Sonnet......sort of!

Interminable minutes, hours and days
Negate the hopes, ambitions, of my youth,
Endlessly blocking all the schemes and ways,
Enfeebling stealthily the search for truth.

Damn the desires I once held! in fear,
Made known, I should be left alone, bereft;
Outed, exposed, derided as a mere
Nugatory fool, that could be used, then left.

Escaping from all that, I turned it round;
Yielding no more to love, aloof and proud,
Not giving, taking,and then shifting ground
Only to flee once more from love allowed:
Which leaves me now, in age, once more alone:

  Dissatisfied.

                     Unsatisfied.

                                       A hopeless drone.

1953 (iii)

[This photograph is of  Peggy Ashcroft (later, Dame Peggy Ashcroft), one of the great actresses of the twentieth century.
She is responsible for my love of Shakespeare's plays. In 1953, I saw her play Cordelia in King Lear  and Portia in The Merchant of Venice.]

  Joan and Cliff enjoyed the theatre. Both were members of Bridlington's premier amateur dramatic society - The Green Circle Players (founded, led and directed by a tall, bespectacled, stangely angular woman who went by the name of Margaret Dick). Joan was  the star of that company. Cliff  played supporting roles; He was also an enthusiastic tenor in the Bridlington Operatic Society's annual presentation of Gilbert and Sullivan. In those days, during the Summer, Bridlington was treated to a season  by the Harry Hanson Court Players. Each week they presented a different play , usually light comedies or  sub-Agatha Christie thrillers. It was, as a company of players, at best, adequate. Some weeks, they needed extra players for very small roles and, rather than hire another professional, they looked for local amateurs. Joan played several  maids, each with about one line - usually, "Oh, ma'am, It's the police to see you!". Cliff, who was a pharmacist, was often  recruited to play the doctor who, at the beginning of Act Two, had to examine the corpse which had been discovered at the climax of Act 1. As their payment for appearing, they got their names in the programme, a mention in the town's weekly paper, "The Bridlington Free Press, and a couple of free tickets  - which they passed on to me.
Joan was preparing for her elocution exams for the Royal Academy of Music and  the Guildhall School of Music.Later, armed with these qualifications, she became a teacher of Speech and Drama. I became used to her suddenly stopping in the middle of the washing up, turning to me and declaiming :
     "I am not mad; this hair I tear is mine.
     My name is Constance. I am Geoffrey's wife.
     Young Arthur is my son, and he is  lost!
      I am not mad: I wish to God I were,
     For then 'tis like I should forget myself."
which meant nothing to me (it is from Shakespeare's "King John") but sounded absolutely thrilling, and I used to laugh delightedly every time she performed it with resonance, agonised expression and the brandishment of a dish mop.  Cliff, if he were present, would respond by singing "Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes" (G and S: The Gondoliers), always forgetting the words after the first couple of bars. I thought that they were both marvellous, and that the stage was an enchanted place.

Coronation year, a son who had passed the 11+ underage: what better way to celebrate than to take him for the first time to Stratford - upon - Avon? I was excited by the prospect: not by the chance of seeing Shakespeare's birthplace, nor that of going to see one of his plays in what Joan and Cliff called "a real theatre"; but by the fact that we were going to drive all the way there (and some of the journey would be on what was called The Great North Road)  in Cliff's little black Austin. The distance seemed daunting. To start with, we were going South of the River Humber. That meant we would be moving out of East Yorkshire and into very foreign territory. (At that time, the Humber Bridge did not exist, so , to go South, you had to drive to Goole - clearly, a frontier town - and turn left). Then, we were going to  break  the journey and stay with cousins  just North of Birmingham.  It seemed  the journey would be epic!

Epic it was - in that The Great North Road seemed to go on for ever, all of it looking exactly the same as the roads around Bridlington. We passed through drab towns.  (For a frontier town, Goole was particularly disappointing: no cattle rustling in sight, no shoot-out  occurring in the main street, no lawlessness; just  a succession of grey, terraced houses, the front doors of which gave straight onto a littered pavement.) There were lots of lorries, belching filthy exhaust , but little traffic otherwise. Motorways were yet to be created across England, and there were very few dual carriageways. As we approached  Birmingham, I perked up a little  at the name of a nearby village, Water Orten, where, Cliff assured me there were beds of Watercress; There were a few ponds at the side of the road surrounded by trees, but they looked no different from the duck ponds we had in the Yorkshire Wolds (and they had much more exotic names like Burton Agnes and Wetwang).  I was a bit bored by the time we reached the home of Joan's cousins.

There was a lot of laughter and noise there, and also three  girls, (my second cousins, I guessed). They each had long red hair and wore blue gingham shortsleeved dresses, short white socks and sandals with straps. They were pleasant enough and took me to play  in a nearby field; but it was difficult, for I could not penetrate  their Midlands accent and , to them, I spoke "posh" (Joan and the Misses Potts had ensured that I did not talk with a Yorkshire accent - at least when I was "in society"), and, anyway, I just didn't like girls much. By and large, I thought they were boring.
So, it was a relief when, two days later, with a lot more laughter, and dashes back into the house for forgotten items, and noisy waving of goodbyes, Joan and Cliff and I finally drove back up to the main road  towards Bimingham.

