I'll keep the red flag flying here

 “He has no heart who is not a socialist at twenty. He has no head who is still one at thirty”. That’s a phrase that may have been coined by Churchill, Shaw, Disraeli, or Bismarck. I heard it first from my English teacher in secondary school. Mr. White insisted that we attribute any quotes in our essays to their original source. As he made no mention of a source, I assumed he was the originator of these profound words, and he shot up in my estimation.

It was back in the sunlit uplands of 1982. The Human League were number one in the charts, the hunger strikes had just fizzled out, kicking off thirteen more years of misery just up the road from where I was living.

Down south, we were in the middle of three general elections in eighteen months. I was developing an interest in politics and was seduced by the rhetoric of the emerging left-wing parties whose growth suggested that Ireland might finally be growing up. For years before that I had looked at British and European elections and marveled at the balance between left and right in their politics. Back in Ireland, we were haunted by the ghosts of the 1923 Civil War. Two center right parties came out of this conflict and have ruled Ireland ever since, conning the people that they are fundamentally different to each other.

I was hopeful that this cycle would be broken in 1982 and took the opportunity to pen an article in the school magazine to this affect. Mr. White, who was a card-carrying member of one of those right-wing parties, was editor of the magazine. He graciously let my article through without amendment, apart from the above quote scribbled in the margin. I’m now fifty eight, well past the age of thirty when I was supposed to swivel into a right wing zealot. And I think of that scribbled quote every time I search for the most left-wing candidate on a ballot paper.

When I could first vote in 1983, my choice was the Worker’s Party. They were an unapologetic Marxist group with completely sensible policies, but who would have shit themselves if they had ever been put in a position to implement them. Luckily, this was never a possibility and I could bask in the smugness of voting for the correct party and then complaining about the parties that actually had to govern.

I moved to London when I twenty two and immersed myself in the fight against Thatcher. In 1992, I became part of an incongruously named group called “Accountants for a Labour victory”. I worked in the head office of an Insurance Company. Our premises were in a small town to the South of London. As a result, we didn’t attract the posh end of the Accountancy profession, who all seemed to work in City institutions run by their uncles. The twenty or so Accountants in our office had all come up through the public education system and the English ones at least had all gone to “brown brick” universities that had sprung up in the sixties. Over chats in the canteen and pub we learned that most of them planned to vote Labour and a couple of us even went so far as to hand out leaflets.

We met up on the evening of the election for a victory party, but by 11pm it was clear that our efforts where in vain. Britain was condemned to another five years of Tory rule, by which stage I was back in Ireland looking at Tony Blairs ascendancy with admiration.

By this stage, I had become more pragmatic, as had most of my old comrades in the Worker’s Party. They had shut up shop and joined the middle of the road Labour party. I followed them, as it seemed the most logical root to election success.  Unfortunately, when I did, Labour joined the government as a junior coalition partner and surrendered all their principles for a few tawdry bobbles of office.

I spent seven years in Australia and couldn’t vote as I wasn’t a citizen. Ironically, I got this title just as I was a leaving and under the mandatory voting rules in that country, I’ve had to vote in every Australian election since. I was in Australia in 2007 when Kevin Rudd won and at the ripe old age of forty two, I found myself living under a Labour government for the first time, although sadly not a left wing one.

New Zealand allows me to vote, although in fairness they have never bothered to check if I’m entitled to. Most of my time here has been spent under the benign leadership of Jacinda Ardern. She’s not exactly a radical left winger either but was a decent skin at least.

But I have to admit, I never voted for her. The Green party in New Zealand are much more left wing than Labour. They want wealth redistribution, a policy that used to be a given in Labour parties around the world, but is somehow never spoken about today. The Greens are also concerned about that other small matter. Saving the planet from its imminent climate catastrophe.

We had an election here recently and sadly my vote was in vain. The country is lurching to the right and we face at least three years of tax cuts for the rich and climate change denial.

