That Was The Year That Was

What do I know?

As screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride) wrote in his 1982 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade

Nobody Knows Anything

And looking back to January 2020, I could not have predicted that I would live through historic times:

• the stout guarding of George Eliot’s statue in Nuneaton Market Square in case any protestors felt the need to vandalise the author of Mill on the Floss;
• the (final) Brexit deal, heralding months and years of further bureaucratic wrangling (thank goodness the deal is “oven-ready”) but hopefully there is an end to the Tory EuroPsychoDrama which distracts, deflects and divides;
• the clear and democratic defeat of President Trump in a corrosive American election;
• the clamping down by Chinese authorities on civil liberties in Hong Kong;
• the (to date) almost 83,000,000 cases and almost 2,000,000 deaths from a global, deadly pandemic.

What I DO know.

I know I’ve done a lot of local walking, completed a lot of jigsaw puzzles, re-read Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son, read a lot of other books (including my book of the year, Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet), watched a lot of TV, attended lectures, interviews and Tai Chi classes online, watched theatre online and extracted every ounce of pleasure I could from the family and friends I’ve managed to see with the changing (and sometimes confusing) restrictions, lockdown and tiers. I know one daughter was furloughed for a time (and has worked from her home for much of the time.) I know another daughter continued training to become a nurse (including working on Covid wards and now helping deliver the vaccine.) I know my wife attended French and ballet classes and a book group online and I know she continued to work (safely) at a local Food Bank which, in 2010, delivered 600 bags a year and currently delivers 600 bags a week…. anyone care to speculate what social policies have led to the increase in the demand for food parcels?

Rainbows everywhere

In windows, on hillsides, in the sky…. Rainbows expressed appreciation towards key workers. Compassion, kindness and solidarity triumphed over selfishness after the initial panic of the approaching first lockdown and before the cynicism of the Autumn. The environment bounced back. Birds filled the air. Nature triumphed. In the Spring and Summer children rode bicycles freely on emptier-than-usual roads. Until this year the record for the speed of developing a vaccine was held by the 1960s mumps jab, but the glory (and hard work) of scientists cooperating around the world have produced two safe and effective vaccines for Covid-19 within a year, and a third vaccine is imminent. Hopefully the days are over for those who believe Michael Gove’s soundbite that “people have had enough of experts….” (Particularly those who never heard Gove’s pitiful attempts to wriggle out of saying it in the months following.)

Women-led countries

An analysis by academics at Liverpool and Reading Universities of the initial governmental policy responses to Covid-19 up to 19th May, adjusted for variables (GDP, population density etc), concluded that countries led by women handled the pandemic “systematically and significantly better” than those led by men, particularly ones following a populist agenda (take a bow, Trump, Bolsanaro and BoJo.) So, let’s hear it for Finland’s Sanna Marin, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Germany’s Angela Merkel. “When women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”

So, looking back through the diary of my little life for 2020, what did I comment upon?

January & February 2020

• Confirmation reaches the UK Media that Chinese people are dying of a novel virus, probably originating in a wet market in Wuhan. (As the weeks go by, I convince myself that my 33 days of coughing and high temperature in November and December of 2019 are not connected. I am NOT Patient Zero.) The Republican-controlled Senate acquits President Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstructing congress; in February President Trump tells a rally that the now-identified Covid-19 virus will be gone by April.

In my little life I saw Cats, Little Women, Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker, Jojo Rabbit, EMMA. and Parasite at the cinema. At the theatre I saw King John, A Museum in Baghdad and The Whip at the RSC, the musical Gypsy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Ballet Rambert at Bradford Alhambra and I went to a Van Gogh audio-visual display in York. I enjoyed a cheese and wine evening in Leeds with a pal, attended a school reunion in Wakefield and marvelled at the National Space Centre in Leicester. To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Sally and I chugged along on a steam train with Prosecco and afternoon tea. (Meanwhile, Covid-19 rolls down the line to Italy….)

