The Drood Dudes

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Dickens Fellowship, The Drood Dudes, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Spires Academy, The Woman in White

After the fallow period of recent years, the spring of 2022 is proving to be a busy one as I travel around the country performing in a wide variety of venues. Having returned from Preston on Monday morning, I had a day to collect my thoughts before heading off once more on Wednesday, south this time, to the city of Canterbury in Kent, the county of my birth.

I was due to visit The Spires Academy, a relatively new school, built in 2007 in a rural setting to the east of the city. This would be a second visit to Spires for me, where the year 10 students are studying A Christmas Carol for their GCSE course. It is a impressive modern building, standing proudly with its lime green cladding welcoming visitors into a large central atrium, which acts not only as a dining hall at lunchtime but also as a performance space.

My contact at the school is one of the English teachers, Sarah Turrell, who is also a keen member of the Dickens Fellowship, and she loves to share her passion for Dickens with her students. Sarah has come to many of my shows in Kent over the years and is currently writing an article about the teaching of Dickens in the modern era for that most academic of journals, The Dickensian.

The journey was a beautiful one with the chill of early March giving way to Spring, there were even fields of Rape beginning to paint their broad, yellow splashes across the countryside, and the blossom of trees speckled the deep blue sky. I arrived at 11.30, and Sarah was there to meet me and help me unload. With the help of the facilities staff we found a small cupboard in the main atrium to store my furniture and then headed up three floors to a conference room (in my day, schools never had ‘conference rooms’!)

My first commitment of the day was to meet a small group of students who, inspired by Sarah, had formed their own Dickens Society within the school. The group comes from a wide variety of year groups (yrs 8 – 11) and meet at lunchtimes when their respective timetables allow. Sarah’s suggestion to the team was that they study Charles Dickens’ final, unfinished novel, and try to create their own solution to ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’, and it is this project that gave the group its name: The Drood Dudes.

Before the group arrived, in dribs and drabs from their various morning lessons, Sarah gave me a printed essay, showing what has been achieved so far, and I only had time to cast a very quick eye over it before the seats around the table were full and we began to chat. ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood….Unveiled. A Work in Progress’ is not only an amazing feat of imagination, but also a great piece of well-researched writing too. Students have paired up and worked on specific chapters, and making sure that the language that they use is suitably Victorian in structure. An example:

”The cabin windows blurred by innumerable layers of smog which further added to the uncomfortable aura that had latched onto the room. ‘Where were you on the night of the storm, Miss Budd?’ Gerald’s tone had indicated that he had no longer been welcoming of her diversion to his prompts. Stubborn in her innocence, her annoyance had quickly been replaced with a monotone seriousness. Straightening her posture and clasping her hands together, she responded.

‘My homestead. And only my homestead’

Yes! the detective introduced to the story to get to the bottom of the disappearance of Edwin Drood, is named in my honour, although the character is certainly not an accurate representation of me, for later the narrative mentions that ‘Gerald could tolerate no more. Adjusting his hair, he exclaimed ‘Miss Bud, I think I’ve heard enough.’ It has been many years since I have been able to adjust my hair.

We went through the piece chapter by chapter and the authors of each talked through their inspiration and the motivation for steering the plot as they did.

When Charles Dickens was writing Drood, during the early months of 1870, it was his first novel for 5 years, and marked a new direction: a mystery novel. Perhaps influenced, or piqued, by the success of his good friend Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Dickens set out to weave as many false avenues and red herrings as he could into the plot. Unfortunately, Charles Dickens died on June 9 1870 when only 6 of the planned 12 monthly instalments had been published, meaning that he unwittingly created one of the greatest mystery novels ever written – one that had no denouement. He didn’t leave a detailed plan behind him, although a few letters to friends have a few suggestions as to where the plot may have lead. But, as one of the leading Dickensian scholars pointed out to me a few years ago, if you stop reading Great Expectations at the half way point you would have no clue what is to come, and it is reasonable that Charles would have pulled the same trick with Drood.

I shall not tell you what conclusion the Dudes have come to, for I hope that when the piece is complete I may be able to share it in its entirety, but it is obvious that they have considered and discussed every angle of their plot and stand by it. As we chatted I threw a few alternative thoughts into the mix, not because I felt they were needed, or superior, but because I was keen to hear them defend their choices, which they firmly and passionately did.

When we had finished discussing their work Sarah asked if I would sign copies of The Mystery of Edwin Drood for each of the Dudes, and as I signed they asked me questions about Dickens and one man theatre, until the bell rang heralding the end of a truly exciting morning.

It is obvious that Sarah has inspired this group of students, and they all have immense pride not only in what they have created but also of their society (they even have their own handshake!). In a world that is so fraught with negativity at the moment, this hour was a shining beacon of positivity and hope for the future.

Sarah took me to the dining hall where we met the school’s interim principal, David Thornton, who said that he had never known such success in an extra curricular club.

After a quick lunch the hall was cleared and a stage erected. I just had time to place all of my props, and change before the year 10s arrived – a typical bunch of secondary school pupils: some noisy, some quiet, some defiant, some intrigued, some confident, some troubled. When everyone was seated, the head of the English department welcomed the group with dire warnings about behaviour, and then welcomed me to the stage. I started the show by talking a bit about how and why Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, as the exam syllabus calls for a degree of contextual knowledge as well as a familiarity with the book itself, and then began. This was the first time that I had performed A Christmas Carol since 23 December in Leicester, but the words and movements came back to me as if I had done it the day before.

It wasn’t an easy performance, for the space was cavernous and the audience was not altogether attentive (two members being removed and sent to a classroom to write essays in silence), but I was pleased with what I did. I am currently writing a book about my performances of A Christmas Carol, which includes a detailed account of how I perform each scene, and it was interesting to recall my written words as I performed. I became a lot more aware of where I was on the stage and how I delivered the various lines, and mentally stored some details for the next time I write. The show had a slight break in the middle as there was a bell heralding a change of lessons, and the hall being at the centre of the school building would become packed with students moving from one room to another, so we had agreed that I would simply pause and wait until peace was restored. While I sat on stage during the hiatus some of the students shouted out ‘Mr Dickens! Can we have a selfie with you later?’ I said yes, and the request came in from others too….

