The Daily Novel

Off to Lyme Regis for a lunch at a rather posh hotel organised by the friends of the museum at which the speaker was Ann Jelicoe, best known for her play, The Knack, which hit Broadway and was later made into a film. We arrived at the Alexandra Hotel at 12 AM precisely for our £25 lunch. I did not mind shelling out £25 quid, because it was going to the Lyme Regis Museum, but of course, there was half an hour or so to kill before we sat down. I went to the bar and ordered two drinks, a white wine spritzer and a glass of Rose. I watched mesmerised as my drink was poured out. The bar tender poured the wine into a metal measure, and then transferred it to the size of wine glass I normally use,  There was enough to half fill the glass.

The bill was £10.15. The Ritz Hotel in London W1 probably charges more. But not much more.

I tell you this, so that you will know that your truth telling reporter at this event, may be influenced in what he is writing by some personal feelings. Which were exacerbated when Ann rose to give her talk, nearly two hours later.

She began by saying:

I knew that i wanted to do – go into theatre – when I was four years old……..  From that moment I never dobuted. It made life very simple.

What rot, I thought. At 4 i probably wanted to be an engine driver. At 14 I wanted to be Prime Minster. As life happened i started as a journalist and then went on to be a teacher of journalism.

But when I listened to the rest of her talk, I realised that her life had been far from simple.

She went straight from school to the Central School of Speech and Drama in the closing years of the war. The teachers were tired. Most of the men were still away at the Front. The course was far too long. But in her final year – of a three year course, which she said was far too long – was a huge success, because she starred in a play produced by a young playwritght, Christopher Fry. for the school.

That did not launch her career. Despite her outstanding talent, she could not get a job in theatre. And she became quite seriously depressed. She was rescued by her old school, who gave her a job teaching their students. Who included Vanessa Redgrave, whom everyone at today’s lunch had heard of.

Her own success came years later. When she made her name as a writer and director of plays, thanks partly to the help of George Devine at the Royal Court theatre in Chelsea, one of the key figures who revitalised British theatre in the 1960’s.

So Ann Jelicoe’s story is far from simple. For the last thirty years or so, she has been developing community theatre in Dorset, which does not hit the headlines. She is still going strong at 82. She can still bend an audience to what she has to say.

Even though she is a mistress of the art of self-deprecation. Because when you hear her in person, you realise that her life has not been simple or easy. She has stayed faithful to her own imperatives. Despite the many difficulties on the way.

In one of her plays, she invented a new planet called, ‘Hope’. The scientists have not yet found it. No matter. Utopia has still not been found.

But meanwhile there are many worse things you can do with your lives, than working to find an alternative to American consumer capitalism.

It was only when I received a message this afternoon from a fellow manic depressive who had got something from reading what I have written about this condition, that I realised that I had been depressed deep down inside for the last two weeks. Which is the main reason I have not written a blog for two weeks.

Depressed about the state of the world. Notably  the news that Barack Obama has plunged in the US approval ratings to a record low and that the health bill is still a long way from approval. Depressed by a nasty cough, which is also a reminder that diseases of the flesh are bound to strike with increasing frequency as I get even older than I am now. Depressed because because nothing I thought of writing seemed worth writing. Depressed because so few other human beings share my concerns.

Since I am a manic depressive, just one positive message can jolt me into a manic phases, in which the ideas come tumbling so fast, that I cannot get them down quick enough. And I don’t have time to eat. (Which reminds me of another worry. Replaced the scales, which broke two years ago, and found my weight is a stone below the usual.)

So I will go get some dinner soon.

After expressing my anger about the current fashion for labelling us lot, ‘bi-polar’. Manic depression describes my temparament much more accurately. I spend days when I don’t even feel like getting out of bed, cannot even get out of the starting gate on any worthwhile task. Then I switch and want to sprint a mile.

Have to sprint, because if I don’t I might get submerged by the glooms, yet again.

Still, ‘mustn’t grumble’, which is the title of a book about the English I got for my birthday.

Which I will blog about, if I ever get time to read it.

But before I go dinner.

