• We crossed the river to Berkeley Castle last night, to watch the Rococo Players perform A Winter’s Tale, an very good they were too. The Great Hall made a wonderfully intimate space for such a performance and brought us up close to big, human emotions.

    I found it odd that my daughter could be so engrossed in the Shakespeare, with all it’s difficult language and want not to watch Jeremy Kyle on the same day. The people on Jeremy Kyle were horrible, doing horrible things to each other, but the more I watched the Shakespeare unfold in front of us, in close up almost touching distance, the more I saw similarities between the protagonists in both Shakespeare’s and Kyle’s productions.

    Kings and queens have more elegant language and make larger gestures because they can, but the Family feuds and structures on Jeremy Kyle are exactly the same as those found in Shakespeare.

    What would Shakespeare be doing if he lived now? He’d be watching Jeremy Kyle every morning, that’s for sure, and probably working in reality TV.

    That’s why Shakespeare is still so relevant – The first quarter of an hour is hard, as the ear gets used to the language, but soon we are absorbed by all our petty family stories writ large and repeated generation by generation.

    Not been to Berkeley Castle before. It was wonderful in the night, prettily light up with bulbs rather than spotlights. We must go again in the daylight and see what it looks like.

  • Prince Edward has put his foot in it about the The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

    He says that the possibility of death makes it more attractive to youngsters. Of course he is absolutely right, but was probably a bit insensitive in the way he said it. The parents of those killed while aiming fro their award are still grieving.

    But the fact that you can die is what makes the award mean something. I remember being a teenager myself and wanting to pit myself against nature. I wanted to sleep in snow holes and survive in the mountains. I never got to do it for real, but I understood the thrill of the danger and learned all the skills that would help me to survive.

    The point is, that the kids are meant to be trained to survive and not die. Tragic accidents do happen though. If you keep them safe at home, they can still fall off ladders poison themselves with salmonella.

    Teenagers need to test their boundaries and it’s a harsh cruel world out there.

  • I had my Annual walk with my friend, the crime fiction author, Andrew Taylor, yesterday. We over do it once a year and today I’m feeling a little stiff. We must have walked ten miles or so.

    Starting out just below Staunton, in the Forest of Dean, we walked up to the Kymin Naval Temple that looks down on Monmouth, where we headed for lunch in a pub. I don’t know what the people next to us were eating, but I’m not sure it was dead! Made my stomach feel a little heavy as we headed off upstream along the river Wye footpath.

    It was glorious, the beech and the oak turning a riot of autumn colours. We stopped into the tiny Dixton Church for a look around. It seemed to be inhabited mostly by the Griffin Griffin Family who sound like they should be put into a book. A new, carved oak organ loft has been put in, at some expense, I should think, It’s a bit fab and ready to last another 500 years or so – if the floods don’t get it first.

    We crossed back over the river on the Biblins Footbridge, which is very squeeky, swayey and I’m a celebrity get me out of here-ish. It was getting late by this stage and we hightailed it back up to Staunton. Luckily Andy’s sense of direction was perfect. we went past the Suckstone, an enormous slab that looks like a crashed spaceship, and the wonderfully named Far Harkening, a cliff that, I imagine, acts as an amplifier when calling across the valley.

    As ever, we resolved not to leave it so long next time. We do have a route planned for next time, so maybe we will do it sooner rather than later.