Little Deepings and The Bookshop Band

This week my travels took me to Lincolnshire and the beautiful, and beautifully named, town of Market Deeping, where I was to appear as part of the Little Deepings Literary Festival. I had been contacted last year by Michael Cross and after a series of emails he engaged me to perform ‘Mr Dickens is Coming!’ on the Friday night of the festival.

I was to share the bill with a group of musicians called The Bookshop Band and Michael’s original idea was to connect us so that we could work out a programme that would feature us performing together, me performing a passage followed by them performing some music, but the logistical problems of co-ordinating such a programme meant that it was decided that they would take the first half and I the second.

The drive to Market Deeping was awful in one sense and beautiful in another.  It was the Friday night of a bank holiday weekend and everyone was on the road.  In England if you want to drive north to south or south to north it is relatively easy, for there are quite a few major trunk roads to chose from, but as soon as you need to go left to right or right to left things become rather more difficult.  On this particular Friday evening I left plenty of time for my journey, thinking that I would be able to get to my B&B and have a shower before heading to the venue, but as soon as I set the maps on my phone I saw dire warnings of congestion and traffic which would delay me by over an hour.

My Android phone is loaded with Google Maps and it did its best to find me an unaffected route, and it was these efforts that gave me the most beautiful drive across the countryside, through small towns and villages, passing farmland and yellow fields of buttercups smudged with poppies.

As I passed from Northamptonshire and into Lincolnshire I seemed to enter Festival country as there seemed to be posters promoting a whole range – The Sausage and Cider Festival looking as if it may be the most interesting.

After more than three hours on the road I began to see signs for the Little Deepings Lit Festival and shortly after that I let out a quiet cheer as I was welcomed to Market Deeping itself.

I drove straight to the Deepings School and as the reception was locked I looked around until I found an open door.  I walked in and saw a small group of people at the far end of the room bustling around a table and some boxes, they didn’t look like they were setting up for a festival but one gentleman turned and politely asked if he could help?

‘I’m looking for the literary festival,’ I told him.  ‘I am performing here tonight.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that, this is the food bank, I think you may be in the main hall, let me show you the way.’

And in that instant the lovely, safe, middle class world of literature festivals was put into sharp relief by these few good people caring for the many who desperately need it – a cause that Charles Dickens would have approved of, supported and championed.

In the main hall the preparations for our evening were in full swing and as I walked in Michael greeted me with a warm handshake and a big smile.  On stage The Bookshop Band were working through their sound checks and far from being a group of musicians they were a couple whom I soon discovered to be Ben and Beth.

The set up for the band was all at once simple and complicated, Beth and Ben sat in a couple of chairs surrounded by a bewildering array of stringed instruments, there were 4 or 5 guitars on bespoke stands and a similar number of ukuleles on rather smaller bespoke stands.  There was also a harmonium and a cello.  Each instrument was plugged in and besides that amplification two microphones were rigged up for each performer, one for voice and one for whichever instrument they happened to be playing.  As I arrived a technical team were carefully tweaking each audio channel to make sure that all of the sounds emanating from the stage were perfectly balanced, and that each of the monitors that relayed the sound back to Beth and Ben were at a suitable volume.

As the sound check progressed so I got to hear The Bookshop Band for the first time, and what a beautiful sound it was, their style is folky but with overtones of theme tunes to  Scandinavian dramas such as The Bridge.  Every now and then they would stop playing to request that ‘the ukulele channel be a little higher’ or ‘the monitor for the cello be a touch less’  It was a very involved and professional sound check.

Mine by contrast was less complicated, I stood on the stage and the sound engineer stood at the back of the hall.  I said ‘Throughout my lifetime as boy, youth and man I have derived a love of the stage.  Today I am fortunate to stand upon the stages of the great theatres of the world.’  At which point I asked ‘can you hear me ok?’  The engineer said ‘Yes’ and that was it!

We now had about an hour until the audience was due to arrive so we all disappeared to get changed and wait for the show to begin.  I was stationed in a music theory classroom surrounded by various posters telling me about musical dynamics, and how an orchestra is made up.  The classroom was over the corridor from a gymnasium where there was a karate class and the violent grunts and crashes on to the floor mats were in stark contrast to the gentle music and vocals of The Bookshop Band.

Michael and his team had obviously done a superb job marketing the festival, and our event, for soon the hall was full and extra seats were being sought.  At 7.30 the lights were dimmed and Michael took to the stage.  Usually at events such as these an organiser briefly welcomes the audience, talks about the festival, points out highlights of forthcoming events and maybe does a brief airline steward ’emergency exits are…’ speech.  Michael did all this, but with such presence, panache and style that he really could have stayed up there all evening doing a stand-up routine!  As well as imparting all of the information that he needed to Michael was a great warm up man for Beth and Ben and he had the audience in the perfect place for the beginning of their show.

I settled down at the back of the hall to watch the start of the show, both for my own entertainment but also to gauge the audience and the room.  Ben started the set by explaining what The Bookshop Band are and it is a good story, they don’t play the music circuit, but perform mainly in small independent bookshops or at festivals such as this.

Each song in their repertoire is influenced by a novel and I felt very good about myself when Ben announced that their first offering was based on the novel ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’, which I read a few years ago.

The audience were transfixed, and listened closely to the lyrics (perfectly audible thanks to the rigorous sound check earlier).  I was just settling in for an enjoyable evening when a gentleman with a camera came up to me in the dark and asked me if he could photograph me for the local paper.  He scarcely bothered to whisper, so I went with him out of the hall before we disturbed the rest of the audience too much.

