Old Meeting Yard, Bedworth

I fear I am in danger of becoming boring on the subject of how I continue to be overwhelmed by the strength of community spirit in English rural neighbourhoods.

This week I performed in Bedworth, a town in north Warwickshire which developed in the  coal mining era of the late 19^th and 20^th centuries.  Communities thrived around their meeting places in those days and the town boasts the Old Meeting Yard, a huge Victorian building which high ceilings, thick walls and an acoustic to die for.     Often community centres of such age and scale are too big for modern uses and it struck me as a building which could so easily have become a dinosaur, but Bedworth has spirit and that spirit has not only kept the building alive, but provided the need and, more to the point, money for its facilities to be improved and updated.  And so a brand new kitchen and toilet facilities have been built.  Accordingly, it was felt that the appropriate entertainment for the night was my play “Ten Days … that shook the Kitchen!” and an audience of nearly 70 gathered to sit at long tables to watch the show and then enjoy supper cooked in the  new kitchen.

Standing in the wings minutes before curtain up there was a noise to my left and a latecomer walked in from the cold and told me he’d convinced himself that the play started half an hour later than advertised.  As this was happening, Linda the organiser was introducing me.  As she finished her introduction, he walked towards the door through which I was about to make my entrance.    The audience burst into a welcoming round of applause, and he entered – never to be late again, I fancy.

After the show a lady came up to me and accused me of stalking her.  This could have been awkward.   Stalkers and actors have been known to go together .. but isn’t it the actor who is supposed to be the one who is stalked, I wondered?  The lady explained that there were at least five coincidences between the storyline of the play and her life: school life, the ages of her children being the same as that of the children in the play, their weekly activities being identical, the African snails her children brought home from school – one of which bore the same name as one of the children in the play.  By this time even I was beginning to feel spooked.  Reassured though  because Ten Days .. that shook the Kitchen! is now three years old.  I know we’re not talking longevity on the scale of The Mousetrap, but nevertheless it was comforting to be told that the play is as relevant today as it was when I first wrote it.