While Pip at I are breakfasting and taliking a friend of hers turns up to pick up Bruce, the enormous dog. Turns out they have a dog share. Dogshare? Basically, the dog belongs to Pip, but goes to work with this friend. And they share evening care too, this is the dog's babysitter. Pip and I talk some more. It's a beautiful day and she heads off to walk to work through Oxford. How bad can things be? It is such a beautiful day, it's unreal for April, and I can’t help but think this will be it for summer this year. It’s great to be in my sun clothes and my feet are getting tanned – my feet, for crying out loud.
I manage to do a bit of work before Bartelt heaves himself out of his pit. There are no recriminations about the duvet and we both know something has changed: we are the kind of collaborators who can share a duvet. Where will this end? At which point will one of us cry ‘mercy’ (or ‘peanuts’, the cry we used when I was a kid – no idea why)?
We walk into Oxford, around Oxford a bit. Basically, we're lost, but we’re enjoying the walk. Much to our surprises We manage to find the theatre, which surely means we were not lost at all, and have another lovely, easy tech. The show is close to selling out. Because I'm a scum bag I then have to walk the half our or so back to Pip's to wash my hair. Disgusting.
Pip comes to the show and afterwards there are quite few people in the nearby pub, including police officers I work with and some strangers who came to the show and with whom I talk for a very long time. Finally I sit down with William and Meg for some food, to which I suspect they are going to treat us, and when I say us not only Bartelt and me, but our hostess, Pip, as well.
I grew up with William. Well, he is a bit older than Kate. Actually, now he is considerably older than Kate but that is because Kate has petulently stopped ageing. There are many, many things I could tell you about William and his family, I know them all pretty well, but the story I choose is about playing both tennis and, that most brutal of sports, croquet.
I think I've mentioned that my brother and sister were not at all a fan of mine when we were growing up. Theirs was a deep-seated irritation, not without its justification looking back, but as a small child at the time I found it... utterly devastating, not to mention disorientating: as the youngest I couldn't see why they didn't want me there as much as I wanted to be there, All The Time. Oh, horribly craven and eager to please, yet mouthy and an utter show-off. Delightful.
We had, though, come to an interesting point where I was FINALLY allowed to join them at William's family home to play tennis. It was an extraordinary break-though after a very long, cold war of attrition. I was older than six, mabye seven or eight, and, at the beginning my best friend Katie came with me. This makes the others ten and upwards. I started playing tennis at school when I was nine. So, I had not yet reached the pinnacle in my tennis career which was exemplified by my mate M and me knocking all our balls over the wall into the woods while our teacher was looking the other way. The afternoon was then spent lying under the trees talking about music and boys.... Clearly, the problem with playing with my siblings and their friends was that I was far to young – and crap – to be playing against people approaching their teens.
So they had devised a fantastic contribution for me to make, exploiting my desperation to please, help and be part of things as well as my love of Wimbledon: I was their Ball Girl. I seem to remember I did this for hours on end and for at least a couple of summers. Katie didn't last very long. We are still good friends and she has many qualities, but she's never been anybody's ball girl. I suppose they just thought they'd exploit it until I got bored of it. For me it was fun and it was a way in which Kate and Charles would play with me.
Croquet was quite another matter, however. If you've neither played croquet nor read Machiavelli's The Prince, don't waste your time with both: do one or the other. Croquet will teach you everything you want to know about human nature but didn't ask because you were terrified of the answer. It's a relentless, conniving, tactical game with added violence and ridicule to keep things interesting. I spent a lot of time taking about seven turns to get my ball back from the WBY (Wide Blue Yonder) and the rest of it being laughed at. But I was at least playing the same game as the others and it was clear to everyone that I was a lot weaker, which was not, technically, my fault. Because of the scheming going on I was as likely as anyone else to be persuaded into some kind of deal to stop whoever was winning from hitting the final post first. And how quickly I learnt not to trust anyone, seeing the legion betrayals coursing over the lawn: in croquet there is no loyalty or mercy and ridicule is a rite of passage.
I wasn't THAT much worse than my sister, anyway. She may have been 14 or so but she had delicate little feet and was never as strong as me, or as physically daring, and she certainly didn't have the over-long arms which I possess to this day. And it was fun turning against her and Charles, taking sides with William or his brother James, to bring down the older Peytons. I don't recall winning, but then neither do I recall the sting of losing, I just remember being included.
