CRANKING UP AGAIN. AND IT'S APRIL 2020.

I live in the middle of a usually busy town: a fast five-minute walk from the counters of supermarkets, bakeries and cafes.

But, for the last while, my eyes have been fixed on my phone, watching a tiny van travel a tiny road on a tiny map, bringing a large delivery of bread to my door. He's stopped. He's moving. He's stopped again . . .

Yes, here in the UK, we are in Covid19 epidemic mode.

 

And, in addition, this is me, creaking open the rusty gates of my much neglected blog, partly because I have the odd urge to revisit this wide open space and partly because I have little else to do, Besides, too many words are bouncing around in my head right now. Gives me a chance to talk to myself, I suppose?

This weekend, the 18th/19th April, we are nearing the end of the first stretch of the new normal. Ha! "New normal?" Such a casually bland term! Currently, most lives are spent in variants of social isolation, self-isolation or in total "shielding" practices, depending on age and circumstance and sense.

Yet, for the many brave ones (thank you, all! ), their version of "new normal" stretches into long hours of caring for the ill, the old, the recovering and the dying, often without enough PPE protection or medical equipment on hand . . . .  On and on, the dreadful saga of lack of provision goes.  No doubt - she said cynically - every one of these heroes is hugely encouraged by the Thursday Applause, the apparent crowding on Westminster Bridge and that minuscule CARE badge. 

By heaven, it is certainly it is a time ripe for crankiness, sadness or even despair. It is the least we can do. . . .  Exactly.  And to nobody's astonishment, we enter a second stretch of national isolation. It is impossible to write anything here without acknowledging this real world, whole world context going on out there.

However, the land, under the Easter sunshine, seemed to grow more beautiful.  There were reports of nature filling in the gaps left by humankind: flowers blooming abundantly, goats roaming through seaside towns, hedgehogs successfully crossing roads and so on. Meanwhile, each dawn, the trees and gardens are unusually full of the sounds of birds. Not knowing, and fearful of, whatever might be coming up, there seems to be a private counting of blessings, even as the news relays other images. And on we go . . .

Meanwhile, I'll carry on pondering and pottering and reading and writing. Rather randomly reading. Pondering about this and that. Putting words into the best possible order. And stepping out into this virtual space sometimes, where there's no need to fret about the weeds sprouting all across the paths. I'll be back . . . 

Oh! Is that the doorbell ringing? Tiny van man has arrived!
Keep well and happy,
Penny

ps. Today's petty cause for crankiness?
 There were only three croissants inside the bakery's bag, clearly labelled as an order for five.
 But does one even dare to complain at a time like this?

Library Thoughts: THE BOOK SALE

Two days ago, not unusually, I came home with a book - but I can’t help thinking about the buying of the thing, both happily and sadly.

 

The particular book, COLOUR by Victoria Finlay, is not the cover shown, but a beautiful Folio Society hardback edition. Inside, there’s a rainbow’s worth of chapter openings, illustrations and photographs, and it is in almost pristine condition. I can’t recall such bright plates in my lost paperback version, so there’s which an added glory to this edition. Besides, it will complement a recent gift, THE SECRET LIVES OF COLOUR by Kassia St Clair - and they might inspire me to get out my paints again.

Now, this book treasure cost me just £3.00. £3.00! I bought it at my local library’s BOOK SALE, which is something that both pleases me and grieves me.

Pleasure, because the library BOOK SALE tables appear in the reception area every few weeks so I try to remember to keep a couple of bags in my pockets whenever I walk into town. My Book Sale trawl will vary according to the titles on the tables, but also on size and weight. Any bagfuls must be light enough for the fifteen-minute-walk home.

I do enjoy the wonderfully random selection of books on display and sometimes more get added while the Book Sale is running – like the COLOUR title, above. If I’m in the library, I might revisit those tables, hoping that beneath the popular diet cookbook or footballer’s dog-eared life-story or may lie as secret gem.

Pricing is very simple: works of Fiction (hardback or paperback) are 50p while Non-Fiction titles are usually £1.00. As the Book Sale runs on, the offerings grow thinner, and bigger bargains are there for the taking: three novels for 50p an/or non-fiction at two per pound coin.

Despite my personal book greed, I do ponder about this generously casual offloading. 

 

Where does the Book Sale stock come from?

From how many shelves and categories and libraries do the sale books come?

Across the whole of the admin area or the whole of the county?

Do the library staff (and volunteers?) cull the bookshelves just once a month? A season?