Birmingham was more interesting: it was so big - bigger than Hull -and full of cars and trams and buses and people. The little car squeezed though the city, past factories with belching chimneys and onto the road to Sollihull. Clff pointed out the cricket ground at Edgebaston to the left,  and then, a little further on, to the right, the University with its central Italianate bell tower, which looked interesting, if rather bizarre, amongst the very English semi-detached houses. (Years later, I was to be an English student there and know  the tower as "Joseph Chamberlain's public erection"; but, at that moment, of my destiny, I had no ken.) Up the hill to Solihull and then out again into the Warwickshire countryside and heading, at last, to Stratford - upon - Avon.

In 1953, Stratford was still the busy, smallish market town where Shakespeare happened to have been born. There were tourists, of course, but they were, by and large, tourists who actually knew why Shakespeare was so famous: many of them had actually read or seen onstage his plays. There were not the groups claiming ownership of Shakespeare and his "legacy": the town had not been taken over by the English Tourist Board or become part of the Visit Britain Campaign. The "Shakespeare Sites" had not been comandeered by the Levi Fox brigade, the theatre  had not been swamped by the demanding ego of the R.S.C., and the hotels were still privatly owned by people  who actually had been born and bred in the area. There was certainly nothing called "The Shakespeare Experience", and no garish MacDonalds. You could still walk to Anne Hathaway's Cottage through fields (and it was the original cottage and not  the facsimile that is there today - the original burned to the ground as a result of an electrical fault); there was no pedestrianised precinct that passed by the house where Shakespeare was born, and the squarely modern Birmingham University's Shakespeare Centre , next door to The Birthplace, was still a gleam in Levi Fox's eye.

In 1953, I loved it, as I have never loved it since. I loved the Avon with its swans and I loved the old bridge with its buttressed arches that spanned the river. . I loved the hustle and bustle of the town centre below the crossroads. I loved Shakespeare's house because  the traffic still swirled up and down outside it. If the cars and bicycles had been replaced by horses and carts, it would have been little different from the street he knew. I liked following the route he may have taken  along the High Street to the Grammar School just after Sheep Street (Cliff told me that it was so named because it was the route taken by the shepherds bringing their flock to market. That made sense to me). I  loved the old houses (now hotels) on either side of the High Street (The Shakespeare  looked more posh, but the Falcon looked more historically real).Above all, I was attracted  to the lane that led down past Hall's Croft to  Trinity Church and the River,with its warm brick walls and gently swaying trees, the vigorous noise of the Town Centre reduced to a distant, somnolent hum. I stood perfeectly still and closed my eyes, savouring the summer smells  and , for the first time in my life,  felt that all this had been here for centuries, long before me, long before Cliff and Joan.....well, for ever, it seemed.
We walked along Waterside to  the theatre. It was strange to approach it from this direction, for you arrived first at the  Edwardian redbrick  towered building which was all that was left of the previous theatre. Passing the old entrance, we came to the Stage Door of the modern theatre and then turned the corner towards the river where the  Theatre Foyer was. There were steps leading up to the entrance.
 I gaped. Posed on the top step was a tall woman, gazing down the river into the distance, as if in anticipation of a longed-for arrival. She wore an elegant checked tweed  jacket and skirt. Her head was raised in profile. One hand rested on her waist, the other stretched before her and held the leads of two great Danes, that sat before her, alert and confident  , staring in the same direction as their mistress.
"Who's that? I asked Joan.
"It is Rachel Kempton. She is an actress. Her husband is Michael Redgrave. He plays Shylock this afternoon. She is not performing today."
I stared, transfixed. With measured pace, as if she had become aware that she was no longer alone,Rachel Kempson turned her head and gazed at the throng entering the theatre. The hand on her hip moved to her side. The dogs stood, in unison. The trio exited the scene.
I was hooked.

We had seats on the front row of the balcony.I gawped at the chandeliers the red plush seats, filling up with that excited  confident anticipation of an audience  that knew the delights that were held behind the elegant proscenium arch with the thick red and gold velvet curtains. Would those curtains swish as they parted, I wondered, like they had for the Blue Doors in my favourite book, "The Swish of the Curtain" by Pamela  Brown, about a group of children who wanted to grow up to run their own theatre company?
A roll of drums. The audience stood. The National Anthem played. As it finished, the audience sat down and  quietened to a  hush as the house lights dimmed and the footlights glowed and enriched the deeply glowing red of the curtains. With  mre of a whoosh than a swish, they parted and rose to reveal the bright scene of Venice. Two men entered and moved towards the front of the stage. I leaned forward in my seat.

"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad;
It wearies me. You say, it wearies you....."

I know now, very clearly, what Antonio means when he speaks those opening words. I  don't think I did then but I felt his loneliness. And still today, I am convinced that the central character of the play is neither Portia nor Shylock, although those are the roles in "The Merchant of Venice" that every actor wants to play. Not me: I never got to play Antonio, and, of course, now, I never shall; but he was the character I cared for most that afternoon in Stratford and the one with whom I still identify.
I had never read the play before, and I was gripped to know how everything was going to work out. The Trial scene came. Shylock was demanding his "pound of flesh". Antonio was prepared to die. Bassanio was filled with guilt at what he had helped to bring about. Portia (played by peggy Ashcroft) entered in the disguise of a lawyer.If Antonio was to escape death, only she would be able to achieve it - which, in my opinion, was only right. After all, it was because of her, that Bassanio had created the situation that Antonio was now in. She made "The Quality of Mercy" speech. Shylock was adamant. She looked upon the bond. Shylock refused the offer of more money. All appeared lost: it seemed that   Antonio must die.That seemd so,unfair; and yet, he accepted it: The line, "I am a tainted wether of the flock" worried me at the time. (Many years later, I was to understand his feelings much more clearly. It still haunts me .)

