4th July 2026

There’s a book within feminist/historicist Shakespeare Studies by Lisa Jardine called Still Harping on Daughters which continues to be successful and read. Me? I am a daughter who still harps on my father. Please forgive me if I collide with another book which is no-doubt called ‘Still Harping on Fathers’.

It is twenty years ago today since we put my father to rest in a peaceful if bumpy churchyard near Tenby, South Wales.

My father had prepared for this for some time. He would be interred in a family plot adjacent to his grandparents, and he had sorted a gravestone to be carved by the best in the business.

I can hear you think: “How will Eva bring water into the story this time?”

Well, water was there, and then it was not there. Read on and understand on this trail-blazing Independence Day.

First of all there were the flags. Just so many flags!

There was the one from Israel. David Phillips, a long-term family friend brought that one – all the way from Israel. There was the Welsh one, of course. And then there was the Irish one: Irish with a capital ‘I’, because it had once been draped on the IRA leader, Michael Collins’s coffin, after his assassination. Then I swear there were other ones: a South African one, an Ambedkarite (Untouchables of India) one, and many representatives from different communities.

The churchyard, as I mentioned, was quite bumpy, and some of the people coming were no Spring Chickens. Nor were they all the same size. There was my brother David, my brother Jonathan, there was the man from Cork who brought the Irish flag, and then there was the film actor – my father’s long-term friend – Peter O’Toole, the man who played Lawrence of Arabia for David Lean’s epic piece. He was certainly no Spring Chicken. More like a strung-out crane. Very lanky.

I felt a tad confused by what people were wearing: what I had discussed, and what I was told.

Another long-term family friend, Silvio Narizzano, the Canadian Italian director of the film, Georgy Girl, and various Martini commercials with hot-air balloons etc , had come the night before asking a young lady receptionist at our Quaker-run hotel where the best gay cruising street was in Tenby. I remember her holding her ground as best she could, smiling a little, and looking philosophical, as if remembering her mother had always said there would be days like this. I can’t remember what she suggested. A kerbside by the De Valence Palace Gardens, I should expect. Anyway, because O’Toole had turned us down when we asked him, we asked Silvio to give the friend’s eulogy. No more than 2.5 minutes. Silvio announced to me that he was planning on twenty. I assumed he was joking.

“What are you wearing?” he asked.

I described a black wraparound number and a matching hat, quipping how I thought the result would be something akin to a Mafia widow.

“Interesting,” replied Narizzano. “My mother was a Mafia widow.”

So there were the flags to think about, the bumpy cemetery to think about, the pall bearers of various size and age to think about and there were the costumes.

As if having received the memo that Eva was channeling Mafia widow on the day, my brother and many others were unaccountably sporting dark glasses on a cloudy day as if in response.

Some bods were wearing berets like they were IRA paramilitary. (Some of them may have been IRA paramilitary.) All of it quite disturbing.

The funeral rite was a doddle. But I’m afraid, if Bridezilla exists, I became the getting-it- right-or-else equivalent for funerals.

We MUST have the children do Ecclesiastes, for there is a time for everything and this was their time. My brother Huwie would be saying something and I would be saying something. Colin George, who had directed Daddy as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at Ludlow Castle would be giving a lesson. The vicar would be giving a few words and – because he didn’t want to – O’Toole would be saying nothing at all.

Silvio would be doing it.

Of course, partly because it was Independence Day, but mostly because it was Daddy’s day, we would be singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic (more associated with America’s Civil War but a US patriotic hymn nevertheless):

“Mine Eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord

He is trampling out the Vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored!

He has loosed the fateful lightning of his Terrible Swift Sword

His Truth is marching on!”

Yes, I was very passionate about the hymns.

Surely there should be a sound system outside the church? So that the good people of the Tenby area could attend the service saying “goodbye” to their beloved local boy? David, who was holding the purse-strings assented. In the end, despite the expense, it was unnecessary. Nobody was holding back the crowds. For at a crucial moment, it rained.

