Copyright Alon Alush, from Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0

3/10/2024

I said to somebody today: “You wouldn’t think I like writing comedy, would you?” But sometimes something is so serious, it’s hard to put a comic spin on it.

First of all, I would like to wish a Happy New Year to all my Jewish friends and acquaintances. I’ll be pleased when things are better for the Middle East and I can take down this post. Then I’ll dance with you if you’ll let me, for there could be much to celebrate in years to come.

There is a chapel built in the shape of a tear which, according to Wiki, is on the Mount of Olives, “opposite the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem”. It wasn’t built to remember St. Veronica, the woman who wiped Jesus’s face as he went down the Via Dolorosa, carrying his cross on his back, or the women who are recorded crying as they watched him go by.

No.

It commemorates Jesus’s own tears from before that time, recorded in the book of Luke (19, verses 41-44):

Jesus Weeps over Jerusalem (NLT version):

But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes. Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognise it when God visited you.”

I am going to publish this post just as it is, today. Tonight, tomorrow, or in a few days time, I may edit it. At the moment it stands as a warning from over 2000 years ago. Please listen to it. And remember the loveliness and global desirability of peace.

9/10/2024

“The World needs you alive”

Rosh Hashanah has come and gone and so have commemorations of a very sad day.

Watching the television I saw two beautiful women talking, one was Elizabeth Taylor, the movie star, recorded when she was giving a speech to a hall filled with AIDS charity supporters. She spoke directly to those affected by HIV/AIDS, a community she loved. I saw this footage in the third part of Kim Kardashian’s fine series on the life of the actress. I knew Taylor briefly, when I was a little girl.

“The World needs you alive!” is what I heard her saying. She worked tirelessly at the end of her life for money towards AIDS research. Kardashian called her the “blueprint”.

The second beautiful woman I saw on the television was a woman interviewed outside the kibbutz where she had lost her whole family last year. The community was not sure what to do. Whether to stay and rebuild or – what? What I say to her and to you, Israel, is the same as Elizabeth Taylor said: “The World needs you alive!”

Israel and the Global Environment (as I understand and remember it).

When I was in Israel, so many years ago, I remember swimming down a clear-water tributary of the Jordan River alongside many other people and some very happy fish. I remember the thrill of that and being surrounded by happy young people. It’s taken this recent war to realise what a country full of youth you are.

Israel, as I remember it, was awash with clean water and it sets examples. The sea, as an instance, has been successfully desalinated where necessary. As for the kibbutzim, my father, who took me to that beautiful country said: “They made the desert bloom.” And it was true. Working the land and understanding community, it seems to me, is something which, in the current worldwide economic and environmental crisis, we are only beginning to appreciate here, with our food banks and our community cafes.

So here is the confession, but one made on your behalf, and particularly directed at the second beautiful woman I saw who worked the land but has lost her family: there is a part of me that wishes your country did not exist. That you knew, as many Jewish sects living here in London believe, that “Zion is a state of mind”. A state of mind that rejects notions of war and favours peace.

My favoured Jewish rabbi said: “The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You”. You take it wherever you go.

My son cries when I run this one by him. How could you think about a Jewish existence without its state? And he refers to my father’s film The Light: the Life of David Ben Gurion, which I have not seen for a long time. I think again. There is one reason why Israel should exist, and it’s all wrapped around the past. From the moment they left they were persecuted. And then there was the Holocaust. And for those who chose to come to Britain, or the United States, or elsewhere, I guess, they could always say to themselves: “Well, if things get bad again in any way, shape, or form, we can always go to Israel”

It’s been perceived as a safety net, then. But isn’t it time to come out of there, now it’s not so safe – for you – or anyone, it seems?

I wish you knew to what extent you, with your knowledge, could go to anywhere in our struggling world and bring great benefit, leaving a place fitted up to bring you sadness, to come over here and teach us your skills.

“We are sure we are seeing the effects of climate change,” says another woman on the television set, as England sees, not for the first time, swelling rivers along with flooding sewage systems and water companies that cannot cope.

Come here and bring your community-orientated, peace-loving Zion with you. It’s up to you as far as it goes, but I’m sure we’ll welcome what you know.

Leave foolish people to dissension and the storms of war.

20/11/2024

It’s now the second half of November and I’ve just done a Psalm-a-thon. A day saying the 150 psalms of King David. Forty-three people said them all between them – young people, old people, some said them in their own language, a couple cried. I asked to recite any of them that were about water. And there were quite a few. The whole experience was like a rolling sea in itself. Some represented the depths of despair; some were happy and joyful. They seemed to round and round up and down. Many of the ones I recited were about the parting of the Red Sea – how God has forgiven humanity again and again and again – why? I thought. Some, surprisingly for me, were about God pouring hot coals on one’s enemies. Revenge, indeed. I texted a friend who had organised it afterwards about how I was glad Jesus came along when he did – with his ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘love your enemies’ ideas. They must have been such radical ideas in the context of his time and place.

