Saturday Afternoon.

Just 2 fittings yesterday, one for the mother, Veronica which was very good, and the second one for the Flower Seller" who turned out to be the most extraordinary little person, called Viola. She arrived in the fitting room wearing a brilliantly coloured kimono, outsize shower hat, dark glasses and killer heels, no unseemly scrabbling about changeing from her street clothes or undignified underwear moments for her.
She could hardly have been more unsuitable as a flower seller, really, as she was entirely queenly throughout, and accepted it as completely her due when I complained that it was difficult to make her look un-aristocratic.
She was one of the tiniest human beings I have ever met, and must have been a sensational Odette/Odile, her most famous starring role 40, maybe 50 years ago. [She was born in 1933, they told me, so that makes her still performing at 76.] She probably joined the ballet school 70 years ago, hard to imagine really. She executed a perfect curtain call bow when I said she could have a hat for act 3 - it was beyond my skills to describe a "fascinator" to either her or the interpreter, so a hat with flowers it will have to be. And she brought me chocolates and a minute embroidered hankie for "womens' day" as I was clearly man-less in Moscow.