You are welcome to read about this trip to Ireland in reverse order, blog-stylee, but you might prefer to start with this preamble and work forwards.
Photographs from the whole of our trip to Ireland are gathered in an album on Flickr, click here.
Asides
Ireland With Dumbo – 7 May to 19 May 2015 – Preamble
With my mother’s condition worsening over the autumn of 2014, we made no plans for a holiday proper but did plan at least to go walking in Ireland. After mum’s passing in early 2015, we briefly considered more ambitious plans but then thought better of it; I/we had been through enough and had lots still to sort out. The plan to walk in Ireland come springtime was still a sensible one.
Glossary for less-informed readers: Ged and Daisy are long-standing nicknames for me and Janie. Dumbo is my little Suzuki Jimny. He joined the family in September 2014; this trip to Ireland was his first serious journey with us.
Photographs from the whole of our trip to Ireland are gathered in an album on Flickr, click here.
Malawi, 27 September to 15 October 2013, placeholder/links
We had a wonderful trip to Malawi in the early autumn of 2013.
As usual, we took loads of pictures and my log runs to 28 pages of notes.
The best of the pictures, about 250 of them, are gathered into two Flickr albums:
I have now turned the notes into legible, structured blog stories and postings, starting with this one:
Malawi Journey Day Zero: Slipping Up & Leaving Home, 27 September 2013
But if anyone is really so interested they want to try and decipher my scrawl and check that I have really typed up what I might have really be trying to say, here are scans of the hand-written logs; Part One covers the period of the first photo album, Part Two…:
Malawi Write Up Part One of Two pp1-15 at 200dpib&w
Malawi Write Up Part Two of Two pp15-28 at 200dpib&w
…or perhaps a more legible source; the itinerary from our agent, Ultimate Travel, which describes the planned trip, rather than the actuality of it:
Harris and Wormleighton – Malawi Final Itinerary
I did review also the places we stayed on Trip Advisor:
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Finally, here are scans of the handful of documents we picked up along the way:
Long To Rain Over Us – Heavy Rollers Edgbaston Trip 2012 – Nigel Hinks’s Take, 6 to 8 June 2012
I am very grateful to Nigel for this wonderful, redolent submission in response to my piece, Long To Rain Over Us…
Long To Rain Over Us, England v West Indies, Edgbaston, Days One and Two, 7 & 8 June 2012
…about our most heavily rain-affected Edgbaston trip of all.
“The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened’ by Don Robertson is an evocative journey back to the early 1950s. Readers are introduced to a teenage Morris Bird III, considered by some to be one of the most endearing characters in contemporary American literature.
Our Edgbaston trip in 2012 was so lacking in memory that it is now, well, not memorable. Very little that was meant to take place actually did so.
It was as if we had been enticed to this sodden part of the UK to be teased with the promise of things that almost happened. Morris Bird may well have speculated?
Perhaps we were being tested on our resolve as real Heavy Rollers. Could we cut it when things were bad?
I recall my solitary mission to the nearby cricket ground in advance of the others. They were perhaps still somewhere on the M6 arguing about the relative merits of Delta and Detroit Blues genres, while a dozing Nick yearned for some early Metallica.
Knowing Charles’ detailed preparations before any pre match knockabout, the ‘cricket kit’ would have been checked (several times before being unpacked and repacked) in readiness for our long-awaited net. This was scheduled to take place at Harborne CC. To grace this attractive little ground, in leafy suburban Birmingham, was to be a privilege indeed. All a direct consequence of some emotional story- telling from Charles to some unaware individual who was to forever regret their selfless move to the ‘phone with, “I’ll get it”. Charles had become a master of spin. This had little to do with his ability to pick a ‘Doosra’. Detailed and distressing tales would be discharged to whomever got the job of dealing with random emotive requests, mostly for tickets. Much was at stake this time. A chance to display limited abilities for a donation. It would be a wonderful prelude to the main course.
The scene, however, was a precursor to the forthcoming event. The said ground was deserted. The outfield resembled a small lake. If anything had been planned for this evening it had long been called off. Phone calls from office to office relaying the unhappy, but inevitable, news. I couldn’t avoid observing that the early season volunteers, allocated to small working groups tendering the ground, had failed miserably to:
- Clean around the area you want to repair with a wire brush to remove loose paint or rust.