It’s no surprise Humanity executed him is it?

Here is a psalm for you Israel, and anyone who feels troubled in the Middle East or – indeed – anywhere. I’ve had a hard time, and it means something to me (King James’ version):

142 

I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication.

² I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble.

³ When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.

⁴ I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

⁵ I cried unto thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.

⁶ Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

⁷ Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

And now I have to get back to at least occasional comedy...

30/9/2025

If I write now about Mr. Trump’s hopes with Mr. Netanyahu, I realise there is nothing to laugh at there – only something to hope. Really – Hope!

4/9/2024

The disease of Polio has been much in the news recently because of a ceasefire in the current Gaza/Israel conflict. The no-doubt welcome lull in this horrible war has resulted from the discovery of Polio among Palestinian children. The children of this community are currently undergoing a course of anti-Polio treatments.

Poliomyelitis is an old but acutely infectious viral disease which, in certain forms, paralyses the brain and spinal cord, wasting muscle, particularly in the legs.

When I was a child film actor I played the part of a Polio sufferer called ‘Josie’ who had contracted Polio before the story of the film began. The film was an adaptation of an Australian book called A Sporting Proposition which was written by the significant Australian-British writer, James Aldridge. It was presented by Walt Disney in 1975, the company changing the title of the book for the film to Ride A Wild Pony. Josie was a rich girl in 1920s Australia who, before she contracted Polio, loved riding – a pastime no longer available to her now she could not walk. That was Josie. But the film also told the story of Scott Pirie, a poor boy from the same area as Josie, who captured and trained a wild Welsh mountain pony so that he could get to school. Unhappily, ‘Taff’, as Scotty called him, was a match for the training he received, and he managed to break loose, ending up with Josie, who also fell for the pony’s charms, keeping him and calling him ‘Bo’.

I quote from the blurb on the back of the 1976 Peacock paperback:

“To Josie, the daughter of the wealthiest landowner in town, Bo is an important compensation for her useless legs. To Scotty, the pony is Taff, as wild and independent as himself. But who really owns him? The conflicting claims of the two children build up until the whole town is divided in the tense struggle for the ownership of the pony.”

Yes. There is conflict in Australia over the ownership of a pony. One side is represented by a rich, strong-willed girl who cannot walk after contracting an illness – an illness which, when the film was made in the 1970s, was thought to be largely stamped out; and the other represented by a poor boy, unafraid to stand up for himself when recognising his own in the hands of someone else.

Well I remember the old-fashioned wheelchair, the orthotic calipers fitted, the discussions about what it was truly like not to be able to move my legs. Getting to know the ponies – of Welsh extraction like me. I remember the friendships made – Robert Bettles, John Meillon Jnr, Laurence Goodheart (our stunt double) – the crew, the production team – the beautiful locations in the Australian countryside, and how my mother and I wanted to go back, but never did because we never could.

I could write more of my memories here, but perhaps that could wait for a larger and more happy piece of writing, recording what it was like to be a child in the film industry at that time in those days.

Right now, at this moment in time, I want to communicate to what extent Humanity should take seriously the new impetus towards worldwide Polio vaccinations.

The Polio virus is not communicated through water, but it has been detected through sewage testing in our currently ailing water supplies. It is a virus of a few forms passed on to others through faeces to food and can also be airborne. It is quickly caught where standards of hygiene and sanitation are low. Most children in this situation develop immunity on contracting it. For richer areas where sanitary conditions are better, the virus surprises the better-off child (like Josie) and the effects can be devastating. Vaccinations administered to as many children as possible from all walks of life are therefore essential for the whole global community.

According to my copy of the British Medical Association’s Family Health Encyclopedia, published by Dorling Kindersley in 1990, vaccinations, at that time, were given at 3, 5 and 9 months with booster doses given to 5-year-olds. Today, according to nhs.co.uk, it is given at 8, 12 and 16 weeks old as part of the 6-in-1 covering a range of illnesses, then at 3 years and 4 months before attending school, and lastly, again, at 14 as part of a teenage booster shot: Polio – NHS (www.nhs.uk)

