Not one of Eugene O’Neill’s greatest plays, but my log suggests that Bobbie and I both found this production very good…
…and why shouldn’t we. Vanessa Redgrave & Timothy Dalton, with support from Amanda Boxer, Malcolm Tierney and several other good names. David Thacker directed it.
This was, in fact, a West End transfer of a much-lauded Young Vic production; the UK premier of this play. Bobbie and I couldn’t get in at the Young Vic but got in early during the transfer, so saw the original Young Vic cast/production.
Bobbie and I were on a bit of a roll, theatre-wise, at the start of that year, seeing some great productions. This was certainly one of them.
Lindsay Duncan was a most memorable Maggie The Cat and Ian Charleson was superb as Brick; tragically Charleson died just a couple of years after this production. The cast also included Eric Porter, Alison Steadman, Henry Goodman…plus many other fine performers. Howard Davies directed.
The Lyttelton is not my favourite place for this sort of play, but somehow this one seemed to work in that space. I seem to recall it received superb notices and for good reason.
Michael Billington loved this production – his review clipped below:
There’s little on-line about this particular production, given its antiquity, but if you have no idea even what the piece looks/feels like, here is a clip of Paul Newman and Elisabeth Taylor from the 1950’s film version:
…while the following clip is from a subsequent National theatre production of Cat:
https://youtu.be/GobBM0Tt0j4
Anyway, the Lindsay Duncan & Ian Charleson version will live long in my memory. Bobbie’s too, I’ll guess. I’d better ask her.
I rated this play/production superb in my log – I remember it well and fondly.
Jim Broadbent and Linda Bassett were both outstanding – I think this might have been the first time I saw either of them in the theatre and it was, I think, my first experience of seeing an Athol Fugard play performed. If so, it was the first of many in all three cases.
The play is about a Russian soldier hiding in a pig sty for many years after the war and possible recriminations for his desertion are over. No doubt it is meant to be a parable with relevance to the Afrikaner position in South Africa.
Frankly, I found it hard to engage too deeply with the parable at the time, but did think it was an interesting and entertaining play, especially in the hands of the talented cast.
Unusually for productions that please me so much, Fugard himself directed this one – I’m not keen on the idea of playwrights directing their own work and usually detect some untrammelled egotism in such productions, but I think Fugard might be an exception to the “don’t direct your own plays” rule of thumb.
Did Bobbie enjoy this one as much as I did? I think so, at the time, but whether it stuck so long in her memory as it did mine is a question I’ll have to ask her.
I’ve either mislaid or never had the programme for this one, sadly, so I needed to do a bit of on-line searching.
The log makes it clear that i went to see this play with Bobbie and that we both thought it was “really good”.
I do remember enjoying it and I especially remember an early scene in which Maggie Smith, as a tour guide, starts making up the history when her memory fails her and/or the reality doesn’t seem interesting enough.
These days I quite often hear the Lord’s tour guides explaining the history of real tennis to a tour group while I play. Sometimes they are pretty accurate and sometimes they indeed dwell into fiction. On one recent occasion (February 2019) they told the group that the charming woman I was playing against, whose handicap is some 10 points less impressive than my modest handicap, is a former open champion and one of the finest players in the world. We both lifted our performances a little to try and impress.
“Fantasy floods in where fact leaves a vacuum”, as Lettice puts it in the play, Lettice and Lovage, which is the very thing I am digressing away from writing about here.
Apparently it opened in October 1987 so we got in fairly early in its long West End run. It was at the Globe Theatre – i.e. the West End Globe, not the Shakespeare facsimile thing that didn’t yet exist in 1988…obvs.
By all accounts it was a big hit – hence the long run and subsequent Broadway run too.
Maggie Smith was terrific as was Margaret Tyzack as her foil/nemesis. I don’t in truth remember what the supporting cast was like – probably just fine. Michael Blakemore directed it, which is usually a very good sign.
By all accounts, including his own, Shaffer wrote the Lettice part with Maggie Smith in mind, which makes sense:
I recall that the play was both funny and thought-provoking about issues of conservation, history and the grey areas between historical fact and fiction.
What is it about visits to theatres named Theatre Royal with Bobbie Scully, I wondered?
