AILEEN MAY WARDLE - 1922-2014

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Dear diary (blog),

Time.

   What is time?  I mean, what is time really all about?

It cannot truly be quantified, at least not in my jaded view. By this I mean we cannot get time back. Each moment passes us by and is lost to us. So what is time?

Time to get ready for work. Time to see friends, time to visit places of interest, time to meet a partner and grow a family, and then we look back and we think. My, where did all that time go? Didn't that go quickly.

  You may sense some underlying sense of frustration in this months update. You would, dear reader, not be mistaken.

 It was this last month that we lost our dearly loved Grandma, mother to my father, wife to granddad Sidney (deceased in the latter part of the 1990's), sister to Phyllis (deceased some ten years previous) and Pam, aunty to several cousins, and life-long friend to a one Win Windybanks of Dorset. England. So, yes, I am not ashamed to write it is with some sense of frustration and longing for a time lost to us that my quil falls upon this tea-stained parchment paper. Otherwise known - in this day and age - as tapping away on this laptop. My how the times change.

   As a young boy I remember with clear twenty-twenty vision the sights, smells, ambience and adventures we all shared. Grandma's famed roast dinners, with proper, thick gravy. Her chuckle and warm smile as I would enter her living room having dressed-up and done my hair like a one Elvis Presley - she did not know, or rather, I thought she did not know, that I had also used her hair-spray - Granddad singing old war tunes to us and regaling me with tales of adventure as we all strolled out together for miles through local woods.

Sleep overs at my grandparents were a magical mystery tour all of its own. Possibly of no real interest to anyone other than myself, but still, hey, each to their own.

So, time. As much as all of my heart and mind yearns to get this time back, to revisit that age - the 1980's & 1990's specifically - their home, the home where my dad grew-up, the home where my grandparents lived most of their married life together, the home I first new as Grandma and Granddad's home, this time is lost. Gone. Vamoosh.  Sad but true. So, as I sit here, deep in thought, I have two choices as I see it. I can live for a time that is lost, and believe me readers I have spent far too much time doing this and I can wholeheartedly dissuade you from trying it. It is a lost cause. Or, I can do as I am doing, that which my Grandma would wish for me to do. And I can live. Relish each special moment of time, cherish the opportunities that present themselves and go out and create my own luck, my own opportunities and rejoice in the luxury of life. Not to be confused with the luxuries of life. I mean the luxury simply of living and breathing. A whole world is out there and as a sprightly young thirty something I can wholeheartedly write to you in my grandma and granddad's memory I shall go forth in to this world carrying the warmth of that time with me, no one can take this away, and attempt to live a life that is stimulating, helpful to the many not the few and brings me some mild sense of contentment and happiness.

   In-keeping with a previous update 'It's All A Bit of a Knot' I am not sent to depress literature, I am merely using this months update as a tool to convey to you some small semblance of what life has thrown at us these past moments of time since the last update.

  Please do not confuse the seriousness of the content in this for anything other than what it is. A literary note to oneself as a public record of the emotions associated with the loss of Aileen May Wardle at 11:30 pm GMT on Tuesday 29th July 2014 aged 92.

What will be will be.

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

A UNITY IN TIME, A HEARTACHE AND A PLEASURE ALL-IN-ONE

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Dear diary (blog)

   Where or where do I begin?

  So much has happened over these last weeks.

I have attended a large family wedding somewhere not too dissimilar to Downton Abbey, passed through to a final year of study and read some amazingly insightful books, including one which has truly taken me. A unity in time, a heartache and a pleasure all-in-one. Caitlin Davies' The Ghost of Lily Painter.
         
                                          

   A story centred around the lives lived during the course of a little over a hundred years in one house in London just off the Holloway Road. During this gripping page turner of a story we the reader are treated to a lesson in  local and national history. One resident during the first part of the twentieth century kept a journal allowing the reader to feel like they are a part of this moment in time. The journal starts on January 28th 1901, right at the time our dear old Vic - Queen Victoria - died. Dear old Vic died on the 22nd January 1901 sending the country into a state in mourning. The keeper of this journal, a Police Inspector, notes :

"It is a way to record day-to-day events, in what I trust will be a manner much interesting for posterity."

   Davies utilises the literary technique of this journal and the surrounding characters related to it, namely the inspector, his wife and their lodgers, as a truly fascinating tool providing a harmony between their time and the time of 2009 when the modern-day protagonist, Annie Sweet, moves in to this house and finds herself unravelling the history within the place she has bought.

