Pinter and all that

Mr Darnbrough and I went to the theatre earlier this month. We went to the Royal Windsor Theatre, which is located (funnily enough) in Windsor and we saw a Harold Pinter play called “Old Times”.

It is a long time since Mr D and I have been to the theatre together. After some difficulty, we finally worked out that the last play we had seen would have been “The Tempest” in the garden of one Cambridge College or other, about ten years ago. It might be tempting to suggest that our cultural life stopped 'round about the time of our wedding (”I was interested once in the arts, but I can't remember now which ones they were”), but I think that would be unfair to both of us. Once the children came along, I think we were mostly just too knackered to make the effort. Now that they are older, we're going to try and go more often.

I have been to the theatre more recently than him, having clocked up performances of “Noddy’s Birthday”(excruciating), “The Owl and the Pussycat” (rather good actually) and a sweet little puppet show based on the Peter Rabbit stories with a giant-sized Peter Rabbit in it who scared the living daylights out of Eldest Son. Mr D maintained that these dramatic experiences did not count, but having now seen my first Pinter play, I think some of them did have hidden depths - or perhaps that’s my memory reinventing things again.

To tell the truth, our decision to go and see Old Times was not dictated by the most literary of criteria: it was written by a Nobel prize-winning dramatist (heard of those); directed by Peter Hall (heard of him); it had Neil Pearson in it (heard of him - Drop the Dead Donkey, Between the Lines), and it was short, which meant that we’d get home in time for last orders at the local pub.

Now it’s possibly because of the kind of dramatic production that I’ve been used to, but when Mr D suggested that we buy a programme, I said we wouldn’t need one. It was a play, wasn’t it? Everything we’d need to know would be in it. We ordered our interval drinks and strode confidently in to the auditorium.

At half time, we wandered uncertainly towards the bar and sat quietly clutching our drinks and looked at each other. The bar was pretty quiet and no one else seemed willing to talk in anything above a whisper so there was no chance of earwigging on someone else’s conversation. Neither of us was quite willing to ask the inevitable question: “What on earth was that all about?”

Eventually I opened with: “Do you think that was a shag pile carpet they were standing on?” This made us giggle and we moved on to talk about other stuff.

The second half did help to explain a little bit about what was going on but it was only slightly less obfuscatory than the first. It was clear that the rest of the audience thought so too. I’ve never seen three actors leave the stage and return so quickly to take a second bow as those three did that evening. As we walked towards the exit my comment to Mr Darnbrough was: “Well, I expect they’re glad that’s over.”

We discussed the play on the way home and came to the conclusion that it was a fairly stagey exploration of the existentialist idea that “Hell is other people” with a definitely misogynistic twist. I felt that Kate, the one the other two were duelling for possession of, was a particularly manipulative character: a kind of Black Widow spider who ate both of them in the end. We got the central idea that memory is entirely arbitrary and is used by individuals for their own purposes: it would have been hard to miss that when one of the characters says: “There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened”.

Later in the week I was sufficiently intrigued to do a Google search on the Internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Times was helpful). I was sorry to see that the critics did not share our views but then they know an awful lot more about these things than we do . . . . and I suspect that they also go to a lot more plays.

The whole experience reminded me of a medical student I shared a flat with when I was at university. He made two comments about me which I have never forgotten. The first was that I had forearms like chicken legs. The second was that I was not cultured or uncultured so much as a-cultured. I’ve always thought that I knew what he was getting at but I've now looked it up to make sure. The Concise Oxford Dictionary confirmed my suspicions: “prefix” it says. “not, without (amoral, agnostic . . . )”. What a smug git he was. . . .

Earwiggings: Overheard in a cafe . . .

"I'll tell you what sums up my life at the moment: the only thing I get real pleasure from is doing an Ocado shop . . . and even they limit the time you're allowed to spend doing it."

A “good” time to be hi-jacked?

Timewatch last Friday was all about the hi-jacking I was involved in when I was ten.

It made fascinating viewing. And yes, it did bring the memories back. It’s a pretty weird thing to happen to you when you’re ten. Luckily for me, I had two of my sisters with me and my copy of “My Family and Other Animals”, so I spent most of the time reading. So “thank you, Gerald Durrell”, for keeping me occupied during a rather trying couple of days.

The things I remember which didn’t get into the programme are the scary bit at the beginning when we realised that the plane had been taken over and all the children immediately wanted to go to the loo! I don’t recall ever feeling frightened after the plane landed at Dawson’s Field.

I remember peering out of the plane window at the press when they came out to look at us. We had had very little food or water at that point and there they all were with their sandwiches and whatever. It was the presence of tomatoes that really struck me. I’d have really appreciated being given a tomato at that point. I can remember not wanting to climb down the ladder to get onto the ground because it was long and very steeply angled and there were men crowded around the bottom who would look up my dress.

I remember seeing the explosives in the cockpit and seeing the guerrillas all walking around with their guns. I can remember seeing the Jordanian Army’s tank in the distance and knowing that it would not be a good thing if they came any closer.

I can remember gathering around the radio to listen to the news and my sisters and I getting the hijackers to sign the propaganda information that they gave us to read. When we got back, all these signatures were given to the “intelligence services” for them to examine. We did eventually get them back.

I can also remember feeling rather cross about the grown-ups patronisingly speaking for us and saying “Of course, the children didn’t understand what was happening or how much danger they were in.”

Even today, I think that they were missing the point. It’s not that I didn’t understand. I knew perfectly well that there was a chance that I might die. It’s just that as a child, you live so much more in the present. What happens tomorrow isn’t really of that much concern (unless it’s having to go back to boarding school or do a French test).

I did contact a few friends to tell them about the programme. A number were astonished that I’d never mentioned it before. It may seem odd at first, but when you think about it, how do you raise the subject in casual conversation?

“What were you doing yesterday, Susan?”

“Oh, I was just thinking about the time we were hijacked . . . “

I’ve always felt that it’s a bit of a conversation stopper.

Besides, when we finally started back at school, the other children didn’t want to hear about it. I remember one of my school friends telling me that people had been saying “Oh, we’ll never hear the end of it from the Abletts when they get back. . . . ” So we shut up and got on with our lives.

In the years since it has happened, I have watched the news of other hijackings and followed the fate of those involved and felt rather fortunate that we got hijacked when we did. . . . .