A Glimpse of the Possible

There are some occasions when I sit down to dictate this blog, and face the blank screen, to find that I have absolutely no idea what I want to say.

This is one of them. In life I am not a person who is normally lost for words. I suspect that if I were ever invited to take part on "Just A Minute", one of my favourite Sunday lunchtime programmes which I've just finished listening to, I'd do rather well. Not sure how I might do on the "No deviation" rule though.

There have been no unexpected trips to hospital, no really exciting personal events, and no work. We've just had our nephew Marcus staying with us for a week, and he's been doing work experience at the Victoria Palace Theatre on "Billy Elliot",  something that Richard had arranged for him to do as part of his college course. He's doing a BTEC in stage technical skills and has an ambition to work as a sound operator on live events, or in the theatre. I think the fact that he has an aim in life is to be applauded. As a child, I always knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to act. A brief period between the ages of 13 and 14 persuading myself that I really wanted to be a journalist in order to satisfy the teachers at grammar school who said that I needed a more "academic outlook" was soon curtailed and I was once more to be found in the careers room flicking through the one drama school prospectus that my grammar school had. No Internet, no way of finding out just what options were open to me other than by looking through books to find guidance for writing off to places for prospectuses.

It was around this time of year that I saw a letter pinned on the school's Sixth Form noticeboard from the National Youth Theatre inviting people to audition. It had not been mentioned to us, and was addressed to "Dear Head of English". Drama in my school was a pastime - something we did to excellence - but a pastime. Yet I knew I would never be happy unless it was my career and my life. I noted down the address that one had to apply to on the letter, and then I went one further by taking the letter down from the noticeboard and putting it in my pocket. This ensured that I wouldn't get the address wrong and also that nobody else would have a chance to apply. Just lowering the odds a little. In hindsight I wasn't depriving anybody, but at the time I saw it as a manifestation of my single mindedness,  and the lengths I would go to to get what I wanted. I wrote the letter, and it was only on receiving a response which contained an invitation to go to Manchester for an audition that I told my mother.

The information I gave her about what the National Youth Theatre entailed may have been a little fanciful. These days young people who join the NYT have the pleasure of staying in hand-picked accommodation, University  halls of residence where they are supervised when not in rehearsal. Indeed said nephew did his first technical year with them last year and did just that. This didn't happen in the 1970s. I told Mum were I to be accepted, I'd be staying in a special hostel right next door to the theatre and we'd be looked after. I think  I may have been so fanciful as to suggest there was a bridge linking the two buildings so we wouldn't even have to cross the road. It was only on these terms that she agreed to accompany me to Manchester for my audition.

The audition was to take place in some downbeat community centre in a non-too desirable area of Manchester somewhere out of the centre. On getting off the bus and locating the appropriate building, I then had to make it clear to Mother that this was the point beyond which she could not go. I well remember my mother, in her pressed Navy coat with marquisette brooch and sensible small hat with matching handbag, trotting across the road to some dive of a Naff caff to pass the time over a cup of stewed tea while her offspring disappeared into the bowels of the Upper Hellhole Community hall to prove himself as the next Olivier.

 I may not have managed that, but I did manage to gain a place. This, of course, necessitated revealing to my mother that we wouldn't be staying in luxury accommodation of a semi attached to the theatre nature, but would have to sort out our own digs from a list and make our way daily across London to the rehearsal rooms under our own steam. I think it was the name of the "Catholic international students hostel",  although of course we are, and always have been, staunch Anglican as a family, that convinced my mother it might be a safe gamble to let me go. If she, or even if I, had known of the visits to casualty, the late-night walks back to Finsbury Park, and everything else that were involved in being 17 and alone in London, I am sure she would never have untied the apron strings. But she did, and I am forever grateful.

In that summer I grew up. Not because I played  a particularly big part, although I did manage to get myself 10 lines which  for a first year, I'm told, was rather remarkable, but because I learned how to negotiate the tube. I learnt how to make my money last until the following Friday (a talent that I seem to have lost since) and I learnt how to  care for myself.

Marcus has been absolutely no trouble this week. He has managed to get himself to work on time every day. He's managed to feed himself, discovering the hitherto hidden delights of a burrito - he's from Exmouth so let's face it, McNuggets have only just reached there!  He's managed to deal with a lost Oyster card, and above all he's managed to deal with himself -  for a whole week.  As I write this, he is on the train back to Exmouth, which he will no doubt find an even smaller place now. I know I found my return to South Yorkshire unbearable after my first Youth Theatre summer. But the one thing that kept me going was that I knew I'd be back. I knew London would be my home and I knew that acting would be my job.

 I think Marcus knows that now.  And that's a good thing.  In these hard times it's increasingly necessary to have ambitions, aims, and desires.  And it's necessary to have the get up and go, and the passion to achieve them. I think our nephew will do just that. And there'll be nobody prouder than his London uncles, whose spare bedroom he dossed down in, when he does.