One key thing about us manic depressives, we are all different from each other.

As are all human beings.

Which is another reason why I doubt the creation myth. Human beings are not cast in the same mold cast by one celestial sculptor. They are beings who have been shaped by genes, social and economic background and by the life experiences they have lived through.

Which is, when you think about it, really wonderful.

Angry with myself because I wrote a blog last night about Chemical Ali, mixing him up with another Iraqui, who was a much better man. So that blog was a serious mistake. So it has been deleted. But in any case it did not do justice to my anger at Ali’s execution. And my remembered anger at the execution displayed on the world’s television sets of Sadaam Hussein. The justification for regime change, and the deaths of the innocent and the guilty in the Iraq war, is that the US and its allies are introducing better government to Iraq. But these executions turn the taking of a human life into mass entertainment, just as it was in the aftermath of the French revolution, in Dickensian Britain, and in those parts of the world today where human beings are put to death, not only for criminality, but for political dissent or for transgressing societal rules of sexual behaviour.

It is pandering to the emotions of the mob. It is turning back the progress human beings have made  towards established humane societies, where the weak, the old and young are protected from those humans who want to bully them or worse. And the huge irony is that this Iraq regime change was orchestrated by just two world leaders, both passionate believers in Jesus Christ, to whom they pray regularly seeking guidance in making the big decisions.

No wonder they allowed themselves to be deluded about the evidence for those weapons of mass destruction, because they persist in believing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, who created the earth, though there is strong scientific evidence that the world evolved, more or less as Charles Darwin thought.

Worse than that Bush and Blair ignore the very strong historical evidence that Jesus Christ the man did exist and that the teachings of the New Testament does represent his teaching, though much of it was written down some years after he had died. He was above all a man of peace, who believed in compassion for sinners, and advocated giving them a chance to repent their sins.

He might have locked up Chemical Ali in a cell for the rest of his life with only a Bible to read, but he would have made sure that he had enough to eat and drink.

This same Jesus Christ would also, if he were indeed alive today, be urging that the international bankers should not be allowed to use their wealth to satisfy their infinite greed, grabbing far more than fair share of the world’s goods. There is no evidence that he rose again on the third day.  But in a metaphorical sense, he stayed alive in the memories of his followers, and through them, he is ‘alive’ for those who read his teachings more than 2,000 words afterwards.

He urged them to look for God within themselves. And he did warn them that when they looked inside, they  might find the Devil, who was telling them it is OK to be greedy.

OK to charge £10 million for people to hear the wonderful voice you have been lucky enough to be born with.

In the dream I am hurrying to a West End theatre to see a Shakespeare play which is probably, Much Ado About Nothing. I am late. The usherette, a striking brunette who resembles the new girl friend of my wife’s cousin, whom I met for the first time on Sunday, tells me  I shall have to stand at the back until the first interval. But once inside I join a group of middle aged men who are sitting on the steps talking amongst themselves in rather loud voices with public school accents.

 They are also watching the action, taking place on the stage a long way below – we must be in the gallery. The actors are too far away for me to hear more than a few words of what they saying. But I hear enough of them to know that the words they are speaking are not those of the Shakespeare play. And they are all in modern dress. What I am watching must be the creation of a contemporary playwright who has been inspired to write something of his own, loosely adapted from the original.

 Within a few minutes the first interval arrives and I head for the bar. In the corridor I go through a doorway leading to a white spiral staircase. It is unlike any staircase I have seen. On either side there tooth like pillars of irregular height, vaguely reminiscent of the fangs of a tiger.  It is narrow, too narrow for people coming up to pass people going down. It seems to go on endlessly, and I have no wish to climb them all on the way back. I want out. But the youths also walking down tell me there is no exit until the bottom, which we reach eventually.

 The staircase ends, not in the street, buton what must be the river bed. It seems much bigger than the actual Thames river bed, more like the seashore. All I can see in front of me is sand and water. No sign of the opposite bank. There is a light mist which adds to the beauty of the scene, which might have been painted by Turner. The tide is coming in and as I walk along the shore I have to step around rivulets of water.

