writing, not drowning

On a January Sunday, 60 years ago . . .

 

Richard Burton was in a BBC studio recording his inimitable performance as the narrator of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. It was broadcast on what was then the Third Programme the following evening. At the age of six, however, I knew nothing of Dylan Thomas and no-one in my family listened to the Third Programme.

My introduction to Thomas came five years later at my primary school, thanks to a Welsh student called - yes - Mr Jones, who was completing a teaching practice with our forty-strong form. One wet, chilly afternoon, at the start of an English lesson, Mr Jones announced that he had a treat in store for us. Out of one of the classroom cupboards, he hauled a wind-up gramophone, whose prior use had been confined to providing the music for our weekly country dance classes. (Our form teacher was a very keen member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.)

Then, from his briefcase, he produced a record . . .

'This,' said Mr Jones, in reverential tones, 'is something remarkable. We are going to listen to Under Milk Wood. Some of the finest words in the English language - and written by a Welshman, Dylan Thomas. The narrator possesses one of the finest voices in the English speaking world and he is a Welshman too, Richard Burton. So, I want you all to sit still, absolutely no fidgeting.'

I can't remember what my classmates did but, from the moment I heard the opening line:

'To begin at the beginning . . .'

delivered in those deep, rich, nut-brown tones, there was not the remotest possibility that I might fidget. I was somewhere else - hovering on the edge of Llareggub, looking down on Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, Captain Cat, Rosie Probert, Mr Mog Edwards, Gossamer Beynon et al. It was the first time that I can recall shivers running down my spine while listening to the spoken word. Mr Jones also had the look of a man for whom, in the words of Louis Macneice, 'time was away and somewhere else'.

But, this being the 1950s and my primary school being run by a head teacher who was feared by all, our literary transports of delight were doomed. Half way through the lesson, our head teacher stormed in, red of face and teeth clenched. She almost wrenched the gramophone arm out of its socket.

'This,' she bellowed at Mr Jones, 'is NOT suitable listening for 11 year-olds. See me in my office at the end of the lesson.'

And that was the end of our introduction to Dylan Thomas and Under Milk Wood. And it was the end of Mr Jones's teaching practice at our school. But I thought at the time that he had been right  about the words and the voice. Sixty years later, I still think he was right and I have a much-read first edition of Under Milk Wood and a frequently-played copy of the BBC recording to prove it.

So thank you, Mr Jones, for that great gift. And here, to mark the 60th anniversary of Burton and the cast's magnificent recording, the opening of Under Milk Wood. 

You can find the rest of the recording on YouTube. Unless, of course, you have your own much loved and much played copy. 

Music, Einstein and creativity

Picking up wehere I left off in my previous post . . . my own writing mentor, Briony Goffin, and I have often discussed the importance of finding ways of keeping one's creativity stimulated, to keep the ideas - and, in our case, the words - flowing. I live a long way from the cultural delights and opportunities offered by a city - art galleries, theatres, museums, exhibitions and that vibrant buzz generated by a city's diverse communities - so have learned to tap into what I do have.

Music is the most easily accessible pathway to creativity for me: singing with a choir and pushing my own boundaries, in terms of what I listen to. Which means that I now spend as much time tuned in to BBC Radio 3 as I do to Radio 4. R3's Late Junction, for example, described on the BBC website as 'a laid-back, eclectic mix of world music, ranging from the ancient to the contemporary', has long been the starting point for musical journeys of discovery and wonder. These days, I am never awake at the time it is broadcast, so have to rely on iPlayer to catch up, but no matter.

I usually listen to R3, driving to our choir sessions on Tuesday evenings, when the repeat of that morning's Composer of the Week programme is broadcast. Last week was devoted to the music of American composer, Philip Glass, whose work I find both compelling and mesmerising. I think it all started for me back in the 1980s, when I saw the film, Koyaanisqatsi, for which he composed the score, and then a televised production of his opera, Akenhaten; I had never heard anything quite like it before . . .

Glass describes himself as a 'a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist', so therein lies some spiritual and personal resonance. Added to which he has worked extensively with so many writers, poets, singers, musicians, performers, film makers and artists whom I admire, including Leonard Cohen, Doris Lessing, Twyla Tharp, Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar; if they love his work, it follows that I might too. And I do.