When I resumed, my main concern was the timing of the show, as I had to be finished before the school day ended at 3.15. Fortunately there was a clock on the wall opposite me and I could carefully make decisions as to how much of the text to included so that I finished and left time for some questions. I said the final ‘God Bless Us, Every One’ with 10 minutes to spare, and the year 10s gave me loud and raucous applause, born to some extent out of the relief to be able to make noise again! When the tumult had died down I took questions for a while, the answers to only a few of which were going to help the students in the exam, for example I doubt the paper will ask for my age, or details of how much I earn, but it was a fun session nonetheless.

At 3.15 the bell sounded the end of the day and the group dispersed, although plenty of students gathered around to take their selfies with me, before heading home. Soon the atrium was quiet once more, and having changed I loaded the car, said farewell to Sarah and headed back onto the road.

As I drove away I smiled at the memory of a successful day, but in particularly of my hour in the company of a talented, enthusiastic and inspiring group of students: Maxwell, Jasmin, Honey, Ryan, James, Chloe, Maisie, Rosenevi, Jasmine, Katy, Ali, Phoebe, Kaiya and, of course, Sarah: The Drood Dudes.

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.

Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 4: Happy Birthday to the Immortal Mr Dickens

Tags

Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens Statue, Portsmouth, The Charles Dickens Museum, The Union Jack Club, Waterloo Station

And so my week of celebrating came to an end as Monday 7th February dawned – 210 years since Elizabeth Dickens gave birth to her second child Charles. It is sometimes reported that Elizabeth and her husband John had been dancing at a party the night before the birth, thus imbuing the infant with a love of entertainment and fun.

My birthday celebrations would involve driving to London to be present at a dinner to honour the event, hosted by the Central Branch of The Dickens Fellowship. My brother Ian, who is currently The President of The Fellowship had a busier day in store, as he travelled from his home on The Isle of Wight, and attended celebration events in Portsmouth, the city of Charles’ birth. Firstly a visit to the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum and then onto the UK’s only statue of the great man where a garland of red geraniums were placed over his head (Charles’s not Ian’s!).

My journey to London began after I had taken my daughter to her dance class, and as I was getting on the road straight away I was the best dressed dad there, looking rather like James Bond in my dinner jacket and hand-tied bow tie (no clip-ons here!). The traffic to London was light and I had booked a parking space ahead of time, so I would not have to trawl around the city centre, panicking that I would be late for the dinner. As it happened I arrived almost an hour before the reception was due to start, so I simply sat in my car and read for a while, until it was time to make the short walk through the Waterloo district of London, to The Union Jack Club where the dinner was to be held. The main road in the area is Waterloo Road which is a busy, bustling thoroughfare filled with buses, taxis and bikes. Pedestrians take their lives in their hands as they dash across the road to reach the huge Waterloo railway terminus, rather risking being struck by a car than missing that all important train home. But running parallel to Waterloo Road is Cromwell Road and that is quiet and peaceful street, lined with a terrace of elegant Victorian houses, now much sought after and no doubt eye-wateringly expensive, but presumably built as mass housing for manual labourers, maybe those who built Waterloo Station. It is a lovely part of London, and surprisingly very peaceful and it was along Cromwell Road that I walked from my car to the club.

The Union Jack Club has no Dickens connections, but exists for the use of servicemen and veterans. It was first built on the site in 1907, but was heavily bombed during the Second World War, and eventually (in 1975) a new building was erected on the same spot.

The Fellowship dinner was being held in small dining room, and we had 46 attendees. Paul Graham, the Hon Gen Sec of the Fellowship had not been sure how many members would actually attend this first meeting since lockdown restrictions were eased, but it was a goodly crowd who gathered. Ian, in his role as President was hosting the event, and it was lovely to hug him and his wife Anne when I arrived.

There were many old friends and familiar faces in the room and we all chatted until Ian called the evening to order and recited the traditional Dickens Grace:

‘In Fellowship assembled here; We thank thee Lord for food and cheer; And through our saviour, thy dear son; We pray ‘God Bless Us, Every One!’ We all joined in the last line and then took our seats to dine and converse.

Many of the guests had watched my streamed performance the night before, and were kind enough to compliment me on it. Cindy Sughrue, from the museum, was also there and told me that the feedback from the event had been very positive, which was immensely pleasing.

Ian, Anne and I shared our table with Adrian Wooton OBE, the Chief Executive of Film London and The British Film Commission. Adrian became involved with the Fellowship in 2012, when we celebrated the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth, by curating a series of events based on Dickens in Film and has been an active member ever since, he was due to speak at the end of the dinner, and was a marvellous companion. Ian and I in particularly relishing a shared love of Formula One motor racing!

Dinner was delicious, consisting of a smoked salmon and horseradish starter, a steak with mashed potatoes and broccoli for main , and a crème brule for desert. At one point, when the steak was served, Michael Eaton, another table mate, was spooning mustard onto his plate. Unable to shift the thick yellow paste he knocked the little silver spoon against the china plate sending a ringing retort throughout the room, which was immediately followed by a pushing back of chairs and a silence descending, for everyone thought it was time for the speeches!

Ian hosted the dinner with such grace and ease, moving everything along, and speaking effortlessly whenever he needed to. When desert had been cleared and coffee cups filled he announced a 5 minute comfort break and when all were gathered once more it was time for me to do my party piece. At such events it is the job of The President to introduce the speakers, and this usually involves quite a bit of research to create factual and witty remarks to welcome the guest. On this occasion Ian just had to talk about his baby brother, and did so with such a sense of pride that I got rather emotional.