March & April 2020

• The World Health Organisation declares that Covid-19 is a pandemic, Italy goes into full lockdown and, after increasing clamour from health experts, the UK government locks down, and the “Clap for Carers” begins on Thursday nights at 8pm. For a fortnight, supermarkets struggle to fill shelves with particular items. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister is diagnosed with Covid-19 and Keir Starmer becomes Labour leader. Captain Tom Moore becomes a hero by doing laps of his garden on a zimmer frame and raising £32m for the NHS. The Queen reassures the nation. President Trump suggests injecting bleach and bringing light inside the body (worth quoting verbatim for the record):

"I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs…. I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too... So, we'll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute - that's pretty powerful."

In my little life I saw Dark Waters, Military Wives and Onward at the cinema and Acosta Danza (Carlos Acosta dance group) at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. They were the final trips to the cinema and theatre until the Autumn because of lockdown or tier restrictions. Final meals out, final family gatherings, the beginnings of Skype and Zoom group calls, the scheduling of WALKING began. Emily returned home to live in our attic in isolation as she worked on a “hot ward” and subsequently recovered from what was almost certainly Covid symptoms. My niece, and then my sister, were diagnosed with (and hospitalised by) Covid-19 in April – thankfully both went on to recover. NT Live, YouTube, quality TV and lectures online filled time and Tai Chi classes switched to online.

May & June 2020

• Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s claim of delivering 100,000 Covid tests a day is debunked when he has to admit that what he meant was that the bulk of them had been put in the post. UK government credibility is undermined by advisor Dominic Cummings’s ludicrous version of his trip to County Durham and Barnard Castle. George Floyd, an unarmed black man, is unlawfully killed by police in Minneapolis. Marcus Rashford leads a successful campaign for free school meals for disadvantaged children.

In my little life I attended my first Zoom funeral (very impressive) and phrases like “socially distanced” became ubiquitous. The Hay Festival successfully broadcast its talks and performances online. Our future holidays were cancelled. We got a new bed and in May became an “empty nest” again.

July & August 2020

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak launches an Eat Out To Help Out scheme to revive the hospitality industry. Joe Biden chooses Kamala Harris as a running mate to stand against Donald Trump later in the year. The awarding of GCSE and A Level results is a fiasco that was predicted and could easily have been avoided and the hapless Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, keeps his job after the first of what seems like a series of gaffes and U-turns that continues through the rest of the year.

In my little life we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary with a picnic and walk on Penistone Hill. We were able to meet friends in the garden – but only until August 1st. The birth of Great Niece Charlotte added new life to the wider Johnson clan, a welcome miracle in the middle of the year. The RSC started broadcasting the Talking Shakespeare series of interviews. Pre-Covid arrangements and maskless supermarket shopping seemed to be a very distant memory.

September & October 2020

• The “world-beating” (organised by the PM’s private sector chums) Test and Trace system fails as schools and office workers return at the same time to superspread Covid-19 and kickstart the second wave of infections. Jacinda Ardern wins a landslide victory in the New Zealand elections having shown clear leadership in dealing with the pandemic. Having publicly argued with the Mayors of Middlesborough and Manchester about regional lockdown rules, Boris Johnson announces a second national lockdown for November.

In my little life I went to the cinema once: The Perfect Candidate and, gloriously, went to Leeds Playhouse to see some socially distanced theatre: Orpheus in the Record Shop, Krapp’s Last Tape and La Voix Humaine. My 60th birthday came and went without pomp but with good food, a terrific hike and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

November & December 2020

• The second national lockdown makes some, but not enough, impact on the rising cases of Covid-19 but the world celebrates as a German-Turkish couple, Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, produce an effective vaccine at Pfizer. Dominic Cummings (and Lee Cain) exit from UK power struggles in 10 Downing Street and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris decisively win the US Presidential election with a bigger margin than Trump beat Clinton in 2016. A 90-year old grandmother from Coventry, Margaret Keenan, becomes the first (non-clinical-trial) person in the world to receive a fully-tested and approved Covid vaccine. Second in line for the jab in Warwickshire was 81-year old William Shakespeare….!

In my little life, I squeezed in one cinema trip: Uncle Vanya and was deliriously happy when the US election made sense of my hope in humanity. I started my re-reading of all Shakespeare’s works with Two Gentlemen of Verona and we began having posh takeaways delivered once a week to “celebrate” another week survived. As the year ended we managed to see a good number of friends in outdoor venues and the Christmas spirit endured in spite of the government’s poor communication skills.

