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."

Enter Sam

Welcome to the world, Sam

Filling dreams
And so, something unique happened this last week – unique to me, but an astonishingly common occurrence throughout history and across the world. But this thing has never happened to me before. I took on a new identity –  Grandfather/Grandad/Grandpa/Poppa/some other word – when a new member of my family arrived. I’m assuming Sam – for that is he – will decide what to call me at some point in the next few years. Sam is a lucky little guy arriving in a loving family in a lovely (new) home in a lovely corner of Planet Earth near shops, woods, a meadow, railways (big and miniature), a canal, a river, a valley, hills and dales and enough sky, clouds and wuthering weather to fill his dreams.

Arriving home

At first the infant
What can I say in a blog about my first grandchild? My brain, heart, guts and soul are rollercoasting with thoughts, imaginings and feelings. Shakespeare’s most famous quotation about babies is negative (but funny):

                                   All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms….

Cuddle with Auntie Em

Things to look forward to….
Sam’s in his First Stage of Life and as well as mewling and puking, I’m sure he’ll do some drinking, feeding, looking, tracking, gurgling, babbling, chortling, biting, reaching, gripping, grabbing, staring, hugging, kissing, tickling, waving, clapping, dancing, pushing, pulling, rolling, sitting, crawling, holding, pointing, smiling, laughing…. And hopefully a goodly amount of sleeping. And that’s before this time next year. Until then, a couple of poems.

"I thought we'd agreed," said Cora, "it was just the three of us...."

Joy is my name

Infant Joy
by William Blake

‘I have no name.
I am but two days old.’
What shall I call thee?
‘I happy am.
Joy is my name.’
Sweet Joy befall thee!

Pretty Joy!
Sweet Joy but two day’s old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile.
I sing the while.
Sweet joy befall thee.

First Meetings

Dark, peaceful, sacred…

Although Carol Ann Duffy (like Blake, one of my favourite poets) writes the following to her daughter, it’s easy to imagine beyond the pronouns to any child, any time, any where, any when…

A Child's Sleep 
by Carol Ann Duffy
I stood at the edge of my child's sleep
hearing her breathe;
although I could not enter there,
I could not leave.

Her sleep was a small wood,
perfumed with flowers;
dark, peaceful, sacred,
acred in hours.

And she was the spirit that lives
in the heart of such woods;
without time, without history,
wordlessly good.

I spoke her name, a pebble dropped
in the still night,
and saw her stir, both open palms
cupping their soft light;

then went to the window. The greater dark
outside the room
gazed back, maternal, wise,
with its face of moon.

Samuel Miles Grimley

Hope the voyage is a long one

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

John Keats, in his famous Ode to Autumn, outlines, in three stanzas the abundant harvest of Autumn, then its hard-working processes and finally its descent into the potential of Winter…. whatever Winter means. Old age? Death? And Spring will surely come again….

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run….

I’ve just about emerged from the shadow of Covid and have my booster booked (go, me!) So, I find myself once again striding out to enjoy the burnished colours and low-lying sunlight of Autumn.

Hope the voyage is a long one

As well as Keats, I’ve recently reached for the words of a Greek poet I admire, Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, better known in English as CP Cavafy. I’ve pasted below one of his poems that reminds me to “not hurry the journey.” To savour the here and now. The poem’s title, Ithaka, refers to the island home of Odysseus, the hero/antihero who took ten years to reach Ithaka (and his wife) after leaving the Trojan War. Ithaka captures the idea that life is so fleeting (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter….) that it is important to savour the journey, not to only focus on the destination. Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors has themes of loss, travel, searching, finding your identity and reunion and a joyous production I saw in an outdoor theatre in summer in Stratford-upon-Avon made its way on tour to the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. Welcome to the north, Royal Shakespeare Company! It was an uplifting return to live theatre:

“after so long grief, such nativity.”

Moving, frantic, hilarious, inspiring. Like Keats, like Cavafy. May all your voyages be long.

Ithaka

by CP Cavafy

translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbours seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Head above the parapet again

The scariest moment is always just before you start*

*Stephen King

So, I’ve been summoned back into the world of Rhenium where survivors of the human race attempt to create a better society on a new planet in a galaxy far, far away…. (if you want to see where I was back in August 2018 before I contacted agents and got a wide range of responses - some very pertinent and some just rude, click here.)  Covid-19 lockdowns didn’t boil creative juices inside me, just survivor instincts, so I put my magnum opus aside for the best part of three years in favour of reading, walking, feasting, watching TV and doing jigsaws.