The photographer had obviously been doing this for a good few years, and stood me against a wall in the school corridor. ‘Now, do you have your book that you can hold?’, he assumed I was an author and was going to be talking about my new novel, he seemed disappointed when I explained I was here to do a theatre show and therefore didn’t have a book. It was as if I were ruining the composition of his shot!

 
I posed in a pose he has posed a thousand times before, and he went away to chat with Michael before leaving to shoot his next job.

 
As I was out in the corridors of the school anyway I decided to pace a bit and run through my lines. The script of Mr Dickens is Coming has been deeply ingrained over the years, so it flows easily, but as I got to the end a strange, and artistically dangerous thought, came into my head. A few weeks ago I introduced a new passage from Great Expectations into the show, featuring Pip, Miss Havisham and Estella and it worked well, but that was just a one off and I hadn’t looked at it since, but now I began to think ‘why not do it again?’

 
I had no script for the passage with me, so it was just a case of relying on my memory. After a few false starts I discovered that the words were still in my head and eager to be used! Yes, I would include the Great Ex passage.  Probably.

 
Having done a little more work I slipped back into the hall to listen to more Of Ben and Beth who were performing a piece made up of opening lines from novels, featuring the ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….’ passage particularly strongly.
Great Expectations was still playing in my mind, so at the next round of applause I slipped out to rehearse a little more until the first act finished and the audience emerged and headed to the temporary bar.

 
I went to the stage and congratulated Ben who was starting to pack all of the instruments and equipment away and when he had finished so the tech crew moved in to wind up all of the cables and pack up the microphones and speakers until the stage was empty and ready for me to move my reading desk, screen, hatstand and chair into their required positions under the lights.  When everything was as it should be and I was confident that all of my props were in place I returned to my dressing room, drank some water and wondered if I was being stupid in changing the script at the last minute.

The interval ran its course, soon the audience were back in their seats and Michael was on stage to welcome them back and introduce me, which we did with professional grace.

Instantly I knew that I was in for a good evening for the atmosphere on the stage was perfect – the combination of the hall, the lighting, the words of Dickens and the magic that occurs when a completely random collection of individuals come together  to form a single living entity called an audience, all worked to make last Friday night thoroughly enjoyable.

As I worked through the script I still hadn’t fully decided whether I would be brave enough to include the Great Expectations passage but when I got to the edge of the precipice I decided to jump, and it was the correct decision.  The end of Mr Dickens is Coming is vastly improved by having a more serious and literary passage nestling in it and the pace of the piece is a nice contrast to the rather more frenetic material that precedes it.

Somehow a literary festival such as Little Deepings deserved Miss Havisham .

The end of the show features the anecdote of Charles Jnr finding his ageing father performing the Murder of Nancy in the gardens at Gad’s Hill Place a few days before his death.  After describing a pale, grey, lined, pathetic man I suddenly become a violent villain ‘MURDERING NANCY ONE LAST TIME!’  Last Friday I became so energetic that as I ‘struck’ the imaginary Nancy I fell to one knee and put my hand on the ground to steady myself and in that moment I realised that Charles Dickens had assumed the famous pose of Marvel Comics’ Iron Man.

Never before have these two cultural icons met!

I took my bows to lovely applause, left the stage and was called back again for a second time.  Michael bounded into the light and thanked me, Ben and Beth and after reminding the audience of what was coming up in the festival he bade everyone goodbye.

I got changed and then returned to the stage to tackle the less glamourous part of my job which entails packing up all the props and loading them into my car.  It’s one thing doing it at home when I’m going to a gig, but after a show when I’m hot and the adrenaline is still  flowing it can lead to a very sudden come down and weariness sets in easily.

Eventually everything was loaded and I said goodbye to Michael, Ben and Beth before we got into our respective cars to head off.  I drove in convoy with Ben and Beth who were staying at the same elegant B&B in the town centre.  We said goodnight once again and I went to my room where I fell into a very deep sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

British Reserve

If last week saw me return to where I am most comfortable, that is the stage, this week’s appearance wrenched me straight out of my comfort zone again.

A couple of months ago our doorbell rang and there stood a neighbour of ours;  not a next door neighbour or an across the street neighbour, but a gentleman who lives in a small cul-de-sac nearby and whose house overlooks our back garden.  We have met him and his wife on occasion at neighbourhood events such as royal street parties etc, and of course we have been introduced to him, but on this particular evening could we remember his name?  No.

He began by saying that he was the president of the local branch of the Rotarians and that he would be hosting the President’s dinner soon.  He knew it was an imposition but would it be at all possible for me to be the after dinner speaker at the event?  He quickly added that he didn’t expect me to do a show or give a performance, just to talk for 20 minutes or so.

After a quick check of diaries we discovered that both Liz and I would be free on that evening and it may be a fun opportunity for us to dress up in our smart togs and have an evening out.

We said yes.

Now began a terribly British thing, – British reserve one might say, for Liz and I realised that we could not actually remember our neighbour’s name.  Not only that but we weren’t altogether sure as to which house he lived in.  Not only that but we didn’t have a phone number or email address for him and neither did he for us.  Oh well, stiff upper lip, can’t admit it, on we go.  British reserve, don’t you know.