So what next?

It would be good to think that 2021 will be the year when lessons learned from the pandemic begin to bear fruit. That....

• the “rat race” is not the only way to live
• home working is possible
• a long daily commute is not conducive to good living
• nature is indispensable
• a cleaner environment is achievable
• community resources are value for money
• the arts bring entertainment, inspiration and solace to millions
• local expertise is invaluable
• experts are worth attending to
• heroes come in all shapes, sizes, creeds and colour
• an equal right for one is an equal right for all
• carers, volunteers and key workers are more important in a crisis than pin-striped hedge-fund managers
• compassion and kindness are free
• the welfare state is as precious as the NHS
• magic money trees are not and have never been real – because where there’s a (political) will, there’s a (financial) way.

New Year. New Decade. Welcome to the future....  

Talking Shakespeare Yksi (One)

Outer images from last Christmas, inner images from 2020 prep

Member Benefits

Christmas is a-coming – a few purchases have now been made (mincemeat mixed, Christmas cake being “fed” monthly, a few gifts have been wrapped….) I’m allowing Christmas to infiltrate my life in November having, in the sixty previous years, banned all thoughts until December 1st but in this Covidacious year I take pleasure however and whenever I can. (Full disclosure: Sally still wears The Christmas Crown and is entirely responsible for the spicy aromas of fruity baking.) One advantage of having a Royal Shakespeare Company membership is being granted access to resources giving insights into the ongoing bottomless chasm of Shakespeare exploration. During both lockdowns a number of actors are giving interviews under the title Talking Shakespeare and that is just what they did. I’ll post about them all in due course, a few at a time….

Greg Doran intervewing Adjoa Andoh, Ray Fearon, Judi Dench and Alex Gilbreath

Adjoa Andoh and Ray Fearon

• Adjoa Andoh, known for Doctor Who and Casualty, is known to me especially for two stunning performances: as Ulysees in Troilus and Cressida and as an astonishing Richard II in an all-black, all-female production of Richard II at The Globe. Her interview ranged widely over all her Shakespearean roles but, most powerfully, about her personal life and commitment to community work.
• Ray Fearon revealed how he fell into acting by accident and started performing in amateur community projects. He was inspired when working as an extra in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money to (successfully) apply for Rose Bruford drama school. He worked at Liverpool Everyman and Manchester’s Royal Exchange before rising through the ranks at both the RSC and the National Theatre. His big breaks at the RSC came in a touring production of Romeo and Juliet and then (his third) Othello with the frisson of his Desdemona being played by his Juliet, Zoe Waites. He gave a moving account of his experience playing Pericles, a magnificent performance that stuck in my own mind when I saw it, and then talked about the sensational all-black Julius Caesar when he played a scarily dangerous Mark Antony.

Adjoa Andoh in Richard II and Troilus and Cressida, Ray Fearon in Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet and Othello

Judi Dench and Alexandra Gilbreath

• Judi Dench revealed herself to be the trooper she is and went the furthest back in time to her childhood in York and her early appearances at the Old Vic before marking off virtually all of Shakespeare’s heroines in her 70-year career. She talked about some of her legendary performances with typical humility – and plenty of funny anecdotes – but came up to date with her recent stage work that I’ve been lucky enough to witness live, in Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merry Wives (musical) of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale.
• Alexandra Gilbreath’s throaty tones have always drawn me in to her performances and she was enthusiastic and insightful about her major roles, all of which I saw in Stratford: Hermione (The Winter’s Tale), Juliet, Rosalind (As You Like It) Kate (The Taming of the Shrew), Olivia (Twelfth Night) and, alongside Judi Dench, in the musical version of Merry Wives.

Judi Dench in Macbeth, Merry Wives, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Alex Gilbreath in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale

Athens of the North

Drizzly in Saltaire, cold in Edinburgh
“Cast ne’er a clout, till May be out….” my Mum used to say. And a feature of Retirement seems to be paying closer attention to the weather than I ever have before. Is Spring over? Have we jumped Summer? Is the Jekyll & Hyde weather connected to global warming? Be still, my beating heart, because another aspect of Retirement is taking a mid-week (term-time) break in Edinburgh, Scotland’s fine capital.

