People I've been in a lift with....

During my time working for ITN, ITA, BBC, I have often been in a lift with various famous people.

One of my jobs was to "meet and greet" the actors and take them to their dressing rooms or the green room or the restaurant to meet their producers.

So....in alphabetical order as I remember

Sophie Aldred

Tom Baker

Reginald Bosenquet

Richard Burton (and his brother!)

Craig Charles

Tony Curtis

Peter Davison 

Sandra Dickenson

Charlie Drake

Robin Ellis

Tony Hart

Charlton Heston 

John Hurt

Lulu 

Miriam Margolyes

Roger Moore

Peter Sissons

Patrick Stewart 

Wow that's enough name dropping for one session!  It's a good memory test for me, and that's but a few of the people I've got coffee for, found a dentist for, taken to lunch etc.etc.
Got out of the toilet when the door stuck. (This is after being in the lift - the other part of my job - oh yes - I was a camera operator as well!)

I loved my job!

 

Memories of Shoreditch

Not a place I like to go really. I always felt Shoreditch was not my home. I always felt that somehow I didn't belong. When something awful is about to happen, I always dream I am in my mother's flat on the day of her funeral. The family are all waiting for the hearse to arrive, her brother Patrick, his son Paul, us, her three daughters with our boyfriends/husbands. Aunts Flossie, Gwen, Barbara, the flat is always dark and there is a hushed conversation going on.

I wake up sweating knowing that something awful will happen soon. 

It usually does. 

When I wrote 1955 I revisited Shoreditch in my memories. I remember being chased through the streets one evening after working for pocket money at the canteen of the town hall for a function. I remember running up the urine soaked stairs of Peabody building and hiding in the chute cupboard. I waited for a long while until the man who had followed me clattered back down the stairs.

I have a memory of sitting playing on my own in the flat, it was sunny and warm. Mum was making blazer sleeves on her Singer sewing machine, and she asked me to cut them apart  as she ran them all together with one long thread. I asked her.
"Why am I here?"
"God, Jezus, what kind of question is that for a four year old?" She stared at me.
"Because I wasn't here before was I? I was on a balcony, wasn't I?" I cut another thread.
"The flat balcony, yes, I opened the door it was hot." Mum carried on sewing.
I closed my eyes and the balcony I saw was not the balcony of our flats. It was at the base of a Pyramid and I was a woman, holding my young daughter's hand. I felt scared, my husband was galloping off into the hot sandy distance to get help.
"No, before, you know, when I used to tell the story of Pegasus to my little girl."
She stared at me, "I don't know who Pegasus is."
Suddenly it was all gone again.The buzz of the sewing machine, the shouts from Hoxton Market, a dog barked, I was back in Shoreditch again.

I saw the Krays "the sporting brothers" when they came with an actress called Yootha Joyce to open St Monica's youth club.  Apparently now it's a trendy cocktail bar. Then, it was a half empty church hall with a tennis table, and a frightened little priest.

There were parts of Shoreditch you just didn't go. My English Nan used to tell me where policemen were murdered and what manhole covers they were shoved down to get rid of the bodies.

My father knew all the tunnels of the tube system, as a teenager during the war they used to explore the underground system and he showed me how to walk from Old Street to Baker Street without getting on a train. He even knew where the old crate lifts were to enable you to get back to street level and whereabouts they came out. 

I haven't been to Shoreditch for over ten years now, the last time was to deliver my entry to the Tate Portrait competition, strangely the collection point was my old comprehensive which became an art academy.

Why am I thinking about that now? 

I don't know, but while we were away I saw my young life flashing before my eyes one night in bed. I had been feeling quite ill, and I thought I must be dying. My dear husband just told me it was tiredness. Yes I'd walked for 5 hours and I was still getting over a flu-like virus.

Today. Today I feel sick. My legs ache, but apparently I'm getting better according to the Doctor, I am using this time for writing practice. Spewing whatever thoughts I have onto the blog. Verbal vomit. 

Apologies, but I feel a lot better for that.

Claydon House - adventure

What a Bank Holiday weekend that was, we're still recovering. I've had a cold since we arrived back.

