Fun and frolics at the theatre when uppity stars get their comeuppance

Meanwhile back in Basildon . . .

After the few days of excitement at the National Union of Journalists’ ADM in Wexford things seemed very quiet back at work.

My personal life was still going well at this stage. Quite a lot of it centred on the Basildon Arts Centre, some of it as an am dram actor and some as a member of the audience.

As I have said before the manager was from Rhyl and I often used to call in to catch a show, sometimes as part of my job and sometimes just for the sake of it.

Obviously there were some shows which were just one-nighters, such as Acker Bilk, Cleo Laine and similar big names.

There were also less well known (at the time) acts such as Magna Carta, an excellent folk rock band which was formed in 1969 by Chris Simpson, Lyell Tranter and Glen Stuart.

By the time I saw them in Basildon the line up had been changed a couple of times, but Simpson and Stuart were still the mainstays. I met them after the show and had a good chat in the bar. I now have original vinyl albums covering the years 1969 to 1980.

It was not only local am dram productions that were put on at the Arts Centre. Professional companies also appeared with theatre productions or musicals.

That summer of 1974 included the Sooty Show which was there for a week and brought in hundreds of little children longing to see the little puppet who had entertained them on television.

Malcolm let me have a look backstage during the week Sooty was on. The sets and sound equipment they used for their show, much more than you would have thought, was moved to the back of the stage area and well into the wings during the evening if there were other productions on. After all a children’s puppet show wasn’t aimed at evening audiences.

I say puppet show but they actually had quite large sets.

It was quite amazing to see how the stage technicians could move sets, sound equipment and even lighting bars around to allow more than one show to use the stage area on the same day.

Of course there were productions where the stage sets stayed for the full week, such as the touring company presenting Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which starred a well known pop star from the 60s.

I was good friends with one of the stage technicians, a chap called Lawrence, and again had a look backstage to see all the sets which had to be changed during brief blackouts to give the impressions of a desert encampment, Pharaoh’s Palace and even a prison cell.

One thing I did discover was that the “star” was not very popular with other members of the cast as well as the stage crew. Apparently they considered him too arrogant and reckoned he put on airs.

The members of the company decided to get back at him during one show.

There was a scene with Potiphar’s wife where Joseph had to leap on her as she lay on her bed. Just as he jumped she adjusted the position of her knee and the “star” had a definite change of note in his singing.

It is amazing how much the backstage crew and even other cast members know about the people we see onstage. They know the good ones and they know those who just think they are good. What they should all remember is that technicians and fellow actors can make or break a star if they wanted.

People I met at the Arts Centre that summer were to cross my path again – and it wouldn’t be that far in the future.

More about that later.

Where was Britain when Rome blew out the candle – in the Dark Ages

We know the Romans occupied parts of Britain – what is now Wales, the West Country and as far north as the border with the lands of the Picts – for almost 500 years.

We also know that in 1066 a Norman duke brought an army from across the Channel and defeated the English king before claiming the kingdom of England for himself and his heairs.

That leaves about 650 years unaccounted for and raises questions.

Why was it now known as England and not Romanland?

Who took charge when the Romans departed?

Who was King Arthur?

I’ll answer the second question first.

In 410 AD, as the bulk of the Roman troops were pulled back by Rome to protect the other borders of the empire against barbarians, the population of Britain consisted mainly of Britons, but they were a mix of Romanised Britons; former Roman soldiers (from all parts of the Empire) who had settled in Britain when they had served their time; Britons who had, in the main, stuck to their traditional way of life; and various traders who had set up home in Britain.

In the main life continued almost as usual.

The Romano British lived in their fine villas or in the cities created by the Romans. Just as many continued their life in more rural locations, eschewing the benefits of Roman civilisation and getting on “very well thank you” compared to their more civilised brethren.

This set up worked reasonably well, although in the absence of a Roman governor, it is difficult to know whether there was any form of central control or just a loose federation of local leaders.

The threat to this New Britain seemed to come from two directions. Much as it had done in Roman times. The Picts and the Scots made forays across the northern border and even in Roman times the Saxons had attempted to land in the South East and a series of coastal castles were built ranging from Brancaster in North Norfolk round to Portchester (Portsmouth).

Information is very hazy at this stage but it appears there was some form of council of regions with representatives working together to protect each other. The name Vortigern frequently crops up as an apparent war leader rather than a king or national leader.

