ON SALMON FISHING AND CHILDREN

The Wild Atlantic Salmon

There's a trailer doing the rounds for a film out shortly: 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.'  I drifted into a charity shop on Monday and quite by chance saw the book there and bought it.  And then consumed two afternoons sitting in this week's glorious sunshine reading it. A most marvellous book, combining the mysteries of migratory fish with high (and Middle Eastern) politics. 

I recommended the book in turn to a friend who used to be a UNESCO colleague and who is a marine biologist and without quite realising what was happening we had an exchange of emails that could have come straight out of the book (which is full of emails).  He told me that there had been attempts to introduce Atlantic salmon in all sorts of places and that the farming of Atlantic salmon was now established in places such as Patagonia and Chile.  Indeed, he told me, that salmon had been released in a Chilean river and had returned to spawn, though the reproduction, for some reason, had not been successful and the authors of the project had returned to fish farming.  I would have thought (in line with the book) that sport fishing would have brought in more income than commodity salmon fish farming and, moreover, would have been less harmful ecologically.  That must remain a subject for debate. 

Salmon fishing is something that hooks you, if you will excuse the pun and though I last caught a salmon forty-two years ago on the river Conon near Dingwall in the north of Scotland whither my grandfather used to invite me and my sister to fish,  the romance of the noble fish and its capture has never left me.  He, my grandfather, was always a great fisherman and in his spare time became a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Edinburgh University.  In one memorable (and just possibly apocryphal) three day period he was summoned to three grand houses where the wife of the laird lay in the throes of childbirth.  All three babies took adequate periods of time to arrive; adequate anyway for him to change into his fishing gear and take himself off to the river (of course there weren't such things as mobile phones in those days) and catch a salmon.  Then he would come back and deliver the baby.  His account at the end of three days thus read: three babies, three salmon, three thousand guineas.

Yes, a thousand guineas was the fee apparently for delivering a baby in those pre-war days.  It seems a very great deal, (maybe £50,000 now?) which is another reason for wondering whether the story - like all fishermen's tales - may have been 'stretched' - a little.   Nor do I know the identity of any of the babies, though I do know that he delivered Magnus Magnusson.

Magnus (who will forever be identified with the upmarket Quiz Show 'Mastermind') once found himself in the spotlighted Black Chair, facing questions himself.  He was asked, he once recounted, quite a simple question: 'What was the name of Marilyn Monroe's first husband?'  But although he knew the surname was 'Miller' - the first name that intruded into his thoughts was 'Douglas,' rather than the correct 'Arthur.'  Afterwards he said that he had had a total blackout and had found it impossible to think of any Miller but his mother's doctor (my grandfather) who had by this time become a family friend.

One consequence of the fine weather is that children want to play outside and not only outside but with water as well.  Theo, my grandson of three, had invited his little friends - boy of three and girl of five - around to play and watering the garden while supervising adults tried to engage in a sensible pastime of a summer afternoon glass of Vouvray in the shade of an ivy hedge.  I think everyone enjoyed themselves, though the plants seemed to receive precious little water most of which found its way into the children's clothes.  This might bode well for a potential future career as fisherfolk.

As the Vouvray seemed to have gone down well I made some canapés of humous and paté and meanwhile finding the children some interesting activity indoors.   Recently I have been removing from the shelves reels of old labels that had lost most of their stickiness (labels do have a shelf-life).  But these actually make excellent playthings.  While we adults were enjoying the sunshine, the children, gone quiet for a moment, had decided to 'paper' and when we looked again the hallway was a mass of fluorescent yellow labels, that fortunately, having lost their adhesive power, came off easily.

I'd like now to bring this blog to a tidy close by reporting that we all then sat down to a dish of fresh rod caught Atlantic salmon.  But we didn't.  I fear sadly that my grandfather will prove to have been altogether more efficient as a guide in the salmon fishing department than I will ever be to young Theo.  The Atlantic Salmon is under great threat from fishery of the stock on the high seas and from the capture in vast quantities of the sand eels and other minor forms of marine life on which it feeds for processing into fish meal.  When Theo grows up the sight of wild salmon leaping in British rivers may long be a thing of the past.  If you'd like to know more have a look at the Atlantic Salmon Trust    website from where I have taken the photograph at the head of this piece.

