A day in the life . . .

There I am – above – that was in the BBC Shakespeare series As You Like It with Helen Mirren – no I'm not fighting Helen Mirren!!

That thing in my right hand is my sword – it seems to be angled right at the camera so you can't see it properly.

It's not my hair, of course, and that thing at the top of my legs is a small cod piece.

The other fella, by the way, seems to be tied up in knots and believe me if he'd known the photo was being taken he would have bent his head around. The photo was taken by one of the ace guys who take the tennis photos at Wimbledon each summer.

The photo below is going back even farther – or further - I am on the right and the play we were in was called The Alchemist by Ben Johnson – not the runner, the 17^th century playwright.

On the left, looking very elegant and proud is Julian Fellowes (now Lord Fellowes) of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey fame, and in that photo you can see something similar at the top of my legs – yes a cod piece. 

The other fella, nearer Julian, is the (now) famous wine expert Oz Clarke but the fella with his hand out is now a mystery to me. 

Rather a large one – I got these two photos from the Internet but I'm sure I have originals somewhere.

I did The Alchemist at The Royal Theatre, Northampton and we stayed on in Northampton to live for some years. That's where we brought the children up in a small village about six or seven miles east and it would take over an hour to get in to London on a good day.

A year or two after that photo was taken I was walking through the market square in Northampton when I stocky young fella with long hair and a beard came up to me. He seemed to be dressed in many colours and he said – 'hello boy; you that fella with the cord pace; ent that right?'

Yes, I said.

'I remember that cord pace in that play.'

I asked him if he went to the theatre much and he said no that he only came that once.

He was with a girl and I could see he had a few drinks on him. Tom, his name was, and it turned out that he was quite famous as a singer of folk songs and led a folk band. We talked for a while and went for a drink in, I think, Shipman's bar just off the market square.

I bumped in to him lots of times after that and sometimes we would have a drink and maybe end up at his place. I can't remember where it was but he had loads of musical instruments around the place and I was never sure if it was his place. Those were hazy days and one time I bumped into him London near Ward's Irish House in Piccadilly and whilst we were there an old friend of mine walked in with his dog.

I can't remember what kind of a dog it was but Tom looked at the dog very carefully and said to my pal 'I think his trousers are too short.'

What Tom was doing in Piccadilly that day I don't know but my pal wanted to know if I could do a West Indian accent 'course he can' said Tom 'he can do any accent you like. I saw him doing Walsh and carckney – you name it.'

'I thought you didn't go to the theatre?' I said.

'Oh I snuck in once or twice' he said.

So my pal said his friend wanted someone who could do a West Indian accent to go to his flat to read his play.

'You go and do that' said Tom.

'He's a white West Indian' said my pal ' says he Irish.'

'He'll be from Barbados' said Tom 'you heard the saying “Hell or Barbados?”'

So Tom wandered off and I went up to Muswell Hill to my pal's friend's flat.

When we got there he sure was a white West Indian and he'd written a play 'I need to hear this' the guy said and he poured a large whiskey for me.

We sat down and read it and my pal read the other English part.

My accent wasn't that good – more Jamaican – but the whiskey flowed and we had a few laughs reading the play.

When we finished the play we played darts – with an air pistol.

We were shooting tiny coloured darts at an ordinary dart board and there was a lot of cheering and shouting if we hit the bull and the playwright's wife went out to fetch more whiskey. When it came back it flowed again till it was time to go.

I got to Euston Station just in time to catch the last train to Northampton which was ten minutes past midnight.

As I walked along the platform a loud voice shouted and there was Tom carrying a small bottle of whiskey.

We walked up through the carriages and there sitting on one of the seats I met someone else I knew. An actor called Raynor Burton and he was with his pal who was strumming on a guitar.

Tom passed the whiskey around and we sipped from the bottle as we travelled up to Northampton. Raynor and his pal were going all the way to Birmingham and as we travelled, sipped and laughed, Raynor's pal went into one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs Lay Lady Lay; it was beautiful.

You would think we were a nuisance, singing and drinking and laughing, but no. 

I could see people were smiling and we sang a couple of folk songs with Tom to the fore and then the guitarist starting singing 'Where do you go to my lovely?/When you're alone in your bed' and the whole carriage joined in.

Not too many people as it was the middle of the night and when we finished we had reached Northampton.

Tom left the whiskey with the boys as they continued the other half of their journey to Birmingham and we wandered off in to the night.