Bark, roses, flowers, outdoor eating.... summer 2021

Write. Write more. Edit. Edit more.

A combination of factors has brought Raydan Wakes back under the microscope and it is now subject to the laser-bright-brutal scrutiny of my editorial pen.

Go with me to my tent; where you shall see….

How calm and gentle I proceeded still

In all my writings.

Suffice to say, the new version seems (to me) radically different from the first (two, five, thirteen?) version(s). Some sections I cannot even remember writing…. Creative writing is a very peculiar hobby! But I’m back in the saddle again, clopping along the lonesome trail…. Giddy up, cowboy! (with thanks to the critters on the pioneer trail who cheer me on….)

The colours of Rhenium society and Nick Shelton's artist's impression of two key characters

Return to Maggie's Bar

Emily, Amy, Benji, Sally, Maggie, a May evening, a starry starry night

Inclusively Injected with love

Last Summer, we were invited to Maggie’s Bar (click here for reminder). Yesterday evening we returned to enjoy the additional gazebo which warded off the meterological uncertainties of Spring 2021. Benji sat on Sally’s knee (as in collage above.) Nibbles were nibbled. Discussions roamed around the past and our present lives, hopes, dreams and lockdown experiences, the prophetic Corona cushion, WhoGivesACrapRecycledToiletRoll, TV, cinema, theatre, the future….  On our return to the bar, we could toast the gospel that the entire Shipley branch of the Harry Potter Film Club have now been Covid-Vaccinated, Double-Jabbed, Inclusively-Injected…. There was also a Birthday Bonus present for Sally. Not only does Maggie run a very popular bar, but her eyes, hands and talents can craft lovingly produced Cross Stitch works of art. As Shakespeare truly muses:

I count myself in nothing else so happy

As in a soul remembering my good friends

A Cross Stitched gift, more signs of Spring, ecological toilet rolls....

Learning to dance in the rain

GQ’s Men of the Year

Lists of “Top Ten” or “Best Of” regularly appear in many places in the media to spark debate and highlight trends. I’d have to endorse Mr William Shakespeare as a Man of the Year in every one of my lists, as he was “not of an age, but for all time” (© Ben Jonson) and he inhabits my soul every day. But I’m also happy to concur with some of GQ’s Men of the Year:

• Russell T Davies (thanks for your TV series It’s A Sin and past creativity)
• Captain Tom Moore (thanks for your past service and current inspiration)
• Marcus Rashford (thanks for your tenacity and courage)
• Josh O’Connor and Riz Ahmed (thanks for all your performances, in particular recently in Romeo and Juliet and Sound of Metal, but formerly in God's Own Country and Nightcrawler)
• And Prince Phillip, HM Queen Elizabeth II’s “constant strength and guide” and “strength and stay.” 

Falling within a bell curve

Prince Phillip’s recent death (9th April) produced much broadcast material and many column inches about whether he was the last of a particular kind of man. Such dogmatic reasoning always falls flat in my head, maybe because I’m a Libran and can usually see an alternative argument for everything. Prince Phillip was not unique despite his context and background; stastical probability (given the planet’s billions of people) suggests there will be other Prince Phillip types in decades to come. The one we’ve recently lost was remarkable, I agree, and I liked his daughter, Princess Anne’s, quotation about him – “a life well lived and service freely given.” Shakespeare has Hamlet say, of his late father, “I shall not look upon his like again” but he idolises the memory of the late king and is in a profound state of grief. More empirically truthful, I think, is Tim Minchin’s lyric in If I didn’t have you (somebody else would do):

I mean, I think you’re special

But you fall within a bell curve

Outlaw’s Cave

Robin Hood, now there’s a man! Steals from the rich and distributes to the poor…. possibly? Any road up, on the day Prince Phillip died, we met Michael and Janet to complete an undulating walk in the secluded woodland of Conjure Alders in the twin valley of the Rivers Maun and Meden, at the edge of Sherwood Forest. We walked across fields with huge horizons, through woods filled with birch and alder trees, picked over tangled roots by the river and marvelled at the sandstone cliff outcrop concealing Robin Hood’s Cave. No sign of Maid Marian or the merry men (or a reduction of income inequality) in early April 2021…. Where’s Robin Hood when you need him the most?

