The Rat Pack – and in loving, joyous memory of Susan

When you hear of The Rat Pack, you possibly think of Hollywood and Vegas in the 1960s; of Sinatra, Deano and Sammy. But there was an earlier incarnation of the group, led by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

And it was that version that inspired a group of pupils at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School to form their own Rat Pack in the autumn of 1979.

 

Bogart fan that I was, I’d just arrived at the school after my family had moved to the area from Manchester. This, however, was a very, very different sort of school – in many ways, like something out of an Enid Blyton or Angela Brazil schoolgirl novel, though for clarity, it was a state school in an area (like my previous one) that maintained the 11+.

 

The LGGS head was one Miss Owen – otherwise known with no particular affection as She Who Must Be Obeyed and Big-O. She was a substantial figure of a woman, often to be found clad in dresses of purple and pink, combined with an orange or red cardi and an obligatory pearl necklace, and was renowned for her character-building geometry lessons.

The cartoon version above, is by me and is not a joke. For clarity, that illustration also includes Mr Kenyon (physics) and Mr McKee (bowling), my music teacher. The latter was an absolute diamond, who I came to regard almost as a surrogate dad because of the way he seemed to genuinely understand me. And he was an absolutely superb teacher who essentially gave me a lifelong appreciation of classical music. 

 

She was aided in her rule by one Mrs Rigby (Riggers or Rigger-Mortis), a cadaverous figure who sped around the school in her badger boots (black with a white stripe down the centre), gown flaying behind her and a ruler always at hand to check that the heels of the girls’ shoes never surpassed the allotted inches. When heels got deviously curved, she got a deviously flexible ruler.

 

On speech days, she had a peculiar tendency of sporting headwear that looked either like an upturned jelly mould or an unexploded nuclear device.

 

In essence, it was Big-O and Riggers against the entire rest of the school community, uniting the rest of the staff and pupils in a quite extraordinary way.

 

Arriving at the start of the new school year in September 1979, I somehow fell speedily into the orbit of a group of girls from several years who could probably best be described as ‘eccentric’. Interested in chess, cricket and being cerebral, as I recall it, things came to a speedy head when I was dared to put caps – you remember those little twists of paper that exploded if you flicked them at the ground? – under the pedals of the grand piano in the school hall.

 

I took up the challenge – and Blu-Tacked a trio of them in place shortly before an assembly one morning.

 

With girls and staff crowded into the hall, music teacher Mr McKee sat down to play the hymn. Big-O strode onto the platform and intoned: “We shall now sing … 

 

BANG!

 

Shock ran around the hall. One teacher was overheard as saying (hopefully, I suspect): “Miss Owen’s been shot!”

 

Big-O looked around and tried again.

 

“Hymn number …”

 

BANG!!!

 

I was shopped of course, since while Mr McKee didn’t suspect me, his prime suspects knew whodunnit. Not that I have ever blamed them. I ’fessed up straight off, and got away with a mention on my record, as it was obviously a left over from my previous school; plus I’d also missed out on Miss Owen’s geometry lessons, so clearly lacked for character.

 

Though I cherish the memory of being shown into Big-O’s office by Mr McKee, with the words: “Here’s our explosives expert”. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.

 

Lancaster is a very small city, but the story sped around it rapidly, just as did the regular extremes of Big-O and Riggers.

 

That was how my parents found out. My father, a clergyman, picked up the story and regaled it at dinner one evening. It turned out to be one of the rare moments in my life where I actually impressed him!

 

Yet thus was the Rat Pack born. I became Chief Rat – come on; how many people do you know who have tried to blow up a school piano in an assembly? – with my friends Susan as the Literary Rat and Fiona as the Deputy Chief Rat. I add mentions for Rachel, Eleanor and Dana who were rats without portfolio.

 

We spent the next two years, running up to her retirement, making Big-O’s life a misery – or at least complicating it with a campaign of rule-bending that never quite broke those rules, leaving her frustrated at being thwarted on various fronts.

 

A massive part of that was possible because Susan KNEW the rules. Nobody else in Christendom knew them as thoroughly as she did. They might have thought – a Big-O did – that they had the regs down pat, but Susan already had a lawyer’s eye for detail and a chink in the opposition’s armour.

 

Let me give you an example. Shortly after the piano incident, I was called into Big-O’s office for not having a school scarf. Given that we’d moved to Lancaster within days of the autumn term starting, none were available. The shops had sold out and they made hens’ teeth look everyday.

