Avon Recalling
I'm back in George Best airport. There is, as there always is, a single Mod, sandy haired and in his middle years, with a Carnaby Street flight-bag and calf-skin desert boots. His female travelling companion has the cheerful, fit-for-purpose demeanor of a farmer's wife and looks as though she barely puts up with his nonsense. I have a vision of her vacuuming the cream Axminster round his feet while he's trying to listen to Anne Peebles imports on his headphones.
It's a beautiful sunny day and I can stare out at the runway from my vantage point in George's Deli and Kitchen (blissfully quiet - everyone is in the pub). There is a yellow sign next to the runway that reads 04:22 and having been in Northern Ireland for too long now I naturally think that its a Biblical quotation. Of course, this being Northern Ireland it could well be a Biblical quotation, as this is a country where they hang hand-written signs reading Remember the Lord is thy God at accident black-spots, presumably so the last thing you ever do is contemplate that wrathful Old Testament fella, as you spin out of control and into his stern embrace.
My right eye spontaneously weeps at Starbucks where I am ordering a micro-wave Croque Monsieur from a little tattooed boy who keeps calling me buddy. I wonder what my eye knows that I don't. I don't know.
Queuing to get on the plane there is a chirpy cockney couple behind us. They fall into conversation with three locals behind them: affable, mildly pissed rugby types. "Where are you going?" says the cockney man. "Birmingham," says one of the lads. "What? No really?" "No, Birmingham. Really." "He's having us on," says the cockney woman. "No," says the lad. "Where've you come from?" "Belfast." "You're in Belfast," says the man. "Yes." "Well you can hardly be travelling to Belfast - you're already here." "Yeah," says the lad, slightly bewildered, "I live here." "You live here?" "Yeah, and I'm travelling to Birmingham from here." "Why did you leave?" "I haven't," - he is really confused now - "I'm still here." "He's having us on," says the cockney woman, slightly less sure of herself. "Where are you going?" says the lad. "Belfast." "Well, you're here." "I know." "Then why are you queuing to go to Birmingham?" The woman asks Susie and I where we are going and we confirm our destination. "We thought this was the way out!" says the man. We give them directions and they trundle off down the corridor dragging their wheelie-bags behind them. You can hear the woman's laughter long after you can see her. You don't hear the man's.
We're in Stratford-on-Avon and once again we have gone on holiday somewhere we are the youngest people there. Our fellow travelers shuffle past in Littlewood's outdoor-wear, their hands clasped behind their backs, their faces alert with the panic of old age: they know they're going to die and that it could be at any moment. The clever ones wear expensive sunglasses so you can't see the fear in their watery eyes. They all have aggressively functional footwear but it looks new and untested, not yet molded to their feet. I wonder if there is some psychological reason why Susie and I only holiday around old people?
Nothing in nature looks older than an old man. You can stand them next to sloping, tumbling Tudor houses and the men still look older: stooped and drooping, hair like moss bleached under a stone, bellies swollen and distended like Ox Bow lakes. Legs barely props now. I see myself in them. I shall blink and that will be me. If I'm lucky.
Tourists are obliged to go to the pubs in gangs as they have palpably never been in a pub before. They carefully order rounds of water, half beers and the Guinness always last, and insist on talking to the server, so she becomes distracted throughout the endless transaction. The place is also full of ancient Brummie bikers who are pragmatic and chippy and passive aggressive, when they're not revving their engines outside Barnaby's fish shop.
I'm in the Black Swan pub, my first pub in Stratford and it is the actor's pub judging by the signed spot-light photos on the wall. There's a mullet-ed Michael Sheen and a moody and intense Anthony Sher with a perm and double-denim. Beneath them is a sexy Frances de la Tour and Richard Burton blinded by key-lights. The music is terrible but the staff thrillingly competent and tireless. It is always a pleasure to see good bar-tending: its like someone invented a perpetual motion machine and just left it lying around.
Shakespeare's house is called New Place. Not much of a stretch for the finest poet in the English language. Its not even accurate.
