Golf, Hertz and East Meadow

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Doctor Marigold, East Meadow Public Library, Long Island, The Signalman, The Verrazano Bridge

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday had promised to be another relaxing day in the cabin, possibly doing some work on the script for A Child’s Journey With Dickens, until I had received a text the day before from Bob’s son George asking me if I would like to join him for a round of golf (I had mentioned to Bob that I had brought my golf shoes just in case there was time for a round, and he had passed the message on). I readily agreed and George arrived at the cabin to pick me up at 8.45 in readiness for a 9.40 tee off. The course that he had selected was Heron Glenn Golf Club near to the town of Flemington from where I would be collecting a rental car later in the day.

We arrived at the club in good time and sorted out a set of rental clubs for me, which would provide a perfect excuse for poor play in the early holes, and made our way to the first tee, where another two players introduced themselves as Bill and Michael and told us that they would be playing with us, which turned out to be a good thing as they were able to show us the way around and warn us of hidden areas of rough. They had broad New York accents and George and I tried to guess what they had been during their working lives: we came up with either police officers, or maybe in the newspaper industry. We never did find out.

We had a wonderful time, I wont go into it hole by hole, but we all played some very good shots and we all played some woeful shots. On the whole George played more good shots than the rest of us, and if we had been competing he would have vanquished us, but we weren’t and instead we all had fun

From the golf course I had to pick up a rental car which will be with me until I arrive at Logan airport on Saturday to fly home. We were to go to a Hertz dealership in Flemington, and it took a bit of finding. In our defence the venue didn’t look like a Hertz office. In fact it was a very small car repair shop, with scattered bits of wounded automobiles lying on the ground. The only clue that the office may be part of one of the world’s leading car rental concerns was a tiny sign on the wall outside the office. I walked in and said I was due to collect a car and that my name was Dickens. ‘Ah, yes.’ said the lady in the office, its the white Nissan Rogue, here are the keys. Its got 3/4 of a tank, just drop it off with the same wherever you’re leaving it.’ And that was it! No signatures, no driving licence check, no credit cards: nothing. Easy, but I was not entirely sure that Hertz head office knew that I had their car.

I said goodbye to George, although we’d be meeting up again for dinner, and drove back to the cabin, where I took the Mustang out for one final journey to fill it up with petrol (during my drive to Burlington I’d watched the fuel gauge go down as quickly as the speed went up!) When I returned, I sorrowfully guided it into the garage and said my goodbyes.

George had booked a table for dinner in the town of New Hope, 30 minutes away, in a very smart restaurant overlooking the river. Maura, George’s girlfriend was also there and it was a great pleasure to meet her. She is going to be working with Pam on the administrative side of my tour and she was keen to find out as much as possible as to how it all works. She will be a great asset to the team, I think. We all dined well, I had a spicy Asian trout dish which was absolutely delicious, and it was a very pleasant evening with good company.

I returned to the Cabin for my final night in the woods

THURSDAY

Although I had only one show on Thursday, in the evening, I did have a little extra work to do at Byers’ Choice, for David wanted to record a few promotional videos for the forthcoming Christmas tour. Firstly I sat at a large table and, looking into the camera, cheerily invited people to come and see A Christmas Carol at Byers’ Choice. Next I cheerily asked them to come and see A Christmas Carol at their local venue (this means that sponsors can put their own captions and booking details on the screen.) Then I told people that they may like to buy my book, and finally a piece about my DVD of A Christmas Carol (Yes! It is available this year). When all those short clips had been filmed Dave and I created a mini Byers’ Choice travel show as I walked through the visitor centre pointing out things of interest, especially relating to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol.

When the filming was finished I said my final goodbyes to Dave, Bob and George (who returned my golf shoes that I’d left in his ca)r, and I set out on the road East, towards Long Island. The traffic wasn’t too bad until I reached the environs of New York City, at which time I inevitably hit long tailbacks – some because of accidents, some because of roadworks and some just due to heavy city congestion. I had plenty of time in hand, though, so it was not a concern.

To skirt around Manhattan my route took me across the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn, and it has to be one of the world’s most truly impressive bridges to be sure, rivalling The Forth Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sidney Harbour Bridge, and even its near neighbour, the Brooklyn Bridge. The heavy traffic continued onto the misnamed Long Island Expressways but I arrived at the Marriott Hotel in good time. I had stayed at the same venue last Christmas so everything was familiar to me.

I had an hour or so at the hotel before I was due at the East Meadow Library where I was to perform the double bill of The Signalman and Doctor Marigold that evening. The drive to the library was only a matter of minutes and in no time I was greeting my friends from December Jude and her husband Mark, who helped me to unload my costumes and props ready to set up in the small auditorium. The first job was to reconstruct the danger light for The Signalman, using the screws and screwdriver that Dave had sent along with me. Mark used to be involved in Broadway theatre in the tech, set and props fields and as we built the light he was commenting on the construction of it, with a certain sense of admiration, but also with the inevitable ‘Ah, if I’d made this I would have……’

Soon we had the set in place and Jude suggested that we all went to get some dinner before the show, so we piled into Marks huge RAM truck and headed to a lovely Italian restaurant, where we dined alfresco, beneath huge sunshades. I had a simple chicken dish in a white wine and lemon sauce, which was delicious, but I was aware that time was pushing on towards six pm and we were due to start at seven. Mark noticed my unease and offered to drive me back to the Library so that I could finish my preparations in as relaxed way as possible.

The priority was to do a sound check with Larry, who had looked after my performance in December and who I knew to be a safe pair of hands on the faders, because of that I had also given him the wind sound effect to play during the first half. With the sound check completed and the set checked once more I left the room, so that the audience could take their seats, and went downstairs where I changed in a small staff cafeteria room.

At seven o’clock Jude came down to say we were holding for 5 minutes as guests were still arriving, but soon everything was in place to begin. Jude opened the door to the auditorium (the seating was raked, and I would be performing on the floor level), and I slipped in behind her, which elicited a round of applause form the audience, to which Jude hissed back at me in a loud pantomime-style whisper ‘you were supposed to stay outside!’ It was all good fun banter, and Jude is a natural entertainer.

With the introductions completed I started the show. The audience weren’t as responsive during the two performances as some others, there was not the same laughter at Marigold for instance, but oh my they were appreciative and applauded long and loudly afterwards. I learned long ago that audiences respond in different ways and just because there isn’t an instant response, it doesn’t mean that they are not enjoying, or appreciating the performance, and the crowd at East Meadow were a case in point. After Marigold was finished (and, yes, they gasped at the correct moment), I opened the floor up to questions and we had an enjoyable session covering lots of ground, including how do I learn lines? What is my favourite film or TV adaptation of any Dickens novel? (David Lean’s Great Expectations, or the BBC’s Bleak House), and how did I feel about the Queen? which brought the emotions that have been there all week bubbling up to the surface again. Soon it was time to wrap up and I took another round of applause before leaving the room. I loitered outside as the audience left and the questions continued until the library emptied and it was time to pack up my belongings, say my goodbyes and head back to the Marriott where I set my alarm for 5.45, as I had a three hour drive ahead of me to Massachusetts.

Jekyll Island

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Doctor Marigold, Jekyll Island Club Resort Hotel, Queen Elizabeth II, St Simons Island, The Signalman

Flags at Jekyll Island Club Resort Hotel

On Friday it was time to get to work. I woke early thanks equally to being in the wrong time zone, but also thanks to a tropical storm beating the roof and window panes of my room. I logged on to the BBC news coverage and watched as the news of the Queen’s death and the King’s accession still played out, eliciting the same emotions in me as the day before. I noticed that many of the correspondents wore black arm bands and decided that that was a suitable way to show my respects during the days and weeks of official mourning. The only problem with that plan was that I didn’t have a black arm band, or even any material to make one, but a quick online search showed me that there was a fabric store on St Simon’s Island, just a 30 minute drive away and as I had plenty of time on my hands I decided that I would make the journey.

I cant remember when I had last been at the Jekyll Island Club Resort, it must have been 15 or 20 years ago now, in a completely different era of touring, and readers of my blog posts will know nothing about it, for my performances there predate ‘On the Road With….’.

Having performed at The Dickens on the Strand festival in Galveston Texas in 1994 I was approached by Caroline Jackson, an entrepreneurial lady who wanted to build a tour around my show, and offered to become my US agent. At that stage I had no thoughts of touring and simply enjoyed the experience of the single trip to Texas, with a stop in Kansas City tagged on. Caroline, however, had bigger ideas, and promised great things if I signed with her, which I did, and so this amazing story began.

In her efforts to find venues for the first tours Caroline signed an agreement with The Historic Hotels of America chain, an umbrella organisation that marketed various hotels which were, naturally enough, historic, and it was through that connection that I first performed at Hershey, Williamsburg, Ojai, The Memphis Peabody and many others, including on Jekyll Island.

As I had driven towards the hotel on Thursday afternoon I had tried to remember what it had been like – I recalled the people I worked with and the sheer sense of fun, but had no real memory of the physical layout of the hotel. Vaguely in my mind I recalled the dining room being slightly awkward to perform in, I seemed to think quite long and narrow, but that was all. As I arrived I remembered the grandeur and elegance of the property – anywhere with a croquet lawn is quite special!

On Friday morning I went down to breakfast, which was served in The Grand Dining Room and it all came flooding back to me – yes the room was long, and had four rows of pillars through it, making five distinct corridors, albeit not filled in by walls.

I remembered that to perform A Christmas Carol I had to work the room, making sure I was always on the move, with no fixed area to focus the acting on. I also remembered that the banquet staff would be clearing the previous course as I performed, meaning that there were ample opportunities to include the waiting staff in the story (thinking back, I am sure that they must have hated it), and one poor guy always managed to be in the wrong, or the right, place during the Fezziwig ball and I would end up dancing a jig with him.

As I looked at the room over my eggs and bacon I dragged my mind from the past into the present and looked at the possibilities for my evening performance of The Signalman and Doctor Marigold. I knew that the evening was going to be an intimate affair and I doubted that we would need the whole dining room, so how else could we stage it? The answer was the door to the room, for as you enter there is a full width area, unencumbered by the pillars, at one side was a large bookcase (perfect as a backdrop for Marigold), and at the other a fireplace (suitable for The Signalman.) That seemed to be the perfect place to perform, I also noticed the large wooden desk with a sloping top, used to check guests in, and wondered if I could appropriate that for the desk in the Signalman’s hut.