   Using a history centre Annie finds information to strengthen her knowledge of her house and to ascertain who Lily Painter was. This is achieved by her use of a microfiche  machine. In realising that perhaps the past is not so far removed from her present it was with a real sense of pleasure and also, I might add, a personal attachment to this particular thread of plot, I followed Annie's, Lily's and Molly's lives in search of a shared goal.

   What particularly took me with Davies' work is the way she interlinks with, as far as I know, a factually accurate retelling of life in this part of London at this time whilst showing and telling the reader of the developments that have come to this street and area of London in the intervening years. Told through the eyes of several rounded and engagingly presented characters relevantly characterised in each time.

   Davies introduces 'modern-day' life in this area thus:

"Holloway Road, a London Street if ever there was one, a litter blown artery into the City, a road clogged with trucks and buses where every tenth vehicle is a police car or an ambulance..."

   For me at least as the reader of this story this description coupled with that which I have shown from the journal, encapsulate the overarching unity of time this story so brilliantly captures. To be of interest to the many not the few.

   The Holloway Empire, where once a one Lily Painter, a young aspiring music hall star who used to live at this house performed at, which then becomes the Odeon Cinema, the place our protagonists of the early Twenty First Century, Annie Sweet and daughter Molly go to watch movies. Molly, like Lily, has aspirations to be on the stage, and so, in Davis' consummate adept and technically in-tune use of plot-lines and language, weaves a narrative that is not only historically accurate and revelatory, but teaches the reader, or is that guides the reader? to an understanding of the harmony between the past with the present and no doubt, the future.

   Once I had finished this book, I did in all honesty have a lump in my throat. It is something of a rarity that I can write a book has captured me to the point I feel a deep and raw sadness. To close the characters and lives they lead back into themselves within the closed pages of a book makes me truly sad!

I can think instantly of just two in the last six months that make me feel like this.

Caitlin Davies, The Ghost of Lily Painter - of course - and Sebastian Faulks Birdsong

  This written it is also with a slightly self-congratulatory nod of appreciation, I as can you, have the luxury of re-reading.

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

IT IS ALL A BIT OF A KNOT.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Whilst it never fails to humble me, this time of year, this particular year, 2014,utterly combusts me.

  Having recently commemorated the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Landings, on Normandy beaches, in France during World War Two, we are in the month of June, which marks the centenary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination. June 28th 1914, marking the beginning of World War One. Although Britain did not declare war until the 4th August of 1914.

  A book I recently fell into is Robert Harris' An Officer and a Spy. Composed as a fictional retelling of 'the most infamous miscarriage of Justice in History,' that of the conviction of Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, for treason in France 1895. This acted as the precursor to the disharmony, subsequently catapulting Europe in to a World War by afore mentioned assassination of 'The Duke.'
   Now, I hesitate to linger on this as it sounds far too much like politics and religion, nothing wrong with this but there are other vehicles for it. This written it is an almighty clanger of miscarriage if ever there was a clanger. Clanger, not to be confused with hanger, you know, for coats et cetera. Or maybe shirts, skirts and jackets? I write this currently diving out of the way of yet another author sent from afar to depress literature, so said he of Blake. Written in the margins of a tattered old - 'traditional' - book. Suffice as to write An Officer and a Spy is in my view, well worth a read. Or re-read. Or re-read the read you have read. It is up to you.

  So, where do we find ourselves in this sort of vacuum between commemorations? Rejoicing and cherishing life. That's where.

  As if by some unjust rod plucked from my bleeding heart (depressing literature again are we?) I find myself feeling something other than sad. I find myself equal. In spirit and in action. I do hesitate to go further along the lines of the word spirit, so we shall simply call it a spirit-level. You know, like a builder would use to level a wall. Or a floor. Again I pause for thought over deploying the word plethora. Plethora is apparently a word used most widely by students to show their understanding of the English language. With all it's multitudes of plethoras' of possibilities. I am indeed also a student, as such I respectfully decline from using the word plethora. If seen please feel free to report the word Plethora to trading standards. Or some other such body of precision.  For more visual imagery of the word plethora read ART FOR ARTS SAKE?... please click here:  http://robertjameswardle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/art-for-arts-sake-surely-not-thats-no.html

   Another word I fell upon, many many summers ago, is ramifications. The complex consequences of actions. Or there about.

This word, is a continuously useful word and as such I shall deploy it now.