- Use an old screwdriver to dig out any old jointing material.
- Put the nozzle of the sealant gun into the joint, and run a bead of roof and gutter sealant around the pipe.
One side of the pavilion’s guttering resembled a waterfall. Safe to say the kit wouldn’t be making an appearance this year.
I returned to Harborne Hall with heavy heart, but gratified by the familiarity of our accommodation, and its proximity to some decent restaurants on Harborne High Street for later. High quality Chinese food surely? At least we would be reunited and sustained by our past recollections of basic, but friendly, home-from-home accommodation. It was soon to be revealed that this just was a futile memory, unless your home was a Category C prison.
The corridors still echoed with the long past anticipation and apprehension of eager volunteers, about to make their way to various VSO outposts around the world. The evocative black and white photographs of some wiry young men with mullets, and women in cheesecloth skirts, dancing self-consciously with grateful African children, or in makeshift classrooms, adorned the stairways to our rooms. Such warm recollections were soon to be illusions, as the march of commercialism that had begun to engulf this little haven took shape. It was becoming transformed into something neither here, nor anywhere really. VSO were still present somehow, but surrounded by an impression of a low budget boarding house with an identity crisis.
The futile negotiations over extra breakfast toast rather summed up the whole affair. Jokes about when parole became due and “are you in Block H?” were tinged with reality. As Ian has described, we didn’t see any cricket either. Given that was the whole purpose it could be argued things were not going too well.
I recall walking back from the equally uninviting and playless Edgbaston in time for a planned tour of the local graveyard. This was advertised on a display outside the adjacent church amidst notices, it transpired, unchanged for many a decade. I should have twigged on reading the one with rusty drawing pins, congratulating the Mother’s Union for raising £7 19s 11d for Church upkeep. My children have often reiterated their displeasure when on holiday, mostly in France, when I would enthusiastically jump from the car and excitedly head off (alone) towards a remote cemetery or graveyard. This would make up a little for earlier non-events.
Wet through from my walk back, I just made the appointed time only to be met with a resounding silence, where I imagined the throng would now be congregating.
Just me then. The church was securely locked and, without a guide, any chance of an educational tour of the graves was out of the question. So, given I was staying one further night, I returned to the honesty bar at Harborne Hall before lock down and lights out. I left rather early the next morning, not stopping for toast.
This was to be the final ‘non-event’ of the 2012 gathering, so dominated by things that almost happened….
William Carter, Theorbist Extraordinaire’s Mystery Punter Outed, 24 September 2010
Is that William Carter on the theorbo or a Naxi Musician in Lijiang on the pipa?
I was most amused, when I tracked down the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM’s) blog piece about the concert we attended on 24 September 2010 – click here for the whole piece – to read this snippet:
The mood’s lively tonight. William Carter (theorbo) comes in to the dressing room in the interval telling us that a punter has accosted him and enquired whether his instrument is Chinese. “No”, replies Bill. “It looks very much like an instrument I saw in China”, insists the punter mysteriously.
I can now solve the mystery – Janie (Daisy) is the mystery punter.
We had been to China a few months earlier and had seen a concert of ancient Chinese music performed by Naxi musicians in Lijiang, Yunnan province – pictures 97 to 107 on the following album:
I remember Janie asking me whether that big lute thing…
…”theorbo,” I said…
…was the same as the Chinese instrument we saw in Lijiang.
“No”, I said.
“That’s what he said”, she said, confessing that she had asked William Carter that question as we were leaving the hall for the interval.
I explained that there was a fair bit of cross-fertilisation of musical instruments between east and west in the Renaissance period, but that instrument is a close relative of the lute and that family of instruments is more of a middle-east to west cross-fertilisation than a far-east to west influence. I also explained that the Chinese instruments of that kind might be far more ancient than any in the west, so technically, there might be a dim and distant connection.
“So, basically yes, then?” suggested Janie.
“Basically no,” I dared to disagree.
It is most amusing to find, so many years later (writing in December 2017) Janie’s exchange with William Carter preserved on the AAM blog.
