Of Time and the City Page #2

(Archive recording of woman)

'We used to help one another out.

'Go to wash house.

'Do washing for anyone if they couldn't,

'or nurse them if they were sick.'

Those are all right,

but yours still smell of smoke!

'And then, of course,

my mother died on Christmas Eve.

'And she left me at fourteen

'with a little baby, twelve months old,

'and another one, er, four.

'Me dad stayed with us

eight weeks.

'And then he got a ship,

and went away and left us.

'Course, he died after, you know.

'Then I had more trouble

on me plate, like.

'Me husband never ever

got much work.

'I had to work all me life.

'But thank God! God's been very good

to me. And his Holy Mother.

(Bell chimes)

(# The Spinners:
Dirty Old Town)

# I found my love

# By the gas works croft

# Dreamed a dream

# By the old canal

# Kissed my girl

# By the factory wall

# Dirty old town

# Dirty old town

# I heard a siren

# From the dock

# Saw a train

# Set the night on fire

# Smelled the spring

# On the sulphured wind

# Dirty old town

# Dirty old town #

The year moves towards November.

Bonfire night, a penny for the guy,

someone singing

Keep the Heaven Fires Burning...

(Fire crackles)

...as Jimmy Preston and me, the only

ones left now, roast potatoes on sticks.

We sit, quiet at the last.

Jimmy Preston who was a real boy,

and whom I envied.

Jimmy Preston who once put

his hand on my shoulder,

and I didn't want him to remove it.

"Don't go in just yet.

Please, not just yet... '

But he does.

Twilight and evening bell.

And after that...

...the dark.

(# Branesti:
Priveghiati si va Rugat)

(# Orchestra repeats and develops

a simple, wistful theme)

(# Chorus of voices collectively restates

the orchestra's theme)

(# Children sing playground rhymes

over the orchestral music)

(Child) # You bought me a shawl

Of red, white and blue

# And when we got married

you tore it in two

# Oh, gee, I love him, I can't deny it

# I'll be with him wherever he goes #

(Bells chime)

(Woman)

'I would have liked to have worked on,

'but they threw me out

because I was old.

'It's a sin to grow old, you know.

'We had an old lady here, and, erm...

'Everybody would run and get her

a cup of tea and they'd wait on her,

'and do all those little things, but

she'd always say, "Nobody wants me.'

'Well, I mean if you take that attitude,

'you can't expect anyone

to want you, can you? '

(Terence Davies) Oh, watch and pray.

Watch and pray.

Do you remember, you who are

no longer young, and you who still are?

Do you remember the months of

November and December?

Wet shoes and leaking galoshes,

and for the first time... chilblains,

with Christmas in the air.

God was in his heaven,

and oh, how I believed!

Oh, how fervent I was!

And on Christmas Eve,

pork roasting in the oven,

the parlour cleaned,

with fruit along the sideboard.

A pound of apples, tangerines

in tissue paper,

a bowl of nuts

and our annual exotic pomegranate.

Do you remember?

Do you?

Will you ever forget?

(Woman laughs) 'Happy days! '

My mother,

generous with the small nest egg

of twenty five pounds she'd borrowed.

Love and cellophane.

My brothers, with their made

to measure suits, bought on H P.

My sisters and a dab of scent,

maybe only Evening in Paris,

but making it seem as if the whole world

was drenched in Chanel.

Being taken to the Pictures, and in all

those movies, it was always Christmas

and it was always perfect.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,

Young at Heart,

All That Heaven Allows.

But all...

all are gone - the old familiar faces.

And yet, time renders -

deceives the eye; deceives the heart,

a valediction and an epitaph.

Now voyager, go forth, to seek and find.

But my eldest brother, lying in

an army hospital in Leamington Spa.

He will not go to war.

He will be safe.

Cometh the hour. Cometh the man.

Cometh the Korean War.

(Explosions and gun fire)

(# The Hollies:

He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother)

# The road is long

# With many a winding turn

# That leads us to who knows where

# Who knows where?

# But I'm strong

# Strong enough to carry him

# He ain't heavy

# He's my brother

# So on we go

# His welfare is my concern

# No burden is he to bear

# We'll get there

# For I know

# He would not encumber me.

# He ain't heavy

# He's my brother

# If I'm laden at all

# I'm laden, with sadness

# That everyone's heart

# Isn't filled with the gladness

# Of love

# For one another #

For Queen, country and the Civil List.

(Applause)

And yet all over the country,

street parties were held

to celebrate the start of

the Betty Windsor show.

When the golden couple married,

in 1947,

the following was lavished

on the ceremony:

Jewellery from other royals,

a washing machine,

a fridge, 76 handkerchiefs,

and for the 10,000 pearls

sewn onto her wedding dress,

Her Majesty allegedly saved

all her clothing coupons.

Even more money was wasted

on her Coronation,

as yet another fossil monarchy justified

its existence by tradition

and deluded itself

with the notion of 'duty'.

Privileged to the last, whilst in

England's green and pleasant land,

the rest of the nation survived

on rationing

in some of the worst slums in Europe

And in 'Bonny Scotland', they gave

Her Majesty a 21 hose salute.

Or maybe they were just taking the piss.

(Singing)

After Korea, EOKA and Mau-Mau,

India had gone, soon Africa would go.

Then Suez as a last hurrah,

leaving only a fading memory

of when most of the globe was red

and Victoria was the first and only

diminutive bourgeois imperatrix.

Betty and Phil

with a thousand flunkies.

"The trouble with being poor

is that it takes up all you time.'

[Willem de Kooning]

The trouble with being rich, is that it

takes up everybody else's.

After farce. Realism.

The heart that beats beneath the heart

is tender, is not savage

It beats in time, though years apart,

from struggles silent marriage

Of storm and stress,

of quiet love

As when the lights begin to fall,

and he just smiles as she just hums

A tune that fitted like a glove

But tapped its rhyme,

still and small, into their room

When nightfall thrums,

a kind of peace that soothes the heart

And lets the years fall

from nought and down

As they shuffle off to bed, apart

Then meet again

beneath the eiderdown

(# Peggy Lee:

The Folks Who Live on the Hill)

# Someday

# We'll build a home

# On a hilltop high

# You and I

# Shiny and new

# A cottage that two can fill

# And we'll be pleased to be called

# The folks who live on the hill

# Someday

# We may be adding

# A wing or two

# A thing or two

# We will make changes

# As any family will

# But we will always be called

# The folks who live on the hill

# Our veranda will command

# A view of meadows green

# The sort of view that seems

to want to be seen

# And when the kids grow up

# And leave us

# We'll sit and look

at that same old view

# Just we two

# Baby and Joe

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes