Transformed

"Will you look at that! Look how she moves! It's like Jell-O on springs. Must have some sort of built-in motor or something. I tell you it's a whole different sex!"
Jerry / Daphne, 'Some Like it Hot'

One of our old tutors from drama school, recently surfaced on Facebook which reminded me of an acting exercise we did with him.

The brief was that during a break from the school we were to observe someone well known to us so that we could become them as a character. Unfortunately for me I went into hospital at that time for a minor op which meant I had very little time to observe much more than the shocking state of the ward. I therefore had to make a very quick observation of the only person I was in close contact with between operation / recuperation and returning to school - namely my father.

On returning after the break the exercise began in earnest. As my school was very big on Stanislaski and Method Acting this meant a great deal of wandering around in character as much as possible or even taking it further and walking into the local town. As I moved down the street with the slow measured pace of my father I could see other students hobbling with crunches, fidgeting uncontrollably and generally making a fool of themselves as only acting students can. I gradually became aware that everyone else was dealing with very extreme characters or at least characters very different from themselves. I, on the other hand, was discovering that my father and I were much closer in personality then I had previously realised. However, this hadn't escaped my tutor who also thought this character wasn't stretching me enough.

The final part of the exercise was to 'perform' the characters to the rest of our fellow students. Each person would enter the room, introduce themselves and then take questions from the floor staying in the role the whole time. So before this final exercise my tutor set me a challenge.

"Make your father a transvestite"

This was in 1990 and although society still had some way to go before reaching the level of understanding towards homosexuality that we have today is was becoming less of an issue, particularly within the world of theatre and acting. I was to witness one or two 'spectacular' closet departures by friends during my time at  the school. However, those of a trans-gender persuasion had yet to find their voice in the world. Even Eddie Izzard had yet to publicly find his 'high heeled' feet by then. I wanted to to do the character justice and not resort to a stereotype or, even worst, something out of Monty Python ("Oh, fornicate the Penguin!"). After all, this was my father I was dealing with here, all be it in an alternative reality style scenario.

My tutor very much left it up to me to find my father's new 'voice' as it were. The only thing he did insist on was secrecy. In theatre nothing beats getting one over on the audience so my transformation soon became the biggest secret going. Only the two main tutors for my year plus one friend, whom I called on to lend me some of her clothes and help with my make-up, were in on the 'twist'. So on the performance day with the additional aid of a hair clip, a clutch bag, some strappy-sandals and some strategically placed balled-up socks (possibly the only time you can wear socks with sandals) I was ready. For obvious reasons (to those in the know at least) I was kept until last and on entering the room everyone was shocked into silence as I sat and introduced myself as Barbara.

Some thought it was a joke, possibly in either good or bad taste. Some believed I was playing with fire and that the tutors would drag me (pardon the pun) over the coals for pulling such a stunt. As a result the questions were very slow on coming as no one, especially those who thought my character was based on my father. Finally one student, who was often critical of other people's work and no doubt wanted to be the one to point out the Emperor's lack of clothes, said,

"You have a very deep voice for a woman."

To which I smoothly replied,

"That's because I'm a man."

The room seemed to suddenly relax but also lean forward at the same time. Questions now quickly came to people, not only to find out more about Barbara but also about the man behind her (or inside her or outside or which ever way you want to see it). I confidently explained my life and the reasons I did what I did and was what I was, mixing fact with fiction so that my father and Barbara flowed together. Fianlly the session ended and Barabra slipped away.

But if the questions had came think and fast during the exercise then it was nothing to the barrage I received after. Or rather the same question over and over,

"Is your dad really a tranny?"

It took quite a while to explain the whole plot and reasons behind the birth of Barbara. But I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the effect it had on everyone. However, I did feel a little bad for my Dad. Partly because I'd had to 'enhance' his character for the performance. But mostly because when he next met some of my friends he was relentlessly ribbed about the day he'd been turned into a women. And the name Barbara also stuck for a while. (Sorry Babs)...

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Think

Think
Think first
Think of what you are doing
Think about whether it helps or it hurts
Think if this solves anything or just makes it worse
Think of the innocent
Think about what you do does to them
Think of the pain you cause and in whose name
Think of the others
Think of those on the top floor
Think how happy they are that you screwed up once more
Think about yourself
Think about what is true
Think about how they will just use this against you
Think of an answer
Think of being heard
Think of dropping and swapping a brick for a word
Think again
Think

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Glimpse

There are so many brightly burning stars in the world of film, television and pop culture, and all we mortals wish for is the chance to meet one of two. Especially as a child.

