Orange Crate Art
Archive for the ‘Weblogs’ Category.
Drama Withdrawal
Some time ago Rick decided that he was suffering from drama withdrawal and went and joined Orpington Rep, one of the local amdram societies. They welcomed him with open arms and within a few months he had played a murderer and a hero. The second was in The Woman in White, for which he enlisted me as a wardrobe mistress. They're fitting in another show before he goes off to university - three comedy one-acters - and I was invited to the read-through. I pointed out that I'm a musician, not an actress. "Come on, it'll be a laugh," said Rick. So I came, and it was. And I found myself cast as a Wicked Stepmother. How did that happen?
The Age of Uncertainty
To sit over a foolish or even a wise novel when the daily duties of life demand our attention is absolutely wicked. We have seen, in our own life, the mother of a family devote herself to novel reading.
The father was at sea in the merchant service. A boy, a girl, and the house demanded the wife's attention. The children were neglected, dirty, ragged, untaught, running about the roads; the house was dirty beyound description, for there was but one servant, who naturally, followed her mistress's example.
The wife could not make her income suffice her, because no one watched against waste or dishonesty in the kitchen, and her husband, when he came home from sea, was arrested for her debts.
The son, utterly ruined, ran away from school, and finally disappeared in Australia. The daughter, trained only in the unreal folly of novels, married secretly a man much below her father's station - he was also an hereditary madman!
When the mother of the boy and girl married, she had been a lovely, clever girl. But novel reading, like intoxication, bought misery on her and on two following generations.