Waiting for the storm to pass

Spring continues to springeth and daffodils to bloometh. No-one knows exactly how Covid-19’s infection rate will spread, nor how severely, so time and tide wait for no man…. so now seems a good time to hook up (safely) with other Men (and Women) of the Year…. Thank you, Brian and Sue, for the fish finger butties and chips under your verandah in Tollerton and the inspirational message:

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,

It’s about learning to dance in the rain

Once the pandemic is endemic and (hopefully) as ubiquitous and controlled as ‘flu, I imagine many people will continue to value nature and lobby decision-makers to tackle the global climate crisis and the over-exploitation of precious resources. Thank you, Nick and Graeme, for giving us a glimpse into the future with our proxy experiences of an electric car.

Sites opening up again

So if we live long enough to be in the market for a new car, electric will be the way to go. In the meantime, the pleasures of bread-making, flower arranging, table setting and dining at home are not to be abandoned lightly when the economy “opens up.” Buy locally? Travel locally? Save the planet? It’s been a pleasure to return to the (local-ish) Bolton Abbey Estate, and re-adding it to our repertoire of beauty spots, alongside the Leeds-Liverpool canal and the River Aire. A Man of the Year from the early 19th Century, Lord Byron, “mad, bad and dangerous to know,” expressed my feelings about walks and nature perfectly in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more….

River Wharfe at Bolton Abbey, River Aire near Saltaire and Leeds-Liverpool canal

 

Talking Shakespeare Neljä (Four)

Dense, Juicy, Layered

David Oyelowo, speaking from Los Angeles, remembered a dusty (and intimidating) copy of Shakespeare’s plays in his family’s Islington council flat. He was later surprised to discover Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V was also written by Shakespeare, having watched it as a movie, not caring about the language. The real breakthrough for David, though, was seeing a live production at the National Theatre – the visceral production of Robert Lapage’s mudbath Midsummer Night’s Dream with Timothy Spall as Bottom. David started acting accidentally when he tried to impress a girl by joining a youth theatre and then standing in when another young actor couldn’t attend because of a tube strike. His Theatre Studies teacher, Jill Foster, encouraged him to consider acting as a profession and helped David audition (successfully) for LAMDA. His father fully expected him to “get it out of his system” when he was given small roles (seven lines in Antony and Cleopatra) at the Royal Shakespeare Company. But the bug had bitten and seeing someone like Mark Rylance in his fourth incarnation of Hamlet at The Globe deliver the language with “dexterity, musculariy and elasticity” further reinforced David’s conviction that Shakespeare is the “Everest of Acting… so dense, so juicy, so layered.” 

Greg Doran of the Royal Shakespeare Talking Shakespeare with David Oyelowo, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen

Vulnerability and Frailty

He gave a very funny account of getting the role of Henry VI and loved “the journey” of his time on Michael Boyd’s production but became weary of the “pioneer” emphasis placed on him by the media wanting to interview him about being the first black actor at the RSC to play an English king. He detected a similarity between Dr Martin Luther King in the movie Selma and Henry VI where the abiding motivation for both characters, as he played them, was religious faith, leading to vulnerability and frailty. David felt that both MLK and Henry VI fully expected everyone around them to be imbued with the same values and were both destabilised when the. His other major Shakespeare role was playing Othello with Daniel Craig and Rachel Brosnahan (as Iago and Desdemona) in an intimate production in New York in 2015. Like Greg Doran, I hope he can be tempted away from Hollywood for more UK stage work in the future.

Selection of David Oyelowo roles: as Henry VI, Othello, Orlando in As You Like It and the movie Selma

Queen Helen

Helen Mirren is a multiple award winner: she has carried home an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy and has famously played a line of queens: Queen Margaret in the Henry VI trilogy; and on TV and film: Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II. She also has the distinction of playing Cleopatra three times, first at the National Youth Theatre in 1963 and then later playing opposite Michael Gambon (1982) and Alan Rickman (1998) as her Antonys. I was lucky to see the 1982 Adrian Noble production (in The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon) and for me it became a benchmark production of how epic plays can be staged in small spaces. Helen’s early memories of working at the RSC include watching the generous Ian Richardson from the wings in Coriolanus.  She reminisced about working (warily) with the mercurial Nicol Williamson (on both stage and in the film Excalibur) and played Lady Anne, Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Ophelia to Alan Howard’s Hamlet. She also vividly recounted the touring production of Troilus and Cressida which many argued brought the play back into favour in modern times and she described working with Peter Brook in the legendary project Conference of the Birds which toured the Saharan regions of Africa in 1979.