After breakfast I immediately walked to the car and set off to St Simons Island. It was a beautiful drive, across flat wetlands where herons flew in such numbers that they reminded me of seagulls.

I drove on across various bridges and soon I was pulling up outside the fabric shop. To my dismay I realised that it actually sold fabrics for furnishing – curtains, drapes, furniture coverings etc, and didn’t have anything that would suit my purpose, but the owner did suggest the next shop which specialised in quilting, so I tried there instead. As I walked in a lady was using a huge machine, reminiscent of a Victorian cotton mill (except it was powered by electricity and had a laptop attached to it), to create a huge piece of work. She was concentrating hard, as the needles darted this way and that to create the elaborate pattern, and I thought it best just to wait quietly until she had finished that particular section, On she went, ignoring me completely, not even a quick ‘Ill be with you shortly’. Finally she stopped, looked up, saw me and jumped in the air at the same time shouting ‘JESUS CHRIST!! OH GOD!’ Such had been her concentration she had no idea I’d even entered the shop and then suddenly there was this apparent apparition standing at her counter watching her. After holding her chest and panting for a while, she calmed down and I apologised for scaring her so much. I explained what I wanted and why, and she immediately began to talk about The Queen and Charles and, inevitably, Diana and Camilla. She was very kind and she was the first actual person I had spoken to about the Queen since she died and I found myself becoming very emotional all over again. My new friend very kindly made no charge for the small amount of fabric, seeing as what it was for.

I drove back to Jekyll Island, returned to my room and fetched my sewing kit (which I travel with to patch up costumes if they suffer from the rigours of the tour), and started to hem the edges before completing a small hoop that snuggled onto my arm without slipping.

Having completed my needlework I went to the little pantry store in the hotel and bought a chicken salad, which I ate on an outside deck whilst admiring two little green lizards running to and fro.

I spent the afternoon running through my lines for the two shows and getting frustratingly tangled up in both, which was slightly worrying. The best thing would have been to gone for a walk, but yet another tropical rain storm had settled over the island and I was restricted to quarters.

Variety was provided by a meeting with the hotel staff about the evening’s event and to my delight they told me that they were indeed setting up in the wide space at the entrance to the room, and yes it would be fine to use the sloping desk for my set.

We chatted about the timetable (guests were dining at 7.30 and I would start performing after they had finished an hour later, which meant it was going to be a late evening.)

I went back to my room and did some more rehearsing, with more success this time (I actually put costume on, which helped me to concentrate more), and then settled back to wait for the start of the show. As I sat on my bed I remembered that I had a very early start in the morning, in fact I would need to set my alarm for 3am to leave the hotel at 3.30, so I began to carefully pack everything I could in my suitcase, and left it lying open on the floor at the end of the bed ready to add my costume and wash bag to it in the morning.

At 7.45 I got fully into The Signalman’s all black costume, including my black arm band which naturally didn’t show, but I knew I was wearing it, and made my way down two flights of stairs into the small bar area, which is just outside the dining room, and where quite a group was gathering and starting a rowdy evening. In the dining room a more sedate and elegant evening was progressing as the guests were served their main courses. I sat in a large leather arm chair to wait. At various stages some of the guests came out of the room to get some fresh air, or stretch their legs and chatted to me. One lady had actually been at one my previous performances here when she was a young girl, apparently I stole some asparagus from her plate during the show, and she has never forgotten it.

I received updates during the rest of dinner from the hotel’s audio visual guy, Dante, and eventually, at 8.30, I got the word that the dinner service was complete and cleared and that I could start. There was nobody to make introductory remarks or welcome me to the stage, so I simply walked into the room and began.

The lines for the Signalman flowed well and the dark eerie light that Dante had created with a couple of floor LED spotlights added to the atmosphere in the lonely signal box, and when I got to the end of the show the audience applauded warmly. I announced that I was going to disappear to perform a quick costume change and would be back in a few minutes to continue the evening, at which I made my way behind the large book case and changed costume in a sort of cupboard/passage way/storage area just a few feet from the stage itself. Soon I was in the corduroy trousers, collarless shirt with rolled up sleeves (black arm band showing clearly this time), plain waistcoat and rough laceless boots. I re-emerged with as little ceremony as I could so that I could move the furniture around and place the little flight of steps that would represent Marigold’s cart, without the audience thinking it was part of the show. When the set was ready, I waited until the guests had all returned and started once more.

Doctor Marigold went as smoothly as The Signalman, with just a couple of minor line errors, that while frustrating to me, didn’t effect the show itself. I reached the end and again received lovely applause and then stayed on the stage to do a little Q&A session, before everyone prepared to leave. I posed for some photographs and then collected all of my props and the Signalman’s costume and made my way up stairs to my room. In the bar the boisterous party was still in full fling, and at the centre of it were two British gentlemen, so I joined in with the banter for a while before retiring for the night.

I packed my costumes into the little roller case – it is amazing how much that can hold, set the bedside alarm and my phone for 3am and left the large case open ready for the morning.

A Debut for a Waistcoat

Tags

Abel Magwitch, Anthony Gormley, Castleford, Charles Dickens, Fire, Gateshead, Great Expectations, Jury's Inn, Just Giving, Miss Havisham, Mr Dickens is Coming, Newcastle, Oxford Half Marathon, Pip, The Angel of the North, The Word, waistcoats

As summer turns to autumn my thoughts turn to a series of trips to America, but before I fly to Jacksonville on Thursday, I had one performance in Britain. I was returning to The Word, the magnificent National Centre for the Written Word in the north eastern city of South Shields.

In a remarkable attempt at efficiency I had decided to load the car the day before and had even created a spreadsheet with all of the props and costume pieces that I would need listed and a little check box waiting to be ticked next to each. I was due to perform Great Expectations and of all my major shows this one probably has the smallest set, meaning that packing the car is a relatively quick process, albeit one that always leaves me with the feeling that I have forgotten something. But, I had checked all of the boxes on my list, so it was all OK.

South Shields is tucked away in the far North Eastern corner of England, not far from the Scottish border, indeed just over the River Tyne is the town of Wallsend which marks the end (and also, presumably, the beginning) of Hadrian’s Wall. The drive from Oxford is around 4 1/2 hours, and allowing for a couple of stops for lunch and leg stretching I needed to get on the road at about 10.am.

Last time I drove to The Word I suffered a puncture within 20 minutes of starting and had to carry out a tyre change in the darkness and rain, so I was relieved that this year the journey was smooth and adventure-free. I listened to some podcasts and coverage of the morning practice sessions from the latest Grand Prix weekend, and in between took the time to run the lines of Great Ex. which still resolutely refuse to permanently in the way that the words of A Christmas Carol and Mr Dickens is Coming! do.

I stopped for lunch at a motorway service station and as I returned to the car I thought I would just check my costumes, which were hanging over the passenger seat, and to my horror I realised that I had failed to include a fancy waistcoat, despite ticking the relevant box. The costumes of Great Expectations lead from ragged at the opening (representing the convict Abel Magwitch and the Spartan life of the Gargery family in their tiny forge,) to a slightly old fashioned tail coat in which young Pip is sent to meet the intimidating Miss Havisham. At the end of the first act Pip is informed that he is to receive a huge income and be raised a gentleman by the largesse of an unknown benefactor (assumed to be Miss Havisham, of course) and at that point he changes into expensive and extravagant clothing.

As I drove on I debated as to how I could sort this problem out and decided I couldn’t really get away with wearing the very drab and plain waistcoat from the first act, so began looking for a shopping centre along the route where I could maybe find a store where I could purchase a fancy waistcoat – a wedding supplier would be perfect. In the end I found an outlet village in the Yorkshire town of Castleford and made my way in.

There used to be a television in the early 90’s programme called ‘Challenge Anneka’ in which the host, Anneka Rice, would leap out of a helicopter and try to find some equipment or products to complete the week’s challenge (usually refurbishing a community centre or school). She would run around shouting to anyone who happened to be present, ‘where can I find a timber merchant? Hello! can you help, I need a supply of timber, can you tell me where I need to go?’ and off she would run with camera crew in tow. Well, I felt a little in the same boat as I arrived at the crowded mall and I wanted to grab passers by and shout ‘Waistcoats, I need colourful waistcoats, help me, where is a waistcoat shop, can anyone help?’ Fortunately for the residents of Castleford the very first shop I saw was a men’s outfitters called Eden, and I thought I’d make a start there. At the very back of the shop I found a very smart double breasted waistcoat in a midnight blue with a pale check across it. Although not garish and bright, it exuded a sense of style and actually reminded me of one of the waistcoats that Dickens himself wore, and which was highlighted in the recent exhibition at The Charles Dickens Museum ‘Technicolour Dickens’.

Fortunately they had my size and, being an outlet centre, the price was very reasonable, so I bought it on the spot and resumed my journey north with a sense of relief.

I was due to stay in a hotel at Gateshead, on the banks of the Tyne, and just had time to check in , before continuing my journey along the river to arrive at the magnificent cylindrical building that houses The Word. I have performed at The Word on three previous occasions, so I know the form, which is to ignore all accepted traffic laws and drive up onto the pavement and park outside an anonymous looking door, through which my props can be easily carried to a lift. I was greeted by Pauline Martin and together we emptied the car before I could go and park a short distance away.

When I returned, Pauline had kindly loaded the lift and got everything to the top floor and all I had to do was to set the set, which involves draping and dressing a white hat stand to represent the figure of Miss Havisham and placing a few bits of furniture, as well as carefully leaving some items of costume on stage that are required during the first act (including my new waistcoat which was due to make its debut without rehearsal…).

It was an early start, 6.pm, and at 5.30 Pauline asked if she could let the public in and I retired to my little backstage store room to change and prepare for the show. From what I could hear there was a goodly-sized audience gathering and I was keen to begin. The problem with the room at The Word is that it is not a particularly theatrical space, especially as regards to lighting. Pauline had told me that when the building was built they had been promised spot lights, but that they have never materialised, meaning that the choice is strip lighting on, meaning my face is illuminated but so is the rest of the room, or strip lighting off, meaning that my face and figure is in shadow. We went for lights on.

At 6 o’clock I hid myself behind the stage and waited for the voiceover taken from the opening passages of the book to finish and then bounded onto the stage in the guise of Abel Magwitch: ‘Hold your noise, or I’ll slit your throat!’