LONDON WEEKEND

Rich experiences last weekend, which we spent in London visiting some very old friends who now live in Surbiton.  The Friday afternoon journey down proved tedious owing to an accident on the M3 (although clearly more tedious for those involved whose cars looked pretty mangled); still we arrived safely, but no sooner had we had a refreshing cup of tea than we were off again, driving into town and parking in Piccadilly to see the Hockney exhibition for which (being members of the Royal Aacademy) our friends were able to get us tickets without the hassle of queuing.

I'd like to say that I like looking at Hockney's paintings, which in the main are very large and very bright and often of the same landscapes.  But if the test of an artwork is whether you could live with it, then I only counted four paintings (out of maybe a hundred) to which I would have given houseroom. With the hordes of people milling around, the vast interest this exhibition has attracted and the hushed tones in which people speak of Hockney, I couldn't personally help feeling that there was an element of the Emperor's New Clothes about this display.  But still, as a phenomenon, it was interesting. And, for someone like me who knew very little of Hockney before, educational.  I was grateful and glad we had gone.

The following morning posed less of an assault on the visual senses: we went to Henry VIII's Royal Palace of Hampton Court to which I had never been and where I would have been happy to stay the whole day if not the whole week. (I am sure an enterprising down and outer could manage to hide away somewhere in the warren that is the Palace and live perpetually in some royal cupboard, perhaps posing as someone or other, practically in perpetuity).  The spring sun shone, there weren't too many crowds and buildings and gardens did really look very beautiful.  Tudor lords and ladies occasionally dropped in too so that for me it even felt a little bit like coming home as I did once play Cardinal Wolsey on stage.  This wasn't however enough to get me in for free.

So back then to a (very) late lunch for family and grandchildren.  Our friends' daughters are just a little younger than our own and grandchildren don't change very much wherever you go.   A most pleasant walk along the Thames followed, we watching the rowers and scullers and the passenger boats that ply a trade along the river. 

Needing a rest in the evening we all set off to see a film: 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' which I can thoroughly recommend to anyone who likes a heart-warming, life-affirming story, being the one selected.  It made me cry and laugh in equal measure and as the cast includes Maggie, Smith, Judy Dench, Bill Nighy and a host of other stars all acting naturally and not trying to be edgy or violent,  watching them provided an acting masterclass.  It is a superb film, though, naturally, panned by the critics.

On Sunday we all drove over to Dulwich to see more old friends who had tickets for an exhibition of Van Dyck's paintings at the Dulwich Gallery.  At the same time the gallery was hosting a second exhibition of 'Ragas' - little Indian paintings about the size of an iPad - made three or four hundred years ago to accompany pieces of music and song - an early form of music video, I suppose, though these paintings didn't move.

Having had by then our daily shot of culture we adjourned to lunch or rather to a glass of champagne in the garden sunshine before sitting down, eight of us, to a splendid piece of roast beef.  After which our host, who is a bit of a wine buff, decided we should have a tasting of dessert wine to accompany the cheese and pudding. For each of us he produced six glasses into which he poured six dessert wines which we then had to link with a grape variety and a wine growing country or region.  We all did very badly, I am sad to say, but I appeared to have done slightly less badly than the others and so was awarded a history of Pol Roger as a prize for my efforts.

Then back round the South Circular to Surbiton and, after tea, back again down the M4 (we avoided the M3 this time) to Wales, noting that the Bridge tolls have increased again.  Anyway a most interesting and productive weekend.

The picture is of Hampton Court Bridge from Hampton Court Palace.  In the foreground of the picture to the right, there is (though you probably can't see it) a pigeon that had waded out into the river and was giving itself a bath like a duck. It was actually swimming but it wouldn't have taken more than a passing ripple to have lifted it off the bottom.