The weather, when we set out, was okay as far as I remember. It was okay for the bumpy churchyard and all right for the pall bearers’ entrance. I believe there were local news cameras there as we approached the church, and the weather continued okay for that, fine for Ecclesiastes when grandson Oliver forgot his words, nervous, no-doubt, at doing anything important in association with his grandfather

It was all right – the weather – for my brother Huw’s heart-stoppingly amazing Eulogy – all about the dumbing down of British televisual quality in the wake of the end of our father’s work. The weather remained all right for the beginning of Silvio’s speech, I’m sure, but by 3/4 of the way through his 20 minutes (no, he wasn’t joking), round about the moment he was launching into Philip Larkin’s ‘They Fuck You Up your mum and dad’, all hell broke loose in the sky with a bang-bang-bang of lightning and claps of noise undoubtedly designed to wake the dead, not put them to rest. Sheets of rain hammered down on the rooftops. And the crowds didn’t come or remain. It was, for the 4th of July, a totally unseasonal and wholly unexpected storm.

I feared, as I got up to speak, that Water would be a key component of the interment of my father. But at least, as wilful organiser of the day, with no gainsaying on-comers countenanced up until that point, I now knew where my place was.

“And Daddy has organised thunder!” I observed. And indeed, he had. The congregation – with the grandchildren still grinning from ear to ear from the effect of the Larkin – fell about laughing.

Yes, this was very Kenneth Griffith. Thunder, lightning, and sheets of rain.

And what did I do? What did I say? Talk about? Well, with Daddy by the altar, and all those flags draped over him, I had asked an Ambedkarite stand on one side of the coffin and Damian, my father’s Irish lodger-friend stand in the other side, and I quoted from the end of Daddy’s film about Tom Paine ‘The Most Valuable Englishman Ever’. The bit where, with only a few present at Paine’s funeral, a woman friend stood on one side of the grave, and her son stood on the other, with her instruction that she and he would represent a thankful America and a grateful France, respectfully: grossly short, as they were, of anyone official to mark their gratitude and say their farewells.

For the burial itself we all gathered, and I could say much else about it, except that at this moment in time – it can wait.

Strangely, then, the sun came out, blazing like a determined angel. And tired and relieved, and perhaps a bit puzzled, we ended the day doing what anyone else would have done.

We went to the beach, had an ice cream, and went for a well-deserved swim.

Hurrah for the red, white and blue!

3/7/2026 – the brink of the 4th of July!

Thetford, in Norfolk, is found at the meeting point of the River Thet and the Little Ouse, this oozy Ouse providing a boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk…

It is also where a corset-maker and British thinker was born, who was to synthesize into words how America could be Free.

Here, in the 250th anniversary year of the founding of America, and for ‘a limited time only’ as a Happy Birthday USA present, and to commemorate Kenneth Griffith, film-maker and admirer of Paine, Lemon Shakespeare offers for free this rendering of Tom Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ – a 15-minute version of his hit pamphlet of 1776:

https://embeds.audioboom.com/channels/5106420/embed?v=202301

Starring Murray Simon as the Voice of Tom Paine in his original East Anglian accent and Obioma Ugoala as the Singer of Special Songs!

Yours respectfully,

Dr. Eva Griffith!

25/6/2026

Dr. Eva Griffith

It seems a while, and so much has happened, since remembering my father in Israel. But now a lot of water has flowed under London Bridge, and, indeed, round the straits of Hormuz. Let’s hope all that horror stops, and we can get Life back on an evening keel.

My father, Kenneth Griffith, is 20 years gone today. I tried to write something about him for Father’s Day but, in truth, he was hardly a Father’s Day sort of man. And I would be telling lies if I gave an impression of roses round the door, or a chocolate boxy life with a man at odds with most things around him.

Christopher Fry roses.

Moreover, I couldn’t post what I’d written then because the internet fairies decided there was no way my passwords would work that evening. Even now, my edited photo of a skull’s head is causing a whirring round and round… Will it make it? Probably not. Such is the power of the will-of-the-web.

My father once played Oberon, King of the Fairies, for an Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the 1950s. This was when my mother, playing Mustard Seed and the First Fairy, caught his eye.

I guess it seems strange celebrating a person’s death. But a) I am a Catholic and we like that sort of thing, and b) my father liked Shakespeare who liked that sort of thing too.

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

(Shakespeare. The Tempest)

Kenneth Griffith is buried in South Wales, near the beautiful beaches of Tenby in Pembrokeshire. We buried him on the Fourth of July – American Independence Day – and that way lies a curious tale of things my father liked and things I liked about my very independent father.

Benjamin Franklin’s House, near Charing Cross Station, London.

What makes you cross?

