‘Making Observations …’ by Ms Paige Turner
As we all well know, a writer and performer’s job is to make observations of human nature and then reproduce and communicate them to a reading and viewing audience.
So when I saw a couple of dear school friends I had known since I was ten years old and one of them went to write something: not signing the bill as times have moved on with a swipe, I said, ‘I have never noticed you are left-handed.’
The other of our sweet three said, ‘Have you never noticed that, Jan?’
I said, ‘No. And for someone who is supposed to be a writer and performer, I am sadly lacking in observational qualities’.
And so it was, that when attending an online ‘Memory and Imagination …’ Master Class led by my two Cambridge supervisors: Sarah Burton and Jen Poster – sixty attendees no less – I heard the latter say, ‘Writers don’t observe more than other folk, they just use the observations they make’.
Maybe I didn’t need to use my friend’s left-handedness and maybe the universe will always give you the answer if you think hard enough.
When This is All Over …’ a pandemic anthology/Creative Ink
https://amzn.to/3xi8iay
My novel ‘Shakespeare’s Clock’.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/shakespeares-clock/jan-moran-neil/9781912964635
https://www.cranthorpemillner.com/product/jan-moran-neil-shakespeares-clock/
https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/shakespeares-clock,jan-moran-neil-9781912964635

Blog from Blog … by Ms Paige Turner

Gill James, editor of ‘Evergreen’ – an anthology of short stories just out, has published my short story ‘Scheurer’s Green’. She has asked writers some questions for her blog. Here’s me and here is the link:
http://www.gilljameswriter.com/

Memory, Imagination and Going Spare … by Ms Paige Turner
I’m about to do an online ‘Memory and Imagination’ course – as I need to sometimes ‘student’ and it’s with my Cambridge supervisors so that’s good. I’m wondering if ‘the most famous person on the planet’ will come up as Prince Harry does merge Memory and Imagination. ‘My memory is my memory, it does what it does, gathers and curates as it sees fit, and there is just as much truth in what I remember, and how I remember it, as in so called objective facts.’ His memoir (yet another one to add to the can) is a talking oxymoron as he is a walking contradiction in terms. (eg A confirmed bachelor who says he is desperate to marry.) I’m only halfway through so I can’t judge a book by its cover to mix my metaphors but this reader is aware of how scantily H, Haz, Harold, Hazzers (he goes by many names) explores his relationship with his elder brother – Willy. I am feeling quite sorry for Willy.
Then yesterday, during a contretemps with Mister Justin Case, my husband told me that my elder sister (by eight years – and she always maintains seven) said during one of my rare ‘outbursts’ that I had been performing this way since I was two years old. (This isn’t the way I remember it, even when I was two.) To use H’s term: I saw red mist. Went spare. (I mean Mister Justin Case just laughed – but he’s the eldest of three brothers.) I could go into why I was so enflamed but to cut a long story, I suddenly ‘got’ H’s brief narky asides in regard to his elder brother. I totally ‘got’ his angst the moment my husband revealed my elder sister’s own aside.
However, the difference is: I’m not publicly announcing my narkiness with regard to my elder sister’s untrue remark. Well … only to my three lovely blog readers …
‘Spare’ – The Duke of Sussex’s memoir written by J.R. Moehringer whom the duke acknowledges in the middle of his many, many acknowledgements, as ‘collaborator’ and friend, and sometime sparring partner’.
My novel ‘Shakespeare’s Clock’ published by Cranthorpe Milner is available on Amazon too. Ha ha.

Happy 2023 to my three blog readers.
‘There is no friend as loyal as a book’. Ernest Hemingway.

Abou Ben Adhem By Leigh Hunt
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?”
The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou.
“Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel.
Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished.

The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,

And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

I read this poem this last week at my lovely cousin’s funeral. For George Nabney Bell. Merry Christmas to all.

