A Trip to Stratford-upon-Avon

My parents took my sisters and I on a coach trip from Loughborough to Stratford-Upon Avon in the late 1950s, about the time that I was 14 years old. Much was made of the fact that we were going to see Shakespeare’s birthplace and that we would also see the theatre and other related sites.

We climbed out of the bus on what was probably the hottest day of the year, and the place was crowded with tourists. I remember walking along the side of the River Avon, with its resident swans and ducks, and returning to the town over a very old stone bridge.

In the town, wooden timbered houses lined the streets, taking us up to the famous theatre, and past a pub appropriately called The Swan.

The next place we visited was Holy Trinity Church, where the famous William Shakespeare lies buried below the High Alter. I remember looking at his gravestone with its threats, curses and consequences to any person ill-advised enough to move the interred bones!

We sat and ate our packed lunch on the town green close to the old bridge. I seem to remember a troop of Morris dancers performing their traditional capers with sticks and jingling bells. I was quite worried that I might, at any moment, be expected to join them.

Dad went off to join a queue for some bottled drinks. The heat from the sun was getting unbearable and we were all extremely thirsty. He was gone for a very long time and when he finally returned with the drinks, the contents of the bottles were disappointingly warm. My small sisters were, by now, getting hot and a bit fractious, poor mum was trying, unsuccessfully, to keep sun hats on their heads.

I was very glad when the time reached 5.00pm and we returned to our waiting coach, and home!

David Taylor

Photo by Eric Kingdon on Unsplash

The Visitor from Australia

It seems outrageous that I live less than an hour from Stratford-upon-Avon and have only visited this beautiful, notoriously historical place once.

My niece came for a visit from Australia. Her mother had considered that getting to know her relatives and the English way of life/weather would be character building. I suspect that it was also considered a safer option (and cheaper), to be here with relatives rather than with girlfriends in Thailand or some such exotic paradise.

Mary was aged seventeen and recently finished in full-time education. This was to be her gap year, though, as she did not attend University, we did wonder - gap between what?

The slender, spindle legged, Betty Boop lookalike teenager arrived in the most minimal of skirts.  A shock of bright red hair the first thing that came into view.

Known as a challenging child, I suspect her mother welcomed six weeks of relief from the rants and huffs of her eldest daughter. Perhaps it was the outdoor lifestyle in Australia that facilitated this overconfident child? She was certainly a far cry from our quieter children, who were positively shy in comparison.

It was arranged that Mary would stay with her grandmother. Within a week of arriving however, she upset her to such an extent that she was no longer welcome to stay in her home, the responsibility too great for an almost 80 year old.

Mary’s welfare, therefore, became ours - her aunt and uncle. We provided bed, food, and taxi service. We also had to try to keep her entertained, not so easy in an English winter. We knew we could not compete with the outdoor summer she had left behind in Sydney. Mary was used to a swimming pool in the garden and access to Bondi, Manley and other beautiful beaches, not to mention the lifeguards.

 Our Christmas was spent inside with the heating on. The curtains were drawn by 4 pm to block out the frosty nights. Electric blankets were a new phenomenon to Mary, an artificial heat source she quickly grew very attached to.

For New Year’s Day, a trip to the seaside seemed a good idea. After a two-and-a- half hour drive we pulled onto the car park in Hunstanton. Before us, just visible on the horizon, lay the brown, choppy sea. Half a mile of brown sand and mud stretched before it, the tide right out as it always seems to be in Sunny Hunny.

With earphones removed, an Australian twang rang out from the back seat - “Is this it, do people really come here for pleasure?”  Mary refused to get out of the car into the infamous East Coast wind. The offer of a brisk walk along the beach was dismissed out of hand.

The next task on this not-such-a-good-idea was to find an open Fish and Chip shop. No an easy feat during the closed season and on a miserable New Year’s Day. Challenge achieved, we devoured our lunch hidden from view behind steamed up car windows, the car heater still pumping out heat.  