So William and Meg have made the effort to come to the show, had, in fact, offered us accommodation too. It was so lovely to spend time with them, telling stories of Beyton where we grew up, of the characters, the long summers and, of course, of Kate. He hadn't seen her much in recent years and so remembered a much younger version of her than do I. I had not spent that much time with him in.... I don't know how long. He and Meg are lovely and so easy to talk to, the five of us laugh and chat... and I'm so grateful to see them, and I miss Kate, not with a dull ache, but with the shock of her disappearance, seen here in the inappropriateness of her absence.
I resented Kate's tennis abilities all my life - she wasn't even that good, though still managed to utterly outclass me - playing catch-up as I was and naturally ungifted. I was jealous of her in recent years playing in south London with her friend Penny as I would have been a risible addition to the party. How I wish now I could see her heading off to meet Penny today, feel the sting of jealousy and resentment at my sister and behaving in a slightly petty way when she got home again. The simple fact of her deadness does not change the petty truths of our relationship, in fact, it makes even those tiny little nastinesses poignant. Oh, let me wake up and realise these more-than-six-years have been a dream.
Thursday 30 June 2011
Thursday 23 June 2011
Pip and her amazing memory
Pip's small car is already full, of dog. There is no getting round the size of her dog Bruce. Literally. And he and Bartelt sit on the back seat of the car grinning at us and at each other.
We met Pip through the show. Not only is the show self-selecting, in that people come who are interested in the subject matter and, mostly, fancy a bit of death-chat, but we have met many great people through it. Pip is a boon though. Obviously we are able to stay with her for three nights while we do the show in Oxford, which is rather marvellous, but there is more to Pip than the comfy futon, peaceful house and phenomenal cooking. There's the fizzy wine, cute garden, great music collection, the books, the promised guided tour round the Bodleian... no, no, no, I mean there's her brother's death.
Pip looked, well, very upset when she came out of the show in Edinburgh. By this stage Bartelt and I had become, not inured to it, but somehow to expect it. Many's the time I went running after someone or other and encouraged them to join us for a drink. Pip was easy to persuade. As we talked, with another friend, Carrie, whose father died recently, it became clear what a loss her brother had been, how she missed him... the loneliness, I guess, of grief. We all find ourselves agreeing vigorously and it is clear that this is not the reaction Pip is used to. She describes a long journey to here, a slightly better place than the one she found herself in the days after he died.
And she is the ideal host. We get to walk Bruce, the enormous dog, but this is not just any walk: this is a guided, history walk through an Oxford park. Pip knows.. EVERYTHING. I'm not surprised at all, she is clearly a very bright woman with a good memory, but her knowledge is wonderful. Ironically, despite mine and Bartelt's assurances, she keeps apologising for the commentary. We run out of ways to tell her that we love it, that we'll probably only retain 10% of it, even after only half an hour or so, but that we want to hear as much history as she can give us! We both have a very quick half life for retaining historical facts. I'm not a great reader, I find it very hard, and here is the equivalent of a concise history of everything about Oxford, literature and nearly everything else, just pouring out of her into my head. We stay up a bit too late and drink a bit too much, but we don't mind because we're in Oxford. With Pip. And Bruce, the enormous dog.
It has been a long time, maybe always – I don't remember – that my memory has had a very swift half life. It never ceases to amaze me what other people retain, and it's not because I'm not interested, which people often infer. It's because... I have a diabolical memory, which is particularly unjust as I've never done any class A drugs.
Before we actually get to bed, and admittedly after a few drinks, Pip has to get the complete Oxford English Dictionary down and look up the total background of some words. We are WILD. I don't recall which word is was, of course, but Bartelt and she have a fantastic time with their noses buried in the enormous book while I look on. It's our kind of fun.
But however many dictionaries we try to read, bedtime arrives and for the first time in our collaboration-cum-friendship, Bartelt and I are sharing a futon and only ONE duvet. We are both single and it's no one's business what we get up to: what happens on the tour of the show about my sister's murder stays on the tour about my sister's murder as well as being documented in the blog, obviously. I have to confess I am worried, though: if I in anyway stop him sleeping he will become impossible and if, more likely, he simply has a bad night's sleep, as often happens, he's going to blame me and he will become impossible. I lie in a very small, still line down the very far side of the futon and think of very still things.