A NOVEL EXPERIENCE

Squizzey - the bestest little grey squirrel in the world

"Why don't we meet," she suggested - "seeing as you live close by?"

"Why not?" I answer.  See you next Wednesday!  And lo! it came to pass that I met the lovely Kathryn Eastman from the Nut Press in Cowbridge's newly opened Costa Coffee shop this week.

But that wasn't all - oh no -  for who should have come along as well but Squizzey - 'the bestest little grey squirrel in the world' (though he does have a tendency to say so himself) - the cool dude with his name on his blue polo shirt.

He sat on the table, playing umpire as Kath and I drank cappuccinos.  Ominously I think he was taking notes.  He has a blog as well which you can find here.

Now it seems a universal experience that whenever blogging friends meet they find - not that they are total strangers meeting for the first time - but that somehow they have become old friends already, with a great deal in common and even more to talk about.  Thus it was with Kath.  She had sensibly suggested we exchange photographs, but I would have known her instantly the moment she walked in through the door.  Two hours flew by and I'm sure we might have continued for another two hours had life not got in the way.  But we have plans to meet again and continue where we left off. 

Kath has a lot of advice to give and she was most helpful in suggesting websites and publications that I might look at to develop my own writing.  Since entering a couple of stories for the Choc-Lit Short Story Competition in January, I seem to be beset by competitions.  I sent off a story about learning to drive in February to one Writers' Group that I have recently joined.  There's another local competition in connection with the Cowbridge Book Festival, but the biggest current challenge is the Good Housekeeping/Orion Books competition for an unpublished novel.  Write a chapter of about 5,000 words and a synopsis and get it to us by 31 March, they say.

I have never written a novel and have no idea whether I could write one, but - a bit like climbing a mountain - I'd very much like to try and having a competition like this is a great spur.  (I discount entirely any chance of winning: the competition is useful only in that it provides a pressing deadline).

If I find, thanks to this competition, that I can scribble out one tolerable chapter and synopsis, then I might conclude that it might be worth continuing for a few more chapters.  I have found myself thinking more and more about the interesting characters in my Choc-Lit story and asking what happened to them before they met (and what will happen to them afterwards) and who all the other people are that flip the levers of their particular pin-ball game.  Thus has evolved, I told Kath, a wider, more complex story: part romance, part history, part thriller and set partly in St Petersburg, the most northerly metropolis in the world and capital of the Tsars.

Conceiving the synopsis and sketching out these initial 5,000 words has been fun.  Fun because,  if you will excuse the pun, it is, for me, a novel experience.  It is fun because I have no idea of how I should proceed, so the learning curve is steep and challenging.  No two novels are the same, it seems,  even if they are by the same authors.  Some are descriptive, some are personal, some go on inside the protagonists' heads, some are like film scripts. The canvas of the blank page can, I admit, be terrifying, but to me it is like a seaside cove to a child, filled with rock pools in which lurk all manner of exciting wildlife.  I have only to close my eyes and my characters are there telling me what to write down.  In both cases there are so many unknown things waiting to be discovered. 

In some ways it has been remarkably easy, compared to what I am used to.  When you are writing non-fiction you have to find something to say that is reasonably researched and true, or at the very least have an opinion about something that is reasonably true. If you are writing fiction on the other hand, if you do not know what to say you can just make it up.  For that's the thing about fiction, as someone said once, it doesn't happen. 

I'm also finding it fun to be able to make characters do things.  Having directed plays I try to make the actors appear in a certain light and present their personalities in the way I want.  This doesn't always succeed: the actor may be stubborn or I may fail to make him do what I want.

What a relief then to know that as a writer I have the power - should I so wish it - to make my characters turn somersaults in at the door, or to stand on their heads, or to present an angry, a facetious or a woebegone face to the world whenever I so decree;  I can dress them however I desire, even make them appear in shining armour, and move them back and forth in time.  (Virginia Woolf did this with Orlando.  Poor soul, he found himself being dragged through four hundred years and changing gender in the process). I don't think I'll go quite that far,  but it's nice to know that one can. 