My log records the following from our 1986 visit to the Theatre Royal Haymarket:
This production was notable for the overlapping dialog to speed it up. Despite that mercy, we attended on one of the hottest days of the year and the air conditioning was poor or non existent. Quite literally, a fight broke out in the audience (just in front of us) at one point. Luvvie rage?
Ah yes, I remember it well.
I liked Jonathan Miller’s idea to use overlapping dialogue. While Long Day’s Journey is regarded as a great play, it is normally incredibly long for a play in which pretty much nothing happens. The overlapping dialogue shortens the play a fair bit. Further, it added a sense of realism to the drama. A family pretty much at war with itself probably would comprise people speaking a lot without really listening to anything the others are saying.
This was a Broadway production on transfer to the West End – the Haymarket was doing quite a few of those back then.
Jack Lemmon played the lead in this production and I thought he was very good.
A young unknown (to us) named Kevin Spacey played James Jr – I thought he overacted a fair bit, but then what do I know. In fairness, when Janie and I saw him 10-12 years later play the lead, Hicky, in The Iceman Cometh, I felt he had come on leaps and bounds as an actor.
As for the heat and the poor air conditioning and the flight – that for sure is my most abiding memory of the Long Day’s Journey evening.
The fight broke out towards the end of the interval. I think someone simply stepped on someone’s foot while trying to get back to their seat. So much so normal in those poorly designed, ludicrously-expensive-yet-space-restricted-seats in theatres housed in illustrious 19th century buildings such as the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
I seem to recall that both of the combatants were Americans. Perhaps the stomper was belatedly or insufficiently apologetic to the stompee, but anyway they actually stood there fighting for a while.
I especially remember a rather camp usher rushing to the end of the offending row, waving his arms and shouting,
Stop it! Stop it at once! Please stop fighting!…
…as if arm waving and pleas were likely to stop a couple of audience rage pugilists at that stage of the dispute.
I don’t suppose the fight lasted all that long, nor was anyone seriosuly hurt. Nor did either of the antagonists refuse to sit close to the other once they had calmed down – I think they were only two or three seats away from each other. Far enough, I suppose.
I do recall Bobbie and I deciding that the fight was the most action-packed dramatic incident of the evening. Long Day’s Journey is, in truth, a play in which almost nothing happens.
I had logged this incorrectly as 4 August but actually we went 16 August.
My diary also reminds me that Bobbie and I went to Inigo Jones for a pre-theatre meal, which I describe as:
…fab nouvelle cuisine meal.
Remember Inigo Jones restaurant in Covent Garden? Remember nouvelle cuisine?
I also note that we…
…had coffee at Swiss…
…[i..e. The Swiss Centre] after the show.
Bobbie might now remember some or all about the evening, but last time I asked (17 February 2020) she drew a blank, other than remembering having seen this production with me.
Wednesday 16 July – Fairly hectic day at work – met Annalisa for lunch. Met Bobbie after work – had meal at Mayflower & went on to Woody Allen Film after – v nice.
Mayflower was one of the better Chinese restautrants in Chinatown – now (writing in 2020) resurrected as New Mayflower.
The Woody Allen film in question would have been Hannah And Her Sisters, which went on general release in the UK a couple of days later. No doubt we went to a preview at the Curzon West End (just opposite the Mayflower).
I still think Hannah And Her Sisters is a great movie. But gone are the days that I’d complain about a hectic day at work in which I had lunch with a friend and left work early enough to have a meal and then see a movie. Such a snowflakey-sense-of-entitlement-youngster, I was.
Pretty busy at work today. Went to LC [Laurence Corner] etc.
Met Graham Watson for a drink – Mike came too (is leaving office).
(Met Jon Graham on way home).
Earlyish night.
I hasten to add that Laurence Corner was, for me, work – not a fun outing at lunchtime. Mike (he who was leaving the office) must be Mike King, who, by that time, I think was doing much of the work on the Laurence Corner account and who was, presumably, handing over some of the reins to me.
Graham Watson was an old friend from school. I vaguely recall running into him in London and thus meeting up. Coincidentally Jon graham was also a friend from school and (if I recall correctly) I didn’t realise he was still hanging in Streatham until this chance encounter. Jon and I met up again more than once, IIRC. I’m not sure whether Graham and I did. Perhaps Graham gave me the bumps…again!
Several years earlier, Graham Watson & Paul Deacon giving me the bumps, Tim Church feigns a lack of interest, picture “borrowed” from Paul’s facebook posting with grateful thanks.
