No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson (Canongate 2022)

 

We had about four Caspers in my school class alone, lads from ‘broken’ homes dressed in hand-me-downs, not sure from where their next meal would come, dodging bullies, irate neighbours or members of their own family. These were shadow boys, a few yards behind the rest of us, unwilling to join in. They often played alone on the margins, down by the river near the chemical factory or on a piece of oily scrubland between the road and railway. Gerald Swanson was typical. We’d often ask him to join us but it was like trying to tame a feral cat; he didn’t trust us enough to draw close. He was always yawning and sometimes fell asleep in class, his forearm a pillow for his head. During the summer holidays we found him sleeping on a pallet near the canal, curled up tight. His face was mucky and looked to be tear-smeared.

‘Swanny.’

Gerald opened his eyes, blinked and scanned our faces. In an instant, he was off. He charged through the shrubs and bushes and was on the towpath within seconds.

‘What’s up with you? We’re not going to beat you up or owt.’

‘Fuck off,’ he yelled and jogged away.

The Pressures of Life: Four Television Plays edited by Michael Marland (Longman Imprint Books 1977)

 

The Pressures of Life

Sometimes we feel that we are on top of life - able to follow our interests, succeed in our work, get on well with other people, and everything goes smoothly. At other times, we feel frustrated we cannot quite manage what is needed; we seem to hit problems that are beyond us; we feel overcome by “the pressures of life". These four plays all show people of today suffering in one way or another from the pressures of life today. The plays are by different authors, and were written for different series, but they each have “the pressures of life” in common, and in each we meet characters who are having difficulty coping.

Short plays on television are one of the most popular and probably one of the best art forms of today. The television screen has encouraged a form of realistic, compressed, and popular drama which explores contemporary characters in contemporary settings. The best of these have a depth of understanding of human nature and the predicaments that people get into that makes the play seem more than just a typical problem of the moment. Neil’s conflict with Fred Pooley in the first play, for instance, makes us think about the ways in which people’s pride and their prejudices affect their relationship with others. These are, above all, plays about people, people pushing against their surroundings and fighting the pressures of life.

The atmosphere of each play is different, and the reader should try to imagine the background of each. Speech Day depends on the atmosphere of an old-fashioned school building, just as A Right Dream of Delight depends on the cheery, bright comfort of a modern light factory, and The Piano on our sensing of Ada’s house, which is cramped but homely and comforting. Readers can build up a picture of each setting, not only the look, but the sounds of the schoolboys singing, and the demolition machinery' at work — all the details which are hinted at or described in the printed text and which the television screen would bring to life.

This Artistic Life by Barry Hines (Pomona Books 2009)

One day, when we were playing in the sand outside the prefabs, we became aware of the large numbers of miners walking up Tinker Lane from the pit. Usually, there was a lot of laughter and banter when they were coming home from work, but this time they were unusually quiet and serious, and the only sound was the clatter of their clogs on the roadway. Instinctively, we knew something was wrong.

"What's happened?" I shouted.

"Doug Westerman's been killed!" one of the miners replied.

The name meant nothing to me or to any of my pals, so after watching the silent procession for a minute or two, we resumed messing about in the sand.

Later, when I went home for tea, my mother was sitting in the armchair by the fire, sobbing into her hands. My dad, still wearing his pit clothes and unwashed, had his arm round her shoulders, trying to comfort her.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Your grandad's been killed," she sobbed.

I stared at her. Then the penny dropped and I realised that Doug Westerman, the dead miner, was my grandfather. I hadn't made the connection because I didn't know his name. I only knew him as grandad.

After the death of her father, I was always aware of my mother's uneasy glances at the clock when my dad was late home from work.

"Go and see if your dad's coming," she would say, and I would go outside and look down the lane towards the pit, praying that he was, so that I didn't have to go back inside and disappoint her.

(from 'Tinker Lane')

Looks and Smiles (1981)

The Blinder by Barry Hines (Penguin Books 1966)

He stormed out and slammed the door. Lennie took a wad of notes from his pocket and broke the brown paper seal. He stuffed them into a loose heap in his pocket, then walked out of the room and up the stairs to the directors' box at the front of the centre stand. The people sitting at the back saw him first and the information spread quickly downwards to the front. Mr Leary turned and stood up. Lennie stepped down past the ends of two rows and threw a crushed handful of money at him. The ball broke and scattered like confetti. He threw a second ball, squeezed tighter so that more would carry. A roar filled the stand and everyone's head whipped round, freezing the scene like a photograph. Grey, and tweed, and fur caught sitting and standing and crouching, all with their bodies turned to Lennie, their faces to the pitch. Les Adams was stooping into the back of the net to retrieve the ball. The United team were rejoicing in a heap. Lennie turned away and walked down the steps out of the ground.