Seamus Heaney

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Liz

Seamus Heaney died a year ago today.

I never met him but one afternoon in a large classroom in Longslade Upper School in Birstall we shared the same space. It was 1972, 1973, and I was an English teacher, it was my first proper job. Seamus Heaney, at the start of his career, came to the school to read his poetry. In a large room with windows looking out over the Leicestershire countryside, I sat at the back on one of the hard school chairs, and as the children filed in, hoped that the students from my classes would behave themselves, even if nobody else did.

I had never heard of Seamus Heaney, but as soon as he began to read I was enthralled by his soft, Irish accent, and the strange, other-wordliness of his subjects. So were the students, listening hard, all quiet and respectful, until he said the word ‘bog’. And said it again. There was no stopping them – there were snorts and giggles. Bog. I set my face to look firm and serious, to show him he was appreciated and to show the students this was how to behave.

He read on, unperturbed, and the laughter settled.

For years after, I followed his progress, bought his books, watched with motherly pride his rise and rise, thought often ‘I must write to him and ask him if he remembers Longslade.’ But I never did. Probably for the best.

Extreme Gardening

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Liz

This is the plan of my garden, created by old chum Annie Morgan, 12 years ago. She designed something lovely in the space that was a typical London back garden, 35 feet long and 15 feet wide.
Since then the garden has grown and developed. Ivy has grown up on all sides and regularly taps at the windows of the ground and first floor of the house. In a later planting plan that Annie also constructed, four circular box hedges appeared as pathways to the lawn.

It was a great design and it has served me well – low maintenance, varied style, colour co-ordinated. The weak link is of course – the gardener (ie me). My gardening experience can be described by the letter T.

Trowel

A gardening essential.

Note how clean it is, one might almost say unused…

Topiary

Those box hedges, added to the pathways of the lawn. And what do hedges require? They require regular attention and shaping. Topiary.

Tragic topiary. Assisted by rather blunt shears, insistent pigeons and fox pee.

Tree

The apple tree which Annie incorporated into the plan, in the top left corner, no longer exists. It didn’t grow in my garden in any event, but the branches leaned over into my plot of land, an integral part of the secret garden with the bench and the small lily pond. In spring the blossom was foamy and white, in summer the leaves gave us shade, and in autumn there were apples. And then one day, the neighbour whose garden the tree was in, cut the tree down. Oh no! And not only did he cut it down, but he then pushed it over into my garden. Extraordinary.

Toad

But there are consolations. One day, sitting in the summer sunshine, eating lunch, there was a rustle in the ivy. And there it was. Shuffling in the sun to find a shady spot. I love the fact a toad is living in the garden.

And Tigers

Well, they’re not in the garden – they’re at the end of the road. But they begin with T…

East London meets the South of France

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Liz

Ceret – town of 7,500 inhabitants, in the heart of the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, last week.

We chose to go to Ceret because it was an interesting looking place in a part of France we didn’t know. We noticed there was a Musee d’Art Moderne and thought that was an added extra, somewhere interesting to visit, particularly if it rained.

It did rain. We visited the museum – a wonderful, large light building, on this occasion filled with work on the theme of bull fighting, for which Ceret is well known. There was Picasso after Picasso, ceramics, sketches, paintings, a room where children could explore the images, dress up and paint the capes and moves of the toreadors. It was difficult not to be appalled by the cruelty of the subject but also impressed by the extraordinarily evocative work we were seeing. But as well as the paintings of bullfights and matadors there were many, loving images of the town, so much so that there are copies of those paintings placed around the town, next to the building or view they represent.

And then, one evening, sitting on a balcony looking out at the mountains,

I opened an email from Alan Waltham, supporter, protagonist and defender of the East London Group, sending me this catalogue

from the Lefevre Galleries, St James’s, London SW1 – the year 1935. An exhibition of the paintings of, amongst others, the East London Group.

What a wonderful coincidence to receive this email in the place where we were, Ceret – the home of some of Picasso’s most iconic work. What I love about the catalogue, is the almost casual way the work of the East London Group is – quite rightly – placed beside that of those we now think of as great. As well as Picasso, the Lefevre Gallery was exhibiting paintings by Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Monet. And as in Ceret, the paintings by the East London Group, successfully represented the town they loved.

Thanks to Alan Waltham for his fascinating story and generous assistance providing information about the East London Group.

Read more about my trip to the Pyrenees – To the Mountains – on my blog The Paris Train

East London Group continued

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Liz

Kim Valdez is an artist and sculptor who was the founder of Crouch End Open Studios, an annual event exhibiting fine art ‘within walking distance of the Crouch End Clock Tower’. Her mother was a contemporary and friend of members of the East London Group of artists and Valdez has been involved in rediscovering the work of these artists.