I think Rumours was a Chinese restaurant in Newcastle [corrected – see postscript below].This picture of me eating Chinese food is from Guilin in 1993.
The end of September and beginning of October at Keele was the lull before the approaching storm of the new academic year. Apart from some fallout from the resits and resulting appeals processes, we were getting ready for the sabbatical year proper with a lot of training and induction activity.
Sunday, 23 September 1984 Got up quite early – mooched around flat – mooched around union – went over to Kate [Fricker] evening.
Monday, 24 September 1984 – not so busy today. Slouched a bit – felt tired too – went to bed early.
Tuesday, 25 September 1984 – Busy day with training course etc. Appeals results came out late afternoon – worked late then went to Rumours with group [probably Kate Fricker, John White, Pady Jalali, Andy Crawford, Ali Dabbs and any other committee folk who were around]– back to Union and mine.
Wednesday, 26 September 1984 – busyish with training and appeals results. Cooked meal for Kate, John & Ali, and took an early night.
Thursday, 27th September 1984 – Busyish day, callers, meetings etc. Went on trip with Allied Breweries and drunk quite a bit.
Friday, 28 September 1984 – Extremely busy with belated appeals etc – got to London late – too tired to do anything.
Saturday, 29 September 1984 – Got up late – went to Brent Cross. In evening went to Rasa Sayang for nice meal.
Sunday, 30 September 1984 – Got up late. Went to Blooms for late lunch – then went drinking in Highgate.
The End Of Appeals
Mopping up after the appeals results came out was quite a busy period, but nowhere near as busy as the time between resit results coming in and lodging the appeals. We had been quite successful with appeals that year. Without going into too much detail, a serious botch up by the French department with one blameless student opened the door to pretty much any appeal by a student who had flunked that particular subject. To some extent that was gaming the system but Eddie Slade, the Senior Tutor, gave me encouragement to assist those modern language students in so gaming. Oliver Goulden, who headed that department at that time, never forgave me for “humiliating him”. I remember politely pointing out to Oliver, when he said that to me, that he had humiliated himself with the initiating botch.
A Trip To London – North Of The River This Time
I don’t think I visited my parents at all on that London visit – I think I just visited Bobbie, who had just started sharing a flat at the top of the Archway Road with several other recent law graduates who were about to start their law/bar exams and (in her case) pupillage.
Brent Cross was not my sort of place, but I think Bobbie needed to buy some stuff for her new digs. She had been kind enough to help me with my move from Barnes to Horwood when visiting Keele; it was the least I could do to traipse around Brent Blooming Cross with her (oh how I hate shopping) before an evening treat at the Rasa Sayang, a Malaysian Restaurant in Soho, which was one of my favourite haunts at that time.
I remember the visit Bobbie and I made to Bloom’s in Golders Green very well. Bobbie was keen to try the place as she had never been to an authentic Jewish restaurant. I gently cautioned against the idea but was persuaded that this was something that Bobbie wanted to do.
The rudeness of Bloom’s waiters was the subject of legend. Aficionados of rude waiter places in London might like to conjure up a Jewish version of Wong Kei (Chinese) or Khan’s (Indian) with the worst excesses of those places coming to the fore.
But actually I think Bobbie’s and my experience is up there with any of the celebrity “endorsements” of the rudeness.
I had treated Bobbie to the Rasa Sayang the night before and she was to treat me to Bloom’s the next day. That’s how we rolled in those days.
Problem was, the waiter’s “sales technique” with a couple was to try to push the most expensive and/or extra dishes at the female, on the expectation that the male, keen to impress his date, would say yes to everything as soon as the female showed the slightest interest in the item being pushed. This technique was not going to work very well in our circumstances, not least because I knew all about the dishes that were being pushed and Bobbie was looking for my guidance.
Allow me to script one of several such attempts by the waiter.
WAITER (fawning, to Bobbie): I think maybe you would like to try the kishka, madam?
BOBBIE (to me): what’s kishka?
ME (yawning, to Bobbie): stuffed intestine – I don’t think you’ll like it. The helzel (stuffed chicken’s neck) is probably enough stuffed body parts for one meal.
WAITER (thinks): this guy is a pain in the kishkas. What’s the matter with him?