I am writing in a café in Islington and I see many men in shorts. “Why are they in shorts in wintertime?” I think. I mean… so many of them. They are allowing quite a large proportion of their body to meet the cold! What’s worse – they are probably runners. Running plus the wind-chill factor means very cold knees. They are probably single and on the run, just in order to keep fit. So that they are well enough to face that time when keeping fit is hard: when they are old. They keep themselves fit and locked into music playing in their ears. I reflect on men and how I wish my husband would keep fit. So that we might have a long life together, with the normal ratio of humour and hurt as befits marriage, but be fit enough to meet the challenges with aplomb. And then I think: “there’s more than one way of ‘keeping fit’ ”. You have to drink plenty of water if you run. Indeed, it’s wise to lock into the H20 whatever your level of fitness. My husband builds things from time-to-time. He’s a gardener. He can build you a place in your garden to recycle things if you like. He’s done that. We have a place like that in our garden. There’s drinking water, there’s enjoying the great outdoors, there’s building something. Slowly drawing on the examples of time.

I’m in Suffolk and I’ve jumped off a bus right by a church I know.

I need to think.

Churches carry about them stoups of water, blessed so you can bless yourself with water from them. Holy Water. It’s reassuring.

For some reason, once in there, I go straight to the statue of St. Joseph. It’s a nice statue but there’s something missing from one of his hands. Probably the tools of his trade. He was a carpenter, and probably the most famous step-father we know. Looking around I see I’m not alone in the church. A really cool and stylish leather-jacket-wearing woman is just sitting, legs towards the congregation part of the church, on the altar steps and she is writing in a notebook, quietly. She looks up at me.

“It’s nice in here at this time of day,” she says. “It’s so quiet.”

I want to light a candle by the statue of the Virgin Mary at her altar in a corner of this church, but again I see that I am not alone. Again the person is low to the floor, as if hiding. But he’s not hiding. He is a slight but muscular man. He has adopted the lotus position of the eastern religions on the floor. He is absolutely concentrated on his prayer.

I assume, since he is in front of the Virgin, that he is what my sister calls “channelling the Divine Feminine.” The power of his meditation is so strong that I don’t not want to risk disturbing him. The World needs prayer right now. I end up at an icon that’s been put up by the Polish community in this Suffolk town. It’s of Our Lady and her child.

I’ve been reading about Polish people in Suffolk. The icon’s near a picture of the Sacred Heart, special to the Polish. It feels right that I should light a candle there. Outside, everything is unstable, easily misinterpreted. My work feels unsafe, I feel unsafe. I wobble like a jelly at a small child’s party, outside. I’m not sure I don’t belong at a small child’s party, to tell you the truth. Maybe it’s a lemon jelly. And I wear a red nose. But in a place of worship or a place I can draw closer to the best we can manage, I feel okay. Myself. Grown up.

Stepfathers. Yes

I’m visiting another church in Islington. It’s unusual as it doesn’t have leaks. A grander church, up in the north of Islington, is always suffering from bad leaks. It’s too big. This one I’m in now was a church that my son’s father’s family used to go to. My son’s father is London-Irish. His stepfather, also Irish, was like St. Joseph in that not only was he a stepfather, but he was a carpenter in the building trade. As far as I understand it, what he would do was frame out a building ready for concrete to be poured where it was wanted. A “shutter carpenter” my son’s father tells me. He looked after Angela, and a good few children of Angela’s did Ken. A strong man, not an easy man, but a strong one. He was a quiet person. He drank, somewhat, of course, as many Irish men making our city better did. I look at the ceiling of this church and think: it hasn’t got leaks because builders loved it. They thought it was ‘worth the candle’. Ken had one child with Angela. A daughter. She was their Pearl. And they had many grandchildren and step-grandchildren.

I remember the last time I saw him. I was in Eddie’s van. The family had just lost Angela, and everyone knew Ken wouldn’t last long. I can still see him. Waving at me and my son and Eddie in the front of the van. His cheeks red, flushed, the rest of his face pale, pale, pale. A skilled person. A quiet man who – if he went into church – would probably go in alone when no one else was around. I’ve observed men doing this.

And now my son has moved near us with his wife. His one and only. And for all their differences in personality, he gets on with my husband very well. My husband makes him laugh. My husband makes ME laugh. And, of course, he’s strong. He gets boxes down from high up places; he moves furniture around town for my son. Maybe one day, my son and his wife will have children, and we’ll be nearby. His own gem of a father is not far away. Whatever happens, we’ll all be nearby, I hope.

We are building something.

And it will be healthy, and safe.

Overdone it a bit? Feeling the pinch around the midriff?

Not to mention the bank balance.

Recently my husband and I visited Turkey to attend a marriage ceremony.

We had a great time. Too great a time, as a terrible bout of indigestion kicked in, at one point, for my other half.

Could he get the usual over-the-counter relief? No. So local advice was sought.

“Ah!” A non-English-speaker responded, getting the hang of my husband’s gesticulations. And he pointed to two products on the shop’s shelves.

