to live or a place to work, the past is just that, the past.
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Hide AdThat night we were reminded that our roots should always remain strong. Judi Dench was born in Heworth on the outskirts of the city. Her Pa, as she called him, was a doctor and her mum, a housewife.
And for the first time in the decades since she left Yorkshire as a young actress she had returned to the very house where she had lived just the day before she appeared on stage for us.
Not only that, a chance meeting with a gardener led her to be shown around her childhood home and in turn share that moment with us for the very first time.
She told us of her happy days at school at The Mount, which she visited the day after on another trip down memory lane and cried at and hugged the gift of a teddy bear with its button activated voice recorded by a pupil which told her to break a leg for her evening of reminiscences.
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Hide AdBut it was her answer when Giles asked her what family, many of whom were in the audience that night, meant to her that will stay with me. ‘Everything’, she said. ‘Just everything’.
And, incredible actor though she is, you knew that to be true. And that the roots she talked about were as strong as they ever were.
In that moment Judi was simply one of us. A woman who has loved and lost her soulmate but last week amidst the talk of trophies and accolades was just a woman coming home to her roots, roots she has never tried to shake off but embraces.
Afterwards as we were lucky enough to be invited to share a few moments in a room filled with her family and friends, the friend I was with reflected on something that also happens to be true as she shared a few moments with a woman who that night had shared so much of herself with us, some of it funny, some of it obviously raw. Because that’s what taking a trip down memory lane is, isn’t it ? A mixture of emotions.
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Hide Ad‘They say you should never meet your heroes in real life.’ my friend ruminated. ‘But I just have and in this case Judi did not disappoint.’ And she most certainly did not.
There is nothing like a dame. And this one is ours. It just so lovely to know she has never forgotten that too.
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