We met Pip through the show. Not only is the show self-selecting, in that people come who are interested in the subject matter and, mostly, fancy a bit of death-chat, but we have met many great people through it. Pip is a boon though. Obviously we are able to stay with her for three nights while we do the show in Oxford, which is rather marvellous, but there is more to Pip than the comfy futon, peaceful house and phenomenal cooking. There's the fizzy wine, cute garden, great music collection, the books, the promised guided tour round the Bodleian... no, no, no, I mean there's her brother's death.
Pip looked, well, very upset when she came out of the show in Edinburgh. By this stage Bartelt and I had become, not inured to it, but somehow to expect it. Many's the time I went running after someone or other and encouraged them to join us for a drink. Pip was easy to persuade. As we talked, with another friend, Carrie, whose father died recently, it became clear what a loss her brother had been, how she missed him... the loneliness, I guess, of grief. We all find ourselves agreeing vigorously and it is clear that this is not the reaction Pip is used to. She describes a long journey to here, a slightly better place than the one she found herself in the days after he died.
And she is the ideal host. We get to walk Bruce, the enormous dog, but this is not just any walk: this is a guided, history walk through an Oxford park. Pip knows.. EVERYTHING. I'm not surprised at all, she is clearly a very bright woman with a good memory, but her knowledge is wonderful. Ironically, despite mine and Bartelt's assurances, she keeps apologising for the commentary. We run out of ways to tell her that we love it, that we'll probably only retain 10% of it, even after only half an hour or so, but that we want to hear as much history as she can give us! We both have a very quick half life for retaining historical facts. I'm not a great reader, I find it very hard, and here is the equivalent of a concise history of everything about Oxford, literature and nearly everything else, just pouring out of her into my head. We stay up a bit too late and drink a bit too much, but we don't mind because we're in Oxford. With Pip. And Bruce, the enormous dog.
It has been a long time, maybe always – I don't remember – that my memory has had a very swift half life. It never ceases to amaze me what other people retain, and it's not because I'm not interested, which people often infer. It's because... I have a diabolical memory, which is particularly unjust as I've never done any class A drugs.
Before we actually get to bed, and admittedly after a few drinks, Pip has to get the complete Oxford English Dictionary down and look up the total background of some words. We are WILD. I don't recall which word is was, of course, but Bartelt and she have a fantastic time with their noses buried in the enormous book while I look on. It's our kind of fun.
But however many dictionaries we try to read, bedtime arrives and for the first time in our collaboration-cum-friendship, Bartelt and I are sharing a futon and only ONE duvet. We are both single and it's no one's business what we get up to: what happens on the tour of the show about my sister's murder stays on the tour about my sister's murder as well as being documented in the blog, obviously. I have to confess I am worried, though: if I in anyway stop him sleeping he will become impossible and if, more likely, he simply has a bad night's sleep, as often happens, he's going to blame me and he will become impossible. I lie in a very small, still line down the very far side of the futon and think of very still things.
Saturday 18 June 2011
Emotional baggage
Martin and I have one of many meetings at a London mainline railway station. He has so little stuff. And I'm not only saying that because I travel with so much stuff and am insanely jealous. And not because it's a pain – often literally – to carry it all, but because I fear people judge my mental state by the amount and disorder of the one-woman camel-train which is me, and because they'd be absolutely right to do so.
I'm mentioning how little stuff Martin travels with because his arthritis has left him with a great deal of weakness and pain and so he is forced to carry very little, as well as being the kind of chap who likes to wear the same outfit day after day: it's a combination of habit and scumbaggery. For the record, I am simply a scumbag, but he is a creature of habit.
He has a very lightweight rucksack which he uses when he travels internationally, but we have already had a bad time on this tour due to the rate at which I'm inclined to walk and the amount of pain his rucksack gives him. Oh, and then there is his very bad knee (the injury to which ended his preposterously promising dance career at 27) and his bad knee, the one with only the arthritis. He is fond of reminding me, as I forget his plight and stride off into the distance with all the unknowing assurance of one who was last an inpatient when I was untimely ripped from mother, that a kilo carried on the back has the effect of eight on the knee. So, even though he only travels with eight/ten kilos of luggage, this adds up pretty fast. In my defence, I keep telling him we can get cabs if he needs to. But he doesn't want to need to and, for him, succumbing to needing to is another vertiginous splurge down the slippery slope to... more hospitals? Not being able to hold his razor? A wheelchair?