This morning M and I walked down the garden path of Valdez’ Crouch End home to see her installation ‘The Studio of the Unknown Artist 1928-2014.’

The front room of her house has been converted into the studio of Albert Turpin, a WWI marine and thereafter a window cleaner and member of the East London Group.

Valdez’ acrylic sculpture is based on a photograph of Albert Turpin.

Turpin said this: ‘Why give a man a fifteen-stone body, the temper of the story-type Irish navvy with the face of a fighting pug, and then implant a tiny seed of melancholy, a tiny seed but enough to bring tears when an old piece of music is played or a poem read.’ He was the painter of the wonderful Kitchen Bedroom, which shows his wife rinsing out his window cleaning materials.

He went on to become the Labour Mayor of Bethnal Green.

There is a lot more about these great painters in the book From Bow to Biennale by David Buckman.

East London Group Artists 1928-1936

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Liz

I had heard of this group of painters from M, whose friend’s mother knew them well. There was talk of an exhibition. On the Bow Road. In a place called the Nunnery. And so we went. We approached from the Grove Hall Park end – a children’s playground and a pretty Memorial Park, full of lavendar and roses. And then, in a dark narrow alley, a chalk sign pointed us towards the gallery.

The East London Group Artists were a group of working men and a handful of women who were given the opportunity to paint after their experiences in the First World War. Their main tutor and driving force was John Cooper, but Walter Sickert was a visiting lecturer and Arnold Bennett a supporter.

It’s a very local set of paintings – images of Bow and Stratford, The Art Classroom (Elwin Hawthorne), The Scullery (Walter Steggles) the moving Kitchen Bedroom (Albert Turpin). There is a handy map of London indicating the site of the subjects of the paintings.

But there are also the iconoclastic smoker’s paintings – My Lady Nicotine and Pipe and Matches by Henry Silk, and bucolic images of scenes outside the smoke and grime of East London. Canvey Island (Walter Steggles) as you have never imagined it.

The whole exhibition is a powerful reminder of the acknowledgement that we cannot live by bread alone; of the skill and talent which lies dormant in all groups of people which needs to be supported, coaxed, encouraged; and the fact that in this age of ‘austerity’ (for some) and strict curriculum, that talent is not being given the chance to flourish. It is a lovely space, the exhibition is simply and clearly curated, and there are prints and cards to buy at the end, followed by a good cup of coffee in the cafe – in the sunshine if you’re lucky.

The exhibition runs until 13 July 2014. Entrance is free. It is a rare opportunity to see the work of great but little known artists and learn something of the real history of the East End.

John Petherbridge 1943-2014

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Liz

John Petherbridge died in April. On Monday, a month later, a memorial party was held in the upstairs room of the Rising Sun pub in Long Acre, not far from City Lit where John was a tutor. It was a great party, good food, good company, friends, family and colleagues. People from all aspects of John’s interesting and rich life were present. I was asked to speak about John as a teacher.

John was a writer, a tutor, a lover of film, a radical. I first met him in the mid 1970s when we were both involved in Women’s Aid – he was a worker at the Wandsworth refuge and I was working in the National Office and we were both on the Press and Publicity Subgroup.

Roll forward 20 years. I signed up for a radio play-writing workshop at City Lit. It was a summer course and we spent a wonderful sunny week in a hot glass class room led by John, who guided us imaginatively through the stages of writing plays for radio. At the end of the week he brought in actors to read our work. It was magical.

So then I signed up for his Saturday afternoon Creating Fiction class and I loved it. I had tried other writing classes but none had suited me.

This is what I liked about the way he ran the course. He created a perfect world – like the Eden project, a world you’d like to live in. The class started on time and John made it clear that arriving late was simply impolite. The format of the class was clear and the aims and objectives were set out. There were no favourites, there was no question of the same people being called on every week to read their work. There were no in-jokes. And there was no sexism. John would have none of it, no sly comments, no lewd remarks. If anyone said anything inappropriate he would ignore it. In extremis he would say something, but usually he didn’t need to. Extraordinary really.

This is how it worked.At the beginning of the class two or three people would read and then the rest of us would critique. He wouldn’t allow anything unpleasant. If a book was of a style or genre that was out of the ordinary or simply not terribly popular – for me Science Fiction for example – the class simply had to knuckle down and deal with it. And then after the class had given their views he would add his own comments which were of course the ones you always wanted. Rather like Masterchef – no one cares what Greg thinks, they want to know what the real Chef, John Torrode, thinks.

