The War

At a certain Christmas in WW1 the troops on the German side and those on our side met in no-man's-land and played a fun game of football. Afterwards they continued doing what they had come there to do - fight a war. The silliness of it caused me to write this poem:

The First German I Shot After The Game

I pointed it at him as he came on running,
Right at his forehead I pointed the gun,
I then pulled the trigger, the bullet - it hit him
And I watched as he fell down, a heap in the sun.

Then my mate, right beside me, said: "See who you've done for -
The one you just killed with a shot in the head?
'Twas the bloke that we played with, the one who skillful,
He scored a great goal, now he's lying there dead."

I said: "He's a German, an enemy soldier,
If I hadn't shot him he might have shot me."
"But we played them at soccer and hour ago, mun,
And he scored a great goal, a great goal, din't you see?"

"O' course I did see, mun, o'course I did see him,
I got eyes, mun, as you have, and I saw him die."
"But he doesn't use his now, the poor bloody bleeder,
Face down in the mud here," my mate gave a sigh.

"He's a German, a German, and they en't not human,
They kill little babies and rape as they scream;
Don't you hear what they tell us, they're beasts in disguise, mun?"
But my mate said: "He looked one of us and he played like a dream."

He played like a dream, aye, he played like a dream
Better than us, aye, he moved like a dancer,
Moved like a dancer and scored a great goal.....
And my mate's got a question but I know there's no answer.

Miriam Pleasence

A good friend of mine has died: Miriam Pleasence. She was Donald Pleasence's first wife (he had three or four afterwards - "got younger every time" she told me). She had been an excellent actress and, she told me, had written a couple of plays with her husband; whether they were ever produced or not I don't know. But since I knew she could write I asked her if she would collaborate on a play with me. She said yes so we went about collaborating - not very successfully I'm afraid: I'd write a scene, send it to her in London, she'd make changes and send it back. It never worked out.
She had been, early in her life, in the Birmingham Reportary Company under the famous Barry Jackson who had set up the company in the early part of the 20th C.
She was an exceptionally good writer of amusing theatrical anecodal stories and I tried to persuade her to make them into a collection and get them published. This, I think, never came about which is a great pity.
We both used to attend, fairly regularly, writing weekends in Abergavenny. I recall one evening in the bar when I was telling a group of writers about an article I had read (in Punch magazine) about a husband and wife who had the perfect partnership: he went to work in the nights and she went to work in the days; they passed each other on the doorstep on their ways out and in. A woman on the course objected strongly to this, she found the idea in rather bad taste. She said "I had a perfect marriage, my husband and I did everything together.... etc etc" Later I told Miriam about this incident and she said "Was it her first, second or third husband?"

Bleddwyn Williams

I saw Bleddwyn Williams play rugby quite a few times: when he played regularly for Cardiff and on those occasions when he played for Wales. In the Welsh team with Haydn Tanner and Jack Matthews there was a combination of real talent.
He had a spectacular side step. It was spectacular for two reasons: it was a large sideways stride from off his right foot while he was running at full speed, and the opposition never saw it coming. This was odd because the whole of the Arms Park spectators saw it coming "a mile off". You'd hear someone close by say "he's going to side step" and he would yet the player he passed never predicted it.
Now he has died at 85. A few weeks ago his team-mate in the Welsh team, Haydn Tanner, died. Williams said of him that he had the best pass in the game. Williams too had a great pass. But more than just the side-step and the pass was his whole game, intelligent and strong. Matthews was always noted for his bullet-like tackling but Williams too could tackle well: he seemed to embrace the opposite number in a huge bear-like hug, thus taking care of both man and ball.
There used to be a joke going round about two mythical Welsh men, Twm and Dai. They had travelled together from the valleys to see England v. Wales at The Arms Park in Cardiff; a couple of hours before the start of the game Twm found he had left the tickets at home. Dai, having a car, said he'd go back for them. Which he did, only to find Twm's wife in bed with the milkman. Dai returned to Cardiff, met Twm and said "Twm, I've got some bad news for you. When I went back for the tickets I found your wife in bed with the milkman." "I've got some bad news for you too Dai," said Twm. "Bleddwyn Williams has got the 'flu and can't play."

Railway Carriages

On the TV news today they showed a train from 60 or 70 years ago that had been restored to its former glory. They said that the train and carriages had been left to rot but some enthusiast had come along and restored it. It also said that some of the carriages had been once turned into homes, and there was a woman who was interviewed who said that she had actually lived in one. This was during the housing shortage in the Second World War.
I can well believe this because I remember people living in railway carriages. I used one family in my novel "Looking Back" (never published but got close some time ago). They were "The Bishops" and what a family they were. The mother was a screaming harridan with a husband I hardly ever saw and two boys who were about my age but who never attended school. Rough? They were the roughest lot I ever came across. Not that I knew them personally. Saw them only from a distance. The boys were always dressed in rags.
Another family who lived near them possibly in another railway carriage had a dog, a medium sized sheep dog. One day the owner of the dog couldn't get the dog to come to him; the dog was under another carriage and wouldn't come out. We helped him get the dog out but regretted it soon after for the man beat the dog with a stick ruthlessly.
They were the very dregs of the town we lived in.