One purchase was the sainted Lemon, and the other, a bottle of SODA water. Soda water, mind, not tonic or mineral water. According to the bottle pictured above, sodium bicarbonate is the crucial ingredient of soda water, which, the internet tells me, is the same as bicarbonate of soda. Apparently (and this is confusing), baking SODA is just the American term for bicarbonate of soda/sodium bicarbonate; while according to some, baking POWDER is also the same – to others, it has cream of tartar added. Bicarbonate of soda is more powerful, which explains why (perhaps), between two banana cakes tried recently, the one with bicarb in it was softer than the one with baking powder.

So much for cake. Back to indigestion.

To my husband’s surprise, the cure worked. The water is alkalising and hydrating, of course. Lemon is good for the digestion, reduces gas, and can even aid sensible weight loss.

Carbonation is what happens to all three types of fizzy water, with naturally bubbly mineral water having valuable minerals included, such as calcium, magnesium and sodium. Soda water has salts added to it by dissolving carbon dioxide in the water forcefully. Tonic water is also carbonated, but with sugar and quinine added, now available with extra flavours bringing about choice that can become elaborate but no doubt enhances whatever you are having with it.

When it comes to the early modern world, all I can say is “heartburn” was a discomfort understood by the antiquarian and lexicographer Thomas Blount (1618-1679) who coined the term “dyspepsy” for his Glossographia (1656), when we believed the condition was associated with the heart, not the esophagus (reflux, etc.).

Look, if this all seems a bit late in the day, we’ve got Burns Night coming up.

Keep up the water intake!

The air is very soft here, where I am. We’ve just had a Coronation, and I’ve come away from London so I can appreciate it, as one would a work of art. And a work of art it was. Spiritual, musical, historical art.
In the nights before the ceremony, I caught glimpses – on the television – of disrespectful things. Even my own ‘skit’ on Lansdowne MS 285 might be interpreted as disrespectful, by some. If so, I am sorry.

But excuse me while I gasp! Did I know, as I studied that British Library manuscript, that Lady Fiona Lansdowne would be there, accompanying the new Queen? Did I know that Pretty Yende, who I last saw singing in beautiful Napoli, decked out in Lemon yellow, would be there too?

I understand the King has a great sense of humour, and one of the wonders of British satire is that we are allowed to have it.

A gentleman called Michael, who was from Ireland, but had lived here in England a long time, was reading the newspapers while we watched the ancient ceremony here where I am. It turned out he had lost his son in a joy-riding car accident. Michael also suffers from epilepsy and shouldn’t drink alcohol. He was on the lemonade; I was on the really hard stuff: water. Michael was particularly interested in the satirical cartoons in the papers he was reading, I could see from the way he showed these to a friend. After a while he stood up, in the place where I am (where it was sunny on Coronation day). He was troubled, and left the room, unable to be near the rites any more. Later he spoke to me a little and I listened. He was full of full of jokes and laughter and aphorisms denoting Irish Wisdom about Life and his life, some of it cruel.

Am I destined always to feel conflicted? To feel that my father was right to be someone who knew that much of what has happened in the past still needs to be addressed, whilst at the same time, myself seeing that many are doing their best in a complex world.

To those of you who might say that we should do away with the monarchy I would say – look to those sections of the Coronation ceremony where diversity took over. A Hindu gives a special ring; a Seikh gives a special glove; and I would urge you to think about what these cultures mean in terms of King Charles’ knowledge about this land and the world. We are looking at a farmer king, and a Green one. India and the Punjab are ex-imperial emblems, yes, but Asia is a place where climate change marches on, largely unchecked.

Michael’s land, Ireland, is a place where the English language bends and folds around soft-spoken thoughts, hidden knowledge translated into poetry. As soon as I saw lines 31-32 of Lansdowne 285 I thought of W.B. Yeats ‘He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven’. The line is about new ‘Ray cloth’ being laid down in the cathedral for the King’s feet, and I wondered if the poet had seen a ‘Form’ of Coronation in the way I had. And I wondered, in all that spiritual commitment expressed, whether King Charles was wishing for the cloths of heaven too. I think he probably was. He seems a man who wants to bring things together, not to divide. I felt, amidst a lot of debate about what made him the happiest, that the moment when he smiled at the group of faith leaders on his way out, that this was the best. The Welsh Cross of the procession, carrying splinters of the True Cross, was beautiful. And that’s where this king is. Not at the bottom of signed undertakings declaring things firmly this way or that. There were sticks of Equity and Mercy… And the new Queen is a charity worker too. And we should go with that. Indeed, I’ve just seen Prince William confirm this idea about his father: service crossing all faith and culture boundaries is the name of the game.

