Cat on a hot tin roof

Newman & Taylor, Charleson & Duncan, Boyle & Parker (photo credit: Keith Pattison/PR), O'Connell & Miller (photo credit: Johan Persson)

“I’ve got the guts to die…. have you got the guts to live?”
The first time I saw Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a hot tin roof was a TV showing during my teenage years of the 1958 film version starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Burl Ives. I have memories of the power of the character of “Maggie the cat” and remember the row between father and son where the climax was a declaration that love is what matters, but I was definitely too young to fully understand the adult bitchiness, secrets, tensions and manipulations that Williams had poured into the relationships. Of course, back in the 1970s, what I didn’t know is that the screenplay was effectively a censored version of the play, removing much of the play’s subversive (for the times) text.

Newman/Taylor (SNAP/Rex Features), Cast of Young Vic production (photo credit: Johan Persson), Charleson and Duncan (photo credit: Mike Hollist/Daily Mail/Rex Features)

“We’re through with lies and liars in this house.”
In March 1988 at Bradford Alhambra I saw the touring production of Howard Davies’s National Theatre production designed by William Dudley and starring Lindsay Duncan as Maggie, Ian Charleson as Brick, Alison Steadman as Mae, Barbara Leigh-Hunt as Big Mama and Eric Porter as Big Daddy. I hadn’t cottoned on to the reputations of any of these actors so I just took the play at face value and remember being awestruck by the lyrical beauty and viciousness of Williams’s dialogue and felt gobsmacked/heartsmacked/soulsmacked by the actors’ ability to present flayed ugly reality in full view of an audience, but in characters that were yearning for connections and love and truth.

School production of Streetcar with Lois Taylor, Joe Layton and Clare Kelly (photo credit: Dale Wain) and the three main women in the Young Vic production: Hayley Squires, Sienna Miller and Lisa Palfrey (photo credit: Johan Persson)   

“I’m not living with you. We occupy the same cage.”
Fast forward to October 2012 and Sarah Esdaile’s production in the Quarry theatre with Zoe Boyle as Maggie, Jamie Parker as Brick and Richard Cordery as Big Daddy. The design by Francis O’Connor suggested the text’s “twentyeight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile….. Victorian with a touch of the Far East.” Paul Pyant’s Lighting and Mic Pool’s Sound dripped with the heat of summer. By now I’d taught Streetcar Named Desire and seen both that play and Suddenly Last Summer, Camino Real, The Glass Menagerie, Orpheus Descending and taught and directed a student production of Streetcar. I’d also read Tennesse Williams’s kaleidoscopic memoir and read enough biographical detail to understand his own self and his own family were the main “copy” in his work. His alcoholic father, his volatile mother, his lobotomised sister, his repressed sexuality, his health problems, anxieties and dreams - all feverishly emerged in his stage characters and situations. But from where was the poetry and the vision? His innate genius, I suppose.

Top two photos of West Yorkshire Playhouse production; photo credits: Keith Pattison/PR. Other photos by John Persson of the Young Vic production

“What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? – I wish I knew…. Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can….”
And so to last night to see the NTLive broadcast of the Young Vic production by Benedict Andrews designed by Magda Willi. Sienna Miller was a feline Maggie, Jack O’Connell was a crumbling Brick, Colm Meaney a domineering Big Daddy, Hayley Squires a desperate Mae and Lisa Palfrey a heartbreaking Big Mama. The rest of the cast and production values were equally evocative in my opinion – evocative of Williams’s study of “Mendacity” – the lies we tell to remain a part of civilised society when all the time we are festering with shameful desires…. a perfect play to watch in this time of fake news and bare-faced political lying. Something about the two central performances in this version suggested to me there was hope at the end. “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was true?” says Brick to Maggie as she embarks on a determined baby-making campaign…. the way Sienna Miller played it I thought “it is true, there is hope, life will find a way.”

Jack O'Connell and Sienna Miller in photos by Johan Persson

Blog Two Hundred

August 2014.... final days living temporarily down South

Blog Two Hundred
Welcome to my 200th blog. Time to look back. Older? Wiser? Healthier? Back when I started writing a blog (in August 2014 - see pictures above) I’d just taken early retirement and had a dream of trying to write (and finish) a novel. I imagined blogging might make me produce words that were spewed out regularly into cyberspace. It might teach me about writing deadlines and train me to keep on writing, keep on churning out stuff that might form into a novel. Well, now in 2018 (see pictures below) my bucket list dream of writing (and finishing) a novel is approaching fruition.

Scenes from March 2018 including birthday pals Sally & Maggie, at Salt's Mill with bass player and sterling friend, Dudley Phillips, Emily, Harriet and Chris. (An Autumn pudding for wintry Spring and a new laptop.) 

Blogspot Data
Comparing Blog One Hundred (31st May 2016) with the stats of Blog Two Hundred:

• TheReadinessIsAllLetBe had been visited (in early June 2016) over 13,000 times
• Now the visitor tally is 36,638
• Back then people in 76 countries had followed links to the site
• Now, it’s 104 countries (I don’t expect that to go any higher)
• The most frequent countries to visit my blog in 2016, apart from the UK, were the US, Ireland, Russia, France and Germany
• Now, China has replaced France in the top 6
• The most frequently-mentioned topics in 2016 were: Family, Shakespeare, History, Yorkshire and Reading
• Now, Writing has replaced Reading in the top 5

Apart from Family weddings, parties and holidays the most popular blogs (so far) seem to be about Wine, the Catholic Church, Brexit, the “Tampon Tax,” the book H is for Hawk and the film God’s Own Country. So much for my ambition (back when I started in August 2014) to focus on the works of William Shakespeare!