I had decided to speak about my own personal milestones in my relationship with Charles Dickens, and spoke about becoming aware of his importance to our family at the age of 6 when I shared a pew with the Queen Mother in Westminster Abbey. I recalled being made to study Oliver Twist at school (quoting Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’ along the way), and I recounted the story of my first ever performance of A Christmas Carol in 1993, and how Dickens’ brilliant descriptive text helped me morph into the characters. I finished by telling the story of visiting the site of The Staplehurst Rail Crash and sinking up to my neck in muddy water. When the bemused farmer saw this bedraggled man trespassing in his field, and listened as I explained that I had been visiting the site of the rail crash, instead of taking a pitchfork to me he said simply ‘Charles Dickens’. I wound up my talk by saying that ‘he didn’t know I was there to research a book.  He just knew of the celebrity who had been at that exact spot 154 years before.  And that says everything about the long shadow that Charles Dickens has cast across our globe – much longer and more influential than just 21,307 days of life.  He left a legacy that can never be measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or years.  Charles Dickens’ influence over our society is timeless.’

I invited the guests to stand, charge their glasses and I proposed the toast to the immortal memory of Charles Dickens.

It seemed to be well received, and there was some nice applause as I sat down. The truth is that I really feel uncomfortable giving speeches, it is not where I am happy, and I feel exposed and vulnerable. Give me some voices and contorted facial expressions to hide behind and I am relaxed as anything, but put Gerald Dickens in a dinner jacket and ask him to stand and talk…..

I was relieved when I was finished, and envious as I listened to the naturalness with which Ian and Adrian spoke, but it was a great fun evening and it was wonderful to meet so many old friends.

In closing this quartet of birthday blogs I would like to point out a remarkable coincidence: Charles Dickens died when he was 58 years old, in fact he lived for 21,307 days (hence the reference to that number in my speech). On Tuesday 8 February, (the day after I spoke in London), I was also 21,307 days old.

It was a wonderful week and I will conclude by once again offering a birthday wish up to Charles Dickens, and to thank him for making my professional life so unbelievably exciting.

Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 3: A Home From Home

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Mr Dickens is Coming!, Mr Micawber, The Charles Dickens Museum, The Pickwick Papers

My week celebrating the 210th birthday of Charles Dickens continued on Sunday 6th February in two homes – his and mine.

On Sunday evening a specially filmed version of my old show Mr Dickens is Coming was due to be streamed by The Charles Dickens Museum, which is based at 48 Doughty Street, the home that a young Charles moved into having enjoyed instant success with The Pickwick Papers.

Cindy Sughrue, the director of the museum, had approached me last year with the idea of my developing a version of the show that would utilise many of the rooms in the museum, meaning that I would have a wonderful backdrop for my performance whilst the museum could be shown in its best light. The original idea had been to film it before Christmas, but various issues with my tour, obtaining visas and some family concerns at the time meant that we decided to delay the project until early in the year, using the birthday as a suitable time to screen.

Monday 17th January was selected as a filming day, with the 18th being held as an extra. The advantage of these particular days being that the museum is closed on a Monday and Tuesday, thereby giving us full rein to use whichever rooms we needed, whenever we wanted without disturbing the paying public.

I arrived at around 10.30am, and was met by Jordan Evans who is the Marketing and Events manager at the House who was responsible for co-ordinating the entire project. We would be working with videographer Alex Hyndman who has filmed in the museum often, most particularly with actor Dominic Gerard who performs his brilliant A Christmas Carol from the house in December, and as I arrived Alex was setting up cameras and lights in readiness for the first takes.

I quickly changed into costume, which included one of my oldest waistcoats – a black one with shining golden embellishments, and bright patches of colour. I saw it back in the 1990’s hanging on a bargain rail outside a charity shop in the pouring rain. I had been looking for a garish waistcoat for the show, and this one seemed to be calling out to me: ‘buy me! buy me!’ And I did.

I had re-written my old script whilst taking the virtual tour of the museum, which is available on the Carles Dickens Museum website, and had tried to feature each room in a way appropriate to the part of the story I was telling. My opening shot would see me striding down the centre of Doughty Street towards the camera and then entering the famous red door to begin, and this, Jordan decided, would be the first scene to film. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, as Rabbie Burns wrote, and on the morning of filming we discovered that it was bin collection day, so the elegant street was lined with piles of rubbish and recycling rendering our idea for the long view of Doughty Street impossible to capture. The three of us stood in the street pondering our next move and I realised that I was holding my hand up to shade my eyes against the low-in-the-sky sun shining along the street (which apparently runs East-West). ‘Guys,’ I said, ‘why don’t we use my shadow on the pavement?’ and so the show opens with a panning shot of a top-hatted shadow striding along, until the camera pans up to show me walking up to the door.

For the rest of the day we moved from room to room, planning how to shoot each scene and taking care not to touch the historic furniture and artefacts as we did. In the nursery on the top floor I performed the passage about John Dickens next to his bust, and then Alex was able to swing the camera round as I walked behind the original prison bars from The Marshalsea Prison, where the family had been sent for debt. At the end of the scene I moved out of shot, revealing a picture of Mr Micawber on the wall behind me.

We managed to get the whole show filmed in the single day, wrapping with a final shot in the little courtyard garden, and I drove home again, leaving Alex to cast his editing magic wand over the whole thing.

During the intervening weeks Jordan made sure that social media was covered with information about the screening, and Alex had made a short trailer for the film too, which meant by the 6 February we had a goodly number of viewers signed up. I would be watching the film, and then taking questions afterwards, from our new garden office, which we have yet to paint, so it would look rather as if I were sitting in a sauna. During the afternoon, after I had driven back from Sharnbrook, I went up into our loft and grabbed a large picture of Charles Dickens as a young man, one of Henry Fielding Dickens, my great grandfather, and one of me on stage, and hung them in such a way as if to suggest I was in a picture-lined study (I am sure that I didn’t fool anyone!).

I was scared watching, for I knew that many viewers would have highly academic backgrounds, and Mr Dickens is Coming was never written with that in mind: it was always a light-hearted script designed to entertain primarily and doesn’t really bear serious analysis, but Alex had done a great job with the editing, and it came across pretty well, I thought. We had viewers from Australia, Japan, America, Georgia, Malta and many other countries, such is the international influence of Charles Dickens.