Currently what makes me cross is being silly, wasting my time and the internet. Kenneth Griffith was known for his ire, his anger, in relation to so many issues: to do with the disaster of imperialism, censorship, Englishness and shallowness. He was resolved “never to be objective about anything”. Thus he was an adventurous mix of good but passionate acting, incisively aggressive but lively documentaries, making people laugh with his over-the-topness, growling confrontation, dark-eyed bite and a kind of oily quality, employed to play, in his youth, a spiv, a gangster, a gay military man, a steam-compressed boat engineer and a number of reverends.

He loved the sea. But he couldn’t swim. He talked of Tenby as if it were a place for dipping into rock pools, but never to venture further than Goscar Rock. His one and only respected theatre director was Tyrone Guthrie – the first director, it is said, who deserved his name above the title of a production. And it was Guthrie who believed that my father had pre-natal memories, these too involving water. An old man, totally naked, with a long beard, sitting in a stone cave with a pool of water before him in which my father, a baby, lay.

I’ve always been drawn to this picture of an idea. It always seemed appropriate to the man. Something ancient and prophetic.

Ernest and Emily Griffiths

The week my father died, he took against a photograph of his beloved grandparents. I remember him shuddering when he looked at it, recoiling from the image placed on the Welsh dresser in the dining room. My half brother and sister, after a lot of difficulties to do with my father’s old age, had resolved to put him downstairs in the basement, where they adapted the utility room into a shower and toilet area, and his bed right where the dining table had been. Next to the dresser. I can only imagine that if his grandparents had come back to him in a way he didn’t like, it was because in the teeth of a life which made people think, on a personal virtue level – he was flawed. Emily and Ernest, Godly and good people, had been faithful to one another all their lives, and would never have dreamt of hurting anyone, let alone a member of the family. My father was not so blessed with perceptions of automatic virtue in this fashion. Of the same two children who attentively made efforts to give him comfort in his last days, hoicking him firmly out of a ward for the mentally ill where he did not belong, my youngest brother had always found himself on the receiving end of fairly virulent bullying from that same father. That same son, who looks like my father in many ways, gave the most jaw-droppingly amazing eulogy at my father’s funeral. And he it is who has placed our father’s documentary films on YouTube.

Who can guess at the capacity of love or laying a ghost to rest before it has a chance, once dead, to give you pain?

The lucky ones.

If one had asked Kenneth Griffith why he had left so many women, one of them with a pair of toddler twins in tow, or why he had his favourites, he would have shrugged his shoulders and said: “it had to be that way”. It was what it was. There is always a price for an intelligent and brave life, especially one in the public eye. Those who want it, take note as I take note.

Kenneth Griffith, the Good Father

Before going much further, I should remember the positive effect on my life with my father. For my mother brought me up to love him and go with him, and it wasn’t hard.

Before the trip to Israel when I was sixteen, I remember walks to feed the ducks along the New River path in Islington, ice creams at The Fountain Bar at Fortnum’s and Mason’s, meanders between the antique shops at Camden Passage and the Portobello Road (looking for Boer War memorabilia mostly), and various endeavours at support which paid off – because of the man he was.

Touching on The Fountain Bar, a particular memory comes showering back to me of the only thing my mother could think to do when a particular disaster beset me (bad reviews). I remember her face as she came up the stairs of our flat towards me, having had a quick look at a newsagent. Whatever capacities she had, this one was beyond her. So she phoned my father who insisted I come over straight away.

Here was something my father could certainly do something about, and Kenneth Griffith rose to the occasion. “That Milton Shulman…” (This is the only blighter’s name I remember. Daddy went through them all.) “I know him! Take no notice of him!” And he probably went through all the reasons I should tell my truth about my character and never mind the rest. No criticisms of me, no advice about how to play the part, just wholehearted and complete support of the person I was and still am. And then we went out down town. I remember Regent’s Street and a pen shop and this beautiful fountain pen that he bought for me. Blue it was with sparkly bits, later stolen at the Bush Theatre, I think. He’d never bought me anything like that before. And then Fortnum’s and a Banana Split at the Fountain Bar. Just as it had been before when I was small.

Unlike other men I was to know, this one, for all his faults, never drank too much, never wasted his energy with drugs, and was committed to passing on values of Truth and Bravery. With a valuable kind of crossness.