As the door shut Liz asked ‘what will you talk about?’  It was a good question for this was not a case of pulling one of the shows from my repertoire, this was a different kettle of fish altogether – after dinner speaking is not what I do and was not what I was prepared for.  We chatted for a while until Liz gave voice to a thought that was also sitting somewhere in my own head: ‘why not talk about The Signalman and Staplehurst?’  This was the same week as I published my blog post on that very subject and having done the research it seemed like a good opportunity to expand it.

Over the next few weeks I created a talk based on the blog, and added much more detail about Dickens’ relationship with Ellen Ternan into the piece.  On the day of the Staplehurst crash Charles Dickens was travelling with Ellen as they returned from France.  It has been suggested, and it is indeed very probable, that Ellen had given birth to a baby during her time in France but it had died almost immidiately.  Ellen’s mother had travelled to France, presumably to be support her daughter, and was also in the carriage on that day.

I worked, I practised, I tweaked and the speech began to take shape.

After a week or so our neighbour returned clutching a menu to ask what we would like to eat at dinner.  Liz chose chicken, I chose Cod.  Did we confess and say ‘we are so sorry, this is terribly rude, but we don’t actually remember your name?  Would you mind giving us your phone number?’  No, we did not!

The next week passed and I worked on.  I read the talk through, I sought a new quote or fact, I tried to make sure that each section ran into the next quite naturally.

Unfortunately for a day or so it looked as if Liz would not be able to make the event, and we told our host that it would only be me attending when he popped round to make arrangements for getting to the venue (very kindly he had offered to drive us so that we could enjoy a glass of champagne).  I would be picked up at 6.30 on Friday.

The day of the dinner arrived and I was feeling more nervous and more twitchy about it than I usually would about a theatre show.  Throughout the day I tinkered, and made changes to punctuation and phrase.  I read it and timed it and read it again.

But it was during the day that circumstances changed and we realised that Liz would after all be able to join me, and now it became imperative that I not only knew the name of our host but could get in touch with him too.

I decided to see if the Abingdon Rotary Club had a website and after a brief search was delighted to discover that it did.  My delight turned to confusion however when I discovered that the photo of the President was not that of the kind and smiling gentleman who lives around the corner.  Even more confusing was the fact that instead of a black tie dinner in the Cosener’s House in Abingdon, the Rotary Club of Abingdon seemed to be meeting for a cheese and wine tasting evening in a nearby pub.

Maybe I was not speaking to the Abingdon branch.  I widened my search and opened the page for the Oxford branch but still without success.  Next on the list was North Oxford and there flashing up onto my screen came the reassuringly familiar photograph of Andrew Humphries!

But how to get in touch with him?  I sent an email to another neighbour who is a leading light behind the various events in our road and she almost instantly replied with an email address for Andrew and his wife Lynda.  I don’t think I have ever sighed a longer sigh of relief as I did last Friday morning.

At 6.30  Andrew rang at our door resplendent in a smart dinner jacket proudly wearing the royal blue ribbon and medal of a Rotary Past President.  From the back of the car Lynda greeted us with a cheery hello too and as we drove to The Cosener’s House we chatted as old friends chat.

Abingdon is a small town on the banks of the river Thames not far from Oxford.  Today nothing much happens in Abingdon but 500 years ago it was one of the most important settlements on the river.  Abingdon Abbey towered over the skyline and the Benedictine monks wielded great power and influence over the surrounding countryside.

However in 1541 Henry VIII passed the disolution of the monasteries act and the Abbey was destroyed.  Monastaries and abbeys throughout the nation were ransacked for their gold and treasures, all of which passed to the King.  Some of the buildings, such as Glastonbury and Whitby Abbeys, were left as ruins, but those on the banks of the Thames were completely destroyed so that Henry could float the valuable stone to London where it was used to build the great Royal palaces.

All that remains of Abingdon’s glory days is a large green park with the footprint of the old edifice laid out with small paving slabs.  But close to the site remain some ancient buildings that served the Abbey.  The Unicorn Theatre, where I have performed a couple of times, is housed in a building which dates back to the 14th Century.

Another building with its roots in those years is the Cosener’s House hotel and restaurant (a Cosener was a Cuisinier or Kitchener and supplied the food to the abbey), which on Friday 17th May was due to play host to the North Oxford Rotarians.

As befitting his role as President Andrew had made sure that we were among the first arrivals and it was good to get the lie of the land before the other guests arrived.  A welcoming glass of champagne was served in a small rotunda beneath a spiralling staircase and this space soon became very crowded with a fine crowd of people all dressed to enjoy a very special evening out.

The nerves ramped up a notch.

Andrew had asked if I would come in costume, so it was obvious that I was the turn for the evening and many people came up to me and generously told me how much they were looking forward to whatever I was going to perform for them.

The nerves ramped up another notch.

I detached myself from the main group so that I could inspect the dining room to try and judge how the acoustics and sight lines would work.  My heart sank, for although it was a lovely room with windows overlooking lawns that ran to the river bank, it had originally been two rooms which had been knocked through to create a single large space.  The arch that remained would trap any words uttered at the top table before they could reach the farthest tables.

I returned to the reception crowd and with Liz chatted to various people to whom we were introduced.

The proceedings were overseen by a splendidly florid master of ceremonies complete with a scarlet tail coat, white tie, white waistcoat and a gavel which he wielded with terrifying aplomb.

