Juxtabook

More on Swallows and Amazons and Bunloaf

Having mentioned recently that I had still not read Swallows and Amazons but that I was familiar with the bunloaf mentioned therein, I found myself standing in front of a copy in the town library whilst I was waiting for my daughter and pounced!

I have finally read and thoroughly enjoyed Swallows and Amazons and I have reviewed it on my YA book blog here.

I was glad to see bunloaf mentioned so often but a bit disappointed that there was not a description of it at all. Ah well, you can't have everything...

Much though I loved the book, I do wonder what modern children would make of it, and I muse along those lines in my review. If you've experience of reading with a child or a children's book group, or know a teen who has recently read the book, I would be grateful for any feedback as to its genuine enjoyability for 9-14 year olds, rather than its appeal for middle aged booksellers! The comments are open over there.

Tull at The Octagon, Bolton

I don't often get to the theatre these days but Tull at The Octagon in Bolton had caught my eye and I am so glad we made the effort and went.

Walter Tull is believed to be the first black outfield player in British top flight football. In the years before the first world war he was a forward with first Tottenham and then Northampton Town. This is remarkable enough but his sad childhood (death of mother then father) ended with a decade in a children's home in Bethnal Green. He shared this time with a brother for the first two years but the brother was adopted by a couple from Glasgow separating Walter from this last link with his family. Football appears to have then become Tull's life.

But with the story of any young man in early twentieth century Europe one always knows what is coming: four long grinding years of war - if you live that long. Walter volunteered for the First Footballers' Batallion and served with distinction for nearly all the war, becoming one of the first black officers (which was in itself against the rules) and being recommended for the military cross, an award inexplicably denied him. Walter lost his life in the March of the last year of the war in the spring offensive of 1918. A fellow footballer risked his life to try rescue Walter's body but it couldn't be done and Walter is one of many with no known grave.

The Octagon's version of Walter's life is a remarkable piece of theatre. Eight men and women with no props, no set, and a muted 'costume' of neutral colours in stretchy fabric produce in that tiny space in the round: a Kent childhood, a boisterous children's home, football training, aggressive matches, the searing liquid anger of the terraces, the politics of war and peace and women's suffrage, and the small scale development of the character of one man in a context of extraordinary circumstances. Phil Vasili's script is tight and exciting but leaves plenty of space for the emotional ride of Walter's life too.

Every inch of space was used. Dozens of characters were portrayed with actors slipping effectively from one accent to another, one characterto another, two scenes often playing at once. It was all so seamless, and there was never any doubt what or whom you were watching. The cast's skill at characterisation was remarkable but almost paled into insignificance at what they achieved physically. The fights (childhood and adult, football and war) and the representation of the beautiful game itself were a triumph of choreography and execution. The standing ovation the cast received at the end was well deserved. If you are anywhere remotely near Bolton I can't recommend this production enough: social history and drama at its best, it is a truly special piece of theatre.

You can sign an e-petition which calls upon the government to posthumously award Walter Tull the Military Cross for which he was recommended.

Tull at The Ocatgon Bolton is on until 16th March and the play is based on Phil Vasili's own biography of the footballer: Walter Tull, (1888-1918), Officer, Footballer: All the Guns in France Couldn't Wake Me

 

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

If you have listened to much British music or watched many British films then it is hard to come to Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe with a clean slate. The tale of Arthur and his desire not to be crushed by the social and economic system is hard to read afresh. It is hard not to see the retro-styled album covers of The Smiths, to see Hylda Baker, to hear The Artic Monkeys, to see every subsequent British New Wave film on working class culture running through your head: A Taste of Honey, Billy Liar, The Family Way, and so on. You can't help seeing motifs that have become cliches, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not", yet of course in 1959 they were far from cliches.

The plot is fairly simple: Arthur aged 22 and recently out of National Service slaves all day on piece work in a local factory. He has no responsibilities beyond giving a few pounds for board to his mother and enjoys drinking heavily, spending his money on nice clothes, and dallying with several married women. None of this particularly engages his brain though it is entertainingly related to us by the narrator, and so we get his rambling internal views on all aspects of the working class world in which he lives as he muses on the lives of his parents' generation and his own, on the government and the army, on marriage and husbands and wives, and on the future for men like him. He wants something more but as yet cannot see what that really might be.

I find this post-war era fascinating. The tail end of military service meeting the social movements and discontent that led to much of the 60s' activism and change. So if you can come to this book with fresh eyes it is remarkably light. Arthur's gripes might seem petty to those who experienced the squalor of the interminable dole years described in the brilliant but tuly 'grim oop north' Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood, but Arthur experienced those too, as a child, and he mentions them a couple of times. The lightness comes from the fact that Arthur must know that, compared to real years of hunger in the past, he is a lucky man, yet still his spirit strives for more. It is this striving in Arthur that points to hope for the future: whatever compromises Arthur might make in his own life, the human spirit constant seeks the stronger light.

I love this book and can see it becoming a regular re-read.

I wonder if others find an extended context of cultural references a help or a hinderance when reading a book like this for the first time?