 Soon I meet up with middle aged men from the balcony, still talking to each other in loud voices. But happy to help me. I am trying to light a cigarette, but both of the two lighters I have with are refusing to ignite.  Three of them offer their lighters. After the first so satisfying inhalation, I wake up and discover I am in our London flat, looking out on a white winter wonderland.

 The snow is back and my guess is there has been a fall of about two inches during the night.

 That is all I remember. But my belief is that the unconscious mind is telling us stories and painting pictures for us during the night, and that what I am remembering is part of much bigger construction. Whether or not the unconscious is sending me messages with important meanings I am not sure. But what I do know is that my free night-time film is sometimes much more entertaining than much on offer by the one hundred odd channels on my television set.

Snow scare stories are still dominating the media. Both daughters rang up yesterday afternoon to warn us to stock up because heavy falls were predicted in the south of England today. Listening to the BBC 8 o-clock news this morning added to the dire tidings. Nearby Hampshire had a foot of snow and some motorists had been trapped in their cars on the A3.

Quite an anti-climax when I drew back the curtains. In our part of Dorset we have yet to see anything so dramatic. More a dusting of parts of the landscape as my pics demonstrate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My children got closer to Charmouth’s big swim than I did. Here are four of their pics.

It was a frosty night down here in Dorset but by 11 AM the sun had broken through just in time for Charmouth’s Christmas Day fancy dress swim. Dozens, young and old,  dashed into the chilly waves, cheered on by hundreds more. With all that adrenalin  flowing it did not feel as cold as it was. So they told me, because I decided to take some pics instead of making the plunge.

On your marks……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everybody in…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colourful splash…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, now back to the turkey…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I did it, Dad’……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Courtly gent helps his lady over the pebbles…..

Down in Dorset the kids have been missing all the excitement. While  the television screens and the newspapers have been full of spectacular pics of the worst winter for years, we have not yet had a single flake here. And the chances of a White Christmas must now be a million to one against. The gas man who came  to fix the heating system, which had decided to give up the ghost so we could have a real old-fashioned Christmas, had heard rumours of snow in Winchester.

He was right, as I discovered when I dashed up to London for a pre-Christmas party on Monday evening. When we drove back on Tuesday morning the M3 in Surrey and Wiltshire was an almost magical winter wonderland, with snow painting  the trees white. The sun came out to brighten the scene and offer a beautiful picture.

 Alas, I did not have time to stop. So all I have to offer is the picture taken from my London flat on Tuesday morning. At least it demonstrates that London Overground (that’s  what we all knew as the North London Line) was providing a better service than EuroStar. Despite the alleged unusual nature of this year’s snow flakes, London Overground managed to provide normal service. Whereas on EuroStar the passengers on five trains were trapped in the tunnel for 22 hours.

All of the passengers, except for Claudia Schiffer, for whom the Eurostar managers sent a special car.

That’s high tech privatised public transport for you. My vote in the next election will go the party who gives the tunnel contract to folk like those currently running London Overground, who have also planted flower boxes on the stations.

…….transport depended on the likes of my great grandfather. I found today in one of those cardboard boxes, the only surviving picture of him.  John Jones was a saddler, who specialised in making the collars, without which the gentry could not pull their carriage and pairs.

 He was, according to the Walsall local newspaper obituary, one of the stoutest members of the realm, weighing in at 35 stone, but in an age when obesity meant gravitas.

He was big all round and the only other photo I have seen was of him in a doorway, where his head projected above the top of the door.

My father never knew him, because he died in 1878, aged 38 when my grandfather was not yet ten.

 He was a legend rather than a reality in my childhood. He lived on only in the memory of my grandfather, who kept this photo pasted inside his membership card for the Wolverhampton Bowling Club.

None of his sons followed in his footsteps followed in his footsteps. The eldest John became a housebuilder. My grandfather, Frank, lived for sport. He was good enough at soccer to have a trial for the Wolves and made the Staffordshire cricket team. To keep the family going he did a variety of jobs.