We have since seen pipa concerts and I think Janie could now distinguish theorbo-type and pipa-type instruments with some skill.
I have one other anecdote about William Carter, from a few months later. By that time, my mum was in Nightingale House, her dementia worsening. I was at that time often visiting her and then jumping on the tube to go to the city.
Walking along Nightingale Lane towards Clapham South, I saw a young man just ahead of me carrying a large musical instrument case that looked to me as though it could only contain a theorbo.
I hurried my step, caught up with the young man and said, “excuse me, but is that instrument of yours a theorbo?” He beamed a smile at me and said, “yes it is. I have been lugging this theorbo around London for years now and have had the daftest questions asked about it…you are the first person who has actually recognised it and enquired after it by name!”
It turned out that the young man was one of William Carter’s students at Guildhall and was on the way to see him. We had a most pleasant chat about early music on the tube into the city together.
Tennis at hotel Moulin d’Hauterive – an aside, 1 to 5 September 2009
An aside about tennis during our short Burgundy break with Tony and Phillie – the main piece can be found here.
One of the reasons we booked the Moulin d’Hauterive was because it boasted a tennis court amongst its amenities.
Janie and I have travelled far and we have travelled wide. Our tennis rackets and balls have travelled long distances with us. Occasionally the tennis courts we find at the hotels are not quite up to the standards we are used to at home, not that we have always played on very high standards of surfaces at home either. We are leisure players.
For example, we enjoyed the tennis court at the Zenobia Cham Palace Hotel in Palmyra in 1997 despite its idiosyncrasies – I don’t suppose it is up to much any more of course – point is, we make allowances.
But the tennis court at Moulin d’Hauterive almost defies description. Had the Burgundy region recently suffered a major war or a series of natural disasters of the earthquake and hurricane variety, the cracked, moonscape-like surface and the intermittence of the perimeter netting might have been explicable.
But this didn’t look like the result of a recent disaster. It looked like decades of neglectful, distressed gentility.
On challenge, the rather haughty proprietor’s son (who had sniffly advised us, when I asked about choosing wine to go with the specific food we had ordered, simply that the more expensive bottles were always the better ones) mumbled indifferently that the court was indeed due for some repairs soon.
We played each day. It is difficult to describe the game we played as tennis in the modern sense, but it was some form of a game with rackets and balls, plus we used the tennis scoring system. But in truth it was more of a range hitting game, where we aimed for the smooth if we wanted to perpetuate a rally or aimed for the rough if we wanted a laugh.
Memorable is probably the best adjective for it.
I note that hotel Moulin d’Hauterive no longer boasts the tennis court amongst its amenities. What a pity.
BENTLEY BRING AND BRAAI CRICKET MATCH, Unfinished Masterpiece, 20 JULY 2008
Here is the unfinished “masterpiece”, which started to tell the tale of the Ian Harris Invitation XI v Charles Bartlett Invitation XI, Bentley CC – reported in a more Ogblog stylee here.
Sorry I didn’t have time to write a shorter one…
…or a complete one.
BENTLEY BRING AND BRAAI CRICKET MATCH – 20 JULY 2008
Big Match Build Up
Hailing a brave new world, the annual Z/Yen v The Children’s Society cricket match had been laid to rest as a fixture. Several of the original protagonists worked for neither organisation. Further, numerous transfers and inter-marriages had occurred over the years. It now seemed more fitting for the match to be renamed appropriately. Ian Harris Invitation XI v Charles Bartlett Invitation XI sounded good. Charles agreed to design a new trophy. Even Dot Bartlett thought that “The Harris/Bartlett Trophy” sounded very grand, but Charles’ ego couldn’t sanction the title that way round, so the new trophy was named The Bartlett/Harris Trophy.
As the day of the big match approached, both captains were busy making their plans of campaign, more or less as usual. Some things never change.
In order to cultivate a rich seam of talent, Ian had engaged the services of Heinrich The Gangmaster, who had in any case long-since moved on from The Children’s Society and was doing a great deal of work for Z/Yen. Ian therefore claimed rights over Heinrich and his entire South African entourage. Since Albus, top talent that he is, had married Fran from Z/Yen and led the way to a classic victory in 2007, it seemed only fitting that Heinrich’s entire gang switched allegiance.