At 7.30 our MC called for silence and instructed us to make our way into the dining room which we all dutifully did.  Liz and I took our seats at the top table along with Andrew, Lynda, the Vice President (next year’s President) and his wife, the gentleman who will be Vice President next year (President in two) and his wife, and Andrew and Lynda’s daughter Sarah.

As the lords would have watched over their guests from the high table in the abbey, so we watched on as the 70 guests found their seats.  When everyone had taken their place the MC whacked the table with his gavel making many people jump and palpitate uncontrollably.

‘Pray Silence for the President of the North Oxford Rotary Club Mr Andrew Humphries’

Andrew stood to welcome his guests and to say grace and this was an important moment for me for it was the first time that I could judge how the acoustics in the room actually worked.  My worst fears were realised as I could see people at the back of the room either straining to hear or just continuing their conversation unaware that anything was being said.

Once Andrew had delivered the Rotarian grace we all sat down and began our meal.  I chatted to Mr and Mrs Vice President Next Year and President in Two (Mr and Mrs Shelton to give them their correct name), who were fascinating company as they own a farm nearby.

But as dinner went on I became more and more withdrawn, I scribbled notes on my speech, not because it needed it but because I needed to do someting.  Conversation became more stilted not only because of my nerves but also due to my tinnitus which makes hearing anything in a  noisy crowded room very difficult.

Prawn cocktail came and went, and our main courses (chicken for Liz and cod for me) were placed.  The noise in the room became louder and there were guffaws of laughter every now and then.

After desert had been served, consumed and cleared the master of ceremonies brought on a few more cardiac arrests with his gavelling and announced that it was time to toast the Queen.  We all stood and raised our glasses to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.  After the loyal toast had been murmured a comfort break was announced and the time for speechifying came closer.

Due to the fact that the Cosesenr’s House was not well provided with loos the 20 minutes suggested drifted on towards half an hour but eventually everyone took their seats and I took a deep breath.

The first up was Paul, the Vice President, who had unfortunately left his notes at home and had to speak off the cuff.  Paul decided that it would be best to speak from the half way arch, thereby taking in the whole room, and this seemed to work succesfully as everyone laughed at his jokes and joined in the toast.

After we had all sat down the MC walloped his gavel again and called silence for the Presedient, Mr Andrew Humphries.

Andrew decided to speak from the top table and this gave me the opportunity to judge how I should position myself when my turn came.  As soon as he asked ‘put your hand  up if you can’t hear me at the end of the room’ lots of hands rose and there was much laughter, but it was obvious that there was an issue so Andrew also decided to move to the archway.  Unfortunately just a moment before Andrew made his decision a gentleman with a military bearing and of advanced years had decided that we would relocate to the top of the room so as to hear more clearly.  He had just found a chair near to the top table and had stiffly settled himself into it, when he realised that Andrew had moved and in fact he would be better off in his original seat.  The proud march home was heralded by cheers and claps from the rest of the crowd.

Andrew’s job was to propose a toast to the guests and he gave a superb address discussing what the word ‘guest’ actually means.  He ended up by thanking all of the guests (specifically the wives of the Rotarians) for their help and assistance throughout the year.  He also gave us a little information of the fundraising achieved through his year of presidency and it was a remarkable achievement indeed.  The toast was given everyone sat down, and now it was my turn to make my way to the middle of the room.

I looked around the room at the sea of expectant faces and took a deep breath: ‘Mr President, Mr Vice President, Rotarians, guests…’  I have no idea if this was a correct way to address the group, but it seemed suitably formal for such an occasion.  I thanked Andrew on behalf of the guests (my official duty) and then launched into my speech.

It is a strange phenomenon but put me on stage performing one of my shows in front of 1000 people and I am as happy as Larry, but stand me in a room as myself and ask me to speak intelligently and coherently, I turn to jelly.  This was really out of my comfort zone and I would have been much more comfortable performing The Signalman, or reading some passages from The Pickwick Papers (which in hindsight would have been terribly apt for the group and occasion!), but Andrew had specifically asked me to give a speech and not a performance and I would do that to the best of my ability.

And here we had another bout of British reserve, for Liz told me later that in conversation with Andrew he had mentioned that he’d asked me NOT to perform because there was no fee available and he didn’t want to take advantage of my professional status, but he did confide that he was sure that the members of the club would have thoroughly enjoyed a reading.  If only he’d asked I would have had a much more relaxing evening!

Back to my speech and I got off to a good start: ‘Mr President, Mr Vice President…..’ was greeted with a murmer of ‘Oh we can hear HIM’.  The talk that I had prepared of course was about a rather serious and morbid subject – a rail accident that killed ten and injured forty is not the stuff of belly laughter, but I did try to introduce a few laughs along the way.   By way of example when I described how Dickens went among the injured I told the story how he had tended a man with a terrible would and gave the poor fellow a drink from his hip flask but the man died in his arms, Dickens went on and found a young lady slumped by a tree, Dickens gave her a drink but she too died.  I paused before saying ‘What DID Dickens have in that hip flask?’ which got a chuckle.

I rather hoped that people hadn’t expected a comedian, for if that was the best gag in my armoury it would be a long evening.

I think the talk went well and people were genuinely interested in what I was saying.  Maybe it wasn’t quite the right speech for that particular evening, maybe I would have been better off talking about Dickens’ career and throwing in a few readings and characters, but this was something I wanted to do.  I wanted to give myself a challenge that made me nervous, I wanted to conquer those nerves and come through it.  I wanted to learn lessons from the evening so another time I can talk more confidently and with a greater sense of what is required.  I am pleased with what I did.