 

I tried with Miss Bell – who in her non-teaching time ran ‘Bell’s Boutique’ from the school basement, where she had vast stocks of second-hand school uniform, but to no avail.

 When you hear of The Rat Pack, you possibly think of Hollywood and Vegas in the 1960s; of Sinatra, Deano and Sammy. But there was an earlier incarnation of the group, led by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

 

And it was that version that inspired a group of pupils at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School to form their own Rat Pack in the autumn of 1979.

 

Bogart fan that I was, I’d just arrived at the school after my family had moved to the area from Manchester. This, however, was a very, very different sort of school – in many ways, like something out of an Enid Blyton or Angela Brazil schoolgirl novel, though for clarity, it was a state school in an area (like my previous one) that maintained the 11+.

 

The LGGS head was one Miss Owen – otherwise known with no particular affection as She Who Must Be Obeyed and Big-O. She was a substantial figure of a woman, often to be found clad in dresses of purple and pink, combined with an orange or red cardi and an obligatory pearl necklace, and was renowned for her character-building geometry lessons.

 

She was aided in her rule by one Mrs Rigby (Riggers or Rigger-Mortis), a cadaverous figure who sped around the school in her badger boots (black with a white stripe down the centre), gown flaying behind her and a ruler always at hand to check that the heels of the girls’ shoes never surpassed the allotted inches. When heels got deviously curved, she got a deviously flexible ruler.

 

On speech days, she had a peculiar tendency of sporting headwear that looked either like an upturned jelly mould or an unexploded nuclear device.

 

In essence, it was Big-O and Riggers against the entire rest of the school community, uniting the rest of the staff and pupils in a quite extraordinary way.

 

Arriving at the start of the new school year in September 1979, I somehow fell speedily into the orbit of a group of girls from several years who could probably best be described as ‘eccentric’. Interested in chess, cricket and being cerebral, as I recall it, things came to a speedy head when I was dared to put caps – you remember those little twists of paper that exploded if you flicked them at the ground? – under the pedals of the grand piano in the school hall.

 

I took up the challenge – and Blu-Tacked a trio of them in place shortly before an assembly one morning.

 

With girls and staff crowded into the hall, music teacher Mr McKee sat down to play the hymn. Big-O strode onto the platform and intoned: “We shall now sing … 

 

BANG!

 

Shock ran around the hall. One teacher was overheard as saying (hopefully, I suspect): “Miss Owen’s been shot!”

 

Big-O looked around and tried again.

 

“Hymn number …”

 

BANG!!!

 

I was shopped of course, since while Mr McKee didn’t suspect me, his prime suspects knew whodunnit. Not that I have ever blamed them. I ’fessed up straight off, and got away with a mention on my record, as it was obviously a left over from my previous school; plus I’d also missed out on Miss Owen’s geometry lessons, so clearly lacked for character.

 

Though I cherish the memory of being shown into Big-O’s office by Mr McKee, with the words: “Here’s our explosives expert”. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.

 

Lancaster is a very small city, but the story sped around it rapidly, just as did the regular extremes of Big-O and Riggers.

 

That was how my parents found out. My father, a clergyman, picked up the story and regaled it at dinner one evening. It turned out to be one of the rare moments in my life where I actually impressed him!

 

Yet thus was the Rat Pack born. I became Chief Rat – come on; how many people do you know who have tried to blow up a school piano in an assembly? – with my friends Susan as the Literary Rat and Fiona as the Deputy Chief Rat. I add mentions for Rachel, Eleanor and Dana who were rats without portfolio.

 

We spent the next two years, running up to her retirement, making Big-O’s life a misery – or at least complicating it with a campaign of rule-bending that never quite broke those rules, leaving her frustrated at being thwarted on various fronts.

 

A massive part of that was possible because Susan KNEW the rules. Nobody else in Christendom knew them as thoroughly as she did. They might have thought – a Big-O did – that they had the regs down pat, but Susan already had a lawyer’s eye for detail and a chink in the opposition’s armour.

 

Let me give you an example. Shortly after the piano incident, I was called into Big-O’s office for not having a school scarf. Given that we’d moved to Lancaster within days of the autumn term starting, none were available. The shops had sold out and they made hens’ teeth look everyday.

 

I tried with Miss Bell – who in her non-teaching time ran ‘Bell’s Boutique’ from the school basement, where she had vast stocks of second-hand school uniform, but to no avail.