Or is it a continual process, with the Book Sale taking place whenever the surplus books and cardboard boxes are full?

And/Or do evil-minded electronic ticket machines secretly register the number of times a book has been taken out and – at some point - reject the barely-read book from the system?

One sad fact is that every single book represents an author in the form of a writer and maybe an illustrator and each book, when borrowed earns that author a small amount of money, which comes from the Public Lending Rights fund, or PLR. In past years, as a children’s author, PLR has kept me afloat - or afloat enough to pay any owed taxes.  

What comes around goes around and out the door again, eh? 

Which leads me to:

First Big PLR Point: the author’s titles do need to be there on the library shelves and available for borrowing. When I gaze at the tables of outcasts, it’s hard to tell if this or that copy is the last one left within the whole of that County’s library stock.

Second Big PLR Point: titles also do need to be there to be borrowed, registered within a system that is linked to PLR. 

Sadly, as far as I understand it, those Community Libraries that are now devolved from their County Council don’t register borrowings for PLR, nor do the various "Little Library" schemes, though I have heard of schemes being discussed. Therefore as more and more poorly-funded councils reduce support for public  libraries (if they even have libraries at at all, ala,) a great many authors will feel the pinch.

Here's where I should add that the amount of PLR that an individual author can earn has a top limit so the Rowlings, Rankins, Walliams and Dan Browns can’t bankrupt the system.

Consequently, while I might feel glad about the book-sale-books I carry home, I do also grieve when I see the BOOK SALE signs go up and all the discarded titles spread out across the tables.

Part of me wonders if all the cash raised goes back into purchasing new books. I do hope so, otherwise – with less money allocated to the library service – the shelves will soon empty.

And particularly poignant are the times when, scanning the children’s and teens booksale tables, I spy cast-off titles by favourite writers and writing friend I know: the books I may have heard about as first imagining, or met in draft form, or worked and written and accepted, and then finally published and reviewed and out there for their readers – and now, and now . . . .

Quickly crossing my fingers, I fling out a hope that there’s still one copy, at least, of that particular title left somewhere in the library system – not only for the PLR, involved, but so that that author’s work is still there to be read.

 There will surely be more library thoughts to come.

BOOKSHELVES & A BOOKSELLER & THE NUMBER THIRTY

How many books - and how many bookshelves do you need? Or do you fit into your rooms? Or would, if you were a bookseller?

Marie Kondo, the tidiness lifestyle guru, said - or so I first heard – that she only keeps thirty books on her bookshelf. 

Across the media, people responded angrily to this meagre allowance until other people, not quite as aghast, explained that thirty was merely the number that Marie Kondo had said sparked joy for her in her own surroundings. It seemed you could keep as many books as you liked, really, as long the books looked orderly and your didn’t forget that there are storage facilities available for hiding ugly, faded or visually disreputable titles. In the land of the decluttered, nostalgia is not queen.

However, that cruel total of thirty wasn’t a shock to me. In my experience whenever I’ve peered into interior design magazines, I rarely see shelves bearing a satisfying quantity of books. 

The magazines might show a few, new, evenly-sized books balanced on a tiny, amusingly-designed wall-shelf: a circle perhaps, or an S or Z-shape or rope in a lifebelt: certainly never shelving that’s any way substantial or roomy.

Alternatively – especially around late autumn when there is a need to feel cosier– a fully-lined library will appear as one of the magazine settings. The photographs will show a grand interior, where an impressive quantity of volumes rises from floor to ceiling and runs across the tops of doorways and windows. So many books, ah yes!

A polished wooden ladder will be at hand to reach those high, dust-free shelves and, come October, a fashionable dog will be lolling by a flickering hearth. Unfortunately, if the "big bookshelf" issue is planned for November, a Christmas tree with all its decorations will block the way to any of the reading material. 

I know these glossy bookshelf pages are merely created as backdrops and sets for designer fantasies and probably don’t exist within any real rooms either, but they are so little use if one has a reasonable number of books.

I look around me: the books home here are so real and so many that most shelves are double-stacked and are often disorderly. 

All of these facts made reading Shawn Bythell’s memoir, THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER, a very suitable and cheering New Year experience. 

 

The diary is a half-despairing glimpse into the running the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland, which was what had occupied Bythell since 2001.

In 2004, he became involved in establishing Wigtown, Galloway, as a “Book Town”, complete with its own annual Book Festival and then, recently, took a long break.  

THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER is one result of his sabbatical.