New Town, Old Town, Princes Street, the Athens of the North

Food, drink and a room with a view
The gargantuan dark edifices of Old Town and the benevolent strand of Princes Street Gardens anchor the city for all eternity, but we also spent time parading round New Town’s Georgian elegance, visiting the squares and churches built to lift the volcanic city out of its Burke&Hare reputation. As ever, food and drink were on the menu and I can recommend Veeno’s (where we had a lovely lunch on Day One) and Wedgewood (where we had a fancy dinner on Day Two) but, better than both, was eating in the home of old friends from university, one of whom was the subject of a book launch (mine in 2022?)

Literary Edinburgh: Dorward, Spark, Boswell & Johnson....

The Human Kind
was the book, launched in Edinburgh at Waterstone’s on Princes Street. The author was Edinburgh GP, Dr Peter Dorward, and the subtitle says it all: A Doctor’s Stories from the Heart of Medicine. I always felt Peter, like Sally, was a cultured and literary medic, a man who discussed patients not conditions and who, back in the heady days of learning at the University of Manchester in the 1980s, didn’t fit into the debauched world of medical training (I’m sure it’s all much more civilised these days.) His book is part-memoir, part-reflection on a career dealing with ethical, moral, economic and humanitarian issues whilst simultaneously attempting to keep in mind the individual human consulting about their…. disease…. injury…. distress…. ShitLifeSyndrome…. A masterpiece of philosophical rumination on the current state of the NHS – very personal, highly recommended.

Hotel Indigo on Princes Street, the lovely room 203....

Literary Edinburgh
The Athens of the North is a fitting place to think about books with monuments to Burns, Scott and Stevenson everywhere, including in our hotel where our room was plastered with facsimiles of the original edition of Kenneth Graham’s Wind in the Willows. Happily our literary experience was not all male as we stumbled into the Library of Scotland where there was an entertaining exhibition about the comically sinister and waspishly poetic Muriel Spark whose words in her most famous book are an apt place to end:

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

A Room with a View and, among highlights, Gladstone's Land with its secret-filled ceiling....

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....

To Infinity and Beyond

Boldly going....

Bradford’s National Science + Media Museum
Guess what’s on display at the Science + Media Museum in Bradford? It’s the final parachute and the small (savagely-burned) Soyuz capsule that brought Tim Peake back to Earth in June 2016 after his six month mission to the International Space Station. The capsule is remarkable – it looks ancient, it looks small, it contained three crew members! You can take a selfie in an astronaut suit and (book to) experience a Virtual Reality descent to Earth wearing goggles, guided by Major Peake. The display has already been to London and will be going to York, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. If you can’t make it to Bradford (between now and November 19th), then try and catch it elsewhere. It didn’t take long to see everything in the display but it filled up my imagination for many days.

"The smells of Earth are just so strong"
Tim Peake’s mission covered a distance of over 100 million kilometres and orbited Earth around 3,000 times. The pictures he sent back for publication were incredible and made a mockery of the ephemeral political intricacies of the human race. Asked how he felt after landing, Maj Peake said: "Truly elated, the smells of Earth are just so strong, just so good to be back on Earth. I'll look forward to seeing the family."


Into the stars
I’m still on a breathing space break from writing my YA trilogy after finishing Book One Draft One but, if I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll reveal that it’s set on another planet – over a thousand years into the future when Earth has had to be abandoned. I feel confident that I’m writing speculative fiction rather than fantasy because the Tim Peake/Soyuz display and follow up research convinces me that humans could survive on a number of planets in the universe. If we rechannelled the money we spent on arms and weapons of mass destruction to the exploration of outer space we would soon be giving our future destinations names. Maybe one could be called Rhenium like the planet in my book…

Fish Finger Butties

Back in Yorkshire
After a week on Anglesey it was good to touch down in time to catch the final afternoon of the Saltaire Festival. The beaches, castles, walks and bridges of north Wales will appear in a future blog but, for now, I’m commemorating the joys of tucking in to a Fish Finger Butty (with a glass of prosecco!), listening to the music and soaking up the atmosphere of my adopted “village”, Saltaire. (I noticed I was not alone in gravitating towards the Fish Finger Heaven stand….)