My father used the term ‘Valuable’ in relation to a hero who has everything to do with integrity, independence and an awe-inspiring capacity to block out anything that wasn’t for the best in the world. I refer to my favourite Kenneth Griffith documentary film, ‘Thomas Paine: the Most Valuable Englishman Ever’ which you can view, after my brother’s endeavours, on YouTube here:

My father died as he had lived. Wrestling with himself and some demons. Early on the morning of the 25th of June 2006, on a bright day, just like today, I unaccountably got up from my bed, sat on the sofa in my living room, and stared out the window. And then, right on cue, the phone rang. I knew it would be Damian, my father’s Irish lodger and a great helper and friend.

“Oh Damian, he’s gone, hasn’t he?”

Kenneth Griffith died falling out of bed, crying out against some unseen thing. Being piled back into bed again, having refused to eat for many days. If a man is anything when he dies, it’s a special thing who leaves you in one sense relieved he’s gone, with your shoulders at long last coming down from round your ears, while at the same time, feeling lost in the sensation that a mighty bonfire has blown itself out, the like of which you’ll never know again.

I think it’s time to bring him back. Just a little bit. Because the world has gone grey and silly and unable to laugh at the clearly ridiculous. It’s gone wan – one thing my father never was. In his honour I have arranged an audio-file of something he admired – the work of Thomas Paine. Namely, a 15-minute rendering of Tom Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ which we are calling ‘Common Sense: the Fun Version’. Look out for it in the coming days.

Eva.

Anonymous, for Lemon Shakespeare, March 2026

On International Women’s Day, this writer felt she had a rough ride.

On this day, a Sunday, a relative and I went to a café for a chat and ended up arguing over my experience of Life. When I brought up an assaulting incident culminating in a mutual friend ending up in a police cell, my relative replied that he only ended up in the cell because I told the police. “But I only told the police because he assaulted me!”

The relative pursed his lips.

“You can’t be like that to me today, it’s International Women’s Day!” I said. But obviously my relative could be like that.

I do my best to be amusing.

The BBC have recently reported that over 100 women were killed in Britain in 2025 in domestic violence situations. “Hardly a week went by without…” reflected someone involved in collecting the figures over the year.

The term “coercive control” gets used.

I guess I know something about this. I’ve not only been involved in a mind-torturing relationship with an alcoholic in my life (it’s-an-illness-yes-I-know-it’s-an-illness-I-told-him-it-was-an-illness-and-eventually-he-got-help), I was once kidnapped by a man for a year, who blackmailed me into staying for a year, with him threatening to tell the authorities about some illegals I knew from the Philippines if I didn’t stay for a year. Hard-working people, they were, all women, who cleaned people’s houses and sent their money back to their families.

I counted the days. For a year.

Get this – he was a law student – and after the year was over and I said: “Well, I’m going now” he claimed he’d completely forgotten. But when I went as if to leave – as if I was serious – which I was – he beat me to the front door, locked it, treated me like Judy in the old puppet show and did a little more than assault me – that night.

That’s the way to do it.

Coercive control for just a little over a year…

I got away in the end. I was in my twenties. I’m a bit older now.

I went home after the café/relative incident and thought: I’m blowed if I am going to sit here and mope on International Women’s Day about young men who don’t think or believe in Women’s Experience. I’m going out to do something that makes sense to me today. I’ll go and see William Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’. More than a few women get abused in that play one way or another; more than a few men end up in prison cells. It’ll be cathartic.

A friend of mine was in a ‘cue script’ production of this play at a pub theatre near Oval tube (The Golden Goose). Not near enough for me to be on time, unfortunately, but curiously the text began just as someone let me in through a door to the shout: “Are you ready?”

‘Measure for Measure’ was written at the beginning of the Jacobean era in England, when the authorities, under James I, were commanded to come down hard on prostitution. There are a lot of legal/authority scenes in this play, and there is one nun, Isabella, who would quite like to stay a nun (actually). Trouble is, none of the men she meets agrees with her. It’s set in Vienna. It couldn’t be set in London because at that time neither nuns, nor any of the trappings of the Catholic faith, were allowed. There is also a duke, in disguise. He wants to see his realm as it is, not as he hopes it is. He wants to see the workings of his deputy. He sees both. The deputy takes a fancy to the nun, whose brother is condemned to die for getting his girlfriend pregnant. The deputy tells Isabella that he’ll let her brother go if she does a lot more than pray for him… Need I say more? I don’t want to have to issue spoiler alerts. You should go and see the play.