 

Bythell's account of his trade is never idyllic and the characters are rarely literary celebrities. He is offering the reader his diary: each daily entry starts with online orders and books found, and ends with the number of customers and amount of the cash taken at the till. Some days are definitely unprofitable. 

For example, one early February Friday lists 2 online orders and 2 books found, while – by evening – only 4 customers have come in and there is just £67.00 in the till. Not a life of glamour and riches at all.

However, in between the worrying totals, Bythell describes constant battles with the crumbling Georgian shop walls, heating failures, eccentric assistants with fould eating habits, ungrateful customers and the problems of book-shelf label management , all recounted with a charming grumpiness and even a dour, stubborn kind of hope.

There are, for those that know the tv series, faint echoes of Black Books, but THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER offers a lot more sociability as well as glimpses of the local Galloway landscape and community and the odd contents of personal libraries up for sale.

He also mentions forgotten planning permission for the doorway, and demands from customers eager to sleep in THE BOOKSHOP’s festival bed. In fact, one Wigtown bookseller was – at the time of his writing - letting out her premises, week by week, to people eager to fulfil their dream of running a bookshop - DIY B&B&B anyone? - adding that there were bookings for years ahead.

Despite publicity snippets, I didn’t find THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER a “hilarious” laugh-a-line kind of book but very few are, are they? Sometime the mood was the very opposite, when Bythell mutters about Amazon and Abebooks predatory practices and their dire effect on the bookshops and second-hand booksellers. 

 

So, not a hilarious read, then - but as someone interested in all aspects of the books world, I certainly found Bythell’s memoir (pbk 2018 ) worth my time. THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER was a pleasure and a suitably wintry amusement: it is very unlikely to encourage new members to the trade but highly likely to increase the number of wistful, bookish visitors in Galloway.

I must, considering my earlier rant, mention that the copy contains b&w photographs of the shop, and its books, and its shelves- and I am very sure they are all satisfyingly real. There's also an audiobook, which would surely make a wonderful bedtime story!

CRANKING UP THE LAPTOP AGAIN.

Today is the 5^th of February 2019. Already. The snow came, went and will probably come again.

After Twelfth Night, the tinsel stuff was packed away, but I hadn't stowed the nativity set away. I'd got used to seeing small cast of characters parade along the mantelpiece.

A few days away in Dublin happened and then I spotted the whole gang still there, quite comfortable. For a moment I hesitated but they didn't seem appropriate any longer, especially as by then I was ferreting through all the bills & receipt for the tax returns. 

A new arrival - an imposing Augustus Caesar figurine? or a Herod? - might have fitted the atmosphere, but he would arrive too late. So back into their seasonal gold biscuit tin the holy folk went and away into the cupboard. The tin isn't used for real biscuits, obviously.

Joy! The the dread paperwork was safely done, the money paid and returns sent to HMRC. Sighs of relief and wide vistas opening out around me . . . . .  

And then came the wild fantasy. 

Could the Cranky Laptop blog be brought to life again? 

Re-started? Be useful - and be fun?

 

The timing is well more than appropriate, machine-wise. The morning after The Tax was done, I cheerfully sat down at my ancient Desktop Box and pressed the big round button. The blue circle of light flickered on, as normal, and then off and the humming stopped. The Destop went ominously quiet and dark . . . . 

Oh well. . . . Oh bother.. . . And more . . .

So here I am, with the Destop dead, getting used to my New Blue laptop all over again. I have loved and admired the slim new thing greatly: for a start it works without the yards of power cable its very Cranky Laptop predecessor needed all the time.

However, I have Tech Imposter Syndrome. Unfamiliar keyboard layouts and actions easily send me into a panic.  What better way to face the unfamiliarity than crank up the blog once more? And so it begins . . .

If you see a tear-stain on a post here, don’t be alarmed. I’m not really alarmed either for the word is that Blogs are No Longer Read by anyone, not even by those who write them. Slipping back into the cavernous, almost anonymous silence feels so much easier.

As nobody knew I'd left, nobody will know I'm back, la la la! Makes writing the wittering words much easier.

Back soon. 

Off to make an apple crumble, which is a very comforting thing to do on a wintry afternoon, don't you think?

INTRODUCING THE NEW BLUE

THE NEW BLUE

Ah yes, that Cranky Laptop.  The ancient one with its weight and size. The one that needed the annoying cable & socket strip to keep it plugged into power and therefore alive. As someone, in response to my mutterings, told me: “That’s not a laptop, mother, it’s a desk top. Move on.”