Then there would be an exercise on a particular subject – perhaps two people in deep conversation interrupted by the arrival of a third person, or something embarrassing that happened to you as a child, maybe the description in words of a piece of music that you like – and we would have half an hour or so to write something. We would drift off to our favourite writing place and then we would come back to the class and read them out. If we wanted. I loved it! Two pieces of mine from that exercise later won competitions.

I knew what his politics were – from Women’s Aid days and I knew that he’d been in CND and although he was a bit older than me we had lived through many of the same social changes so I was able to feel safe in my material. I wrote about being a mod girl in the sixties, the music and the clothes, Tamla Motown, Green Onions, Georgie Fame, and wearing a CND badge on my suede coat.He did ask me – as only someone who had been in CND could – whether it was the cheap sixpenny badge or the smaller more expensive half a crown one. He assumed that for a mod girl, it would be the expensive one and felt I should have made that clearer in the piece.

Each term he would give us the name of a book to read – usually books I hadn’t read so it was a very pleasant time of discovery, books I would never have read, some forgotten classics like A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin, or newer unusual works such as Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding – and then he would take us through the book, showing us how it worked, why it worked.

And he brought an agent in to meet the class. The agent asked for manuscripts – I had only finished about a third of my book but John encouraged me to show it to her. The rest – for me – is history. The agent, Annette Green, took me on and secured a publishing contract for me.

Last year I went to John’s 70th birthday party. He was as always, funny, friendly, interesting and interested. He gave a speech that had everyone roaring with laughter. His story of some alleged damage to the door of a railway carriage was wonderful. As was the speech by his partner Zoe Fairbairns.

Zoe and John were together for 40 years and the fun and love that passed between them on that day was a joy to behold. At the party on Monday Zoe spoke again, this time about John the writer. This is part of what she said:

A woman is off work with a cold. She’s lying in bed sniffling and eating grapes. Then her boyfriend arrives. For him it’s a normal working day; but he’s decided to come round in his lunch hour to see how she is. Soon however he is crawling under the duvet with her.

The point about this scene – which comes from one of my favourite of John’s early plays, The Flying Bedstead, (1976) – is that it is not mere carnal desire which gets the man into bed with the woman. The Flying Bedstead, which was performed at the Head Theatre in Hammersmith, is not a steamy sex romp. I mean it’s not just a steamy sex romp. That would be predictable, and, just as John was never quite predictable in his life, he wasn’t a predictable writer either. What motivates the man in the play is envy – the envy of the person who has to go to work for the person who doesn’t. Haven’t we all felt that?

This sort of insight – these moments where you recognise yourself – are hallmarks of John’s dramas.

John’s writing focused on the small, the intense, but he always had his eye on the wider society. He followed William Blake’s injunction to see the world in a grain of sand. When he wrote about anti-nuclear campaigners in his radio play Toys from the Boys, he looked at the strategic and political issues, but he also evoked the smells of vegetarian food cooking over a paraffin stove at a peace camp.

He wrote about imprisonment: a large subject, but one which, in his play Bluebottle which came second in the 2012 Brighton New Ventures competition, is reduced to the maddening buzzing of an insect.

His radio adaptation of the Robert Graves novel Antigua Penny Puce told the story of a lifelong rivalry between a brother and sister over another small object: a postage stamp.

He wrote about domestic violence, its victims, its survivors and its perpetrators. In his play Passing Through one of the most terrifying moments occurs when a fist breaks through the panel of a door. This fist is all you see – everything else is implied. Audiences at the Upstream Theatre screamed.

One of John’s last plays was called The Secret Pleasures of Dining Out. It grew out of a conversation he and I had some years ago with a friend of ours who was a taxi driver. The taxi driver told us that when he picked people up after what he called a ‘middle class dinner party’, he always knew what was going to happen.

While the hosts were seeing the guests off, the air would be filled with cries of thanks, flattery and appreciation of the wonderful evening the guests had just enjoyed. But once the taxi moved out of earshot, it was a different story. Then the eavesdropping driver would hear the guests getting out their hatchets and laying into the rudeness of their hosts, the horrible food, the vulgar house and its tacky furnishings, the unfashionable clothes,the pretentiousness of the other guests, the low standard of conversation. The entire evening would be torn to shreds. John’s play imagined whole gangs of party goers, driving around, sharing horror stories on their mobile phones, awarding points to, and deducting them from their erstwhile hosts.

Meanwhile, of course, their erstwhile hosts are doing exactly the same thing, phoning each other to do share critical reviews of the clothes, hairstyles, conversation and table manners of their departed guests.

So I’d just like to finish by saying I hope there won’t be any of that when the party finishes this evening, because I hope you are all enjoying everything. Thank you for coming here to celebrate John’s life in a way that he would have enjoyed.