Susan posits the idea that in 500 years there will be "in Basildon or wherever he's from a Royal Walliams Theatre and there will be Walliams deniers who will claim he never wrote "The Boy in the Dress" or maybe they will combine it, so it becomes The Royal Shakespeare Walliams Theatre. I fear she might be right.*
*I should point out that a musical version of David Walliam's "The Boy in the Dress", music and lyrics by Guy Chambers and Robbie Williams, is starting at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre here and that his autobiography - possibly written by himself - "Camp David" is available in the gift-shop.**
** he's from Reigate in Surrey. Of course he is.
We are woken up in the hotel on the first morning by furious metallic clanging. After five minutes with a pillow over my head I go and investigate. A fat man in a high visibility tabard is striking a skip with a hammer outside the bedroom. Its eight in the morning - the optimum skip beating hour. I cannot go back to sleep and continue to read my novelisation of Queen Kong.
I have been attempting to joke with the people that I interact with when I'm out and about in Stratford. It never goes well. At the church where Shakespeare is buried a man is sat at a pseudo-National Trust toll-house. He is friendly and clearly not being paid for this and suggests that we might like to make a four pound donation for the upkeep of the church. Something about my demeanor might have displayed muted outrage at this unexpected expense and he is keen to put my mind at ease. "We do suggest you make a donation as we are entirely self-funded. But its entirely at your discretion, of course...I can't stop you coming in..."
"So if I were to leap this barricade and tussle you to the ground..." I say.
He looks alarmed. "No, as I say, you don't have to pay..."
"No, I wasn't really going to attack you..." I say. I already have the tenner in my hand.
"Two is it?" he says.
"Yes,"
He looks me up and down. "Shall we say a fiver?" On the one hand I'm appalled that he thinks I can't afford the full eight pound donation. On the other its a saving of three quid, so I swallow my pride and say "Sure."
We poke around the church with the other tourists. Shakespeare's entire family are well represented here. They all get a bit of altar. There's a bust of the immortal bard stuck on the wall like Statler or Waldorf. He resembles a Klingon who has lived not wisely but well. There is what amounts to a curse on Shakespeare's gravestone. You can see, in a way, why there are so many doubters: Shakespeare seems almost too well represented. I don't know anyone else so famous that both of his son-in-law's houses have been preserved by the National Trust. The second most famous person from Stratford on Avon is Marie Correlli, Victorian author of best-selling melodramas (including "The Sorrows of Satan"). No, me neither. There's a fucking big drop off in the fame stakes after Shakey.
They sell "Upstart Crow" DVDs in the Royal Shakespeare Company bookshop. But then they also sell Robbie Williams' autobiography. You might think that's a generously egalitarian and inclusive idea but I'm not so sure. They also sell books which are Shakespeare translated into what they call "English anyone can understand"*** which rather defeats the point of Shakespeare I would have thought. The world is becoming stupider by rights. People are demanding to talked down to. I hate it - I think everything should be much harder than it is. The world is complex and catastrophic and constantly spoon-feeding people nonsense seems like a delinquent idea.
***I appreciate these books, on reflection, are probably for the many tourists that don't speak English as a first language. But I stand by my dyspeptic outburst: the language of Shakespeare is everything. If you are watching As You Like It for the plot...well...don't watch As You Like It for the plot.
Susie greets me in the Mason Bar where I have been scribbling with the news that Doris Day has died. Que Sera Sera, as everyone else has no doubt already said. I liked Doris Day: she was a proper trooper and a badass: a freckly blonde with a deep, sexy growl in her voice, which she used sparingly and to great effect. I will watch Charade when I get back, her nonsense sixties spy-spoof. She was too old for the part just like the male protagonists of sixties spy thrillers, so she was perfectly cast.
Coming out of Shakespeare's church a man with long hair and sunglasses trundles past in a powder blue hatchback. He bellows "Rock and Roll" out the window and does a devil sign. As he pulls away I finally place the song: "Take Me To The River" by Talking Heads.