Nowadays everyone gets to feel a little like a friend to the famous through the magic of Twitter or Facebook, although it seems to me more akin to 'licensed stalking'. However, back in my childhood touching the hem of the great and the good was far more personal. Back then it was about writing fan mail and hoping for a reply. Or clutching an autograph book while waiting hopefully in opportune places. Or though chance meetings in obscure locations.

Before marrying my dad my mother was lucky enough to have brushed shoulders with several famous people. Firstly as a teenager when she danced in Summer Season in Weymouth and again when she later worked at the BBC. There she was part of the production team of, among other shows, 'This Is Your Life'. I always remember two photographs of my mum which sat with pride in my grandparent's house. One was of her in a chorus line of dancing girls with Benny Hill in the middle and another was of just her and Eamonn Andrews standing together in a corridor at the BBC Television Centre. Although she moved on from there to raise a family Mum still knew people who worked at "The Beeb". One day, thanks to one of these friends, we all got to take a trip around the Television Centre.

I think her friend was an assistant producer at the time and would later on go on to work on 'Only Fools and Horses. Just then she was working on a small comedy ironically called 'Mr Big', staring Peter Jones, Prunella Scales and Ian Lavender. On the day we went there they were rehearsing the show prior to shooting in front of an audience. We first got to see briefing inside 'The Booth' where the production team worked and then sat in the studio itself  while the cast ran a couple of scenes.

I remember thinking how small the whole place appeared to be. In front of us was the set which the actors were working on; the regular 'home' set which was used for every episode. To the left of that a second set waited ready for a later scene. Stacks of lights and monitors hung from the ceiling obscuring most of the action. I don't remember the dialogue but we basically watched them pretend to cook some beans on their small stove for about twenty minutes while the cameramen slid backwards and forwards in their own little ballet. Unfortunately as they were working we didn't get to meet these particular stars before continuing with the tour.

We walked round the circular corridors of the inner part of the building looking at the statue of Helios in the central courtyard and taking in Mum's old office. We also had a drink in the infamous BBC canteen before sticking our heads into another studio. Here they were rehearsing that badly conceived yet amazingly popular 'Black and White Minstrel Show'. It seems impossible to believe that such a programme ever made it to mainstream TV but that was the seventies I suppose. I'm just glade that things have improved since then. Being a rehearsal there was no make-up so it was just the 'White and Whiter Minstrel Show'. Still doesn't excuse it but at least makes for a better memory. With or without make-up they meant nothing to me so we moved on again.

Just as we we finishing the day, and having yet to actually meet anyone face-to-famous, I saw someone I truly idolised. If I tell you I was seven years old at the time you may understand my wonder when there in front of me stood - Derek Griffiths! He was strolling down the corridor towards us, as cool as anything, top to tail in denim. I know that to children of the seventies there are certain names which even when spoke softly to oneself will evoke the warmest of feelings. Names such as Chloe Ashcroft, Johnny Ball or Fred Harris. Floella Benjamin, Carol Chell or Stuart McGugan. These are names from the two big roles of honour; 'Play School' and 'Play Away'. And of them all Derek Griffiths was my hero as he clearly was the joker in the pack.

To my joy he stopped and chatted to the family, gave me his autograph, joked with us and also called over and introduced Toni Arthur who happened to be passing by (there you go - another warm, fuzzy name). After what seemed to me to be hours of banter he said goodbye and went off to work. I left the TV Centre feeling like I was stepping off Mount Olympus having shaken hands with a god...

Altogether now... 

"It really doesn’t matter if it’s raining or it’s fine, just as long as you’ve got time 
To P-L-A-Y play-away-way, play-away-a-play, play-away-way, a-play-away, play-away..."

(Many years later I was to have another brush with a icon from the 'Play Away' hall of fame, but I'll save that for another day...)

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Beef

August Mooo-vie Quiz

We've done chickens so now its the cows!

...In the Australian Outback a reptile monikered man pacifies a cow by waggling his fingers and humming (beat that Paul McKenna)...

...In mid-west America a group of storm-chasers are stopped in their tracks by the sight of a flying cow...

...In depression hit America three escaped cons discover that the one thing George Nelson hated more than his nickname was cows...

...Outside a castle in East Germany two members of the French Resistance try to gain entry disguised as a cow - in boots!...

...In the old West a man rides into town on a bull, just don't shoot him as you'll only make he angry...

...Three buddies from New York go cattle herding and along the way one of them delivers a calf, buries two horses and finds his smile...

