Sitting in the back row at a sixth-form open day, listening to how recent changes to AS-levels will affect me (they won’t, is my understanding, because I’m not the one entering sixth-form next year), I was reminded of an evening last week when I was briefly put before a video camera and asked, “What’s the most important thing you learned at school?”
It was like being back at school – I struggled to come up with an honest-sounding reply that was close to what I imagined my questioner wanted to hear: “a love of the written word”, or “the importance of learning from one’s mistakes”. But neither of these is actually true, and I couldn’t give the real answer, which was: “never use the east stairwell as a shortcut between the cafeteria and maths; there’s probably someone waiting on the landing to beat you up, and your strangled cries will go unheard.”
Had I been able to consult my phone, I could have cheated. The question “what’s the most important thing you learned at school?” has been answered thousands of times on the internet: “organisation is crucial”, “never second-guess yourself”, “to ask questions”, “to listen”. Any of these would have served. But a light was shining in my face and the silence between the question and my as-yet-unsupplied answer was beginning to ripen. In the end I just said, “the quadratic formula”.
Winning lines
This week I went to the Donmar Warehouse to see Phyllida Law’s magnificent all-female production of Henry IV. It’s set in a women’s prison, with actors dressed as guards in the aisles to create an atmosphere of institutional intimidation. The effect was undermined when one guard stepped forward to announce that the actor who plays Hotspur was indisposed, that another cast member would take the part, and that due to the size of the role, she would be using a script. You can’t really deliver news like that in the guise of a stern prison officer. You have to sound apologetic. You have to flash a pained smile of commiseration while the audience digests its disappointment.
But it wasn’t disappointing – it was one of the most compelling things I’ve ever seen. If you think divesting yourself of memorised lines sounds like a high-wire act, try stalking the stage with a big bunch of highlighted pages in your hand, acting while trying not to lose your place (she did lose her place at one point, and recovered brilliantly) and accommodating the movements of other actors who have the considerable advantage of being able to look where they’re going. She did all this for two hours without an interval, and still managed to breathe such life into the character that at first I didn’t even notice she was also playing the part of Mistress Quickly. Hers was the biggest applause of the night.
How to speak to a teenager
Back in front of the camera, I was about to slip away before someone could ask me to recite the formula. But they had one more question: “If you could go back and talk to your 13-year-old self, what’s the one piece of advice you’d give him?”
This has always struck me as odd. It implies I don’t have regular contact with 13-year-old me, when in fact we’re in almost constant communication. How’s the whole pretending to be a grown-up thing going? he asks. Fine, I tell him. I have a beard, I can drive, I know some big words – nobody suspects a thing. This camera and questions business is boring, he says, let’s run! Hang on, I say, I’m just going to make up a stupid answer, then we can go and get drunk. My answer was “relax”, which is a bit rich coming from my deeply unrelaxed 51-year-old self. I should have said, “stay out of the east stairwell”.