My father in a kind of way did follow in the footsteps of great grandfather. He made the rubber collars for the wheels of the horseless carriages.

 The photograph shows its age but if only I can really learn Photoshop properly I may be able to restore it.

Great excitement at Axminster station today when I arrived to meet the Lonon train at noon. The mayor and council and almost every other big wig in town was assembled on the platform. All waiting, I was told, to greet the transport minister, Lord Adonis, who was about to open the new footbridge, double track line, and hourly service to Waterloo. The regular London train was ten minutes late but the national brass were not on it. They were in their own special train which arrived fifteen minutes later. The toffs from London poured off and shook hands vigourously with the local toffs.

But no Lord Adonis.

Apparently he had been asked but he was too busy trying to keep all the national trains running on time. The locals had to make do with the managing director of Network Rail, who you can just about see making the speech in one of my pics.

Now I am sure that all the folks in Axminster will be delighted to have an hourly train service to London, thanks to Lord Adonis, Network Rail and and South West Trains for this £20 improvement scheme. But those locals who came on the 9.20 from London today will be more sceptical about the much publicised improvement. Under the old timetable the train used to arrive at 11.54, a journey time of 2 hours 34 minutes. Under the new timetable it arrives at 12.02, journey time 2 hours 42 minutess. To be fair it was the fastest train of the day, which did not stop at Crewkerne. Most of the others took between 2 hours 40 minutes and 2 hours 45 minutes.

But for the age of high speed trains that is a long time for a journey of around 150 miles. After all we live in an age when we can get from London to Paris in 2 hours 15 minutes.

So what was happening in Axminster today is of importance not just to the locals, but to the nation, because improvements have to be made to road and rail services to this neck of the woods before the Olympics which we are hosting in 2012. If Britain is not going to have egg all over its face in that year whoever governs Britain between now and then, must improve transport between London and this part of the country.

Because the water Olympics take place in Weymouth, to which South West Trains will take you on the 9.05 from Waterloo  in 2 hours 55 minutes. This is not because South West Trains is run by a bunch of idiots. It is because of the political decisions made by successive British governments. But before I do the naming and shaming let’s get the facts clear.

The money which has been spent on British railways modernisattion has gone to the Padington line to the west. So that if my wife had taken the 9.o5 from Padington today she would have been in Exeter in 2 hours 12 minutes. If she had continued her journey witth South West Trains to Exeter her journey would have been on the train for 3 hours 17 minutes.o

So despite the huge technological advances folks down here are not getting around by rail any faster than in Victorian times. Axminster station was opened in 1860 with two platforms and a double track. It has been withered down by the politics of Harold Wilson (and my Lord Beeching), Margaret Thatcher, with her doctrinaire decision to privatise Britain’s rail network (in total ignorance of the fact that many of the problemss inhherited by British Rail arose from the fact that this vital public service was run by a hodge podge of private comanpies trying to make money for their own companies.

So the line to Axminster was a bit of territorial expansion by the old Southern Railway company, which prospered on their line to Brighton. Things have not improved under New Labour. The present Labour transnport minister is the un-elected Lord Adonis, one of the Greek gods of New Labour, an unelected minister, brought into the New Labour Government as Education minister, at which he was not a great success. At least he  knew something about education, even though he was stronger on the theorising than on the realities.

But the problems today, in Dorset and in the rest of the country, arise from the need to have a national transport policy. Governnments can fire South West Rail, and Network Rail (again!) but however good the managers of privatised bits of our rail network are, they cannot serve the interests of the electorate.

Because what we need is an efficient national network. And none of the political parties are addressing this issue.

At today’s ceremony a bunch of the local schoolkids had been given time off to make up part of the welcoming party. Their placards announced a welcome to the Jurassic Coast. But in order to get there today’s rail travellers have to take the bus, because the railway line from Axmminster to Lyme Regis was closed in 1966. Courtesy of Lord Beeching and the Wilsonian new tech old Labour.

The rail network we have today was produced by Victorian privatisaton, which succeeded not because of the ideology, but because they were employing some really great engineers.

But the world has changed since Axminster station was built 160 years ago.