Writing Process Blog Tour

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Liz

Kit Habianic is the author of the recently published novel Until our Blood is Dry, the powerful story of two families’ struggles in the 1984 Miners’ Strike. She has also published short stories in an awe-inspiring number of literary magazines and anthologies.

I spectacularly failed to get into the launch party for Until our Blood is Dry – there was a problem with doors and the enormous amount of people and a desire not to interrupt a reading by Dannie Abse – and yet she has asked me to take part in the Writing Process Blog Tour. This is ‘a kind of whistle-stop tour of writers exploring their writing process – they answer four questions about their work, then send you on to the next writer’. This is a wonderful initiative. It’s fascinating to read the methods that other writers use to get the work out there. Sometimes it’s a reminder of temporarily forgotten but well-loved pieces, but also an exciting introduction to poetry and other writing that originally slipped by. Kit has provided her answers and has now handed over to me. I am in august company – she has also asked Martina Evans, poet and writer, the author of the Betty Trask award winning novel Midnight Feast, to share her experiences.

Here are the four questions with my answers:

What am I working on?

My first two books were crime novels (Good Bad Woman and Babyface), but I have just published a collection of short stories about life in the 60s – A Sense of Occasion.

For some time I had been working on a novel based on the same characters – Beyond the Beehive – and couldn’t stop tinkering with it, adding chapters, moving characters round. I was getting nowhere. Then, at a writing group I’ve been involved with for some years, I met a woman who had just published her novel as an eBook. She said, ‘I simply had to get it out there so I could move on.’ And I thought, That’s what I should do. A Sense of Occasion was really me dipping my toe in the water, to see if I could do it. It’s terrifying not having the protection of a big publishing company behind me, and I’m not very good at marketing. But it was a real buzz to get the book up there and see it on a computer screen, the stories gathered together as a real book. So now I am fired up to publish Beyond the Beehive. Then it’s on to the Seventies.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

A Sense of Occasion and Beyond the Beehive are about Chelmsford – I don’t think there’s much out there about that part of Essex, certainly not about mod girls in the 60s. And I’ve tried to reproduce the humour, I think there are some laugh out loud moments in the books. Sometimes that’s not evident in novels about working class life.

Why do I write what I do?

I’m really proud of my upbringing, my dad’s union work, my mum’s socialist principles, coming from a council estate, the great friendships I had. When I started writing my 60s stories – about 25 years ago, there wasn’t a lot of interest in that. What I try to do, and I know I don’t always succeed, is get some politics in – socialist politics, feminist politics, not necessarily obvious, just there, how it was as I was growing up. The way people talk to each other, the issues they care about, their moral codes. I think we need those politics now more than ever.

How does my writing process work?

The word ‘process’ for my writing regime is a good vague word. Before my first books were published I used to get up at 5.30, make a cup of tea and write till the sun rose and everyone in the house woke up. It’s been more haphazard than that since then. I write when I can. Giving myself a deadline is good. For A Sense of Occasion I decided, Right, it’s now or never, and I pulled a date out of the air. 30 April. I got cold feet after a bit, because life was particularly hectic, and I changed the date to 1 May. 24 hours. I felt much more relaxed then. Having a cover to the book – a design by the fabulous Christine Wilkinson – also kept me on track. But I was altering things right up to the moment when I pressed Save and Publish.

Now I hand over to two of my favourite people. The American writer Sue Katz recently published a collection of wry and inspiring short stories Lillian’s Last Affair – the lives and loves of seniors. VG Lee‘s award winning novels have delighted and amused me for many years. VG’s Facebook posts brighten the darkest day. These two great writers are about to tell you how they produce their work.

#writingprocessblogtour

Brussels

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Liz

A day trip to Brussels for day two of the 18th Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

I was travelling with Sara Chandler of Caravana – an organisation working for human rights in Colombia – who was to give a paper on the current situation there. It’s dire. Lawyers are imprisoned, death threats are issued particularly to those working in the area of human rights, such as land rights, when people are shifted out of their homes for the purposes of big business. And lawyers are killed. Caravana organises trips of lawyers to Colombia which brings international scrutiny to the situation and provides some small protection for the lawyers there.

It was a bright sunny day in Brussels, and we walked through the park to the Vrije University where the conference was being held. It was an inspiring event – lawyers from all over the world, Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Haiti, Japan, Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Cameroon, Australia, the USA, Canada, Turkey, Portugal, France – you name it. There were head-sets and interpreters of French, English, Spanish, Arabic and Dutch, with other languages as necessary. On the day we were there sessions were held on the Independence of the Judiciary and the protection of lawyers,

the crisis of international law, and trade union rights as well as the rights of migrants and the right to protest.