Cornflower blue butterflies are everywhere in Stratford. Strangely, Susan, a committed lepidopterophobe, is fine with them.
Paid £25 to see Shakespeare's house New Place. As we go in we're told "There's a talk at one o clock to tell you why it was demolished." I'm so embarrassed that I didn't know Shakespeare's house wasn't actually there that I don't say anything.
We come out into a garden full of globes and sailing ships and a bronze tree to meet a rather shifty looking man in shades who does a half hour talk which is basically a long-form apology for the house no longer being there. His speech is richly informative and quite amusing and the knot garden and the grounds beyond are beautiful places to be and covered in Shakespeare inspired sculptures that I actually like. The whole thing was well worth it, in fact. Well done New Place - it was an uphill struggle but you got me onside.
A house would have been nice though. And not Thomas Nash's house next door. He barely even lived there.
I'm in Susie's Bar in The Other Place - Stratford's own Black Box, with its uncomfortable chairs, alien beers and a staff comprised solely of actors. Outside young people are dressed in unmistakable Midsummer Night's Dream motley: Moth and the other mechanicals making a single coffee last four hours while they thesp about. The inside is bare, sticky wood and distressed surfaces and the lighting and music are rather more urban than the rustic setting would suggest, and certainly most of the patrons look as if tea in the cricket pavilion would be rather more their scene. In fact the music is uniformly awful, precisely judged to appeal to no one in the modern manner. I only ever hear modern music on adverts these days and as a consequence every song is the same empty anthemic experience, and I imagine the same bearded man driving a dully competent car through a European city night-scape.
I run into the actor Michael Patrick, the only possible person I know that I could run into at Stratford. He's doing really well - he's in the Royal Shakespeare Company. I'm scribbling long-hand into a notebook while day-drinking. Dammit all to hell.
The print in my room shows a stately home with a walled garden and bears the inscription: "Smell the seat of Sir Robert Atkyn." I have been unable to work out what this means.
We went to see The Provoked Wife at the Swan Theatre and it was marvellous. An in-the-round Restoration nonsense by John Vanbrugh it featured, rather remarkably, the talents of Caroline Quentin, Rufus Hound and Les Dennis - and they were all great. It was exactly the sort of thing you want to see in Stratford: big flouncy costumes, trap-doors, descending swings, knowing winks about leafy arbors, cross-dressing, sword fights, drunken carousing and rather beautiful singing. The story is one of adultery, misogyny, droit de signeur, domestic abuse and the patriarchy restored. Its a comedy - of course.
Les was underused as Sir Bully, Caroline Quentin was very good as Lady Fanciful, a woman punished for the crime of fancying herself a bit. Rufus Hound was short but surprisingly handsome and had some steel about him, and Jonathan Slinger's Sir John Brute was remarkable: funny, violent, sick and transgressive, pragmatic and never likeable. He is a little man but strangely dangerous: furtive, unpredictable and above all rich, which is an unbreachable suit of armour. The play is odd, somewhat plot-averse and the ending is muted and confused. The story shudders to a halt because Brute wills it, he is his own Deus ex Machina. Its a rather sullen and realistic note with which to end a bawdy romp and leaves the central menage jarringly unresolved. Brute tacitly agrees to turn a blind eye to his wife and Constant's affair. But equally he is allowing it. It is under his control. He now owns their relationship too. That's what rich men do.
There is a Waitrose in the petrol station opposite our hotel. It sells good quality wines and high end salads. It also features "The Jamie Oliver Deli by Shell" which is like something from a dream. And not a good dream.
I visit a number of pubs in Stratford on Avon you will be shocked to find out:
The Swan's Nest - a snarling, red-faced drunk squats down the end of the bar. When I order a pint of "Shagweaver" he snarls "A shag!" as though it were an actual joke. I don't furnish him with a laugh. Later he will fail to pick up two women who are too good for him and he doesn't know it.
