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.

A continuation of Lemon’s Water theme; thinking of those in deep waters

Michaelmas, 2022

By Eva Griffith

I recently met an old friend from a parish in Stoke Newington, Hackney: the church where I was married. She comes from Nigeria and her name is Mary, famed for saying “How are you?” and to me, in particular, “How is your son?”. On the bus I asked her, “Do you know where Father John is?” Father John was an extraordinarily great man: Irish, from County Wicklow, I think. He would behave equally with everyone, would give money to the homeless if they came to his door saying to us if we wondered about it: “What does it matter what they do with it? It’s none of my business.” The children would gather round him in the sanctuary of the packed church so they could see, close-up, exactly what was going on there. He’d arrange cheap parish outings to the seaside. Some of us went for free out of parish funds. At the time I was a middle-class woman down on her luck. But, nevertheless, when I needed someone to work out how to put together a bunkbed in our home, it was Father John who came in person with the relevant spanners.

Nobody knows where Father John is today. I heard life had been unkind at one point, although talk is cheap. I’d really like to know where he is. The point being that when my father met Father John, he said “Now that man is like my grandfather”.

Praise indeed. Ernest and Emily, my great grandfather and grandmother, brought up my father. This was because, for one reason or another, my grandparents couldn’t. Ernest had a stonemason’s business, inherited from his father, a mysterious figure whose paternity is unknown. Somehow, my great-great grandfather (Edmund) came by the money to set up the stonemason’s business. Perhaps his story should be left for another time.

My father said Ernest was a man who would do anything for anybody. A Methodist, he brought up my father to go to Chapel several times on Sunday, but the impression is given of someone who approached life happily, and communicated, without proselytising, what was right from wrong.

And then things went wrong. As a small child, my father remembered living in some style, with a nurse-type nanny called Lily Phillips, a pony and trap, and respect from the community. But then came the Great Depression, with its cruel consequences for many businesses, and Ernest, once a man to be relied upon, ‘went bankrupt’ and couldn’t meet his obligations, much of the time to old friends and associates in a tight-knit community. I guess this is a story for our currently hurting economic world. Be kind to those around you who are struggling; those with the debt-collectors at the door. ‘Money’ had potential, once, as an idea – how else would we do it? But now, how we trip over it! Solutions: how about swapping and sharing more? Vegetables in our gardens? Skills in sewing and recycling upgraded things we personally need no longer. Sharing the load, at least. Why not?

Emily – my father told us – became blind with the shock and the shame of the bankruptcy, which is hard to imagine. But I guess, with an underlying condition she might have had (diabetes, possibly?), her health could have got much worse with the stress.

Bit by bit they moved out of Tenby to the neighbouring hamlet of Penally. My great-grandparents, along with my father, are laid to rest in the Anglican churchyard there. My father took care to get a fine workman in stone to carve out his respect for them.

At a certain point, my grandfather had a lucky break of sorts. He was employed by the Tenby Town Council as Clerk of Works on a project there: the extension of Tenby’s sewerage system.

Now Tenby is known today for its extraordinarily beautiful beaches, with award-winning clean water. But that’s today.

My father told the situation then like this:

“Tenby’s sewage pipes ran out under the sand from the North Beach and emptied themselves into the sea; but not far enough, as any walker along those sands could see for themselves! An engineering firm was engaged to enlarge the pipes, I think, and then to extend them. First land work and finally work under the sea. And my grandfather was appointed by the Tenby Town Council to be Clerk of Works… he was to be Tenby’s supervisor of the project.” (Kenneth Griffith, The Fool’s Pardon, p.26.)

Ernest must have possessed great skills as a builder. We visited one house he built in Tenby (I think it was the place where my father was born) and, once informed, the owners said that the fact it was built of stone explained why they couldn’t install a picture hook on any of the walls… Well, they were Methodists. What would they do with pictures?

Anyway, my great grandfather was able to wear tweed suits again with an Albert watch strung across him as my father described. He was trusted to inspect and approve the enlarged, extended pipes which were laid on the land portion of the project – the problem came with the sea.

Tenby men, in those days (indeed I suspect this may have been the case along tracts of Britain’s coast) would not know how to swim. Prior to being a wonderful place to take a holiday, the town had been a fishing village, and a marked respect remained for the sea. If it’s going to take you, it will. So, they never bothered to learn to swim. Not my father nor any of his relatives or friends. (Things have changed. The Boxing Day swim is now famous in Tenby! See https://www.tenbyboxingdayswim.co.uk/history/)

When asked if he could ‘sign off’ the pipe work, my great grandfather said he couldn’t. Why? He had seen the land part of the work, but he hadn’t seen the works completed under the sea. Now there is honesty and transparency for you. It would have been the easiest thing in the world just to put his signature to the forms. But that wasn’t Ernest’s way.