‘Evergreen’ at this time of year by Ms Paige Turner
My short story ‘Scheurer’s Green’ is published in Bridge House Publishing’s anthology ‘Evergreen’. An apt time of year to launch this lovely collection of stories.
My short story is about the death of one Matilda Scheurer, aged nineteen, killed by the ills in our society. I first read my poem ‘Scheurer’s Green’ at a workshop in Cape Town. The theme was ‘Green’ and indeed, I found myself sitting next to Mrs Green. (Did she attend because of the nature of the theme? I didn’t ask …)
Author Tracey Farren also attended the workshop. Tracey wrote the wonderful ‘Whiplash’ which was made into a film, focusing on the life of a False Bay prostitute. When she heard my poem she encouraged me to write the novel. But subject matters will have their ways – her encouragement gnawed away at me and the canvas became this short story. When I sent it to Tracey she said, ‘It’s wonderful how writers seem to channel and express the voiceless dead decades or even centuries later.’
George Eliot’s last lines in ‘Middlemarch’ are ‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’
I chose my great-great grandmother as the narrator to tell Matilda’s story. Charlotte Dukes was a fancy box cutter so it worked for me. She may have worked with Matilda. Who knows? What I do know is that my great-great grandmother’s voice seemed, as is colloquial today, to ‘reach down’ to me.
See for yourself if you think it did. It’s available here:
http://www.thebridgetowncafebooksshop.co.uk/2022/11/evergreen_25.html

George Nabney Bell – 26/4/52 – 20/11/22

Rest, rest now, sweet coz.

I shall not look upon your lovely like again.

My poem ‘Bird Brains’ has just been published in a beautiful collection of poetry entitled ‘Voices for the Silent’ in aid of the League Against Cruel Sports and edited by Ronnie Goodyer at Indigo Dreams Publishing. Honoured to be in the same anthology as Philip Larkin and Margaret Atwood. You can buy here.
https://www.indigodreamspublishing.com/voices-for-the-silent

‘Silver Gulls …’ by Ms Paige Turner
In 1977 (gosh!) I directed Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’ with a bunch of warm and widely cosmopolitan Canadian students at the Dome Theatre in Montreal. It’s my favourite of Chekhov’s seven full-length plays. As a director’s gift the cast gave me a silver seagull locket which I have always kept and treasured. ‘Because,’ they said, ‘they could not find any jewellery relating to ‘three sisters’.
‘The Seagull’ is one of Chekhov’s earlier plays: a study in what it is to be an artist and human – or a study in what it is to ‘want’ to be an artist and human. Konstantin is the trigger-happy son of the successful actress Madame Arkadina but he’s envious of his mother’s partner: the successful young writer Trigorin. I say ‘trigger-happy’ as Konstantin shoots the gull, which is symbolic of the man who shoots the free bird: the young ingénue Nina thereby destroying her art and her being. After unsuccessfully shooting himself dead, he ultimately manages to do so. So he’s not really happy about anything at all especially as Trigorin falls for the young Nina with whom Konstantin is in love. So they all shoot the bird. They destroy each other and their own selves.
In this study to be an artist we see the successful Trigorin, unable to function without the relationship with the older Madame Arkadina. One can suspect that his success may be linked to the contacts he makes and has made with the established actress. He’s not satisfied with his creative works. Nina falls for him – or does she fall for his success? Konstantin is not successful and criticizes what he considers his mother’s commercial artistic leanings. Nina discovers the path to fame does not glitter and Madame Arkadina’s brother is a successful High Court Judge but always wanted to write.
The National staged this with the minimum of set, reminiscent of a rehearsal room. (Chekhov would have embraced this, as words were it all for him. The last thing the playwright would have wanted was a screeching seagull.) It almost could have been a radio play but I wouldn’t have wanted to miss all those facial expressions transported across the stage like thought bubbles. They almost re-wrote the play too, updating with references to social media and casting directors.
It worked. I loved it. Loved the cast and still love my silver seagull pendant.
My four plays are available from www.stagescripts.com