When we arrived on the Friday, it was warm and sunny, we had a view of the lake and the house.

The Living History camp started to fill up around us, woodturners, cooks, musketeers,dragoons, even The King himself!

Setting up and locking up and going back to the plastic camp for the night

The beer tent and traders lane.

Our little abode for the weekend as we left it on Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday all hell let loose with the weather, horizontal driving rain and high winds tore through the camp ripping the smaller tents from their pegs. Lord and Lady Verney pitched in with my husband Andy and many others to peg the tents down. I was holding the tent flap closed on our tent and got soaked from the nape of my neck to my ankles. I managed to lace it up and sit inside.

I lit a candle more for atmosphere than anything else. The heady fragrance of lavender garlic and savory filled the windblown tent. Outside, the wind and the cannon roared, shots were fired, shouts heard. I closed my eyes, would this have been a tiny taste of the war? Trying to survive the weather, listening to our army fight the enemy. Sitting soaked, freezing, wondering what was happening outside, and too afraid to go and look?

 Luckily the weather the following day was fine, and as the Goodwyfe I could again cater for the troops with food and my musket ball remover. The crowds came and talked to us, we showed them the Jumble biscuits made from a recipe found on a battlefield. Hard as rocks but like biscotti as they were made to be dunked in warmed wine or ale. Welsch cakes that I made on the skillet, and pears from our pear tree. 

All in all a brilliant weekend, leaving me with a rotten cold, and dear Andy with sore shoulders from putting tents back up.

Happy 50th Anniversary to The Sealed Knot and long may the adventure continue.



 

The Sealed Knot at Claydon House

I write all kinds of stuff on this blog. The stuff of my life. My books, short stories, my failures, my victories.

Well, this weekend about 2000 Sealed Knot re-enactors will be at the home of the Verney Family for the Sealed Knot's 50th Anniversary.

It's going to be a fabulous event, over 200 living history tents, the backdrop of the house - a real Sword Divided family. Father Ralph the Royalist Standard Bearer and son Ralph a member of Parliament. In between them, the women of the family, daughters, wives, aunts, grandmas.

The famous story of Sir Ralph the Standard Bearer, holding so tight to the King's standard that the only way to get it from him, even after death, was to cut his hand off. The ring on that hand was returned to the family, but Sir Ralph's body was never found. His ghost is said to haunt Edgehill battlefield looking for his lost hand.

Then there was the son, trying to keep the estate together as a Parliamentarian, while his father fought and died for the King.

The mysterious burnt arm portrait in the upper gallery. Look what they have done to us...

Daughter Mal's desperate pleas for help when she found herself with child in London. "Mend me or end me." She wrote to her brother.

I have researched the 17th Century for so many years now that if I were to meet any of these people in the flesh I would know them as friends. I know more about that time than the century I live in now.

I will be on the living history demonstrating the cures of a Goodwyfe, taking musket balls out of the wounded, and binding them with bandages. I will show how pox marks will be covered by ladies, soap of the day, antiseptics etc.

Here are some photos to get you in the mood for the weekend:

Quiet, peaceful, but the war is coming and no-one will escape.
 

 

Life...the Universe...and anything.

Today I watched a mother murder her child on YouTube. It was a Crime programme from the USA.
On Facebook I saw an eagle being pulled from the front grill of a car and released back into the world by a couple of kind Americans.
On Twitter I saw an Orca whale grieiving for her deceased baby.
Too much.
Too much pain.
Too much information.
Not enough Kindness.

Mostly I feel nothing. I don't want to feel like this. As a writer I should be motivated by the stories I see and hear.

We are bombarded by facts, figures, politics, cute kittens and dogs, murder, mayhem, etc.
Reams and reams of it.

Trump taking war into space with his "Space Force". What a moron, every day he wakes up he does something so unspeakably evil and hypocrytical, and lies through his false teeth.
He should be impeached, the only President who is a self confessed traitor.

Meanwhile, a woman whose only crime was to go to Iran to visit her parents has now been moved into a prison for political prisoners. She is being helped to live through this terrible time by the other inmates. Nazazin Zaghary Radcliffe's life is wasting away in this hell.

