Enter Owen

The Capacity for Love

It’s not an original experience, I know, but I did spend some time feeling bewildered about whether or not I would be able to love a second grandchild as much as the first. Bewilderment is now in the past, faded to nothing, evaporated into a faraway haze. Reader, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the chambers of the heart expand mightily when love comes a-knocking.

Hello there, Owen Thomas                                                      

Fortune has smiled upon this baby. He arrived and we learned his name, second son to Harriet & Chris, brother to Samuel Miles, nephew to Emily, grandchild to Sally & Tony. Plus he has another family of cousins, an auntie and a grandma in the Midlands. And there’ll be a whole tribe of neighbours and friends around to create “Owen’s village.”

The basics

It’s easy to forget how, for a good number of weeks, it’s all about the food, the poo, the wee, the comfort, the sleep. Oh, the sleep, please Grant Them Sleep! And this time around there’s a 2-year-old to care for, keep entertained, and integrate into the newly fresh routines.

The future – the hope and the promise

Eleanor Roosevelt said “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” I know I can be irrationally sentimental, but it is hard not to see Hope and Promise in the presence of a little baby – no cynicism, no worries, no knowledge of evil, no pressures from social media or society – just survival and growth. Potential.

Two brothers

Sam has already shown tenderness to his younger brother, talking to him, reading to him. What kind of relationship will Sam and Owen develop as they live together in the same house for at least sixteen more years? So much potential for silliness, skirmishes, support and love.

Reach for Shakespeare

Sam can already identify the image of Shakespeare and he has a couple of books with characters from the plays. So far he has enjoyed Extracts from The Sonnets, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet (minus the stabbings.) What came into my heart when I held Owen for the first time was Ophelia’s line from Hamlet:

"We know what we are but know not what we may be."

Lockdown Shakespeare

Clockwise from top left: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest - all currently on BBC iPlayer

April 23rd
Every year (from 23rd March which is my Mum’s birthday) I start to anticipate 23rd April – yes, St George’s day, but more profoundly for me, the day when Shakespeare died and the day when he was likely born (given that he was baptised on 26th April 1564 and the common practice in Elizabethan times was to baptise three days after the birth.) In the front room in my childhood home there was the family Bible, a set of encyclopedias and a Complete Works of William Shakespeare, complete with Fuseli plates. I never thought to ask my parents (and it is now too late) how Shakespeare got into our house. But the book proved, for me, a doorway to a surprising, inspiring, mind-bending landscape of love, friendship, murder, passion, betrayal, pride, violence, jealousy, redemption, tenderness and magic. Every story was told with memorable language, sometimes exquisite poetry, sometimes impenetrable jokes or confusing grammar; but, despite some difficult bits, on every page, certain words and phrases bounced out and tickled my fancy….  What a pleasure it has been to revisit some of the productions I’ve seen on the BBC iPlayer (Shakespeare in Quarantine) or as part of the NTLive YouTube broadcasts.

NT Live screenings of: Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra

Puck's Glen

Somewhere over the rainbow
Our first day in our holiday house in Inveruel began with a rainbow over the loch (second photo in previous post) before setting off with backpacks containing a fine picnic into the wilds of western Scotland. Five go on an adventure….

Puck’s Glen
Puck’s Glen felt like the route to Rivendell in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And it had the same name as a well-known character from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So the magical features of both those works of fantasty fiction infiltrated my mind as we crossed wooden bridges, climbed moss-covered stones, gaped at picturesque waterfalls and ascended to a high ridge overlooking a panoramic view of this section of the Argyll Forest Park. At times you had to pinch yourself that you were in Scotland and not in a tropical rain forest with the proliferation of wild (and sometimes giant) ferns and with the rivulets and cascades appearing on every bend, bouncing off ledges, tumbling round corners. Douglas firs towered above us along the way, so emerging on the high ridge at the top of this dramatic gorge, Puck’s Glen, felt like quite an achievement to start our week in Scotland.

