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Where Was Moses When The Lights Went Out?*

22/7/2013

For a while, when I was a theatre stage manager, I worked in a county in the south of England. I'll call it Hampshire.

I was part of a very small community theatre company, touring a variety of productions around the area to village halls, schools, care homes, long stay NHS hospitals (that dates it!), and community arts venues.

It seemed to me that, at that time, most of the village halls were 'run' by retired Colonels. Certainly, when we arrived at each hall in turn at the agreed time, it was usually a retired Colonel who met us, let us in, showed us what was where and - if we were lucky - unlocked the kitchen and made us a cup of tea. So far, so kind.

I was then in my mid 20s, very small, very slim - but even though it was me driving the van that carried the set, actors, costumes, and all the necessary other bits and pieces, when we arrived the Colonels would always make a beeline for the oldest, tallest male actor, only to be told they needed to talk to me.

They were far too polite to 'harrumph' loudly, but were clearly not used to the idea of a woman being in charge. Yet, at the end of every show - without fail - these very polite older gentlemen would come up to me and say, in extremely clipped tones:

"Might be a girl - but jolly good."

It made me laugh a bit - quite kindly, and privately - and think I'd at least made some small inroads for womankind. And it taught a lesson about not making judgements based on prejudice but that - if you do - you should openly give credit when you find you are mistaken.

But that's not the main lesson here, although it's a good one.

On this one occasion, the village hall in which we were to perform was being extended and (for various reasons) the only way we could fit everything in was if we put the set up at one end, against the building works. In effect, the backstage area was a building site.

It was a Christmas show for children so (like all good community theatre) it involved a 'chase' sequence, in which one actor cannot see that a second actor is following him/her, appeals to the audience for help, and watches as numerous 5 year olds go purple in the face screaming and urgently pointing, "He's behind you."

Ah, the old traditions. :-)

We'd just reached this point of frenzy and - likely - noise levels that would be prohibited in law in any other place of work, when the lights went out. All of them. All at once. None of our lighting and sound equipment worked. Of course, this was rural Hampshire so there were no streetlamps or any external lighting. It was pitch black, indoors and out. Fortunately I had a torch (being a well organised stage manager), but even so I was stumbling around this building site trying to work out which bit of our equipment had caused the power to trip, and how I could get round to the front of the building to switch on the hall's lights.

Luckily, the two actors then 'on stage' had the presence of mind to stand still, and the one being chased to call out, "Where is he? I can't see anything", to much laughter.

Then our lights and sound suddenly came back on, and the show carried on as normal.

At the end, as the audience was leaving, I went up to the retired Colonel in charge of this particular venue to say I was so sorry about the blackout, and hoped our equipment hadn't caused a problem. I was worried we'd somehow damaged the new electricals in the unfinished extension.

"No," he said, quite matter-of-factly. "I'd not put enough money in the electricity meter. So I had to put in another 50 pence."

And the lesson from this? (It's a simple one.)

When something goes wrong, it may well be for the most mundane of reasons.

(And, to answer the traditional music hall joke used as a title for this post* - when the lights went out, Moses was in the dark.)

Mrs Howard's Life Lessons - Part Two

8/7/2013

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As I mentioned in Part One of this post, Mrs Howard lived with one of her three sons and his girlfriend.

I'll call her son Dave. He was in his early 60s, balding, and he moved quite slowly: Mrs Howard said he'd been in the local mental hospital for a short time, many years earlier. It wasn't clear how long he'd been living with her when I knew her, but it seemed that he had been coming and going for several decades: every now and again he would move out and, she said, find work with tied accommodation, or travel, or go and live with other people elsewhere in the country.

I once met her other sons: they and their wives were at the house one day when I was visiting. She'd lit a fire in the front room - against Fire Brigade advice - and had been upset when the resultant chimney fire led to her being told again she mustn't do it. She was perfectly able to understand what she had been told, so it wasn't that; and she wasn't particularly stubborn, so it wasn't that: I think she may have felt that, as she'd not had a fire for some time, maybe it would be okay by now. It was a sort of 'fingers crossed' approach to life, to which many of us can probably relate.