Why is it when we all pull together so that we can get where we're going faster - is it that some-one always cuts the rope?

My latest book is finished. It combines the stories of several women, trying to live through a war not of their making. Where the United Kingdom is being torn apart by two rival factions.
Sound familiar?

History repeats itself and yet no-one learns from it.

I try and look for the good, but it's getting harder to find. 

We are in Sodom and Gormorrah, at the moment. Self centred narcissistic sexually profligate, non binary, WTF?  

I think it was GK Chesterton who said that if man doesn't believe in God, he'll believe in anything. Seems to be true.

I believe there is goodness in the world, kindness, sense, happiness. We just need to get it back. 

I know there is more to this life than flesh and blood. I want men to stop making their own Gods. 

Here we go then  Norman Greenbaum - enjoy - God can be fun.  No I'm not really a Jesus Freak, as I said before in these blogs. I believe in everything. From Angels to the Loch Ness monster, but I think there's room for God as well.

https://youtu.be/-cXrEPNvRO8?t=52







 
 

Romance

There doesn't seem enough of it around.  Years ago before people could phone each other, twitter, insta, or facebook, there was the chance for lovers to express themselves on pen and paper.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee, let me count the ways."
Carol Anne Downing "Warming my lady's pearls."
William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116 " the one that starts - Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when alteration finds..."

Recently I have been thinking about my husband.

In my minds' eye, I see him steadfast, tall, holding his dying brother's hand. A hand that looked exactly like his own. Looking into the far distance and keeping his brother company in his last moments.

I loved him so much at that time.

I watch him sleep. When we first got together it was because I was frightened he would hear me snore. But now I watch his chest rise and fall silently, listening to the comforting purr of his breathing. 

He is my good sense, my touchstone, my best friend and collaborator in all things.
We have our secret world.

His smile makes me smile. He is kind, clever, loving and capable.

Yet doesn't see it.

He has sat with me many hours in the Hospital holding my hand. Comforting me, making me laugh, making me brave enough to face all the tests I  had to undergo. 

We wake and look at the sunrise together, we shower together, recently this, as I have problems with balance. 

I look in his olive green eyes and I still see the young man I fell in love with, the young man who bought me lunch at work when I was living on Mars bars, so that I could pay a mortgage and bring up my son on my own.

It's been twenty two years since he walked into the BBC Studio where I worked and we were introduced to each other.

We were fast friends almost immediately. Confiding in each other, and being stupid together, going for long drives after work, so long at one time that we were reported missing to the police!

I love him more every day, even though the times have been hard these past three years for us. Illness, bereavements, estrangements from those we loved.

So many memories now, and so many more to make.  

I was lucky to find the love of my life, and as dear Jane Austen says in Pride and Prejudice, 'Reader, I married him.'
 

Short Story freebie

Copyright © Margaret Cooper-Evans

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of he copyright owners.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

CLARA ROCK

It had been a year since Danny died.

I still go over that day in my mind every morning as I squeeze onto the 7.45 train with hundreds of familiar strangers. We jolt along in the sufforcatingly hot carriage,the air conditioning never seems to work on this line. As we move towards Marylebone Station, that day starts inside my head - again, as it has done for the past twelve months.PTSD I suppose. It's not likely I can ever forget.

I changed my name to Clara Rock, the place he died, so I wouldn't.

Thinking back, it was an easy climb, we'd done it a couple of times before. He was roped, for some reason he didn't want to wear a harness like the rest of us. Not exciting enough for him, I suppose.

Clive was above him,I was below.

I see him falling, smiling, laughing - almost like he was on a ride at Alton Towers. 

He'd slipped before. Done this before. Big joke. But this time he had unscrewed his carbiners. He had done it. On purpose.

He grinned up at us as he fell.

The shock was terrible for all of us. 

Especially me. 

What should have been a stunning dream holiday in the Far West of Cornwall had suddenly turned into a nightmare.

The train shuddered to a halt, bringing me back to the moment, I thought I should have got the fast train, but it had been cancelled. As I walked out of the station towards Baker Street,

I felt choked as the memories flooded back. I made my way to work as usual, along the hot pavements.