Also, we are already aware that we are both a lot fitter than we were when we started this tour. Neither of us is that interested in the gym or knocking a ball at someone else just for them to knock it back at one - surely ball sports are simply a metaphor for the pointlessness of life? However, shifting logs, mowing the lawn, cleaning the car, walking from B&B to the train station, these exercises make sense to us.
I have been trying to persuade him, though, for some time that if he got a lightweight rucksack which also had a handle and wheels, he might be a lot better off. Jacques would be better off as well – I thought this lightweight rucksack of his was his... but it's not. It belongs to Jacques, who is more than good to Bartelt, and, apparently, sometimes plaintively points out that if Bartelt is travelling with his rucksack then Jacques cannot use it. But, as with the new razor, Bartelt has a resistance to a New Bag. And it's not to spending money. He can do that. I'm inveterately stingy, but Bartelt has an ability to spend money and he'll spend money on someone else as much as spend it on himself. But he is used to the rucksack he has and doesn't want to change. He knows its pockets how to pack it, how to find something it in, and exactly how painful it is. In fact, he's been to a shop and the one he found weight 3kg empty. This put him right off and he doesn't particularly want to talk about it. I, on the other hand, am sure we can find him something.... if we have an opportunity on tour.
We know we are both going to love Oxford. I went, years before, when my friend Dey took me to his college ball for my 21st birthday present. I have many memories of that ball: having a filthy cold, sitting next to someone whose father had written the key text on Don Quixote which I was studying, and the zip on the ball dress my sister had made me as an 18th birthday present, breaking as we got into the cab to go to the ball. But this is Bartelt's first time. As our friend Pip picks us up from the station and we drive past the ancient buildings of the various central colleges and the like, Bartelt looks like a child who has arrived at the zoo for the first time, or maybe a dog who is being shown the sofa he will be allowed to sit on... soon. Which is strange to see as he is sharing the backseat with the enormous Bruce, Pip's dog, who, as we are about to find out, owns parts of Pip's sofa.
I'm mentioning how little stuff Martin travels with because his arthritis has left him with a great deal of weakness and pain and so he is forced to carry very little, as well as being the kind of chap who likes to wear the same outfit day after day: it's a combination of habit and scumbaggery. For the record, I am simply a scumbag, but he is a creature of habit.
He has a very lightweight rucksack which he uses when he travels internationally, but we have already had a bad time on this tour due to the rate at which I'm inclined to walk and the amount of pain his rucksack gives him. Oh, and then there is his very bad knee (the injury to which ended his preposterously promising dance career at 27) and his bad knee, the one with only the arthritis. He is fond of reminding me, as I forget his plight and stride off into the distance with all the unknowing assurance of one who was last an inpatient when I was untimely ripped from mother, that a kilo carried on the back has the effect of eight on the knee. So, even though he only travels with eight/ten kilos of luggage, this adds up pretty fast. In my defence, I keep telling him we can get cabs if he needs to. But he doesn't want to need to and, for him, succumbing to needing to is another vertiginous splurge down the slippery slope to... more hospitals? Not being able to hold his razor? A wheelchair?
Also, we are already aware that we are both a lot fitter than we were when we started this tour. Neither of us is that interested in the gym or knocking a ball at someone else just for them to knock it back at one - surely ball sports are simply a metaphor for the pointlessness of life? However, shifting logs, mowing the lawn, cleaning the car, walking from B&B to the train station, these exercises make sense to us.
I have been trying to persuade him, though, for some time that if he got a lightweight rucksack which also had a handle and wheels, he might be a lot better off. Jacques would be better off as well – I thought this lightweight rucksack of his was his... but it's not. It belongs to Jacques, who is more than good to Bartelt, and, apparently, sometimes plaintively points out that if Bartelt is travelling with his rucksack then Jacques cannot use it. But, as with the new razor, Bartelt has a resistance to a New Bag. And it's not to spending money. He can do that. I'm inveterately stingy, but Bartelt has an ability to spend money and he'll spend money on someone else as much as spend it on himself. But he is used to the rucksack he has and doesn't want to change. He knows its pockets how to pack it, how to find something it in, and exactly how painful it is. In fact, he's been to a shop and the one he found weight 3kg empty. This put him right off and he doesn't particularly want to talk about it. I, on the other hand, am sure we can find him something.... if we have an opportunity on tour.
