This is a picture of a man crossing a road against a red light. I’m not being judgemental, I do it myself. Of course I always look to be sure no cars are coming, but at the same time I look at the others waiting at the kerb to see if they’ll judge me if I go before the light turns green. Should one of them go, I usually follow, just as others follow me if I go first. Which all goes to show what a socially complex as well as hazardous enterprise this is. Why can’t I just wait a minute longer and go with the little green man? One answer is that I stride through the streets at a certain pace and I don’t like my momentum to be interrupted. Stopping and starting again takes much more energy. But there’s more to it. I am in a small way asserting that the rules that exist for the safety of others don’t apply to me. So there’s arrogance in it, and rebelliousness, even a flash of anarchy. Not how I think of myself at all. Inside many a respectable old gentleman lurks a pirate longing to buckle a swash, so long as the coast is clear.
Thank you to William Nicholson @billscreenwriter for giving @shadowlandsplay to us to perform at the @aldwychtheatre these last few months. His support on our last night and throughout the run has been incredible.
A story of love, loss, big questions that perhaps cannot be answered, laced with wit and compassion.
It’s been an honour, Bill.
And thank you to the Front of House team at The Aldwych who went above and beyond to make our audiences feel welcome.
Shadowlands 2026
Farewell
See you in Narnia x
Solving the housing problem the Tunisian way: I’m struck while travelling through Tunisia by the high percentage of half completed homes, and ask our guide why this should be so. I surmise that it’s tax avoidance, but no. He tells me that 80% of Tunisians own their own homes even though most are poor. They manage this by building their houses themselves, but the process takes time, often generations. Outside they may look unfinished, but inside the owners live happily. Later on our trip we visit a deserted Berber village (last pic) and I realise this long-term view of housing has a history. I reflect on the new housing estates being built in my home village and think how we’ve become detached from the very place in which we live. Imagine if every concrete block of my house had been laid by myself or a family member! But we’re all so specialised now. Also of course land is cheap here. But it makes me see this half finished landscape in a new light, not as decay but as a slow process of becoming.
This is thrift, growing in our herb terrace, a lovely sign of spring. But also a lovely name. It's called 'thrift' because it thrives on stony ground, it makes do with little. Three thrift flowers used to be on the back of the old 12-sided threepenny bit, to indicate that much can be bought with little. Seeing it in our garden made me think how thrift has more or less disappeared as a virtue. It does have a sting of the well-off telling the poor to be happy with their lot. Even so, I find it touches some deep chord in me. I live in a big house and have far more than I need, but still I want to go off and live in a hut in the woods like Thoreau. Except I notice I don't. Just good old hypocrisy, I suppose. But 'Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue' (Rochefoucauld), which is to say, I still care. I admire thrift. I don't want to believe that life is just about striving to possess more and more. I'm attracted by eco theories of de-growth, and something they call 'frugal abundance', which I take to mean having all you need while having very little. It's a difficult line to draw, and I cross it daily, but I know it exists. I read in the paper today that there are now 3,428 billionaires in the world, worth $20 trillion. What do they find to do with it all? Why aren't they feeling sick? Even I feel a little sick.
Not the surface of the moon, but one of our bedroom ceilings following a water leak. Today a service engineer was due to come to investigate the leak, but has had an accident and can’t come. Add to this an unexplained breakdown in our newly-installed solar panels, and days of wrangling with an updated computer, and I find myself in an irritable state. Given the disaster unfolding in the Middle East and the rise of the far Right, it’s ridiculous to fret over such unimportant matters. But fret I do. I sleep soundly through the bombing of whole nations, and wake filled with anxiety because my wifi is playing up. I’d like to believe this is the perspective effect, that things look bigger when close up, but I fear it might be a failure of imagination. Seriously, what harm does it do me if a workman fails to come on time to repair a damp ceiling? And yet I seem to feel I have the right for everything in my life to work correctly, and when it doesn’t, to be angry. In my more philosophical moments I tell myself that if I fell ill I’d be saying, ‘If only I was better I’d be chirpy as a cricket.’ But this would be a lie. Not so long ago I was ill, and longed for the return of health. It duly returned, and here I am grumbling about computer glitches. I should have learned by now that life just isn’t, ever, ever, going to be 100% fault-free. Perhaps my crabbiness is caused by old age. Oh Lord! That thought does shock me. I absolutely refuse to become a Grumpy Old Man. There! Moaning on Instagram - I write these posts as a sort of stream of consciousness - has led me to a better place. I see it now. Life is good-ish. And you could, squinting a little, look at the damp-wrecked ceiling as a work of art.
This is a gift but I can’t recall who gave it, which is terrible because it’s clearly a fine bottle. I know myself when I bring a particularly good wine to, say, a dinner party, how much it disconcerts me to see it disappear without comment. Of course the host has already got our evening’s wine, so it’s a normal response, and I can’t say what I long to say, ‘It’s actually rather a good bottle.’ These days if I’m the recipient, to overcome my poor memory I write the name of the giver on the bottle. If any of my friends reads this and recognises their gift please tell me, so when we drink it I can thank you.