After the speech the guests drifted away, many coming to me and shaking my hand, telling me how much they had enjoyed what I’d said.  Of course one of the most repeated comments was ‘we could hear every word!’

At last it was just Andrew, Lynda, Sarah Liz and I left and we all piled into the car and drove home.

The best bit of the evening?  We now properly know Andrew and Lynda and can count them as friends. Hopefully they will come to our house soon and the four of us can dine, chat, raise a glass, have a chuckle with no sign of that British reserve.

 

 

Regular readers will know of my lifelong passion for Formula One racing.  I started following the sport in the 1970s and became a fully-fledged fan during the hot summer of ’76 when a dashing young Englishman called James Hunt took the fight to the clinical reigning champion Niki Lauda.

The 12 year old me saw things in black and white and I supported Hunt, meaning that Lauda was the villain, but what a perfect villain he was!  At the start of the season he won as he pleased, which was all rather dull.  Hunt in contrast got pole positions, crashed, retired from races, won non-championship races and courted controversy with his drinking and womanising.  He even played the trumpet in the Royal Albert Hall – wearing a t shirt, trainers and no socks!  He stuck two fingers up at establishment and that appealed to a young boy from a respectable household.

But in the middle of the summer Niki Lauda crashed catastrophically in Germany and for days lay upon the point of death.  He fought against his injuries and only 6 weeks later started racing again.  His dedication and strength was an inspiration and suddenly Niki Lauda became a real man not the pantomime baddy; the battle for the championship took on a fresh impetus to me.

Niki Lauda died this week, and with him passes the excitement of those days. He, and his like, gave me so much and I will be forever thankful.

Thank you Niki.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the History Books

Last  week was been spent preparing for two days of performing.  Both venues were new to me, which tends to bring its own pressure and waves of nervousness.

On Thursday I loaded the car up with the set required for A Christmas Carol, and set my satnav for the Alderwood School in Hampshire.  It was a lovely drive although traffic on one of the motorways prompted my phone to suggest an alternative route, which I duly took.  The roads were narrow, pretty and the houses large suggesting a well to do area of the country.  Suddenly things began to look familiar and I couldn’t quite think why until I drove past a sign informing me that I was entering the town of Hartley Wintney.

Many many years ago, in a time before Dickens one man shows, I used to be a partner in a small company that specialised in corporate theatre.  We wrote and performed murder mystery parties, we provided open-air children’s theatre for tourist attractions and we provided actors for training purposes, most particularly for the Police Force.

We worked in two major training centres, one in Maidstone which was close to home and the other at the Hampshire Constabulary’s training facility in Hartley Wintney.  As I drove through the town so many memories came to mind.

We would be sent 5 minute scenarios and the candidates, at an early stage of their training, had to follow certain proceedural routes as we provided them with carefully scripted answers to their questions.  On one occasion the test was to breathalise a suspect drink driver, and when the officer had ascertained that there was reasonable grounds he was supposed to use his radio, clipped to his lapel, to ‘radio base’ and request a breathalyser kit.  At this point the senior training officer would hand over a sealed and sterile breath test unit, and the candidate would continue, asking the correct questions and following the correct proceedure.

On one occasion a rather flustered young officer came in and reached the point where he should have radioed in, but in a complete panic he forgot what he was suppsoed to do.  Realising he didn’t have a breath kit at hand he decided to improvise and stuck one finger straight out and asked me to blow into it.  The senior office, desperate to help, hissed softly ‘use your bloody radio!’  Our candidate’s face cleared and with relief he unclipped his radio, pushed the stubby aerial towards me and said ‘blow into this please!’  As the poor lad left the room the training officer sighed ‘and there goes a future Chief Constable!’

Wallowing in nostalgia I drove on until I turned into the gates of The Alderwood School where I was greeted in the car park by Glenn Christodoulou who was responsible for booking me.  Glenn used to teach at another school at which I performed every year and we became good friends but a few years ago he retired to Devon.  However the siren song of education was too compelling and now he is back teaching in Hampshire.

Having seen me signed in and issued with a lanyard (ensuring that the students were perfectly safe) Glenn showed me to the hall where I would be performing.  I arranged my furniture on the high stage and Glenn experimented with the lights until between us we were ready to go.

The year ten and eleven students are currently studying A Christmas Carol and, as with a few other schools recently, I had been asked to perform my show as well as giving the students some idea as to the context in which the book was written (the latter forming a large percentage of the available marks in the examination).

What Alderwood School had provided me with was time – plenty of time to talk, plenty of time to perform and plenty of time to answer questions.  I had two hours for each group which was positively luxurious.  My first performance was for the year tens, who will be sitting their examinations next year.

Glenn took me to the English department’s office which had been appropriated as my dressing room and which seemed to welcome me as it was furnished with a large stack of A Christmas Carol books on the table.

Peeping out from behind books on shelves were various Christmas decorations and trees which made me feel even more at home.

For the first time in three months I got into my costume, checked cufflinks, tied my cravat, wound my watch, slipped it into my waistcoat pocket and time travelled back to 1843.

In the hall a few members of the English department were around and pointed out to me that a lot of the students in this group were now not studying A Christmas Carol but Jekyll and Hyde, and could I gear my presentation towards that instead. Um?  No!

As the school bell rang the group made their way in and took their seats and awaited their morning session to start.  I was introduced (a distant relative of Charles Dickens) and walked up to a lectern on floor level to begin.