There were fierce salvos of e-mail and a few frosty telephone and face-to-face exchanges, mostly revolving around size and shape of players. “No giants” was the gist of it, but definitions and playing conditions as usual got blurred in the debate.
Heinrich The Gangmaster was trying to be helpful when Ian spoke with him on the telephone. “We can easily put together a winning team”, said Heinrich, “Rubeus is available, for example”. “But Rubeus is a giant”, said Ian, “and I have promised Charles that we’d not field any giants”. “Rubeus is only half-giant”, said Heinrich, unhelpfully, “but what about Lucius and Draco?” “They’re evil”, said Ian, “I can only field players who we can be sure won’t try to take the opposition’s heads off”. “What’s happened to your sense of fun?”, asked Heinrich. “I lost it when you arranged for all of those giants and unhinged people to play against my team a couple of years ago,” Ian replied. “I think I get the message”, said Heinrich.
Meanwhile Charles was taking no chances. To counter the perceived threat, Charles Bartlett had cunningly ensured that he had access to the services of as many Bentley CC players as he might need, plus the festering talent pool of Tufty Stackpole, as well as the Children’s Society people, their friends and relations.
Of course, you wouldn’t guess any of that from the discussions between Charles and Ian. “Not sure I can even get eleven people,” said Charles on one occasion, “been let down left right and centre. Even that Bentley lad, Andy, is doubtful now.” “We can always see if Heinrich the Gangmaster can find us some more South African hired hands,” said Ian. “Funny you should mention that”, said Charles, “as I believe The Children’s Society has a couple of Heinrich’s mob back on their books again”. “But no giants”, said both Charles and Ian in unison.
Meanwhile Dot Bartlett took on the unenviable task of arranging the most important element of the fixture: the catering for the day. She was none too pleased when the original choice of caterers helpfully informed her that the firm had been taken over and that the new owners “wouldn’t get out of bed” for a poxy little catering contract like ours. But Dot scrambled around and found a suitable alternative, little knowing that Heinrich The Gangmaster had his own ideas.
The Day of the Match – Ian Harris Invitation XI Innings
Come the toss, Ian was a little concerned that two members of his team were still missing: Michael and Elisabeth Mainelli. Even more concerned was Ian when he lost the toss and was promptly inserted by Charles, as Ian was planning on opening the batting together with Michael. It was a cunning plan. Ian was to do his regular sandpaper bit, while Michael was to “pinch hit” using the baseball stance and technique which worked rather well against Barnardo’s 10 years ago.
But the Mainelli family arrived just in the nick of time. The Mainelli’s came as a gang of four, including daughter Xenia (only the cruel and misguided suggest that Xenia was named after the business) and their priest, Father Bill (taking no chances this time, we nearly needed the last rites read more than once last time those big Saffers played).
“There’s a zoo, there’s a zoo”, shouted Xenia excitedly as they arrived. “I can see zebra, wildebeeste, crocodiles, ostriches and snakes”.
“That’s not a zoo”, explained Michael, “it looks as though the Saffers have brought some food with them. This looks distinctly like a ‘bring and braii’ to me. If I’d known, I’d have brought some charismatic mega fauna with me as an offering.”
Meanwhile, Elisabeth was protesting that she had no suitable clothing or even footwear, as Michael had forgotten to tell her that she was playing today. A very brief panic ensued, until Heinrich reminded Ian that we could, if utterly desperate, engage the services of Antonius Bloch, his former flatmate. While Charles was remonstrating that Ian’s team was sleezing in a last-minute Saffer giant, Henirich assured everyone that Antonius’s only known sporting prowess was at chess. Indeed, we could se Antonius playing with a rather shadowy-looking figure as we spoke. Ominously, Father Bill was mumbling incantations at rapid speed while keeping a very safe distance from the chess-players.
While Elisabeth was remonstrating with Michael that she would have gladly played had she only been told that she was in the team, Ian was simultaneously rushing Michael into his pads and various protective clothing, all the while speaking in tongues about “pinch hitting”, “run rates”, “leg side”, “cow corner” and such like.