When the final shot in the garden faded to black, Cindy Sughrue’s camera flicked into life, which was my cue to switch mine on as well. The comments in the chat room scrolled quickly as various viewers from around the globe congratulated me and asked many questions, which Cindy put to me to answer on screen. We spent around 30 minutes chatting until Cindy would the session up, and having said farewell, I logged off, leaving Charles Dickens’ home behind me and walked back down the dark garden towards the warm, welcoming glow of my own house.

A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic

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A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, FareShare Charity, London, Stephen Mangan, The Old Vic Theatre, The Royal Academy of Music

Call it a busman’s holiday, but when Liz asked me last year if I would like to go to theatre to see a production of A Christmas Carol as one of my Christmas presents, I leaped at the chance. I never tire of the story and any opportunity to see someone else’s vision of it is a privilege, and is also useful for the ongoing development of my own show as I always notices different ways of presenting a scene, or even just an alternative method of delivering a line.

The production that Liz had chosen was at The Old Vic Theatre which is situated near to the Waterloo railway station just south of the River Thames. The Old Vic is not in the heart of the West End theatre district, but has a reputation for imaginative and innovative programming. I remember being taken to the venue on a school trip to see the British actor Timothy West play Shylock in a production of The Merchant of Venice, which we were studying, and realising that seeing a play in its natural setting rather than grinding through it in an academic environment can teach a student so much.

Saturday January 8 was our performance day, and having dropped the girls off at a friend’s house, we drove to London in thick fog and heavy rain, it was a foul day to be travelling and a slightly tight timescale meant that we couldn’t dawdle. Our matinee was due to commence at 1pm, but we had to present ourselves at the theatre between 12 and 12.30 – in these days of Covid restrictions the management were trying to get blocks of audience seated at different times, to avoid everyone rolling up together at 12.45.

The traffic was heavy and fast moving, although the visibility was low, and the opportunities for catastrophe was high. Inevitably we were soon rolling to a standstill behind a long queue of stationary traffic, and away in the distance the thick cloud was pierced by flashing blue and red lights as a police car blocked the road, presumably to allow for an accident to be cleared. We sat and sat and sat, and the idea of making our time slot became more and more unlikely. Eventually the flashing lights were extinguished and we drove on once more.

We made good time for the rest of the journey and we wound around Buckingham Palace before crossing the river Thames and finding our parking space close to the the theatre (in the absence of any parking garages in the vicinity we had found a parking space available for rent on someone’s driveway and booked a four hour slot).

The rain was still falling as we walked to the theatre and joined the long line waiting to be admitted. In an attempt to expedite the process, one of the front of house staff made her way along the line scanning tickets, so that by the time we got to the door we could walk straight in….or so we thought.

The producers of the show had sent a detailed email the day before entitled ‘Everything You Need to Know About Your Visit’, and we had followed the instructions to the letter, however one may have supposed that in an email with such a title, they might have mentioned the need to take a Lateral Flow Test for Covid on the day of the show, rather than putting that instruction in a second email with the title ‘We Are Looking Forward to Your Visit’, which sat, unread, alongside many other similarly titled emails most of which were purely of a promotional nature.

So, when a second box office member walked the line asking to check on everyone’s LFT status Liz and I exchanged a look of horror, for we had no idea! The young man was sympathetic, but unmovable, there would be no entry to the theatre without proof of a negative test in the past few hours. However, he did offer to call his manager who may be able to explain. So we were asked to leave the queue and stand aside until the aforesaid manager appeared. He was equally sympathetic and equally intransigent until he produced a pair of test kits, as if they were Class A drugs, and secretively handed them over to us, suggesting that we find somewhere nearby to carry out a test (‘don’t do it in front of the others, ok?)

We looked helplessly around us, until I noticed a tiny little tent in the square outside the main theatre entrance, which bore the legend: ‘NHS Mobile Testing Centre’ well, that seemed as good a place as any other, so we poked our heads in and asked if we could do our LFTs in the dry, ‘We don’t do Lateral Flow, only PCRs’ we were told, so we had to explain that we had the kits, we didn’t need to be given any, but just required a dry space and as they had no one in their tent at the present, could we huddle under the dripping canvas? They agreed, and we both undertook the least clinical and probably least hygienic tests imaginable. As we waited for the tell-tale line to appear, some more people arrived from the theatre queue, making the same request, but they were turned away. We were lucky.

Fortunately both tests were negative and soon we were back in line and were finally admitted to the theatre with 8 minutes to spare, rather than the 30 that we should have had. Liz had booked amazing tickets in the stalls and we were nestled close to the action, as a temporary circular stage had been built in the centre of the auditorium, meaning that the whole show was performed in the round, with extra seating having been installed on the traditional stage looking out through the proscenium arch and into the auditorium. As the audience gathered, so the cast (with the exception of Mr Scrooge) mingled on the stage, greeting us all with smiles and waves – they were all dressed in long black coats and top hats, but were in no way ‘in character’, they were simply welcoming us to their club, encouraging us to join them. Earlier on in the process they had been handing out mince pies and satsuma oranges, but at that time we had been taking our secret Covid tests, so missed out on the tasty treats. Bah, Humbug!

In the text of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens goes out of his way to make the reader feel as if they have company throughout the story, for example when Scrooge first encounters the Ghost of Christmas Past Dickens says: ‘The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow’. There is the storyteller, close at hand, looking after us.

As an audience we weren’t allowed to feel that the cast were one group and the audience another, in fact we were encouraged to believe that we were ‘really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.’ and that would be a central theme to the entire performance.

At the centre of the stage a trio of musicians played country folk tunes on a fiddle, an accordion and a whistle, and then suddenly, imperceptibly, the story began, the music became louder, the audience began to clap in time and the cast began to sing, just like that: no announcement, no lowering of house lights, but we were off an running. During the first musical number the entire cast provided accompaniment on hand bells, which sounded sublime.