Well… we have a photograph of this approximately 60-years-old non-swimmer in a boat off Tenby’s coastline, twentieth-century deep-sea diving helmet visible, smiling jovially at the camera with the other men around him. This was taken, presumably, after he took his courage into his hands and completed his assessment of the pipes under the sea, fitted, as he was, with a knife put around his waist in case he met with a conger eel. According to my father, having been let down into the deep and seen what he had to see, the signal to come up was given and, once up with his headgear unscrewed, Ernest smiled and said he could now sign. My father could report this because he was in the boat at the time.

I know Tenby’s sewerage system has been improved again since then. But with previous generations having set the standard, the beaches remain some of the best Wales have to offer. And free for all, whatever your economic circumstances.

And that’s a blessing, isn’t it?

About Its Water

I am full of contradictions (said Bangladesh). I have about 405 rivers declared by the Bangladesh Water Research Foundation, plus 400 other rivers. So I have around 400-800 rivers. The main rivers are Padma, Meghna, Jamuna,  Brahmmaputra, Shitalakkha, Ghumti and Karnafuli etc.

Seasons, including the Rainy Season

There are six traditional seasons, for we have our own Bengali months and there is a new season every two months. Today, with Climate Change, people are saying that there are three seasons: The Rainy Season (monsoon) traditionally goes from mid-June to mid-August. Our summer is before this, from mid-April to mid-June. Sharat Season is equal to Autumn; Hamontu, Winter; Boshonto, Spring.

Problems during the Rainy Season

(Bangladesh sighs, telling me I should look these things up on Google):

There are four types of flood –

1. The Rainy Season floods
2. Floods involving my Drainage Systems
3. Also floods from the hills
4. Also Coastal floods, including Cyclones etc… problems from the Sea.

What is it like during a flood? People have to move to high ground where there are Shelter Centres. The 2004 flood took a long time to recede, unfortunately. There was another one around 1991/2. Our main staple food is rice. Harvesting the Paddy Fields is impossible during floods.

UNICEF are generous in giving out water purification tablets. Water-borne diseases such as cholera become a problem.

What water do the people drink in Bangladesh? Do they have to boil it?

Not everywhere suffers floods at a time of flood here. Maybe 30-40 districts, perhaps. Cities have a level of water – “no problem”.

The cities are usually well-supplied with water. In Dhaka which is our Capital City (population, twenty million), they used to boil their water. In flood areas they use the water purification tablets distributed by UNICEF .

Cultural effects of Floods

When the floods destroy our crops, of course, a lot more is lost apart from food (but who can do without food?). Life is about more than survival, it is about celebration.

At Hemonta (our Harvest season) for instance, we take our paddy (if we have it) and create a festival using the rice to make special dishes as well as rice flour. We use this for sweet cakes (Pitha), but it can also be used for savoury pastries, stuffed with, for example, spicy vegetables. We use water for drinks which include orange, lemon, and mango flavours, even mixing in chillies. Date jaggery can be used as a sweetener, if we have the dates.

There is dancing at festivals like these. Celebrations of Life that is threatened by flood.

HOPE

The future is hopeful where we can acknowledge that Bangladesh is a ‘young’ country.

In Bangladesh, 70% of the population are young people, willing to look after their country.

I am hopeful because of this (said Bangladesh).

Lemon Shakespeare has been researching all things related to her ‘lucky find’ of a survey showing new historical sources for London water. Using this as inspiration, she is up for learning about the environmental aspects of current-day water, and has material at the ready to share with you. Currently, Africa’s Water Crisis worsens; England is under a heat wave, and Lemon Shakespeare is delving into her interests in Europe again, glad of well-supported air-conditioning and trains that work in the sun.

It’s been a long walk in sandals. Undertaken with all the fierce striding of a woman who has pulled her boots on, careering towards action.

Yes, Dr. Griffith’s current interest is in WATER, and Lemons are supporting her in this. Ostensibly her exploration comes out of her discovery of a sixteenth-century survey of Clerkenwell, penned by the distinguished Tudor surveyor, Ralph Treswell, dated 1587.

More appositely, there is every reason for everybody to be interested in WATER.

By Eva Griffith (started 13th May, finished the 22nd)

The Tudor Seckford Estate in Clerkenwell had many gardens – some of them given over to fruit and produce.

I have recently been looking at a sixteenth-century book called The Gardeners Labyrinth (1577). It is quite likely that the gardens there were like that.

As I look out on our little bit of land ‘at home’ with a pond, roses, forget-me-nots and daisies, I can think about the crown jewels that our island possesses in its gardens.

Among the foliage and flowers of our one, loaned to us, as everything is loaned, in a Britain only benefiting from the soil we have, a tree grows which my husband cannot identify. Dear reader: this morning I saw the most beautiful bird alight among its leaves. Blue, brown, white and peach, I believe it may have been a Jay. Its warmth relieved and intrigued me all at once.