 He made his farewell to Bassanio; Shylock advanced towards him, sharpening his knife.

In the theatre, there was  silence.

Portia: A pound of that same merchant's flesh is thine.
            The Court awards it, and the law doth give it
Shylock:Most rightful judge!
Portia: And you must cut this flesh from off his breast.
           The law allows it, and the court awards it.

In the theatre, there was an absolute stillness.

Shylock: Most learned judge! A sentence; come, prepare!

 Shylock advanced downstage left to Antonio, who was now barechested and supported by Bassanio.

In the silence and stillness of the theatre, Shylock raised his knife to strike

Portia: Tarry a little, there is something else.
            This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood

I have never forgotten the sound of an entire audience releasing its breath as they did, that afternoon , in the auditorium of that theatre in Stratford. Later, I thought about it. It  seemed to me that I must have been one of the very few people in the theatre watching the play that afternoon who had not known beforehand how the trial scene worked out. So, how was it that, if most people knew the ending, they were still caught up in the action as if it were the first time they were seeing the play? How could people whom we knew were really actors involve us so completely in their fate? And how could Peggy Ashcroft convince us that afternoon that she was the beautiful, witty, rich Portia, and, a few nights later, persuade me that she was the rebellious youngest daughter of King Lear  whose death in his arms made me feel so sad?

Whenever I have seen this play, or read it, or taught it, or directed it, at this moment of Act 4, I am transported back to that moment in my life when I first knew the power of theatre .

And it is Peggy Ashcroft's voice I hear.

Sentence Construction

An essay is created by a series of paragraphs, all concerned with a particular topic.
A paragraph is built with a series of sentences.

There are many different forms of a sentence:

Simple Sentence:      The cat sat on the mat.
Double Sentence:      The cat sat on the mat and watched the mouse.
Multiple Sentence:    The cat sat on the mat and watched the mouse and swished its tail.
Complex Sentence:   The cat, which was striped, sat on the mat.
Double Complex:      The cat, which was striped, sat on the mat and watched the mouse.
Multiple Complex:    The cat, which was striped, sat on the mat and watched the mouse
                                     and swished its tail. 

Which kind of sentence  you to choose to use will depend on the effect you want to communicate to your reader. Varying the sentence construction in a paragraph also helps to encourage the reader to read more of what you are writing.

 A sentence is created  by the use of     Clauses.

What is a Clause?

A clause is a group of words containing a  Finite Verb.

A verb is a word that shows the action in a sentence.
 [You could say that a verb is a "doing" or a "being" word  - I put it this way because, many people forget about words like  "are". For example, in a sentence like "You are happy", the word "are" is a verb (from the verb "to be" -people often forget that simply "being" is, actually, an action)].

However, look at the verb  "run", in the following:

Running down the road.

There is action there in the word "running", and it is a form of verb;   but,   it is not an example of a finite verb . 

However, if I write:

The boy was running down the road.

Then "was running" is a finite verb. Why? Because the reader is told who was performing  the action: in other words, the verb has a Subject.

              The Subject of a verb is the person or thing that performs the action



Each clause  contains only one finite verb. So by discovering how many finite verbs there are in a sentence,  we can know how many clauses there are in that sentence.

For example:

I saw the boy who was riding the black bicycle.

The finite verbs are  "saw" (subject : I) and  "was riding" (subject: who - relative pronoun standing in place of "boy)

Let's put this another way:

Here are  two sentences:

a)  I saw the boy.             b) He was riding the black bicycle

Each sentence makes one simple point.

However,
these two sentences can be made into one sentence  by turning them into clauses using the relative pronoun "who" :

c) I saw the boy who was riding the black bicycle;

Now the one sentence has become more interesting, since, by using two clauses, we are able to emphasise one of the points as more important:  the fact that I saw the boy is more important than the fact that he was riding a black bicycle.

So, already we can understand one reason why the use of Clauses in a sentence is  necessary. They allow the reader to understand  the related emphasis of information in a sentence.

                          The use of clauses helps the comprehension of the reader.

Now, there are two kinds of Clauses.

Main Clauses    and  

Subordinate Clauses. (Do not be put off by the word "subordinate"; it simply means "supporting").

The MAIN Clause
                               is the core of every sentence: it contains the most important information of the sentence.

 Every sentence must have at least one Main Clause.

So, if there is only one finite verb in a sentence, there can only be one clause in that sentence and , therefore, that clause  must be a Main clause.

Sentences which consist of  one main clause and nothing else are Simple sentences (see above).

[You can join two main clauses with a conjunction *. In that case, you have a sentence composed of two main clauses, which makes the sentence a  Double sentence (see above).]

You can string as many main clauses as you like in a sentence, all joined by a conjunction, and  - as long as there is no other kind of clause present - you have created a Multiple sentence (see above)..