All that remained was the return two-and-a-half-hour trip back to Leicester. An unimpressed Mary still in the seat she had left only briefly to visit a public toilet.

My days off from work were now taken up with trips out for Mary. Her love of history was a saviour. Castles and stately homes are not in short supply around the Leicestershire area.  Personally, I see no excitement in viewing a pile of derelict ruins but if there was furnishing and artefacts displaying the way people lived in the house, I enjoyed the visits immensely. Had history lessons at school not centred around battles and dates, instead covering social history, I could have greatly enjoyed the subject.

Towards the end of her holiday and running out of places to go and money to fund it, we headed out to Stratford. We saw signs for William Shakespeare’s birthplace and made our way there.  My education at a Secondary Modern School never ventured into the realms of Shakespeare or his works. The gardens were of greatest interest to me, even at this dormant time of year. This proved too cold for Mary and proved very short lived.

The house was interesting to us both. As we entered the kitchen, the floor space was consumed by a polished dark wooden baby seat. This was attached to a long pole, which in turn was connected to a pivot. With a child installed, William could have run around in circles like a pony on a lead rein. His mother could then complete household chores unhindered, apart from stepping over the pole that consumed most of the kitchen. Unable to venture further than the ‘turning circle’ the child was safe, if not a little bored with the repetitive view.  

I doubt my fascination with the device was of interest to Mary, but we both enjoyed the visit for our different reasons. We had a nice lunch overlooking the River Avon. Mary warmed up considerably and became more content with a glass of red to hand.

It was a long and expensive six weeks.  The money her mother had provided for her keep was kept firmly in Mary’s charge and she happily spent every penny. The responsibility for this seventeen-year-old weighed heavily. My sister-in-law was on the phone daily enquiring after our trips and seemed satisfied that we were fulfilling her wishes to expand her daughter’s education, if not her family roots.

The return trip to the Airport was a relief for all the Blighty contingency. Smiles of relief replaced the usual shedding of tears as the Singapore Airlines Boeing 747 lifted to the skies above Birmingham, thankfully heading back to Sydney.

CW

Jester, Stratford on Avon
Photo by A Mott

The RSC

Back in the 1980s I was an associate member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the main benefit of which was being able to book for forthcoming productions about two weeks before tickets went on sale to the general public. At a cost of £5 a year I thought it was worth the money but resigned my membership when the cost increased substantially from one year to the next.
 
Living thirty miles or so west of London and an hour’s drive from Stratford-upon-Avon meant both RSC venues were relatively easily available so I would go fairly often. Cymbeline, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Richard the Second, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Plantagenets, Henry the Fifth, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth (with Derek Jacobi), and others – not always Shakespeare!
 
In the mid-1990s I took my younger daughter Jane and husband Colin to the Barbican to see As You Like It. During the interval we were enjoying a drink at the bar when I mentioned one of my long-held ambitions at the Barbican was to be having an interval drink when I would unexpectedly see someone I knew. It had never happened in any of the many times I had been there, but within two minutes of mentioning it to Jane and Colin a minister friend from Cambridgeshire came into view.
 
He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him though we didn’t have long to chat as he was attending an orchestral concert in the Barbican Concert Hall, their interval was just ending, and he was hurrying to get back in time for the second half of the concert. Nor, in the years since, has such an unexpected meeting ever happened again.
 
David Parkin

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

In honour of Shakespeare's birthday ...

The Morris Dancer

He was a Morris dancer
it was obvious to see
with his white attire
red ribbons of fire
upon his elbow and knee.

You knew when he was home
it was impossible not to hear
the bells on his shoes
which would jangle in twos
Sweet music to one’s ears.

But the highlight of the night
Was when the door went ’click’
And he danced around
both feet off the ground
then bashed you with his stick!

The following piece was written with the prompt of 'fusty dull-brained Malmsey-butt', a phrase created at random from insults Shakespeare used in his plays.