"How's it going to end?" asked Kath.  At this point, Squizzey, who had started to look a little bored as I had rambled on, pricked up his ears and licked his pencil. 

"I don't know," I said, and here I looked directly at the Squirrel.  "For it may of course never end, in the sense that the story may languish still-born at the end of the first chapter.  In one sentence I may move everything two hundred years into the past and give everyone cholera and that will be that."  Oh, the power!

But if I should ever get to chapter seventeen, eighteen, nineteen: what then?  I just don't know.  (Well maybe I do know - sort of - but that far ahead the crystal ball is still a little cloudy).  I hope nevertheless that it will all end happily.  For the goodies anyway.  Baddies (and there are some) will just have to take their luck where they find it and hope they catch me on a good day.

(Otherwise they might just end up being liquidated by squirrels).

THE MAIDEN'S REVENGE

I think Balthazaar looked something like this

Why - or rather what - is she looking at?  In the early morning light from her house on the hill?  And, of course, why is she up so early? 

Maybe she is revising for an exam - an early medical student perhaps, though I'm not sure why she keeps a hat beside her.  At any rate it will fall off the dressing table soon.  Maybe she has just picked it up and has now perched herself on her stool again, one leg tucked neatly under her bottom to see if what she saw really was what she thought she saw; before she finds her slippers and goes out over the wet grass to discover the beast for herself.

But she's a little wary.  She's a medical student, as we have established, and she is still in her calico nightdress and she fears that it may have been over-zealousness towards her studies that has made her see things.  So she looks again.

Yes, there he is.  And he looks so dazzlingly white. And he is wearing a golden chain around his powerful neck. His mane is swishing in the light breeze and his rump looks powerful and muscular where the sun catches it.  He is stamping his four black hooves, which shine in the dewey sunlight.

Delicate feet, she thinks. But it is his horn by which her gaze is transfixed. That long tapering and spirally grooved horn of white ivory, as long as her arm.  She has never seen such a horn, or such a beast.  No wonder that she can't decide whether to fetch her slippers. 

The unicorn is caught, its feet entangled in brambles.  Should she run to help it? Or call others?  But if she went to help, might she not be caught too?  Not by the brambles, perhaps, but by the horn. She could become impaled and left dying on the dew while the beast snorted and flew off into the sky. She supposed a unicorn could sprout wings - or maybe it didn’t need wings - at all.  Her medical textbook was silent on this point.

No, of course,  the beast wouldn't impale her, but would instead go down on one knee, bowing its head and showing its golden chain. Perhaps it would neigh softly.  She would talk to it and give it sweet dandelions and plat its mane with daisies in the morning sun.  It might even tell her its name.  Balthazaar! 

She had always fancied Balthazaar as a name for a unicorn  She would laugh and, holding her hat, would kiss the beast's nose, enticed by its rich, leathery and equine smell.  Then, knowing her mother would scold her, she would abandon caution and clamber on the beast's back and all at once it would rear up and she would clutch at the golden chain and grip tightly with her knees lest she tumble into the brambles and close her eyes and the next moment they would be far away up in the sky heading for a different land, the wind whistling about her ears and the beast stretched out, the horn a compass needle to a future world.  She would awake, and he would lay her down gently, in the sand, somewhere to the south of Samarkand, beside a merchant selling silk and spice.

In this way have many potential female doctors been lost to science and many young women been enticed into the spice trade.  But wait!

When she came to her senses she noticed there were actually quite a few unicorns about the merchants' enclosure, most with their heads stuck in nosebags. Whatever they were eating it wasn't dandelions, nor probably oats either.   Nor were the unicorns any more a dazzling white but a kind of dusty grey.  Moreover,  their golden chains, she thought - unless she were very much mistaken - were in reality just a species of brass. 