I wont give a detailed review of the show, for there are many available online, but I want to share our feelings of the adaptation and the performance: it was beautiful, it was intensely moving and it was very very clever. The set and staging was very simple, with little more than four doorframes (one at each compass-point of the stage) which rose up when Scrooge was in the reality of his office or home, but which tilted backwards and laid flat, recessed in the stage, when he was on his supernatural journeys.

Much of the narrative and dialogue was lifted directly from the original, but the writer Jack Thorne had not shrunk away from including his own changes and way of telling the story (for example the three spirits in no way resemble those written by Dickens, but were extremely effective nonetheless). Some scenes were moved around within the plot but settled into their new homes with ease, and the whole journey of Ebenezer was utterly believable and so moving. Much of Scrooge’s torment was shown to arise from his childhood fear of debt, and in these scenes there was a sense of Dickens’ own personality (when Charles was only 12 years old his father had been imprisoned for debt leaving a scar on the great man’s personality that would never heal).

There was a lovely moment when the young Scrooge was seen chatting to his little sister, Fan. Ebenezer had just been released from the lonely torment of his school but was now faced with the anger and abuse of their debt-ridden father. As Fan skipped onto the stage she held a violin in her hand and happily told her brother that she had been told she had talent and if she practiced hard she would become even better. In Dickens’ own childhood he had been sent to work in the squalor of a shoe blacking factory, whilst his little sister was sent to The Royal Academy of Music, where she had won a scholarship. The young Dickens never begrudged her successes and loved her dearly: her name was Fanny, or Fan.

And what of Mr Scrooge himself? The role was played by the very popular actor Stephen Mangan who in recent years has enjoyed a stellar career as a television ‘personality’. Apart from his roles in both comedy and drama series he has also found a niche as a presenter, winning prime-time audiences over with his flashing smile and easy wit. When such personalities are cast in a leading theatrical role it is often to satiate the marketing department, and the performance is little more than an extension of their television persona, but Mangan is so much better than that. We were fortunate to have seen him in a previous theatrical role, and had been super impressed by his performance as Sidney Stratton in ‘The Man in the White Suit’, but his performance as Ebenezer Scrooge moved the bar up many levels. He played Scrooge as an angry man, tormented by his background and his fears. I have said before that I do not like versions of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge is angry throughout and refuses to listen to the ghosts, and to some extent Mangan’s performance took this route, but you could tell that beneath the apparent rage the new Scrooge (or, more to the point, the old Scrooge) was struggling to burst forth. And when it DID burst forth, OH! What JOY! The tears of sheer elation poured down our cheeks and I am sure many others too. Suddenly the entire audience became part of the celebrations. The young boy who is sent to fetch the turkey from the poulterer’s shop became three young boys selected from the audience being sent to the bakers, from where hey nervously and proudly carried the largest, wobbliest, fruit jelly you have ever seen onto the stage and received a rousing round of applause and a cheer (we were all cheering and applauding everything by this time!) We all joined Fred’s party and took the feast to the Cratchit’s house where old Ebenezer and Tiny Tim connected in the most moving way imaginable. And it snowed! Throughout the auditorium it snowed on us all.

Among this finale of celebration there were moving scenes too, as Scrooge tried to make his peace with those he had wronged, and the meeting of him with Belle at her house door was a particularly effective moment. There was also a reminder from the three spirits that this was not a magical overnight conversion, but one that had to be continually worked at.

As the show ended, Liz and I were on our feet clapping and cheering loudly, and the entire cast looked deeply moved by the reception. Their emotions would have been heightened by the fact that this was the final day of their run and they now had only one more opportunity to present A Christmas Carol. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

OK, I promised not to review it. Too late!

The performance, the experience, stayed with us during the walk back to the car, throughout the journey home and on into the evening. We both felt moved, uplifted and improved by being part of it and it will stay with us for a long time to come

It was a spectacular afternoon of live theatre and I thank the entire ensemble and production team for bringing it to us.

At the end of the show Mr Mangan made a short speech pointing out that Dickens was writing about the huge poverty gap in the 1840s and the sad fact is that the problem still exists, we were encouraged to donate to the FareShare charity, who raise money and campaign to bring food poverty and food waste to an end. It is a superb and appropriate cause and if you are able to support it then please visit the website and give what you can.

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‘Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash!’ Quite a Way to End!

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, Leicester Cathedral, Leicester Guildhall, Mr Fezziwig

The final day of my 2021 Christmas performance season was in the City of Leicester, in The Midlands. It has become something of a tradition over the years that on the 23rd December I perform a matinee and an evening show in the amazing surroundings of the Guildhall’s Great Hall, which was built at the end of the 14th Century. The room is timber framed and at the centre there is a huge fireplace which is always lit during my visit to warm the sell-out audiences that always attend.

With the Café Royal’s sad cancellation, I had spent my free day with Liz and the girls, and in the evening we had visited the Silverstone race track, where we had attempted to ice skate (I had a great fear that I would fall awkwardly, thus making my rendition of Tiny Tim rather too real), and then drove a very slow lap of the track to admire the light and laser show that had been installed for the Christmas season.

On Thursday morning the car was a prop carrying vehicle once more and I was back on the road. As I drove, the radio programme which was playing asked listeners to supply their favourite questions for Christmas quizzes, and one chap phoned in with the inevitable ‘How many ghosts visit Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol?’ The answer being, of course, four (Marley and the ghosts of Past, Present and Future), but then somebody else texted in with the pedantic opinion that as ‘Yet to Come’ was from the future it couldn’t be considered a ghost, so the answer was three after all. My solution to this celestial conundrum was to include the words ‘on Christmas Eve’ after the question, which means the answer is one, as only Marley appears before midnight, although there is the issue of the air filled ‘…with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.’, but technically they haven’t actually visited Scrooge, so don’t count!

I arrived at Leicester at 11, and parked as close as I could to the venue and started carrying the furniture down the narrow cobbled alley which runs between The Guildhall and Leicester Cathedral with its tall spire.