I hope very much the ramifications of a novel I am continuing with, and a script I am co-writing, both come to fruition bringing pleasure and stimulation of emotion to the many not the few.

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

ART FOR ARTS SAKE? SURELY NOT! THAT'S A NO VOTE FROM ME.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

   Art for art's sake is not an expression I find any resonance with. For me art is, or at least can be, found pretty much anywhere I look. It is for me at least a source of constant expression and comfort. My art is my words. Quality always subjective.

   ART: The angle of a chair, displayed/hung in traditional 'art galleries,' watching a squirrel skip playfully down from a tree in nearby St James' Park -London Uk - art is then interpretation. Surely?

   Often I hear people saying beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, beauty is only skin deep, art is purely subjective. Well, I can take the points these statements make without having to agree can't I?

  We live in a very culturally diverse city, us London folk, although dear friends, please do not forget, I am a proud Yorkshire man, raised and schooled in a field near York. So traditionally I am indeed, a countryman. Although currently skipping about in London.

   Subjectivity is also applicable to most things, not just art. My reality is different to your's and your's is no doubt even slightly different to your neighbours. Does this make art?

Does reality constitute the label of art?

What's with all the questions this month dear man? I hear you sighing, whilst instantly raising your blood pressure as you have no doubt just noted I initiated this sentence with yet another question.

Damn fool.

That was you thinking not me writing by the way.

  Subjective, personal opinion and perspective only, here is the raw emotion afore mentioned with reference to art being purely subjective.
 
   Are you feeling the same as me, your neighbour, or even the same as you felt a second ago?

   Quite possibly not.

   Adding to these emotions comes the plethora of 'outside influences' upon our lives. How, or maybe this is just me, life seems circular. That is to write, history repeats itself, trends resurface, what was widely accepted as a 'shocking' piece of art or an inappropriate 'art-form,' can, by afore mentioned outside influences, resurface hundreds of years later to become widely acknowledged as 'amazing - ground-breaking - revolutionary.'

   The way in which I view the world here in London changes minute by minute, borough by borough, more often than not, from street to street, I find myself skipping through multiple arts and multiple realities.Does this mean that reality constitutes art? Well, if anyone who has taken a brief moment to read this, for which you are eternally thanked, has ever been to Shoreditch -LondonUk - you will have cause to resonate with my question. At least I hope you will.

   An eclectic haberdashery, haberdashery, is this a word? Ok enough questions, of art, multiple realities and multiple persona's. In my as yet somewhat limited experiences of life in London, Shoreditch is for me a place of relaxation, breeding creative stimulations. And no dear friends, creative stimulations are not found in a pub. Well, not always. Merely being on the east side streets of Shoreditch one encounters all walks of life, in all styles of expression, wearing all manner of era's clothing with mismatching shoes and haircuts to boot.

Art then. In my subjective perspective opinion, is everywhere, in everything, we just have to open our minds to embrace it.

This IS NOT me. Ashamedly afraid to write.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly Yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

ONE BIG ADVENTURE

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

  Well, wow, Easter is here again.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel this year to be flying past their eyes and ears with no pause for refuelling?

Having embraced both a plethora of books, written words and thank the lord, some concerted efforts to continuously embrace theatre land here in London Uk, at last, my life - for what interest it is to you dear friends I do no know - has become something of an unusually pleasurable variety these last months since Christmas.

   As I write this to you now, I sit at mum's new breakfast bar, in her newly refitted country kitchen, see COUNTRY KITCHEN LIVING blog post Tuesday 10th Sept, 2013. Thea, my parents new puppy, has grown immeasurably to the size of a small ship in stature. She always was due to become a full sized lady of the house. My dad, in true country gentleman style that he radiates, has just brewed a lovely pot of steaming tea, from a red tea pot to a mug, and mum, bless her gentle soul, is playing chase the puppy with Thea around the coffee table in the living room.

Are you riveted by this? No, I thought not.

Am I at peace in the loving arms of my family amongst the rolling hills, babbling brooks and bails of somewhat damp hay this rainy Easter Sunday? Yes you bet I am.

 As far as I can tell life is one big adventure with a dollop of what I loosely term, admin. Admin seems to grow the older I get. You know, the finding a home, paying bills, settling down, raising a family side of life.

Am I being purposefully reactionary writing that? Yes.

Why? Well, I yearn to be a quiet family man. To share my life with another and hopefully raise children to  appreciate the beauty of beautifully peaceful English countryside.

So why write such a hard-line, admin comment then I hear your wonder? Well, I use the word admin loosely. As mentioned above.