The Garrick - an ancient, low-roofed, rabbit warren of a pub with efficient and slightly over-friendly staff and brace of charming eccentric locals. I would recommend heartily, with the slight caveat that I'm always wary of pubs that describe the staff on a blackboard as "Chris and the team".
The Pen and Parchment - walked in and out. Its the sort of place that my mum goes to for Sunday lunch.
The Black Swan/ The Mucky Duck - the best pub in Stratford. Its also where the actors hang out owing to the fact its directly between the RSC and The Other Place. I will drink anywhere with a profile shot of the young Michael Jayston adorning the wall.
Kitchen and Keys - the most woefully over-ornate pub I've ever been to. Every inch of every surface has something nailed to it. Its a health and safety nightmare. It makes the Duke of York look like St Anthony's cave.
We go on a boat trip up and down the Avon which is almost exactly the same route as we had walked earlier that morning although, obviously, that version was on land. It is a delightful experience as we drift through a vision of bucolic splendor, spoiled only by my continued awareness of other people's proximity. I really wish I could leave myself at home. We are, by about twenty years, easily the youngest people on the boat, barring the captain and ships-mate, whose function seems to stop as soon as she has got the patrons on board without them killing themselves. After that she eats salad and stares at her phone, bored of everyday beauty. Our relative youth comes into stark relief as rowboat paddles past with a young couple in it. Scandalously she is rowing while he sits back, arms behind his head, smiling. There is uproar on board as this rupturing of certainties, though they are laughing at this topsy turvey scenario. "Should be the other way round!" quips one wag. Quite. This is the highlight of their trip. Only a trail of fizzy ducklings comes anywhere close.
As we disembark there is consternation. A woman in a kaftan is shouting abuse at passersby: "They should learn English if they're going to be in our country." she shouts at the smiling tourists politely queuing for the next trip. "Why not a take a photo?" she says to somebody who has the temerity to look at her. "You're probably queer," she bellows at a man who glowers at her. She is swigging from a can of Carling. "Don't you fucking talk to me, you queer," she shouts at nobody in particular, "Why can't they learn English if they're going to be here." This is the face of Brexit: day-drinking in a Kaftan at a popular tourist spot and demanding holiday-makers here on a coach tour for two days learn a language that you have barely grasped the rudiments of in 60 years. She is challenged by no one and expects to be challenged by no one. No one punches her in the face, this drunk old woman being rude to strangers for no reason. Its the last thing she would expect and the first thing she deserves. Advocating punching an old woman, John? Pretty cool, John.
Yes, but she wasn't a very nice woman was she?
I fail to punch her. She carries on abusing tourists who can't understand what she's saying until she falls asleep. I wish her sunburn, at the very least.
Get a text from Susan: "I've just seen Mark Benton's bench. I'll show you tonight for a treat."
Truly I am blessed.
Birmingham New Street station is incredible: a Carlos Esquerra city-scape made of molten glass. Its easily navigable too. The last time I was here, twenty plus years ago, I was nervously waiting for a girlfriend who was studying at the University. Back then I remember dank, black platforms stacked up against one another and anticipating being stabbed in the eye with a contaminated syringe. Now its pretty amazing: well lit, clear, clean and completely user-friendly. How often can you be impressed by a train station? No stench of piss. Which is the title of a dystopian novel I'm writing.
Birmingham Airport is a centre of excellence for screaming and confusion. Its not a popular view but I am firmly of the opinion that hell is other people's children. Susan and I hunker down in the Bottega Prosecco Bar and Caffe which we can ill afford but needs must when there are young families trumpeting about.
Everyone here is rude and entitled because they are business people. One Dutch guy eats a hamburger while he's on the phone. He eats the entire thing with his mouth open, phone pressed between shoulder and ear. Doing his important business.
The most depressing thing about the airport are the huge gangs of middle-aged men going on sports holidays or stag does. The only time you would ever find me on a plane with a group of middle aged men dressed like me is if I joined The Cure.