A few hours ago she had been struggling to remember the anatomy of the gall bladder.  Now the choice seemed to be whether she should try walking back to Berkshire in her nightdress, or stay and become part of the merchant’s Samarkand entourage.  She looked to the Unicorn for inspiration.  But Balthazaar merely winked.  

Could one stow away on a unicorn? she wondered.  The exams were, after all, terribly important.  And the Samarkand desert wasn’t renowned for its sweet daisies and dandelions.  The vets were better too, she whispered into Balthazaar’s ear, as the darkness closed around them.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

I was in France at New Year and,  thanks to the foul weather that made walking almost impossible, found that I had spare time on my hands; so  I wrote a short and romantic story to send off to the Choc-Lit short story competition where they were soliciting stories in which chocolate featured as a central theme. 

I came to know a little about Choc-Lit from Chris Stovell whose compelling debut novel Turning the Tide they published last year.  Choc-Lit writers also publish an Authors Corner blog in which they talk, sometimes about their books and sometimes about other entertaining matters of relevance.

In another life, Chris may have been a sheep dog, for she has been assiduous in rounding up her friends and pointing them in the direction of the Author's Corner, encouraging them to leave comments.  Being of a sheep like disposition I dutifully responded to her instructions and, in what seemed an eye blink, found that a comment I had left (about mice, as it turned out) had won me a book.

If I could win a book for a comment then who knows what I might win for a short romantic New Year story about a lugubrious Russian, (I think it right to stress the 'might' for I have never ever had any success with such competitions, but they are fun to enter all the same), with a practical fondness for chocolate.

The lugubrious Russian in my story was not the person in the picture, though he might well have possessed similar good looks;  I am sure anyway that Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, the great Russian poet, whose picture* it is, wouldn't really mind.  He is quite handsome after all, don't you think? (and the story is a romantic one), though if it were left to me I should be inclined to advise him to shave the whiskers.  Anyway they like sharing pictures of handsome young men on the Choc-Lit blog to whom I offer the image if ever there should be a lack of hot talent from the present era.

As well as being handsome Pushkin was a romantic.  Indeed, he becomes even more romantic when you know that he was fiercely addicted to duels. For he was both a duellist and a poet.  I put the duellist first because he almost fought more duels - twenty-nine in all - than he wrote poems.  Most of the time he was lucky (I daresay he was a very good duellist) but one hundred and seventy five years ago - almost to this very day (10 February 1837 to be precise) - his luck deserted him and he was killed by the French officer he had challenged, leaving literature bereft because, if he was a good duellist, then he was certainly an even better poet and writing the poems and plays and novels which he turned out seemingly without effort from his St Petersburg desk is a more rewarding activity than duelling (and getting yourself killed). 

As a teenager I was as lugubrious and full of depression as the Russian in my story, wrote a deal of very bad abstract poetry and consoled myself by reading the great Russian authors - Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and the like.  Then, when we were told that we could only spend two thirds of our school time studying for 'A' Levels and we had to spend the rest being 'educated,' I opted for a Russian class.  They threw us in at the deep end and we found ourselves translating, before even mastering the Cyrillic alphabet, Pushkin's famous poem that begins 'I Loved You.'

                I loved you; even now I must confess,

                       Some embers of my love their fire retain;

                       But do not let it cause you more distress,

                      I do not want to sadden you again.

                     Hopeless and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly

                    With pangs the jealous and the timid only know;

                     So tenderly I love you, so sincerely,

                   I pray God grant another love you so.

I regret I do not know who translated this; certainly it wasn't me for I stumbled badly in that class and left it after a term, thinking that Russians were much better when rendered in English by competent persons.  But I went on loving this poem and keeping a nostalgic and romantic perspective on nineteenth century Russia, reinforced, of course, just at the time when it might have been waning by the absurdly romantic film of  Dr Zhivago.

I happened to be in Germany when that film came out and watched it, dubbed into German, in Hannover.  Then I caught a train that rumbled across Europe to catch a midnight boat from Calais, disgorging its weary and sleep deprived passengers on to the Victoria station concourse early the following morning. I breakfasted with someone I had met on the train and as Dr Zhivago was playing opposite the station and both of us had a few hours to kill, saw the film again.  It all seemed remarkably romantic at the time. 