 

It was Susan who came up with a plan. Remember that I said she was the detail one of us? She knew that the rules actually said that you had to have a school scarf … or a school beret.

 

I went to see Miss Bell again. She hadn’t thought of it, but was tickled pink and found me one – remember that I said that Big-O and Riggers unified the rest of the staff and the pupils?

 

My next appointment in Big-O’s office arrived one morning after an assembly. I had the beret with me, behind my back, as I entered her office.

 

“So … have you got a school scarf yet?” she intoned. “No,” I replied simply. You could see her inflating with pleasure.

 

“But I’ve got the alternative,” and produced the beret from behind my back, on a single finger.

 

There was nothing she could say – she had been done. I wore that beret in class for days – a glorious sign of victory.

 

The legacy continued. Susan was the first of us to leave for higher education – and while at Oxford, wrote a tome that the rest of us had been contributing to with ideas etc. It was called Murder on the Medium Wave, which managed to combine … well, murder, the England cricket team – which at the time included Botham, Gower and the Rat Pack’s beloved Mike Brearley – plus radio commentary of the sport and a (very) thinly disguised roster of our teachers and ourselves.

 

Forty-plus years on, I look back on those times with absolute relish. It was a barking, utterly unrepeatable experience. My Other Half had listened to the stories with a sense of tolerance, over some time, ultimately believing that there was a serious degree of exaggeration going on.

 

Yet when he joined me and Susan in an east London pub and the subject of LGGS inevitably came up, he was staggered to hear the same – and other – such stories, realising that no, I really hadn’t been making it up.

 

I consider myself very, very lucky to have shared that extraordinary experience with the rest of the rats – and not least, with Susan.

 

I’m posting this on an evening when I should have been in Manchester to say ‘farewell’ to Susan at a celebration of her life, after she died very suddenly a few weeks ago. With the extreme heat and all the don’t travel advice I cancelled my arrangements.

 

So I’m posting this now as an act of remembrance – and celebration.

A shimmeringly good start to the Debussy centenary

A Christmas present to make you feel grown up

In this centenary of the death of the great French composer Debussy, one thing is assured: there will be no shortage of recordings of his works.

If Debussy has never quite been my favourite composer, he’s been hovering not far away from the top of my personal pantheon since around 1980. I had embarked on A’ level music studies at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School and one of the first works that we were introduced to was Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

It was a Deutsche Grammophon recording, with Herbert von Karajan wielding the baton and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra providing the gorgeously lush sound that stunned this then teenage listener.

It was the start of love affairs with all four component parts of that musical equation.

My mother, whose own classical music appreciation largely went little further than Handel’s Messiah (played every year as we put the Christmas decorations up) and Gilbert and Sullivan, was delighted in my interest and happy to buy me albums at Christmas and birthday.

The mantra was established instantly: DG, Von K, the Berlin. Most arrived on cassette, since I had one of those handheld ones that I later took to college. Such tech has gone the way of all flesh, but my vinyl recordings still survive – including one of those joint Debussy-Ravel programmes that seem to have been the light-classical norm for years.

In a general sense, I always loved DG covers – and still do: so much cleaner and brighter and more modern than those that, for instance, had a reproduction of a painting of an eighteenth-century street because it was a recording of something or other by Mozart. And while of course I would not wish to suggest that I am swayed by covers alone, I do still think that DG produces the classiest covers around, even when they’re predominantly artist portraits. 

Before the centenary got underway, DG had released Seong-Jin Cho’s new collection of piano works, Debussy, comprising Images I and II, Children’s Corner and Suite bergamesque.

In January, this was followed by Daniel Barenboim’s heavily-touted Claude Debussy, with a programme of Estampes, Clair de lune (from Suite bergamesque), Le plus que lente, Elégie and Préludes, Book 1.

Since the composer is standardly described as an Impressionist, it’s easy to think of his work in terms of paintings rather than the literature that was his inspiration. It was a poem by Mallarmé that gave birth to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, for instance.

But it can be difficult not to see pictures in the mind’s eye when listening to his work. To be honest, I don’t think that counts very high on a list of problems.

On a different note, I have made the mistake, for some time, of treating music as background – something to play on headphones when working so as to aid concentration – and forgotten the value of setting aside time to really listen.

This weekend, I decided to actually sit down and pay attention to these two new discs.