The problem was, of course, that in the intervening years Michael had seen a fair smattering of cricket and even been to see some 1st class matches, so he had seen how batting was supposed to be done. So Michael ignored all this strange instructions and simply knuckled down to emulate the technique he had observed.
Several years seemed to pass as Michael and Ian’s opening partnership got underway. The entire crowd fell into a deep and profound slumber, except for Heinrich the Braaier and his Assistant Braaier, Severus.
Suddenly there was a terrifying roar, the sound of a wild beast in agony.
“Nnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh”.
“Jou dom stuk kak, Severus”, yelled Heinrich, “I’ve told you before, man, don’t put live wildebeeste onto the braai”.
“I didn’t, man, that yell was Ian saying ‘no’ to a run”, said Severus, sheepishly.
“Sorry man. Score still nought for nought then?”, asked Heinrich.
“Something like that”, said Severus.
No amount of pleading managed to persuade Michael to try a scoring shot, despite his pinch hitting role, but eventually he was put out of his misery and Matt joined Ian at the crease. Matt didn’t find it much easier than Ian and Michael to get the ball off the square of the pudding-like wicket. Eventually Matt decided to play a straight one, played across it, and Charles Bartlett had clean bowled Matt of all people! Some say that Charles did himself some permanent damage celebrating that wicket, while others insist that the damage had been caused a long time ago through Charles’ strange habit of not wearing a box when batting.
Arabian Nights Party at Sandall Close – Playlist, 24 June 2006
I had recently acquired my first iPod – a gift from Kim and Micky, so this was my first party playlist and by gosh I did it the hard way.
Had to do it the hard way, really, as my music collection was all CDs and vinyl, so I ripped (in the case of CDs) or specifically digitised through a sound box/Audacity (in the case of vinyl) every single track I wanted for this party.
Not quite as onerous as the old cassette and reel-to-reel compilation tapes, but hardly the “quick search and click” ability I now have, as my whole collection is digitised and in the cloud on iTunes (other cloud music services are available.
Here’s the CD Box Style thing that iTunes does for you, but it only shows the first 22 tracks…
Daisy Partial Party Playlist CD Box Stylee with image
…there are actually 114 tracks on this playlist; over 8 hours of music. Here’s the full list:
Daisy Whole Party 2006 Playlist
I made the first hour or more solidly Arabian style to go with the theme of the party – click here for a link to the story of the party and more besides. Then a more conventional party playlist, with the mandatory Barry White for Phillie and plenty of dance music for Janie.
There’s some seriously good stuff on there, though I say so myself. Janie and I still listen to that list reasonably often, even though I have better digital recordings of many of those tracks now.
A Conversation With My Neighbour When Staying at the Beechwood Hotel, 24 to 26 May 2006
The following is a note I wrote up on my jotter while staying at the “hell hole” that was the Beechwood Hotel in Edgbaston for the Sri Lanka test match in May 2006, as written up comprehensively – click here.
With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
It relates to a conversation I had with my next door neighbour.
The door to the next room was wide open. At first I thought my neighbour was engaged in conversation with someone – perhaps in the room but unseen by me, perhaps on his mobile phone. As I put the key into the lock of my door, he yelled out, unmistakably at me, “hello young fella. We’re neighbours, mate”.
‘Young fella’ is an endearing moniker once you get to my age. (These days only stewards at Lord’s and front of house staff at the Wigmore Hall still seem to use it for me.)
I took a couple of steps back and greeted my neighbour. He was certainly alone in the room and as far as I could tell had not been talking to anyone other than himself before I arrived.
He was bare chested – a strange sight in an old Victorian house/hotel in that Midlands City in spring – indeed I was going to my room to get an extra layer for the evening. He was drinking a can of lager.
“Sorry mate, I’m a bit pissed”, he said. It was 18:30 – probably par for his course.
“No problem”, I replied, “why not? You enjoy yourself.”
“That’s the spirit”, said my neighbour, “you going out for the evening?”
“That’s right”, I said.
“Well you have a good time, mate”, said my neighbour.
“And you have a good evening too”, I replied.
“That’s the spirit, mate”, he hollered after me as I scuttled the few steps along the corridor, quickly opened up the door to my room, grabbed my jersey, locked up again and fled for the evening.