On not wearing a watch: the changing of the clocks reminds me of my complicated relationship with timepieces. It's many years since I gave up wearing a watch, but I'm not casual about the time. My body clock, and my neuroses, keep me alert to mealtimes, sleep time, and so on, with a punctuality that borders on the obsessional. But I don't want to wear a watch. It's true I have a phone in my pocket and it tells the time, but I far prefer the wall clock in the kitchen. Alas, nowadays there are few public clocks. Even in train stations today you have to squint at the little announcements to find the time. Gone are the days of the lovely big railway clocks. It's as if we've individualised time, along with everything else. As for wristwatches, they've become male jewellery. I'm bewildered by Rolexes, which look to me like shackles. These iconic watches began by promoting their sturdiness and time-keeping reliability. Now that perfect time-keeping comes from a chip, their ad line is 'Reach for the crown!' and Rolex wearers are reduced to saying, 'Look how rich I am.' So now we have the commercialisation of time. I think back to an age before I was born when all that country people knew of time was the angle of the sun and the sound of church bells. I well remember the days when people regularly asked each other, 'What's the time?' I now do it myself. So I like to think my non-wristwatch wearing is me breaking the shackles of the self-sufficient individual. But maybe that's as pompous as wearing a Rolex.
Not scammed yet! This arrived yesterday, two weeks after I ordered it (with a spanner to screw the bolts on the handle) - no named manufacturer for my 'life and cooking frying pan', made in China, it appears to be titanium, but we have yet to test it. Perhaps it'll melt on the gas. Perhaps it'll perform well for a month and then become caked with gunk. Or perhaps it'll turn out to be a life-long asset as promised, and my cynicism will prove unfounded. All this is very confusing. If it's real, why make up a manufacturer's name, as in Lixis, which doesn't exist elsewhere? Somehow, somewhere, I'm being diddled, I'm sure of it. I just can't work out how or where.
Frying pan blues: some time ago Virginia asked me to find her a non-stick frying pan that wouldn't lose its virtue after a few months. I turned to the internet and located something called a titanium hammered pan, which seemed to be the best (and most expensive) sort, with prices ranging from £100-£300. Yes, crazy, I know, but for a pan that lasts a lifetime and can always be cleaned? Ah, well. You know what's coming. I chose the one made by Lixis which was given an A+ rating on one of the comparison sites, paid my money (£119), and in a hurry to have it as a surprise present for Virginia, clicked the fatal click. Later that night I woke, as I often do, at 2.30am, and started to recall some tell-tale details. The comparison site had listed many pros, and only two cons, 'Often out of stock' and 'Can take several days to deliver'. Those aren't cons, I thought; those are more incentives to buy. For the first time it struck me that I was the victim of a scam. I got out of bed in the middle of the night, went to my computer, and re-researched the brand. The only place it seemed to exist was on its own website, a very full and convincing site, and on one comparison site, topleveltips.com. What if both were scams? Next day, to my relief, I received the usual shipment status update, it was coming via Yodel, and calmed down. That was last Friday. Since then the Yodel app has assured me that my shipment has 'started its journey' to me, but it's not got any further. I'm now back to believing I've fallen for a scam. Why did I choose Lixis? Because it seemed both expensive enough to be a good product, and not as wildly expensive as its competition. I'm ashamed of myself for not having checked more thoroughly before clicking 'Buy'. I'm ashamed of myself for not realising the obvious, that most comparison sites are fake. Meanwhile I wait and wonder if anything will ever arrive. It turns out Yodel, while not a scam, is famously slow. But if something does arrive, what will it be? It might even be an actual frying pan, but a £10 model for which I've paid ten times that. But most likely even the Yodel email's fake. Next time I'm buying in person, in the real world, in John Lewis.
Fence in mist, seen on my morning walk to get the newspaper today. Surprising how much this evokes in me. Am I being fenced in, or fenced out? Because the mist creates a nothingness beyond the fence, it promises an everything. If only, it seems to say, you could cross to the other side, you would leave all your sorrows behind and a new better life would begin. All this by drawing a line across the land and obscuring what lies beyond. The newspaper, when I collect it from the village shop, is filled with alarm and despondency. I walk back into the mist, grateful to be shielded from seeing too much.
Dawn in the woods: I'm back after a long rainy winter taking my morning walk across the fields, and stopped this morning for several minutes to watch the sun rise. I felt such a strange mixture of emotions. Awe at the sun's power, joy at the coming of spring, and unease that I should be so moved by it when bombs are falling far away. I don't really know how to reconcile listening to the news with living my safe little life. At the same time the sense of infinite space and eternal time that sunrise delivers offers me hope. This too shall pass.
This is the late great Robert Duvall with red glasses added by me, to bring out his resemblance to me (real me in pic 2). Of course the resemblance is very superficial, I wish I looked half as great, but even so I’ve been aware for some time that the comparison is occasionally made. Now that the real Robert Duvall has died he leaves the field to me, and to the curious sensation that my outward appearance doesn’t correspond at all to how I feel inside. Mainly the inside me is younger, but also much more dynamic. Whenever I catch an accidental glimpse of myself, say in a shop window, I’m taken aback by how limp I look, shuffling down the street. All my life I’ve intended to work on my posture: now my only recourse is to my imagination. In my imagination I’m Robert Duvall, flying his chopper in Nam to the swelling chords of Wagner. Now he’s left us I mourn him but I fly alone.