This production was only an hour and a half long. That was good for a Shakespeare play. Intelligently cut. But to tell the truth, I have never been sure about the ‘cue script’ theory. Everyone is given their ‘cues’ – the last words in the line belonging to the previous speaking character, and then their character’s lines, the ones they have to learn and say. So you learn your lines, and the words before, so you know when to start speaking, and then the production relies on the fun of that. But unless it’s very cleverly done, it just looks like a lot of people forgetting their lines. You can learn something funny when characters have the same cue as someone else, but I can’t say that happened here, only that it didn’t quite work for me. Valentina Vinci was good playing various parts including Mariana, the deputy’s girlfriend. The man who played the Provost was good, very prison warder-like, and the girl who played Isabella was also more than proficient. It felt as if all the women were pregnant, or about to be, except the nun.

Honestly, I shouldn’t be too critical as I understand many of the parts will be played by other people in the future, and it is in the nature of an original production experiment.

The website for The Golden Goose is http://www.goldengoosetheatre.co.uk

And here’s a link to a BBC article on Queen Camilla’s take on domestic abuse.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg37wj5ezpo

11/3/2026

The Wave in the Sky

22/3/2026

I went into the Samsung Palace the other day. You know, the big Wave in the Sky near Granary Square, King’s Cross.

I had – would you believe it – a Samsung phone, which I had (by some good fortune at the time) LOST, or – more likely – had STOLEN – from a property in Hackney…

And then it reappeared! In an A4 see-through envelope, with other things in it.

I couldn’t get into it. The pattern between the dots was wrong.

Now I had already taken it to other fixers of phones. People kept redirecting me. From Currys to I-smash… I-smash couldn’t help me. The only people who could help me (said I-smash) were the Samsung people.

So I went to Granary Square.

Bearing in mind I have some sort of condition in my knees which is having repercussions on my breathing, I nevertheless strode forth with my hopes high on a beautiful Spring afternoon in London.

The birds were tweeting. The arts students from St. Martin’s were rolling about on skates or practising their dance moves in cool avenues. It was a long painful walk across a bridge and the square after covering most of Tottenham Court Road. But I got there.

One funky lift wouldn’t open for me. But the other one, mysteriously, could.

“Bing” said the lift. And I was lifted.

I had been to this place before.

Truth to tell, I have never had any joy there. Trying to fix this phone.

I gave them the information they wanted. I couldn’t get into it. I thought it had been messed with. No, I didn’t have proof of purchase. Or the something special from Google they wanted. I just had the phone.

Had I heard of GDPR (something to do with Data Protection)?

“So, you are trying to protect my data by not fixing my phone?”

“What if it’s not your phone?”

“It is my phone.”

“But what if it’s not?”

Dr. Griffith breathes quietly, counting to ten.

and then, politely:

“Do you have an idea of how rude that sounds?”

“We don’t mean to sound rude. It’s just the law.”

There comes a point in these conversations where, at my age, I suddenly perceive myself as a dog that has to be trained to be good in order to deserve treats. Like having my phone fixed. The trouble is I am not like my grandma. I ignore the signs. Deliberately. On behalf of all young people – as well as the old – everywhere, I have no intention of growing old gracefully. And like a Staffy on heat, I go in for the kill.

“Are you trying to tell me that in this vast emporium to Samsung products, this palace to all that is quick and convenient and helpful, that you can’t fix my phone?”

“Do you have a Gmail address?”

“Yes,” I replied, “several.”

An engineer had joined us by this time. There were hardly any real people there, by which I mean clients. He looked skywards, having done the workshop on keeping calm and telling it just as it is, smiling philosophically at several steel girders – mixed with tasteful wooden beams. Beaming at the beams.

“Ah,” he said. “We can’t help you. Sorry.”

“Well,” I started, “do you think you could get it back to its factory settings…?”

“Without proof of purchase, I’m afraid -“

“Whoever stole it… And put it back… They didn’t have proof of purchase, did they? Unless they stole that as well! And THEY got into it… Couldn’t I sell it to the people who know how to hack into the thing -“

“Without proof of purchase…”

“The trouble is,” I ventured, sotto vice, “there is far too much red tape in this country…”

I picked on a very nice young lady in a hijab wearing an AI advertising tee-shirt who was very attentive to what I was saying. “Do you have younger brothers and sisters?”

She nodded, listening.

“What do you suppose they will do for a living? Work here with you? There are more staff here than clients. AI is going to take all your jobs, and all their opportunities away. Just the same as the supermarket machines are taking jobs from budding grocery retailers.”