Why? Well, as already written, as far as I can tell life is one big adventure. So, the admin growing as the years pass me by only serve to enhance what I can see is the adventure known as life.

Recently it has been with a warm smile and a positive beat in my heart that London is ever striking me as a beautiful playground of opportunities.

So, back to the admin. Perhaps I should call admin, essentials?!

Time and tide waits for no man. Except in my small world where a fear is that this staple essential desire to be a loving family man may prove never to realise itself upon me.

Whatever happens I have to write to you dear friends, life is at last becoming one big adventure. The essentials I feel will only come if I embrace the adventure.

So embrace life I shall.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly Yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

TWELVE ANGRY MEN & I

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Where oh where do I begin? So much has stimulated me since last I wrote to you.

Fully-embraced three plays. One of which twice, Pole Factor - BLOW-IT-UP YOUR POLE FACTOR. One of which was my very first Shakespeare in London, King Lear - SHAKING-UP THE GLOBE. And one of which was a birthday treat, my father, Twelve Angry Men and I at The Garrick Theatre in London UK's West End -Theatre land!

Somehow I managed to find myself with several beautifully passionate, dedicated, inspirational and loving new friends. I say friends, we are still in preliminary stages of 'getting to know you.' I like to believe the genuine shared passion for words, stories, will unite us for many years to come. Crumbs have I jinxed it? Probably!

  Since first I wrote I hope you by now understand if only through this page, how intrinsically important family, the countryside and good old Yorkshire down to earth, a spade is a spade'ness is to me.

Spade'ness, is this a word?  . . . spade'ness, first used by RJ Wardle  Copyright 2014.

Keep it real. Really does resonate.

I really do hope.

Entering into a life spent with words is after all, more than just a cosy dream. It is with every inch of my mind, heart and soul an all encompassing mind-mapped goal I strive continuously to build. Go out and create my own opportunities. Don't wait for them to come to me, find them!

As I believe I wittered on about three updates ago in WAKING - UP IN LONDON.

Some weeks ago my much loved father and I skipped along to embrace possibly one of the greatest dialogue driven plays we have seen together in years.

With a cast of, funnily enough, twelve men, all playing jury service members in a murder trial in an American Court during the early 1950's. We the audience were collectively gripped by the gritty, at times sporadically sparse, at times elongated monologues delivered in a noticeably calm and fluid fashion. As was the movement more akin to a flock of geese floating through a pond than twelve angry men stomping about a stage. I blinked and the centre-stage long desk had silently, unnoticeably turned from lengthways to sideways. Robert Vaugh, a face I know well from his day's as Napolean Solo (Great name) in The Man From U.N.C.L.E (a 1960's american television series) shuffled, and yes I do literally mean shuffled about the stage remaining largely silent. But my, how his presence radiated throughout the theatre. All eyes were on him. Where on the stage is he? What is he doing? Not a lot largely. Took a loo break, washed his hands - I believe this is known as 'business.' On this point: most the cast frequented the sink, toilet and water cooler quite a lot. Quite a lot of business. Business? Vaugh doesn't need business. Nor does he require a ream of monologues, he is within his very fibres, a solid time-served man of words. Remaining seated at the table, after his loo break of course, silently scribbling notes before coming out with mostly one line nuggets of gold, like, 'Maybe he wanted to be noticed?'

   As the play climaxed, perhaps rather unsurprisingly, most the men originally . . .   no wait, that would be a spoiler. And like Agatha Christie's The MouseTrap, I personally feel I should respect the privacy of the conclusion so as it remains a luxury of those that are seated in the audience to know.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly Yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

SHAKING-UP THE GLOBE

Good morning. good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

 This specific blog is something of an elongated, at times arguably self-indulgent review of a fantastically forward-thinking engagement of Shakespeare's King Lear. Just in-case you are in any doubt.