If this seems like a series of disjointed thoughts and feelings, then that’s how these special days felt for me.

I’m sorry about the rain, especially on the marching soldiers, but then, as I said for somebody else’s podcast recently (and the king echoed this, I believe), our rain is – for the most part – a blessing. It’s rhythms don’t swing in the way it does in other places. It has a poetic beat all of its own.

Lansdowne 285 lines 31-32:
“and he shall go upon new Ray cloth laid under his feet on the ground”

W.B. Yeats, ‘He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven’

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Maggie Steed and Peter Quince star in a completely barmy one-off script I have written, based on the Coronation Form transcribed in my last post (before I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary). Performed practically sight-unseen by two brave friends. Hurrah!

No Frenchman was harmed during the making of this audiofile. Vive La France!

Long Live the King!

Taken from British Library Lansdowne MS 285.

https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=3997

Here is a modernised transcription of a form of a coronation. It is published here to mark the crowning of King Charles III.

Extracts from Folio 2 onwards:

First the Prince that is now to be crowned the day before his Coronation shall be 1 | apparelled and clothed with most noble and fairest clothing. And so he shall ride from the 2 | Tower of London to his Palace at Westminster through the City of London bareheaded 3 | Riding with him temporal lords and the Commonality of the same City with 4 | other much and noble people /// 5 |

The King’s seat: Also, it must be ordained that in the day of the King’s Coronation, 6 | in the Great Hall of Westminster, the King’s seat be Royally ordained and dressed with 7 | cloths of silk and gold and Royal cushions and carpets.

The Pulpit: Also, in 8 | Westminster Church must be ordained a Pulpit with “grees” [steps] on every side. And that 9 | must be fair arrayed with cloths of Silk & of gold and about on the ground, both. 10 |

The King’s Throne: Also, in that Pulpit, shall be a Royal Throne and a Royal seat in 11 | the which the King shall sit. And it shall also be Royally arrayed with cushions 12 | and cloths of gold and silk.

The Abbot of Westminster shall inform the King: 13 | Also, it is, to wit, that the Abbot of Westminster, which is, for the time, two days 14 | other before the King’s Coronation, or the Queen’s, and shall inform them of divers 15 | observances that they shall do & keep in their Coronation, and warn them to 16 | strive and to cleanse their Conscience before the holy anointing. And if the 17 | Abbot be dead sick or in foreign countries, or “leefully lett'”[lawfully stopped] Then shall one of the monks 18 | of the Church be chosen by the Convent that shall fulfil and do in the Abbot’s 19 | stead at the said time of Coronation.

The Shirt and the Coat: Also, the 20 | same day of the Coronation, the same Prince that shall be crowned shall 21 | be lifted up in the foresaid Royal seat in the Hall, but first he shall be bathed 22 | And after the bath, there shall be ordained to him a new shirt and a Coat of 23 | Silk opened to the breast, open between the shoulders & the middle of the 24 | arms. And above the Coat he shall be clothed with other noble vestments 25 | And he shall wear one [pair of] hose without shoes.

The solemn procession: Also, 26 | there shall be a solemn procession ordained by the Abbot and Convent of Westminster 27 | unto the King’s seat in the Great Hall, in the which the Prince shall sit abiding the procession 28 | and in this procession shall be Archbishops and other prelates, and then 29 | shall the Prince descend and follow the procession into the Church, and he 30 | shall go upon new Ray [striped] cloth laid under his feet on the ground from the said 31 | Church, and there shall be singing in the “Resteyning” of [receiving?] Kings and Queens 32 |

… The Archbishop, with a high voice, shall enquire the will of the people as touching the King’s Coronation. And that while shall the prince stand in his Throne or Chair and turn him also to the parties of the people. And after that question shall an anthem be song…

The Offering of the King. Also when the anthem is song and ended, the King shall come down off his pulpit unto the High Altar between bishops that shall lead him on which altar he must offer a cloth of gold…

The Lying of the King before the Altar. Also, when the King hath offered, he shall lie down flat on the pavement before the altar upon cushions and cloths of silk, Royally arrayed, till that the Archbishop or some other that shall Crown him hath said Deus Fidelum. And then there shall be made a Sermon to the people. Another that the King shall make. And when the Sermon is done, the King shall come to the Altar to make his oath, which he shall confirm with the Sacrament of the Altar.

The lying down again of the King before the Altar. Then shall a hymn begin: Veni Creator Spritus…

The Anointing of the King in 6 places. Afterwards, the King shall arise out of his Chair to go to the altar and “do of” [take off] his clothes save his Coat and his Shirt that he may receive the anointing… and shall be anointed in 6 places, that is to say: in the hands, within the breast, between the shoulders and in the great of the arm, and in the head in the manner of a Cross with the Holy Oil.

