The Cold(er) Blasts of Wintery Weather

Thursday12.00 p.m. It's a good deal colder this morning. I thought there was ice on my car before I drove off to the Oaktree Centre at around 8.50 a.m. to help set up the playgroup, but it wasn't ice, just moisture, so that was a relief.

Friday. 9.15 a.m. The washing is in the dryer. It will take around 45 minutes before it is dry enough to remove and for me to hang my shirts in the wardrobe and the rest in the drawer unit. Then, with my shopping list in my hand, I will be off to Sainsbury's.

Yet another relatively mild morning. Totally unseasonal.

Saturday. 6.55 a.m. It's dark. Well, that's a surprise? No, well, it is usually at this time of the morning in early December. 

Sunday. 8.10 a.m. My posts on here are getting thinner and thinner. 

The weather is getting considerably colder as the days go by. What do you expect in December?

The World Cup is dominating everything at the moment. I am no fan of football, so it's something to avoid. It's not necessarily the football that I find annoying, but all the waffle they dole out, the constant chatter which is more like padding between the games and the fact that all three main television channels have games on at the same time. You get highly-paid, so-called pundits, such as Gary Lineker, rambling on incessantly, and then they have what I think you call 'vox-pops', where they go out into the streets and ask members of the public for their views. Totally irrelevant and meaningless. Not journalism at all. Crazy. 

12.30 p.m. We had café church at SCF this morning. In fact, I have just got back. The idea is to attract non-church-goers into the Oaktree Centre and there's free cake, coffee, tea and other goodies and games for the children to play and a time to chat with anyone and everyone and make friendships. I have spoken to several people I haven't met or even spoken to before and a good sense of community.

3.35 p.m. I have resubscribed to Britbox, the streaming service which is owned by all the major British television providers, BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5. There is a lot of classic drama on there, Doctor Who, Keeping Up Appearances, Fawlty Towers and more and quite a lot of original content. I was interested in watching the new series of 'Staged' the comedy starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen, which is set during the pandemic and imagines them staging a play via Zoom. The new series is exclusive to Britbox. At £5.99 a month it seems excellent value and the content is constantly changing, with stuff being taken off and new stuff being added.

6.25 p.m. I'm watching the BBC's 1970s serialization of 'I Claudius' on Britbox. This was one of the BBC's hits in its day. Derek Jacobi was Claudius, with a stammer. It is somewhat stagey by modern standards. No exteriors and definitely studio-bound, but that was the way television drama was made in the mid-1970s. It has stood the test of time remarkably well. They must have spent a lot on sets and costumes. Also made on tape rather than film. It's more like a filmed stage play. Derek Jacobi's makeup is a bit ropey. I don't know what age he was when he played the part of Claudius, but he's made to appear as an old man, who is telling the story. Other actors who appear are Sian Phillips as Claudius's mother, Brian Blessed, (here far more restrained than his usual 'shouty' acting in later programmes and films.) and John Hurt as Caligula. 

Changing Clocks

Thursday. 10.55 a.m. I've been to Asda. I wanted some coloured markers, because I'm editing some of my written work, and it seemed a good way to show what I am going to cut, rather than merely scrubbing it out in black ink, so I can't read it anymore. They seem to have a fairly good stationary department. I haven't been there in a while, and when I went there last time, I was surprised by how it's changed. I think because it is under new ownership. No longer owned by the American company Walmart.

Saturday. 11.20 a.m. Well, it's sunny and bright as I write this, but it was quite nippy when I went out with Alfie around 5 a.m.

That water feature I mentioned in my last blog post (being polite calling it that.) has come into its own, (ie: some sort of use instead of being a weird shaped thing stuck in the centre of the community garden) by being a place for birds to drink and have a splash. I saw a large crow on it earlier when I was standing washing up in my kitchen. 

Sunday. 7.35 a.m. The clocks have changed. 'Spring forward', as someone has said, so you remember to set your clocks an hour forward. It was on Friday that I realized that the clocks changed. My FitBit and computers (iPad and MacBook and I suppose iPhone.) change automatically, thank goodness. I just found altering my digital watch really difficult and the date was not accurate, merely because I couldn't change it.

Yesterday afternoon I watched a film through Amazon Video, 'The Good Liar', which stars Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen. I have to say I'm something of a fan of Ian McKellen and admire his acting. He's very versatile and goes from playing such Shakespearean characters as Richard 111 through to Gandalf in 'The Lord of The Rings' trilogy to 'X Men', from sitcom in 'Vicious', to appearing in 'Coronation Street', Widow Twankey in pantomime and then Harold Pinter and then a character who has a dark and sinister past in this low key thriller. Amazing. I can say I have actually been in the same space as Ian McKellen. In the early 1970s I was an A.S.M. at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester. As part of the wide mix of plays that were staged, not just what I'd term 'Main House', or part of the normal season, they did late-night productions. Ian McKellen came to direct a production of Tom Stoppard's hilarious one-act play 'The Real Inspector Hound', which had two other great actors in it, Derek Jacobi and Edward Hardwick, who went on to play Watson in the Granada Television series 'Sherlock Holmes.'