We know we are both going to love Oxford. I went, years before, when my friend Dey took me to his college ball for my 21st birthday present. I have many memories of that ball: having a filthy cold, sitting next to someone whose father had written the key text on Don Quixote which I was studying, and the zip on the ball dress my sister had made me as an 18th birthday present, breaking as we got into the cab to go to the ball. But this is Bartelt's first time. As our friend Pip picks us up from the station and we drive past the ancient buildings of the various central colleges and the like, Bartelt looks like a child who has arrived at the zoo for the first time, or maybe a dog who is being shown the sofa he will be allowed to sit on... soon. Which is strange to see as he is sharing the backseat with the enormous Bruce, Pip's dog, who, as we are about to find out, owns parts of Pip's sofa.
Thursday 16 June 2011
Let's hear it for the boys
Anyone who is following this story of the tour will have noticed there are lots of trains. I love trains, I don't love the utterly opaque ticketing system in this country, over-crowding, over-pricing of tickets/tea/mini bottles of wine; the fact one has to go out onto the moor at night and meet the wise woman in order to work find the best price; that the best price is often knee-weakeningly high..... but the experience of travelling by train, particularly through the English countryside is rather wonderful. Any context, actually, I love it: Peru, Zimbabwe, Russia: consistently touching, exciting and relaxing.... And look! Those are some of the places to which I've travelled. I am so cool.
It is lucky that we love trains, given just how many separate trains rides we will have been on by the end of this: somewhere in the twenties, with me doing two more than Bartelt. This is because, between our trips to Newcastle and Oxford I head home for a couple of nights at my mother's place as my cousin is getting hitched and having a small reception at my mother's house.
My cousin James was a high-energy, deeply inquisitive little boy. He was five years younger than me and I used to look after him, as I did his two brothers and our two other cousins. Five little boys. James is still fives years younger than me, but has progressed to looking after himself, indeed, has found Neil to help look after him. It's a really wonderful day: I am amongst my marvellous extended family, from whom I derive endless pleasure and support, as well as irritation and confusion, of course: they're not super-human, after all.*
At the wedding I get to know Neil's mother and aunt a bit – I've never met them before – and it's lovely to discover what interesting people they are. Yes, I'll share James with them, that's fine. There is one highlight, though, which stands out in my mind as I sit on the first of the two trains which will carry me to Oxford and the next two gigs, and it is Neil's speech. I confess I've not ever thought of Neil as a public speaker. I have thought of him as more at home with the written word than the spoken and as more eloquent about dungeons and dragons than about love, but his speech was lovely. And good. AND funny. Not only was there his love for my cousin, and the specialness of their friends, and what this all means to him, but also the difficult child/teenager he was for his mother. It sounds like he was pretty difficult and, as he speaks, his mother looks as if he was, indeed, deeply difficult. It's kind of a public apology, actually, and all genuine apologies have to contain respect, but this one is dripping with love. Not the cloying (for jaded old moi) romantic love I associate with weddings, we-were-meant-for-each-other-I-knew-the-moment-I-saw-you-I-was-no-one-before-I-met-you claptrap, hawked around by every bride-cum-groom... But a frank, mature love which embraces us all in its honesty.
I go up to him later and – being me – tell him I didn't expect either his eloquence or his easy public-speaking style. Being me, I apologise for underestimating him. Other people might have left it at a simple and heart-felt well done, but for some reason I have to go that extra step and probably become offensive when I am trying to pay a large compliment. Neil's a very good egg, though, and seems to take it all in very good heart.
As I sit on the train, I go on to consider the issue of civil ceremonies themselves... I have referred to this day as a wedding and no one seems to flinch or punch me when I reveal the protagonists are both men. I know there are people who are troubled by homosexuality, I mean, I understand that these people exist, but I genuinely can't imagine why it causes anyone a moment's distress. Obviously, there are lots of things about other people's relationships about which I do not want to hear, but that's got nothing to do with their gender. In fact, I'd rather hear about the ins and outs of a gay couple – literally - than the remodelling of someone's roof space or landscaping of their garden. There are as many relationships as there are people to have them. I give up trying to understand what's so disturbing about them and conclude it's simply that some are obsessed with what other people get up to when naked. FYI, on this tour, when naked, I have usually been rooting through my rucksack trying to find clean pants and/or my deodorant salts: the only necessary items to begin a new day.