On the meal went, with the waiter fawning over Bobbie, while Bobbie gently but clearly signalled that she was the paying customer and I was the guest, even though I knew what we were ordering and she didn’t.
Eventually Bobbie called for the bill. The waiter brought the bill and went to hand the bill to me.
BOBBIE: No, no, please hand the bill to me.
The waiter looked at me strangely. Then he looked at Bobbie even more strangely. Eventually he handed the bill to Bobbie.
Bobbie settled the bill with notes. The waiter returned with the change, pointedly placing the saucer of change in front of me, not Bobbie.
Bobbie equally pointedly grabbed the saucer, asked the waiter to wait, retrieved some but not all of the change for herself and handed him back the saucer with his tip.
…said the waiter, which means “madness” in Yiddish.
Bloom’s.
Postscript: Jonathan Knight points out that Rumours was in fact a burger restaurant; the Chinese one was Peaches – still going in 2024.
Still, the 1993 tale of the Guilin snake, from which that picture is taken, is well worth a read although it is entirely unconnected with tales of Keele in 1984:
The National Union Of Students (NUS) provided training courses for sabbatical officers in September. I think all four of us (Kate Fricker, John White, Pady Jalali and me) went on at least one or two. Here are my diary entries about my week:
Monday, 3 September 1984 up early – Bobbie [Scully] dropped me at Stoke. Met Kathy [from the North Staffs Poly Students’ Union if I recall correctly] and went to [University of] York for Education and Representations (E&R) Module.
Tuesday, 4 September 1984 – E&R module in York (okay). Got back to Stoke, went to Kathy’s for a while. Came back to Keele.
Wednesday, 5 September 1984 – Got up really early to go to [University of] Reading for Welfare Module.
Thursday, 6 September 1984 – Welfare Module in Reading (v good indeed). Got back to Keele late and very tired.
Friday, 7 September 1984 – Tired today – cleared some of the backlog of work – ate in McDonald’s in evening.
Saturday, 8 September 1984 – Went shopping in morning – did some work in afternoon – went to Wolstanton to meet Vera [sic – Veera Bachra] in evening.
Sunday, 9 September 1984 – Rose late. Went in to office to clear work in afternoon – went over to Kate [Fricker]’s for meal in evening.
I thought better of the welfare course than I did of the education and representations one. I think I felt I had previously acquired most of the negotiation skills and possessed the requisite common sense that the first course was trying to impart. Whereas the welfare one steeped me in some techniques and protocols that hadn’t occurred to me before and stick with me to this day, not least the notion that volunteers and sabbaticals should signpost and refer, but not attempt to advise and/or counsel.
I remember Phil Woolas being quite heavily involved in at least one of, if not both of, the courses. He was NUS President at the time and went on to a ministerial career in the Labour Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
I had forgotten that Veera Bachra had remained in The Potteries even until then and that we kept in touch into my sabbatical year. She had been my neighbour in Barnes L Block for a couple of years and became a good pal, as described in several Ogblog pieces (this link all those tagged Veera). I do wonder what happened to her subsequently.
Eating with Kate Fricker, more often at my place than at hers but on this occasion at hers, was a fairly regular occurrence throughout our sabbatical year.
Aftermath Of Resits Week
Reinforcements: Annalisa de Mercur, picture thanks to Mark Ellicott
I had been primed to be ready for a constant stream of people through my office, primarily those who had failed their resits and wanted help with appeals and/or pastoral care. It’s just as well I’d been primed.
Thus spake my diary:
Monday, 10 September 1984 – Busy day getting ready for the onslaught etc – Kate came over for a meal in the evening.
Tuesday, 11 September 1984 – resit results came out today – extremely chaotic and exhausting day. Worked till quite late.
Wednesday, 12 September 1984 – Appeals business all day. – Annalisa arrived as reinforcements. – came over for a drink in evening.
Thursday, 13 September 1984 -very busy day with appeals etc. Worked till quite late. Annalisa came over for dinner in evening.
Friday, 14 September 1984 very busy with appeals today – Bobbie arrived early in the evening. Went to Pinocchio’s for dinner and came back.
Saturday, 15 September 1984 Bobby left early. I got up quite late – went shopping with Kate – worked in afternoon – Annalisa and I went over to Kate’s for dinner in evening.
Sunday, 16 September 1984 – Got up fairly late – came into office for afternoon etc. Had Kate and Annalisa for dinner in evening.