*The picture of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin painted by Vasily Tropinin is courtesy of Wikipedia.

BEG PARDON?

My hearing is deteriorating. I can no longer hear the telephone ringing in another room; and I miss a lot of dialogue from the TV or radio. I suspect I need a hearing aid.  So I rang the surgery for a referral to the hearing clinic.  The woman I spoke to asked whether I had had my ears syringed.  I said ‘no,’  She said that if I were to be kind enough to drop olive oil into my ears for a week she would make an appointment with the nurse for next Wednesday.

 Well, after a week of dripping oil into my ears (sometimes the oil seemed to be running in one ear and out the other) I thought that, just possibly, my hearing was improving, but not by very much, and so I went along at half past two to see Nurse Harji in Consulting Room 6.  Nurse Harji smiled broadly and sat me down and then, with the medical instrument that you use for peering into ears, looked first into the one and then into the other. I had expected she would tell me they were full of oil, or maybe fluff, certainly full of wax,  but after some careful looking she said she couldn't see any wax at all and  concluded therefore that I didn't need any syringing, which was all a bit of a let down as I had steeled myself for the operation.

As it seemed we now had time on our hands she asked me if she might take my blood pressure about which I was dubious. My blood pressure is at best disobliging and has a habit of rocketing unexpectedly. But on this occasion all was well - indeed super well. One hundred and fifteen over eighty, she told me; and I said it hadn't been that low since I had been a carefree travelling student and had given blood for the princely sum of £25 at a clinic in Athens in 1966.

Nevertheless, she thought I should see the doctor anyway who could advise whether I should be referred to the hearing clinic for assessment and possible fitting of a digital hearing device. No appointments today, she regretted, looking at her computer screen, but there would be one tomorrow at four thirty. 'I am sorry to have to ask you to come back,' she said, apologetically.  I said not to worry, that tomorrow at four thirty would suit just fine, so she wrote me a card and then dismissed me with a kind, caring and professional smile.

So back I went to the surgery the next day,  five deferential minutes early and I sat and waited and as I waited picked up  Good Housekeeping (February 2011 edition).  We must be an honest lot down here for this edition, despite being a year old, still had all its freebies intact. There was some fetching lotion or other in a little sachet glued inside - I think it was just plain body milk, but anyway it had a fancy name - and I wondered whether I might be entitled - as compensation for the wait which was fast becoming prolonged - to remove it.  In the end I decided that I wasn't and didn't, but afterwards felt a little disappointed with myself for being timid. 

There's a  telescreen in the waiting area which summons patients to their doctors and in between broadcasts health ‘advice’ to  the halt, the sick and the lame waiting for their appointments. Advice about falls seemed to figure prominently on the endless loop (which seemed to have some kink in it for parts of the message played upside down). 'Wear sensible shoes,' the telescreen advised. 'Eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day' it beseeched,  which made me want to ask: do nuts count? The screen said nothing about nuts and of course you can't ask it a question.

At last, after three-quarters of an hour, I got to see my lovely doctor looking much as though she could use a well-made gin and tonic.  I told her that maybe the olive oil was working for the previous night I had managed to hear, and more or less understand, an episode of Midsomer Murders (or at least half an episode, for a whole episode might have damaged my sanity, what with headless horsewomen and folk colliding with tree trunks and gargoyles) and with the TV at normal volume.

She then peered into my ears and said that nurse Harji had been quite right and my ears were indeed devoid of wax. "But what I think we ought to do", she continued quickly in a loud voice, just in case I had other ideas, is to discount the temporary amelioration that you report "and send you for a Hearing Assessment." And with that she typed a word or two into the keyboard and then asked in a determined and a 'can't you see what the time is' sort of voice, whether there was anything else she might do for me. There wasn't. Or at least we should have been there until midnight if we had started on the details of my crumbling organs.