I never saw any of them again but when I looked Tom up on the Internet just now I saw that his name was Tom Hall and he played with a band called The Barback Riders and he died twelve years ago.

A Chowder of Cats, a Murder of Crows and a Tent.

I noticed the other day – or I realised the other day – that I lived in Los Angeles longer than I had lived anywhere. I moved there in January 1995 and came away in July 2011.

I lived in other places, of course, and the other long residence was in Northamptonshire where we were for another fifteen years. We had three addresses there (three in LA too) and ended up in a village about six miles or so from the town of Northampton itself.

It might have been like the TV series I wrote about last time Father Brown with a drunken vicar, the headmaster of the school having a ding dong with one of the teachers, a few village idiots (one having a dubious relationship with sheep), gentlemen farmers and a certain amount of small mindedness.

We had a very warm kitchen where we would sit around the table for meals each day and I seem to remember having to buy quite a few water jugs, which were placed in the middle of the table at meals, as they were always being broken.

I would brew my own beer and wine and make bread and pizza and I seemed to be very productive writing bad poetry, mediocre songs and a fairly good play.

I also made comic tapes for the children, which made them laugh when they came in from school, and there are still copies of the 'daft daddy' tapes knocking about.

We had three dogs (not altogether) and loads of cats; a lot of them died which broke all our hearts.

We had a female cat called Alex and one called Tibbles. They both had kittens and were killed not long after on the main road. Tibbles' kitten was called Flossie and was pure white.

One day she was shot somewhere near the thigh; she came home, climbed on top of my stereo music centre and slept for 24 hours. When she woke up she was fine – she was shot because she was white and must have stood out luminously at night when the village boys with their shot-guns were prowling.

She was killed too on the main road and then one day a young cat came into the house; she was tortoiseshell, we called her Biddie and she decided to stay.

Sometimes we would call her Auntie Biddie.

She had loads of kittens, which we gave away, but kept four of them and they lasted till they died of natural causes – so there we were with five cats (a chowder of cats) and when I went to live in Los Angeles I left 3 of them behind and the dog – Whiskey.

It sounds like an idyllic life, doesn't it, and in fact it was; when I got to Los Angeles I was there by myself for 18 months (or as the Americans say 'a year and a half') and we went back to the start of our marriage when my wife came.

Our children were grown up, property owning and independent; it was as if mummy and daddy had died and gone to heaven but they could still contact us. In fact our biggest expense when we lived there was the telephone bill.

That and the trips back to London and the children came to us too – so United Airlines were the winners. We thought the children might have wanted to join us but it wasn't to be so that's the reason we came back – children and grandchildren.

We had 2 cats in Los Angeles; 2 American cats who liked to bite and didn't like human food, fresh chicken, fish or milk. It had to be cat food from the Supermarket.

One was called the Big 'ne the other the Little one – they had other names for the vet - and we kept them till they died naturally.

The Big One came back to London with us but because of the British Law had to go into Quarantine for a while – not for that long as he'd had a rabies jab and a passport – and when he moved in to our house here, he lasted nearly 4 months and died.

So I buried him in the garden and it was very sad – here he is smiling.

The other night I had a dream – I was back in the house where he died and I came down the stairs and when I looked through the window, in the moonlight I saw his tent. I didn't see him but knew somehow that it was his; the tent was the size of a small dogs' kennel and at the head of it were two or three large very black crows; on each side of the tent three or four more and at the other end, another two or three others.

A Murder of Crows.

They seemed to be sniffing out the Big One; El Grande.

My one fear, when he died, was that I might not bury him deep enough as I was nervous about the foxes and crows eating him.

So maybe that was somewhere in my subconscious as I looked through the window; I carefully went out into the garden and who would be at the far end of the tent?

Biddie; the tortoiseshell cat and the mother of them all!

Father Brown.

I've been confined to barracks of late; old sweats – old soldiers - will know what I'm talking about as I've been laid up. I can still go into my office as it's just off the hall, in our flat, between the bathroom and the kitchen. 

So I am very comfortable in the relative luxury of our apartment and the cold weather outside. I suppose the heating bill will be high next time but it's always high.

So after I have been in here working out ideas, doing my taxes and looking after the running of our lives, I break for coffee at around 2:00 pm and sometimes switch on the television.

Not a lot on in the afternoon really, but I could always watch 'On Demand' which is most of the stuff that's been on TV over the past week. I rarely watch any of the commercial channels that way as I can't skip the commercials - you have to sit there and let them run. 