Would you believe that Pinocchio’s is still an Italian Restaurant, albeit rebranded Pasta Di Piazza with decent enough reviews still. For sure it was one of the better places in Newcastle0-Under-Lyme in 1984.
Annalisa was on my Education Sub-Committee and very dedicated to the task she was too. Coming up to Keele, to help with appeals week, was over and above the call of duty, as were many of Annalisa’s sterling efforts that year.
Progressing From Appeals To Beer-Tasting
Ale be seeing you in all the old familiar places…
The appeals process continued into the early part of the following week, after which attention switched to the vexed question of beer.
In particular, under our new bar regime, we were very keen to offer real ales on a regular basis and had settled on the ballroom bar as a suitable location (actually the only suitable bar) for the storage and serving of such beers.
Other Ogblog postings, previous and to come, attest that we committee folk were quite traumatised by the process of dismissing the bar managers and the subsequent appeals processes. But I confess that we did enjoy the several field trips and organised tastings by the breweries that were courting us for business in that latter part of the summer. The diary leaves me in no doubt:
Monday, 17 September 1984 – Very busy day indeed with these appeals. Worked till very late.
Tuesday, 18 September 1984 extremely hectic last day of appeals, etc, – cooked. Came down to union and got pissed at John Smith’s expense.
Wednesday, 19 September 1984 -Very tired today – took it fairly easy. Got pissed at Allied Breweries expense tonight.
Thursday, 20 September 1984 – Tired and not very industrious today. Went to union in the evening and had to buy own drinks – didn’t stay long.
Friday, 21 September 1984 -Still a bit shattered. Went over to Kate’s for meal in the evening.
The Theatre Royal Hanley wanted to encourage Keele University students to attend their theatre. They offered me a pair of free tickets to see any show I fancied over the summer. I was a new Student Union sabbatical and it was a new (or I should say revived) venue. I suppose they thought people like me might have some influence over the “yoof” audience.
I spotted what looked like quite an interesting play – with Tom Conti in it if I’m not mistaken, which I thought Bobbie and I would both enjoy when she was up for a long weekend at the end of August/start of September.
Problem was, I chose the Sunday evening (probably because we were otherwise engaged on both the Friday and Saturday evenings) and failed to check whether the Sunday evening show was the same show as the Monday to Saturday show.
It wasn’t.
You cannot blame the box office – they had been instructed to issue me with comps for whatever evening I chose…and I chose the Sunday evening.
The Life And Music Of Rodgers And Hammerstein. I am 95% sure that the show we saw was Hella Toros and her ensemble. A grande dame by 1984, widow of John McLaren, who had been in the original cast productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein shows in the 1950s…
…here’s how she looked and sounded in 1940, before sadness and illness struck her life for some while:
Correction: it wasn’t Helen Toros’s ensemble, it was the Newcastle Amateur Operatic Chorus. The following clipping from the Evening Sentinel confirms why/how I got the “They’re Playing Our Song” offer (Peta Toppano and Barry Quinn, not Tom Conti) confused with Rodgers and Hammerstein, plus confirms exactly who performed:
It was the most stilted show imaginable. Imagine a heavy European accent dramatically stating
Rodgers and Hammerstein, the most wonderful musicals in the whole world…
…I bet she said that about all the composers of such works in all of her shows…
…Ivor Novello – the most wonderful writer of musical shows in history…Sigmund Romberg, the most exquisite operettas ever written…
Between numbers, Hella gave us bits of her life story tentatively connected to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Her late husband’s involvement in the original stage productions of the musicals was bigged up to the extent that one might have imagined that John and Hella were round Oscar and Richard’s places all the time back in the 1950s.
In short, Bobbie and I had turned up at the theatre expecting to see “our sort of play” and found ourselves instead watching a static recital of songs from musicals, delivered in an exceptionally old-fashioned style.
The audience was almost as stilted as the performances. Not that everyone in the audience was about three times our age. Dear me no. Some of them were at least four times our age.
Bobbie and I didn’t know where to look. Actually we did…not at each other, lest the giggles get the better of us.
To be fair, we mostly won the struggle to keep straight faces for most of the first half of the recital…
…until the rather elderly and minimally mobile grande dame of the show, Hella Toros, attempted to sing Happy Talk with appropriate movements…lifted from the movie…
…our struggle with retaining our composure was lost. For good.