We are exhorted: ‘Plant a Tree for the Queen’s Jubilee!’ Why not? There isn’t room in our garden, but I’d like to see more trees, breathing in the CO2, breathing out much-needed oxygen, if we are able to water them in the dry times. It has been very dry this Spring. Madrid is suffering a heatwave; Pakistan is enduring temperatures of over 50 degrees.

In my previous article on this website, an allusion was made to a Mirror which encloses a text entitled ‘The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’, and, let’s say, it has inspired me to remember extracts from a book I have begun but not finished. It is called My Friend Eve, and it tells the story of a poor woman who, in the frazzle of getting older, senses the world around her has changed in a way she couldn’t have imagined before. It might have been changing for a longer time than she realised, she just hadn’t noticed. The book was started before the pandemic. It is a comedy which, like most comedies, depends on cruel things happening and nobody really caring. In the book this woman is abused by her husband and rejected by her family and friends, thrown out of houses, turned away by people in a song of not really caring. This happens after a parent dies. So many people do these hard things to her that she knows it just can’t be real, so, like a woman eccentrically wearing Wellington boots expecting rain, she waits until it’s over. She is told she is going crazy inside a scenario reminding one of the old play/film Gaslight. (Are your ribs hurting with laughter, yet?) As time goes by, she garners more and more knowledge of a society that just doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong. Walls and fences are broken down around and within a Garden (of England?) that is found wanting: political, personal – what was private is no more. It’s as if her life has been ransacked, taken apart bit by bit and held up for display. It’s so unkind, it just cannot be real. The experience, of course, changes her. And soon it is as if everything she said she ever wanted to do and be is offered to her if only she can change. So, change she does, as something is squeezed out from her like a cloth used to clean something very dusty and dirty. And then some good things start to emerge from what was once cold and rained on. Just like fruits growing from a tree in a garden. As if everything were waiting for the Spring and a better light to picture an issue.

I have written before, recorded on another website, of my understanding of a world which seemed to call out My Friend Eve’s name: that is: Crying about the Environment | Eva Griffith I recently noticed another programme using the ‘Eve’ name. It was called Hollington Drive, shown, as a repeat, late at night, originally aired in 2021. There was a little girl called ‘Eva’ in it, wrongly put in the frame for the death of a boy called Alex. ‘Crying about the Environment’, which includes observations on the recent use of my name, was originally written for a paper given in Belfast. It centred on the some aspects of climate change alongside extracts of my comedy filmscript about the Red Bull playhouse. I am gathering further material for it, even as I write this strange article. It will very much include ‘The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ I think, found in the documents of William Bowes’ of Clerkenwell – and his ‘Mirror of Repentance and Reformation’ to boot. What could ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ be in the context of a tree? Whatever it is, it could only invoke the older Eve’s story, taken from Genesis, of a woman who once lived in a beautiful garden where she made a horrible mistake, tricked, as some think, by a snake. Bowes wished that the members of the Goldsmiths’ company would read the Tree’s message every year and, no doubt, learn from it, before they ate their special annual lunch. A gentleman who presented as the current historian of the Goldsmiths confirmed to me, also over food, that such texts do exist among the company’s records, but he does not recognise the mirror covering, so perhaps Bowes’ device of instructions, within a reflective frame, was never made.

The story of ‘My friend’ Eve is a hard one, but if ever I finish it, you will laugh at it. The fruit in the tree could be Humanity, I guess, as well as a person in transition. From one state to another. From something not so bad to something better, from unhappiness in a place where we need a #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek because it’s a world that doesn’t think before it acts, to one which has to surrender to #Help. Eve is asked to believe that the whole thing was a joke. But say you don’t have that kind of sense of humour? Say you were never brought up to have one like that? Why should you find something horrible, funny (you should read my PhD thesis…)? And who is really laughing, or not doing anything, when the actions taken inspires domestic violence, as in the case of Eve? I have mentioned before about ‘The Twelve Steps’: a form of self-help which has literally saved millions of lives.  We hardly ever talk about it because some its magic depends on anonymity. I never needed it for drinking too much or for taking drugs or for material addiction of any kind, neither did my parents, but I needed it for loving people who were addicted. Perhaps I was addicted to them. Either way, the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous invites one to give up one’s problems to something bigger than those problems. This is given the name of ‘Higher Power’ which, if one struggles with the thought of it, can be as simple as the kind power of the people who introduced you to it.

We could call this power many things. But sometimes the names we give it turn sour in our mouths like dark berries from a tree we cannot identify. No wonder that significant forms of faith advise us not to give it a name. Just to know it is on our side, and that it ushers us into a non-bullying world where we can relax and trust in it, rather than another human being or force.

Here is The Serenity Prayer that is known to 12-step groups:

God grant me the serenity: to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In the meantime (the time between the acceptance and the wisdom), Eve can use her new-found knowledge of the world for something like a comedy screenplay. All about the laughter of other people. For example – Shakespearean actors. And perfect people. From London. And the World.