My friend Hilary Young, who has died aged 86, was mayor of Bakewell and a man of many accomplishments, including, most intriguingly, managing the celebrated Century Theatre. This was a “theatre on wheels”, a remarkable aluminium and steel contraption involving four trailers that folded together to form a complete 225-seat proscenium theatre.
When launched in 1952 (in Hinckley) it was hailed as a triumph of engineering. “Must be seen to be believed,” said The Times. Besides the stage and seats, upholstered and “tip top”, there were dressing rooms, showers, a dining room and kitchen plus living quarters for the whole company of 17 people. One of Hilary’s booklets lists a typical repertoire of plays: Shakespeare’s Othello, The Miser by Molière and A Man of God by Gabriel Marcel. Century trundled round the Midlands and north for more than 20 years and was the force behind the creation of Theatre by the Lake in Keswick and the English Touring Theatre. Hilary’s job involved everything — including, he noted, emptying the loos, usually just before the audience arrived, while wearing his dinner jacket. I still marvel at the sheer madness of the idea of a mobile theatre. Hilary, you won’t be forgotten.
Rewind to the past
The grandfather clock has been on “holiday” with Keith, our horologist (sounds grand, doesn’t it?) for months. The clock, a family heirloom that was taken to America in the 1850s and is now back in England, has been on strike for most of lockdown which means, of course, that it was refusing to strike. As part of his investigations, Keith dismantled something called the “snail”, flat circular pieces of metal that are part of the mechanism. Inside one piece of metal he found an etched date of 1829. It is safe to say that Keith is the first person to see that date since William Paddon built the clock in Modbury, Devon, for one of my ancestors. It solves one mystery — we thought it dated from around 1825 but weren’t sure — and poses another: why would anyone put a date somewhere almost no one could find it?
Badger trap
Whenever I think of Owen Paterson, whom as parliamentary sketchwriter I wrote about for many years, I can’t help but think of Badger from The Wind in the Willows. As you may remember, back in 2013, when Paterson was environment secretary, he became rather defensive about a failed badger cull. “I’m not moving the goalposts,” he insisted, “the badgers are moving the goalposts.” All around the land, or indeed under it, badgers giggled but also knew that being badgered by the environment secretary was a badge(r) of honour. This week, Mr P himself tried to move the goalposts over parliamentary standards though not, as it transpired, for very long. Yesterday he announced he will resign as an MP. Badger will be among those who will miss him.
John-Boy, phone home
One of the bonuses of my boycott of John Lewis (I’m still holding the closure of the Sheffield store against them) is that I can be as savage as I like about their Christmas advert. I watched the ad, released yesterday in an almost comic flurry of publicity, with trepidation, as JL can do tear-jerky Christmas pap better than almost anyone. This one is no exception — it’s sort of E.T. meets The Waltons — but it did feel marvellously unoriginal.
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Merry wishes
I stumbled upon my word of the week while reading a cookery article which covered the tradition of pulling the turkey wishbone. It seems “wishbone” is actually American and in the late 1800s replaced the British “merrythought”, so called because the winner was thought the most likely to get married. It’s so much better than the American version, isn’t it?