We felt we owed it to the audience, who were, after all, our elders and betters, to withdraw during the interval, ahead of the second half of the show, rather than inflict the inevitable giggly disturbances on the audience throughout the second half.
The exact nature of the Hanley-based Indian meal we devoured in place of the second half of the show is lost in the mists of time. It was probably quite good food and reasonably priced – there were some decent Indian restaurants in the Potteries by then.
Is it possible that, but for my choice of night/wrong show error, I might have been able to influence the student body to frequent the Theatre Royal Hanley and helped turn around the disaster-prone institution? Unlikely.
On reflection, Bobbie & I probably shouldn’t go to any theatre with “Theatre Royal” in its name…I recall a peculiarly incident-rich visit to the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Bobbie to see Long Day’s Journey Into the Night. There’ll be a link here once I have written that one up.
I found a lot of my sabbatical year hard work. Occasionally I found the work emotionally challenging too.
Still, I doubt if I’ll find a more unequivocally miserabilist entry in any of my diaries, across the many years I kept such notes, than 30 August 1984:
Thursday, 30 August 1984 – horrendously busy day – including suicide, Frank [Dillon]’s burglary and loads of misery. Went to McDonald’s and pub in eve confused and wretched.
Suicide was an issue that constantly worried Keele staff and students alike. At one time Keele had a reputation for having a high suicide rate amongst students, despite also having a reputation for having very high satisfaction ratings. Existential Marmite?
Seriously, I recall being very upset when I learnt that Theo had committed suicide in the spring of that year, while I was completing my finals. I knew she was troubled; she and I had discussed the sorts of things she might get involved with in the Education & Welfare Office during my sabbatical year.
Whether I really would have been able to help her or not, we’ll never know. Things got too much for her that spring and she chose to end her life. Those close to Theo (in particular Ashley Fletcher and Simon Legg) chose not to tell me about her death until after my finals in the June, because they thought the news might upset me (it certainly did) and thus disturb what little equilibrium I had for finals cramming.
I don’t recall the details of the suicide I refer to in this diary entry. I don’t think it was anyone I really knew and I suspect it had happened away from the campus – possibly someone who had failed their resits or in some other way knew they were in trouble at Keele, but not someone who had presented themselves to me.
I also don’t remember any of the details of Frank Dillon’s burglary, except that he found it disturbing, as anyone who has experienced being the victim of burglary would attest.
Friday, 31 August 1984 – busyish day with resits and Frank’s business. Bobbie arrived in evening, moved, and then went to Hong Kong Garden for meal.
Saturday, 1 September 1984 – Went shopping late morning and dossed around, finished moving and cooked Bobbie a meal in the evening.
I say “moved” and “finished moving” in glib phrases, but this was a change of some moment for me. I had shared flats in Barnes for two-and-a-half years, very happily for the two years in Barnes L54 as discussed in several earlier pieces and as reprised in a letter to Concourse that June.
I moved into my own flat, in Horwood K Block. It was a small “resident tutor’s flat” which was basically two study bedrooms and the end of a corridor repurposed as a two-room flat with a living room (one of the study bedrooms), a small bedroom & a small bathroom (the other study bedroom) and a galley kitchen (the repurposed end of the corridor).
It was small, but it worked and it was all mine. Actually, I say “all mine” but it proved remarkably popular as a doss house for people who for one reason or another, couldn’t get to their own places for the night – e.g. John White, who moved off campus for that year but quite often wanted to stay on. John became very well acquainted with the floor of my so-called living room.
Despite the many visitors, I acquired a taste for having “a couple of rooms of my own” on the back of this experience and have never quite shaken off the desire, at times, to retire to my own little place.
The Friday diary entry confirms my suspicion that Hong Kong Garden was my Chinese restaurant of choice at that time. Anyone else remember it?
Not THAT Hong Kong, not THAT garden…the above photo nine years later
Did I ever thank Bobbie properly for helping me with my move? I know it was only from one side of the main campus to the other, but I do recall that the extra muscle really helped. Bobbie might not be the tallest person around, but, certainly in those days, she was pretty strong and could lug boxes as well or better than most folk.
Michael Ratcliffe On Cat Sun, Feb 7, 1988 – 26 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Billington on Poet Thu, Feb 4, 1988 – 14 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