*Neither am I.
It is lucky that we love trains, given just how many separate trains rides we will have been on by the end of this: somewhere in the twenties, with me doing two more than Bartelt. This is because, between our trips to Newcastle and Oxford I head home for a couple of nights at my mother's place as my cousin is getting hitched and having a small reception at my mother's house.
My cousin James was a high-energy, deeply inquisitive little boy. He was five years younger than me and I used to look after him, as I did his two brothers and our two other cousins. Five little boys. James is still fives years younger than me, but has progressed to looking after himself, indeed, has found Neil to help look after him. It's a really wonderful day: I am amongst my marvellous extended family, from whom I derive endless pleasure and support, as well as irritation and confusion, of course: they're not super-human, after all.*
At the wedding I get to know Neil's mother and aunt a bit – I've never met them before – and it's lovely to discover what interesting people they are. Yes, I'll share James with them, that's fine. There is one highlight, though, which stands out in my mind as I sit on the first of the two trains which will carry me to Oxford and the next two gigs, and it is Neil's speech. I confess I've not ever thought of Neil as a public speaker. I have thought of him as more at home with the written word than the spoken and as more eloquent about dungeons and dragons than about love, but his speech was lovely. And good. AND funny. Not only was there his love for my cousin, and the specialness of their friends, and what this all means to him, but also the difficult child/teenager he was for his mother. It sounds like he was pretty difficult and, as he speaks, his mother looks as if he was, indeed, deeply difficult. It's kind of a public apology, actually, and all genuine apologies have to contain respect, but this one is dripping with love. Not the cloying (for jaded old moi) romantic love I associate with weddings, we-were-meant-for-each-other-I-knew-the-moment-I-saw-you-I-was-no-one-before-I-met-you claptrap, hawked around by every bride-cum-groom... But a frank, mature love which embraces us all in its honesty.
I go up to him later and – being me – tell him I didn't expect either his eloquence or his easy public-speaking style. Being me, I apologise for underestimating him. Other people might have left it at a simple and heart-felt well done, but for some reason I have to go that extra step and probably become offensive when I am trying to pay a large compliment. Neil's a very good egg, though, and seems to take it all in very good heart.
As I sit on the train, I go on to consider the issue of civil ceremonies themselves... I have referred to this day as a wedding and no one seems to flinch or punch me when I reveal the protagonists are both men. I know there are people who are troubled by homosexuality, I mean, I understand that these people exist, but I genuinely can't imagine why it causes anyone a moment's distress. Obviously, there are lots of things about other people's relationships about which I do not want to hear, but that's got nothing to do with their gender. In fact, I'd rather hear about the ins and outs of a gay couple – literally - than the remodelling of someone's roof space or landscaping of their garden. There are as many relationships as there are people to have them. I give up trying to understand what's so disturbing about them and conclude it's simply that some are obsessed with what other people get up to when naked. FYI, on this tour, when naked, I have usually been rooting through my rucksack trying to find clean pants and/or my deodorant salts: the only necessary items to begin a new day.
*Neither am I.
Thursday 9 June 2011
Learning who your friends are
Bartelt does not rouse himself for the disappointing breakfast on our second morning. As tour manager I can't help feeling a bit guilty. He breakfasts later as we have a skype meeting with Lucy, our radio producer, about prospective radio things.
I used to be a light entertainment agent. It's a long story, but when I left I had the salutary experience of discovering who my friends were. They were 1. some of my colleagues 2. some of my clients 3. TWO of my many of contacts: Nigel and Lucy.
Lucy has been so supportive of this project all the way down the line and it was she who rescued me when I was convinced, after a very bad preview for me, that I should abandon the project. Bartelt helped too, but off the back of my enormous wobbly he had told me that he would not be having another heart valve replacement (another long story) and I had said, standing on Hungerford Bridge, Thames below us, South Bank Centre to our right, so, you've decided to die of heart failure? And he'd said, rather tearfully, yes. We met Lucy just after this, had a bottle of wine, and she'd kind of got us both back on track. In fact, we should have a disclaimer saying that if you hate this show, get in contact with her and not us.