It was somewhat foggy when I took Alfie out at around 6.30 this morning, which was something of a surprise.

Quite a few people at church have covid, so, as a result of this, it was decided to have the morning service on Zoom today. I'm not sure I could see how it worked, having around 27 people all peering at one another on a laptop screen. I attempted to have Zoom on my Portal TV which is set up on my Hitachi HD television set, but for some reason, I couldn't get the video to work, so I transferred to my MacBook, and it worked well.

Creative Writing

I didn't continue with the writing course at Milton Keynes Academy. It was really far too basic. I have rung and I'm getting part of the fee refunded. I am now doing an on-line course through something called Futurelearn. I've done a couple of these free courses, one on Shakespeare and another on Hadrian's Wall. I can recommend them highly. I have signed up to do another of their courses, starting in January, on William Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet.' Should be interesting as I have a particular fascination with the play and have seen a couple of stage versions as well as the Kenneth Branagh film version which is uncut as well at the B.B.C. Shakespeare television production which has Derek Jacobi in it. I was involved in a production of the play when I was an A.S.M. at Liverpool in 1971. Hamlet was played by John Castle and Ophelia by Joanna David.

Working In Theatre- Part 6

 I remember John Mortimer arriving at the rehearsal studio and some days bringing in completely new scenes he had only just written. It seems that when the play started rehearsals that it wasn't complete, hence the new scenes as well as some scenes being completely rewritten. It must have been quite stressful for the actors involved as it would have meant new lines to be learned.

I went with the designer of the show on a prop-buying expection in central London. We went to a variety of prop hire companies and even into Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush. It was quite an experience for a rather 'green' youngster at the time to be going into this famous building, and particularly into areas that you wouldn't probably get access if you didn't know a member of staff there, as he obviously was. We went into the B.B.C. club, the staff-only bar and restaurant and design department. All of this is now closed down as the B.B.C. vacated the building earlier this year. 

"A Voyage Round My Father" was due to start it's run with a Press Night, as most new plays do. It was a World Premier, so there would have been a lot of interest. We did a technical rehearsal, but the set would not work.  It took something like four nights for the show to be 'got in' to being something like ready for a technical rehearsal. I had been detailed for something  like two nights to look after the technicians from the company who supplied the equipment that worked the set to make them tea and generally keep them supplied with food, sandwiches etc, in a vain attempt to get the set working so that the show could proceed to it's Opening Night. But, after a great deal of effort it was decided during the Technical rehearsal, that the set wasn't going to work as planned and the scene changes would have to be done  another way without the 'forms' moving up and down stage and spinning round on their axes. We had to bring furniture and other pieces of scenery on in full view of the audience with the projections set to be projected onto the stationary 'forms.' The revolving section worked well enough to be used as planned.

During one of the performances the lighting was being re-designed as the show went along, not something that is usual in any show. One performance was extra special, as we had Royalty in the audience. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden came to this particular performance and there was a great buzz around the theatre as at first it wasn't clear who the 'royal personage' was. Special arrangements were made to the restaurant in the theatre with a screened-off area for them to sit and have their meal. I believe that they came up the river from central London and came to the theatre from the river-side, but I can't be sure now. So, I can say that I have appeared on stage 'before royalty' even though I was only pushing a piece of scenery on stage!

I would imagine that "A Voyage Round My Father" was eventually going to transfer into the West End. It wasn't clear one way or the other, but it would have been great if it had and all those who had worked on it in Greenwich had gone with it,  including myself, but it didn't have a West End transfer. We were visited by several prominent actors who would have been cast as the central character of the father, such as Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Alex Guinness. I believe that Alex Guiness did eventually play the part in the West End and Laurence Olivier was in a brand new television version which was made by Thames Television. I do remember Olivier coming backstage having seen a performance. The play has since been revived more recently, with Derek Jacobi in the role of the father and staged at the Donmar Warehouse.

During this period there were many strikes, it was during the 'Winter of Discontent' of the 1970's, and at one point there were many different groups of workers on strike, particularly dustmen, and I recall seeing piles of rubbish along the side of streets in London due to this strike, rubbish which hadn't been collected due to these strikes. Also, power workers went on strike and there were a lot of power cuts. As a result, places such as theatres were not considered important enough to have electricity and some were closed early to preserve electricity. Also, lights in shops were turned off early in the evening. It was at this time that Greenwich Theatre installed a generator to provide power to light the stage lighting and emergency lighting and so allowing performances to continue uninterrupted. One performance was, though, underway, when there was a powercut.  This must have been before the generator was installed. The actors continued, presumably expecting the electricity to be restored, but it didn't come on, and the audience seemed to enjoy the performance, and it must have been rather like experiencing a live radio play. Quite amazing, and brilliant that the actors managed to continue in the dark!

During this time I had an interview at R.A.D.A. (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) to join their stage management course. I didn't get accepted. They said, as I was already working in theatre, there wasn't much they could teach me that I didn't already know. I don't know, on reflection, whether it would have made any difference to me, but as I had got around three years of experience behind me, I'm not sure whether I would have benefitted.