With renewed attacks from the north it appears he persuaded the other leaders to agree to paying Saxons to provide a mercenary defence force. In return they would be granted lands in the east (Kent) to settle their families.

They did a good job under their leaders Hengist and Horsa and forced the northern invaders back. The problem then was that the lands they had been granted were better for agriculture than their own Germanic lands in Saxony and they invited family and friends not only from their homeland but also from the land of the Jutes and the Angles.

This put them at odds with the resident Britons who had expected to provide a small amount of land as part of the mercenaries’ pay.

It is possible that at this period, the late fifth century, the basis was laid for the legendary King Arthur. It certainly appears that Vortigern was not looked on as a good war leader as his attempt to fight off the Picts and the Scots had landed the native Britons with a new enemy – the Saxons and their pals the Angles and the Jutes.

It is possible the council chose a new war leader and this person was possibly a Romano-Briton or even a former member of a Roman auxiliary cavalry troop. In the first case it was possible that Vortigern’s son Vortimer took on the role or in the other case he might have been Syrian as they were known as excellent cavalry soldiers and some were stationed in Britain/.

What is certain is that after years of continual fighting the Celtic Britons withdrew to the West – Cornwall and Wales – much as the elven folk of Middle Earth had left the realms of man and gone into the west ,

Angles and Saxons took over more and more British land and came to be referred to as Anglo-Saxons (the third partner, the Jutes, seem to have been a minority).

Not that life was easy for them in this new land because they faced greater dangers of invasion themselves from the lands in the north – the Norsemen we all came to know as Vikings – who came to raid and pillage but decided the new land was so good that they wanted to settle there with their families.***

Thus the Anglo-Saxons who had originally been hired to fight off the Picts and the Scots found themselves facing a greater threat from the north than they had ever faced.

Halfway through the Dark Ages, the British (well they covered most of what we call England) were no longer Celtic and so unable to claim Boudica as a hero, and did not even have a single ruler.

Don’t forget those Norsemen because we will meet them in a new guise.

Meanwhile things were still looking dark for the Anglo-Saxons. They had no mercenaries to call on and were no longer a united group. Now they were Mercians, Northumbrians, people of Wessex and Essex (West Saxons and East Saxons), as well as the South Folk and North Folk (Suffolk and Norfolk).

COMING SOON: light at the end of the tunnel, but are they friendly?

Birds of Passage

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1807-1882
Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;
And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tidy-like darkness overwhelms
The fields that round us lie.
But the night is fair
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapour fills the air,
And different sounds seem near,
And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.
I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
They seek a southern lea.
I hear the cry
Of their voices high
Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.
O, say not so!
Those sounds that flow
In murmurs of delight and woe
Come not from wings of birds.
They are the throngs
Of the poet's songs,
Murmurs of pleasures, and pains and wrongs,
The sound of winged words.
This is the cry
Of souls, that high
On toiling, beating pinions, fly,
Seeking a warmer clime,
From their distant flight
Through realms of light
It falls into our world of night,
With the murmuring of rhyme.

Tiny Feet

by Gabriela Mistral

1889-1957
A child's tiny feet,
Blue, blue with cold,
How can they see and not protect you?
Oh, my God!
Tiny wounded feet,
Bruised all over by pebbles,
Abused by snow and soil!

Man being blind, ignores
That where you step you leave
A blossom of bright light,
That where you have placed
Your bleeding little soles
A redolent tuberose grows.

Since, however, you walk
Through the streets so straight,
You are courageous, without fault.

Child's tiny feet,
Two suffering little gems,
How can the people pass, unseeing.

Ice and Fire

Edmund Spenser

1552-1599
My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congeal'd with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

No more paddling in the shallows as I dive headlong into union politics

There are many forms of addiction – drink, drugs, gambling and more. They nearly all start small but many lead to disaster.

As one drink leads to another, as one pill ends with a needle in your arm, or a flutter on the Grand National reaches the point when you put all you have left on that last do or die bet, addiction is hard to break.

Some addictions are less tangible.

For me there were two addictions – journalism and politics.

Not many people talk about their work as an addiction, maybe journalists are a different breed – I think many members of the public see us in that light, always have and always will.