Now I come to think of it, the other friend, Nigel, is the one who put me in contact with his literary agent. I'm supposed to be writing the book of the show... I'll start, when I finish this, I promise, Nige.
So we have a long skype conversation with Lucy and then we sit for hours working: admin, photos, blogging. And then we go round the charity shops of Newcastle!!! They are great. I try some clothes on but nothing really works. However, Bartelt finds a jumper which, it turns out, he will barely take off for the rest of the tour. He is such a creature of habit. And he is SO happy with the jumper, well, it's rather pathetic. He has reasons for his delight: it's just the right weight/colour etcetera, but he's just in love with it and that is that.
My friend Chris's sister and her bloke come to the show. I've not seen her for years and it's great to - very briefly - catch up. And Emma, who has already seen the show once, brings her parents to the show that night. Afterwards her father, a chap in his eighties, tells me it is the most moving piece of theatre he has ever seen. There is also a rather lovely speech about the opening night of Who's Afraid... which is happening all around us, and Erica mentions us as well. Really, this is such a delightful place to work. We bang on at quite a few people about our next show, working title Our Father, and then we wander back through town.
We have an early – for Bartelt – train in the morning. We make it, although he has to remind me again not to walk so fast. When will I learn? We both love trains and and enjoy ourselves working on them, so we work and plan all the way back to London: we are very excited about working on our next show. Tonight in London it will be the MartyBartyParty at a pub somewhere in central London. This will be a very intimate affair to celebrate Martin introduce him to a few folk and to see some mates before we're off again on the road, I mean train.
I used to be a light entertainment agent. It's a long story, but when I left I had the salutary experience of discovering who my friends were. They were 1. some of my colleagues 2. some of my clients 3. TWO of my many of contacts: Nigel and Lucy.
Lucy has been so supportive of this project all the way down the line and it was she who rescued me when I was convinced, after a very bad preview for me, that I should abandon the project. Bartelt helped too, but off the back of my enormous wobbly he had told me that he would not be having another heart valve replacement (another long story) and I had said, standing on Hungerford Bridge, Thames below us, South Bank Centre to our right, so, you've decided to die of heart failure? And he'd said, rather tearfully, yes. We met Lucy just after this, had a bottle of wine, and she'd kind of got us both back on track. In fact, we should have a disclaimer saying that if you hate this show, get in contact with her and not us.
Now I come to think of it, the other friend, Nigel, is the one who put me in contact with his literary agent. I'm supposed to be writing the book of the show... I'll start, when I finish this, I promise, Nige.
So we have a long skype conversation with Lucy and then we sit for hours working: admin, photos, blogging. And then we go round the charity shops of Newcastle!!! They are great. I try some clothes on but nothing really works. However, Bartelt finds a jumper which, it turns out, he will barely take off for the rest of the tour. He is such a creature of habit. And he is SO happy with the jumper, well, it's rather pathetic. He has reasons for his delight: it's just the right weight/colour etcetera, but he's just in love with it and that is that.
My friend Chris's sister and her bloke come to the show. I've not seen her for years and it's great to - very briefly - catch up. And Emma, who has already seen the show once, brings her parents to the show that night. Afterwards her father, a chap in his eighties, tells me it is the most moving piece of theatre he has ever seen. There is also a rather lovely speech about the opening night of Who's Afraid... which is happening all around us, and Erica mentions us as well. Really, this is such a delightful place to work. We bang on at quite a few people about our next show, working title Our Father, and then we wander back through town.
We have an early – for Bartelt – train in the morning. We make it, although he has to remind me again not to walk so fast. When will I learn? We both love trains and and enjoy ourselves working on them, so we work and plan all the way back to London: we are very excited about working on our next show. Tonight in London it will be the MartyBartyParty at a pub somewhere in central London. This will be a very intimate affair to celebrate Martin introduce him to a few folk and to see some mates before we're off again on the road, I mean train.