I had to crowd fund his funeral. He had no money. None. 

He didn't own anything of value. His flat was a mess, we just put everything in the skip across the road by the demolition site. His Landlady said she wouldn't charge us back rent if we could leave it as it was when he moved in.

Immaculate.

It took three weeks; cleaning, painting the walls, taking the bottles,newspapers, girly mags, and clothes to the recycling.

How could a twenty six year old guy have so much crap in his flat? 

His parents came down to help. His father stared disbelievingly at the remnants of his son's life, trying to make sense of it. His mother cleaned and tidied as if he was coming back that day, and she had to have it ready for him. She stood, red eyed in the kitchen amongst the take away trays and burger wrappings, tears falling. The only thing he had in the fridge was a fine growth of green furry mould.

I walked into the office. Executive Travel. My job was to shovel would be tourists onto over booked planes. I got well paid for it, but it was boring. My RayBans blocked the flare from the car windows in the street, and disguised my tears from passers by.

I wanted to take today off, but Olivia had beaten me to it. So I wasn't allowed. Fucking Olivia. who had only met Danny through me, had taken a week off.

I had been his girlfriend.

 I turned my computer on and went into the back to make the coffees.

"Mawning darling." Clive drawled, dropping his manbag by his seat, and walking into the back to get his coffee."How are we on the first anniversary of Danny's death?"

"Oh you know." I handed him his black, no sugar. "Fucked up."

He smiled, "He was a bastard wasn't he?"

"The best kind." I sat at my computer and opened up the bookings screen.

Danny's face popped up as an emoji waving at me.

"I suppose you think that's funny!" I snarled at Clive turning the screen towards him.

"Not me darling, I'm surprised you think it was." He came to look over my shoulder as I turned the screen back towards me.

He fiddled with the keyboard. He was wearing expensive aftershave that filled my nostrils.

Clive was tall, handsome, well manicured. I wondered for a moment why all the really good looking guys were gay.

"Look at this, he sent this the week before we went to Cornwall."

"So he knew what he was going to do?" I asked.

"Obviously." Clive squatted beside my chair, "Perhaps there's more."

"He didn't leave a note at the flat." I said feeling weird.

Suddenly the shop door opened with the bell ringing. A fat middle aged woman with dyed purple hair, wearing an oversized orange tee shirt opened the door for her even fatter husband. She had tattoos of her grandchildren on both arms.

"Can Coon." She breathed heavily as she waddled into the shop. "Got any fing for Can Coon?"  She elongated the word as Cockneys do.

Clive stood up. Suddenly very masculine. "When are you thinking of going?" He asked.

I took the cups back to the kitchen. Danny had joined us last year as a temp, but as he could sell snow to Eskimos, he was very quickly made permanent.

So the four of us, Clive, Danny, Olivia and me became not just a sales team, but a kind of disfunctional family. That sometimes included Clive's partner Miffy.

Danny was the life and soul of our party, he dared us to go on adventures. All on staff discount. So weekends were spent caving, bungee jumping, canoeing, paragliding, you name it. Week after week with Danny and his dares. We were getting exhausted, but no one wanted to be the first to give in.

More and more excessive adventures followed until one day, in the pub after work, Clive said, "darlings, I'm suffering from adrenalin overload, and my poor Miffy hasn't spent any real time with me in weeks." He sipped his drink. "What about doing something a little safer? Miffy can watch us from a Hotel balcony by the sea as he sips his cocktails."  He smiled, "we can still go out and try and kill ourselves."

"Clara Rock." Danny spurted enthusiastically. "I've always wanted to climb Clara Rock since I was a kid."

"Where is it?" I asked sipping my Margarita, "I can't afford a long haul flight this month."

I remembered the pile of brown envelopes containing bills, mounting up on my table at home, waiting to be paid.

"Cornwall," he grinned. He was handsome when he smiled."We can drive down, a road trip. What do you think?"

"I'm in!" Oliva fluttered her eyelashes at Danny as she smiled. She'd fancied the pants off him from the moment he came into work for us.

She didn't know it, but I was the one he was sleeping with.