Cursed Child

The Palace Theatre and the walk to Top Withins

All is well

“The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.” Thus ended the seven books of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, a set of books I cannot praise too highly, as a retired teacher, for their readability and cultural impact during the time of the rise of mobile devices. My daughters “grew up” with the series paralleling the school years and troubles of Harry, Hermione and Ron (and Luna and Neville and Ginny and Draco and Dobby and Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks and Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape….) and the cavalcade of characters, good and bad, complex and straightforward that continue to exercise the loyalties of readers the world over. It was inevitable that one day we would end up seeing “book 8” in its stage form and patience paid off as Harriet secured tickets for the two parts of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Armed with Alex from Badby, a Younger Muggle for protection against interference from the Dark Arts of the railway system, we spent the last Saturday of June at the Palace Theatre.

Badby Barbecue

Who is the Cursed Child?

Since we faithfully promised at the theatre that we would Keep The Secrets, there will be no answer here to the question of Who is the Cursed Child but in typical J K Rowling fashion, the answer’s debatable. I managed to steer clear of the script, all reviews and any spoilers, so when the lights went down, I confess I was expecting something tourist-friendly and a bit theme-parky but within minutes I was hooked. By the twists of the narrative, the depth of characterisation, the connections to the Wizarding World’s canon, the bravura theatricality, the commitment of the cast (Jamie Ballard as the grown-up Harry Potter! – working every bit as intensely as when I’ve seen him before on stage as Antonio, Angelo, Hamlet, Mercutio, Flute and in Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean.) Given the huge fan base, the production was way better than it need have been and the themes perfectly in keeping with the Harry Potter universe. How do parents shape the characters and destinies of their children? It was a profound climax to Harriet’s “birthday season” in 2018, the other highlight of which was tramping up to the cobweb-blowing meaning-of-life moorlands at Top Withins.

There is a world elsewhere

Productions during the 2017 summer school

70th anniversary of the summer school
I’ve just finished attending the 70th anniversary of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Summer School. There are some attendees who remember seeing Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh perform in Stratford in Titus Andronicus in 1955. Four years later delegates saw a season including Paul Robeson in Othello, Charles Laughton in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dame Edith Evans in both All’s Well That Ends Well and Coriolanus (the latter also with Olivier.) Imagine.

Faces of the RSC summer school 2017: Janet Suzman, Katy Stephens, Ray Fearon, Tony Byrne, Nia Gwynne, David Troughton, Erica Whyman, Chuk Iwuji, Dr Elizabeth Sandis, Miles Tandy, Penny Downie, Suzanne Burden, Michael Billington, Jacqui O'Hanlon, Dr Maria Evans, Matthew Tennyson, Prof Michael Dobson, Prof Russell Jackson, Gavin Fowler

31st anniversary for me….
My first summer school was in 1986, the year I married Sally, and the year The Swan theatre opened in Stratford-upon-Avon. I haven’t been every single year since then, but more years than not and, like with Shakespeare himself, there are surprises every year.

Roman season
This year it’s all about Ancient Rome. So all four of Shakespeare’s Roman plays are being staged: Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus at the moment and  Coriolanus later in the year. There is a spoof new play based on Plautus by Phil Porter, charmingly titled Vice Versa (or the Decline and Fall of General Braggadocio at the hands of his canny servant Dexter and Terence the Monkey) which can only be described as the love child of Carry On – Up Pompeii – Panto On Weed. Sitting between these offerings was a gay-focused version of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé with a male actor in the role of the dancing princess.

Decapitations, songs, stabbings, dances, neck-breakings, love scenes….
They say variety is the spice of life and the theatrical sights veered between grisly shocks and tender vignettes. All of the productions offered a new angle or fresh perspective on the characters or themes. Over it all soared the language of Shakespeare and Wilde (and the thumping doggerel of Phil Porter, acting like a satyr dance or bergomask to the season.) During the day lectures by people like the rigorous Dame Janet Suzman and the visionary Erica Whyman commented on the season, the plays, the RSC and the state of theatre and the world in 2017. As Coriolanus himself says, “There is a world elsewhere….” There were no overt attempts to make the plays relevant to today’s political upheavals but it was impossible to ignore the parallels and hear echoes of our current world. As Ben Jonson wrote in the First Folio,

“Soul of the Age!....
He was not of an age, but for all time!”

