Play for Today: The Sin Bin (1981)

 

The Wednesday Play: Chariot Of Fire (1970)

 

The People of Providence: A Housing Estate and Some of Its Inhabitants by Tony Parker (Picador 1983)

A fair-haired young woman in a gaberdine mackintosh crossing the pedestrian shopping precinct in Robins Walk stopped with a polite smile.

— Sorry love but if it’s insurance we’ve got more than enough thanks.

A book? About Providence Estate? Go on, you’re joking! Really? Blimey, that’ll be a job! I must read it, when’s it coming out? Oh I’ll not be here by then I shouldn’t think. Mm? Well, if I could think of one word to tell someone what a place is like. ..

‘Mixed’? Well yes, that’s one word for it, I think that’s about right that is, ‘mixed’. ‘Mixed’ — how do I think he meant? Well you know . . . I mean, there’s all sorts of people here all together, isn't there? I should think that’s what he meant. You’ve got people who do what you might call hard physical sort of jobs, those that work in the docks or on the building sites — the what do you call them, ‘manual workers’ is it? Then you’ve got the people who work in offices and banks and shops and that. Then there’s those who're the sort of posh ones, posh jobs like lawyers, there’s quite a few of that sort lives around here, it's surprising. And teachers — and old people — and families — people living on their own — and kids, a big lot of kids. Happy people and sad people and odd people and peculiar people — a big sort of mixture, so that’s absolutely the right word for it that is, yes . . . ‘mixed’.

An elderly man with the collar of his overcoat turned up, coming out of the library, two books by Hammond Innes under his arm.

— It would be extraordinarily difficult for me to try and summarize a place such as Providence Estate in a hundred or a thousand words, so it would be totally impossible to do it in one.

Certainly if somebody has already said to you ‘mixed’ I would say that was an appropriate word, certainly. I couldn’t say precisely what they might have meant, but I should have thought a moment’s glance round would have made it clear because it is instantly visible, isn’t it, how mixed it is?

You have the group of tower blocks over there, then those long six-storey things, I think they call them linear’ blocks over there; then in that direction there are those small maisonette-type low buildings of flats. And if you go through that way you come to the old houses that have been refurbished; and beyond those, ones that aren’t going to be done up and are scheduled for demolition, though heaven knows when they’re going to get on with it. And the prefabs of course, scattered around here and there. . . . So I’d say yes, high-rise towers, long blocks, modern small flats, old places done up, others dilapidated . . . a large ’mixed’ area very obviously, no one could quarrel with the word. And not at all unpleasing to the eye; all in all, not at all.

You’re welcome sir, good afternoon.

Twelve perhaps thirteen years old, the small boy in a royal blue blazer and grey flannels with a too-small cap on his head and a satchel over his shoulder looked thoughtfully into the distance.

— ‘Mixed’? What did they mean, ‘mixed’ how, what sort of way? Did they mean the people or the buildings or what? Funny word to use about the estate isn’t it, really; could mean all sorts of things couldn’t it, to different people? ‘Mixed’. Mm, yeh. . . .

He went on staring into the distance. After a while he began slowly nodding his head.

— Yeh, well, if you come to think of it, that’s quite a good word. I mean like where we are now, standing on the footpath in the middle of the grass . . . you see over there’s the towers, back that way there’s the flats, then there’s the shops and Robins Walk. So you could say if you wanted to that over there where the buildings are, that’s like town, and here where we are, with the grass and the trees, this is like country isn’t it? I mean if you don’t look that way you can’t see buildings and if you don’t listen too hard you can’t hear traffic. So it’s all like a mixture between town and country, right? Not built over everywhere, but not like out in a wood or something either. ‘Mixed' is a very good word, I’d say that was about right yeh.

Red Hill: A Mining Community by Tony Parker (Coronet Books 1986)

- He says it'll burn me up in flames one day, my husband does, me and my blazing hate. He says it can't be kept up for ever, you've got to forgive and forget. I'll never forget, that's one thing that's sure: and I'll never forgive neither, at least I can't see myself doing. The Coal Board's turned my husband, who all his life's been an honest upright working man, into a criminal. They've made him someone with a conviction, and a criminal record for it. And as well as that they've made him into someone who because of it'll never again in his whole life get a decent job. He did nothing wrong in the first place: but they won't relent and give him his job back. So neither will I relent either. Those people, the Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, Maggie Thatcher, the Tories - I hate every one of them and I'll hate them till my dying day for what they've done to my husband. He can forgive them if he likes, and if he does he's a better person and a better Christian than I am. To me they're the biggest bastards who ever walked the face of the earth, and every morning when I get up I curse them and I curse them every night when I go to bed.

(from 'Me and my blazing hate')

Studs Terkel: A Life In Words by Tony Parker (Henry Holt and Company 1996)

It didn't take her long when I asked her for her recollections about poverty and unemployment in the twenties to start in about the 1926 General Strike. She was in London at that time and she was a girl of twenty-five. And as she told it, tears started to run down her cheeks, real tears. She said "Seeing all those people standing at street corners, no work for them, no money to buy food with, oh it was terrible, it broke your heart, it was so sad." Then she said "Wherever you went in London on the buses you know, you saw it everywhere, north of the river, south of the river, in the West End and the East End, it was all exactly the same." I said "But how come you could see them in so many places from the buses, weren't the buses on strike too?" "Oh yes" she said, "only like all the other young people, you know, me and my friends, we all volunteered to drive the buses to keep them running. Everyone needed them to get around, you see, you couldn't just let London come to a standstill, could you?" And all the guys with me you know, the camera crew and the soundmen and the lighting guys, they're all trade unionists, aren't they? They couldn't work in those jobs if they didn't belong to the different technicians' unions: I don't have to look around, I could hear the sound of the hair bristling up on the backs of their necks. And there she is, still crying and sniffing into her handkerchief and saying: "Oh all those poor people, seeing them looking so without hope like that, it was so sad, so sad." . . .

Boy, you've heard the expression "dumbstruck"? Well, every one of us, every single one, were struck dumb. We filed out of there without a word, and with her "Good-bye. Good-byyyee!" from the bedroom getting fainter and fainter in the background as we went down the stairs. Whether the television company ever included that interview in the series I wouldn't know. I shouldn't think they did, what with my incredulous questions, and I guess the film shaking more and more while the cameraman was shooting.

Memories of England, eh . . . ? Oh boy!