I was welcomed by Ben Ennis, a friend of many years standing, and we chatted for a while, catching up on our news. Ben had caught Long Covid very early on, and suffered for many months. Although understandably he had been extremely cautious, worn a mask and kept away from crowds, he actually caught it again, thankfully this second time he recovered within a couple of weeks. I asked him if the Guildhall’s audience numbers were being affected by cancellations (after the Café Royal’s experience I was nervous during these last days), and he said although some had called, their tickets had been snapped up by those on the waiting list, so he wasn’t too worried.

Once the car was unloaded I had to move it to a nearby car park and as I walked back I saw that Jubilee Square was filled with a huge Ferris Wheel and a skating rink – I knew from experience that noise from the square accompany would my performance, and I resigned myself to the fact there may be distractions for both me and the audience – little did I know then that later I would have given my right arm to just have the noise from the ice rink in the background!

My changing room at The Guildhall is The Jury Room, from where I can hear the audience gathering and on Thursday the afternoon crowd sounded a lively bunch, and very Christmassy. There was a lot of laughter and loud conversation, which boded extremely well.

At 1pm I went to the back of the hall, and slowly walked through the masked audience, with my scarf pulled up over my face, until I reached the stage. I was right, the audience were imbued with the spirit of Christmas, and we all shared a great afternoon together. Unfortunately there wasn’t a big enough staff to spare anyone to follow the script and look after the sound cues, so apart from the opening music I was performing unplugged, meaning that Mr Fezziwig had to dance without the strains of Sir Roger de Coverly to give him rhythm, but he managed quite well.

The show finished at around 3pm and I took my bows to loud applause and returned to the Jury Room to change. It has been a tradition in Leicester that between shows Ben has brought in a Christmas lunch of Turkey and all of the trimmings and so, with various staff members and his family, we have celebrated the season with good fellowship, but of course this year we couldn’t gather, which was a shame. Ben made up for this loss by presenting me with a turkey sandwich, some fresh fruit, and a trifle, which I took back to my hotel room, where I lay on the bed and watched television until it was time to get ready for the evening show.

When I arrived at The Guildhall, there were already audience members waiting for the door to be opened, and soon a steady stream were making their way in reserving their seats, before availing themselves of mulled wine.

Once again it was almost a full house and once again the audience seemed in great spirits, boding well for a fine send off to the ’21 tour. But, this wasn’t going to be an easy show by any stretch of the imagination.

I was not far in when the bell ringers in the cathedral began their weekly practice, and spent time perfecting their loudest and most complex peals. Every scene was accompanied, indeed almost drowned out, by the constant noise, making it difficult to concentrate. Every so often a particular peal would end, and you could almost feel the sigh of relief in the hall, which turned to disappointment as the next one began. The Leicester Cathedral bell ringers are a dedicated bunch, I will give them that! The interval arrived and still the bells rang and crashed. Ben apologised, although there is nothing he could have done to prevent it, and said that they would probably finish within about twenty minutes of the second half beginning. That SHOULD just about have been OK for Bob Cratchit returning home without Tim on his shoulder – the narrator says that it ‘was quiet. Very quiet’, and it is one of my favourite moments in the show, for I can feel the emotion and tension of an entire audience in that moment – crashing bells wouldn’t be appropriate.

I started act two and sure enough eventually the Cathedral Tinnitus ended, allowing me my moment of peace. The Cratchit scene passed and the atmosphere that builds through the final quarter seemed to be well established, until unbelievably a nearby security alarm went off and the rest of the show was accompanied by a loud, screeching ‘whoop whoop whoop whoop’ which didn’t end until the very final sentence of the story. I at least made was able to make an adlib, which broke the ice somewhat, by saying ‘Yes, the bedpost was his own, the bed was his own, the room was his own, the alarm was his own…..’ which was greeted by a loud cheer and even a cry of ‘Brilliant!’ That was rather overstating it, but it proved that we had all been battling the same intrusions into our fantasy world, together.

The show came to an end and the the hall erupted into applause and I earned a standing ovation which was a very fitting end to a wonderful season of performances – it has been apparent that audiences in both the UK and America have needed entertainment after such a difficult two years (I remember the same phenomenon in 2001, post 9-11) and have come out in good numbers to see the show, but have remained respectful of the wishes of others, whether that has meant wearing a mask throughout the show, or distancing in an auditorium.

My decision not to undertake long formal signing sessions has allowed me to conduct the question and answer sessions after the shows which have proved very popular.

What does 2022 hold for me? Of course we cannot tell, but there are a couple of new books in the pipeline, one of which is all about the history of my tours and the development of the show (I may even include the script…), and if everything works well that will be available for sale when I tour next year.

I will also get back to my running, which I have rather let lapse during the 2nd half of this year, with the aim of completing a half marathon before the year is out.

In the meantime, thank you to all of the audience members who have joined me for the ride this year and to the many people who have allowed me to perform in their venues, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year.

Two Nights at Highclere

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol film, Charles Dickens, Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle, The Café Royal

My final week of performing continued on Monday, just a week after returning from America, with the first of two performances at the magnificent Highclere Castle.

I had left my hotel in York at around 9am and with a decent drive I managed to get home for some lunch and time with with the family (the latter having been a rarity over the previous month), but at 2.15 it was time to get back into the car and head to the beautifully castellated and be-towered cuboid home that in real life is the home of Lord and Lady Carnarvon, and in fiction is the ancestral home of the Crawley family in the guise of Downton Abbey.

I first performed at Highclere two years ago, and the event had been a great success, but sadly one that we couldn’t repeat in ’20, for obvious reasons, but in 2021 Lady Carnarvon was anxious to celebrate Christmas well in the old house and booked me for a double stint, with shows on both Monday and Tuesday.

As the sun lowered in the sky I turned into the long driveway and was delighted when a security guard flagged me down and cheerily said ‘Hello Mr Dickens, just follow the road up to the front door where you can unload!’ so I swept into the large gravel area in front of the house and pulled up outside the great front door (such a spacious area deserves a good ‘sweep’). As I opened the car door I was cheerily greeted by John, the Castle Manager, who opened the large front door for me, and helped me load my things in to the Saloon, the great space, dominated by a huge Christmas tree, which forms the heart of the house and where I would be performing.