So there I was on Tuesday evening, in the car park, all set to spend a couple of hours making music myself, when the programme presenter, Donald MacLeod, introduced this, Einstein on the Beach, Knee 1. It is an extraordinary piece, from an even more extraordinary, five-hour opera based on Einstein's life and theories, which therefore has a certain circularity about it . . .

I knew nothing of the relationship between mathematics and music until I was 30-something and studying the Open University foundation course, An Introdution to the Humanities. Oh, I thought, if only I'd learned about this at school, I might have paid more attention during our dreary Maths O-level classes. Ditto physics, where I got no further than a very basic introduction; in terms of the school's O-level timetable, opting for history, which I did (how could I not?), meant dropping physics. Only later, much later, did I realise what I had missed. The Tao of Physics, which I am convinced would have made a huge difference to my appreciation and understanding of the subject, was not published until 1975, more than 10 years too late for my schoolgirl self.

If only we'd had a better teacher for maths; someone who could have fired our teenage imaginations, as did our arts and humanities teachers, instead of spending her time dreaming up endless new stratagems to keep us away from the temptation of boys, back-combed hair, make-up, fashion, rock and roll, and just about the entire 1960s. If only . . . but we were left to get by as best we could and there was certainly no help available for anyone who was floundering. (Rather too many of us. Where were the school inspectors?) What a wasted and lost opportunity, not just for me but for the hundreds of young girls who struggled (or slept/gazed out of the window/read furtively under their desks) in her classes throughout the decades she spent at our convent school. Years later, my work enabled me to meet some truly inspirational and gifted teachers of maths and physics and I would listen to them in awe, wondering if their students knew how lucky they were. (It should not, of course, be a matter of luck. Young minds deserve the very best teachers.)

But back to Philip Glass and Einstein on the Beach. You can read more about the entire work here, which is probably more reliable than any attempt on my part to explain it. Meanwhile, I invite you to listen to Knee 1, as music, as meditation, as . . . what you will. For me, it is like listening to the heartbeat of the universe.

Magnific-app

So, after yesterday's very serious post, some music. Not that I'm anything but serious about music.

There was no way I was going to miss Channel Four News presenter Jon Snow's appearance on Desert Island Discs last Sunday and I didn't - and I listened again yesterday. A fascinating programme featuring a consummate broadcaster and which introduced me to two pieces of music that I had not heard before.

First, Magnificat by Herbert Howells - one glorious sweep of very English choral music:

and then there was the Kyrie from Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle.

Such riches. Thank you Mr Snow.

As an aside, at my dear old alma mater, Gumley House Convent, we had our very own version of the Magnificat, composed, I think, by a former pupil. We always sang it at the end-of-year assembly and it always made me a bit weepy. Still does; I just have to hum the opening bars. I checked to see if, by any chance, a recording is available online anywhere. It isn't but this is: a BBC News item on the trial the school is running on the use of iPhones and apps as teaching aids . . .

Exciting stuff for this generation of pupils and far be it from me to go all o tempora o mores at the thought of it but do they, I wonder, still sing the Magnificat? If so, would one of them please do me the most enormous favour: just video it and then upload the clip to YouTube? After all, you've got the technology and you'd be making this old girl very happy. 

Miss Kennedy's guide to gracious living

When my friend C was here last week, we found ourselves reminsicing about Miss Kennedy, who taught general science at our school, Gumley House, for many years. Anyone who attended Miss Kennedy's classes will have vivid memories of those classes and not just of matters scientific.

She was something of a wonder to behold. At a time when many of our teachers still wore their black, academic gowns, Miss Kennedy went for colour, the more vibrant the better. Purple and red was a popular combination (tight, straight, purple wool skirt, worn with bright red jacket, for example), a gash of crimson lipstick and hair dyed to within an inch of its life. Deepest red. She had a voice like a cultured foghorn, which would boom across the science lab.

Ah, happy days, messing around with Bunsen burners, charting the production of coal tar or dissecting frogs (except for the squeamish, like me). But Miss Kennedy was about so much more than science. She was our very own version of Miss Jean Brodie and our weekly double science lessons were interspresed with little homilies on how to conduct ourselves when we left the shelter of the convent for life in the big wide world.