Casablanca The Musical, Timeline And Programme Notes For Original 2001 Production, Written By Yours Truly, 31 August 2001
TIMELINE: WORLD EVENTS AND CASABLANCA, THE MUSICAL
|
Date |
Events |
| 1899 | January 23, Humphrey DeForest Bogart born, New York City, USA.
August 2, Michael Overfish Ward born, Halifax, England. |
| 1931 | Song “As Time Goes By” appears in Broadway show “Everybody’s Welcome”. Cornell student Murray Burnett irritates his fellow students by playing it constantly. The Great Depression has been running globally for two years. The Nazi party is number two in the German Reichstag with over 18% of the vote. Talking movies are four years old. |
| 1933 | Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany in January
Mike Ward becomes Chancellor of Keighley in August |
| 1938 | Germany annexes Austria in March. Later that year, Murray Burnett, a Jew, goes to Vienna to help relatives to escape; he is horrified by the hatred there. Mike Ward is reported to have said “if you think Nazi Europe is horrifying, you should see Keighley”. |
| June 1940 | Nazis take Paris and do a deal with the remnants of the French Government, much to the chagrin of the resistant French elements. Marshal Petain becomes head of Vichy France, in collaboration with the Nazis. General Charles DeGaulle announces plan to develop the means to liberate France from the overseas empire, primarily French Africa. |
| 1940 | Murray Burnett, in collaboration with friend Joan Alison, writes play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” about an American expat in Casablanca whose former lover turns up at his night club with her resistance leader husband, Victor, in tow. She asks Sam the pianist to play “As Time Goes By”. Love with Rick is rekindled. She wants to stay with Rick. Rick insists that she leaves with Victor. She goes. The curtain falls. |
| 1940 | DeGaulle establishes his credentials in Free French Africa, successfully breaking the Vichy stranglehold in Equatorial Africa. Strangely, the position of Ouagadougou in Upper Volta is hard to establish from the histories. The position over North Africa, including Morocco, is ambiguous and is to remain so for several years – it’s status can be vaguely described as unoccupied by agreement with Vichy France. For example, the British allow Vichy ships to pass through the straits of Gibraltar without interference. |
| 1941 | Murray Burnett struggles to place “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” until the US’s entry into the war towards the end of the year suddenly makes the property look hot. Humphrey Bogart is busy making The Maltese Falcon. |
| December 1941/ January 1942 | Irene Lee and Hal Wallis of Warner Bros buy “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” for $20,000 – then the highest ever price for an unperformed play (about £100,000 to £150,000 at today’s UK prices – why can’t Mike Ward plays raise this sort of cash?). Warner Bros immediately change the name of the piece to Casablanca and announce that Ronald Reagan is to play Rick, Ann Sheridan is to pay Ilsa and Dennis Morgan is to play Victor. |
| February 1942 | Julius and Phil Epstein set to work rewriting the script into a Warner Bros movie screenplay with humour and sparkle. Wallis decides on Mick Curtiz as director and they pick Humphrey Bogart for Rick, condemning Reagan to B-movie obscurity until he uses politics to revive his flagging career. Mike Ward also fails to get the part of Rick, condemning him to a career in public relations until the Actor’s Workshop revives his flagging career. |
| April 1942 | Hal Wallis gets Howard Koch to do some touching up work on the script to add youthfulness and agitprop. Could this be too many cooks? With hindsight – clearly not. Meanwhile the shortlist for Ilsa is now Michele Morgan or Ingrid Bergman. Michele would cost $55,000 whereas Ingrid was available on loan from Paramount for $25,000. Ingrid gets the job. US government recognises Free French administration in Equatorial Africa and swaps eight bombers for landing rights. Mike Ward swaps eight gobstoppers for some cigarette cards with famous cricketers on them (one of them of course being Len Hutton). |
| May 1942 | Dooley Wilson is signed up for Sam. He cannot play piano but he is cheap. Paul Henreid signs up for Victor’s role as long as he gets third billing above the title on the posters (no joke). Conrad Veidt signs up to play Major Strasser – Veidt was a Jewish refugee who made an acting career out of playing evil Nazis. They start filming with the Paris flashback sequence. A few days later, Claude Rains signs up as Renault, Sidney Greenstreet as Ferrari and Peter Lorre as Ugarte. |
| June/July 1942 | Script famously still being rewritten during filing. Later, Jack Warner was to use Casablanca as a case study on out of control scripts – there’s no pleasing some bosses. |
| August 1942 | August 2, Mike Ward’s birthday. August 3, last day of official filming on Casablanca. August 21 final bit of filming (new closing line). |
| November 1942 | Operation Torch: Allied Forces land in North Africa (Algiers, Oran and 8 points along Moroccan coast). Fighting ends after thousands of casualties. Admiral Darlan announces himself “High Commissioner for North and West Africa” but it is hard to work out if he is now Vichy or Free French. North African position now tense and ambiguous rather than just ambiguous. Movie Casablanca premiers same month – that really was amazing timing. |
| December 1942 | Admiral Darlan assassinated before anyone could work out whose side he was on. Mike Ward flees Keighley in both confusion and diapers. |
| January 1943 | 22nd – DeGaulle, Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Morocco to try and agree a carve up but DeGaulle and Roosevelt can’t get on with each other.