So I did - and now I have a fine shiny laptop.My New Blue will be wonderful one day. It is light, slim and beautiful - unlike its human -  and has oodles of power. However, at first it felt almost as crotchety as the cranky old machine. A shouty, unfamiliar system made me feel slow and stupid and the screen was plastered with links to unwanted apps and games. It was as if Sleeping Beauty lay there daubed with fluorescent facepacks, overnight beauty aids and correctiveS patches.

The New Blue machine and I felt like strangers and all the embedded “helpfulness” made it hard to do what I most wanted to do which was a) to start some writing and b) be able to find it again.  I was in despair about wrangling any new writing into shape ever again.

Is it always like this with a brand new computer? Or was it that I had no helpful young person close at hand to sigh and smile in an amused way and say, quite casually, “Oh, you just need to do that.”

You see, a while back, I had a daydream. I'd imagined sauntering into town, settling myself in a coffee-shop and typing with careless ease plus -  cue hollow laugh - a gentle spark of inspiration. And it would all take place once I had my mythical non-cranky laptop. 

Alas no. Although I possessed the elegant New Blue, I was like an aged toddler attempting to stack different-sized plastic tumblers on slippery tiles.

However, being positive, I can learn and ask and practice patience - and be kind to helpful tech-bodies and all will be good.

Although how could I post my cranky words out in the blogosphere when my. New Blue wi-fi does not like the house walls – or is it the other way around? I was trapped in a zone of silence. Or faced with a search for a memory stick in a small rattly box that's Somewhere . . .

Or, as of today, through peace and quiet and an armchair in another room, progress has been made. The New Blue and I are here togther. We exist.

Onward.

Autumn Images, October 2017

Time passes  . . .
      and another Autumn arrives, even for the Cranky Laptop.


Wandering in Harlow Carr Gardens, experimenting with a new camera:
 

Apples red and ready to fall, 

 A tapestry of colours

 

 Pale grasses ruffling in the wind

 

And a reconstruction of a Victorian potting shed. 

Meanwhile, another day, elsewhere: sunlight on a fountain after a funeral.

Perhaps, she thought, I may have cracked my photo and posting problem . . .

Ahem. Yes, hello again, in a grovelling sort of way . . . 

I now know that starting up this new blog was a sure way of making a)my days suddenly grow busier and b)several electronic devices fail on me nastily, of which more anon. ANON? Please do note that deft twist of literary language as it links into something I spotted in the news today.

On 17th October, the post below was my piece for the month on the History Girls blog. I wrote it after going to The Globe to watch Emma Rice's production of Morpurgo's children's novel, ending the post with a few extra thoughts about lighting and effects in "Shakespeare's theatre". 

Those comments seem even more relevant today, with the news that Emma Rice will be stepping down as Director of The Globe at the end of next summer's season over the lighting issues. 

I suspect this matter of "natural light" must have made the season painful for many involved, although there were obviously highs like the broadcast of her "Midsummer Nights Dream". I'm hoping that Emma Rice's talents will soon bring her vision a happier home elsewhere. Meanwhile, I'll be looking forward to seeing "946" and Tips at the West Yorkshire Playhouse at the start of November.

Read on - and do visit the History Girls blog too, if you haven't already. There's a new posts by a historical fiction writer there each day of the month. 

"946" or G.I.s at THE GLOBE 

Today’s post is about a play – and a novel - for young people based on a historical event and performed at a historical place.

As soon as I saw that the Kneehigh Theatre Company was at The Globe on London’s South Bank in September, I checked dates and booked tickets. Although the Cornish-based company occasionally tours to Leeds, I wasn’t sure if that would happen with this show. So London it was. 

I particularly wanted to see how they would dramatise THE AMAZING STORY OF ADOLPHUS TIPS, a children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo, the author of WAR HORSE. The story is another “animal & war” tale, written in his classic, thoughtful style which was why I could not quite imagine how the story – and the history behind it - could be translated for the stage and for a family audience.

I had hopes: Kneehigh has a wonderfully theatrical approach. Although their performances feel emotionally real, what the audience sees is not realistic in the TV or CGI sense of the word: the company uses a cast of multi-talented actor-musicians in a variety of roles as well as puppetry, music, song, dance and movement and seem able to tread between from moments of raucous humour to intensely moving sensitivity.

“946: THE AMAZING STORY OF ADOLPHUS TIPS” is set during WWII. Ostensibly, the story is about a twelve year old girl trying to find her lost cat, yet it is also about the pity of war and the changes that war brings to ordinary lives and places. Michael Morpurgo, as ever, reminds us of the histories that one generation should share with those that come after. 