Now Cho is new to me, whereas Barenboim is an established household god who I have had the very great joy and privilege of seeing play live.

The programmes are different – except for Clair de lune. Both are wonderfully meditative: a proper listen is seriously de-stressing stuff.

I have no preference over that one shared piece. But there is something in Cho’s playing that is so subtle, yet utterly devastating.

The thing I kept thinking of when listening was, ironically, not in his programme – Le Cathédrale engloutie (The Submerged Cathedral), which is is the tenth piece in Préludes, Book 1. Yet it is what I thought of, time and again, while listening to Cho.

Barenboim is wonderful, with the contrasts that you would expect, but there is an ethereal, shimmering quality to Cho’s interpretation that takes the breath away – that’s if you’ve not already found tears streaming down your cheeks.

I was constantly half-thinking of light on rippling water – and yes, of submerged buildings.

In this year of Debussy, these two have already set the bar very high. Get/stream both, if you can. But if you have to choose, go for Cho and then invest the time away from anything else, simply letting yourself be drawn in to the utterly beautiful music and this quite extraordinary performance.

And one can only hope that this is indicative of the quality that we’ll be treated to over the coming months.

Notes on the new culture white paper

The government has released a new white paper on culture and the arts – something that should be welcomed, since there hasn’t been anything on the subject for decades.

Not only are the arts and culture crucial for general wellbeing and a positive force in terms of education and development, they are hugely important for the economy of the UK – and not just in London.

But where the white paper could have been a positive force, even a quick reading illustrates that it’s full of empty promises, with words such as “support” and “encourage” rendered meaningless by lack of commitments on funding (even though it specifically quotes the Prime Minister as an enthusiast of “public-funded” arts and culture) and by the government’s own policies on, say, education, where it fully intends to remove all schools from having to teach the national curriculum that this paper says has importance to culture and arts.

The devil is always in the detail – or the lack thereof. So here goes, with an analysis of approximately half of the document in question.

On page 5, in the introduction by Ed Vaizey, the minister of state for culture, communications and creative industries, it states: “The increased appetite for culture was evident after Culture Secretary Chris Smith introduced free admission to museums in 2001.”

This is disingenuous, since 2001 saw a re-introduction of free admission.

The 1980s had seen attacks on cultural public spending, and pressures from the Conservative government of the day to introduce admission saw many museums and galleries do so.

Those that didn’t – including the British Museum, the Tate and the National Gallery – saw visitor numbers rise, while some that introduced charging saw substantial declines. The V&A introduced a £5 admission in 1997 and saw visitor numbers halved. (1)

And post-2001, the white paper says, that was repeated as, “in the next decade, visitor numbers soared” when admission fees were dropped.

The paper quotes Chancellor George Osborne in his last autumn statement as saying that our “creative industries are ... ‘one of the best investments we can make as a nation’.” So let's look for the investment.

It invokes the Bard, while Mr Vaizey himself also notes that it will “look at how culture can be used in place-making – and if ever a town was shaped by culture it is Stratford-on-Avon, where every year Shakespeare brings 4.9 million visitors to the town”. This is perhaps unfortunate, given what is happening in the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ – and not least Lancaster (2), where most museums are on the cusp of closure as a direct result of cuts to local government funding, even as the city tries to utilise its own extraordinary heritage to draw visitors in.

The introduction notes that: “When we look at new models for funding, we find that our experience with Shakespeare shows us the way. In Barking a community-focussed outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice is being crowdfunded to the tune of £80,000 and has raised £25,000 from a local property company”.

Yet only a few pages earlier, the first words in the white paper, after the contents, are:

“If you believe in publicly-funded arts and culture as I passionately do, then you must also believe in equality of access, attracting all, and welcoming all.

“Rt Hon David Cameron MP”

“Publicly-funded arts and culture” now appears to have a new definition – crowdfunding (which requires disposable income) and gifts from business.

On page 8, it states: “Everyone should enjoy the opportunities culture offers, no matter where they start in life.

“We will put in place measures to increase participation in culture, especially among those who are currently excluded from the opportunities that culture has to offer.

“In particular, we will ensure that children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are inspired by and have new meaningful relationships with culture.”

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone would disagree with this.

The document explains that the new apprenticeships levy will mean that “our larger cultural organisations” will be expected to “take on apprentices and promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace.” Expectation, though, does not mean anything to back it up.

Funded bodies will need to publish strategies for increased access (which will cost them resources, of course).