The first part of my presentation was given over to describing Charles Dickens’ early experiences in London and explaining how he saw poverty, neglect and vice at first hand as a 12 year old wandering the streets whilst his father was incarcerated in the Marshalsea.  I talked about what a prosperous and great trading nation Britain was and how with such great prosperity comes great poverty also (I assumed that this would be useful to students of Jekyll and Hyde too!).  I moved on to Dickens’ tireless campaigning work, his efforts on behalf of the ragged schools, and then to his speech in Manchester on October 5 1843 where the first glimmers of an idea that would become A Christmas Carol started to glow.

To conclude my discourse I talked about The Tale of the Goblin who Stole a Sexton from The Pickwick Papers which would form a basis for the plot and pointed out the important differences between the two pieces (Gabriel Grub is a completely evil and violent man within whom there can be no real hope of redemption, whereas in the Carol Dickens is careful to paint Scrooge as a mean man, but never a villainous or vicious one)

When the forty minute talk was complete I went up onto stage and began the show itself.  It was good to back, every movement, every gesture, every voice seemed reassuringly familiar and soon I was becoming completely surrounded by a world that has become part of my life over the years.

Thanks to my previous performances for him Glenn was familiar with the script and was having a fun old time on the lighting desk: dimming them, flashing them up, creating different atmospheres as the story moved from time to time and scene to scene.

The audience of students certainly were attentive and reacted well throughout the show.  I had 70minutes to fill, which was so much better than the hour long ‘greatest hits’ version of the show that I usually do in schools.  The extra ten minutes allowed for the charity collector and the carol singer (which was important as I had compared Scrooge’s and Gabriel Grub’s reaction to their respective carol singers in my initial talk – whereas Ebenezer threatens and scares his away, Grub inflicts actual bodily violence).

There were a few other chops and changes, Marley doesn’t get a full outing, and neither do the Cratchit family, but Topper gets a little look in although he is not allowed to play at blindman’s buff with the niece’s sister.

I came in bang on time, leaving some 15 minutes for questions of which there were plenty – thoughtful, inquisitive and intelligent questions.

When the group had left I got back  into my normal clothes so that I could have a very quick lunch before preparing for the year 11s in the afternoon.

Unfortunately the rain has set in during the lunch break and the students had not been able to get outside, also it became clear that some did not realise that the session would take them past of the end of the school day.  There was a degree of dissention.  The staff asked if I would be able to cut everything shorter, but I was loathe to do that seeing that this particular group would be sitting their A Christmas Carol exam in just a few days – this was the group who would get most out of the history and the story.

at 1.50 they slouched in.  I decided to get as much information across as I could whilst aiming for a 3.30 finish.  I didn’t stint on history and context, and I didn’t cut much out of the show, I just did it all an awful lot quicker.  If you had heard a recording of the performance on that day you might imagine that I’d sucked the gas from a helium balloon before speaking!  I managed to get the show finished at my target time, and most students bolted for the door as soon as they were released.  A few stayed for the Q&A session and I was able to furnish them with a couple of extra quotes and anecdotes that their less committed classmates would not be party to.

The rain was heavy by now and once I was changed Glenn and I got soaking wet as we loaded my car up.  We said our goodbyes and I headed off into the murk, towards home.

After a relaxing Friday  I was on the road again on Saturday, this time driving the length of the country.  My show was to be made up of Mr Dickens is Coming, which requires my facsimile of Charles Dickens’ reading desk, a chair, a hat-stand, a table and a screen; and for a second act The Signalman, which uses the large clerk’s desk, my new block signalling equipment, a chair, a table and a stool.  All of this meant a logistical exercise of supreme efficiency to fit the set into the back of my Renault Scenic.  I think that this combination is about the most I can manage without having to hire a van.

I was headed for Jarrow in the far North East of England and it is a drive I know well thanks to my regular appearances at the Lit and Phil in Newcastle.  As I drove I re-familiarised myself with the scripts that I was due to perform.  Mr Dickens is Coming is so familiar to me that it didn’t need much work, but I needed to change the end to include a passage from Great Expectations, and that transition needed some attention.  The Signalman is fairly secure in my mind but it was good to run through it once on my drive.

Apart from rehearsal much of the drive was taken up spotting Eddie Stobart lorries, the cabs of which are all painted with the names of the driver’s wives or girlfriends above the front wheel arch.  As I pounded northward on the M1 and then later the A1 I logged Sarah, Elaine, Cassandra, Rebecca, Marion, Charley, Kimberley, Holly, Susan, May and many others.  What a simple way to pass 4 and half hours!

My journey continued through Yorkshire and on towards Tyneside, soon there were signs for Sunderland, Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle and Jarrow the last of which was to be my destination.

Jarrow is one of those English towns that is known to most purely by its place in the history books.  Anyone of my generation could glibly trot out ‘The Jarrow March’ without having any idea what we were talking about.  The facts were that following shipyard closures and a general decline in the industrial landscape 200 workers embarked on a crusade to London, where they presented a petition to Parliament.  The Jarrow Crusade lasted for the whole month of October and although it didn’t achieve anything specific, in that the issue was never debated,  the crusaders took their place in history.