When watching one of the commercial channels live I usually pause the programme for about ten or fifteen minutes so I can skip through when watching.

One of the programmes, apart from all the quiz shows, is a kind of detective series but the PI is a catholic priest, and it's on BBC, Father Brown. 
He's a very famous detective in fiction created by GK Chesterton; he wrote many Father Brown stories and at the end of it he converted to Catholicism.

The acting is quite good and the relationships between the leading characters is amusing. It takes place in a village in the countryside and, even though it's supposed to be a small village, there is a murder every week.

I accept that it's a bit like Agatha Christie but it's a bit funny - and safe.

I have seen about 10 or so episodes but I have yet to see a black or non-white face – until today. 

Today there was a Hindu playing a wise man who was an assistant to the victim.

In fact there may be an episode somewhere with a non-white face – I don't know - but in 10 episodes I haven't seen one.

People argue that there were very few blacks in Britain in the fifties and I have to say that where I went to school I didn't see a black man, or non-white, till a Pakistani came to our school. His name was Shamshad Khan and he was from Lahore; but so what?

Here's is the school choir and you will see what I mean:

 There we are aged about 14 - I am the little fella with the greasy hair 3rd from the right at the back. Shamshad who was my friend, and told me all about the fair in Lahore, is at the front on the right.

But there were plenty of black people living here in conurbations and there are plenty today. 
There are loads of complaints about not enough variety in casting and if I was black I would be very angry and if the answer is that there are not many blacks living in small villages in Britain and even fewer in the fifties set it somewhere else.

It's shot near Birmingham which is very cosmopolitan and even though it (Father Brown) is well done it has no edge. 

Rather like the British films in last week's BAFTA presentations.

I don't expect it to be full of bad language as it's on in the afternoons but let's let it reflect the population here – now!

For your amusement here are two Father Browns of the past; Kenneth More and Alec Guinness:

The Eccentric Mr Turner

I have not been been here for a while as life has a funny way of getting in the way of writing, but I did find to time to go to Stratford on Avon over the weekend to see a late night screening of a film – The Eccentric Mr Turner.

Yes a film about England's greatest landscape painter; if not the world's greatest.

The film is a short one and deals with the last part of the great man's life and features a virtuoso performance in the title role by Gary Taylor. With a few flourishes and flicks of the wrist, a nod and a wink here and there and a look in the eye that makes you think, look and wonder, Taylor introduces us to an aspect in the life on JMW Turner that the recent big budget bio-pic missed.

Why the eccentric and why the mister?

When he first started to stay with his eventual last lover, Mrs Booth, he was known, in her guest house, as Mr Booth - and the eccentricity?

The first thing we see in the film is a painting and we hear Turner admonishing someone; the someone in question has made some kind of mistake and made a mess of something – another fine mess you got me into – and we find out that that someone being lectured to, is a horse; his horse!

And the horse's name?

Hercules!

We learn from Mrs Booth, ably played by Tina Parry, that Turner had fallen asleep and Hercules had to find his own way home.

And then he turns his attention to his two cats – Wellington and Napoleon, would you believe – and they are still out and will be disciplined upon their return.

As he wanders around his studio giving instructions to Mrs Booth, he is starting another painting - the painting turns out to be his most famous and notorious Slave Ship which he had completed many years before.

It soon becomes clear that his life is flashing before his eyes as Turner paints and goes through his experiences meeting again his father, to whom he was very close and misses so much: Charles Dickens, The Prince of Wales and George Stephenson.

There he is (above) with the inventor of Stephenson's Rocket looking at the train roaring and snorting away from them.

He also meets two of the crew of the Slave Ship; he learns that the human cargo are treated wretchedly and if any are sick they are thrown overboard.

Just like that – no nursing needed just a chuck over one of the sides.

One of the crew, he meets again, struck up a relationship with one of the women who had been thrown into the ocean and the moving scene thrusts Turner on to the Slave Ship painting, and as we have been watching the film the famous painting slowly but suddenly appears before our eyes.

This has and is a one man stage show and Gary Taylor would paint The Slave Ship at each venue – he must have painted it many times but in this film he had but one chance as the film was shot in one long take.

No edits or cuts just one long take, in pristine black and white shot beautifully by Michael Booth who also directs.

I would like to think that this lovely little film would go on from here – it's low budget but doesn't look it – here is a link to the trailer: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJhtoyJWjLE

The Slave Ship is below and here is an excerpt from Turner's "Fallacies of Hope" (1812):

"Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhon's coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying - ne'er heed their chains
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?"