Visit to the vicarage
March 18, 2011
I met Grahame and his wife Mary when they visited me in 'The Reading Room' at the RSC. They sat down to talk to me and were encyclopaedic in their knowledge of the theatre. During the conversation Grahame mentioned that he had programmes of all the RSC shows he had ever attended. He also told me that he recorded each performance into a notebook and had been doing that ever since he saw Paul Robeson playing Othello in 1959. I was intrigued and wanted to see the book as well as the tapestry that Mary had hanging on the wall with several Shakespeare plays represented in it. She had bought it years ago from the RSC. So we made an appointment for me to visit them at the vicarage. Suffice to say we never got round to filming and talking about the tapestry, as the programmes and records in the notebook took up our entire visit and we ran out of time.
As a writer I am intrigued by the act of writing. The dedicated process of having a regular practise where you write for yourself, the act of recording, of paying homage, of diarising a particular experience; the selfless commitment of regularly putting pen to paper, what motivates the writer, the writing itself and the notebook. I wanted to see Grahame's notebooks. It reminded me of an old fashioned method of recording the world. I had worked at the Wellcome Trust Library two years ago and seen the journals and writings of explorers, the recorded household instructions that housewives recorded in little notebooks for the next generation to follow, filled with medicinal and cookery recipes. I loved looking at the handwriting, the type of book, what the author wrote because they thought it was important. So was intrigued by Grahame's meticulous inscription of each of his experiences in the RSC theatre.
The day that I went to visit Graham was magical. There was something exciting about visiting a vicarage in a small country town to meet a person who kept records of their passion as well as collected and maintained memorabilia of their visits to the theatre. I could not wait to get to his house.
The magic began with my phone call to the local cab station. I remember saying, 'Hello, can I order a cab please' and the controller asking, 'Is that Malika?' I remember being shocked. How could he know who I was simply by hearing my voice? It turns out that he had seen me read poetry at the event 'Uncertainty is Not A Good Dog' at the Swan Theatre where I had hosted a night of poetry with brilliant poets like Jackie Kay, Jo Shapcott (who recently won the Costa Prize for poetry), Kayo Chingonyi and Jay Bernard and he had simply recognised my voice from that night. We talked poetry for a quick minute and I made an appointment to interview him for the project.
Then there was the drive to the Cotswolds. I remember the sun beaming down on the fields as we drove along the high way, filled with trees that had lost their leaves to the winter, the fat grazing cows, the bloated heavy clouds, all puffed up like moving cotton wool, the tinges of pale blue sky, the winding narrow roads, the thatched roofs and red brick houses that indicated we were passing through another village. It was a beautiful winter's day and I felt that this was the beginning of a journey that had begun when Grahame and Mary had popped into the 'Reading Room' in the Swan Theatre. We got lost trying to find the vicarage and Grahame walked out to find us. Everyone in the village also knew that we were expected at the vicarage that day so when we stopped for directions people knew who we were. I recorded most of the session with Grahame. Here is a filmed excerpt of our conversation.
by Malika Booker
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