As always the airport is a rotten way to end a holiday but I have to say that this short break has been one of the very best holiday experiences of my life. And I'm not easily pleased. Stratford on Avon in the sunshine is a demi-paradise. I grabbed little pockets of bliss there. Stolen wonders.
 |
| Murky, la vie |
It's a beautiful sunny day and I can stare out at the runway from my vantage point in George's Deli and Kitchen (blissfully quiet - everyone is in the pub). There is a yellow sign next to the runway that reads 04:22 and having been in Northern Ireland for too long now I naturally think that its a Biblical quotation. Of course, this being Northern Ireland it could well be a Biblical quotation, as this is a country where they hang hand-written signs reading Remember the Lord is thy God at accident black-spots, presumably so the last thing you ever do is contemplate that wrathful Old Testament fella, as you spin out of control and into his stern embrace.
My right eye spontaneously weeps at Starbucks where I am ordering a micro-wave Croque Monsieur from a little tattooed boy who keeps calling me buddy. I wonder what my eye knows that I don't. I don't know.
Queuing to get on the plane there is a chirpy cockney couple behind us. They fall into conversation with three locals behind them: affable, mildly pissed rugby types. "Where are you going?" says the cockney man. "Birmingham," says one of the lads. "What? No really?" "No, Birmingham. Really." "He's having us on," says the cockney woman. "No," says the lad. "Where've you come from?" "Belfast." "You're in Belfast," says the man. "Yes." "Well you can hardly be travelling to Belfast - you're already here." "Yeah," says the lad, slightly bewildered, "I live here." "You live here?" "Yeah, and I'm travelling to Birmingham from here." "Why did you leave?" "I haven't," - he is really confused now - "I'm still here." "He's having us on," says the cockney woman, slightly less sure of herself. "Where are you going?" says the lad. "Belfast." "Well, you're here." "I know." "Then why are you queuing to go to Birmingham?" The woman asks Susie and I where we are going and we confirm our destination. "We thought this was the way out!" says the man. We give them directions and they trundle off down the corridor dragging their wheelie-bags behind them. You can hear the woman's laughter long after you can see her. You don't hear the man's.
 |
| Shitty shakey |
We're in Stratford-on-Avon and once again we have gone on holiday somewhere we are the youngest people there. Our fellow travelers shuffle past in Littlewood's outdoor-wear, their hands clasped behind their backs, their faces alert with the panic of old age: they know they're going to die and that it could be at any moment. The clever ones wear expensive sunglasses so you can't see the fear in their watery eyes. They all have aggressively functional footwear but it looks new and untested, not yet molded to their feet. I wonder if there is some psychological reason why Susie and I only holiday around old people?
Nothing in nature looks older than an old man. You can stand them next to sloping, tumbling Tudor houses and the men still look older: stooped and drooping, hair like moss bleached under a stone, bellies swollen and distended like Ox Bow lakes. Legs barely props now. I see myself in them. I shall blink and that will be me. If I'm lucky.
Tourists are obliged to go to the pubs in gangs as they have palpably never been in a pub before. They carefully order rounds of water, half beers and the Guinness always last, and insist on talking to the server, so she becomes distracted throughout the endless transaction. The place is also full of ancient Brummie bikers who are pragmatic and chippy and passive aggressive, when they're not revving their engines outside Barnaby's fish shop.
I'm in the Black Swan pub, my first pub in Stratford and it is the actor's pub judging by the signed spot-light photos on the wall. There's a mullet-ed Michael Sheen and a moody and intense Anthony Sher with a perm and double-denim. Beneath them is a sexy Frances de la Tour and Richard Burton blinded by key-lights. The music is terrible but the staff thrillingly competent and tireless. It is always a pleasure to see good bar-tending: its like someone invented a perpetual motion machine and just left it lying around.
Shakespeare's house is called New Place. Not much of a stretch for the finest poet in the English language. Its not even accurate.