Note: * A conjunction is a word that joins two similar things together (two nouns, two adjectives, two main clauses, etc) It cannot join two different things together. Words like "and" or "but" are conjunctions. A conjunction will not join a Main Clause with a Subordinate clause.

Here is our example of a multiple sentence again (the finite verbs have been underlined):

The cat sat on the mat and watched the mouse and swished its tail.

Simple, Double and Mutiple sentences are fine if  everything you want to say has the same importance. However, if you want to  emphasise something as the major point in a sentence but need to qualify it in some way to the reader, then you will need to use a combination of Main clause(s) and Subordinate Clause(s). In this way you will begin to write in a more complex way: persuasively, descriptively, and with more sophisticated ideas and nuances to help your reader understand you more clearly.  You will have noticed that little children,  when they begin to use language, only use simple sentences often linking them with "and". This is because, when we are very young, everything has the same importance to us: it is only when we develop intellectually that we begin to sort out what is more important - and our use of language  and sentence construction will demonstrate that fact.

SUBORDINATE CLAUSES  play a supporting role in a sentence. Sentences which include subordinate clauses are called complex sentences.

There are three types of subordinate clauses:
1) Adjectival clauses. These perform the same job of work in a sentence that an adjective does. The tell us more about anoun in the previous clause.

Just like adjectives, Adjectival clauses answer the question "Which?"

[I rode the bike] (which was black.)    [ ] indicate Main clauses; ( ) indicate subordinate clauses.

In the above sentence, the most important statement [Main clause] "I rode the bike"

The subordinate clause  relates to "bike". It answers the question "which bike?" (Not the red one,nor the blue one, nor the green one; but the black one). Therefore it is an Adjectival Clause.

2) Adverbial clauses do the same job of work that adverbs do: they tell us "when", where", "in what manner/how", an action in another clause was performed,

(When the heat was less fierce),[I rode my bike.]
(Where there was no traffic),[I rode my bike]

3) Noun  clauses  do the same job of work in a sentence that nouns do: they can act as a subject or an object of a verb in the Main clause.

[I knew] (that he was lying.)    " I knew" is the main clause: "that he was lying" is the object of  "knew" - it is what I knew.

(That he was truthful) [ was a lie.]  "That he was untruthful " is the subject of "was"

Through the use of Simple , Double, Multiple and the various Complex sentences with their subordinate clauses; we are able to write paragraphs which are lively, full of interest, and which help the reader to evaluate what is of greater importance and what is of lesser importance  in each paragraph. To be able to make this distinction is invaluable when you wish to read a passage and abstract from it only the essential information.

H.I.P.F.W.E.

[This is an aside from the strand in  the current blog that I am writing. However, recently, I have been asked if I can give advice about writing an essay. What follows is a slightly potted version of the course I used to give my English students on this topic.. I hope it may prove helpful still.]


                      Holliday's Infallible Plan For Writing Essays..................H.I.P.F.W.E.

1.     An essay is a piece of writing which clearly and logically conveys the writer's ideas and thoughts to the reader. Most people will remember from their schooldays that they were told that before starting  an essay they should make a plan of what they want to say. If they are honest, they will remember that what they actually were advised to do was to start by making some notes. Usually  , this consisted of a few phrases which sort of referred to some ideas floating around in their head on the subject that they had been set. Having spent a few minutes doing  that,  they then remember that their teacher had told them that there were three sections to an essay: 1) An opening paragraph that explains what the essay is to be about (usually a rehash of the essay's title)  2) The middle bit in which they put down what they thought was the required answer, and 3) A final bit where they summed up their conclusion (This part usually started with the words "Thus we can see that.....") . Following this "plan", they then wrote the essay (probably the night before it was due) and , if they were conscientious pupils, checked it for spelling, copied it out neatly, drew a line under it at the end (often with a little Smiley) and handed it in.

                 This is exactly what should NOT be done if the aim is to write a planned essay
                                                which will achieve a passing grade.

What follows will show you how to produce a planned essay which will achieve  a higher grade because it is clear, logical and consists of several paragraphs, each of which  contains a Topic Sentence and supporting sentences which illustrate, develop, clarify the topic sentence of that paragraph. Each paragraph will link logically from the preceding paragraph and  to the following paragraph. The first paragraph will not be introductory ("In this essay, I am going to explain...") but will go straight into the first topic you wish to discuss. The last paragraph will not be a repeat of he points you have made in the preceding paragraphs but will be the final point you wish to make written in such a manner that the reader feels that your argument has concluded

Think of the essay as a stream that has to be forded by  using a series of stepping stones that lead you from one bank to the other. Each stepping stone is a paragraph and the reader moves from one paragraph to the next just as the walker moves from one stepping stone to the next until the end of the crossing is achieved.

2.    What is a paragraph?
        A paragraph consists of a group of sentences that are concerned with a particular topic. One of these sentences is the topic sentence. The other sentences in the paragraph will support the topic sentence through illustration, development  through explanation and expansion, clarification of the idea in the topic sentence.  When you scan an essay, you should be able to pick out the topic sentence of each paragraph and, by noting these, be able to follow the argument that is developed throughout the essay. These topic sentences give the reader the bones of the essay's argument: they provide the structure of the essay. The reader may not agree with the argument of your essay, but,  at least,  he or she can take on board what  you think. In this way, the essence of writing has been achieved; the essence of all writing is communication. If you can achieve that, then  you are a writer. How good a writer you are in the eyes of others will depend on things like tone, appropriate vocabulary, intelligence: we cannot all reach the power of Shakespeare, the wit of Wilde, the force of Shaw; but we can make our views clear through the planning of our essay.