The Abbot of Westminster. And then after the aforesaid anointing and wiping with linen cloth (which shall be burned), the openings of the place of the anointing in his Coat and Shirt shall then be closed after the anointing of the Abbot of Westminster or one in his stead.

The Abbot of Westminster shall take off the King’s Pelion: Also, when the King is anointed on his head, the King’s head shall be held with a linen cloth for the Holy anointing. And so it shall be still till the viij [8] days after he is anointed, at which day the Abbot of Westminster or a Monk in his stead, shall come to the King and take off that Pelion (turban) and wash the King’s head and make it clean…

By Eva Griffith, 25th April 2023

So I’ve disappointed everyone, I guess, saying that Sir Henry Seckford was not a privateer-pirate in the “Arrr!” sense. That research must be gone into more deeply… I have a friend who had a quick look (and thought I might be right), and I’ll be in touch with him again.

But – “hiding in plain sight”, yes.

“Solder”, it turns out, is a metal alloy – a filler metal employed as early as 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Its friendly term is “PIKE”, like the fish or the ne’er-do-well lad in Dad’s Army, that long-running tv comedy.

I should preface what I want to say by stating that we had the story of ‘Doubting Thomas’ recently at church – it’s a story that means something to me as an entertainment historian of an earlier time. It means something to anyone who believes that in order to say anything about anything in history, having a look at the original documents is a privilege and an aim. Just like Jesus’s friend Thomas wanting to place his fingers in the wounds – to really believe and get the full context of what happened – I like to see original documents. Not that, unlike Thomas, I ever had to put my fingers into Christ’s wounds to believe his message of radical Love. But with history, the printed form is never enough. Even if the original vellum or parchment doesn’t tell the whole story, or may even contain untruths, it’s best to lay your fingers on it. In other words, faith is not enough when you are looking at entertainment. There is too much ‘let’s pretend’ in the world today.

Before the ten-year-old book, I was the proud PhD student of one article, not freely available today, and that’s quite good because my own research out-dates it now. It was published in the journal Theatre Notebook at the turn of the millennium, when found a seventeenth-century survey showing the southern portion of the ‘Seckford Estate’ where Thomas Seckford (see previous article) lived. It was very near his brother, Henry. He left it to his own Suffolk charity to raise money to keep it going and this was where the Red Bull playhouse came to be.

In the article I cited a will – a 1575 will – of a gentleman brewer called John Draper. Draper was the father of Anne Draper, later Anne Bedingfeild, who held the lease of the part of the land where the Red Bull came to be. In Draper’s will he leaves property in St. John Street to Anne, identifying what it was only by saying he had it from one “Dunstan Braye”. A PhD student’s head spins, however ‘mature’ she might be, and she scours the known records of the Brewers’ company looking for Braye. John Draper was a rich man, having attained positions within his livery, a brewery in the Whitefriars liberty of the City, other property around and about, and with charitable intentions towards, for example, Highgate School. Surely this Dunstan Braye was an important man as well? But he wasn’t a brewer from what I could see, not in its available records.

The favourite old book of Revels things that I like to look at carries a problem, in that it is so full of old entertainment wonders that when I read it, all I can hear is the sawing and planing of wooden structures (there is a lot of that in my comedy screenplay), alongside the occasional “ouch” of an embroiderer as he/she stabs her finger with a needle. Let’s call her “she” for this essay, although males abound at this time. She’d have to be careful not to get blood on the very expensive materials she’d be handling for the costumes she would be making or sorting/mending for the entertainments at court.

A lot can be understood from ‘Accounts’. Taking one example at random, a haberdasher called Peter Bonyvale (Bonneville, maybe?) was paid £6 and 16 shillings in 1558/9 for 12,000 “Spangells” – I think we might say “spangles” – although exactly what they were I can’t imagine, except they sound SHINY. During my 1970s childhood, a Spangle was a boiled sweet that came in tubes and was bad for a young person’s teeth. For this earlier time it sounds like the sort of thing you might sew into a costume to make it sparkle – but I don’t know. For his £6 and 16 shillings, Bonyvale also provided six ounces “di” of copper silver, “di” dozens of feathers and something called “cullen sylver fringe”. Not sure what the “di” of any of these things were, but when dipping into this book you can get waylaid by so much glitter. And this I have been: waylaid by the twinkle, missing an entry that was always there before my eyes, just further along into the book. I only missed it because my imagination burgeoned under the weight of so much spangly-ness, as well as taffata, silk, “tyncell” (tinsel), something called “sarcenet” and much more besides.