23rd – Casablanca goes on general release in US – amazing timing yet again, Mr Warner. |
| May 1943 | Unified Free French Government formed in North Africa. |
| January 1944 | DeGaulle and Churchill meet in Marrakech – they don’t get on too well even without Roosevelt |
| March 1944 | Casablanca wins 3 Oscars – Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay |
| 1983 | British Film Institute votes Casablanca as best film ever. |
| June 1998 | American Film Institute rates Casablanca second greatest American film of all time (look out next for Mike Ward’s “Citizen Kane, the Musical”) |
| August 2001 | Mike Ward begins work on “Casablanca, the Musical” |
| September 2001 | “Casablanca, the Musical” is done and dusted. |
Deal Making
MIKE WARD: Where are the goddamn programme notes you promised me? We need to go to print tomorrow.
AIRPIECE: Where’s the goddamn script. I can’t write programme notes about a musical I haven’t read.
MIKE WARD: It’s all done. I’ll send it to you.
AIRPIECE: When?
MIKE WARD: When I’ve written the ending. It’ll be a couple of days.
AIRPIECE: I’ll need a couple of days after that.
MIKE WARD: It’s a deal.
Echoes
The birth of Casablanca, the Musical has many echoes with the birth of the movie. Last minute revision to the script is but one example. Ingrid Bergman was selected for the movie because she was cheap, a sentiment that the Burgers of Halifax would no doubt endorse. I was selected to write these programme notes for similar reasons; Lord Archer of Bulmarsh, who has some time on his hands, was in the frame but wanted a larger fee per word than me.
Apocryphally, the ending of the movie was in doubt right until the end of filming (much like a Mike Ward play), although some experts say that it was never in doubt that Victor and Ilsa were going to end up with each other. Spin doctoring had been invented by 1942, so you can’t treat every Warner outpouring as gospel. After all, they announced Ronald Reagan as the lead just before signing Bogart. It is that sort of movie. “Play it again Sam” is the most famous quote from the movie and it is not in the movie. “Oh shit, I’ve dropped a table on my foot” will probably be the most famous quote from the musical, although not in the script, merely irritating noise offstage. It is said that more has been written about Casablanca than about any other movie. (The movie even has its own web site, Cyberblanca.com, to which I owe a debt of research gratitude.) And oh boy do Mike Ward plays have more written about them in the programme notes than most plays. But then, I am paid by the word, you know.
Finally, while tracing these echoes, I thought I’d research what had become of Murray Burnett who wrote the play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” upon which Casablanca is based. It is well known that he earned $20,000 for the play. Less well known is the fact that he scratched out a living later as a screenwriter experiencing little success. His later stage play projects, of which there were several, were never produced. When Murray Burnett died in September 1997, his obituary in Classic Images misspelled his name as “Murray Bennett.” “Mike Warred”, on the other hand, seems somehow to get all of his plays produced. But no write up in Classic Images. And no movie rights sales as yet. Perhaps the plays are too long.
Professor Ivan Airpiece
Department of Forensic Cinematography,
The Fulbright University College of Keighley (F.U.C.K.)