We arrive just after the fall. A narrowboat’s passage is blocked. Boating seniors on holiday consider their options mid-stream. This is not an obvious weather-related event. On the bank is the fresh wound – trunk torn with stress fractures. My mind’s ear hears the creak of wrenched wood and tumbling branches heavy with leaves, then the splash! I am haunted by the absence in my vocabulary. I cannot name the tree with its unevenly serrated orbicular leaves.
Autumn has arrived on the marshes. Sloe berries are fat enough for hipster foragers on bicycles with their shoulder satchels full of berries. The sky is dappled; grasses and leaves are tinged yellow. How long do we have until we’re out of time? The dandelion clock is briefly whole, with its perfect interlocking sacred geometry.
From the outset the fortitude of the ensemble cast move us when a member of the Sydney Theatre Company tells of Ningali Lawford-Wolf’s death last week mid tour. Our narrator has come sudden to take her place, sometimes reading the text, to keep the narrative going despite tragedy. Is this a metaphor for the continuing struggle for Aboriginal land rights perhaps? This is the story of one small place where white settlers take land from the first nation people of Australia. One tale told well demonstrates the bloody outcome of colonisation. We see how fear breeds separation, which leads to violence. As one indigenous performer fills the huge Olivier stage, the power of two centuries of injustice is brought home.
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-secret-river
I pass a small garden in my urban neighbourhood where flowers flourish. It brings me joy. One dahlia, a flamboyant burlesque artist in silky yellow petals shimmies on a long stem. A supporting cast of country garden flowers encourage its sensual display.
I stop to talk to a pigeon. I am taken by its fine hood of taupe fluff and a thick coat of beige and brown feathers. One eye assesses my intentions, unperturbed by my proximity. On closer inspection it wears identity anklets, above fetching red feet and white claws. This particular symbol of peace and love is taking a nap before returning to a ‘well-feathered’ nest.
The cemetery stretches into the distance. Monumental headstones made of York stone sit near, marble with occasional flower vases in the far reaches as the centuries shift. I park randomly, stepping out to find my great great uncle Jehu’s grave and along the first line of stones there are several familiar surnames. I scatter ginger cake and crumbly cheese, leave white roses as offerings to these forebears I never met who lived in this town I never knew until now.
The name of the mill was built into the brick façade with the confidence of the industrial revolution’s entrepreneurs. The history of the family is bound and twisted – like the ropes they made – with the mill. The place, its legacy has been knitted into my own psychogeography. Here it is, my first encounter with this legendary edifice. The dark red brickwork and broken windows conceal a complex weave of family history, ethics, and exploitation, and the story of cotton in Lancashire.
This is an acerbic, witty slice of the politics of 1988. It shows a stone hurled from Thatcher’s Britain and the consequences reverberating into 2019. Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings spar with brilliance as a tory minister and his bitingly sarcastic wife. The punch, however, when it comes demonstrates the destructive power of undigested grief. Simon Woods underlying manifesto is a prayer for compassion.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/hansard
In 1901, my great great grandfather William, his brother and sister with their families lived in this terrace of 3 houses. The houses, ‘The Brooklands 1, 2 and 3’ still stand. Well to do briefly at the turn of the century, signs of worth and respectability have fallen into disrepair. My great grandfather who would later live in one of the houses is a cotton spinner living in a red brick two up, two down on the other side of town in 1901. My mother recalled him saying knowingly, “it takes 3 generations to go from clogs to clogs”.
Four hands sweep in unison across one after another back, shoulders, calves. We know the rhythm of each other as we kneed together. Then it is our turn to be stroked, by an emerald green cricket eager for the residue of jojoba and sweet almond oil. It tends to me, its proboscis tickles my skin.