On page 9, it states that the government will work with various bodies to promote culture as good for wellbeing, while a “new £40 million Discover England fund will showcase” the new programmes, including UK City of Culture, the Great Exhibition of the North.

It’s simply unfortunate that, at the same time, Lancashire County Council (as just one example) is planning on axing “40 libraries, five museums and two adult education centres”.

These include the cuts impacting on Lancaster, plus many, many more, including Blackpool tram maintenance, which will presumably not be good for an area that is already seriously struggling. (3)

All the subsequent talk of “new cultural partnerships” and a “Great Place scheme” and “Heritage Action Zones in England” is meaningless in the face of such devastating cuts and losses.

“We will encourage councils and owners to make empty business premises available to cultural organisations on a temporary basis.”

Because “cultural organisations” can just spring up suddenly and take over such premises and put something on without any other resources that require financing. Oh, wait – that’s where the crowdfunding and business patronage come in (not the PM’s “publicly-funded” bit, you note).

“Technology offers many opportunities to bring our culture to many more people in many different ways. We will work with our cultural institutions to make the UK one of the world’s leading countries for digitised public collections and use of technology to enhance the online experience of users.”

You won’t be able to look at anything in the flesh, but we’re going to digitise Lancaster’s collections so that you can look at them online after the museums are closed (it won’t help the city itself – unless you have to pay to view – and it’ll create and sustain bugger all in the way of jobs, but whoopy-do! It’s digital!

If this isn’t (an extreme but entirely logical interpretation of) the case, then it’s just more meaningless twaddle. Is there any evidence that people don’t go to museums and galleries because the ‘online digital experience’ isn’t what it could be?

Personally, I never use audio guides or anything other than brief notes when visiting an exhibition etc – because it gets in the way, in my opinion: as do those concentrating on such things rather than the exhibits.

Page 10 sees talk of the UK’s global “soft power” (not the bombs that gave us our “mojo” back) and of building on the “GREAT Britain campaign”, which has “increased investment” (it doesn’t say from where, but this will apparently attract “world-class events to the UK”).

This year, “we will support Shakespeare Lives”, although at no point does it elucidate on what concrete form that government “support” will take.

Page 11 notes that: “We have a successful model of cultural investment in which public funding works alongside earned income, private sector finance and philanthropy. This mixture of income streams provides the basis for a thriving and resilient cultural sector.”

Well, except where the public funding is withdrawn (see Lancashire etc), while it’s difficult to see how the ad hoc nature of the proposal that councils and businesses should loan out empty properties will in any way promote stability and, therefore, quality.

“We will continue to support growth through investment and incentives”. Interesting that it does not mention the public funding that it quotes the Prime Minister stressing.

Of course, there are forms of VAT refunds to help, while a new tax relief for museums and galleries is to be introduced next year (someone tell Lancashire to hang on!)

“We will establish a new Commercial Academy for Culture to improve and spread commercial expertise in the cultural sectors,” because making money is what culture is all about or should be – see, Lancashire: that’s been your problem.

There’ll be a new Private Investment Survey and “tailored reviews” and a “wide-ranging review of the museums sector” ...

The paper makes clear that investment in culture has “enormous economic value” (p13) – “in 2014, the economic contribution of museums, galleries, libraries and the arts was £5.4 billion,” while “heritage tourism accounts for 2% of GDP, contributing £26 billion per year” (p16) and “research by the British Council shows that cultural attractions are the most commonly mentioned factor in terms of what makes the UK an attractive place to visit while the arts was the third most commonly mentioned reason”.

On page 13: “it [the white paper] explains how the government will help to secure the role of culture in our society”.

As a whole, the paper makes much of saying that the arts and culture are important for all and should be available to all. You’ll find absolutely no disagreement here.

It says that all “state-funded schools” must provide a broad and balanced curriculum, nurturing the “spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils”. Again, no disagreement.

Apparently the national curriculum “sets the expectation” that pupils will study cultural subjects. “New, gold-standard GCSEs and A levels have been introduced in these subjects”. (p23)

Unfortunately, since academies and free schools do not have to teach the national curriculum, and all schools are set to be academised ...