A sense of place; images of Saltaire including the day of the Tour de Yorkshire

Sense of place
I’ve written elsewhere about the concept of “home” (having felt roots in Wakefield, Manchester, Stratford-upon-Avon, Helsinki, Sheffield, Leek, Bingley, Badby, Dorking and even in Sorrento, Italy and Wengen, Switzerland….) One good thing about Saltaire, though, is that it has risen to a sense of itself through a series of cultural and entrepreneurial decisions. When Jonathan Silver invested in the purchasing of Salt’s Mill in 1987 he boosted the local economy, leisure and work opportunities and promoted David Hockney’s work through gallery space in the converted mill. Regular events like the Advent Windows or the Open Gardens ensure there are often reasons to walk around the World Heritage site. So it’s always good to come “home.”

2017 Saltaire Festival - band at top = the excellent Backyard Burners

Soaring Tethered

Breakfast, dinner, tea
School dinners were always school dinners during the 1960s and 1970s. You gave the teacher your “dinner money.” I can’t remember when I started talking about lunch when I meant dinner. I haven’t graduated to dinner to mean tea and still say “what’re we having for tea?” (meaning what many call dinner.) Supper was always supper. Then a few years ago I learned some people talk about “kitchen supper” but I always thought of supper as being in your pyjamas sitting in front of the coal fire….(usually bread and dripping or a crumpet toasted on a toasting fork.) I can’t imagine sitting in the kitchen having supper….

Class
I imagined as a child I would always be working class. Then I did A Levels, went to the University of Manchester, lived abroad in Finland for a year and became a teacher. At what point on that journey did I become middle class? Does it matter? Why even think about it? Is it a social invention to keep people in line and control them? Does class exist? It clearly obsesses the British nation, and often troubles, niggles and unsettles me. I think it confuses and divides people. Two related memories have stuck in my mind.

Memory One
The first memory was on the night before being taken to university (in my older brother, Mick’s, car; my parents never owned a car.) I sat on the stairs in my house on Eastmoor Estate in Wakefield and wept like a baby – barrels of snot pouring down my chin – wishing I wasn’t always called the “brainy one.” Within a month or so at university I’d got over that feeling and was reading like a madman and writing essays that were competitively brainy (so brainy that when I came across one recently I didn’t understand the argument one bit.) So my grief about leaving home was short-lived. Something drove me on to devour education and aspire to be as brainy as possible. (Though lacking in common sense, as I think my wife, daughters and sister might testify….)

Burst balloon – memory two
The second memory I have is of listening to one of my favourite writers, Alan Garner, lecture about his own dislocation from his “class.” He was lecturing about writing and mental health and being honest about a personal experience when he felt he had had a nervous breakdown. He saw education and moving away from home akin to being blown up like a balloon. The balloon gets bigger and floats away, getting bigger, seeing further and wider, getting perspective, gaining height. Sometimes the balloon bursts. (How he felt about his own nervous breakdown.) The balloon needs sticking back together. Patching up. Before it can be inflated again. Sometimes, though, the balloon floats but it remains tethered to the ground, to its base, to where it came from. And it can be pulled back to its roots and bounce back again freely when it wants. And soar. And return. And soar again. Soaring tethered.

Train to Jane Austen's Bath

Early morning train
After the moving tributes in St Ann’s Square to the Manchester arena victims, and the exuberant production of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Sally and I boarded a very early morning train at the reopened Manchester Victoria rail station and trundled down the country to Bath. This was a pre-booked birthday present – having a fancy meal on a fancy train.

Belmond Northern Belle
Shiny cutlery, starched linen, elegant crockery, roomy seats, inlaid-wood panelling, attentive staff and a feeling that we were in for an Agatha Christie train ride. Ideally there would be no murders on the Belmond Northern Belle but there would be time to scoff and quaff and watch the world go by – hedges, fields, livestock, towns, roads, stations, counties. England went by.