...On a remote island a yet to be opened theme park delivers a live cow into an animal pen, not as an exhibit but for 'lunch'... 

...As our world in invaded by little green men several strange sights are seen including a stampede of flaming cattle...

... In a village in Transylvania a vampire hunter, fresh from tackling Mr Hyde, witnesses a flying cow...

...Inside an English castle, surprisingly inhabited by the French, the order goes out to "Faites chier la Vache", what could happen next?...

Answers

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Scattered

Once closely caught up in each other
The group at distance fondly wonder
What each member now is thinking,
All together separate. Linking
Only through a webbed wide world
That so miraculously unfurled
To serve, to mend the gaps which grew
Through time and space, and start anew.

Seeking out the wandering host
To join once more; to laugh, to boast.
Share images of recollection
Plus proud parental snapped affection
Prove we could grow up. Who thought
Shadows could slip away uncaught?
But lives which went in parallel
Now converge again and swell.

Globe is girdled in an instant.
"Is that you? No! It isn't!"
"Oh yes it is! Well OMG!"
From homeland to antipode.
She cracks a joke. They drop a line.
“Saw Such-a-one today. Looked fine”
Warm remembered clicks and clinches
Mixed with future hopes and wishes.

Standing, sitting, fingers weaving
Feeding truth, dreamers believing.
As messages go out through ether,
Calling back yet urging further.
Here all moments captured show
What we want those gone to know.
Sharing out our troves and treasure
Before all goes beyond all measure.

The seeds of grain once castaway
On winds of friendship swoop and sway.
As solo motes that swirl as one,
A flock of folk dance in the sun
To glint and shine like dusted gold.
So as we shift and life unfold
Let change not hinder us, nor matter
But fly together as we scatter...

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Key

There is a new era dawning...

He's taken his first steps... He's survived being on his own in the big bad world... But from September he will reach yet another milestone.. My son will get his own front-door key!

Yes, with the advent of secondary school, and the careful positioning of our new home so as to be in walking distance, there only the small matter of giving him the ability to actually get into the house to be faced. But am I worried? Of course I'm blinking worried! He's eleven! Not only does he have to remember to take his key with him he will also need to remember not to lose it! And I was eleven myself once!

Actually, for a while it wasn't an issue as my mother didn't work when I was first at secondary, making that long walk back home so as to pocket my bus fare (See 'Intervention'). But when my sister went off to college my Mum decided also to go back to work and for the last few years of my school life I too became a latch-key kid. Difference was that I didn't take a key with me. Instead we had one hidden outside the house.

Rather than the old faithful 'flower-pot beside the door' or the 'on a string through the letterbox' methods we went for the less conventional one of 'in a plastic tub at the bottom of the chest freezer at the back of the garage'. Freezers were just becoming popular then and I'm not even sure your could get upright ones for in the house at the time. Either way what we had was a vast, coffin-like box that would open with a sucking crackle and "Whump!", followed but a rising mist of frozen air that any Sci-Fi film maker would have given their right, rubber tentacle for!

I'd arrive at the house, open the garage door and then close it behind me so that no one would see what I was doing. Then open the freezer, retrieve the key from under the animal carcasses and choc-ices and then wait. Why? Because to my way of thinking any would be burglar spying on what I was doing would think that the process of key retrieval was a far more complicated affair, involving the deactivation of several deadly traps.

"Cover over the snake pit... retract the poisoned spikes... power down laser grid... and lash back giant stone boulder..."

Certainly sounds better than "Lift up Arctic Roll and grab Tupperware!"

Satisfied that the ne'er-do-wells had been put off I would emerge with the key and go to the door. The key itself of course would be freezing cold and one day I decided to see just how cold it was.

Now, there are certain things in this Universe that just cannot be avoided. Moments of destiny which will happen again and again. For decades people have unknowingly attached suction cups to there foreheads only to be immediacy scarred by a perfectly circular bruise that lasts for weeks. Thousand of curious young men have wrongly become intimate with a vacuum cleaner! But one such event surely goes back as far as the Bronze Age. An ancient alumni which I joined that day. The grand order of the "I'll just see how cold this piece of frozen metal is WITH MY TONGUE!"

At first there was no pain. Just intense cold followed by realisation that this very cold thing on your tongue wanted to stay there and just get colder! Picture me if you can, key stuck in mouth, standing at my front door which was still locked! Now this was a Yale key and the round head of which was attached to me so for the merest of moments the thought went through my mind that I could unlock it with my tongue.