So to me the name of Jarrow summed up a long dead, neglected, industrial dinosaur of a town and I was slightly nervous as to how my show would be received there.  Certainly as I approached the town the signs to the colliery and the shipbuilding yard tied in with the stereotype but within minutes I was parking on the banks of the Tyne with a busy bustling market behind me.  Far from my prejudiced imaginations Jarrow showed itself to be a lively energetic and modern town.  The riverside was dominated by two impressive buildings, one the Custom House Theatre which unsurprisingly is situated in a magnificent Victorian or Georgian building and according to the posters outside is a thriving venue, and opposite it a brand new gleaming white circular structure stood proudly looking out to sea.  This was The Word, and would be my venue for the afternoon.

I parked my car in the loading bay and made my way into the main entrance where I found myself in the centre of a huge spiralling atrium alive with life, energy and bustle.  The Word is a library, but it is so much more for it appeared to be a hub for the whole town.  As I took  in my surroundings I saw that there was a gift shop and a café.  In the centre of the atrium a small stage had been set up and prizes were being awarded for a short story competition.

I made my way up the spiral staircase to level one and there discovered lots of smaller areas and meeting rooms, one of which was proudly called ‘The Charles Dickens Room’

I was met by my contact for the day Gemma and together we started to unload my car. My performance space was on the third floor, so that meant numerous crowded rides in the lift.  The room itself was white, light and airy with a large circular ceiling feature which is a motif repeated throughout the building.  The window looked out across the Tyne.

Once all of my set was in the room I bustled around putting it all in place on the small temporary  stage.  My dressing room was a store room just behind the stage area and funnily enough it reminded me of being at the Woodneath Library in Independence, Missouri – a very similar establishment to The Word.

Before I knew it 2 o clock was approaching and the audience was ready to be let in;  actually so was I, for I had popped out to the bathroom and the door to the performance room clicked shut behind me, consigning me to the hallway with the waiting crowd until Gemma returned with her security pass to let me back in.

The crowd was a good one, and I stayed in the room to chat as they came in.  One gentleman wore a Green Bay Packers cap and I was able to tell him about the time I visited the stadium.  Another lady was a huge fan of Dickens and had attended the festivals in both Rochester and Broadstairs.  When the room had filled I took my cue from Gemma and made my way to the stage to begin.

Mr Dickens is a well grooved show and soon the audience were chuckling over the Micawbers and squirming with Uriah Heep.  In no time I arrived at the part where instead of talking about Sikes and Nancy I diverted into Miss Havisham and Estella, as rehearsed in the car on the journey up.

As soon as I mentioned Charles Dickens friendship with George Cooper Apps who, if you remember, told a story of a relative who was left standing at the altar, there were nods of affirmation in the room.  South Shields is proud of its connection to one of the greatest characters that Charles created,  but the looks of pride turned to concerned looks of doubt as I started to suggest that maybe it wasn’t Apps who was the inspiration for Miss Havisham, perhaps it was Miss Dicks from the Isle of Wight, or Eliza Donnithorne from Australia.  However  relief returned to the faces when I pointed out that Mr Apps was the only one to stop his clocks, and therefore must be the true Miss H: South Shields had stakes its claim!

The Great Expectations passage brought me to the end of act one, and I announced that we would have a 10 minute recess while I changed the set for act two.  As people stretched their legs and ran downstairs to buy a coffee, I removed the reading desk, the screen and the hat stand, I brought the clerk’s desk to the stage and proudly fitted my signalling prop which was making its debut.  I put the little wooden chest next to it, and the bell on the top and before I knew it I had my signal box.  Just time to swap my colourful waistcoat for a black one and it was time for Act 2.

 

The Signalman held the audience in its grip – the dark, brooding, claustrophobic nature of the story surrounding them all. We were all so involved in the narrative that there was an audible gasp when my little bell suddenly slid from the little chest and fell to the floor with a clang!  I hadn’t touched it, I hadn’t been near it as it moved.  Was this a poltergeist, the spirit of Charles Dickens reaching out to me?  Or maybe I just need to pack some Blu-Tak next time.

The show came to its conclusion at around 3.30 in the afternoon and the audience gave me a warm and long round of applause.  It seemed wrong to disappear into my ‘dressing room’,  so I stayed and chatted to everyone as they left, until it was just me and the staff from The Word remaining.

As I changed Gemma and her team fetched a cart and started to load my furniture onto it, so we could get everything back downstairs again, and soon I was trying to remember the intricate jigsaw that would allow everything to fit back into the Renault.

I said my goodbyes and headed back south collecting more Eddie Stobart lorries on the way.

On the following morning a Twitter feed popped up with an image from a local newspaper describing Charles Dickens’ Jnrs visit to the town of Jarrow in 1886.  Apparently the audience had been sparse and Charlie had ‘stormed out because he was annoyed at the poor attendence and the masses of people promenading along German Ocean Rd and not listening to him’

I must state that 2019 Jarrow afforded the Dickens family a much warmer and more generous welcome and I hope that I shall return often!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recalled to the Stage

As May begins so my career as an actor is reignited.  I haven’t worked since February and there is nothing unusual in that for this is the usual rhythm of my year.  It is nice to have a few months away from the rigours of travelling and touring, and just to enjoy my life at  home,  but now it is time to re-focus and prepare for the week ahead.

On Thursday I am due to travel to a school in Hampshire at which the students are studying A Christmas Carol for their GCSE English exams, so this week I need to make sure that the script is still nestling in the region of my brain that has become its home.