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Exhibition

All time and all places
As if to underline the Shakespeare Everywhere theme, a new exhibition at The Birthplace explores active involvement in Shakespeare in a group of Asian countries. To some Shakespeare is all about the overthrow of tyrants; to some he is the epitome of justice and mercy; to others he is the key to unlocking the freedom of the imagination and creativity. He is, to me, all these things and many more – a body of work, a fascinating point in history, an explosion of language and dramatic situations.

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

Shakespeare Imagery: to Bard or not to Bard....

Harrogate Flower Show

A coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers

A sunny day, a birthday voucher for Sally, a day out at the Harrogate Flower Show. Who knew that the world of flowers could be so competitive and cut-throat? Thousands, clearly, judging from our visit to the 2017 Harrogate Flower Show.
Away before me to sweet beds of flowers;
Love thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers
Occupying a section of the show ground for the Great Yorkshire Show, the event featured plenty to see (and smell and experience) in the way of garden designs, plants, flower arrangements and creative interpretations. Northern colleges produced weird car bonnet floral displays. There was an awesome section called HortCouture which presented fabulously unique costumes in flower and nature designs. New Zealander Jenny Gillies’s creations were stunning. A night at the Oscars was celebrated with platforms inspired by particular films. Historical themes were interpreted, specific challenges were offered, fashion designers were celebrated. Food and drink were easy to come by and, being in Yorkshire, typically eclectic. We enjoyed champagne with sausage rolls and pie. The comments of the judges were left for people to see and it was fascinating to hear visitors argue with each other about what the judges had written. I went with few expectations really, just a pleasant day out, and came away with the sense that flower shows are gladitatorial and epic.

These flowers are like the pleasures of the world

“Here’s a few flowers” says Belarius in Cymbeline planning a forest burial for a dead boy that he has known only for a short time. As ever in Shakespeare there are depths and complications with this flowery event. We know that the boy is a girl and that she isn’t dead but drugged with a potion that simulates death. We also know that she is the sister of Belarius’s two sons, reared in the forest wild. We also know that Belarius effectively kidnapped the boys so he is nobody’s father, just a good man who made a drastic decision and has now become a solid and beloved (adoptive, woodland) father. And to tighten the spring even further, in comes the two boys to add another body to the grave, a headless corpse of someone that, given the chance, would have raped the boy/girl. But now he’s (literally) lost his head. “Here’s a few flowers” – a simple line but concealing a world of passion and drama. “Harrogate Flower Show” – a simple-sounding event but containing battles and creations and inventions and judgements and tears and laughter. Who knew? (I do, now.)

Walling in and walling out

Walls: walling in or walling out or falling down or being pulled down?

Walls, walls, walls

Walls protect, yes, but walls are also forbidding barriers, and they can form a prison, and they can be a symbol of loneliness or isolation. Blank walls staring out have been used over centuries to depict intractability as well as inertia. Shirley Valentine talked to the kitchen wall in her domestic solitude, Pink Floyd sang about Another Brick In The Wall, Achilles chased Hector three times around the walls of Troy, Joshua marched around the walls of Jericho and then brought them a-tumbling down with shouts and rams’ horns. As Robert Frost wrote:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.

Pink Floyd, Jericho walls, walls of Troy, Shirley Valentine

Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show….

Quince: This man with lime and rough-cast doth present
Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;
And through Wall’s chink, poor souls, they are content
To whisper….

Tom Snout plays Wall in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Sinister cranny

Wall: In this same interlude it doth befall
That I, one Snout by name, present a Wall;
And such a Wall, as I would have you think,
That had in it a crannied hole or chink,
Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe,
Did whisper often, very secretly.
This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show
That I am that same Wall; the truth is so:
And this the cranny is, right and sinister,
Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper….

Cursed be thy stones

Pyramus: O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!
O night, which ever art when day is not!
O night, O night! alack, alack, alack,
I fear my Thisbe’s promise is forgot!
And thou, O Wall, O sweet, O lovely Wall,
That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!
Thou Wall, O Wall, O sweet and lovely Wall,
Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eye!
Thanks, courteous Wall: Jove shield thee well for this!
But what see I? No Thisbe do I see.
O wicked Wall, through whom I see no bliss!
Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me….