Susan posits the idea that in 500 years there will be "in Basildon or wherever he's from a Royal Walliams Theatre and there will be Walliams deniers who will claim he never wrote "The Boy in the Dress" or maybe they will combine it, so it becomes The Royal Shakespeare Walliams Theatre. I fear she might be right.*
 |
| David Walliams mania continues |
*I should point out that a musical version of David Walliam's "The Boy in the Dress", music and lyrics by Guy Chambers and Robbie Williams, is starting at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre here and that his autobiography - possibly written by himself - "Camp David" is available in the gift-shop.**
** he's from Reigate in Surrey. Of course he is.
We are woken up in the hotel on the first morning by furious metallic clanging. After five minutes with a pillow over my head I go and investigate. A fat man in a high visibility tabard is striking a skip with a hammer outside the bedroom. Its eight in the morning - the optimum skip beating hour. I cannot go back to sleep and continue to read my novelisation of Queen Kong.
I have been attempting to joke with the people that I interact with when I'm out and about in Stratford. It never goes well. At the church where Shakespeare is buried a man is sat at a pseudo-National Trust toll-house. He is friendly and clearly not being paid for this and suggests that we might like to make a four pound donation for the upkeep of the church. Something about my demeanor might have displayed muted outrage at this unexpected expense and he is keen to put my mind at ease. "We do suggest you make a donation as we are entirely self-funded. But its entirely at your discretion, of course...I can't stop you coming in..."
"So if I were to leap this barricade and tussle you to the ground..." I say.
He looks alarmed. "No, as I say, you don't have to pay..."
"No, I wasn't really going to attack you..." I say. I already have the tenner in my hand.
"Two is it?" he says.
"Yes,"
He looks me up and down. "Shall we say a fiver?" On the one hand I'm appalled that he thinks I can't afford the full eight pound donation. On the other its a saving of three quid, so I swallow my pride and say "Sure."
We poke around the church with the other tourists. Shakespeare's entire family are well represented here. They all get a bit of altar. There's a bust of the immortal bard stuck on the wall like Statler or Waldorf. He resembles a Klingon who has lived not wisely but well. There is what amounts to a curse on Shakespeare's gravestone. You can see, in a way, why there are so many doubters: Shakespeare seems almost too well represented. I don't know anyone else so famous that both of his son-in-law's houses have been preserved by the National Trust. The second most famous person from Stratford on Avon is Marie Correlli, Victorian author of best-selling melodramas (including "The Sorrows of Satan"). No, me neither. There's a fucking big drop off in the fame stakes after Shakey.
They sell "Upstart Crow" DVDs in the Royal Shakespeare Company bookshop. But then they also sell Robbie Williams' autobiography. You might think that's a generously egalitarian and inclusive idea but I'm not so sure. They also sell books which are Shakespeare translated into what they call "English anyone can understand"*** which rather defeats the point of Shakespeare I would have thought. The world is becoming stupider by rights. People are demanding to talked down to. I hate it - I think everything should be much harder than it is. The world is complex and catastrophic and constantly spoon-feeding people nonsense seems like a delinquent idea.
***I appreciate these books, on reflection, are probably for the many tourists that don't speak English as a first language. But I stand by my dyspeptic outburst: the language of Shakespeare is everything. If you are watching As You Like It for the plot...well...don't watch As You Like It for the plot.
Susie greets me in the Mason Bar where I have been scribbling with the news that Doris Day has died. Que Sera Sera, as everyone else has no doubt already said. I liked Doris Day: she was a proper trooper and a badass: a freckly blonde with a deep, sexy growl in her voice, which she used sparingly and to great effect. I will watch Charade when I get back, her nonsense sixties spy-spoof. She was too old for the part just like the male protagonists of sixties spy thrillers, so she was perfectly cast.
Coming out of Shakespeare's church a man with long hair and sunglasses trundles past in a powder blue hatchback. He bellows "Rock and Roll" out the window and does a devil sign. As he pulls away I finally place the song: "Take Me To The River" by Talking Heads.
Cornflower blue butterflies are everywhere in Stratford. Strangely, Susan, a committed lepidopterophobe, is fine with them.