Great Expectations takes quite a bit of concentration from the audience, and I am always a little concerned that it may not work, but the crowd in The Word followed every scene intently, meaning that I could tell the story without further worry. As I came towards the end of the first act I arrived at the moment when Pip has to change into his new smart London clothes, and so I picked up the new waistcoat. There was one problem in that whilst the fabric of the garment itself is suitably traditional, the lining is VERY garish and modern. This wouldn’t normally be a issue, but as I had to actually put the thing on, I couldn’t help the audience getting a glimpse of modernity. Maybe in the future I will get somebody to make a plain lining, but for now it did a good job and I was proud of its debut.

The end of the act arrived and the applause was long, loud and greatly appreciated. During the interval I changed properly (the ‘posh’ clothes are simply put on over the rough costume in the final scene of the act) and then snuck back to the stage as surreptitiously as I could, to remove a few props and discarded pieces of costume, before waiting for Pauline to give me the nod that Act 2 could begin.

The second half was as successful as the first and when I left the stage as Pip holding hands with Estella (my ending is based on Dickens’s second version, rather than on his terribly downbeat first attempt), the applause was once again very generous in both volume and longevity, and Great Expectations had hit the mark.

I took my bows and then changed and started to pack up my props and costumes. By the time I re-emerged onto the stage most of the audience had departed, but a few folk were still in the room and came up to chat, congratulate and pose for selfies before they headed down in the lift.

Various staff members at The Word helped me to get all of my stuff downstairs while I fetched the car and drove it up onto the pavement once more. I said my goodbyes (hopefully I will be back next year, possibly in March to celebrate World Book Day), and drove back to Jury’s Hotel in Gateshead.

The great thing about starting a show at 6pm was that the hotel restaurant was still serving food when I returned, and I was able to sit in the bar and have a piece of chicken roasted with lemon and thyme and wind down slowly.

I didn’t sleep terribly well through the night: fitful describes it, but towards morning I was beginning to doze off when suddenly the fire alarm went off screeching loudly in my room and flashing a red light, meaning I had to vacate the room, follow the green emergency exit signs and make my way down to the street with all of the other guests, where we waited for about half an hour as two fire engines arrived and investigated.

Fortunately there was no inferno, or even a smoulder, and we were allowed back to our rooms to catch a few more winks until the breakfast service began.

I treated myself to a ‘full English’ (ignoring mushrooms and black pudding) from the buffet and sat at a window seat looking over the Tyne towards the city of Newcastle on the opposite bank.

My fast suitably broken I packed up my bags and began the drive home, making sure I drove past Anthony Gormley’s amazing Angel of the North sculpture that towers over the A1 road. It is always a lovely experience to be in the North East and I shall be back in Newcastle in November to perform A Christmas Carol at The Literary and Philosophical Society.

And now thoughts turn to two important projects, the first being my trip to America during which I will mainly be performing the double bill of The Signalman and Doctor Marigold at a variety of venues. At my very last stop, however, I am due to perform A Child’s Journey With Dickens, and was able to ask the venue if I may share the stage with actor Jennifer Emerson. Jennifer and I gave a Zoom performance of the piece last year, during which she took the role of Kate Douglas Wiggin whilst I played Dickens, so I was especially keen to reprise our performance whilst actually being in the same room, city, state, country and continent!

The other event which is looming ever larger is the Oxford Half Marathon which is to be run on 16 October. I have been in training for a few months now, and need to make sure that my efforts don’t flag, even though I am travelling and performing. When our daughters go back to school next week I shall make sure I get a few runs in, and hopefully a few in America too, even if that means availing myself of treadmills in various hotel gyms.

You will remember that I am running the race to raise much needed funds for Brain Tumour Research, and as an extra event I have scheduled a performance of Mr Dickens is Coming on 7 October in my home town of Abingdon with all profits going to my JustGiving page.

Please do support me in my efforts, you can donate to the fund by following the link at the end of this post. I am so grateful to all of those who have donated already and am keen to raise as much as I can for a cause that has had such a big impact on the life of Liz and me this year.

I shall let you know how the training is going in another post soon.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/geralddickens

To the North: PIES, Unitarianism and a Palace Stand-In

Tags

Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, PIES, Preston Playhouse, Staplehurst Rail Crash, The Signalman, Wentworth Woodhouse

On Sunday morning I left my Oxfordshire home at 9am, to drive to the North West of England, specifically to the city of Preston in Lancashire where I was due to perform The Signalman at a matinee and evening show. My venue was to be The Playhouse, a lovely small theatre in the town, and the show was promoted by PIES, a charity which raises money to help feed and educate children in southern Africa, the acronym standing for Partners In Education Swaziland

This was the third appearance for the organisation, and I have gained a loyal following in Preston, having previously performed Mr Dickens is Coming with Doctor Marigold, and A Christmas Carol. My preparations for the trip were less smooth than they might have been for, as regular readers will remember, I had left an important prop for The Signalman in Leeds following my appearance there a few weeks ago, and somehow needed to get it back to appear on the stage in Lancashire. I had originally thought that I would drive to The Leeds Library on the morning of the show and pick the piece up, but understandably the Library does not open on a Sunday. However, Carl, the manager there, offered to meet me somewhere convenient so that we could make the exchange like some seedy contraband deal. This arrangement would mean a very early departure, as I would have to drive for three hours to get to Leeds, meet Carl, and then drive a further 90 minutes to Preston, perform two shows and then drive another 40 minutes to Manchester, the reason for which will become apparent later….

In the week prior to the trip I had an extremely apologetic message from Carol to say that when making our arrangement he had temporarily forgotten that Sunday was his daughter’s 18th birthday and an absence of an hour or so wouldn’t be terribly well thought of within the family circle. For a day or two we toyed with the idea of me going to his area of Leeds, but that would add another hour or so to the journey, and didn’t seem to be a terribly good idea for anyone involved.

The prop in question is a representation of a block signalling console, described in the story as a ‘telegraphic instrument with its dial, face and needle’ I had taken a photograph of a genuine unit at a local railway preservation centre and fixed it to an antique wooden display box. Using two large wooden rods this unit could be slotted into corresponding holes drilled into the top of a clerk’s desk. The unit was far too large for accuracy’s sake, but for a piece of theatrical furniture it has done the job just fine over the last few years. Alongside the signalling unit sits a small wooden box with a brass bell on top of it (again, referenced in the text), and on the Saturday before my show I suddenly had the brainwave of printing a much smaller photograph of the equipment and sticking it to the back of the little wooden box, and using that in lieu of the big wooden box. I contacted Carl and said that I wouldn’t interrupt the birthday celebrations and would instead retrieve the prop from the library itself on Monday morning.

So, without the pressure of driving to Leeds, I set off at 9am with the various pieces of furniture rattling away in the back of the car. It was a beautiful sunny day, and on a Sunday morning the traffic was light, which allowed me to arrive in Preston with plenty of time to spare, indeed enough to stop for a cup of coffee and a lemon drizzle muffin at a nearby motorway service station.

I pulled up outside The Playhouse Theatre at 12.45, having arranged to meet at 1, but the loading doors were already open as a gentleman was busy removing a set from the previous evening’s performance. I went in and was met by a manager at the theatre, and we briefly discussed certain technical requirements for my shows, before the team from PIES arrived. Joe and Karen Comerford first saw me perform in Liverpool a few years ago and got in touch to book me to perform on behalf of the charity. Having exchanged greetings and made suitable enquiries as to how we had all made it through two years of Covid, we all got on with our respective jobs – Joe and Karen setting up the raffle, while I placed all of my furniture on the set and tried to convince a slide projector that it might like to talk to my laptop, sadly in vain.

My show was to be in two acts, the first of which was my talk about the circumstances behind The Staplehurst Rail Crash, and the writing of my book on the subject. I have a short PowerPoint presentation to go with the talk, made up of a few photographs from the book, and it is nice to give the audience something else, other than me, to watch, but on this occasion they would have to put up with my features, as we couldn’t get the projector to co-operate.

The show was due to start at 2 o’clock and a goodly sized audience were already crowding into the bar. The front of house manager asked if we could open the doors, and I retreated down to the dressing rooms in the basement to change into the casually formal combination of trousers, open-necked shirt and jacket, that I wore for my first publicity shot as a writer.

I looked over my notes for the first act talk and panicked as to whether it was actually long enough. I had said to the front of house team that the first act would be around 40 – 45 minutes, but I wasn’t confident. Despite having given this speech on a few previous occasions I am still not comfortable in delivering it, which once again shows my insecurities of speaking as myself, rather than in the fantasy world of one man theatre.

Just before 2 Joe came to find me and together we waited in the wings of the stage until it was time for him to walk onto the stage and introduce me. I walked into the light to generous and welcoming applause, and began to speak. The talk concentrates on the circumstances of the terrible crash itself, as well as some of the personalities involved, and is lifted directly from the book which, I pointed out on a number of occasions, would be on sale during the interval and after the show. When I got to the end of the talk, I spoke briefly about the second half and then left the stage with the sound of applause in my ears. I checked my watch: 45 minutes, I needn’t have worried about a thing!

Back in the dressing room I changed into the all-black costume that I favour for The Signalman and waited while the folk upstairs drank, ate and hopefully purchased books!

I was on much firmer ground when I returned to the stage, although of course was unable to deliver my usual introduction to The Signalman, which is a brief description of Staplehurst, having given a long description in the first act, so launched into the story itself quickly. The simple black stage with the few pieces of furniture arranged on it (including the little telegraph unit, making its debut), provided a suitably sparse atmosphere, and my red light shone dimly as a portent of the doom that was to follow.

When the the three distinct acts of the story had played out I took my bows and then returned to the stage to take questions, as I did all of the way through last year’s American tour. I chatted for around twenty minutes and it was great fun, gently batting away the constant requests to make a dramatisation of Hard Times, in which Preston was the model for Coketown. They will grind me down in the end and I will relent, but the thought of trying to achieve an accurate Lancashire accent under such local scrutiny is a nerve-wracking one!

After the show had finished I made my way to the foyer, to chat and sign books, which were selling well. Gradually the audience drifted away and the foyer was quiet once more. Joe and Karen said that they were popping home for a bite to eat and I retreated to my dressing room where I ate a salad am some fruit that I had brought with me, and passed the time by reading a magazine, playing some backgammon on my phone and running through the lines again.