"Sounds lovely." Clive finished his drink. "We need to learn the ropes so to speak, what say we go to the climbing wall at CMK on Sunday? Miffy can do a bit of shopping."

"CMK?" Danny smiled puzzled, "what's that?"

"Central Milton Keynes," I answered. "It's got a ski slope, a climbing wall, a sky diving air tunnel."

Danny was immediately enthusiastic. "Lets do the lot! Come on guys, you only live once."

"Climbing." Clive pursed his lips. "We need to learn how to climb, to practice. That's all I'm doing."

So we practised, we learned the ropes, the techniques, the equipment. We climbed plastic walls, we climbed Mam Tor in the Peak district, we even climbed Clara Rock a couple of times, though not quite to the top.

What was different that day, I couldn't tell you. We were all up for it. Danny more than the rest of us.

It was now a year later and he was gone.

That evening Clive invited Olivia and me to his flat in Finchley. His Miffy made us cocktails and we toasted Danny's life, laughing about the dares he got us to do.

"Is it time to see the film I shot that day?" Miffy asked slightly worried."Are you ready?"

We all nodded in agreement.

The huge flat screen tv was switched on and the memory card inserted into it's side.

We watched ourselves climbing the huge stack of rock. Seagulls circling us screeching through the bright blue sky, thinking we were after their eggs. The scenery was stunning, the sea was a beautiful turquoise green against the white sand on the beach. 

We looked quite professional, roped together, a steady climb. Lots of easy foot and hand holds. This time we reached the top and stood taking in the view. Clive waved to Miffy on the opposite cliff top and blew him kisses. So we all did and fell about laughing.

Danny had bought our picnic from M&S, salmon in pink gin, creme caramels and a bottle of raspberry and elderberry wine. An explosion of tastes that didn't go together. Just like us.

Just like Danny.

We watched hawk eyed as we made our descent. Danny was unscrewing his caribiners as we absailed down, he freed the rope, and fell. He passed us, smiling and waving.

He said something as he fell.

Miffy stopped the shot so that we could make it out.

It wasn't goodbye. 

It was YouTube.

We stared at each other for a moment. Clive picked up his laptop and went on to YouTube. 

"What do I look for?" He asked frustrated.

"Danny Seagull." I suggested, "It's his work log in."

Miffy took the laptop and typed it in. After scrolling through films of seagulls nicking ice creams and chips, he found it. Danny Seagull adventures.

Danny's bright tanned handsome face popped up.

"Hi guys, took you long enough." He was sitting on the balcony of our hired villa in Cornwall.

The sea was bright blue against the white of the walls of the villa. "So, I'd better tell you then, hadn't I?  Clive. Stop frowning, your forehead will look like a bum crack!" He laughed.

Clive rubbed a hand over his face.

"I just wanted to say I couldn't have spent my last year with better people." He sipped a cloudy lemonade he had on the table and smiled.

"Oh, Clive and Claire, thanks for all the sex!"

Miffy frowned at Clive, who looked puzzled, and Olivia frowned at me because she thought it was true.

Danny laughed loudly. "I wish I could see you faces, what a joke!"

"Turn it off!" Olivia pouted.

"No!" Clive, Miffy and I stared at her.

"OK, time to get serious. I have a brain tumour. Cancer. Inoperable. I'm going to slowly lose my marbles, my bodily functions, and myself." He sighed, but he was still smiling. "So I spent every penny I earned, probably more, and had as many adventures as I could with you guys." His eyes softened, "but today is the day I say goodbye. Yesterday I couldn't pick up my razor, today I have a massive headache, so I know what's coming next."

We all gasped in shock.

"See this?" He picked up the cloudy lemonade."It's so full of drugs that I won't feel a thing. Just pleasure." He laughed again. "Yeah, I'm a great big shit. I hope you'll all forgive me, extenuating circumstances and all that." He stood up. "Well, time to go, you're all waiting for me by the car." He looked straight into the camera. "Really love you guys."

He switched off.

Silence.

Miffy picked up his cocktail "To that great big shit Danny Seagull."

"Danny Seagull." we echoed, laughing and crying at the same time.