Two years ago a decent sized stage had been erected in front of the huge stone fireplace, and that had been surrounded by around 80 seats. This year numbers had been reduced to 50, to allow guests to distance as they required, and about a metre had been lost from the stage, to allow more room between me and the front row. Once I had my furniture placed I could see that the performances this year were not destined to be terribly active ones, as I wasn’t going to have much room to move.

I chatted to John, and Charlotte, the events manager with whom I have been corresponding during the year, and ran through the running plan for the event (start at 5, interval at 5.45, 30-minute interval, second act at 6.15, finish at 7 and then join the guests for supper). I also ran through the sound queues with Charlotte, and then took myself off to one of the ‘back stage’ private rooms where I laid out my costumes and changed into costume.

As I sat waiting waiting for 5 pm to tick around an email came in from The Café Royal in the heart of London, where I was due to be performing on Wednesday evening, saying that it was with great reluctance that they had been forced to cancel the event, due to the fact that many of the guests had decided that they didn’t want to be with groups of people in the middle of London, where the Omicrom Variant of Covid had been spreading rapidly through the previous week. I had fully expected to loose some shows as the national situation worsened and there was always the possibility that the government would introduce tighter restrictions on events, and scupper the lot. If the Café Royal event was to be the only victim, then I would be relieved.

At 5 o’clock I made my way through the various corridors and met with John, who would be introducing me to the stage. All of the guests had arrived, had been given a welcoming glass of champagne and were now sat in the Saloon ready for the show. I made my way to the top of the staircase, and John walked onto the stage where he said a few words and then welcomed me. Charlotte brought the music cue in perfectly and I walked down the stairs, through the audience and up onto my little stage. To my left sat Liz and our good friends Nikki and Martin. Highclere generously offer me the opportunity of bringing guests to the show, and it was so nice to see ‘my team’ among the audience (this would be the first time that Liz has actually seen the show for two years, and the first time that Nikki and Martin had ever seen it, although Martin worked closely with me on the creation of the video version, which is once again available to rent – details at the end of the post).

Despite the lack of space to move, indeed maybe as a result of it, the show was a very good one, concentrating more on the storytelling aspect, rather than the brash theatricality. I could tell that the little pieces of knock-about business wouldn’t play well with this group, so I didn’t bother with encouraging them to gasp at Mrs Cratchit’s goose, or to sigh in delight when the pudding was produced, I just told the story, and the show was the better for it.

The interval came and went, and I was soon calling to the young boy from Scrooge’s window. When I finally wished everyone a ‘Happy Christmas’ (remembering that I was now in England), and left the stage, the applause echoed loudly around the old walls, and I returned to take my bows to all sides, indeed I was called back once more for a second round of bowing. It was a lovely and rewarding experience.

I hurried back to my dressing room where I changed into a jacket and tie, so that I could join Liz, Nikki and Martin in the festive marquee which had been erected in the courtyard at the rear of the house and where tables had been prepared for each individual bubble of audience members. The menu featured salmon and beetroot, delicious Scotch Eggs with golden yolks, a demitasse of mushroom soup, all finished up with a mince pie and a chocolate caramel cup. Glasses of champagne were regularly refilled, although with a drive ahead of us all, we had to decline further top-ups. This was a rather different dining experience to the various meals delivered to me by Uber Eats over the last few weeks!

It had been a lovely evening, made so much more special by having Liz and our friends there.

The following evening I was back at Highclere for the second show and this time as I drove up to the house there was a beautiful golden setting sun behind creating an image that would have had the film crews of Downton Abbey running for their cameras to capture.

I made my way back to the dressing room and discovered that the staff had brought in a hat stand and hung all of my costumes up for me, as well as laying my shoes neatly out. It was as if the butler had come in, which was rather grand.

The preparations for the show, and the show itself followed the same routine as the day before, although the audience were a little more restrained. On stage it is very difficult to judge how people are reacting when most of their faces are hidden behind masks, but it seemed as if everyone was having fun, and the enthusiastic applause at the end certainly backed up that supposition.

After I had taken my bows I changed and packed my things up, and returned to the Saloon. I was not joining the guests for dinner tonight, so once I had retrieved the car and brought it to the front door, I could load up and return home by 8 0’clock, where I could have a supper at home with Liz – a rare treat!

Highclere Castle is a truly wonderful venue to perform A Christmas Carol in and I am delighted that it has become a fixture on my UK tour.

For any of you who haven’t been able to see the show this year, or who need an extra fix, remember that my film version is available to rent, and you can access it through the following link

TO RENT GERALD DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL: https://tinyurl.com/ychp7t3r

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 people were so hurried and so eager….’

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, City of Liverpool, Ebenezer Scrooge, Liverpool 1, The Quran, The Shankly Hotel

Sleep didn’t come easy on my first night in Liverpool, as the Shankly reverberated to the various parties it was hosting late into the night and early into the morning. It didn’t help that the couple in the next room seemed to have had a disagreement, and he kept leaving and then coming back and continuing their argument through the door, as she refused to let him back in…..

The last time I checked my clock was at 2am, so I assume I must have dropped off around that time. Fortunately I didn’t have an early start, as my first show was not due until 2.pm, so I could sleep for as long as I needed into Saturday morning, which, naturally, was not that long.

Breakfast at The Shankly is an impressive buffet, and I availed myself of a full English, with plenty of refills of coffee (the cups were far too small and needing lots of replenishing). I went back to the room and caught up with some emails and waited for the city to come alive. I was planning to walk into the city centre and complete a little Christmas shopping in Saturday morning, as well as trying to get a float for the remaining merchandise sales.

Liverpool 1 is a large, open shopping mall that embraces many of the city’s historic districts and stretches down to the banks of the River Mersey. Like any port city Liverpool is exciting, brash, vibrant and loud and has its own distinct personality and on that Saturday morning the shopping district was busy.