Paid £25 to see Shakespeare's house New Place. As we go in we're told "There's a talk at one o clock to tell you why it was demolished." I'm so embarrassed that I didn't know Shakespeare's house wasn't actually there that I don't say anything.
We come out into a garden full of globes and sailing ships and a bronze tree to meet a rather shifty looking man in shades who does a half hour talk which is basically a long-form apology for the house no longer being there. His speech is richly informative and quite amusing and the knot garden and the grounds beyond are beautiful places to be and covered in Shakespeare inspired sculptures that I actually like. The whole thing was well worth it, in fact. Well done New Place - it was an uphill struggle but you got me onside.
A house would have been nice though. And not Thomas Nash's house next door. He barely even lived there.
I'm in Susie's Bar in The Other Place - Stratford's own Black Box, with its uncomfortable chairs, alien beers and a staff comprised solely of actors. Outside young people are dressed in unmistakable Midsummer Night's Dream motley: Moth and the other mechanicals making a single coffee last four hours while they thesp about. The inside is bare, sticky wood and distressed surfaces and the lighting and music are rather more urban than the rustic setting would suggest, and certainly most of the patrons look as if tea in the cricket pavilion would be rather more their scene. In fact the music is uniformly awful, precisely judged to appeal to no one in the modern manner. I only ever hear modern music on adverts these days and as a consequence every song is the same empty anthemic experience, and I imagine the same bearded man driving a dully competent car through a European city night-scape.
I run into the actor Michael Patrick, the only possible person I know that I could run into at Stratford. He's doing really well - he's in the Royal Shakespeare Company. I'm scribbling long-hand into a notebook while day-drinking. Dammit all to hell.
 |
| Michael Patrick mania continues |
The print in my room shows a stately home with a walled garden and bears the inscription: "Smell the seat of Sir Robert Atkyn." I have been unable to work out what this means.
We went to see The Provoked Wife at the Swan Theatre and it was marvellous. An in-the-round Restoration nonsense by John Vanbrugh it featured, rather remarkably, the talents of Caroline Quentin, Rufus Hound and Les Dennis - and they were all great. It was exactly the sort of thing you want to see in Stratford: big flouncy costumes, trap-doors, descending swings, knowing winks about leafy arbors, cross-dressing, sword fights, drunken carousing and rather beautiful singing. The story is one of adultery, misogyny, droit de signeur, domestic abuse and the patriarchy restored. Its a comedy - of course.
Les was underused as Sir Bully, Caroline Quentin was very good as Lady Fanciful, a woman punished for the crime of fancying herself a bit. Rufus Hound was short but surprisingly handsome and had some steel about him, and Jonathan Slinger's Sir John Brute was remarkable: funny, violent, sick and transgressive, pragmatic and never likeable. He is a little man but strangely dangerous: furtive, unpredictable and above all rich, which is an unbreachable suit of armour. The play is odd, somewhat plot-averse and the ending is muted and confused. The story shudders to a halt because Brute wills it, he is his own Deus ex Machina. Its a rather sullen and realistic note with which to end a bawdy romp and leaves the central menage jarringly unresolved. Brute tacitly agrees to turn a blind eye to his wife and Constant's affair. But equally he is allowing it. It is under his control. He now owns their relationship too. That's what rich men do.
There is a Waitrose in the petrol station opposite our hotel. It sells good quality wines and high end salads. It also features "The Jamie Oliver Deli by Shell" which is like something from a dream. And not a good dream.
I visit a number of pubs in Stratford on Avon you will be shocked to find out:
The Swan's Nest - a snarling, red-faced drunk squats down the end of the bar. When I order a pint of "Shagweaver" he snarls "A shag!" as though it were an actual joke. I don't furnish him with a laugh. Later he will fail to pick up two women who are too good for him and he doesn't know it.
The Garrick - an ancient, low-roofed, rabbit warren of a pub with efficient and slightly over-friendly staff and brace of charming eccentric locals. I would recommend heartily, with the slight caveat that I'm always wary of pubs that describe the staff on a blackboard as "Chris and the team".