Topics ranged from  underwear ("never, ever go bra-less at any time, to avoid sagging"), to preferred places to take tea ("only the Ritz or Fortnum and Mason"), and there was sound advice on accessories ("never buy plastic shoes or handbags"). Memories posted on Friends Reunited include a mention of her glasses; these invariably had only one arm that she would suck, absent-mindedly, from time to time. She once used this arm to prod one of the dissected frogs and then forgot where it had been . . .

Miss Kennedy drove a Mini (very badly) and pupils were advised to stand well clear, especially if it was raining, as she swept in and out of the school drive. We played endless practical jokes on her; one former pupil claims to have put an eyeball into her handbag. No details, I'm afraid about the type or source of the eyeball. (The shelves of the lab were lined with jars of ancient and grim-looking body parts, all of which had been pickled in formaldehyde.) Nevertheless, even though her temper was as flame-like as her hair, for the most part she took the practical jokes in good heart.

On sunny summer days, she would eschew the stuffy confines of the staff room, walk across to the school playing field, hitch up her skirt, scramble on top of one of the old air-raid shelters and perch there, legs crossed, reading her daily newspaper. And did I imagine it, or was this also where she would light up a cigarette . . . ?

Despite all the diversions for advice on etiquette and gracious living, I can still remember so much of what she taught. How could one forget? I cannot, sadly, say the same of the chemistry teacher with whom we studied in the following two years and under whose uninspiring tutelage many of us lost our way with science. 

After I left Gumley House, I never expected to see any of my teachers again. (Did I assume that they remained sealed up within the convent walls? We certainly never imagined them having lives outside the school.) But I did meet Miss Kennedy once more, in the mid-1980s at Brompton Oratory's* very upmarket summer fair. The Oratory has long been the most fashionable and most sumptuous of London's Catholic churches and the company I was working for had taken a page of advertising in the programme. I'd been sent a complimentary ticket for the fair and went along. And there was my old science teacher, still a riot of colour, up to and including the red hair and lipstick.

It never occurred to me that she would remember me. But she did and, for half an hour, plied me with questions about what I had done with my life in the previous 20 years. We had tea together and, as we left, she put her arm through mine and said what a pleasure our meeting had been. As, indeed it was. I left her trying her luck on the bottle stall.

Years later, I heard that Miss Kennedy had been devastated when she eventually had to retire from the school; Gumley House and its pupils had been everything to her. Retirement meant life in a small bed-sit, somewhere in South Kensington, within walking distance of the Oratory. But then, for Miss Kennedy, this ornate church, with its exceptionally well-heeled and elegant congregation and its glorious music, would have been a natural choice as a place of worship. As she had so frequently reminded us: "Always choose the very best that you can, girls."

"A teacher affects eternity . . . "

Gumley House Convent

Maybe it's an age thing but I now pay increasing attention to the deaths column in my daily newspaper. Hmmm.  From time to time, inevitably, a familiar name will appear and that's what happened yesterday, when I saw that my former history teacher had died, aged 89. And immediately, I am back at my convent school, Gumley House in Isleworth, and remembering Miss Pat Mabey because she was, without any doubt, one of the finest teachers we had.

If I loved history when I arrived at the school in 1959,  by the time I left it was a passion. Miss Mabey taught us from the third year onwards and it's a tribute to her skills as a teacher, that almost 50 years later, I can still recall specific lessons. Her classes were a joy; she knew her subject inside out; she was full of enthusiasm; she had a wry sense of humour but, above all, she loved teaching.

She taught us to explore, to question, to weigh up and sift conflicting arguments, theories and points of view and to be ready to support our own views with evidence. It was Miss Mabey's teaching of the Age of Revolution that fired a spark in my mind that has never left. And I know I'm not alone. When former Gumley girls, Jackie Bennett and Rosemary Forgan wrote There's Something About a Convent Girl (published by Virago in 1991), Miss Mabey was the only teacher who got a special mention in their acknowledgements.

Pat Mabey taught at Gumley House for 35 years and was Deputy Head for the last 13 of those years. During her time, it was known as Gumley House Convent Grammar School for Girls, in these more inclusive days it is simply Gumley House Convent School and has been judged 'outstanding' by Ofsted. I am sure she would have felt enormously proud to see the school's continuing achievements and traditions, to which she contributed so much.

Something of Miss Mabey and her devotion to the school lives on in cyberspace - this extract from the history of Gumley House, of which she was a joint author.

Thank you dear teacher; sleep peacefully - you've earned your rest.