 As a lover of stories it was with a somewhat childlike Christmas day feeling I skipped out to embrace my first Shakespeare play last Thursday evening, man-flu in-tow. Storytelling by any and all means engaging the many not the few, starting with our children, as I was once engaged by my primary school teacher, Mrs Sarah Carlisle in 1989 to the enchanting world of words. A passion deeply routed, further back in my subconscious to the bedtime stories of the mid nineteen eighties. The Famous Five, Rupert The Bear, The Far Away Tree and many other such inspirational texts up to and including my own pleasures of writing short stories at this time, Inspector Kipper. Rather, the wonderful worlds created with words. Stimulating the imagination, the almost dream like quality of theatres, It's that dressing-up-box again, why do I instantly think of Helen Mirren's acceptance speech at the BAFTA's this year (2014)? Not only did Mirren engage her audience to think of their individual inspirational teacher, that did, as Mrs Carlisle did for me, engage them to their passion for literature, for stories, worlds created with words to be enjoyed, created, read, listened to and played. Mirren also quoted with pin-drop emotion, a section from Prospero's monologue in Shakespeare's The Tempest:

 Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

   A new yet dear friend of mine recounted recently how he felt Shakespeare's works that have lasted five hundred or so years, will, in his view [and mine], last another five hundred. Continuing to bring pleasures and educational values as we current human infiltrators of our globe have long since been 'rounded with a sleep.' As I believe you shall see from the quote above, Shakespeare was well aware of life's false realities and time-limits.

   This same friend also informed me a play review should be concise and not name any individuals. Well, I respect your views dear friend, I truly do. I am simply a passionate man behind a page (usually safest) but in my little world, a Yorkshire man skipping about in London finally engaging oneself for I hope a long life with words, I should like to thank publicly, for any who care to read, some of the talents on offer, for any who care to embrace, in The Network Theatre's - King Lear.

   'The bards' timeless qualities transcending boundaries, he wrote to be played, it was with a shaky skip in my step I ventured out from behind a page last Thursday evening. Not, I hasten to write,to The Globe. At the initial time of conception, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was aptly and not by chance named as such due to discoveries by adventurous explorers within our globe, it is not flat for example. All encompassing, as are his works.

   It is worth noting as we mark the 450th anniversary of the bards birth this year (2014) and the 400th anniversary of his death in 2016, London has been shaking-up with Shakespeare with no-less than three King Lear's (I know of) playing in the first months of this new year. In conjunction with a plethora of Shakespeare plays, events on and off stage in celebration of in my view, a genius of words.

  Located at a hidden 'secret gem' theatre aptly named The Network Theatre, again, like The Vaults, underneath Waterloo, a London Uk train station, it is a soul-enchantingly characterful venue. And yes, indeed, with some delightfully impassioned characters within. The curtain will go-up, the show must go on.This King Lear was an intimately cut version by the talent with words that is dear Bernie as she is affectionately known. Bernie's right-hand women in the scrupulously meticulous production we all embraced last Thursday (27th, February, 2014) informed me as something of a newcomer to theatre visits here in London, Bernie is one of those people you meet and would instantly trust and do anything [within reason] for. Well, having been captivated twice now by the genuine down-to-earth, no airs or graces, the words are the important part of this not me character she radiates, I am sure she must be from Yorkshire, I can humbly agree with you. To meet with any like-minded soul, in this case Bernie and the company/ audience of/ at King Lear, who share an unstinting commitment to and love of creating worlds with words, storytelling, it is indeed in my view, all about the worlds with words.

   Let the words speak for the man - as I say to any who care to listen. Not all that many I hasten to write in jovial whimsicality. Mum and dad perhaps.On occasion.

  This written, Bernie's almost as intimate as two naked lovers relationship with Shakespeare's words, afforded an engaging cut from the three/four hours full-length to a more modest two hour inc. interval production. Seamless, would be one word I would use. Engaging, easily accessible plot line, a running commentary more-akin to a BBC news feed commentary box running behind the actors, the comedic nuances played anything other than discreetly by Mark Johnson as Edmund served to lighten an otherwise densely pact text for this particular newcomer to Shaky. A multitude of characters all in synchronisation with each other physically, emotionally and spatially

   As the story un-folded, cast engagingly mocking Lear, played to precise engagement of the absurdities of his characters actions by Michael Mayne. Lear himself at times mocked his own demise, with that dressing-up box reappearing again and again. We enjoyed an army of soldiers, a luminous pink nightgown, many different suits and a denim jacket wearing, woolly-jumpered crutch in this story.To the untrained eye acting as tools, in conjunction with the precisely woven parchment of cut script, the running-commentary box, and two pictures of London's skyline adorning the wings stage left and stage right, to bring this particularly complex play to the many not the few. Including this one, me.  Now surely this is what we strive to achieve. To maintain and grow as widely as possible the magic of worlds within words in this case, that Shakespeare has left us.

In Shakespeare's own words - via Lear,

  'Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say'

   Until we meet again through the page, I trust this finds you in good health and a happiness,


   Peace Friends X