Other days would cover the new international economic order, the Human Right to a clean environment, promoting people’s rights and the struggle for gender equality. There was also a commission on Iraq covering sanctions, invasion, torture, and the violation of international law. Another workshop would be held on Palestinian Human Rights and another on the activities of transnational companies.

There was also time, in our short day, for meeting other delegates and sharing experiences, making contacts and catching up with old friends. The Progress Lawyers Network, the firm in Brussels with responsibility for most of the organisation, had done a tremendous job, the firm members and the many vounteers made for a smooth machine.

On top of that, lawyers from several countries signed up for the next Caravana to Colombia in August, which was a great response for Sara.

We went home tired but happy, inspired to fight another day.

Berlin

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Liz

What a strange and fascinating place it is. I last went to Berlin in about1983 for a conference in West Berlin about European Nuclear Disarmament. We talked about Greenham Common. We walked about in the city. We visited the Wall.

Then we had a free day, a day-off from the conference, and we went to East Berlin. It felt so radical and brave, my first visit to a communist country. But because we had conference papers with us we were stopped at the checkpoint and asked many questions and had our papers taken away and were required to sign a document – all in German, my O level had not prepared me for this – before we could leave. But a good lesson for a defence lawyer – you will sign anything even if you don’t understand it, to get out of custody. And all I wanted to say was – but we’re on your side!

But now, at leisure, relaxed, what you see in the city everywhere are memorials to war – WWI, WWII and the Cold War. The fact of the new buildings, the still empty bomb sites, Checkpoint Charlie, the endless stream of tourist buses (we went on one), the statues of men on horses, all come back to the conflicts this city has seen.

There was the moving and unsettling Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, there was the site of the burning of the books. There were the memorials to the gays and lesbians murdered by the Nazis and there was the memorial to the Roma who also died.

There were pieces of the Wall and there were jokes about Trabant cars – sometimes together.

But then there were little pockets of otherness. On Saturday morning we walked around in the north of the Mitte district (in the old East section) and saw crumbling old buildings that had been converted into artist studios, or restaurants, or small concert arenas. And interesting graffiti.

We hadn’t had breakfast. Then we found a a small arty cafe, Cafe Bravo, in a courtyard in an unassuming street. As we dived into freshly cooked pancakes and maple syrup with strawberries and apple, our waitress told us that she was from West Germany and although there was unification there was still a strong sense of what was West and what was East. And she preferred the East because things were happening here, art, film, music. The West was just about money.

And then there was Isherwood’s Neighbourhood walk. We hadn’t organised this but a couple of texts were sent and received and we had a date for the next day. Isherwood lived in the south of the city, away from the main tourist drag, and the walk took us to all the places he would have known and visited. When you have loved Cabaret for as long as I have – a student of mine from 1972 remembers me telling the class if they did one thing in all of their lives, they had to go and see Cabaret (I was at that time an English teacher) – it was wonderful to stand for a moment outside the house Isherwood lived in, the basis of his novel Goodbye to Berlin and the starting point for Cabaret. What I loved about Cabaret was the way it effortlessly and effectively combined comedy, drama, music and the politics of the time, the rise of the National Socialists.

To imagine Isherwood knocking on the front door, being welcomed by the landlady Fraulein Schroeder and being shown round the apartment, and introduced to all the strange individuals who lived there, just there, across the road, at those windows, was fabulous. Brendan Nash who created the walk was a great guide, knowledgeable, accessible, patient and passionate about his subject. If you do one thing in Berlin, go on this walk.

SouthLAnd

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Liz

Southland is a new police series, set in LA, that has snuck onto More4 with very little razzamataz. 11pm on a Thursday. Why so late? As ever there are not enough women, but it does past the Bechdel test. The women talk to each other and not about men. It is the story of daily police life in downtown Los Angeles which involves a lot of running down alleys, and the creaking leather of belts and shoes when officers kneel to speak softly or arrest someone. Some of the incidents are banal, some more serious. People get hurt, the police get drunk. It’s nice and gritty.

And it has the most wonderful opening music from a track by the Portuguese artist Dulce Pontes The track is Cançao do mar – it was used in the film Primal Fear (featuring Richard Gere. This does not pass the Bechdel test. Oh Richard). SouthLAnd (spelt like that because of its location, obviously) uses the first minute or so – the instrumental. It foretells danger, intrigue, love, loss. Wonderful. Watch it tonight. Or set it to record.

Elizabeth Woodcraft

writing about the law, books and other matters of obvious importance

Category Archives: Day to day