Dave was in the house on that occasion - but he didn't come to say hello to me or his brothers. I think I saw him twice, all the times I visited, and only in passing. He was often there, though. If I saw him I would say hello, and he would look at the floor and say hello, and go quickly into his room. He lived in one of the two large downstairs reception rooms.

Also in the household was Dave's girlfriend - I'll call her Kathleen. She was an overweight woman in her 40s, whose long dark hair was always tied back in a very severe bun. She wore the same sort of blue nylon overall sported by Mrs Howard, which made her look a bit like a school dinner lady. Indeed, she told me she had worked in schools - it wasn't entirely clear as what, but something to do with being a school matron or a nurse, and she'd said this was how she'd met Dave as he'd once worked in the grounds of the same school: but of course I was visiting Mrs Howard about her house, so finding out more about Kathleen wasn't the top priority.

Kathleen didn't, however, live in the house with Dave. Instead, she lived in a small caravan parked in the large back garden. She'd been there for some time, she said. She was a very cheerful woman, and she and Mrs Howard appeared to get on well. She didn't come into the house very often and seemed to live quite separately from Dave, although she said he was her boyfriend. I never went inside the caravan: again, I was there to visit Mrs Howard so I didn't ask to see, and I wasn't invited. Kathleen wasn't working when I met her: neither was Dave. He was claiming the then state benefit for people with long term illness. She was waiting to hear about another job.

One of the things about Mrs Howard was that she was what I'd describe (as a sort of shorthand) as 'selectively deaf'. I'd noticed this before: if I visited when she said Dave was in, she talked very loudly; but when he was out, her voice dropped to a whisper. I would follow suit, mirroring her volume.

She did something similar that day when her other sons were there - appearing not to hear what they were saying so they spoke very loudly, then perfectly able to hold a conversation with me after they'd gone at a much lower volume. So I said I'd noticed just then that she found it easier to talk to me on my own rather than when everyone was there, and wondered if she'd asked her GP about checking her hearing?

We were sitting in the back kitchen, rheumy old dog on the floor in front of the coal fire, Mrs Howard sitting at the large wooden table, and me in one of the easy chairs opposite her. She leaned forward, and beckoned to me to do the same. Her voice as low and as quiet as she could manage, she whispered:

"Dave listens to everything I say, so I pretend I can't hear."

Then she sat back up and smiled at me and, patted her nose with one finger, as if it was our secret. I wasn't sure what to say, but as she didn't seem to be worried about it I smiled back and carried on with the matter in hand. I mentioned it to my colleagues, but her claim was seen as very unlikely and one of Mrs Howard's many eccentricities, along with showing her mastectomy, the loose dentures, playing the piano at the care home over the road, and other aspects of her life: not anything of any note.

Then I changed jobs and moved away. Mrs Howard's need for house renovations got nearer the top of the list and, eventually, a couple of years later, the work was done. She was helped to move out temporarily; by then, Kathleen had gone, and Dave had taken the offer of moving into his own social housing flat.

When Dave's room was being emptied prior to the work starting, the contractors found and removed a number of cassette recorders, and a large reel to reel tape machine, which he'd left behind. It was so damp in the house that all the plaster in the downstairs rooms had to be hacked off, and the bare bricks and stones exposed. And, in Dave's room, this also exposed a extraordinary array of tiny holes through the wall that divided his room from the back kitchen, each containing wires connected to the sort of cheap microphones that were used at home by many people in the days of cassette recorders. There were, apparently, masses of them.

Mrs Howard had been right. Dave had been listening to everything she said - or certainly trying to. Perhaps, when he was in his room, she spoke loudly so he didn't feel anxious about what was being said because he could clearly hear her and - to make sense of her speaking so loudly - she made out she couldn't hear very well. Perhaps, when he was out, she would whisper in order to talk more freely but also because if she was so quiet that it couldn't be recorded, Dave wouldn't be suspicious about what happened in his absence, and would feel able to go out more. Perhaps there were other explanations. But with that came two very important lessons. Even when things seem very unlikely, it doesn't mean they're not true. And just because they're being described by older people - and in this case an older woman whose life was a little unusual - doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention.

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Where Was Moses When The Lights Went Out?*

Mrs Howard's Life Lessons - Part Two

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