The inspiration for Morpurgo’s book was both the requisitioning of Slapton, a remote, rural village in Devon in1943 and the disaster that happened there. The military had noticed that the wide, sloping beaches of Slapton Sands were similar to the Normandy coastline and therefore chose that area to stage Operation Tiger, an intentionally realistic, don’t-turn-back rehearsal for the D-Day landings.

 

During the preparations, as American troops flooded into the area and landing craft gathered along the Devon coast, the local villagers had to make arrangements to leave the homes, farms, livestock and land and all that everything that had been part of their lives for generations. Even then, the rehearsal did not go well. When German U-boats were spotted in the Channel, a mismatch between the British and American coding systems blocked radio warnings and the landing ships, full of troops and sailors, heavy equipment and vehicles were torpedoed. Many men were maimed, killed or lost at sea and, furthermore, the “realistic” nature of Operation Tiger meant that the “live” ammunition was used when troops engaged on the beaches.

Afterwards, Morpurgo found, that although there had been local rumours of the disaster, a news black-out was imposed. Morale had to be kept high for the proposed D-Day landings and so the tragedy remained an official secret for many years, both in Britain and in America. The number chosen for the show’s title - 946 – is quoted as the number of G.I’s who died at Slapton Sands. A grim event, and I could not help wondering how Kneehigh would manage this uneasy subject.

A question asked of Bertholdt Brecht makes the opening line of the show:

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?”
”Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

Slowly, as a model farmhouse - complete with a smoking chimney - is carried on stage, we are shown a country backwater in miniature: a small Dorset farm, surrounded by tiny puppet sheep, a small black and white sheepdog and a delightful boy-puppet playing “keepy-uppy” with his football. In moments, that tiny scene expands to human scale. The small collie becomes a full-sized puppet collie, and we are inside the remote farmhouse with strong-minded Grandma, poorly Grandad in his wheelchair and, gradually all the family, especially Booey, the grandson and narrator. The grandfather is, very gently, dying. Grandma, clearly dominant, takes Booey out on a motorbike, recalling how she and her ailing husband used to travel, “Supreme!” she declares, a refrain that echoes throughout the play. Then, after the funeral, she announces she is setting off on a secret adventure, to do something she has waited until now to do.

If you have read any Morpurgo books, you will recognise his familiar time-slip structure when you see Grandma gives puzzled Booey her girlhood diary, briskly telling him that if he reads it – twelve-year-old Lily Tregenza’s diary - he will understand where she is going and why. As Booey starts reading the pages, time changes and Lily, played by Katy Owen, appears, furiously grabbing her diary out of his hands. 

A frisky self-willed young girl, Lily is obsessed with searching for her cat Tips who has been in hiding since Lily’s father drowned her litter of kittens. (This is a “told” incident, thank goodness.) Lily, unable to forgive her father, would not say goodbye when he left for war. 
Thankfully for my emotions, the puppet cat Tips is quite large and not particularly cute or needy: she is a typical farmhouse cat, in fact, and not one that anyone else on the Tregenza family farm worries about, because it is wartime and, short-handed, they are struggling to keep things going.
   
Lily attends the small village school, where lessons are now conducted by a teacher from France, the cruelly-nicknamed Madam Bloomers, who the “children” mock as she circles the stage on her bicycle. The “pupils” act their parts magnificently well, mixing naughtiness, name-calling and argy-bargy, along with acrobatically gliding around their old-school desks, and more. Even there, Lily does not change: she does not love school or rules and her liveliness and cussedness gives the play and story a nicely unsentimental edge.

Shortly, a group of evacuees arrive. Immediately, the cramped sharing of desks leads to arguments and fights between the village children and the incomers. They are, at first, instant enemies:

“They keep looking at us funny.”

“Well, look funny back!”

Gradually, Lily and Barry, a dim, kindly boy from war-damaged London, form an awkward relationship, with the headstrong Lily delighting in taunting the love-struck Barry throughout he play.

 
The whole “school cast” worked excellently, especially in a wonderfully raucous scene where Lily angrily suggests that Hitler and Churchill should settle the war between themselves rather than making everyone else fight the war for them, an idea demonstrated through a trio of children’s street games using rounds of scissors-paper-stone, a clapping pattern contest and a rather unequal skipping game at the end of which a Hitler figure is driven, snivelling, off-stage and a brash, triumphant Churchill celebrates with a tour-de-force on the skipping-rope.