She was listening.

“What else is going to happen? When something that cost me so much money is inaccessible because of silliness like this! Me hobbling about London trying to get something fixed that could be sorted-by-criminals-so-quickly-and-quietly like stealth bombers acting in completely-innocent-parts-of-the-world!”

(Rhetoric was rising in my throat, nothing would stop it…)

Something, I knew it, was wrong somewhere.

Something was really wrong.

By the time the cool and funky lift decided to refuse to come up and open for me. By the time I’d decided I HAD to GET OUT of the emporium – I was shouting. I was shouting about how AI and the internet was going to take away everyone’s jobs. I was shouting that what the emporium represented was everything that was non-sensically stupid and wicked and just plain wrong about this country. I mean, I PAID for this thing. A lot of money. I could look at the brushed chrome around the lift and decide that the cost of my phone might have paid for the buttons working the automatic doors. Without the cost of my phone, it was likely that those lift buttons – made to look like sunflowers or something – those buttons – would not exist.

Everything would have got better. All would have been so much better if – when I got down the stairs – the world wasn’t still full of cool young art students on their roller skates suiting the suavity of my sunglasses in a way I simply could not manage under the circumstances. Things would have been so much better if I hadn’t turned the air blue with my curses near respectable, hardworking parents and their cute little children brought closer to them while listening to my complaints. Perhaps if I hadn’t made rude gestures to the CCTV machines… Which were everywhere, of course. Perhaps things would have been better. Everyone laughing at me. Even the frisbee players whose games I’d interrupted with my striding about.

But – do you know what made things better? You know what?

Two things. Or maybe three.

The adrenaline coursing round my veins made me forget the pain in my legs. That was good. Then the notification sound on my phone telling me that some poor excuse for a human being – the kind that could probably fix my phone, actually – had managed to hack into Companies House’s system. Companies House, I ask you! The place looking after my details like so many other hacked-into places. Bloody Companies House. Associated with His Majesty’s Revenue – that is TAX with all it’s own failures – had FAILED – FAILED – to look after my details.

The other thing that made things better, was a gentleman outside Kings Cross tube station, who was telling us we’d lost our souls and would end up in Hell. A bit heavy on the alcohol as an excuse, didn’t he know? It isn’t just the whisky that gets you there.

We are already there. In an Emporium of our own making. A lack of a receipt.

A Wave in the Sky.

21/2/2026

I was sitting in a café in France just a few days ago. There have been major rains here because of Storm Nils. Accompanied this time, I was studying property, as a friend is here who is an estate agent. For the ‘be prepared’ property seeker, I had come at the right time to do this. I was presented with a clear case of ‘worst maison scenario’. Everything we saw was affected by ‘water ingress’ in one way or another, which was hardly surprising as the downpours were relentless. Non-stop since, and particularly bad, on December 23rd. Yes, it’s been going on since just before Christmas and while I was there, it was windy as well. Perfectly dreadful on February 15th. Our phones emitted a terrifying sound on St. Valentine’s Day in an effort to warn everyone in the community. The sound, I swear, was enough to wake the dead. And the message came through, peculiarly, in English. (These governments truly keep tabs on us all.) The winds would be something else, the message warned in different terms than that, and if we were intelligent, we wouldn’t leave our homes. So we didn’t. True to reports, a beautiful, tall mimosa tree, seen from our terrace window, swayed perilously this way and that, bringing back memories, to me, of the 1987 storm that decimated the cherry trees in Stoke Newington and caused havoc elsewhere.

As we’d made our way round many a residence, we’d already seen workers attending to the bridges where we were based. Eroded? In danger from the water? Which brings me to what happened on Shrove Tuesday (just before Lent started – Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday) at the main town. Instructed by one who cared that I should gain a key ring, I found a cheap one (3€) in a church shop.

“What’s on that one?” I asked.

The lady in the shop, possibly a plain-clothes nun, but who I called ‘Madame’ anyway, struggled with the English version.

“Benoit…” she began, wincing, “Ben…”

I’d made a friend called Benoit in another part of France some years ago.

“Benedict!” I surmised.

“Yes, Benedict!”

“I’ll have him!” And then I heard myself say: “Let Benedict look after me for a while.”