Helen Mirren as Cleopatra (three times), Cressida, Prospera in The Tempest and Rosalind in As You Like It

Sir Ian ("You shall not pass....")

Ian McKellen has had recent experience of remembering his distinguished acting career as part of his touring one-man show which raised considerable funds for small venues throughout the UK. (Tolkien, Shakespeare, Others and You.) With Greg Doran he shared early memories of seeing and loving theatre and getting involved in amateur and school productions. He always thought Shakespeare seemed fun and enjoyed travelling down from Bolton for school Shakespeare camps in Stratford-upon-Avon. He saw Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft and Charles Laughton in their prime (but also confessed to sleeping through Olivier’s Corialanus – it was a school trip, after all.) At Cambridge he joined the Marlowe Society and came under the influence of George Rylands who has mentored many of today’s great theatre directors as well as John Barton who persuaded young McKellen he could play the ancient Justice Shallow in Henry IV Part Two. He gave a moving account of working at Nottingham Playhouse with Tyrone Guthrie who gave McKellen confidence about becoming an actor and credits Maggie Smith with recommending him to Olivier to join the Old Vic. He was waspish about Franco Zefirelli and had insights into the impact of Olivier and of touring Shakespeare in the provinces and abroad with Prospect Theatre. I’ve seen many of his stage performances and been lucky to meet him both backstage after Waiting for Godot and at a UK showing of the film Gods and Monsters at Bradford’s Pictureville Cinema. Always gracious and always energetic, with a significant place in popular film history with his portrayals of Magneto and Gandalf, Sir Ian continues to be an astonishing creative force for good in the UK.

Ian McKellen as Romeo, Macbeth, Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (which I saw in Doncaster!), Coriolanus, Richard III, King Lear (twice) and Prospero in The Tempest at Leeds Playhouse

Three Resolutions

The weasel in the garden

And 2021 has begun. I resolve to Keep Walking and Keep Creatively Visualising images like the one above and the one at the end of this post. And I Resolve to only check on the news once a day. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Winter sun. Flurries of snow. Wintery frost. Lockdown Three Point Zero. Rising Covid cases, hospital admissions and deaths. As Reignier says in Henry VI Part One

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.

This is a Shakespearian line that should be tattooed onto the UK government’s eyeballs. For the best part of the last year, life-saving decisions have been slow, many have been contradictory and, from the week of Cummings-gate, have been interpreted to suit everyone’s own circumstances because that was the lesson learned from BoJo’s support of the weasel in the Rose Garden. Hopefully the newest campaign to take Covid seriously will make an impact and bring down cases. Time will tell.

The coward on the hill

The President of America, in the dying days of his reign of misinformation, vulgar speechifying and inconsistently perverse decision-making, has incited a crowd of his supporters to invade and riot in the Capitol building leaving (to date) 5 dead bodies, broken glass, stolen goods, vandalised furtniture, and a (future) string of court appearances and prison sentences Although Trump shouted “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…. I know everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building…” he only meant a “royal we” and “everyone” didn’t include his own bloated orange self, so he sent his supporters into notoriety and infamy as he returned, I imagine, to put his feet up on a padded cushion in the White House and eat a cheeseburger and pretend he was innocent.

Cartoon by John Shakespeare for The Age

The rebel without a plan

As ever, something in Shakespeare nagged at me and I realised it was Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two inveterately boasting and inciting a mob. Even though his promises to the angry and starving peasants are impossible, the promises are still effective at rabble-rousing the mob to march and, of course, many are killed.

Valiant I am…. I fear neither sword nor fire…. When I am king, as king I shall be…. I thank you good people…. I will make myself a knight…. Burn all the records of the realm…. My mouth shall be the parliament…. I must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art…. Thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb…. Away with him – he speaks Latin!.... Take him away and behead him…. I’ll defy them all…. (Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two)

Jack Cade's rebellion

The gardener with a pruning sword 

But Jack Cade’s life becomes (like Trump’s is likely to be), not a bang but a sad whimper away from the crowds. The witness to Cade’s death (indeed his unwitting executioner) realises who Jack Cade is as he dies and calls him “monstrous traitor” and ends the scene with a grim final action:

Hence I will drag thee headlong by the heels

Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave….

Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.

The identity of Jack Cade’s nemesis is – future High Sheriff of Kent in history, working class gardener in Shakespeare’s play – Alexander Iden – an English spelling of Eden…. Let’s hope 2021 becomes more of an Eden than 2020. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News.

An Edenic Future Visualisation using snapshots of the past