Hopeful musicians performed their latest songs, or covers of old ones, hoping to be discovered and follow in the footsteps of The Beatles, whilst elsewhere various political factions shouted their opinions over small PA systems (at one point, two diametrically opposed groups had set up camp in the same street and spent the time shouting abuse at their rivals – even making occasional forays to pull each other’s displays down). Another stall was selling English translations of The Qur’an, and a recorded message continually broadcast the fact that it was available. It was a very strange phenomenon to see, but lots of people stuck their fingers in their ears as they walked passed, as if even hearing the words would somehow effect them.

Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men……

Having bought the gifts I needed, I then went in search of cash, and to my dismay discovered that my own bank wasn’t open. I tried a few other companies, but they all said the same – ‘you have to have an account with us to change money’. One helpful lady suggested the post office may be able to help, so I walked to the local branch and patiently stood in line, and here part of my show almost came true.

At the point in the story when Scrooge and The Ghost of Christmas Present stand on the streets of London, Dickens describes the people as being so busy and eager that ‘sometimes they tumbled up against each other’, at which point I strike a pugilistic pose, and if possible make a little ‘ad lib’. In America I suggest that this moment is like Black Friday, but in the UK I will often mention the local shopping mall, saying something like ‘Liverpool 1 on Christmas eve!’

Well, on Saturday as I stood in the post office, the guy in front of me was trying to draw his benefits from an account, but none of his cards were working, the patient cashier patiently explaining to him that he had already withdrawn all of his available funds. Unfortunately, such reasoning didn’t work as he was obviously much the worse the wear from some substance or other. Eventually a manager was called, which didn’t help either, at which time the queue behind me began to get impatient, and one man shouted ‘Just get out of here’, well that ignited the situation, as the guy at the counter rounded quickly, fists flying and screaming every obscenity he could think of. Fortunately in his impaired state none of the blows landed, but he stood staring with bulging eyes, daring his opponent to respond, which he was about to do, when security arrived. In reality there was none of the calm resolution described in A Christmas Carol and maybe there was no spirit present to shed drops of water on the two men. Instead of happily saying that ‘It was a shame to quarrel….’ the two were parted and led away. Phew. Oh, and the post office wouldn’t exchange cash either!

The morning drifted on and I returned to the hotel to prepare for the afternoon’s show. I showered to re-energise myself and took the short walk back to St George’s Hall, where Tas was already setting up. Having watched the show, and pondered overnight, he had had a few ideas, the most obvious one being to add a lingering echo to Jacob Marley’s final line as he floats away out of the window. We rehearsed the scene a few times just to be sure of the timing, and then I went back to my dressing room to prepare.

At the 2 o’clock Saturday show we had a small choir present to entertain the crowds as they arrived (in fact they had been booked for all of the shows, but had cancelled the two evening performances due to the members not feeling comfortable using crowded public transport at night.) Initially the singers sung in the large foyer area, and then at 2pm moved up onto the stage to perform in the Concert Hall itself which was perfectly suited for the beautiful choral harmonies that they created. The audience were suitably impressed and gave the singers a great ovation, as they filed off the stage.

Lynne made her introduction, the lights dimmed and I began once again. The Saturday matinee was played to an almost full house and was another excellent show. I was on good form (and even managed to perform all of the scenes in the order in which they had been written), as were the audience. We had great fun with the aromas of the goose, and with Mrs Cractchit’s pudding, and Tas subtly changed the levels of lighting, as well as adding his echoes to Jacob Marley’s voice (not only when the ghost left, as we had rehearsed, but also during the reprise of that line at the opening of act 2).

Again Liverpool gave me a huge and loud response and I lingered on the stage to make the most of it. It is very moving, but Merseyside has really welcomed me over the years, indeed almost adopted me as one of their own.

The afternoon audience had a good many children in it, which was lovely to see, and at the signing session one young boy asked ‘which ghost did I think helped Scrooge the most?’ I said I have always thought that Past is the one who starts everything, and prepares Scrooge to learn, but I also said that wasn’t the correct answer, just my opinion, and asked which one he thought. He plumped for ‘the jolly guy!’ because he showed him what might happen to Tiny Tim, which is an excellent answer too.

After I had finished and changed, I purchased myself a large Bratwurst hot dog from the Christmas market and returned to the hotel for a couple of hours. I discovered that ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ was on the TV, so I watched a little of that with great interest, before showering and getting ready for my last show in Liverpool for this year. Before leaving the hotel I asked the restaurant if they would put a slice of cheesecake aside for me (the kitchens would be closed by the time I got back), so that I could have a little something to wind down with.

The Saturday night audience was the smallest of the three and therefore, the quietest, and my performance wasn’t quite as strong as the other two, I could feel the tiredness effecting me and the temptation was to over-compensate a little, which I tried not to do. It was one of those shows where the audience response wasn’t as lively during the show, but at the end there was an explosion of cheering and clapping, showing me that they had been fully engaged throughout. Rosalie, my Great Expectations-loving hotel greeter, had come to the evening show, and I knew that the voiced that shouted out ‘EVERY ONE!’ to finish the final line, was hers.

There was not much signing to be done, as we had pretty well sold everything, so I could start the process of getting all of my things packed away quickly. I changed, packed my various cases, and loaded all of the furniture into the lift to take them down to the ground floor level, where the St George’s Hall team helped me to load the car (which I had retrieved from The Shankly’s parking garage.)

Back at he hotel I went to the bar and my cheesecake was produced. Rosalie was there and gushed with excitement about the show, and then introduced me to the social media manager of the hotel. It seemed a strange time of the night to conduct business, but I suggested that The Shankly should come on board as an event sponsor in the future!

Eventually I said my goodnights and went up to my room. On the following morning I would need to be on the road by 9am, so I made sure that everything was packed, and then retired for the night.

It had been a very enjoyable and very successful two days in Liverpool, and hopefully I will be back in 2022.