A Selection of My Writing

NEW PLAYS written between 2019 and 2022:

Two short absurdist plays, ‘FINE DINING’ and ‘BOAR INTENT’, will be performed at The Canal Café Theatre in early November 2023.

‘CHARLOTTE AND LUCY’ – An evocation of Charlotte Brontë’s life and work, focusing on the difficulties she encountered as a practising female writer during the Mid-Nineteenth Century. The play is centred around Brontë’s final novel, Villette, and hinges on the relationship between writer and protagonist in this highly autobiographical novel.

Plays in Preparation:

A dramatisation of ‘BELLA VISTA’, an autobiographical story by Colette.

Performed Work:

1990s onwards: Plays and sketches written out of improvisation.

1987: ‘THE DIVIDED SOUL’ – a black comedy. Canal Café Theatre. Director: Christopher Davies

‘. . . . . A complex and engaging construction which sparked a thought or two and had more laughs than the average report from the therapy class.’ James Mavor ‘Time Out’ 18.1.87

‘. . . . . For those involved in the current feminist psychoanalytical movement, give therapy a miss this once and catch it.’ Tim Robinson ‘City Limits’ 18.1.87.

Occasional Writing:

‘RIVER LIFE’ – Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 ‘The World at One’ 22.9.2020

‘The World at One’ on 22.9.2020

‘WALKING WITH JOHN KEATS’ – Camden New Journal 23.9.2021

River-Life

My river carries sunshine on its back,
joy-rides rows of bubbles
swirled up by counter-currents,
forges a deep-set path.

Emerging from tunnelling the darkness
under the bridge it narrows,
brown, a swift-nosed mole
burrowing between banks of cow-parsley and thyme,
pushing past the ghosts of the also-rans
who didn’t intend to stay long -

my brother is there in the shallows
resisting the flow, balancing one-legged
waving at me; now in swimming trunks
dangling from a branch,
see him dropping fast, a bundle of flesh and daring
into the water below, friends whooping, waiting in turn,
minnows touching at his toes -

and by the narrow tributary
where we paddled
my mother sits on the grass,
spots a kingfisher flashing blue
dragonfly skimming the stillness,
looks to the rushes opposite
where she stood with us one morning
for a photograph.

Only I’m here now
up to my knees, net in hand,
water tickling my calves,
casting about for caddis worms shifting in their twigs,
scanning for floating maps of frogspawn,
the occasional cautious newt.
And the river noses on.

Walking with John Keats

LATE September, and the heathland which John Keats often walked during the last three years of his life is where I walk now.

His ode To Autumn opens with the line, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” – there’s no mist this morning, but ripened acorns clatter to the ground as I cut through a copse beside Parliament Hill.

From here I head across sunlit South Meadow to a favourite glade in woods bordering the grounds of Kenwood House. Not many people find this tranquil spot; it offers a sense of soli-tude, rare in a crowded city.

I sit quietly for some minutes on my habitual log, until a robin chitters its alarm-call at a nearby walker’s beagle rustling its way through fallen leaves; the dog briefly sniffs my hand then is off at a scamper and I am returned to the silence of trees: beech, oak and birch.

In the south corner of this space reign a majestic oak and weathered silver birch.

They stand side by side, contrasting beauties enriching the eye, the birch wraith-like in its paleness and seeming insubstantiality, its companion solid, lasting, with a venerable air.

The topmost branches of the birch are slender, and sway, yellow-tipped leaves moved by breezes and time; the oak, branches thick and dark, leaves now tough and leathery, seems an immoveable force, keeping time in abeyance.

For me, time is pressing: I move on through nearby beech woods, past the Viaduct Pond, and on to open ground.

Maybe it’s the perfect weather and autumn’s yellows, oranges and browns, or my reflective mood, but past seems to meet present almost tangibly this morning – they encounter each other across this grassy slope and its adjacent meadow, beside the “rushy banks” of the ponds which grace Hampstead Heath, along “mossy paths” where a poet once walked with friends, discussing politics and verse.

In the autumn of 1820, Keats left Hampstead for Italy. A few months later, in 1821, at the age of 25, and 200 years ago, he died in Rome, far from Hampstead Heath and its consolations.

My consolation this morning lies in a cup of coffee from my Thermos flask, and a timeless view of the Heath pond nearest his lodgings that Keats might just have been able to see, its surface ruffled perhaps, as now, by a “winnowing wind”