I came into journalism in the old-fashioned way. I was an apprenticed trainee; I went on specialist courses; I listened to what my seniors told me; I immersed myself in the world of journalism; and I followed the path of a story from my notebook to seeing the ponderous presses roll and that story being printed on thousands and thousands of pages.

There is a smell at the works end of the newspaper process. It is hot metal, ink, grease and the general sweat of the workers.

The greatest thrill of all is hearing those presses thunder and feeling that vibration throughout the building.

I lost out on much of that when I went to work down South because my office was in the town centre and the works, which I never had reason to visit except for my own pleasure.

Then came the union lockout and a new excitement of people working together for the benefit of all and not just for the benefit of individuals.

Once that extreme excitement of the lockout ended and the joint print chapel disbanded there was a downturn again and the need to seek a further high which came with attending National Union of Journalists branch meetings.

It is strange how many workers join their union for protection and then let others get on with dealing with the nitty gritty of union toil. One the other hand this did mean that those I met at monthly branch meetings were committed to the NUJ – not just a socialist commitment, members were from the left, right and centre when it came to political views.

Even those monthly meetings were not always enough which is why just months after the united chapel victory I found myself on my way to Wexford, in Ireland, as part of the Southend NUJ branch delegation to the union’s annual delegates’ meeting.

This event, now held once every two years, is the equivalent of a political party annual conference except that in the title – Annual Delegates’ Meeting – it is made clear that it is those attending the conference that it is all about, not the people who run the union day to day.

At the time of the ADM the latest round of “the troubles” in Northern Ireland had been under way for more than four years (as it happens my father and I were in Enniskillen on the August weekend when it all flared – but that’s another story). This tended to give a bad name to the whole island of Ireland.

In response to the bad publicity, the Republic of Ireland (which is, after all, the vast majority of the island) wanted all the good publicity it could get, and what better way than playing host to journalists from all over Britain.

Since this time I have been to other ADMs and to party conferences and I have to say I never saw such lavish treatment as the Irish Tourist Board laid on for the NUJ delegates that April in 1974.

Our delegation had arrived the evening before conference began and had been taken to a very elegant hotel where we freshened up, left our bags and were then taken to the premises were the conference was being held.

Although it was basically meant to be a meet and greet so that we knew who to contact if there were any problems, and to meet other delegates before business began the next day, it was actually hosted by the Irish Tourist Board (or a similar organisation as almost 50 years later some details were hazy).

Having collected our document cases with delegate credentials, full details of all sessions and fringe activities, and all the other information we needed for the conference we were directed to a lavish buffet, with wine. There were also black plastic containers of JPS cigarettes, 50 in each, as JPS had also sponsored this event. I think myself and two others in our delegation of six were the smokers and we ended up with two drums each. Enouigh to keep any journo going for a couple of days.

There were also bottles of wine set on the tables.

Rather than hang around drinking my fellow branch delegates and I slipped some bottles of wine in our bags and headed back to our hotel. We did sit up for a good part of the night and we were drinking – but not to excess. We intended to keep our minds clear for the morning session and spent time figuring out which motions to keep an eye on and which ones we would try to speak at – for or against.

The next morning we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and, after a good breakfast, ready to head for conference.

It was something special, being at my first conference as a delegate, and we intended to make the most of our time there.

A lot of the first morning was involved with admin-based information about which sessions would involve votes; which would be dealt with by a show of hands and which were likely to go to card vote. There were also short debates on clarification regarding putting motions together to save time in debate and voting.

In fact not much got done in actual debate and business before we adjourned for lunch in a big room in the same building.

Once again it was sponsored by the ITB and other local businesses.

The buffet tables groaned with food and each table, which seated six and was handy for our delegation, had two bottles of red and two of white wine.

Once more we stashed a couple of bottles, one red and one white, for later use and were surprised when an eagle-eyed waiter saw only two bottles on our table and immediately fetched two more.

Although the bottles had been uncorked the branch secretary, an experienced delegate, had brought along some bottle stoppers so that they wouldn’t spill inside a briefcase.

We only consumed three bottles between the six of us which meant when we headed back to the conference hall we were still very compus mentis which is more than could be said of some of our fellow delegates as the occasional snore echoed around the room.

It was certain that more business got done in the afternoon than had happened in the morning, at least from those awake enough to be involved. It did give more opportunity for newcomers to get their chance to speak for the first time on a motion.

As it happened there was nothing much to interest us on the order paper that afternoon and we kept our powder dry.