H.I.P.F.W.E
(When you start to use  this method of planning your essay, please remember that
    a) you cannot write the essay overnight using this method: the planning of anything takes time. [I used to tell my students to take the stages day by day throughout a week (which was usually the length of time they had to produce an essay for homework)]
   b)If you consistently use  this method, you will discover that the standard of your essays is rising. You will even find that, as you become familiar with this method, certain stages take less and less time to complete; Eventually, you will be planning your essays automatically, until you reach a point in time when you never remember where or how you learned to write an essay: you just have no moire trepidation about doing it!)


stage 1
Provide yourself with no distraction: no tv, no cellphone, no facebook, no -what are they called?- "i-somethings" (it's a culture that utterly confuses me!)
Concentrate on the title or subject of your essay. Then, on a piece of foolscap, jot down anything that comes into your head that is prompted by the subject of your task, no matter how irrelevant it might at first seem. Do not write sentences: put down phrases, odd words that come into your mind, a snatch of song, a phrase of poetry, anything; but, above all, DETAILS. Do not make generalisations: just as a painter or a photographer or a cinéaste (film maker) observes closely what he is recording, so you must notice the little things; Jot down odd phrases and words from different languages (like cinéaste!), idioms, etc and let your mind follow these paths. Do not stop until the entire sheet of foolscap is completely covered.
Now you may pause, make a coffee, turn on the cellphone, play music, whatever. The first stage is over and you leave the essay alone for a few hours - or the next day!

stage 2
When you return to your page of jottings and look at it again, you may find more ideas  flowing and you should add them to your list. When you are ready to start on Stage 2, look through your list. You will see that certain items you have jotted down are associated one with another. Group these things together in separate lists.  Some of these lists might be quite lengthy: some may only consist of one or two things. With the latter, see if you can think of other details that could be added to them; but, if none occur to you, then put them to one side as "not to be used this time".
Now, take each of your other lists in turn and, for each list, write a  simple sentence* that encapsulates what that group is about.  At this stage, it does not matter how banal this sentence is ( Something as straightforward and obvious as "The sun was shining" is quite good enough!), for each of these is going to be developed, eventually, into the topic sentence  for that group.
Take each group in turn and turn  every item in that group into a simple sentence. So, if you had thirteen items in that group, you will now have  fourteen simple sentences (because you also have the topic sentence that you created for that group)
When you have done this for every group, you have completed stage 2.

[If you are having trouble with the terms in bold print, I will include a glossary either at the end of this post or in a separate post that will follow.]


stage  3
This is the central stage of HIPFWE. It is also the most demanding and takes the most time to complete. This is where you transfrom each of the groups of simple sentences into a paragraph.

Take one of your groups. You have a series of simple sentences, one of which is the topic sentence. First, put the sentences into what you think is the most logical order. Having done this, see which of these sentences can be combined, either into various forms of complex sentences; or, possibly, double or multiple sentences. Try and create a variety of sentence construction a) to involve the reader's attention or b) to create a build-up of tension or to reflect he complexity of the situation you are creating.
 Decide where you will place the Topic Sentence. Sometimes it is good (for example in an explanatory or informational essay) to place it as the opening sentence of the pragraph; sometimes (in narrative essays, for example), it can be placed at the end of the paragraph to effect. But it can go anywhere that you think is most suitable in the paragraph.
Look at the vocabulary you are using. Choice of words affects the tone of a passage. Do not use repetitive vocabulary,but, at the same time, do not feel you have to show off your grasp of a wide vocabulary; Remember, always, that you are trying to communicate clearly with, and involve . your reader .
Check your use of punctuation : remember that punctuation is there to help the reader find his or her way though the sentences, so don't just put in a comma every time you take a breath. There are rules that govern punctuation and, despite living in the age of computer speak, we should obey those rules ........unless we really do not want to communicate!

When you are satisfied that you have transformed the group of simple sentences into a paragraph, turn to the next group and perform the same routine. Repeat for each of your groups.
Then, take a breath, pat yourself on the back  and relax for a while; You have not finished yet, but you are approaching the final stages!

stage 4

You now find yourself with a series of paragraphs. Now you need to decide which is the most logival order in which to place them. Once you have done this, read through all that you have written. You will probably find that whilst the thought line throughout what you have written is logical, the paragraphs seem a tad isolated from one another. You need to look at the final sentence of one paragraph and the first line of the following paragraph and make adjustments so that the one leads logically and smoothly to the next point you are making. Once this has been done, make a fair copy of your essay and leave it on your desk until tomorrow.

stage 5

Read your essay through with a fresh and critical eye. Check spelling and legibility (if anyone still hand-writes essays any more), for nothing is more infuriating for the reader than to have difficulty in deciphering handwriting. Make any small adjustments you feel are necessary. Is the tone  suitable? i.e. You are not using colloquial language (Language as we use it in speaking to one another) for a serious discoursive or informative piece.

And if you are satisfied: voilà, you're finished.!

If you use this method routinely for every essay that you write , then you will find that a) the time  you take to get through certain stages will diminish as you establish your routine; and b)the fluency of your thought and expression will gradually improve and your writing will always be clearly expressed and logical in its development of ideas.