I am old now and feeling quite fusty
(dull-brained as polite folk would say)
But I do like to strut my rotund Malmsey butt
as it shows not a sign of decay!

JT

Nowhere is Perfect

Our second home had a railway track running directly behind the back garden. We had decided to move with our young baby son and toddler daughter, away from the maze of terraced streets in the centre of Leicester.

The house’s proximity to the railway had been no deterrent. The first few weeks, however, made us conscious of every speeding passenger train as they whistled by, here then gone in an instant. Goods trains with their heavy loads and great lengths of carriages trundled by at a much slower rate, shaking the house as they went. Within a short time, we grew accustomed, and barely noticed the noise or the vibration. Trains then only became a bother if the crossing gates closed as you approached when you were late for an appointment in the town. Overnight visitors would have a disturbed night, but we were deaf to the noise and could only assure them that you soon got used to it.

A special event involving the railway was when “The Flying Scotsman” was to pass through on its final journey. Tracy’s bedroom provided the ideal platform to view over the six-foot fence as the green flash of the engine screamed past.

A neighbour - and train buff - had bought his house specifically for its location next to the line. He invited us around one evening for supper and drinks with the promise of showing us his railway memorabilia. We expected a train set or a few photos. He treated us to endless tape recordings of various engines, puffing and chugging into various stations. “The 17.49 to Basingstoke” was indistinguishable from any other to the uninterested ear. This experience was one for us to avoid in future.

Our next house sat alongside the A46. Traffic was continuous and ran at all hours of the day and night. For a few weeks we were mesmerised. A stream of white headlights lit up our lounge. These changed to a red hew of taillights once they passed or halted in traffic jams and queues at traffic lights. Again, we quickly attuned to the busy road, only noticing it when trying to find a gap in the traffic to exit our drive in the mornings.

By far the hardest sound to accept was when we moved to Barlestone. The house was perfectly situated with three sides of countryside and farmland. There was silence. Nothing to get used to - or so we thought. Our first night saw us collapse into bed. Exhaustion from lifting furniture, cleaning the house we’d left and also this dusty, brand-new build. Off to sleep with not a disturbance, just the sweet smell of fresh paint and cleanliness – bliss ...

… until 4am, that is. The farmer’s cockerel made himself known before daylight every morning. He, by some considerable distance, took longer to learn to tolerate. Two people who could kill nothing larger than a wasp hatched elaborate plans of how we could finish him off in those small wee hours!

Carolyn Wheatley

Photo by Nick Fewings @jannerboy62 - sourced from Unsplash.com

Darwin and Evolution*

My father was something of a dreadful driver. A late starter with cars, (as a father of six there was no money spare for lessons and he had to wait until his late forties - and divorce - to take them), he became famous for the dreadfulness of his driving skills. 

Like the time he had to take me to Leicester General for daily blood pressure checks when I was heavily pregnant with my son (I didn't have pre-eclampsia beforehand, I swear, but I most definitely did after those journeys).

Like the Mexican stand-offs he had in the terraced streets around the school when he picked my children up at home time.

Like the time he backed off his driveway straight into a parked car opposite, or the deep, raw gouges ripped into the side of his little Vauxhall from going in and out of the garage, or the growing list of near-miss accidents which were never his fault.

My stepmother’s insistence on shouting ‘oh my God!’ from her front-seat-driver viewpoint caused many a marital disagreement, and when in his 80s Dad sped out of his driveway clipping a passing car he’d not noticed, my brother secretly informed the police he was a danger and his days as a driver came to an end.

I still remember the sound of his heavy-footedness struggling unsuccessfully to tease the biting point. And I remembered it most strongly last Tuesday, as I drove the daughter’s new little motor off the garage forecourt, the young mechanic waving us into the traffic frowning in disbelief.

Alison M

*Written from the prompt 'what've you been up to this week?' as well as the day of writing it being the anniversary of Darwin's death.

Charles Darwin.
Image in the public domain and sourced from the website of the National Archives here.