It turns out that Benedict (Saint) is not just the founder of of the Benedictine rule – which I once owned in book form – but is the patron saint of civil engineers, along with many other good things, such as Europe! His “attributes” are: a bell, a broken cup, a crosier, a cowl, a rod and a Raven. And a bundle of sticks. A powerful symbol of the strength in numbers – the teamwork it takes to fight something like Climate Change.

A group of infrastructure workers strode into the café where I was. They are on the front line of this ill-acknowledged war against weather change all over the world. And those of us who believe in the power of prayer or positive thinking or good energy should get everything out of our arsenal of belief and think about these people. If I had my time over I would be a builder. Young people should be encouraged that way.

According to the BBC, 10 people died in the Aude area of France where I have been, recently. Even a nun was “swept away by the River Aude” according to these reports. These floods “are the worst the Aude river has seen in more than 100 years”. Personally I am grateful to the local authorities for tracking our phones on this occasion. France should no longer allow building on flood plains – not on flood plains anywhere else in Europe, probably.

Today I hold my keyring close and pray St. Benedict will look after all infrastructure workers, as well as the civil engineers who direct them.

Somerset is underwater with Dorset little better; however in Minneapolis Ground Zero means ICE, with all eyes on the ground.

On the ground where temperatures are well below zero, yet hundreds have gathered to query the ICE around them.

Key cards are pedaling backwards as best as trumps can. When the rule of the day is: Never Say Sorry.

My father used to say, the only premier who ever said “sorry” was Pericles. Is that true? When was that? What did he say it for? I am sure Mr. Blair once said “sorry”. Sorry, Surrey, Excuse me

Eyes on the ground, wide open, lifeless. I don’t watch violent fantasies any more. The men with helmets on, snouts for noses, protecting themselves against gas and spray. They look like something imagined. Adversaries in a Playstation game, aggressively standing. Toting. Like something Ridley Scott invented. Alien yet anti-alien. Eyes on the ground.

It’s a nurse! A nurse I ask you!

An all- American nice-guy, entitled to the American Dream. Dead can Mr. Pretti dream it? As the ice melts around him, Border Patrol is not made welcome any more. Not welcome in Minneapolis, Minnesota because – without the American Dream, Minnesota has to look elsewhere. We all have to look elsewhere. For something denim-clad with heart. While nurses are gunned down, where will those who care go? Where will we go if we cannot look toward America and Dream?

Trudging through the snow on the way to Shakespeare, I once stopped off at Minneapolis, Minnesota. Over twenty years ago. A friend took me to see The Mall of America. So big, so huge that Dream. It was icy then. But so big so huge the Dream was. It took my breath away. And with Shakespeare so exciting to tap into.

“And in that sleep of death what dreams may come…?”

Dreams of ICE are not dreams at all. The are spikes.

(With respects to Mr. Steppingstone who looks to be my “denim-clad with heart” and who was writing at the same time as me)

1/2/2026

More and more it seems hard to stay oneself.

Surrounded by pressures and people who want you to hear what they think you should do, how you should be, Life becomes a comedy where you can’t tell the angels from the evil ones, because so much of Life is shadowed by strange hieroglyphs and hints. Moreover, there are confusions that are quite accidental. At least, you hope they are accidental.

Oh how I despise the Great British Hint! I don’t know why people do this. It drives me completely mad. It’s not quite the same, but something of the frustration of Eliza Doolittle getting fed up with romance and wanting Freddy Eynsford-Hill to demonstrate his love for her without too much chat – reflects back how I feel about this non-chatting phenomenon. He’s getting all wordy, in fact, while she wants real things. He thinks she’s doing some attractive kind of street language, while all the time she is learning to speak Received Pronunciation. This is in order to get away from her Cockney background, so she can make a go of it – in Retail.

Today I needed shoes. I very rarely go to clothes shops, but shoes have to be good, especially for me, as these days I walk like a Thunderbirds puppet – I need all the help I can get.

Many actors, thinking about a forthcoming character, think about the shoes first. What shoes would my character choose? If I get the shoes right, the walk will be right. My outlook on life will be right. People will accept the character – my character – for what it is. At the same time, they say in show business: “If they are looking at your shoes, you are losing.” But, yes… that would be right… because if you get the shoes right, bringing about the correct walk, character and so-on, they WON’T be looking at your shoes because your performance will be compellingly correct. For the character.