Thursday 2 June 2011
I can't believe you've asked me that
The space I have to perform in at Northern Stage is big. As the tour has worn on Bartelt and I have worked out that the larger the space the... well, the better I am. It's a pretty enjoyable performance and then we have a Q&A afterwards. Lots of the Northern Stage folk stay for it, and we have a marvellous moment where one of them asks me whether I'd've done a show if Kate had died another way. I answer as honestly as I can, and then the questioner covers his mouth and doubles up. He cannot, he says, believe he just asked me that. Oh, how I LOVE this show! This guy has overstepped his own boundaries without realising it until way after I have answered what is - for me a very tame, yet interesting, question.
It's incredible how this show opens people up, but it is even more amazing to Bartelt and me the level of people's discomfort with asking other people questions. Children ask questions all the time, but by the time those children are adults they have learnt that to ask questions is somehow rude. But this just leads to rooms and rooms full of elephants, as far as I'm concerned: endless stuff we want to know, but are afraid to ask. So, instead of asking, we presume, assume and judge, rather than just finding out from the horse’s mouth. It's no wonder we end up with terrible prejudices and people living in isolation, what with all these elephants and horses.
Then something even more touching happens: a woman begins to tell us all her story. This is another extraordinary thing about this show: somehow, because I have just told my story, people feel empowered to tell their story, and often their story would be as unwelcome as mine over dinner, but Bartelt and I have prepared the ground and somehow given permission for all the scary, painful, messy stuff which constitutes life. This woman's brother had died five years previously and she knows no one whose sibling had died. She says a great deal, but the most wonderful thing she says is that she is jealous of me because I have a surviving bother, whereas she has no other sibling. I want to cross the room and hug here there and then – I do hug her later – what she has just said is so important. Important because she felt is, but also important because we have all of these difficult feelings, often layered over one another.
I didn't say this to her at the time because I didn't want her to feel I was in any way telling her she was lucky/had things to be grateful for/was better off than me, but when she spoke about her nieces and nephews, tearfully as she experienced her grief again and in another context, I wanted to say that I am jealous of her. I am jealous that he brother lives on in various small and ineffable ways in his children: my sister, who wanted children so very much and for so long, died without issue. She's so gone.
But this is for me, and as this woman apologises for expressing her emotions, rawly and without interference, a truly remarkable an delightful thing happens: everyone in the room tells her not to be silly, that we hear what she is saying, we feel for her and there is nothing inappropriate about her expressing her grief and desolation here, with us. As with so many other members of our audiences, I know tonight again, that if she were the only person we had touched, the show has done something beyond my wildest dreams.
It's incredible how this show opens people up, but it is even more amazing to Bartelt and me the level of people's discomfort with asking other people questions. Children ask questions all the time, but by the time those children are adults they have learnt that to ask questions is somehow rude. But this just leads to rooms and rooms full of elephants, as far as I'm concerned: endless stuff we want to know, but are afraid to ask. So, instead of asking, we presume, assume and judge, rather than just finding out from the horse’s mouth. It's no wonder we end up with terrible prejudices and people living in isolation, what with all these elephants and horses.
Then something even more touching happens: a woman begins to tell us all her story. This is another extraordinary thing about this show: somehow, because I have just told my story, people feel empowered to tell their story, and often their story would be as unwelcome as mine over dinner, but Bartelt and I have prepared the ground and somehow given permission for all the scary, painful, messy stuff which constitutes life. This woman's brother had died five years previously and she knows no one whose sibling had died. She says a great deal, but the most wonderful thing she says is that she is jealous of me because I have a surviving bother, whereas she has no other sibling. I want to cross the room and hug here there and then – I do hug her later – what she has just said is so important. Important because she felt is, but also important because we have all of these difficult feelings, often layered over one another.
I didn't say this to her at the time because I didn't want her to feel I was in any way telling her she was lucky/had things to be grateful for/was better off than me, but when she spoke about her nieces and nephews, tearfully as she experienced her grief again and in another context, I wanted to say that I am jealous of her. I am jealous that he brother lives on in various small and ineffable ways in his children: my sister, who wanted children so very much and for so long, died without issue. She's so gone.
But this is for me, and as this woman apologises for expressing her emotions, rawly and without interference, a truly remarkable an delightful thing happens: everyone in the room tells her not to be silly, that we hear what she is saying, we feel for her and there is nothing inappropriate about her expressing her grief and desolation here, with us. As with so many other members of our audiences, I know tonight again, that if she were the only person we had touched, the show has done something beyond my wildest dreams.
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