And so we said goodbye and I went out into the freezing cold and found that my sugar levels had in the meantime dropped to zero and that I had to purchase digestive biscuits in order to fuel myself for the gentle climb up the hill to home.  Now that I remember it, one of the Good Housekeeping articles suggested you should always keep a tin of almonds in your handbag to avert just such problem. So maybe there was some sense in the magazine after all, almonds I am sure being better for you than digestive biscuits even though I am still no wiser as to whether they count towards your five a day. I should have asked, I suppose. Anyway, I still think I should have purloined the sachet of body milk.

MAGIC OF SHAKESPEARE

James Reynard and Claire Tucker

Leafing through the paper the other day I found an interesting graph showing how the country's economic growth has risen and fallen over the last few years.  It bears no relation whatsoever to what has happened in our business apart from the fact that the general trend in both cases is in a southerly direction.  This month in particular has been slow, the sort of 'feathers through treacle' slowness that makes you think seriously of staying under the duvet with the coverlet pulled firmly about your ears. Orders have slowed to a trickle and you wonder whether you are still going to be here a year from now. Then on Friday the cheering news of a large order from the Library Service of one of the bigger London Boroughs.

From a brief perusal of recent newspaper headlines you might be forgiven for thinking that there weren't any libraries left, certainly in places like London, or if there were some left then certainly that they wouldn't have any money; and if by some fluke they did have some money then it would be reserved for some core project rather than additional supplies of labels.  But of course you would be wrong and this order was proof.  Along with a couple of other orders that emerged like beetles from the woodwork, the month ended on a somewhat happier note.

Now, you might be enquiring which London Borough this might be in case they happened to be in the market for your goods and services too.  Well, I am not at liberty to say but I shall give you a clue (which of course might be wrong for boundaries change over time) but I think it was the same borough that once housed Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.  If this seems a recondite sort of a clue, then I admit it is, but along with the febrile state of the British economy Shakespeare has been much on my mind this week.

You see it was our little theatre group's AGM on Friday and I had invited a couple of actors (James and Claire - see above) to try out an adult version of a show they have developed to introduce Shakespeare to children, called The Magic of Shakespeare. As they had to travel all the way from Gloucester, and were partly doing us a favour,  a suitably sized audience to show our appreciation was indeed required.  But for a variety of reasons - some possibly economic - I was beginning to worry that we should not have one.

Friends that usually come along to our shows wrung their hands and said that they couldn't come along to this one.  Excuse followed on excuse and apology on apology.  I wasn't even sure we'd have more than the apocryphal two men and a dog turning up to the AGM.  Even our esteemed Chairman found that he had to attend a wedding in Inverness.  The Secretary and Patron Secretary also sent apologies.  Regulars regretted that this or that had intervened. I was biting my nails.

But in the event something turned up and it was a respectable audience.  My fears went thankfully unrealised,  as fears so often do. The show proceeded and most excellent it was too.  And educational to boot.   I learned, for instance - because this was an 'introduction' to Shakespeare's work - that the Globe Theatre had no lighting.  That sounds obvious - of course the Elizabethans had no stage lights, they had no electricity; the best they could do would have been the occasional candle, or perhaps a couple of burning brands.   So plays took place mostly in broad daylight.

Yet many of Shakespeare's best known scenes take place 'in the foul womb of night' and if you read those lines closely you will learn that Shakespeare tells you (and then tells you again in case you might have been asleep) that a scene is occurring in darkness.  Take, for instance, the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, the word 'night' occurs fourteen times - just in case, in the sunshine of the Globe Theatre,  you might be tempted to think it was day. 

So the AGM and the show passed felicitously and afterwards we had some champagne because the two actors, James and Claire, who wrote and presented the Magic of Shakespeare,  recently became engaged and are to be married in April, perhaps even on Shakespeare's birthday, and it just so happened that it was also the 53rd wedding anniversary of Rosie and Jim.  So we all had a little theatre supper and a few bubbles to celebrate, and a happy time was had by all.