March 2018 - Sally's birthday - What stature is she of? asks Jacques. "Just as high as my heart."

Frequency of posting
I posted

• 25 times in 2014
• 50 times in 2015
• 60 times in 2016 (5 per month)
• 60 times in 2017 (5 per month)
• 5 so far in 2018 (working to 3 per month this year)

I’ve reduced the number of blog posts to 3 per month in order to spend more time writing Rhenium Tales, my trilogy for the Young Adult market that is moving along apace. July 2018 is my personal deadline for submitting it to professional agents. A few people (in addition to First Reader Emily) are getting glimpses and giving me feedback. Nick Shelton has produced brilliant designs for particular aspects of the story. Book 2 is pouring out reasonably easily and Book 1, Raydan Wakes, is about a third of the way through its final edit before submission.

I started this blog in August 2014. Time passes and now....

Funny how…. Time will tell….
Funny how time goes by…. Funny how in August 2014 I had no idea who Raydan Brain was, or Vera Valente, or Pheebus Yadiel…. Rhenium was a rare element in the periodic table, used in the manufacture of aeroplanes…. now, to me, Rhenium’s a planet in a galaxy far, far away. Only Time Will Tell whether Rhenium, Pheebus, Vera and Raydan will become familiar to anyone else…. In the summer of 2014 I didn't imagine the arctic weather of March 2018. Now I can. Back in 2014 I didn't know Chris Grimley. Now I do. Here’s to the next 100 blogs!

Can Spring be far behind?

Pushing the Boat Out

Sue, Sally, and Brian the Baker (a trimmer, friendlier lookalike than another baker what I know about....)

“Little-While Friends”
When Emily and Harriet were young they had a picture book that featured a story about “little-while friends.” It was (I remember) a charming story that made sense of the phenomenon we all know – people you meet (whatever your age) who are excellent friends but only for a short time, probably because of geography or circumstances or because of something that happens that catapults you apart forever.

Little-while friends - and the bromance I imagined (for 1 day) between me and Physics Phil!

Physics Phil
I remember spending the whole of my first day at university with Physics student Phil who I met randomly in a queue at registration. For the rest of the day we walked about the campus, ate, drank, chatted, drank more; we stuck together through the evening and got drunk and drunker, swore undying friendship, swapped numbers, talked about going on holiday together – and went our separate ways without making a specific arrangement. I saw him only one more time. Three years later. One Winter night. In the crowded student union bar. We recognised each other immediately. He exclaimed “Tony.” I exclaimed “Phil.” And we went back to the friends we’d come in with. We gave each other a look that recognised that we were Friends For One Day Only, desparate not to be alone on our first day away from home. Whatever happened to good old Phil? The ultimate “little while friend.”

Blood Ties with a preview of.... a DNA-inspired Nick-Shelton-designed symbol from Rhenium Tales

Blood Ties
Family, of course, we never choose. They’re blood. They’re forever. They’re part of you whoever you are, wherever you go and whatever you do. The DNA of your family connect you to a group of other humans, alive, dead and even those yet to be born…. and they’re permanently part of you. There’s a theory that we’re all connected genetically to our first parents – our prehistoric ancestors – or possibly to an original Mummy Eve and Daddy Adam….

Breaking bread with Adam and Eve, pushing the boat out for Labour....

Horses for courses
Unlike family, you find yourself choosing friends, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident, for example:

• sitting or playing next to you in the classroom or playground
• living next door, on your street, in your town
• bumping into you in a pub, club or party
• meeting you through friends or the friendship of your children
• studying the same course as you
• working with you in your workplace
• helping you through a crisis
• sharing a hobby, sport or interest

And sometimes the friends you meet are for a “little while,” a short time, a longer time, or a lifetime. The main pictures in this blog are from a recent visit with Sue and Brian. They’re lifetime friends. Sally and Sue were born within days of each other and grew up friends on the same street in Bradford.

Sue and Brian, a lovely meal in York, pushing the boat out in more ways than one....

Pushing the Boat Out
This old phrase is one of my favourites – literally it started in nautical circles meaning to help sailors launch a boat as an act of community and friendship – metaphorically it originally meant to buy a round of drinks – or, more typically now, it means to spend more generously than you usually do:

Do you want sausages?

No, let’s push the boat out, let’s have steak!

Sue and Brian push the boat out whenever we meet them. Not in terms of giving us steak, but in terms of generously giving themselves and expecting the best of us. Chatting with them is like chatting with The Meaning Of Life. (Or The Meaning Of Life as I know it…. by that I mean that our chats veer between the silly and the profound. One minute we might be discussing the beauty or the horror of scrambled eggs and the next minute we might be discussing the value or confusion of religion. Moving from one to the other feels natural with lifetime friends.)

Pushing out the boat on the taste buds....

Showing your ugly
If someone has been in your life for a long time, inevitably you’ll know a good number of each other’s joys and sorrows, triumphs and disasters, and many giggles and hiccups in between. I suppose the sign of a good friend is that you can show them your ugly…. reveal your worst side…. admit your shames…. knowing that they’ll take the bad with the good, knowing that they’ll not judge, knowing that between you, when all else fails, you can push the boat out together. Here’s to pushing the boat out….

And in more news I was Slimmer of the Month (and Week) at the end of January....! Time to push the boat out....