Finally:

At the end of the sessions covering HIPFWE, I used to require the students to write the following in their notebooks:
"I promise that, from this moment on, I shall use HIPFWE for all my essays, no matter for what subject the essay is required."
This was followed by their signature and the signature of their witness (who sat at the next desk). I wanted them to write  and sign in blood, but Matron objected and I settled for red ink.
I hope this helps.

1953 (ii)

When I look back to my own schooldays -after almost fifty years as a teacher -  I realise just how much influence they had on my later life. Not intellectually, of course: anyone who has had dealings with me will know that I have no practical  manual talents. I know nothing about Physics and Chemistry (one of my chemistry teachers, after having explained  something at great length - and, possibly, very lucidly- regarded me with saddened eyes and exclaimed, "Holliday, you resemble a cow, staring over a five-barred gate.") I was thrown out of Biology, which may explain some of my future confusions; and any number of bank managers will testify to my complete failure to grasp  the basic factors of Maths. All of which is rather sad since, it appears, my education started when was about two and a half years old.

I do not remember it, of course; but I was told that just after the war (that is World War 2 for the younger of my readers; I was born in November 1942, about the time of El Alamein: I like to think that news of my birth was instrumental in causing grave misgivings to Hitler and his chances of ruling the world); my mother and I (my father having been sent off as a medical officer to various parts of the world) were living in Southampton. My mother went off to work in an office somewhere and, since a baby sitter  was impossible to find, used to hand me over, every morning, to a gtoup of Italian prisoners of war who looked after me and played with me until her return in the afternoon. Clearly, I did not learn any Italian from these encounters; but, equally clearly, they had a profound influence on later  interests. In any case, this baby-sitting could not have lasted for too long, because I know I went to some sort of Nursery school in Southampton. Two memories, totally unconnected, surface every so often. In the first, I am running though a world of grey, that consisted of grey concrete beneath my feet and a thick fog that surrounded me. I am in a playground and I know I am running towards the main building. In my memory, I never reach it........although clearly  I must have done, for my second memory is of being in a small room with a lot of other tots and grown ups. Someone is tying  tiny red boxing gloves on my hands and then I am lifteda central space, surrounded by laughter and cheers. I don't like it and I am crying. Did I hit  my opponent or did he hit me? I don't know. Probably not: I have always backed away from confrontation. And I have always detested boxing as a sport.

What schooling I had between then and five years old, I don't remember. I know  that my father was back from the war and that he and my mother and I were living with Grandma and Grandpa Frank at 44, Burniston Road in Hull.And then, after that , we moved to Bridlington, and I went to Cliff House School

Cliff House School for Young Gentlemen and Ladies was run by two sisters, the Miss Potts. Miss Lucy Pott was the elder. Thin and scawny and with greying hair plaited into a coil over each ear, she ran the Lower class. Eventually , a young gentleman would graduate to the Senior class taught by Miss Jane, who was the complete antithesis to her sister: tall, slim and with jet balck hair, she made you think of Snow White. The school was in their home, a detached house with a big back garden on a  quiet avenue  not too far from the North beach of Bridlington and the path that led up the cliffs  to Danes Dyke ( up which Hentietta Maria had neen rowed when she returned from Holland with treasure to support her husband, Charles I, in his fight against Cromwell.).
 It was here that I learned the basics, especially how to do proper handwriting in ink, to spell, to enjoy words, to count, to learn my multiplication tables (OK until I got to eight  times seven, and then it was downhill all the way), and where I looked at maps of the world on which were a lot of countries coloured in red. It was here that I was given my Doctor Barnardo's saving box,  alittle cardboard cottage with hollyhocks round the door and a slot in the roof into which I put spare farthings and ha'pennies and pennies. On Dr Barnardo's Day, each young gentleman and lady, emptied the collected coins onto the oaken table and we had races to see who could pick up twelve pennies  the fastest, until all had been totalled and Miss Lucy would show us the total amount collected on the blackboard.
It was here that I learned to be a polite young gentleman, to use correct vocabulary. One hot Summer day, I came in from playtime in the garden and cried out,"Ouf! I'm sweating!", only to be gently remonstrated by Miss Lucy, 3Christopher, horses sweat: gentlemen perspire". I have never forgotten.
It was here, I first preformed. I sang  lustily in Singing lessons ("Christopher enjoys this" was  written, rather ruefully, on my report. I liked poetry and in concerts staged once a year by the young gentlemen and ladies in the Tea and Coffee Rooms of the Lounge Cinema, I duly performed poems by Walter de la Mare .My favourite poem was "The Listeners" which I performed with suitable gestures and gusto. And there was a poem, which has long disappeared from memory, about a linnet in a cage, which I pitied and released, that, apparantlly, reduced a rather emotional  matron in the  audience to tears..........not of laughter, I hope.
I could only have been at Cliff House Scool for a couple of years but I think they were probably the most valuable  years of my  life as a child. Schools like Cliff House disappeared and  are now probably regarded as relics of a former age, and laughed at, patronisingly. But I learned there that one should never lie ( I still cannot tell a lie - or if I do, then everyone will know from my gauche stuttering and scarlet face), that other people come first, that ladies should enter a room before a gentleman, should not carry heavy articles and should be respected at all times (well, I am not sure that the last point has been adhered to). It is a world captured in the books of Miss Read and which is now derided. But I felt safe there, and when I went onto  Moorfield Primary School, i was ahead of the other children in my year group.