Morpurgo was very involved with the Kneehigh Company’s adaptation, and I could not help noticing how subtly scripted the language was during these moments and the whole play. For example, the Nazi party is blamed, rather than the German nation as a whole, and although the children may be thoughtless, once they hear that their teacher’s husband has been drowned in a naval convoy, their behaviour immediately changes to sympathy, and for once the sight of school recorders brought peace and joy.

All the way through, the first half is full of activity and sound: the recorders sing tunefully, the tractor rattles around the stage, puppet hens squawk and small farm animals cause  havoc. Even the elusive Tips appears for a cuddle now and then.

However, the schoolchildren’s biggest surprise comes when Adie and his friend arrive in the classroom, asking for directions for their jeep: the children meet two black American soldiers, at a time and in a place where they would have been an unusual sight. Lily is totally enchanted by Adie, especially when the two G.I’s visit the Tregenza farm. 

Moreover, the soldier’s involvement, culture and cheerful friendship is emphasised all the way through by the music from the band on-stage, up in the gallery, descending to act their parts by ladders or skinning down the pole. 946 is full of “American” music - jazz, jitter-bug, gospel and more – and with never a single lute in sight.

 
I felt that the play is noisier and ruder than the original novel and once, rather mistook the book’s mood for me. When Barry’s larger-than-life bus-conductress mum visits the farm, her comic drag role rather overwhelmed the Ivy from the page, who I’d thought of as a helpful, extra pair of hands whose bustling ways had stirred the grandfather out of his mood of dejection. This book Ivy was hidden by the dramatically loud wails of protest about the awful green of her country surroundings. 

Yet, maybe the production needed that energy at that point, coming just before the imminent tragedy? As the second half starts to the sound of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, the stories start to interweave and darken and Kneehigh moves into the powerful arts of mime and symbolism:

- the stage, barricaded with lengths of wire, signifying the dangerous, restricted areas where Lily goes searching for Tips;

- the communication error is signified by two string-and-can phone-sets ( one colour British, the other American) the lines crossed but unconnected.

- an almost ritual acting out of the disaster, where G.I’s carry model ships forward to a rank of water-filled tin baths, like toys in the game of war.

- the fusillade of flashes and explosions and water spurting through the layers of mist and smoke: the fog of war indeed,

-  religious symbols: as the people leave the village, both the vicar’s church candlestick and the teacher’s menorah are carried among the precious possessions: this is not a one-faith confrontation.

- a tiny parachutist puppet descends; immediately an injured German parachutist stands on stage, hands in position but without a trailing parachute. The remote far-off is made immediate and personal

- the children and villagers holding out photos not only of the young German’s family but also the “lost” faces of British, Indian, Black, Jewish and other peoples who suffered in this World War

The production offers much to think about, not only the fact that life was changed for all in that community by those times. Lily’s “journal” concludes, ending with runaway Tips being brought home and the plot returns to the “present” of the early scenes. Where has Booey’s Gran gone? Who will look after her when she comes back? Who will the old lady live with? The squabbling family are waiting at the airport to find out . . .

Emma Rice’s production sharpened all the emotions and strengths of the Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips book, lightening it with humour and bringing sparkle and life to both the past and “present” stories, and there is much in this busy production that I would have liked to include but could not. You'll find a flavour of the show here.

 

However, at the same time, I was aware that The Globe was dressed for a twentieth-century war story. The familiar painted stage - see below - was stacked with sandbags or “protected” by wooden planking. Each pillar carried a large aeroplane propeller that whirred into action at significant moments, the music and sound was amplified and at one point a glitter-ball rotated under the Shakespearean canopy. This production meant a big change for The Globe, which was created to be as authentic an experience of Shakespearean theatre as possible, a theatre where costumes were laced and tied and where the great Round “O” would respond to the sound to human breath. Now – though not all in a single move - there are zips and electricity.

Emma Rice of Kneehigh is now the Director of the Globe so it will be interesting to see how Shakespeare will be played here in future. Her Midsummer Night’s Dream, recently shown on television, was much more in the vibrant, cross-dressing Kneehigh style than in the “authentically historic” tradition. Is this change a loss and if so, does it matter? Or is it a matter of “bums-on-seats” accountancy?

.

I will be seeing this production again. 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips is now on tour – maybe near you? - and will be coming to the West Yorkshire Playhouse during Book Week.  At this, a term-time matinee) I will probably witness the show among an audience of school-children. What they will make of it all? How much of the history will get though to them. And what will they make of all this “singing about the dark times?”