Human Rights March in Leeds in response to President Trump's policies - proud of Sally, Harriet, Maggie and Christine and all the rest who attended

This vile Wall

Thisbe: O Wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,
For parting my fair Pyramus and me!
My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones*,
Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee…. 
Pyramus: O kiss me through the hole of this vile Wall!
Thisbe: I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all.

*Stones, of course, are Elizabethan slang for balls/knackers/testicles and – hole – well, the precise hole being kissed depends on which chink the actor playing Snout offers up…. 

Many American landscapes are awe-inspiring; countless aspects of American culture are having a positive influence on the world; and I know and love people in America:

• Inspiring world figures like Mohammed Ali, Neil Armstrong, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks;
• Novelists like Harper Lee, Kerry Madden, John Steinbeck, Anne Tyler;
• Playwrights like Edward Albee, Lillian Hellman, Tony Kushner, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Sam Shepherd, Tennessee Williams;
• Poets like Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Bishop, ee cummings, Emily Dickinson, TS Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound; 

– these are, dare I say it, tremendous people, without thinking too hard about who to include, not to even begin mentioning singers and actors…. Tom Hanks, Katherine Hepburn, Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, for heavens’ sake, to name but four…! Is this a country that needs a Wall? A country whose current manifestation and wealth has been created from immigration? When birds fly around the globe, do they see borders?

Mending Wall

Genius satirical banners in the UK courtesy of The Poke

Robert Frost’s celebrated (American) poem Mending Wall was first published in 1914, right on the brink of the First World War. I haven’t seen it printed yet in the context of President Trump’s policies so here it is. “Good fences make good neighbours” is what the neighbour in the poem repeats (twice) but the poem has a tension that pulls away from that cliché and more potent are other lines that are repeated: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

Thanks to The Poke

Brief personal thoughts on Mending Wall

In Spring, two neigbours walk the wall between their properties to make repairs – is there a reason for this wall to be built at all? There are no cows, just apple trees and pine trees. Should you summon “spells” to counteract “elves,” a whimsical idea that suggests wall-building is an ancient, outdated ritual, not suited to modern thinking. Maybe the act of building a wall is a chance to talk about boundaries, to talk about customs on either side of the wall, to negotiate why the wall is there. Could a wall be built as a sign of goodwill, mutual trust and cooperation? Or is the wall an act of aggression, a hostile barrier to community? If you place a boulder (a stone, a “loaf,” a ball) into the wall, one day it will fall down. Walls fall down. Sometimes they are pulled down. Has any wall ever “stood the test of time?” How jubilant the world was when the Berlin wall was brought a-tumbling down! We build walls, even when they are not needed. Some people break walls, even when they shouldn’t. The world carries on building walls regardless of whether or not they are effective. Like all great poems, all these ideas are wrapped up in the distilled metaphor of Frost’s Mending Wall.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Like an old-stone savage armed/He moves in darkness

Good fences make good neighbours! Do they? Do they REALLY, though? Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

When most I wink

Actual anniversary
Today is my Pearl Anniversary of being married to Sally on July 5th 1986. Thirty years, four houses, two daughters, and two careers later, we are celebrating by going out for a meal tonight. Over the weekend family and friends surrounded us but tonight we’ll be going it alone. Will we have enough to talk about after thirty years? I expect so.

Dud in the pit at Birmingham Hippodrome and afterwards in a Chinese restaurant

There are certain people….
People come and go in your life. Some are “little while” friends and some take root in unexpected ways. I met one such friend in 1979, before I’d met Sally, whose 1998 wedding in Italy I was honoured to attend (along with Sally, Emily and Harriet.) Dudley Phillips, for it is he, loves family, loves music, loves castles, loves reading, loves absurd humour, loves talking, loves listening, loves being quiet, loves eating, loves drinking, loves life – all loves I happily share. Our most recent meeting was prompted by his performance in the Colin Towns’ Mask Orchestra playing Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn music for David Bintley’s Shakespeare Suite for Birmingham Royal Ballet. Dud plays bass guitar thrummingly, dynamically and intricately, always supporting, always driving, always surprising.

