After my last update some of my close friends were concerned that I was depressed and contacted me. One sent me a text message,
‘your letter is very sad. Hope your ok?’ I sent back,
‘It’s not meant to be! Did I send the wrong one!!!
‘No. It would probably be better if you delivered it allowed.’
When the penny dropped, I sent back,
‘I couldn’t think what you meant. I think you mean aloud!’
‘Sorry. You know my spelling.’
I didn’t but I do now. And I’m not especially depressed. And these are dark times for people who enjoy human company and are on their own. But there’s something else.
The spoken word can be given a dramatically different meaning by tone or inflexion or gesture to the written word which can lie on the page without warmth or humour or, of course, sadness or despair. The written word too allows the imagination of the reader to take flight in a way that the spoken word, I think. can be more definitive.
For politicians and other public figures who make speeches that are then presented in print this must be a particular difficulty and too for journalists who want to stay true to the atmosphere of the words as spoken. Jokes spoken that had one roaring with laughter can look very unfunny in print. What I’ve heard and seen on stage at the Apollo, Hammersmith, shown on television, could cause the deepest offence and possibly legal action if presented in cold print.
I know that in the past I have hardly ever liked the film of a book I’ve read because the film has never, or very rarely, caught the characters as I have ‘seen’ them in my head. Similarly if I’ve seen the film first it has seemed to give me the plot but I can’t get the film’s characterisations out of my mind and be left free to read and imagine the characters. But then again maybe the problem, if there is one, lies with me not with the film. Anyway it’s only the book/film relationship and there are many films I love.
Theatre affects me differently. Or perhaps I’m just stuck on Shakespeare and King Lear in particular. There was, for me, then a teenager, a production by Ngaio Marsh with Mervyn Glue as Lear in the Civic Theatre in Christchurch, New Zealand when I was sure I encountered King Lear. Then I came to London as a twenty year old and saw Paul Scofield as Lear at, I think, the Aldwych Theatre, and I met a new King, equally real and quite different. And with King Lear it’s continued like that in many, not all, productions.
Because I talk/write rather than write/write I probably need to check what I’ve written more carefully to make certain it has the tone I mean it to have, but also, probably, I’m too lazy for that! Maybe too, others may see things there, in the writing, that are there and I haven’t realised it.
Leaving all that to one side, here’s a happening.
I’ve just heard that one of my nephews has found a dressing gown, boarding school regulation type, that might be suitable for his son, for boarding school. The dressing gown already has sewn at the collar two name tags. His, my nephew David Acland and mine, Simon Acland. My guess is that my mother gave my old school dressing gown to my sister in law Jo for her son David when he was going to boarding school. We always passed down clothes in the family. More surprising is that David or more likely Kate, his wife, has found in the pocket of the dressing gown an old newspaper clipping. It reads:
BIRTHS
ACLAND – on July 18, 1941, at “Lewisham” to the wife of Jack
Acland, Mount Peel – a son.
The son was me.
How did the birth notice come to be in the pocket of the dressing gown?
Where had the birth notice been since 1941?
Why was the birth notice put into the pocket of the dressing gown?
Was it there when I wore the dressing gown at boarding school?
Did I need the reassurance of my birth notice to know that I existed?
And, did the Acland’s never put their dressing gowns in the washing machine?