‘Boiling Points’ by Ms Paige Turner

Mister Justin Case and I recently went to see the National Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’.
I have played the part of Mary Warren (the Proctors’ hapless maidservant) at the Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon, wrote on the play as my teaching diploma thesis at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and subsequently directed it at the Amersham & Wycombe College. So I have vested interest.
I used parts of my thesis to introduce a number of scenes enacted by my BND students. (Getting them to rehearsals was a nightmare: I had to work my way around their various part-time employment which I couldn’t beat so joined them with a flexible rehearsal schedule.) It paid off. I opted to have the whole cast on stage during the scenes to avoid backstage chatter and encourage observation of one of the finest plays, in my opinion, ever written.
I was therefore a little surprised that the National also topped and tailed the play with a narrative taken from Miller’s own prologue and had the hysterical girls frequently seated during a number of scenes. The former device obviously used as estimating that a proportion of the audience may not be aware of the seventeenth century Salem witch trials.
Proctor, played by Brendan Cowell was the all-rugged outspoken farmer. Hale, the minister flown in to cast out the so-called witchcraft, was played by Fisayo Akinade (also trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama). This was interesting casting of an ‘of colour’ actor and it worked really well. Erin Doherty who is an award-winning actress, having played Princess Anne in the last ‘The Crown’ series was also an interesting take on Abigail Williams. Abigail has had an affair with John Proctor and she then accuses his wife Elizabeth of witchcraft. Doherty presents us with a neurotic, twitching adolescent: bitter revenge nibbling into the core of the character.
Here’s my feature written for ‘Writing Magazine’ some years ago on the subject of ‘Theme’ because Miller always does ‘Theme’ so well.

Arthur Miller wrote the theme of his play at the top of every A4 typescript page. It was a constant reminder of what he was writing about. The theme is the purpose of your words. Why are you writing this play? What do you want to say? Whose thinking and what thinking are you trying to change?
Theme can be reduced to one word. It can often be one of those ‘shun’ words. Arthur Miller might have put ‘persecution’ at the top of each page when he was writing ‘The Crucible’. Of course the theme of a play can mean something different to each member of the audience. And it isn’t always necessary to know the theme before we begin writing. Themes can emerge.
The theme then can be developed from one word to one sentence. For example, one might suggest that the theme of ‘Hamlet’ is ‘procrastination’ but we could elucidate by saying in modern terms that ‘slow drivers can cause as much havoc on motorways as rash, impulsive ones’. Then the sentence can be developed further still in the scene and so the play overall.
Like the light refracting from a multi-faceted and well cut diamond, the theme should bounce off of every scene written and be observed from different angles.
Very often the title will contain the theme. The Crucible? It’s a container in which substances are heated to high temperatures and then evaporate into thin air. Neat when you consider Miller was using the witches of Salem, Massachusetts, as a political analogy for the McCarthy trials of the fifties in America. Artists with certain political sympathies simply disappeared.
Well. In the past few weeks we didn’t really need a crucible to hasten the disappearance of politicians, did we?

‘All these Memoirs …’ by Ms Paige Turner.
We are rained down with memoirs. Plentiful, pouring forth and post-pandemic. I’ve worked it out.
March 2020. Lockdown. Celebrities can’t perform. Write. For 9 months to a year.
March 21. Send to publishers. Who WFH.
Autumn 22 – Memoir launch/TV appearances/
In time for Christmas.
I am writing this way as I am reading the Swazi, star-struck Richard E Grant’s memoir ‘A Pocketful of Happiness’. Written in diary form. Like this.
I am, of course, mesmerised. Grant recounts his wife’s final year – from her diagnosis of terminal lung cancer to her death in September 2021. His wife was the dialect coach and phonetician – Joan Washington. But she was much more, we learn.
I know Joan was much more than a dialect coach. She changed the trajectory of my life. When I was finishing my training at the Central School of Speech and Drama she told me there was an ad for a voice coach in Montreal. It was on the tutor’s noticeboard. But she thought I could do it. She was right. And she wrote to me my whole year in Montreal.
She was also my Teaching Practice Tutor visiting me in my third Central term when I was on practice in an inner London primary school. I was beside myself. One child attended the nit clinic every Friday to have her hair cleaned. By Monday the nits were back. I was in despair. The class was nitted to the brim. I looked at Joan. She looked at me. Then she scratched her head and burst out laughing. We sat in that Bethnal Green classroom and hooted.
I’m not through Grant’s memoir yet but it’s gruelling when you read about someone facing a terminal illness who had such an influence on your life. Everyone wanted to be Joan. Or become Joan. Or sound like her: a voice with rich chocolate shades of brown. Rather like the Queen – ‘I will not look upon her like again’.
The anthology ‘When This is All Over …’ can be bought here:
https://amzn.to/3xi8iay
My novel ‘Shakespeare’s Clock’ can be bought here:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/shakespeares-clock/jan-moran-neil/9781912964635
https://www.cranthorpemillner.com/product/jan-moran-neil-shakespeares-clock/
https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/shakespeares-clock,jan-moran-neil-9781912964635
I am also available for readings from the novel if you wish to book me in person or virtually!