After a while in my subterranean lair I became aware of voices upstairs and went to see who was about, and was surprised to discover that there was quite a gathering of PIES volunteers, including Norman and Lynne who have kindly provided hospitality to me in previous years. They were surprised to see me, for they assumed that I had walked into town, taking advantage of the sunny afternoon. ‘Gerald! We have some food for you’ and a plate loaded with pieces of pork pie, crisps, salad and a hunk of cheese was produced. It would have been rude not to accept the offering, and my salad had been a small one, so I sat down and tucked in to all but the cheese (dairy products effect the throat, and I avoid them on performance days). Soon the second audience began to arrive and it was time to repeat the earlier process.

The first act went well, and prior to the second commencing Norman went onto stage and said a few words about PIES. The fundraising work that the group undertake helps children in Swaziland, and he pointed out that the money raised from the day’s events would feed 40 children for an entire year, which is quite a thought. Norman then went on to announce the winning raffle tickets: ‘the first is a blue ticket, 34, then another blue ticket, 107, yet another blue, 63. A yellow ticket, 73, and another yellow 137, blue 89 and another blue 43….’ and so it went on. From the wings it dawned on me that all of the winning tickets that had been drawn were in the colours of the Ukranian flag, as if somehow we were able to show our support for the extraordinary spirit that the citizens of that nation are displaying in such terrible times.

When Norman had finished I returned to the stage and performed The Signalman once more, and I was particularly pleased with how it went – the piece is in a good place at the moment.

After I had bowed I once again opened the floor for questions and one was about Dickens’s spirituality and by extension his attitude to religion. I told the audience that Charles had a strong faith and followed the teachings of the New Testament, but as far as aligning himself with any particular religion was concerned he had a distrust of anything organised (seeing the human influence as one of potential corruption), so followed his own faith rather than being dictated to by others. I also talked about the little book based on the gospels which he wrote for his children, ‘The Life of our Lord’. I moved onto other questions, and after a while a gentleman in the front row put his hand up and asked ‘I thought Dickens described himself as a Unitarian?’ I picked up from my previous answer and continued to plough my furrow of not trusting organised religion, although, I conceded, he certainly did not dismiss people or organisations that he saw were doing good and would support such groups. The end of my answer was met with a sort of ‘Hmm’ sound. It is amazing how a single syllable can say so much, and this one said ‘you really don’t know what you are talking about, but OK, I will let it drop!’

The incident niggled at me, so when I got home I did a bit of research about Dickens and Unitarianism, and discovered that, in a way, we were both correct. When Charles visited America in 1842 one of the first people he met in Boston was Dr William Ellen Channing, the city’s leading Unitarian preacher and he was very impressed. Other leading Bostonians, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, followed Channing, and Dickens become more and more enamoured with the doctrine, which purely followed the teachings of the New Testament without, as he wrote once, forcing the Old Testament ‘into alliance with it’. When he returned to England he began to attend the chapel in London where the first Unitarian congregation had met, and later another chapel presided over by the Reverend Tagart. He was a regular attendee for nearly two years, and even afterwards he would occasionally return to listen to particular sermons. He was not only attracted by the spiritual comfort that the Church offered but also by the passionate stance on the campaign for abolitionism, a cause that was particularly close to his own heart.

I hope the gentleman from the front row is reading this and will accept an apology for my ignorance into this aspect of Dickens’s life. In a way we were both correct, for his was not a life long member of the Church, but it certainly had a major effect on his life at that time.

Back in The Preston Playhouse the question and answer session ended and I returned to the foyer, where there was not much to do, other than chat, for all of my books had sold out during my first show!

Having changed and made sure that I had retrieved everything from the dressing room, I returned to the theatre and discovered that Norman and Joe had moved all of my props and furniture to the loading door, so my get out was much quicker than it might otherwise have been. When the car was full, and I checked carefully that I had everything on this occasion, I said goodbye to Norman, who said that he was sorry I wouldn’t be staying with him and Lynne this year, as he would miss the Full English breakfast that Lynne has traditionally prepared in my honour!

On Sunday night, however, I had to drive to a hotel near Manchester, for I had two meetings in Yorkshire the following morning, and I wanted to break the journey a little. As I drove there was the most remarkable giant amber moon sitting low in the sky, which looked as if it were a special effect from a science fiction film. I reached my hotel at around 10.30 and called my new best friends at Uber Eats for a late night pizza as I gently wound down from a long but successful day.

Monday Morning

On Monday morning I enjoyed a large breakfast and wondered what Norman was eating back in Preston. At 9 o’clock I checked out and headed for Leeds where I was at last reunited with the large box that I had left there, although the little replacement had done an admirable job standing in during the Preston performances.

From Leeds I headed towards Rotherham where I had a meeting at one of the most impressive stately homes in the country. Wentworth Woodhouse is a truly impressive pile, but without the fame and popularity of Chatsworth or Blenheim. The house is undergoing a major restoration project and there are many events taking place to help raise money to that end. The building is also used as a filming venue and has doubled up as Buckingham Palace in various TV dramas and big-budget films

I am due to perform there later in the year and wanted to see the spaces where I would be, and to check acoustics, which can be problematic in some large spaces, and came away very excited at the prospect of returning in July.

As I drove up the long, serpentine driveway, my obligations in the North of England were done and I was soon on the M1 heading home.

A New Venue

Tags

Casino Royale, Charles Dickens, Doctor Marigold, Ian Fleming, Leeds, Leeds Library, Leeds Lit Fest, Myster of Edwin Drood, The Signalman

Throughout my working year most of the venues that I perform at are repeat bookings, meaning that I know who I am going to meet, where I am going to change and how the room feels. The fact that I have so many requests to return is a wonderful compliment, and makes me feel very satisfied about what I am doing. Occasionally, however, I will receive an email out of the blue asking me to visit a new city and organisation and this is always exciting but slightly nerve-wracking. Such a thing occurred last year when I was contacted by The Leeds Literary Festival with a request to appear as part of their 2022 event. In fact they had wanted me two years ago, but the onslaught of Covid put paid to that. We communicated via email and phone until we settled on Wednesday 2 March as a suitable date, and I would perform my double bill of The Signalman and Doctor Marigold in The Leeds Library.

The day dawned grey and rainy and I spent the morning loading the car up with the various props that the two shows require, and it is quite a collection: for The Signalman I have a large clerk’s desk, which is in two parts – stand and top, a small table, a chair and a stool. On top of the desk is a large wooden box with the image of Victorian signalling equipment pasted to the front, representing the ‘telegraphic instrument with its dial, face and needles’ that Dickens describes. There is a large book, a railwayman’s lamp (complete with a battery-operated candle to make it flicker) and a new addition – a theatrical spotlight (or at least, an interior designer’s approximation of one) on a stand to double for the dismal danger light at the mouth of the tunnel which is so important to the telling of the story. For Marigold I have a small set of wooden steps, a stool (a smaller one than that which features in The Signalman), a wooden crate, an anodised pail with a small metal shovel, a kettle and a rolled up blanket. Alongside all of the hardware I had to pack two costumes and of course a box containing copies of ‘Dickens and Staplehurst’ All of this filled pretty well every square inch of a Renault Kadjar and it was with a sense of relief that all of the doors shut successfully.

The drive to Leeds takes about three hours and I left with plenty of time in hand just in case the notorious M1 roadworks should delay me. As it happened my journey was very smooth and I had plenty of time to stop for lunch before arriving in the heart of the city at around 3 o’clock, ready to check in at my hotel, The Plaza Park. Being in the very centre the hotel had no car park, but I was able to leave the car for a few minutes in order to get directions to a large parking garage nearby, from where I could easily walk back. I had an hour in my room, during which I had a shower to freshen myself up before going to the venue.

Even though the Library was only a five minute walk from my hotel, I needed to drive so that I could unload all of the furniture and props ready for the show, but as I made my way to the car I had a phone call from Carl, who had booked me. In our various emails I had mentioned to him that I would arrive at the library at 4, unload and then go to park the car, and he had suddenly realised that he hadn’t told me that there was no vehicular access to the library at all, so I would need to park in another parking garage, where he would meet me and help me unload.

By the time I was finally parked on the second level of the QPark garage it was almost 4.30 and I had agreed to appear on a Leeds Lit Fest live podcast at 5, so other than taking my costumes and a few smaller articles, Carl and I decided to delay the unloading process until later. We took the lift down to the ground level and walked along a typical city centre street, through the bustle of a weekday evening, past a McDonalds and a Starbucks until we arrived at a rather nondescript door, squeezed in between a branch of the CoOp Bank and a Paperchase stationery shop.

A blue plaque on the wall suggested that the may be more to this building than met the passing eye, and Carl pushed the door open and I found myself in a small marble hallway at the bottom of a curling grand staircase, which lead up to an Aladdin’s cave filled with the treasure of books!

The Library was founded, so a small wooden sign informed me, in 1768, but moved to its current location in 1808. At the top of the stairs is ‘The Main Room’ and this is the modern section of the library where up to date novels, audiobooks and DVDs can be found but, even so, it has a wonderfully antiquated feel to it, with an iron spiral staircase at one end and books packed into the shelves from floor to ceiling.

Through a small door between shelves and then I am in the ‘New Room’ which was built 140 years ago. It was in the New Room that I was to perform and I had to pause for a moment to take in the grandeur and splendour of my surroundings. The room was narrow and again the walls from floor to ceiling were lined with books over two stories. Opposite my small stage was a magnificent wooden staircase leading to the upper level and around 70 chairs were laid out in the body of the room, this was going to be a wonderful space to perform in.

For now though, I had to concentrate on the podcast and was shown into the Old Librarian’s Office, which would also become my dressing room.

There waiting to greet me was Molly Magrath, who would be interviewing me, and huddled behind two laptops was Jack who would be looking after all the technical side of the session. We had a few minutes before the broadcast was due to start, so they pulled out some gems from the shelves – a travel book dating back to the 1400s (the author never left England so it was a complete work of fantasy!), and a second edition of The Hobbit. Molly also handed me a beautifully bound first edition of Casino Royale by Ian Fleming and this was a real treasure for a Bond fanatic like me to hold.

5 O’clock came round and without ceremony Molly was talking to the little webcam about my visit, and we had a great conversation about the theatricality of Dickens and how I prepare my shows for the stage. It was a really good interview, not too rigidly bound by questions, just a flowing chat. I had done a little research into Dickens’ visits to Leeds and unfortunately he hadn’t seemed to be too impressed by the City. He first visited in 1847 to give a speech at The Mechanics Institute. The visit was in December and he had a terrible cold, but the experience of Leeds wasn’t a pleasant one. He didn’t return for a further 10 years but his memories still burned brightly, for he wrote home to his sister in law on that second occasion that ‘we shall have, as well as I can make out the complicated list of trains, to sleep at Leeds-which I particularly detest as an odious place-tomorrow night.’ Charming!