Moorfield was  the primary school with two playgrounds (one for girls and one for boys) and two separate entrances (one for boys and one for girls. It was where I met Dorothy Woods, who lived just round the corner from St Anthony Road. She is important in my life in that she was the first girl that I ever kissed - well,  in truth, she kissed me, and I didn't like it much. Much more important people there were Mrs Ingle, Mr Penkethman and Miss Senior, the three teachers I had there. I thought they were wonderful and knew everything. No matter what you asked, they had an answer. Mr Penkethman put me in my first play. It was a Nativity and I played a little boy who arrived at  Jesus' birth  and was sad because I did not have a gift for him: a role I overplayed to its sentimental hilt. I was awful, but I loved being in front of an audience.
In those days, in a child's last year at a Primary school, there was the 11+ exam which decided whether a child went on to a Grammar School or to  a Secondary Modern School.  Grammar Schools led onto scholastic futures, Secondary Modern Schools were for children with more practical talents. Most ambitious parents wanted their children to go to Grammar schools. I was in Miss Senior's class and  knew that I had at least another year to go before I had to take the 11+ exam. However, one day, I arrived in her class and with three or four other boys was sent to another classroom to sit a series of tests. It did not mean very much to me; but, then, in the summer term, she called me to her desk at the front of the class, and told me that I had passed the 11+ and therefore had been selected for a grammar School education. Would I like to run home with this letter and tell my mother?  (How difficult to believe today that a child of ten would be allowed to leave school unaccompanied - the very fact speaks volumes about how the world has changed.)
I ran all the way, down the  fenced gunnel that separated the terraced houses from Bridlington Town Football club, turned right onto the top of Queensgate, dashed across the dual carriageway and along the road that went past the playing fields of the Secondary Modern School. I dived down  St Anthony Road to our house and pushed at the back door of Number 10. It was locked.
Disconsolate, I went and sat on the front doorstep. The door opened. My mother was coming out to go shopping and was surprised to see me. I gave her the letter and gabbled out what Miss Senior had told me. She hugged me and said "Let's ring Granny Frank in Hull"
Later, when my father came home, we read all the details that Miss Senior had given me. I had to make a choice from several schools in the East Yorkshire area, including Bridlington Grammar School. But I knew I did not want to go there. I had done my reading of Enid Blyton. Mallory Towers seemed a lot of fun. I knew where I wanted to go.
I wanted to go to Boarding School
I looked at the details and I decided on Archbishop Holgate's School in York. It sounded really  great.

And that was where I would be going to school in September 1953.

1953

1953

"Last night I dreamed  I was back at..".........well, not Manderley, exactly; but through the swirling mists of memory, I saw myself back in the  Summer of 1953, which, in retrospect, appears as a watershed year of  my life.

I was ten and a half years old, and life was cosy and  seemingly secure. I lived in a small  detached house  at the end of a small cul de sac in Bridlington. With a brand new fountain pen, I had painstakingly inscribed  on the first page of my favourite book , my name and address:
                                     Christopher  John  Holliday
                                     10 St Anthhony's Road
                                      Bridlington
                                     East Yorkshire
                                     England
                                      Europe
                                     The World
                                     The Unyverse
There was a wooden gate that led up to the front door where a second path branched round to the side of the house  and led to the back door and the garden that edged the other three sides of the house. On the backside of the garden, there was a high wooden fence, on the other side of which,  (and I could only see this from upstairs through the bathroom window) lay the cemetary and , farther away, the square tower of Bridlington Priory Church.
When I entered the house by the backdoor - the front door was only used  to welcome visitors - I found myself in the narrow kitchen with its pantry. Next to the kitchen was the  dark back room with its coal fire. This was the room we used all the time. The window looked onto the widest part of the garden where one glorious Guy Fawkes Night, when the rain was pouring down, Cliff braved the elements (while Joan and Molly and I watched through the window) to let off the fireworks we had bought the previous week. He set off the first  and we oohed. He set off the second and we ahhed. But then, he accidently dropped a lighted match onto the tray of fireworks and , with  a flash, they were all alive, banging and shooting off in all directions; it was the best firework display I ever saw, and Joan and I cheered Cliff as he returned, soaking and bedraggled, to the back room, whilst Molly barked her approval that the noise was over.

Molly was an Irish Red Setter, highly strung and full of wet sloppy licks. She was, Joan said, "as  daft as a brush" and was  a  present for me from Great Aunt Kate, a formidable Methodist  Aunt of  Cliff,  who had visited us from Oxford one Christmas. She had travelled  up to Bridligton by rail, changing trains at York, and pausing only long enough to telephone Joan to tell her what time she would arrive at Bridlington Station, so that Cliff could pick her up in the car. Just before putting down the receiver, she asked Joan, commandingly,
 "Would Christopher like a dog for Christmas?"
"Well," Joan began hestitatingly, "I expect he might...."
"Because I have brought one for him"
Later, Joan used to wonder exactly for whom Molly was brought. As she said, she was the one who walked Molly, fed Molly, brushed Molly, cleaned up after Molly.
But I loved Molly.