So I bought some shoes at a shop with staff members who were very helpful. Two of them were from Gujurat in India. The shoes were made in Vietnam (I was told). Water is a subject relevant to both of these countries. The paddy fields of Vietnam (I know nothing about Vietnam but I can see watery fields of rice in my mind’s eye) and the Monsoon seasons of Gujurat. One of these assistants, who had a red dot painted on her forehead – a ‘bindi’, I read – confirmed that it was a sign of a particular spirituality. There is a particular Hindu festival celebrated at the moment which centres on the Goddess Amba, she told me, and she loves to mark these festivals.

Amba, I read, is a representative of the ‘divine feminine’ – which is an expression I’ve heard my sister use. She is very motherly, very all-encompassing (‘universal’) in love. She protects with her many arms. She is strong, resilient, almost warrior-like in her maternal aspects. Oh, how I’d love it if Amba would bring all the things I read she can bring, like inner strength, family harmony, self-confidence.

Has anyone noticed it is the fiftieth year since the Sex Discrimination Act and the institution of the Equal Opportunities Commission (1975)?

If there were just a bit more ‘divine feminine’ I am sure we’d fare better.

Back to shoes. This Gujurati lady helped me focus. I need the shoes for particular business-like things. I didn’t need the pink and white ones that were in the sale. I needed both practical and quietly stylish. I chose the right thing, very relieved.

I read that to worship Amba cleanliness is important before the ‘puja’ (holy rite before the shrine). You sprinkle the ground with – guess what – holy water (‘Ganga Jal’). And you bathe. And you put on clean clothes. I would have had a shower this morning but…

I shall not speak of our domestic wet room problems at the current time. I may use the instructions my husband has put together to combat bathroom condensation during my first go at improvisational comedy. This, I hope, will happen at the weekend.

Here is Audrey in some attractive black heels, I think.

Bing Videos

Without Royal Collection images, as yet… but… Here is the first episode.

‘The Story of Queen Anna of Denmark – Episode One: Waiting for a Boat’

Starring Guy Henry as King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England too!)

My research thanks for this are due to the British Library, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Imaginative scripts using the history are registered with BECTU. All rights reserved.)

Originally put out in mid-2025. Here is a bibliography for you:

Bibliography for the series:

Griffith, Eva, A Jacobean Company and Its Playhouse: the Queen’s Servants at the Red Bull Theatre, c.1605-1619 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

McManus, Clare, Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court (1590-1619), (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002)

Meikle, Maureen M. and Helen Payne, ‘Anne [Anna, Anne of Denmark]’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, online version https//doi.org/10.1093/ref:ODNB/559 -subscription needed, 18 pages

Meikle, Maureen M., ‘Once a Dane, Always a Dane? Queen Anna of Denmark’s Foreign Relations and Intercessions as a Queen Consort of Scotland and England, 1588-1619’, The Society for Court Studies, 2019, 168-180

Stevenson, David, Scotland’s Last Royal Wedding: the Marriage of James VI and Anne of Denmark with a Danish Account of the Marriage, translated by Peter Graves (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1997)

Willumsen, Liverpool Helene, ‘Witchcraft Against Royal Danish Ships in 1589 and the Transnational Transfer of Ideas’ in International Review of Scottish Studies 45, 2020, 54-99

Wormald, Jenny, ‘The Witches, the Devil and the King’ in Terry Brotherstone and David Ditchburn (eds.) Freedom and Authority: Scotland c.1050-c.1650 (East Linton: Tuck well Press, 2000), pp. 165-180

Wormald, Jenny, ‘James VI and I (1566-1625)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, online version https//doi.org/10.1093/ref:ODNB/14592 -subscription needed, 54 pages

Dr. Griffith seeking accompanying images in Scotland – during a Tempest.

As Europe burns, Spain displays an interesting international Garden Festival, with twelve gardens dedicated to discussing the subject of how we can look at Climate Change differently. This is not as as something simply depressing, but it seeks to see the situation as one which is an ‘opportunity for the garden’. It is, in urgent circumstances, the garden’s chance to shine.

Entitled ‘cambio climàtico, unha oportunidade para o xardin’ this Galician endeavour comes as a Spring to Autumn accompaniment to, perhaps, the Chelsea Flower Show, which also sought to chime in with our frantic needs. Going with some friends, we were supposed to decide between 12 gardens, all equally astounding, but when I got home I realised I’d only seen eight… Maybe next year I’ll choose my favourite if I am lucky, as it happens annually. This one ends in October. Hurry along!

The Project