The challenge is not necessarily remembering the lines, but remembering which lines to say.  My full performance of A Christmas Carol runs to 110 minutes and my shortest version stops the clock at 60.  The school would like a 70 minute version, so I have to work out how best to edit the script to come in on the hour, ten mark.

Not only will I be performing the show itself but I am also required to talk to the students about the context in which A Christmas Carol was written.  Charles Dickens of course was a great campaigner for reform and was horrified about the situation in which the poor found themselves.  In his second novel, Oliver Twist, he laid bare the horrors of London life, including the issues of parochial corruption, crime, disenfranchisement, prostitution, legal ineptitude, squalor, covetousness, alcoholism and many others.  With each successive novel he returned to the same subjects, adding others along the away,  and was soon seen as a mouthpiece for the downtrodden.

In October 1843 his attentions were focussed on the children of the poor and the necessity of providing them with a basic education.  He argued that if society didn’t look after ‘the poor man’s child’ then the country would soon founder.  He gave speeches and wrote pamphlets on the topic but as The Christmas season approached he realised that by writing a special story embracing his concerns he could reach a much wider section of the population (and the potential income would come in handy, too).

This is how I shall introduce the Carol to the students at the Alderwood School in Aldershot on Thursday and I shall read them passages from The Pickwick Papers (where the plot, in its earliest form, first appeared), and from Oliver Twist in which the description of East London mirrors that of Old Joe’s shop.

It should be a fun day.

After a day off I am due to drive to Jarrow in the North East of England to perform Mr Dickens is Coming and The Signalman at – to give it its full title – The Word, the National Centre for the Written Word. You will recall that the centre was keen for me to introduce a passage from Great Expectations into my performance as one of the inspirations for the character of Miss Havisham came from the region.  With a bit of cutting, pasting, shoehorning and tenuous linking I have come up with a script that fulfils the brief, and will also ensure the popular vote by stating categorically that the Tyneside Miss Havisham (actually a Mr) must have been the true inspiration as he was the only one of the contenders to stop his clocks!

So the first act is in place and ready.  At this point in a regular performance I would usually retire to my dressing room for 20 minutes or so and prepare for the second act, but in Jarrow time is slightly limited so it will be a case of changing the set as the audience patiently waits, swapping my colourful waistcoat for a black one and then launching into The Signalman with barely time for breath.

I am excited about performing The Signalman next Saturday because a new prop will make its debut.  I mentioned in a previous post that I had found the block signalling equipment in our local preserved railway centre and was keen to try and reconstruct it for my set.

My first task was to track a wooden box with some age to it and I was fortunate to find on ebay an old oak cutlery box.  The lid had a recess set into it, which suited my purpose because it meant that I could paste an image from a genuine piece of equipment in, thereby creating the ‘dial, face and needle’ without resorting to clumsy artwork.

I took another trip to the historic railway for the purpose of taking close-up images of the face and used a graphics package to make sure the picture was the perfect size for the aperture.  At the base of the original equipment was a piece of wood on which a Bakelite knob was fixed.  To either side of this large switch were metal panels, one showing a red square signifying that there was a train on the line, and on the other a white square showing that the line was clear.

I created this look by cutting a piece of tongue and groove cladding to size and colouring it to the correct hue it with a dark oak stain.  But how would I create the metal panels and the Bakelite switch?  The solution to the latter problem came to me, quite literally, over a cup of coffee.  As I sipped I gazed at the glass pot which held the instant coffee and noticed that the lid  was large, circular, black and perfect.

All I had to do was drink a lot of coffee in less than a week, and once I had liberated the lid paint a white arrow onto it.

The metal panels created more of a headache until I visited the Oxford branch of Hobbycraft.  As I queued up waiting to pay I saw that there was a large basket of little plastic cards, the same size as credit cards, which once activated become a membership card to the Hobbycraft Club.  The cards were free.  Hmmm, with some silver paint from one of my Formula 1 model kits they would look like perfectly cast pieces of metal.

During the past week I have started to assemble this creation and I am rather proud with the way it looks.  It is the wrong size and proportion and anyone with any knowledge of railways will probably shake their head in disbelief, but as a prop for a theatre show it works admirably, and it will look fine sitting atop my clerk’s desk, upstage left.

But the picture was not yet complete, for next to the block signalling machine there should be a bell mounted on a small wooden box.  The bell is not only a vital part of the signalling equipment but also of the story itself, for the ghostly apparition that haunts the signalman supernaturally rings it as a precursor to tragedy.

A bell I had.  A small box I did not.  If only we were to pay a visit to some old friends, and if only they had a tiny wooden chest of drawers in their spare room.  If only I thought about asking them where it came from and what it was and if only they said ‘please borrow it and use it!’  If only that unlikely sequence of events where to occur.

With very grateful thanks to our friends Martin and Nikki I am now the temporary custodian of said small wooden box, and my bell sits on it perfectly and the set is complete.

All I need to do now is create a structure that holds the box to the top of the desk so that it doesn’t fall embarrassingly as I move around a stage.  For this I shall approach my neighbour who lives for wood!  He is always in his garage sawing, planning, jointing or sticking.  He will have a practical and simple solution to my request whereas I am sure that I would over think and over engineer it.  I will need  a structure that can be assembled at the venue, so that the whole thing can be transported in my car along with the reading desk, the clerk’s desk, a chair, a table, a hat stand and all of the other paraphernalia that I need.

For the rest of this week I shall be muttering lines as I pace around the kitchen and generally getting myself back into the routine of being an actor. It is good to be back!