"I do like it so very much...."
Jane Austen had, at best, an ambiguous relationship with Bath; but she recognised its primacy as a place of display, of mating rituals, of society gossip and an embodiment of the tension between society’s hypocritical constraints and the potential joy of social and romantic interaction. The Jane Austen Centre is not an ex-residency of the impeccable writer but, as an entertaining museum, it conjures an excellent account of her life and times, as does the refurbished Royal Crescent Number One. We’ve been to Bath before, staggering round the cobbles on a spa/walking tour/fun-filled mid-week break. And this trip was a short one, a bonus sandwich in the middle of the luxury of an old-fashioned train ride. But it is easy to understand why Catherine Morland is moved to say in Chapter 10 of Northanger Abbey:

“I really believe I shall always be talking of Bath, when I am at home again – I do like it so very much.”

Half agony, half hope

Foam party
Attending a production of Jane Austen’s Persuasion at Manchester’s Royal Exchange I didn’t anticipate foam falling from the gantry, Louisa Musgrave in a bikini and Captain Wentworth in swimming shorts and the pair of them doing body slides through the foam. And who’s this strutting in speedos? None other than Mr William Walter Elliot. This was the scene at Lyme Regis. Anne Elliot, naturally, kept her top clothes on. To be fair to the director/designer, the original text refers to swimming so there is purist justification. But what the production did, I think, was capture the spirit of the scene by the seaside – unbridled joy ending in the famous fall from The Cobb by the impetuous Louisa.
Much needed injection of Austen
It was after being moved at the floral/balloon tribute to the Manchester arena victims in St Ann’s Square (blog here) that we had a meal at one of my favourite places, the Royal Exchange, and attended press night for this visually updated but linguistically intact adaptation of Jane Austen’s final novel, the title of which was provided by her loving brother, Henry. The adaptation by James Yeatman and all the performances captured the novel intelligently and exuberantly in my opinion. The satire of romantic attitudes was present, the economic brutality of the position for women was in-built into the plot, the feminist anchor of the differences between women and men was laid bare by the interactions. And through it all Lara Rossi as Anne ploughed a road, a lonely road, a fierce road, a determined road towards a final resolution standing together with Frederick Wentworth, their future road not necessarily happy but hopeful and honest. Great companion piece in my theatrical memories of the production we saw at Bolton Octagon of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which may have been less theatrically inventive but was definitely in the same vein of hard-won love conquering all.

Jeff James – Director
Alex Lowde – Designer
Lucy Carter – Lighting Design
Ben and Max Ringham – Music and Sound Design
Dramaturg – James Yeatman

Geraldine Alexander – Lady Russell/Mrs Croft
Antony Bunsee – Sir Walter Elliot/Admiral Croft
Helen Cripps – Mary Musgrove (née Elliot)
Samuel Edward-Cook – Captain Frederick Wentworth
Cassie Layton – Elizabeth Elliot/Louisa Musgrove
Caroline Moroney – Mrs Clay/Henrietta Musgrove
Lara Rossi – Anne Elliot
Dorian Simpson – Charles Musgrove
Arthur Wilson – Edmund Hayter/Captain Benwick/Mr WW Elliot

Rehearsal photographer: Johan Persson; all photographs in collages from the website of The Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester

Summer of discontent

Time will tell
And so one year on from the (dishonest) EU referendum:

• the Brexit negotiations have begun with a weakened Tory PM who has yet to agree a “confidence and supply” deal with the DUP
• traumatic terrorist events in Manchester and London have tested the stretched NHS and the cut police forces and depleted emergency services
• the burnt tomb of the Grenfell Tower stands as a metaphorical testament to government and council priorities
• the gulf between rich and poor in the UK remains wide and is getting wider

Déjà Vu
These days feel like the late 1970s and the “winter of discontent” and I have an abiding feeling that we are heading towards social riots like the ones in the early 1980s. The government needs to restore all the public services to a positive footing where they are not constantly pressured by overwork and diminishing resources. Otherwise, even the heroic emergency services and police forces will struggle if the country descends into riotous anarchy. England has a long history of outbreaks of anarchy. This (potential) summer of discontent contains all the requisite ingredients. Maybe everything will settle down….

Nil desperandum (don’t despair)
I’m finding it hard to maintain my Glass Half Full approach to life at the moment. I need to remember that the sun (sometimes) shines, gardens grow, water runs, food is delicious, wine beckons at the weekend, beer goes well with barbecues, books can be read, pianos can be played, culture continues to entertain and provoke…. I’ll write some non-political blogs after this one…. for a while at least…. Nil desperandum.