In fact, let’s be even clearer. While academies and free schools are subject to that “broad and balanced curriculum”, the funding agreement simply means that “they are required to ensure their curriculum:

“includes English, maths and science;

“includes Religious Education, although the nature of this will depend on whether the school has a faith designation;

“secures access to independent, impartial careers advice for pupils in years 9-11; and

“includes sex and relationship education (SRE).” (4)

On page 22, it says: “The majority of the organisations supported by Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund are committed to working with children and young people, while schemes such as the Family Arts Festival and the Summer Reading Challenge are crucial in introducing young families to their local cultural organisations, especially libraries”.

Excellent. Except where those libraries have closed or are slated to close. See Lancashire – and beyond. As of August 2015, 337 libraries have closed in the UK since 2009-10. (5)

On page 23, we learn that there’s going to be a new “cultural citizens programme” [sic – I don’t know what happened to the possessive apostrophe]. The government will “encourage schools” to use the pupil premium for cultural education, while the Pupil Premium Awards will “highlight the benefits of cultural education”.

This is a close look at just under half the white paper. You can find it all here.

But it should be clear from this that, while the general tone is entirely agreeable, it is nothing to get excited about, for the reasons made very clear above. It’s all sleight of hand; appearing to give (a little) with one hand while removing a lot with the other.

Or perhaps the Bard might have suggested that it was full of a sort of “sound and fury, Signifying nothing”.

Sources

(1)        http://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/free-admission-and-the-lottery

(2)        http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/27/lancaster-city-culture-museum-closures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

(3)        http://www.garstangcourier.co.uk/news/local/revealed-40-libraries-five-museums-and-two-adult-education-centres-among-massive-cuts-announced-by-lancashire-county-council-1-7574160

(4)        https://montrose42.wordpress.com/tag/academies-dont-have-to-teach-the-national-curriculum/

(5) http://schoolsweek.co.uk/nicky-morgan-library-campaign-branded-a-hollow-gesture-after-closures/

Memories of several Bottoms

Sheridan Smith, David Walliams and fairies

On Friday evening, I trotted along to London’s West End down to see David Walliams’s Bottom.

Yes, yes – I know. I know it’s been done before, but apart from one tweet, not by me. So I’m afraid that you, dear readers, have to put up with it being done here.

The fourth production in the inaugural season of the Michael Grandage Company sees A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing to packed houses in the West End – and the main reason for all the bottoms on seats is less that it’s the Bard and more the star casting.

Walliams has been cast as Bottom, while Sheridan Smith takes on the traditional dual roles of Titania and Hippolyta.

The former brings the pulling power of Little Britain to the production, and has been directed to camp up the part for all he’s worth.

Smith brings with her the success of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, plus stints on the Royle Family and Jonathan Creek, and has been directed in such a way that you wouldn’t know about that televisual CV unless you recognised her name or checked out the programme.

My own first Dream was way back in September 1976 at the Bolton Octagon, when a seat in the gallery cost just 50p – the ticket is still pasted into an old scrapbook.

It had been our introduction to Shakespeare a year earlier at school (when I’d read Bottom in class) and this was the first live production of a play by the Bard that I’d seen.

Then in April 1979, it was the Fairfield High School for Girls annual production (tickets 60p – there’s inflation for you), with me donning something like a sackcloth costume as Peter Quince; a performance that the local paper described as being “acted with authority”.

Actually, what I remember most was being able to say “bloody” twice in a speech – in front of the headmistress.

It was the one performance my maternal grandmother ever saw me in, and she and my mother decided that I had a likeness to one of my mother’s brothers. I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.

But back to that Octagon production. Wilfred Harrison, who was also joint director, played Bottom. The notes in that scrapbook only mention his performance, but although this is an ensemble piece, the Mechanicals are what grabs the attention of most audiences, precisely because of the timeless comedy.

In 1991, for instance, Roy Hudd’s Bottom is just about the only thing I remember of a production at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – apart from the less-than-brilliant weather.

When it's not raining, it’s a play that is superbly suited to outside staging.

In 1987, the Duke’s Playhouse in Lancaster staged its first promenade production in the city’s Williamson Park, around and including the Ashton Memorial as a backdrop.

Andy Serkis as Lysander in Lancaster. Puck to the left

That Dream, with a cast that included, as Lysander, Andy Serkis – now best known as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films – was utterly magical.

Of the ones I’ve seen, it remains my favourite production. The lovers were strongly done even if the Mechanicals didn’t make a major impression in the memory bank: Puck was the stand-out, although unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the actor who played him in full faun get up.

But back to the here and now, and Michael Grandage’s new production.