Radio 4

There are two points of view about Radio 4 in today's Times: one person dislikes it intensely, the other is an avid listener. I have known people (usually women) who "listen to it all the time". One of these has radios in all rooms of her house and portables to carry from room to room so that she doesn't miss a word.
I used to like it a lot but now rarely listen to anything except "Desert Island Discs" (if there is someone interesting on), "Start the Week" (sometimes), "The Moral Maze" (if I remember) and the occasional play in the afternoon. But most of the plays are not to my taste. Nor to one of The Times writers: "what is the matter with whoever commissions these things? And why are the actors speaking..... So..... Slowly....?"
Incidentally, why is there a "Woman's Hour" but no "Men's Hour"? Because most of the other programmes appeal to men? Not so. Most men I know don't listen to radio at all - they're killing themselves doing DIY.
The Times writer also refers to the "dead air" by which she means silences. "The Dead Air on Radio 4 can stretch on for what feels like minutes". I haven't noticed that but, there, I don't listen to "Woman's Hour" or the plays. But I know it breaks the golden rule of radio writing told me a man who wrote and had broadcast about 50 plays, most of them Saturday Night Theatre. He said "the only thing you can't do on radio is silence."
From the horse's mouth.

Comparisions

Go to youtube and write "Tuxedo Junction" and click on the first on the list; you get the wonderful Glenn Millar Orchestra playing what I think is his finest piece, "Tuxedo Junction" with its deep purple colour of an opening by trombones and a magical tune that follows played by saxophones - wonderful.
But it's not the version by the Glenn Millar orchestra when he was alive. You can get that version on youtube too; it's a beautiful version but quite different in rhythm and without a lot of the solo improvisers. Which is the best? The original of course. Well, I'm not so sure. I like the new version better.
There's an article in this week's Spectator by James Walton in which he draws comparisions between the programmes on TV in the sixties and seventies with those on now and concludes with "mightn't the terrible truth be that these days we get the television we deserve - and probably even want".
One fact is pre-emminent in his article and that is that the Americans make better drama now than we do - "Mad Men", "The Wire", "The Sopranos" for example compared with, say, "Lark Rise at Candelford".
The name that crops up most in the article is Clive James, probably the most influential of TV critics in the 70's. I remember saying to one of a group of Cardiff based singers and players who wrote their own very clever material and were exceptionally good musicians: "How are you doing these days? Successful d'you think?" He said: "We are waiting for the verdict from Clive James."
Yes, he was tremendously influencial but I don't think his judgements were always sound. I recall him giving a good review of "How Green was my Valley". I thought the serial pretty awful and wrote to him comparing it to John Ford's film. He wrote back to say he was obviously not as enamoured of Ford as I was.
I was once in conversation with a BBC producer about some work I had submitted and he said he had worked for Rudolf Cartier who never went into close-up in his TV plays for at least 20 minutes. I said, without thinking, "John Ford's film 'How Green was my Valley' starts with a shot in close-up of two hands and a man saying 'Time to leave the land of my fathers' ".
End of my career as a playwright with that producer.

Type-casting

There was an English actor who played in many films in the sixties and seventies whose name escapes me - frankly though, I never knew it. He had one of those faces that made you think: possibly a bit crooked or, if not a crook, a bit of a wheeler-dealer; a cheeky little face, the face of a barrow boy maybe. He was in "I'm allright Jack" where he played the part of a worker on the shop floor who helped the posh newcomer to learn how to use a fork-lift truck (so that you didn't stress yourself too much). He was also in "Privates on Parade" as a private soldier who did as little as possible. I saw him interviewed when he was getting on a bit and he said that when he was quite a young actor, a producer or director called him over and said to him "you'll never be out of work with your face", and he said he never was.
Of course he could never play Romeo or Hamlet, though he could have probably played Bottom or one of Falstaff's crew.
Another actor I met (who wanted to be a writer) told me that he was never out of work because he had the sort of face they liked for certain parts. He had a round head, a bit of a bullet head. "If they want a barrow boy type," he said, "they don't look further than me."
But of course the trouble being the sort who are typecast as barrow boys or shopfloor workers or private soldiers never are asked to do Hamlet or Romeo. Though they may grow old enough to play Falstaff.