At the end of the session we had a couple of hours before an evening of entertainment which was planned for us. Because the following day there would be three or four motions that our branch had solid views on we used this “rest period” to draw up our battle plans, while imbibing most of our lunchtime wine supplies.

The evening was another sponsored session, I seem to remember music and some Irish dancing, with JPS providing more of their tubs of cigarettes and another buffet spread of Irish specialities.

The second day gave me the opportunity to speak at a packed conference hall for the first time in my life. I do believe that it was my theatrical training which got me through without deviation, hesitation or interruption. I don’t remember the motion we were supporting but I do know that it was approved by conference.

Another of our delegates was called to speak on further motion we had promised to support (that one went through as well) and we were quite pleased about our actions by the time we went for lunch.

This was a repetition of the previous day except we only had two bottles of wine between six, leaving us four for a late night strategy meeting as we knew on the next day, which was to include an address by a government minister, there were some major motions we wanted to speak on.

In the morning when we arrived at the conference centre we did notice there seemed to be more people than we had noticed previously. A large number of them appeared to be quite burly besuited men, some wearing belted trench coats, and others with suspicious bulges under their arms.

Just before conference was due to start a further group swept in through the front doors and headed for the doorway which led to the backstage area. I just had time to notice that buried in the middle of this group was a smaller man, almost invisible to the casual observer.

It seems they take more care of their government ministers in Ireland than we did in the UK.

As we sat down to begin conference we were asked to welcome the Irish government minister and there was the little man I had seen being escorted in to the centre flanked by burly intelligence officer with guns.

As the conference continued, once the Irish minister had welcomed us and asked us to take back good memories of the fine welcome we had enjoyed, some of the more serious motions came under scrutiny and I got a second chance to speak in favour, as did another member of our delgation.

All in all our delegation had a worthwhile trip to Wexford and I was pleased to have survived my baptism by fire.

The point is, once you have walked across the hot coals without burning your feet you find yourself seeking further and greater challenges.

Somewhere there is a simple life

Anna Akhmatova

translator: Judith Hemschemeyer
Somewhere there is a simple life and a world,
Transparent, warm and joyful . . .
There at evening a neighbour talks with a girl
Across the fence, and only the bees can hear
This most tender murmuring of all.

But we live ceremoniously and with difficulty
And we observe the rites of our bitter meetings,
When suddenly the reckless wind
Breaks off a sentence just begun -

But not for anything would we exchange this splendid
Granite city of fame and calamity,
The wide rivers of glistening ice,
The sunless, gloomy gardens,
And, barely audible, the Muse's voice.

In Petrovsky Park

by Vladislav Khodasevich

1886-1939
He hung without swaying
Thin belt on branch's bend.
His hat - a black remainder
Marred freshly combed sand.
Left palm pierced by the nails,
Of still yet stiffened hand.

The sun ascended slowly
For noon its horses set,
He faced the morning Helios
In somber tet-a-tet.
The man with frozen eyelids -
A risen silhouette.

And focused, focused, focused
His gaze was on the east.
Below, a crowd gathered
The voices hushed and triste.
Slim belt almost obscured
By early morning mist.

Against Love

by Katherine Philips

1632-1664
Hence Cupid! with your cheating toys,
Your real griefs, and painted joys,
Your pleasure which itself destroys.
Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave,
And only what will injure them do crave.
Men's weakness makes love so severe,
They give him power by their fear,
And make the shackles which they wear.
Who to another does his heart submit,
Makes his own idol, and then worships it.
Him whose heart is all his own,
Peace and liberty does crown,
He apprehends no killing frown.
He feels no raptures which are joys diseased,
And is not much transported, but still pleased.

The Prisoner

by Emil Brontë

Still let my tyrants know, I am not doom'd to wear
Year after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

He comes with Western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars,
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise and change, that kill me with desire.

Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears:
When, if my spirit's sky  was full of flashes warm,
I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

But first a hush of peace - a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends.
Mute music soothes my breast - unutter'd harmony
That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels;
Its wings are almost free - its home, its harbour found,
Measuring the gulf it stoops, and dares the final bound.

O dreadful is the check - intense the agony -
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb - the brain to think again -
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

Yet I would feel no sting, would wish no torture less;
The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;
And fired in robes of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,
If but herald Death, the vision is divine.