Well, I was right. It is an AO3. I wish I could show you a picture, and perhaps I will be able to one day. Here’s what it says in the old book:

“The Plummer Dunstan Braye For Leade and sowlder with woorkmanshipp by him bestowed over the Cowntyng-howse at saint Iohns where it Rayned in xlvjs, jd”

In 1583, Braye’s work was described like this:

Plumbers Dunstone Braye for work done | upon the hall & office of the Revelles. | pipe lead to mend the masters conduite [with the price after this] | sheete lead to make a spowte | Soder lj ls At uijd the pound | for workemanship of plumbers & laborers/ xxxijs iiijd [that’s 32 shillings and 4 pence to you – and this is from the original document!]

The whole 1583 job came to £5, 14 shillings and 5 pence in very old-style money.

Well, he was only the Revels plumber, wasn’t he?

Which means (says a rather late Sherlock Holmes) the brewer, Draper, father of the Red Bull’s landlady, may well have been connected to the Clerkenwell entertainment area much earlier than previously thought. I mean before the 1570s when he wrote his will.

The plot thickens like bubbling “pike”. What will happen next? Will I ever leave the subject of water? We’ll have to see.

In London, Easter Sunday was sunny this year. A blessing for those who work indoors all day, like the kind and friendly shopworkers I meet. They could finally tank up on Vitamin D.

I kept Easter Vigil on the Saturday night at a Roman Catholic church I know, and heard the Exsultet welcoming in Easter there. The following day, Easter Day, was mine to go out and play.

In the sunshine I paid a visit to an Anglican church for their Easter service. It is another church I know well and the liturgy was well-attended. But the roof over the sanctuary was not in a perfect way. In one corner of the ceiling there was a large hole – very high up. A tell-tale sign of a leak, but one which would need internal scaffolding to remedy.

Expensive.

Yesterday, Easter Monday, seemed a large stretch from the Sunday. There was so much rain in the morning. At the moment I wrote these words, there was a brightening between the clouds, but the radio warned of storms ahead. How both cursed and blessed we are with our weather systems on this island. Were we really warmer than Rome on Easter Day?

The sight of the hole in the roof reminded me of some research I undertook a long time ago, which ended up in my book of 2013, all about the Red Bull playhouse and its associates.

Thomas Seckford (1515-1587), a hard-working man of law and a Tudor map commissioner and charity founder under Elizabeth I, was never made a knight, but owned a piece of land in Clerkenwell where the Red Bull playhouse came to be in the seventeenth century. Seckford lived there, when in the London area, alongside his brother Henry, who was knighted in 1603, nearly sixteen years after his brother’s death. Since Cambridge University Press published this ten-year-old book, I have realised that confusion has existed over Sir Henry Seckford who, it is possible, was not a privateer as some have believed (and I believed them), but an Elizabethan entertainment-related office-holder, who held interests in ventures at sea, engaged, as he appears to be, in some measure of ship-building. It is possible that he was rather more like the land-bound Antonio, the eponymous merchant in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, rather than a more Thomas Heywood-type personal-style adventurer, his hands on the wheel and his men in the rigging. Henry Seckford, you see, had too much to do in relation to these isles. Regularly to be seen in state-controlled financial accounts of a few kinds to do with deer-hunting, some victualling, and other activities of a property nature – in East Anglia (where the Seckfords and their friends came from), and elsewhere – Sir Henry, as he became, could not have squeezed in quick but profitable cruises around the Mediterranean, not for all the tea to be picked up in Antwerp or other helpful market places. The scene of him aboard ship is one I might have to amend for my comedy screenplay about the Red Bull and its actors.

What is real about Henry Seckford is his office, linked to that of the ‘Revels’, found close to the Red Bull at the old Knights of St. John of Jerusalem buildings. Today the site is found on either side of the current Clerkenwell Road at St. John Square, with a museum dedicated to the order and its founding of the St. John Ambulance association. The museum is very close to St. John’s beautiful old stone gate.

On the north side of the square is where Sir Henry had a residence in the old Prior’s Hall, we think, as ‘Master of the Tents, Toils, Hales and Pavilions’, a job looking after the necessaries of the monarch’s journeys, venturing to places removed from the palaces, when he/she was out hunting or visiting the countryside, needing tents, hunting nets, human sheltering, informal stabling, and somewhere private for the Queen to go to the lavatory, etc. As a buildings-based outdoor recreation person, Sir Henry, as all of us must, had to deal with the annoyances of building works, including leakes coming from very high ceilings. One such record made it to my ten-year-old book.

Quoting an old book of the early twentieth century, I suspect the record is an ‘AO3’ when found in its original at the National Archives. It is noted as dated between the end of 1572 and a couple of months into 1573.