We had a front room. From its windows , you could see the whole of St Anthony's Road, as far as its junction with the Main Road. No cars were present in the road; but every day, the milk cart, pulled by a horse would turn in to deliver bottles to every door, and the coal dray pulled by a   strong horse would come often, and the rag and bone man, once a month would appear with his horse and cart. Once these tradesmen and their beasts had left the road, one could see neighbours, sneaking out of their houses, armed with  a pan and brush, to collect the horses' droppings for their roses. It was in this road, where I first practised riding my two wheeler bike - with strict instructions not to go beyond the junction. Unsurprisingly, I disobeyed, skidded on the gravel at the junction, fell off the bike, grazed my legs, burst into howling tears, was brought home by a kindly onlooker, sat on Joan's knee, in the kitchen, while she bathed my wounds and declared  that I was never going  on a bicycle again, and she told me that " that is what happens when you disobey instructions".

The front room had a fireplace with a ceramic surround : the fire was rarely lit.The floor had a  lush green carpet on which sat a  rather ugly three piece suite and a pouffeAlong one wall was a low set of bookshelves.  I used to sneak in there, and lie on the floor, reading one of  the books that Cliff brought back for me when he returned from his day's travels as a salesman for a pharmaceutical company. It was a bright room, often sun filled. However, the front room was there only for when we had visitors : "for best", as people used to say.
And, in 1953, it was in the front room that we placed the television.

Television arrived in our area, of course, in time for the Coronation.  Ours was bulky, square, and had a 9 inch screen. Only one other family in St Anthony's Road had one: they lived  at the other end, on the right hand corner of the junction. Their garden looked onto the Secondary school for children who did not go to the local Grammar or High School. They had a rather flashy car. Joan thought they were a bit common, an opinion she later thought completely justified when they were the first people in the area to get ITV.

The Coronation was an  enormous event: a new monarch, and a woman, and a woman named Elizabeth. All kinds of comparisons were being made with the first Queen of England of that name. For me, it was  special because   there was no school that day and a lot more jolly than the day off that  we had when King George VI had died  - I rmember that on the radio there was only  "solemn music", and all the newspapers had  their pages edged in black. There was no communal party in our street, but the fmily  at the end of the road did have a rather raucus party. Joan and Cliff invited our immediate neighbours to come and watch the ceremonies on the television. I was dressed very smartly, Joan wore a a cocktail dress. Cliff wore a suit, and we all sat in the front room in a very earnest and dignified manner. When the National Anthem played, we all stood up, at attention, That was, I assumed, what the new Queen would expect. I remember that she looked so small, like a child, sitting on that throne, with the stone of Scone beneath her (Miss Senior  and Mrs Ingle at school had drilled all the facts into my head) The heavy crown and the cloak seemed to weigh on her and I wondered how she could support the orb and the sceptre for so long.It was all clearly very important: something had ended, and something new was about to start. I looked around at the grown ups in our front room. They seemed so solemn, so unified. Cliff  handed out the  sherry and they all raised their glasses. The lady from next door had a tear on her cheek. And they all looked so expectant.

And I was expectant too. Not for the Queen, but for myself.

Breakfast at Christopher's

Despite the fact that I have twenty or so cookery books with such diverse titles as "Italian Cooking", "Cooking the French Way", "Grandma's Little Recipe Book", "The Woman's Institute Book of Recipes", Delia Smith's How to Cook , Part Two", "The Malawian CookBook", "1000 Recipes", "Miracle Foods" and even "Winnie the Pooh's Cook Book", I hate cooking. To spend hours skinning and peeling , chopping and mincing, flavouring, savouring, basting, tasting, dicing and slicing and spicing ; all for an end product that will be swallowed in less than ten minutes, seems a pretty pointless occupation.

I try to follow the recipe books faithfully; but I always discover that one - apparantly indispensable - ingredient is not in my pantry; and I have absolutely no aptitude for discovering a satisfactory substitute. My pastry refuses to form a ball and I add water until it becomes a grey approximation to the ooze that, as a paddling child, I used to find near the sewage pipe on Bridlington sands. No longer how long I beat, my egg whites remain nebulously clear and my arms sore with the exercise. My frying oil is either too much or too little-and always too hot, with grey acrid fumes rising from the pan. Worse still, my sausages are black on one side and lucidly uncooked on the other.

I hate frozen food because it always seems to need frying (see the problem of frying in the previous paragraph) or boil in a bag which seems rather akin to making a cup of tea rather than a hearty meal. In any case, it seems to me that all frozen food, when heated becomes instantly tasteless. I do not use a microwave: I can neither understand the instructions nor eradicate my instinct that if food can really be prepared so quickly, someone might have discovered that fact centuries ago and putting the kibosh on the careers of Mrs Beeton and Delia and the countless other young, fashionable chefs that appear endlessly on TV.

I am not absolutely useless. I can make a hearty soup and don't mind doing so: I bung all the necessary ingredients into a big saucepan and leave the kitchen for an hour or so. On my return, I tip the slush into a food blender and, voila! a thick country soup. And I have discovered how to make an Apple Sponge.

So, all I need is the course in between.

Well, on Sunday, I roasted beef. It sort of worked, but the real test came yesterday, when I had to clean the oven which was dark brown -nay, black- with burnt crusted fat.

There never was a clearer reason for becoming a vegetarian.