I was still yet to have a girlfriend at this time and what kisses I had experienced were of the good old-fashioned English variety and in no way Francais. So my tongue muscles were sadly not up to the task. There was simply nothing for it. I would have to pull it off. Thing was that by now there seemed to be very little difference between the metal and the flesh. You could feel the fusion of ice to tongue. But regardless I gripped the key and pulled...

And did it hurt I hear you sak. Lets just say that any burglars still holding out in their hidey-holes would most certainly have fled from the screams of pain that rushed from a mouth now stripped of a layer of skin and burnt as if by a scalding pop-tart!

So, on second thoughts maybe a nice sturdy key-chain would be the best thing for my son. Welded to his under-crackers, naturally...

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Snag

"The city looks so peaceful from up here."

"Anything is peaceful from one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three feet."

'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'

I am a great lover of heights along with the process of reaching them. I never got into climbing itself but I did scale the odd seaside cliff-face in my youth and when working in the theatre the best place was always up in the fly tower. But for me nothing beats climbing a tree. Is it an inherited gene that makes me want to do the meercat thing and find a high vantage point?  Or is it like all good mountain climbers just 'because it's there'? Or am I simply a chimp at heart? Whatever the reason those limbs of delight have always tempted me.

As already mentioned I've recently moved house and although our new garden is wonderful I was met in it the other day by a very grumpy faced daughter.

"What's up?" I asked. "Don't you like the garden?"

"There are no good climbing trees" she said. And she's right. Although we have five or six trees not one of them stands out as a being particularly good for scrabbling about in.

When I was a kid in my first house in Benfleet had much the same problem. My second house in Thundersly on the other hand was just smothered in good trees. There was an old oak tree which I used to ascend in the company of ants, who were forever trooping up and down. Then there were two large ash trees which protected the front of the house and if you had the bottle seemed to go on up forever. And lastly a laurel that not only had a natural seat at the top (plus a second spot for friends) but also included a glass-bottom-boat style viewing gallery halfway up that overlooked the footpath by our house.The temptation to drop things on people's head was only overshadowed by the exhilaration of seeing without being seen - like the Predator but without the dreadlocks.

But in the first garden in Benfleet I had the choice of only one tree, a silver birch. Now I love silver birch trees as they seem almost magical with their white bark and silver-green leaves. There is something particularly mystical and elf-like when seen together as a woodland group. Unfortunately their beautiful trunks are very slippery so not good for shinning up and the branches, certainly on ours, started higher than I could reach at age 5. Luckily for me the tree grew right next to our fence which was a good sturdy one, not like the wafer thin things you get today. The fence was made of diagonal wooden beams which were easy to climb and once at the top you could sit on the fence and reach the first branches of the tree. There were no perfects spots but I could wedge myself between any one of the branches and the trunk and merrily sit there for hours listening to the wind in the leaves.

Getting down again was more complicated. Once back on the fence I'd have to execute the one manoeuvre I didn't enjoy which was turning from sitting to climbing position. I would end up either skinning my knees or scratching my stomach or slipping too soon altogether, scrapping down the fence and grazing any number of things in the process. One day I decided that the time had come to simply jump down. I sat on the fence as usual and shuffled along to be clear of the trunk. Then one... two... three... I slid my bottom off the fence and miraculously stopped, just hanging in mid air!

I could fly!!!!!

Well no, obviously I couldn't but my brain was unable to immediately deduce exactly what had happened. In actual fact the belt loop on my trousers was caught on the top of the fence, resulting in my unlikely levitation. Again, it's a credit to the workmanship of the age that the trousers held my weight with nary a rip nor a tare. However, this also meant that no amount of wriggling would release me. Thankfully being a nice day my Dad was seeing to his self-sufficiency vegetable patch. He responded to my pitiful cry for help by making his way from the between the rhubarb and the runner-beans to see what was going on.

"You can fly!"

Actually, I don't think he did say that. But being the excellent Dad that he is he would have given me a conspiratorial smirk at my predicament, collected a step ladder from the shed and unhitched me.

Thankfully there were no scars mentally, physically or arboreally. I continued my tree climbing throughout my childhood, then also at Drama School (there was a particular tree that several Thespians in training made use of) and so on into adult and parenthood. The time may now finally have come to leave it to those younger, more nimble and carrying less weight than myself. And in particular my own kids. To which ends I have my eye one tree in the garden which may not be a climber from the ground up but with some work has another more exciting possibility... tree-house!

But that's a project for another day and possibly another Random Word. In the meantime if you're able I urge you to go climb a tree and let it give you a boost... 

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