Wink
The first piece, choreographed by Jessica Lang, was based on five Shakespeare’s sonnets read tenderly by Alfie Jones, taking as the starting point Sonnet 43 “When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see….” The sonnet can be paraphrased something like the following, and it is as good an expression of friendship as I know:

When I’m asleep, then I see clearly
For during the day I look at things I don’t care about
When I sleep I dream of you.
Your image brightens the darkness of sleep
You brighten the dark
You even brighten the day
Things seem clearer when I think of you.
Day seems like night until I see you
During the night it seems like day when I dream about you.

Dudley Phillips on bass and Wink

A group of ten dancers twisted, turned and lifted through pairs, trios and groups expressing heartbreak, joy, loss, love and anger. A raw violin dominated the music by Jacob Ciupinski, aching with longing, longing with ache.
The Moor’s Pavane
José Limón’s riff on Othello was less abstract and set to stately music by Purcell. The four dancers representing Othello, Desdemona, Iago and Emilia presented a palpable sense of abusive love, smothering emotions and violent outbursts. The contrast between the regular pulse of the music and the discordant actions and reactions between the four performers was deeply disturbing.

The Moor's Pavane

The Shakespeare Suite
The final piece, the highlight, David Bintley’s The Shakespeare Suite, with Dudley’s bass playing, surprised and delighted with sassy variations on Shakespeare plays: a virtuoso Hamlet, a punky Taming of the Shrew, a quirky Richard III, a gothic Macbeth, a comically lusty Midsummer Night’s Dream, a troubling Othello and a lyrical Romeo and Juliet. Each pairing (Kate/Petruchio, Richard III/Lady Anne, Macbeth/Lady Macbeth, Titania/Bottom, Othello/Desdemona and Romeo/Juliet) was scored with a different mood and strangely captured the essence of the whole play without any words at all. Hamlet leapt alone but was surrounded by the other dancers in more abstract outfits symbolising different aspects of his personality (or so I thought….) The designs were startlingly bold (Costumes: Jasper Conran; Lighting: Peter Teigan and Steven Scott.) The Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn music was sexy, strutting, prowling and funny – switching and purring, changing and swinging as the pairings paraded. One of the best things I’ve seen (and heard) this year!

Loyal, Dependable, Non-judgemental, Honest, Open-hearted
A couple of lines that neatly capture my thoughts about Shakespeare (and Dudley….):

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end. (from Sonnet 30)

True Lovers run into strange capers

True lovers run into strange capers: Audrey and Touchstone in As You Like It

The trouble with Shakespeare

The trouble with seeking answers in Shakespeare is that there is always a contradictory opinion. He always seems to present (at least) two sides to every aspect of life. Love is both a joy and a madness. Love can be comic or tragic, sometimes both in the same play. Despite calling it “the greatest love story in the world” Romeo and Juliet is anything but a great love story – the lovers are immature runaways, both prone to taking drugs and both commit suicide – they are NOT ideal poster-teens for love, even though they do say some wonderful things to each other:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Should this really be called a great love story?

If music be the food of love, play on

Duke Orsino, in Twelfth Night, says that the “spirit of love” is “quick and fresh” and he wants “excess of it.”
On the other hand, one speech later, he seems to see love as a tormenting predator that he needs to escape:

O, when my eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence!
That instant was I turn'd into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.

Imogen Stubbs as Viola and Toby Stephens as Orsino

Faithful or Giddy?

Orsino also sees himself as typical of male lovers as being absolutely faithful and devoted to his beloved:

For such as I am all true lovers are,
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved.

Only a few lines later, though, he contradicts this entirely, saying that men are notoriously fickle:

Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are

Which is it, Orsino?

Big hearts kill what they love

Orsino boasts about the size of his heart and passion:

There is no woman's sides    
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion    
As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart    
So big, to hold so much….

Unfortunately his strength of feeling might cut off his nose to spite his face:

Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,
Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death,
Kill what I love?

Viola/Cesario with Orsino: Nell Geisslinger & Grant Goodman, Michael Sharon & Shelly Gaza

Each man kills the thing he loves

Shakespeare presents us with the sublime wonder of love and, in surprising places, sometimes within the same character, also presents us with love’s power to recklessly destroy. In The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio asks “Do all men kill the things they do not love?” Oscar Wilde, in The Ballad of Reading Gaol, famously altered that line with lines worthy of Shakespeare himself:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice and Oscar Wilde