Along Whiteladies Road

Introduction

In the summer of 1979, following a year at London's prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, my career as an acting student came to an end. I don't recall exactly how I felt about this, but what is certain is that there were those who wept openly at the thought of my imminent departure. There were moving scenes at my farewell party held as my memory tells me in the depths of the Barbican Estate's Lauderdale Tower; and in the course of which a close friend on my course Gill advised me to contact a London-based agent who was well-known for offering young actors their very first positions within the entertainment industry. I owe her alot because the agent in question, a warm, amusing, flamboyant man with an office near Leicester square, was as good as his beneficient reputation, and within a few months I was doubling as Christian the Chorus Boy and Joey the Teddy Bear complete with furry costume in the pantomime "Sleeping Beauty" that began in Ealing, and culminated around Christmas time at the Buxton Opera House. Early on in the new year moreover, the celebrated theatre director Richard Cottrell offered me the part of Mustardseed the fairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Bristol Old Vic. My acting career was off to a flying start. The following relic from an unfinished tale, which has been reproduced with only very minor alterations and editings, and which I have called "Along Whiteladies Road", I retrieved only a day or so ago from a notebook I habitually wrote in during spare moments offstage at the Bristol Old Vic while dressed in my fairy costume and covered in make-up and glitter; and while doing so, some of this glitter was transferred from the pages with which they were stained more than twenty six years ago onto my hands. It was an eerie experience:

I remember the grey slithers of rain, the jocular driver as I boarded the bus at Temple Meads, and the friendly lady who told me when we had arrived at the city centre. I remember the little pub on King Street, with its quiet maritime atmosphere and the first readthrough with all those unkempt actors. I remember tramping along Park Street, Whiteladies Road and Blackboy Hill, my arms and hands aching from my bags to the little cottage where I had decided to stay and relax in beween rehearsals, reading, writing, listening to music. I remember my landlady, tall, timid and beautiful...