He did, however, return to Leeds 3 further times to give readings, and indeed actually performed Doctor Marigold, as I would be doing later on the evening of March 2.

When Molly wrapped the podcast up I went to find Carl and together we walked back to the car park and began the task of shifting all of my stuff back to the library; it took as three trips to get all of the furniture into the lift, down to ground level, past McDonalds and Starbucks, into the front door, up the narrow staircase, through the Main Room and into The New Room. And it was raining!

At last everything was in and I began creating the set for The Signalman. The stage was not large, but there was plenty of room to place the clerk’s desk with the telegraphic instrument and bell atop it, and the stool beneath. I placed the table a little downstage and placed the chair at the back, so that the Signalman, unused to visitors, could grab it, dust the seat off, and place it for the stranger to sit on. Immediately behind the stage was a display case which was the only bit of furniture in the room that was not an antique, and I was able to put my new red light on top of it, meaning that it towered above the scene in a suitably imposing manner. When the first act set was in place I took the opportunity of running through a few lines and as I did another member of the library staff, Ian, busied himself putting programmes on chairs and preparing a makeshift bar for the evening. When I had finished my brief rehearsal Ian introduced himself and asked if I would like to see the basement, an offer that I was delighted to accept. We descended into the bowels of the building where there is a huge collection of very old books, many in a terrible condition. Ian explained that in days of yore the library had been lit by gas jets which had created acidity in the air causing irreparable damage to the leather bindings. The plan is to restore every volume, but at a cost of over a million a shot, that project is a very long term one. I looked along the shelves and there was a first edition of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens’ final, unfinished, novel. It was such a treat to hold in my hands something that connected me so closely to my great great grandfather. Elsewhere in the basement were racks of periodicals and newspapers just waiting for keen-eyed researchers to discover some wonderful long-lost fact. As we ascended the stairs once more, Ian said wistfully that he never tires of showing off the collection in the basement and that everybody notices something new.

Back upstairs I retired to the Librarian’s Office, my very grand dressing room, and ate a small salad and some fruit before getting into costume for the first act. Outside, the audience gathered and began to take their seats. Ian had told me that this was the largest audience that the New Room had held since the beginning of lockdown. At 7.30 Carl poked his head in and asked if I was ready, and on my replying ‘yes’, he said a few words of introduction and then left the stage to me.

I welcomed the audience, made reference to CD’s rather uncomplimentary words about Leeds, and then launched into a brief description of the circumstances behind the Staplehurst rail crash, vital to both the telling of The Signalman and to the selling of my book at evening’s end. Soon I was into the dark, claustrophobic ghost story and , as ever, I surprised myself by the sheer physicality of what is a very short performance. The emotional intensity of the piece is exhausting and I continually find that by the time I finish every limb is aching from the tension.

On my concluding the story and then announcing the spooky fact that although Dickens was not killed at Staplehurst, he did die exactly 5 years, to the day, after the crash, there was a gasp from the audience, partly in surprise and partly out of relief that they too could relax back into the real world.

Having left the stage and allowed a little time for the audience to drift away, I started clearing the furniture from The Signalman away and setting the stage for Doctor Marigold. In the office I changed into a new costume (long corduroy Victorian-style trousers, rather than the breeches I used to wear), and after twenty minutes or so I returned to the stage to perform my favourite show in the character of the ever resilient and cheerful cheapjack, Doctor Marigold. At one point in the monologue, Marigold describes building a cart with books in ‘rows upon rows’ and so the book-lined walls of the New Room formed the perfect setting for the second half of the story. The audience were rivetted and entranced, as audiences tend to be when witnessing this little gem of a story for the first time.

I finished and left the stage and there was generous and warm Yorkshire applause when I returned to take my bows. Having taken a few minutes to cool down, I made my way back into The Main Room, where I chatted, sold and signed my book, until the audience drifted away into the night.

I changed back into everyday clothes, having briefly donned my black frockcoat again for a couple of photographs that Ian wanted to take on the New Room staircase, and then faced the proposition of taking all of my furniture downstairs, up the street, into the car park, up the lift and back to the car again, however Carl suggested that I actually left everything in the Library, for in the morning the bollards closing off the pedestrianised street would be down, allowing access to the shop fronts for deliveries, and so I would be able to drive to the front door, which would make things much easier.

I walked through the streets of Leeds, back to my hotel and was delighted to discover that they offered a 24 hour room service, so I ordered a plate of fish and chips and let the adrenaline of the evening gently subside, until eventually I fell asleep in the early hours of Thursday morning.

I woke with a start at around 7.40, and decided to get the car loaded before having breakfast, so I quickly showered and retrieved my car, before driving slowly past pedestrians hurrying to work, along the pavement of Commercial Street. Carl and the library caretaker were there to assist and in no time all of my furniture was squeezed into the Renault – actually, we seemed to have hit on an improved system of loading, in that there seemed to be more space than when I had loaded up the day before.

I said farewell to Carl, promising that I would endeavour to find a date for a repeat visit in the winter tour, and returned to the hotel where I enjoyed a hearty full English breakfast before getting on the road for home. The journey was smooth once again and I arrived back in Oxfordshire at midday.

As I unloaded the car I discovered the reason that loading had been so easy, for I had left the ‘telegraphic instrument’ prop in the library. I will next need it for a performance in Preston, Lancashire, at the end of March, so Carl and I will have to work out how to reunite it with the rest of the set, but that is all for another day. For now I could reflect on a wonderful evening, in a beautiful setting, and a new venue for my future tours.

Happy Birthday

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit, Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley, Mr Fezziwig, Saddleworth Moor, St George's Hall, The Custom House, The Tyne, The Word, York

Sunday19 December was a birthday. A 178th birthday. Charles Dickens first introduced the characters of Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley, Bob Cratchit and his family, the various ghosts, Belle, Fred and all of the others to the world on that date in 1843 and so began one of the most extraordinary literary success stories of all time, for the book has never been out of print from that day on.

My birthday celebrations began with an early breakfast at The Shankly Hotel in Liverpool, as I had to get onto the road by 9am for a drive across the country and north to Tynseside, leaving one great shipbuilding city on The Mersey and travelling to another on The Tyne.

The morning was a foggy one, a very foggy one, and all of the cars on that Sunday morning had both front and rear high intensity lights shining so that they glowed like, as Charles Dickens says, ‘ruddy smears on the palpable brown air’.

As the morning went on my route took me eastwards on the M62 and gradually the fog began to clear, and a bright morning sun shone to my right. I was listening to the coverage of the second cricket test match from Adelaide (a day-night match), and it was extraordinary to hear the commentators describe the sun setting in the west, while I watched the same celestial body rising in the east. The clearing of the weather had less to do with the fog lifting but more to do with my climbing to a greater altitude. Various signs informed me that I was crossing Saddleworth Moor, a name which strikes repulsion and loathing into British minds, but which is also one of the most beautiful tracts of countryside I have ever seen. The low-lying fog nestled in the valleys whilst the hills were illuminated in a golden morning glow. I drove onwards and upwards until another notice proclaimed that I was at the highest point on the UK motorway network meaning, inevitably, that I was soon descending back into the thick fog once more.

Eventually I joined the A1-M road, one of the main North-South routes, and I was back on familiar territory as I headed towards the North East.

I was due to perform at The Word – the National Centre of the Written Word, in South Shields, where I had last appeared at the end of October, just before my A Christmas Carol tour commenced. At that time I had been talking about my new book, Dickens and Staplehurst, as well as performing The Signalman, but I hadn’t yet received copies of the book from my publishers, so had none to sell. Even though the book had sold so well in Liverpool, I had kept a few back so that any audience members in South Shields who had seen my previous performance could buy them.

The journey took around three hours and I pulled up outside the extraordinary circular building at the edge of the market square on the stroke of 12. I called June, who was looking after this event, and soon all of the furniture for A Christmas Carol had been unloaded and was being taken up to the third floor, while I took the car to a nearby car park next to the large theatre in the town, The Custom House.

The room where I perform at The Word is not a theatre, it does not have great stage lighting, and doesn’t have any of the history or atmosphere of St George’s Hall, but somehow performing A Christmas Carol in a venue dedicated to the written word was the perfect way to celebrate the birthday and honour Charles Dickens, so the room was excellent!

While I prepared the stage I chatted with June who admitted that she wasn’t sure how many people would actually attend – the library had received a few cancellations, due to the growing fear of the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid 19. I was also worried about the effect of the virus on my final week of shows and fully expected some cancellations along the way, either due to stricter government regulations, or simply because audience members would make their own decisions based on their levels of caution or fear.

At 1.30 the doors were opened and the audience began to arrive, all masked, and by 2 everyone who was expected had arrived. June formally welcomed them and when she mentioned the fact that we were honouring 178 years of A Christmas Carol there was a loud gasp of excitement.

The show itself was very different from those in Liverpool, as I didn’t have the same space to roam, and with the bright fluorescent lights shining brightly, I could see the audience clearly, but the effect of that amazing story was every bit as powerful as ever. The audience laughed, and sobbed and shouted and clapped with every bit as much enthusiasm as their Merseyside cousins and when I took my bows they stood and called out their appreciation. When the applause had died down I returned to the stage and spoke briefly about Dickens’s writing process of A Christmas Carol, and how it came to be published on the 19th December.

When I had finished I pulled on my mask (the Christmas Carol one that I had been given in Pennsylvania a week before) and went to the little merchandise table with its scanty stock of books. Soon they were all sold and signed, and the audience made their way to their homes, while I changed and packed up again. I walked to the car park to retrieve the car and noticed that at The Custom House it was interval time. I could tell this because huddled in the cold outside the front door was a group of audience members smoking, while on the other side of the building, at the stage door, were huddled a gropu of actors smoking! On the pavement outside The Word June helped me to load up my props and a little after 4pm I was driving again, this time heading south through drizzly rail towards the city of York, where I would break my journey home to Oxfordshire, with an overnight stay at The Elmbank Hotel, which has become my traditional staging post for this journey.

I had spent a great deal of the day driving to perform for a small audience in the far north eastern corner of Britain, but it had been well worth it, for in that little room at the very top of The Word we had given ‘A Christmas Carol’ a very good birthday party!