The Pen and Parchment - walked in and out. Its the sort of place that my mum goes to for Sunday lunch.
The Black Swan/ The Mucky Duck - the best pub in Stratford. Its also where the actors hang out owing to the fact its directly between the RSC and The Other Place. I will drink anywhere with a profile shot of the young Michael Jayston adorning the wall.
 |
| A young fit body |
Kitchen and Keys - the most woefully over-ornate pub I've ever been to. Every inch of every surface has something nailed to it. Its a health and safety nightmare. It makes the Duke of York look like St Anthony's cave.
We go on a boat trip up and down the Avon which is almost exactly the same route as we had walked earlier that morning although, obviously, that version was on land. It is a delightful experience as we drift through a vision of bucolic splendor, spoiled only by my continued awareness of other people's proximity. I really wish I could leave myself at home. We are, by about twenty years, easily the youngest people on the boat, barring the captain and ships-mate, whose function seems to stop as soon as she has got the patrons on board without them killing themselves. After that she eats salad and stares at her phone, bored of everyday beauty. Our relative youth comes into stark relief as rowboat paddles past with a young couple in it. Scandalously she is rowing while he sits back, arms behind his head, smiling. There is uproar on board as this rupturing of certainties, though they are laughing at this topsy turvey scenario. "Should be the other way round!" quips one wag. Quite. This is the highlight of their trip. Only a trail of fizzy ducklings comes anywhere close.
As we disembark there is consternation. A woman in a kaftan is shouting abuse at passersby: "They should learn English if they're going to be in our country." she shouts at the smiling tourists politely queuing for the next trip. "Why not a take a photo?" she says to somebody who has the temerity to look at her. "You're probably queer," she bellows at a man who glowers at her. She is swigging from a can of Carling. "Don't you fucking talk to me, you queer," she shouts at nobody in particular, "Why can't they learn English if they're going to be here." This is the face of Brexit: day-drinking in a Kaftan at a popular tourist spot and demanding holiday-makers here on a coach tour for two days learn a language that you have barely grasped the rudiments of in 60 years. She is challenged by no one and expects to be challenged by no one. No one punches her in the face, this drunk old woman being rude to strangers for no reason. Its the last thing she would expect and the first thing she deserves. Advocating punching an old woman, John? Pretty cool, John.
Yes, but she wasn't a very nice woman was she?
I fail to punch her. She carries on abusing tourists who can't understand what she's saying until she falls asleep. I wish her sunburn, at the very least.
Get a text from Susan: "I've just seen Mark Benton's bench. I'll show you tonight for a treat."
Truly I am blessed.
Birmingham New Street station is incredible: a Carlos Esquerra city-scape made of molten glass. Its easily navigable too. The last time I was here, twenty plus years ago, I was nervously waiting for a girlfriend who was studying at the University. Back then I remember dank, black platforms stacked up against one another and anticipating being stabbed in the eye with a contaminated syringe. Now its pretty amazing: well lit, clear, clean and completely user-friendly. How often can you be impressed by a train station? No stench of piss. Which is the title of a dystopian novel I'm writing.
Birmingham Airport is a centre of excellence for screaming and confusion. Its not a popular view but I am firmly of the opinion that hell is other people's children. Susan and I hunker down in the Bottega Prosecco Bar and Caffe which we can ill afford but needs must when there are young families trumpeting about.
Everyone here is rude and entitled because they are business people. One Dutch guy eats a hamburger while he's on the phone. He eats the entire thing with his mouth open, phone pressed between shoulder and ear. Doing his important business.
The most depressing thing about the airport are the huge gangs of middle-aged men going on sports holidays or stag does. The only time you would ever find me on a plane with a group of middle aged men dressed like me is if I joined The Cure.
As always the airport is a rotten way to end a holiday but I have to say that this short break has been one of the very best holiday experiences of my life. And I'm not easily pleased. Stratford on Avon in the sunshine is a demi-paradise. I grabbed little pockets of bliss there. Stolen wonders.
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