It’s played at F1 pace – just two hours for the whole play to unwind – and that has some benefits and some pitfalls.

Some of the languorous sense of the poetry is lost by charging at it like this – I was mightily relieved when Puck’s closing speech was allowed its necessary time – but it also works well in particular places, not least in the chaotic row between the four lovers in the forest as Oberon and Puck looks on.

Indeed, what Grandage and his company have done is remove any reverential attitude and emphasised the play’s physical comedy – the majority of which is quite clearly there in the text.

And they also haven’t ducked the point that it’s largely not about lurve, but sex – certainly in terms of Titania and Bottom.

Elizabethan audiences would have known, for instance, that an ass had a large penis, so Bottom’s transformation into just such an animal, combined with Titania’s awakening under the spell, is quite clearly about lust.*

Just imagine what would happen if all those bored schoolchildren being introduced to Shakespeare via this play were told that it was about sex?

Anyway, this is very good fun.

And more than that, it was thoroughly enjoyed by an audience that included a great many people who clearly don’t go to the theatre often – and most certainly not for Shakespeare.

The production has had some brief moments of song and dance inserted – and some snippets of pop classics – and where used, they work.

Gavin Fowler as Puck

While the mechanicals are camper than the proverbial row of tents, the fairies are a group of crusty hippies with a bit of edge.

And the lovers are far less insipid and boring than they can be.

Of the cast, Smith was excellent – all husky voice and powerful allure.

Walliams gets to nick the show – there’s more ham on display than in a Spanish deli, and anyone older than a teen will wonder if they’re seeing the reincarnation of Frankie Howerd at one point in particular – but again, in the context of this kind of production, it works.

Of the rest of a good ensemble, special mentions for Gavin Fowler as Puck – he moves superbly – Katherine Kingsley as a fabulously feisty Helena and Pádraic Delaney as Oberon/Theseus.

Christopher Oram’s sets work well, as do his costumes. In particular, I liked Puck’s trousers, which tallied with the attire of the rest of the fairies, but, in the side fringe, just hinted at a faun’s furry legs.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable romp – more Carry On than delicate rom-com – but it’s about time that the Dream got this sort of shake-it-up treatment to rescue it from any perception of it being fey, rather infantile and ‘safe’.

Finally, just to note that we considered ourselves lucky in finding – and being able to get a table without booking – Piazza, an Italian restaurant that almost backs onto the theatre.

An independent amid the mass of chains in the vicinity, it did a very pleasant pomodoro (according to The Other Half) and a very nice diavola pizza for me – excellent, doughy base, with fresh tomato sauce, spiced minced beef, red onions, pepperoni, mozzarella and green jalapeños to get the endorphins flowing.

Really not pricy for London, with very pleasant service. That’s one to remember.

* For which insight I thank Jill Betjeman of Lancaster.

Musical tales from the mists of time

Mists. Of time or otherwise.

Way back in the mists of time – or the beginning of the 1980s, as it is sometimes known – I entertained ideas of a very specific career.

I wanted to be a singer.

My music teachers considered it far from impossible: Noel McKee – probably the best teacher I ever had in any subject, throughout my entire schooling – believed that I had a very “Russian middle register”.

Other teachers and tutors later said that, while I didn’t have perfect pitch, I had perfect tone. Which doesn’t sound bad, really, even viewed through the prism of several intervening decades.

I was a mezzo – which often seemed to me to be something of a neither-here-nor-there sort of voice, but wasn’t.

Unfortunately, despite the extraordinary help and support of Noel over my three years at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School, I couldn’t quite make up the lost ground on theory that had occurred at Fairfield, where my O’ level music lessons had been a dreadful experience – characterised in my memory by a bullying approach from the teacher, that I excluded myself from on mornings by walking (slowly) to school with a claim of bus problems.

It was an approach that, no matter how bad I was at some other subjects, I never extended to any other lesson or course.

Now for clarity, I could never have sung Wagner – or Verdi or Puccini or any other grand opera, for that matter. There was no way that I had that level of voice.

But light opera, operetta, oratorio and lieder were well within my vocal capabilities.

I would love to have sung Gilbert and Sullivan with the D’Oyly Carte.

But hey ho – it wasn’t to be.

It’s not snide to say that parental support was not all it could have been.

My father had paid one of his church organists to teach me some basic piano many years earlier, but it was dire.