The British Return to Lewes

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Antique shopping, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, Delaware, Ebenezer Scrooge, Jaws, Lewes, Lewes Public Library, Peter Benchley, Uber Eats, War of 1812

And still I woke early – 3.15 this time, and frustratingly I couldn’t get back to sleep properly. As I sat in bed, watching to the coverage of practice from the Abu Dhabi Grand prix, I realised that having been at Winterthur all the previous day, I had failed to let the owners of The Fairville know what time I wanted breakfast. As I would need to be on the road by 9am, and the breakfast service would start at 8.30, I needed to get in there early, so I decided to go over at around 8.15, hoping to get my order in right at the start.

I packed all of my cases, so I would be ready to go, and when I felt I could reasonably do so, went to the main house, where I was cheerfully greeted by Willie, the young owner. He brushed off my apologies for not letting him know about my breakfast needs and said that of course I could sit down right then, and he would make me my pancakes, and so I was well into my meal when the other guests began to arrive.

With my breakfast finished I was able to get the car loaded up and I was on the road by 9 o’clock. Friday was a strange day, in that I only had one performance scheduled at 7pm, and the drive to Lewes, Delaware, would take a little under three hours, but I had a duo of commitments first thing in the morning: at 9.30 I was due to speak to Warren Lawrence at the WKNY radio station in the Hudson Valley, and straight after that chat I was booked to take my Covid test. I had decided to drive to the branch of CVS where my test was scheduled, and do the interview from the parking lot, so that I was in the correct place to insert a swab up my nose. Unfortunately, there was a traffic issue and I had to pull off the road and park up in a parking space outside some small businesses and called into the radio station. I have spoken to Warren on many occasions, and it he always conducts a really good interview, feeding the questions and allowing me to elucidate my answers at whatever length I feel necessary. There is none of the time pressure of some media interviews. On Friday morning we talked about the character of Charles Dickens, the creation of A Christmas Carol, my adaptation and performance of it, as well as my book, ‘Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biography of a Rail Crash’. Warren even mentioned that the book is available via Amazon in the USA…..

The interview finished at 9.50, and I was able to get back on the road and arrive at CVS by ten, where I drove through the Drive-Thru, and self-administered the test sat in my car as if I were about to handed a Big Mac Meal. The nice thing in America is that you only have to swab your nostrils, whereas in the UK we have to get samples from our tonsils as well, meaning we end up gagging with watering eyes. Having completed the test, I dropped it in the little metal box provided and offered a silent prayer for a negative result, that would be delivered swiftly, so that I can complete all of the official documents that are now needed to fly.

And now I could drive on towards Lewes, which is situated in the south of Delaware. The drive seemed to take forever, and the early start meant that I was feeling very tired. I drank a lot of water, and listened to the radio, or more specifically more podcasts, as I skirted the city of Wilmington, and on. As with my drives around Massachusetts, many of the place names were familiar to me, and I drove through Kent County (I was born in the County of Kent), passed Dover and on towards Sussex County, in which Lewes is situated, as indeed is the town of Lewes in England. Some names were less ‘English’, however and I am not sure that I want to sunbathe on Slaughter Beach any time soon

This would be my first visit to Lewes and it is always lovely to visit a new city. I pulled up in the parking lot of The Inn at Canal Square, which is situated on the water’s edge of a wide inlet, lined with wooden docks and boats of varying sizes and shapes.

The buildings are mostly wooden clad, painted in bright colours, and it is an extremely pretty town. I checked in to the hotel, although my room was not ready, but it meant that I could leave the car in the lot without fear of it being towed and started to stroll around Lewes. Instantly I was greeted by a variety of boards describing the history of the town, and the first one was entitled ‘The War of 1812’. Oh dear, Lewes and the British obviously had previous form.

I read the information and discovered that the British Navy had attempted to blockade the town in 1813, and demanded that the locals provide food to fettle the warships. The residents of Lewes unsurprisingly refused to comply with the British request, and the invaders decided that the best thing to do was therefore to bombard the little town. For almost two days canon ball and rocket rained down on Lewes with absolutely no effect at all, other than breaking the leg of one pig and killing one chicken. The Americans returned fire and managed to set ‘one gunboat aflame’ but there were no casualties among the British forces either. Eventually the ships withdrew from the bay and peace fell in Lewes once more. There is one relic of the violence in the town, for a British canon ball is lodged deep in the foundations of what is now a maritime museum.

I walked out towards the lovely sandy beach, where the only revellers were sea gulls. Actually, the whole place reminded me of the little town of Amity in Peter Benchley’s Jaws, and I imagine that when the tourists flock, as they do in the novel, the atmosphere must be amazing. The beach was lined by grassy dunes, which during the summer months must surely be the scene of late-night teenage campfires, and even a few midnight swims….Durrrr Dum….Durrrr Dum Durdum durdum durdum durdum Diddle deeeee!

I walked back into town and ambled around an antique store where I found the perfect Victorian Hall Stand for my set. It was made of iron and would be far too heavy to carry around, but it would make a magnificent gothic, and menacing addition to Scrooge’s furniture.

I hadn’t stopped for food during the drive, so was feeling a little peckish so I found a brilliant cafe where I had a sandwich, before going to the hotel to rest before the evening’s show. As I lay on the bed I had a message from Barbara, who had used to manage the bookstore, so sadly deserted, at Winterthur, saying that she had felt emotional reading my words, but reassuring me that she had kept all of her ‘goofy stuff’ from the walls of the office and was going to recreate that wall in her home office, the collection being just as carefully curated, as the main Dupont exhibit in the great house itself! I had been booked to perform at the public library and had arranged to arrive there at 5pm to prepare for the 7 o’clock show. Darkness had fallen as I got into the car and the Christmas lights around the city were spectacular – it looked so beautiful. The library was on the outskirts of the town, and was housed in a modern building, similar to those that I have already visited in Kansas City and on Long Island during this tour. I was greeted by the team putting on the show, led by David White, who is a theatre man through and through. David had seen me perform at Winterthur a few years ago and had very much wanted to bring me to Lewes, but various problems, not least the pandemic, had meant that the plans had never quite worked until now. We spent time arranging the stage and working out how best to work the sound cues, which could be run from a laptop, but mostly we simply talked about theatre. Although we were gathered in a modern meeting room in a library it was as if we were in a Victorian auditorium preparing for a show, because we were all theatre folk allowing our mutual experiences to be shared.

The audience started to gather at 6, and I retired to a small kitchen, which had been designated as my Green Room, and began to get ready. The microphone that I was to use was the sort that hooks over one ear, and I knew from previous experience that it would come loose and fall off during the show, but I managed to find a desk in the library offices with a roll of sellotape on it and stuck the unit to my cheek as best I could. I knew it wouldn’t last but thought that it may give me a little bit of time.

David continually poked his head around the door to give me the ‘half’, the twenty, the ten and the five, before it was show time. The room was packed but everyone was masked, and I made my entrance through the centre of the audience. Unfortunately, the little speaker that was supposed to amplify the opening music had disconnected from the laptop, so we could only hear the effect through the computer’s built-in speaker, and during the opening scenes, Jesse, David’s daughter (following the family business in theatre, but more on the tech side), crawled along the front of the stage to try and re-connect it. We wouldnt know if she had been succesful until Old Fezziwig stood out to dance.

The show was great fun, and I gave it my all. It was one of those days during which I had felt fatigued and lacking in energy, but A Christmas Carol cast its magic spell over me and brought me back to life, and Mr Fezziwig DID have music at his dance.

The audience were fully engaged, and at the end gave me a very noisy and enthusiastic ovation. As usual having taken my bows I remained on stage to conduct the Q&A session, and soon the questions were coming in from all quarters. I was asked about my family lineage and took the opportunity to include my new-found knowledge about my host town with a little affectionate and gentle teasing: when I spoke about my grandfather, Gerald, I mentioned that he had been an Admiral in the Royal Navy, and then added: ‘I know how fond you are of the British Navy in this town. I have seen the canon ball, and I have actually been sent by the Admiralty to retrieve it, they would like it back!’ I got a huge laugh and a round of applause and one audience member called out ‘He is OK!’

We finished up and I went back to my dressing room, where the pair of braces (suspenders) that I had been wearing broke, the rigours of the tour are beginning to tell. I will have to order a replacement pair when I get back to England, but for my final three shows I have another set.

The audience had departed when I re-emerged, and I gathered up my things and said goodbye to the whole team. Hopefully I can return and perform some of my other shows in this remarkable community.

It was getting on towards 9.30 when I got back to the hotel and all of the restaurants in town were closed, but I logged on to Uber Eats once more and arranged for a late-night dinner to be delivered to me.

On Saturday morning I will drive back into Pennsylvania and to Byers’ Choice, where the 2021 American tour will conclude with three final shows.

The Thin Blue Line

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Courtyard by Marriott, Ebenezer Scrooge, Marriott Hotels, The Berkshires, Ventfort Hall Mansion

I woke up in my Comfort Inn in Manchester not at 3am, or 4am, but I actually made it to 6 for the first time on the trip! I had been woken to the sound of a car alarm sounding in the parking lot, and I vaguely had a memory of hearing a similar alarm at a previous hotel which rather worryingly suggested that it might have been my car.

Saturday morning would be taken up with driving to The Berkshires, the beautiful mountain region in western Massachusetts, and it looked as if it were going to be another amazing day to drive, with clear skies and a light frost on the ground. Before leaving I had time to watch some more practice from the Grand Prix and as soon as the session was over, I checked out and got on the road.

For audio accompaniment on this trip, I listened to a series of podcasts about the forthcoming Ashes cricket series. I hope that my English readers will forgive me for a moment, while I explain about The Ashes. The greatest rivalry within the international cricket calendar is that between the Australian team and the English team, which dates back to 1882 when the Aussies first beat England on British soil. On the next day an obituary to English cricket was published in The Times newspaper and the wooden bails (part of the equipment used during the match) were burned and the ashes placed in a tiny ceramic urn. Ever since that little urn has been the trophy that the two nations have played for. An Ashes series only comes around once every few years, alternating between England and Australia, and in the winter of ’21, ’22 the series is being played in the Southern hemisphere, where England have only won once in the last 34 years. The podcast was made by the BBC cricket correspondent and delved into all of the preparations inherent in sending a team to the land down under and was a very interesting listen.

My route took me back towards Boston and then skirting to the west of the city I drove straight back through Worcester where I was just a week before, and once again admired the beautiful old railroad station with its twin white towers making it look like the old Wembly football stadium in London.