A very cold time of year.

The title the book gives it is ‘Reparacions on the Leades’, and the sums include works disbursing “Rushes in the hall and in the greate chambere where the workes were doone & the playes Rezited” and, among other things, he also put in for money for “hanging vp Tentes to keepe away the wynde & snow from dryving into the hall”. In other words – with reference to roof leads – gumming up the areas susceptible to – or open to – the outdoor inclemencies. Leaks.

This entry goes on to describe a great deal of other items to do with constructing three dimensional design items for the business of the office, but also, with reference to the above, boarding up windows and buying replacement lead from “Sr Christopher Draper… and for Bestowing the same vpon the Roofe of the howse adioyning to the greate hall & for sowdering [soldering] & mending dyvers other places”.

Monday turned out changeable. By the time I finished a first draft of this post, a fierce wind was blowing, right through the old window behind the table where I was writing. It’s good I met up with double-glazing experts recently. But even today, there has been no real storm, just wind.

How did the early modern man ‘solder’, amend, and replace leading? This I do not know, although my stone mason great grandfather might have had an idea (see a previous post). There are further Revels’ entries of note recorded concerning these matters, but for these we must wait for the next essay from my pen, and a subject that I’ve seen come up as a topic of interest among my fellow academics recently, namely the topic of that which has been ‘hiding in plain sight’.

Here is a very old Catholic proclamation for the night that welcomes Easter.

It’s said before the Paschal Candle in a dark world brought to light.

I will embolden the relevant part.

Does it remind you of anything?

“It is truly right and just, with ardent love of mind and heart
and with devoted service of our voice,
to acclaim our God invisible, the almighty Father,
and Jesus Christ, our Lord, his Son, his Only Begotten.

Who for our sake paid Adam’s debt to the eternal Father,
and, pouring out his own dear Blood,
wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness.

These, then, are the feasts of Passover,
in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb,
whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers.

The water here is the waves of the Red Sea which parted to let the children of Israel pass through without harm. Do we feel, on the other side of the pandemic, and so much more, as if we are people allowed through the waves? The story, and our thoughts about it become complex when we acknowledge the play that echoes its rhythms:

The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1:

LORENZO.
The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise, in such a night,
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,
And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cressid lay that night.

JESSICA.
In such a night
Did Thisby fearfully o’ertrip the dew,
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself,
And ran dismay’d away.

LORENZO.
In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.

JESSICA.
In such a night
Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs
That did renew old AEson.

LORENZO.
In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
As far as Belmont.

JESSICA.
In such a night
Did young Lorenzo swear he lov’d her well,
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,–
And ne’er a true one.

LORENZO.
In such a night
Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,
Slander her love, and he forgave it her.

JESSICA.
I would out-night you, did no body come;
But, hark, I hear the footing of a man.

Shakespeare changes an exclamation of an amazing night of happiness and hope, harking back to Old Testament themes and promises, into a Classical love song for two people -Lorenzo, a Christian Venetian, and Jessica, the daughter of Shylock, a Jewish money-lender. It would simply be a beautiful evocation of love as soft and glancing as the gentle kiss, the wafting of a love and the enchantment of the herbs, were it not for the verb “to steal” and the context of a play which makes Jessica’s father, Shylock, the loser in so many devastating ways. “Christian believers”, divided from “worldly vices”, forget the enlightened moment in Shakespeare’s play, and send the child of Israel who is Shylock on a rollercoaster of pain, including the loss of his daughter.

I have a relationship with Stoke Newington in North London. I was married there, and have many happy memories of that place. The people that gladden my heart on sight there, are the orthodox Jewish families, living out their lives privately, with so much dignity and familial love and respect. I once asked an orthodox Jewish man in a ‘Stokey’ public place if he could help me with my little phone. He seemed so adept with his. I told him I’d gone off ‘smart’ phones.

“You’re lucky,” he quipped. He was probably thinking of his daughters…

Tonight I will stand near a Paschal Candle, and perhaps I will hear the proclamation of joy for a new day. It will be a Catholic church. It will start outside in the gathering darkness. But a historical question for our moment might be – what was Shakespeare doing going anywhere near the Exsultet at all? Given it came nowhere near the Book of Common Prayer? I wouldn’t be the first to wonder at the ‘High Church’, sacramental clues that Shakespeare gave us about Faith issues, possibly personal ones. Troilus, Cressida, Thisbe, Dido and even Medea say, it’s a beautiful love poem under a starlit sky. All I say is, “Happy Easter”, have a good “Pesach” or a great Eid, when it comes.

Let the Light of Love steal in on as all and let Hope reign supreme.