I Am Less Than Satisfied

With my lot at the moment.

I know what brought about this uncharacteristic negativity – the trainee gale that we are experiencing at the moment!
I hate wind. We knew when we came to Spain that it would be hot. We also knew that it would be cold. But nobody mentioned the wind!

However, as ‘they’ say; What cannot be cured must be endured. I might have to endure it, but it’s not going to stop me complaining about it!

My grumble at the moment takes centre stage, and it’s a mega-grumble. I have lost several years worth of articles and stories. I have my early articles, I have my more recent articles, but there is a yawning chasm in the middle.

I was happy in my belief that everything was on the many back-up sticks, but when I went to look for a specific poem about Santa and the Mouse it was nowhere to be found.

I searched high and low. I searched in all the nooks and crannies. I boldly went into internal computer places where no man except the Steves dare tread. All to no avail – Santa and the Mouse had disappeared into the ether, leaving me bereft and cross.

I like to think that I am a fair critic of my own work; most of that which I write is OK, but occasionally I come up with a gem, one of which is the missing mouse poem – I am mortified that I have lost my mouse!

But I’ll give you one I did find; It’s true-ish, and about the origins of Pantomime.

Once upon a time, long, long ago a lunchtime argument was going on in the pub in the rural village of Creek. It was about the future of the local theatre group, known by the anachronism of UPTHE Creek. This stood for Unlimited Productions To Heartily Enjoy, but was commonly referred to as Up The Creek.

An atmosphere of despondency, beer and pipe smoke filled the room. The membership had fallen drastically, and now numbered 4. The group’s last production, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, had been a flop – the only ones to turn up where the local fat boy, who was under the impression that there would be ham sandwiches, and his dog who hoped that his master might drop one.

‘We’ll have to wind it up.’ Said the Chairman sadly. He sighed, and the members sighed in unison, looked pointedly at their empty glasses and then at the Chairman. Nobody moved.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ chirped Rosie, the pub’s buxom barmaid. ‘I’ve written a play – I’ll show it to you when I serve your next round.’

The members agreed, mainly because they enjoyed watching Rosie bend forward to place the tankards on the table.
She fished a tightly folded wad of paper out of her corsage. ‘Here it is. It’s called ‘Jack and Cinderella take Mother Goose to the Chinese laundry, and meet Dick Whittington under the Beanstalk. It’s full of drama - people are bound to love it.’

The Chairman flicked quickly through the pages. ‘Sorry, Rosie. Nice try, but not quite up to our standard. I don’t want to offend you, but the plot is, well – isn’t really, and the dialogue is, I don’t like to mention it, coarse, more suited to the common man than Thespians such as ourselves. We have our standards to maintain, that is why we only stage plays by famous bards, not barmaids, especially barmaids with no education in the art of theatre.’

Rosie flushed, took back the proffered pages and stuffed them back into her corsage. ‘Fine! If it is not good enough for you ‘Thespians,’ she stressed the word, ‘I’ll find someone who it is good enough for.’
The Chairman spread his hands derisively and looked round at the members. ‘The poor girl is delusional. She hasn’t even got command of basic grammar!’ He took a long slug of his beer.
‘H’m’ spat Rosie. ‘We’ll see!’

That evening Rosie, wearing her lowest cut dress, was auditioning a packed pub full of customers for parts in her play. She auditioned everybody, regardless of gender, (at that period women were not considered for acting parts, it was a male-only domain) and by closing time she had a full cast, including a female Principal Boy and a male Dame.

That weekend the production of ‘Jack and Cinderella take Mother Goose to the Chinese laundry and meet Dick Whittington under the Beanstalk’ played to a packed pub audience, who, fuelled by best bitter and encouraged by the players, entered into the spirit of the occasion with much audience participation in the form of cheers, boos, hisses and applause.

And thus was born the Creek Village Play, or as we know it now, Pantomime.
The UPTHE Creek Theatre Group has disappeared without trace, but Pantomime survives to this day!