Worcester Railroad Station

The Old Wembly Stadium, London

The views as I progressed west became ever more spectacular, with dark lakes shimmering with a thin skim of ice on the surface. The traffic became less, and the mountains appeared on the horizon. After two and a half hours of driving I left the freeway and took the route signposted for ‘The Berkshires’ and soon was driving through the pretty town of Lee and on towards Lenox. By this time the final qualifying session for the Formula 1 Grand Prix was starting, and I was able to listen to the radio coverage, via the F1 App on my phone connected to the car’s audio system: it is amazing what we take for granted now and how technology has advanced during my years of touring (remembering the old days of trying to connect a large heavy laptop to a modem, and enduring the whining, beeping and screeching of the dial-up connection). On the final miles of my drive, I listened to the first two thirds of the action until I pulled up outside The Courtyard by Marriott in Lenox.

As I unloaded my bags, I suddenly realised how much I have relied on Marriott during this tour. Not only have I stayed in hotels run by the company in Long Island, Nashua and now here in Lenox, but also my PCR Covid test was conducted in a Courtyard hotel in Oxford, before I left England.

I checked in as quickly as I could and then rushed up to the room to catch the final moments of qualifying on the TV, and I wasn’t to be disappointed as it came to a thrilling climax, with one of the two drivers still fighting for the World Championship crashing out at the very final corner of the very final lap.

I didn’t have much time in the hotel as it was now 1pm and I had to be at my next venue at 1.30. I quickly ate a chicken salad (which Joe had bought for me before the show in Manchester, but which I had not eaten, and it had remained well refrigerated in the car overnight), gathered my belongings and hurried out, not forgetting to take the little carboard sleeve that my room keys were held in, for I have reached that time of the trip where I struggle to remember not only the number of my room, but even the floor I am on!

My venue in Lenox is Ventfort Hall, a beautiful mansion built at the end of the 19th Century for Sarah Morgan, who was the sister of J Pierpont Morgan, which is an interesting connection in itself, in that the original handwritten manuscript of A Christmas Carol was purchased by Morgan and is annualy displayed in the library bearing his name in New York City. I have performed at Ventfort on two previous occasions, and it is a great venue, with the ambience of the small and elegant room really adding something to the storytelling – actually, it is very simmilar to the General Crook House in Omaha. In previous years we have seated an audience of 80 in the little parlour, packed hard in with not an inch of space left. But this year, due to Covid, the audience numbers had been reduced and the seats spaced out. I was greeted by Haley who looks after the running of the house and who has a background in theatrical stage managegement, and she ran through the precautions with me. The audience would all be masked and would all be required to show their vaccination certificate before admission. On the stage, or at least, on the floor at the end of the room where I was performing, she had stuck a line of blue tape, which marked 6 feet from the front row, and that was my ‘acting line’. I placed the props, having changed a very elegant and obviously antique chair for one that I could stand on. When the stage was ready, I introduced to Chris who would be operating my sound cues. Chris had also supplied the wooden stool for the set, from his own home, so I asked him if it was ok to knock on it with my wooden cane, for that tends to leave little indentations, and he said he would be delighted and honoured to have such a souvenir of the show in his house!

The view from the blue line, with Chris’s stool in the foreground.

It was getting towards 2.15 now and some of the first guests were beginning to arrive, so I retired to my ‘dressing room’, which is in fact the room where Sarah Morgan dressed. I had a chaise longue at my disposal, and a table laid with a bottle of champagne and a plate of strawberries (all fake, unfortunately!)

I changed into my costume and waited for the 3pm start time, and when Hayley gave me the word, I went into the great hall ready to walk through the audience and to begin.

It was strange experience to be in a room of fully masked people without wearing one myself, and I half wondered if I should have done the show masked, but there is no way that could have worked. I made sure that I remained behind my blue line as much as I could (which led to a somewhat linear performance).

The audience were a little quiet at first, maybe sharing my uncertainties about being in this confined space together, but soon the atmosphere began to lighten, and laughter filled the little parlour, and at the end as I took my bows the 50 strong audience stood and cheered.

We had a short Q&A session and then the audience left the room to have an elegant tea at tables spread throughout the house. Usually I would join them, but this year I returned to my changing room, where I noticed a plate of cakes, sandwiches and fancies had been left for me – they were on the table next to the champagne and strawberries, so I had to check that they were, in fact, real; and they were, deliciously real.

I changed back into my normal clothes and slipped out of the house in as inconspicuous manner as I could manage considering I was wearing a bright red Christmas sweater, and drove back to my hotel admiring the Christmas lights which decorated the town of Lenox.

I was due to be taken out to dinner in the evening and Hayley had offered to pick me up at 7 o’clock. There was light snow flurrying in the air and my beanie hat and gloves were still in the car, which sat glowing richly in the winter night.

Fully wrapped up against the chill of the evening I waited for Hayley who arrived bang on time, and we drove to the nearby town of Great Barrington where we joined Alice, Patrick and Stephen in ’10’, a restaurant specialising in steaks. We have all met and dined together before and it was great to get together once more and pick up where we left off, two or three years ago. The food was as fine as the company, and we shared a convivial evening with plenty of laughter, although perhaps inevitably the conversation continually returned to Covid issues.

After the last of the desserts had been finished, we left 10 and said our various goodbyes. Patrick and Stephen would be driving me back to Lenox, as Hayley lives in Great Barrington, and as we drove we talked about the power of American Equity, the actors’ union, as well as the benefits and frailties of the British National Health Service – not bad for a thirty-minute drive!

Back at The Courtyard I checked my little cardboard sleeve to confirm where my room was and retired for the night.

New Connections

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol film, Charles Dickens, East Meadow Public Library, Ebenezer Scrooge, Long Island, Marriott Hotels, Mid Continent Public Library, The Great Gatsby

Tuesday morning saw the first of what, as regular followers will know, is an important ritual on my tours: laundry. Having woken and written my blog and made my first coffee of the morning, I emptied the two bags of clothing that needed cleansing and sorted them into coloured and whites (the latter pile comprising mainly of the shirts I have been wearing in the show), but with the dilligence of an accountant, I discovered that my numbers were out: I had performed over two days at Vaillancourts, meaning that there should have been be four shirts, but there were only two. I let my mind wander back and remembered that I had hung two shirts to air in the closet at The Beechwood and must have left them there.

You may remember in yesterday’s post I made a big point about sweeping through my room multiple times to check that I hadn’t left anything there, and you may (quite justifiably) imagine that I wrote all of that already knowing that I had left the shirts there, ready to reveal my folly for comic affect today, but that is not the case! I had genuinely thought that I had everything with me, and that for once I hadn’t left a trail of belongings in my wake, but sadly a leopard does not change its spots so easily, and there were my shirts back in Worcester.

At the Marriott hotel in Uniondale I am situated on the 7th floor, and the guest laundry is in the basement, so early in the morning I bagged up what I did have to clean and made my way to the lift which took me down the eight floors and opened to reveal a warren of corridors, with no signs to guide me to the laundry. As if I were in a maze at some large stately home I started to explore, turning this way, then that, following a direction and discovering it led nowhere, until at last at the end of a long corridor I discovered a lost subterranean city comprising a salon, a gym and the laundry room.

I had a bag of quarters with me, which I collect during my travels for such circumstances, but imagine my surprise to discover that these particular machines didn’t take quarters, they actually had terminals for credit cards.

My emotions at this point were conflicted, on one hand there was an amazing realisation that this innovation meant that the days of hauling bags of loose change around the country will soon be behind me, but on the other end of the scale was the sheer frustration that my wallet was up in room 768! Back through the corridoors, back up the lift, back to my room, collect my wallet and back down again. Soon two machines were spinning and splashing whilst I went up to the lobby to have some breakfast.

The restaurant at The Marriott is spread out around the spacious ground floor, and diners were dotted here and there lost in their own worlds. I was greeted by a lady dressed in jeans and a sweater who I had taken to be a customer, but who asked me if I would like orange juice and coffee, and then I attended to the impressive buffet. As I sat at my table another guest came in, an older man with a white beard (no, not HIM!), and a t shirt, it soon became obvious that he is a very regular guest as almost every member of staff came up to greet and converse with him, and he had a gentle charm with each, asking about their Thanksgivings, and their families, discussing their jobs and their lives. Quite how he had time to eat is beyond me, but he gave everyone as much of his attention as they needed, and did it with good grace. A very impressive individual who just by being in that restaurant, where everyone else sat at anonymous little islands, spread happiness and made people feel good about themselves. OK, on reflection, maybe he WAS that guy with the white beard, after all!’

After breakfast I returned to the laundry and loaded my clothes into the drier, which after another swipe of the credit card, started rumbling away, and I went back to my room to be lazy for an hour.

By ten o’clock my morning chores were done and I could go out for the day. As I was on Long Island, I had decided to visit the area which had inspired one of my favourite American novels, and ater a little research I set my sat nav to take me to Great Neck, better known in the literary world as West Egg, the home of Nick Carroway and Jay Gatsby. I had even downloaded an audiobook version of The Great Gatsby to accompany through my travels.

The first part of my drive took along one of the parkways that run the length of the island, and which apparently act as a guide to the international jets flying into JFK airport, for a constant stream of Boeings and Airbuses flew low over me with landing lights blazing and wheels down. Eventually I reached Great Neck, and drove to a neighbourhood that seemed to be the sort of place where Gatsby could have stood in his grounds gazing at the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock across the water. Unfortunately, I could’t say for certain, for there was no way to get to the water’s edge, all of the properties privately protecting their own stretch of ocean front. The best glimpse that I got was through the locked gates of a yacht club.

I drove on, still listening to the book. I had studied Gatsby at college but I have either forgotten, or never realised, how funny parts of it are, and I found myself laughing out loud in the car. Of course, a student will never find a book funny, especially if a teacher says: ‘Now make a note of this, this is the author using humour for effect, this is a very funny passage…..’

My drive took me further east to Port Jefferson, where I alighted and strolled around a nature reserve and said hello to a family of swans who glided curiously up to me, and deciding that I was of no interest, glided away again.

The weather was cold, so I didn’t walk for long, but returned to my car to cross the island to the south shore and then ‘home’. Whilst I drove, I called the Beechwood Hotel and inquired about the two white shirts and to my amazement they said yes, they had them, and could I pop by and collect them? By a fortunate quirk of this year’s tour, it so happens that I will be driving straight past Worcester again on Wednesday, so a slight detour will not affect me at all. It is amazing when the stars in the universe all align and everything works out.

Finding the ocean at the south shore proved to be as difficult as finding it in the North had been and as flurries of snow were starting to swirl, I decided to head back to The Marriott. I had a couple of hours before I needed to go out, so I flicked through the TV guide to see what was on and to my delight discovered that Apollo 13 had just started, so I wallowed in nostalgia for a while – nostalgia for the events themselves, and for the film, which I remember watching for the first time in one of the large London cinemas and feeling the whole floor trembling during the lift-off sequence. The TV channel that was screening the movie gave it a rather uninspiring description that really didn’t do justice to the bravery and ingenuity of the characters involved, it read: ‘April 1970. Astronauts try to return alive.’ Not thrilling. I wonder how the same TV company would describe A Christmas Carol? ‘December 1843. Man sleeps and wakes kinder.’

As I watched the film, I also did some research into new Covid regulations that have been announced this week in the UK and discovered that I now have to take a PCR test on my return and not a LFT one. These tests have to be booked and paid for before a passenger returns and I had already booked the previously acceptable Lateral Flow Test kit, but now I had to spend another £50 for the PCR. These tests (one prior to each of my departures from the UK and 2, now 3, for my returns) have considerably added to the expense of this year’s tour!

As Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise came back to Earth, I gathered a costume shirt and black socks for the evening and made my way to the East Meadow Public Library where I was due to perform. On entering the building, I instantly felt at home, for it was like returning to one of the branches of The Mid Continent Public Library in Kansas City. I was greeted by Jude, who had kindly treated me to supper the evening before, and she showed me to a room downstairs which was to be my dressing room. Boxes of pizzas and a bowl of salad sat on the table for the staff to grab as they made preparations for the evening.

The actual performance was to be in a small auditorium on the main level and when we entered, the floor was covered with leads and cables as the sound system was being set up. The acoustic in the room sounded pretty good but we tested the microphone anyway, and my sound man (whose name, I am ashamed to say, I never caught), did a fine job in balancing the levels. We then went through all of my sound cues, rehearsing each one so that he had an idea as to how to bring the effects in and how to fade them out again, and when I needed to speak over them. He was very diligent and as I left the room, he began to clear his equipment away and tape down the cables.

Jude had sourced items for the set from a prop hire company and so Scrooge had a very nice chair and table, but unfortunately, we didn’t have a hat rack to hand, so I simply placed another table behind the chair, on which I would be able to lay the hat, cane and scarf as required during the show.

Back downstairs I set to signing copies of ‘Dickens and Staplehurst’ which had been pre-ordered, and when I had finished that, changed ready for the 7pm start. It is always an interesting challenge coming to a new venue – the show doesn’t change of course, but the atmosphere around presenting it does. For example, at somewhere like Vaillancourt’s or at Byers’ Choice the whole team has done this so often that we all know exactly how it is going to work. Likewise, the audience at those venues is usually made up with a large percentage of people who have attended multiple times and know the style of what they are going to see and are excited to see it again; their anticipation also gives a sense of confidence to the ‘newbies’ in the crowd. But in a venue such as The East Meadow Library it is all new, so there is a sense of heightened consciousness and even nervousness in the build up.

Just after 7 Jude welcomed the socially distanced and masked audience and then handed over to me. The music started and I walked onto the stage. As was to be expected, the audience was quiet at first, not knowing if they were going to see a simple reading, or a rather dry Brit reciting a Victorian novel (albeit a much-loved one), but soon they began to warm up and I began to relax, meaning that the show got better and the audience became even more involved. It was a great shared experience for us all and by the end we were the best of friends!

Having taken my bows to a standing ovation, Jude turned the auditorium lights on and we started the Q&A session. There were quite a few children in the audience and their questions were especially good, one asked me ‘What is your real voice like?’, whilst another inquired ‘What is your favourite Christmas food?’ Other questions took us into the world of the minor characters’ back stories and of course favourite movie choices. But soon it was time to wind up and after taking another bow I returned to my dressing room as the audience left the building.

By the time I had changed it was just the library staff left and they congratulated me on the show as we all packed our things up.

A new connection has been made on Long Island and hopefully it is one that we can extend to future years and, maybe with restrictions eased, we can fill the auditorium to its capacity and really have a fun party. You never know, I may even be able to find the ocean…..

I said my goodbyes and drove back to the hotel where I had a delicious plate of grilled salmon and rice, before rising to floor 7 once more and bringing the day to a close.

A New Stool for Tiny Tim

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, Newcastle Cathedral, SleeprZ Hotels, The Literary and Philosophical Society, Tiny Tim, Uber Eats

The second half of my 2021 tour began on Tuesday, when Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and all the rest packed themselves into my car for the journey to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where I would be performing at the Literary and Philosophical Society in the city, more commonly known these days at the Lit and Phil.

However before I could drive North I had to make a brief stop in Oxford to get an official PCR Covid test so that I can gain my Fit to Fly Certificate which will allow me to return to the USA on Friday morning. This was a repeat of my previous appointment a few weeks ago and once again I entered the Courtyard by Marriot hotel in the centre of Oxford and rather furtively announced to the front desk that I was there to be tested. ‘Of course, sir, through the double doors and knock on the door of suite 1, then wait.’ It all seemed very covert, and I thought that when the door opened I should have some code phrase to say: ‘The tulips are surprisingly lacklustre this year.’, to which the voice on the other side of the door would reply, ‘unless you are in Spain, where they are glowing’. However any James Bond fantasy that I may be imagining was swept away when the door was opened and I was welcomed in with a friendly smile and a ‘Good morning. Mr Dickens?’

When the paperwork was filled in I was asked to administer my own test, which I hope I did effectively, and within 15 minutes I was saying ‘goodbye’ and hoping that I have not caught Covid in the week since I last took a test.

Now I could take the cast, as well as the props to Newcastle. The drive was very uneventful and there were no traffic delays on the M1 motorway, which is almost unheard of. I had plenty of time in hand and stopped once for a coffee and leg stretch and then again for lunch. It was around 3pm when I passed Anthony Gormley’s amazing ‘Angel of the North’ sculpture and then crossed the Tyne by one of the many Newcastle bridges, The Lit & Phil is in the very heart of the city and my hotel, SleeprZ is about one hundred yards down the street from it and I found a parking space half way between the two buildings and carefully reversed into it. My first job on arrival was to find a branch of my bank so that I could get some loose change as a float: my new book, Dickens and Staplehurst, A Biography of a Rail Crash (I’m not sure if I have mentioned it before, but it is available through my website, or Amazon), retails at £8.99 meaning that I would need change. I had also invested in a contactless card reader to help me with my after-show sales. Newcastle was definitely ready for Christmas with twinkling lights strung over the streets, department store windows seasonally decorated and. buskers singling carols with varying degrees of tunefulness. It was a lovely sight and the streets were bustling and full of energy.

I found the bank and having got a small bag of coins in various denominations, made my way back to the hotel to check in. The SleeperZ hotel is a very simple one, with compact rooms, but they are brilliantly designed and are bright and colourful. For my performances at the Lit & Phil it is perfect for my purposes. I lay on the bed and watched TV for a while until it was time to return to my car and onload the props. At The Lit & Phil building I was greeted by Kay who books all of my events at the venue. Even though I hadn’t been in the lovely old building for two years, thanks to last year’s lockdown, it seemed like I had only just been in the same room, setting up my furniture in readiness to perform. The large and somewhat heavy chair, carefully draped with the red cloth, the hat stand, the little table with the candlestick and the simple stool which starts the show as Bob Cratchit’s office stool and ends up as Tiny Tim’s shrine. This last piece of furniture was making its theatrical debut, as I had managed to leave my old stool at a venue somewhere in the summer and a search online found a new one which looks much more rustic and aged.

Having prepared the set, I then arranged my merchandise (the Staplehurst book, and my souvenir brochures that Ian and I produced a few years ago). I had designed and printed a price list proudly bearing the legend ‘Contaclass Payments Accepted’ but realised that it was still laying on my desk at home, so Kay kindly offered to print off another one (I had the relevant file on my laptop). It was 6 o’clock now and with a full hour before I was due to begin the show the audience were starting to arrive and take their seats, so I withdrew to a large meeting room that Kay had given me for a dressing room. My costumes had just been dry cleaned, and felt fresh and stiff as I got into them. I applied new velcro pads to the lapels, and made sure that the Victorian penny was in the waistcoat. I tied the cravat, using a large flat screen TV as a mirror, and set the pocket watch to the correct time. I was ready. With twenty minutes to go I ran through some lines, actually the extra pieces that make up the two act version of the show, although I wasn’t not performing that programme, I would be on the following evening so it was a good opportunity to remind me of the lines.

Shortly after 7 Kay knocked on the door and said that we were ready to go, so I wrapped my scarf around my neck, placed my top hat on my head and made for the room where I would be preforming. After a short introduction Kay clicked play on the CD player and my opening music filled the room (during the week I had emailed Kay to ask her if she wouldn’t mind operating the sound, and when she replied that she would do that I responded by asking would she rather just do the first cue or would she like to follow the script and do all 5 sound cues? I have never known a faster response to an email and almost before I had hit send, the reply came back ‘JUST ONE!’

The show went well, I was not on a stage but performing on the floor in close proximity to the audience, some of whom remained masked but most not. The small room meant that I didn’t have to project too much and it was nice to be able to be quiet and reflective especially in the Cratchit scenes. The new cast member played his role to perfection, by the way, and looked perfect with the wooden cane laid on it, creating an atmosphere of true pathos. An extra bonus was a deep resonance to the knocking as Scrooge arrives at his Nephew’s house on Christmas morning.

The applause at the end of the show was very generous and long, and after I had taken my bows I stayed on the stage to do a brief Q&A session which was fun, before putting on my mask and taking up station at the merchandise table where I sold plenty of books and the new contactless terminal performed well.

The audience drifted away into the night and I was able to get changed again. By the time I emerged from my meeting room all of my props and furniture had been carried to the front door, and as I emerged onto the streets the bells were ringing out from the nearby cathedral (Tuesday night is campanology practice night), it was a lovely way to be welcomed to the street and reminded me of Scrooge flinging his windows open on Christmas morning to be greeted by the joyous peal of bells: ‘He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!’

I was back in my hotel just after 9 but the kitchens in the small lobby restaurant had already closed, so I ordered a pizza via Uber Eats, which was duly delivered and I wound down my evening laying on the bed watching a documentary about the super volcano under the Yellowstone National Park.

On Wednesday morning I have a 6 hour drive to the other end of the country to perform again and then it is time to make preparations for my return to America on Friday.