Dull lessons that inspired nobody. Indeed, I don’t recall, at that point, being particularly enthused about learning. I suspect the decision that I should be taught was a combination of our having a piano in the house – thanks to my mother’s parents – and some cock-eyed idea of respectably-educated young gals, combined with one of an even more respectable young woman who could play the organ in church.

That I later pretty much taught myself is at least a suggestion that, with a good teacher, I might have prospered more, earlier.

That I taught myself via a piano score of Oliver! is even more of an indication that the parental choice of music was hardly inspirational.

But that was a theme that was to be repeated over and again.

By the second half of the 1970s, I was regularly competing in an annual local festival in Ashton-under-Lyne, in a variety of categories – including singing.

My parents exercised a certain amount of control over what I sang. Hymns were expected – or old songs like Cherry Ripe, which came out of a brown leather-clad tome that almost seemed to take on the status of family heirloom. I think I still have it somewhere.

I combined a lack of inspiration with nerves. Not good.

Later, in Lancaster, I carried on this trend – albeit tempered by Noel accompanying me for rather better pieces (a bit of Mozart, some Rachmaninov, Schubert …).

But looking back, I realise that I had the most extraordinarily limited knowledge of what was possible.

Nor were my parents particularly encouraging in other ways.

When I sang the mezzo/alto solo in an all-female arrangement of Fauré’s magnificent requiem in a big concert at school, they didn’t attend. I remember my mother sniffily noting that it was Catholic music.

It was actually staged at St Martin’s College – beyond, even, the school hall.

Oh goodness, there were nerves. I remember standing there, score in hand, with Noel before me as conductor, coaxing me, encouraging me – because he believed in me and knew I could do it.

But my parents couldn’t put their own beliefs aside to attend such an occasion.

The school was not Catholic. Noel was an Anglican.

But my parents could not set aside their own beliefs aside to support their own daughter.

These days I have no belief left in any god that has been described by any human civilisation.

But it doesn’t mean that I cannot still take great joy in music that was written for religious purposes. Only yesterday, I listened to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis for the first time – wow: simply wow.

Yet my parents could not set aside their most sectarian and puritanical instincts in order to support their own offspring.

Mind, they didn’t attend when I was a soloist when we performed Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols a year or so later either, and Britten was, like us, a Prod.

There are times when I wonder just what they were on.

And do you think I can talk to them about it?

No.

What good would it do? What would be the point?

In so many ways, it would seem so petty; so small-minded and so – arguably – disrespectful of clearly seriously-held beliefs.

Not that I didn’t keep trying, on the singing level, for many years.

Some years later, after I moved south to find work and spent some 18 months living with my parents in Reading and commuting to London every day, we hit a similar situation.

My father was, as that time, minister to a congregation that met at an old – well, ancient really – church in Henley on Thames, shared with the local Anglicans.

A concert was planned, with the Reading Male Voice Choir. They needed a soloist for a couple of interludes. My father volunteered me.

I was still trying to get into the business, and spending money on singing classes with a serious tutor. And I was just starting to understand that there was a whole range of female vocal styles out there that I had hardly even heard of – I’d just, for instance, ‘discovered’, Barbra Streisand.

So, four songs across two interludes.

My parents made it quite clear that they expected hymns or religious songs.

I went down the musicals route. I rehearsed with the conductor/pianist, who was wonderful (and himself, a clergy son).

In the end, the first three songs went – if not badly, then not inspirationally.

But something happened on the fourth. I’d just recently discovered Cole Porter’s Everytime We Say Goodbye (thanks to Mick Hucknell) and amazingly, it came off completely.

It was sung with eyes shut – not as a deliberate choice, but because that was what happened – and I could feel the mood in that ancient building change. For once, I got them and I held them.

I’ve done it again since, a few times – impromptu performances, usually in pubs: Porter again or Gershwin. Getting lost in the music and finding that the audience, in spite of any booze, goes completely quiet and listens.

Like so many other people, my life could have taken all sorts of different directions.

I don’t dislike – never mind hate – where I am now. But I do sometimes wonder about what might have been …

Why has all this come back again right now?

Well, partly because I have had that opportunity – which I’ve explained more than once recently – to listen to music more than usual.

I find myself having a remarkable amount of understanding – but not nearly as much as if I’d carried on with my music studies.

And perhaps rather unusually for me, I find myself regretting that I stopped learning about music for so long. Because going back to it now, with some intensity, reminds me of just how much it means to me.