But I’m proud to still carry the red flag. If anything, I would say I’m even more radical now that when I was in my twenties, despite being financially comfortable and knowing that the right would benefit me more financially. I’m not sure what happened to Mr. White. I guess he’s retired now and living off a pension funded by the tax paid by the working men he despised. I will keep dreaming of a Socialist paradise while doing nothing to achieve it apart from a tick on a ballot paper every three years.

 

My Life on the Stage

As with most important events in my life, my involvement in theatre started in a pub. The Black Stuff is a venerable hostelry tucked just inside the city limits of Luxembourg. The large car park at its rear hinting at the loose drink driving laws in place in the Grand Duchy in the early 1990s.

I was several pints in and Brenda was being very persistent. “You’ll be perfect for the part”, she explained, ignoring the fact that I had never been on stage before. She went on to tickle my ego to the point where I could see Oscar nominations and a Hollywood career in the future. She sold it to me as the leading role in a 19^th Century Irish classic, a dashing young hero who sweeps the wife of a farmer off her feet and disappears, Heathcliff like, into the fading Wicklow mists.

In fact, I ended up playing a village idiot, a role I have reprised many times since. The plot involved an old farmer who had apparently passed away and was tucked under a sheet in the back corner of the stage. I was busy seducing his recently widowed wife, when at a key moment in the dialogue he would sit up and explain that he had only been sleeping.

It all went well until the last night, when he turned up excited as a spring lamb in the changing room before the show. He explained that his family had flown in from London for the show. I later learned that his marriage had fallen apart due to his alcoholism and the strong smell of Whiskey on his breath should have let me know that a wagon had just lost one of its passengers.

We got to the part in the play just before the big reveal, when I heard loud snoring coming from beneath the sheets. I was the only other person on stage at the time and realised that I would have to rescue the situation. I made my way over to the bed and kicked it gently. The snoring increased. I kicked harder but with no success. In the end I shook him violently, making up dialogue that would have shamed the original author.

He eventually woke up, spotted dialogue from a completely different play and fell back on pillow in a deep slumber. I blurted out the last line of the play and signaled to the stage manager to draw the curtains. We cut twenty minutes off the play length and probably left the audience short changed and confused. But in fairness, audiences in Luxembourg had pretty low expectations from the drama world in those days.

In the changing room afterwards, the director was keen to change the play’s ending to one where the old man actually ended up dead, but we held him back and ensured that no violence took place. I was left with the assumption that this happened in every amateur production. That you flew by the skin of your pants and it would be alright on the night. And that’s largely turned out to be true.

I went on to do two further plays in Luxembourg and then about fifteen in Dublin. The social scene in both countries was fantastic. In fairness the Luxembourg group was made up of Irish ex pats, who party harder than their companions back in Dublin.

I left Europe for the Southern Hemisphere in 2007 and hoped that the fun and laughter I’d found in theatre would continue. I performed in four plays in Australia, until parenthood stepped in and caused me to swap grease paint for nappy cream. I don’t remember those plays with any great fondness. Australians strive for perfection in everything. Sport is the obvious example, but no country will join a song competition named after another continent and expect to win it every year.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to do the best when I’m on stage. But I took up acting for the fun of being part of a group and not to become the next Brando. There always was talk of a ‘party’ at the end of each production, but this generally involved a warm bottle of beer while you took the set down.

New Zealand has been a better experience. They call it “Community Theatre” here and you do get a sense of a more collegial experience. But I’m also getting older and feel theatre requires a big commitment. I’ve just finished a show that had a large cast ranging in age from fourteen to eighty. In the week of the show, I was getting up at 7am, going to work, getting home and grabbing a quick tea before heading to the venue. Then getting home at 11pm and doing it all again. The fourteen year olds and the eighty year olds seemed to cope best. They weren’t working and looking after an eleven year old.

So, my conclusion is that community theatre is a young or old man’s game. Those of us in the middle, and particularly those of us who left becoming a Dad until our mid-forties, struggle to summon up the required energy.

I might take a break now from the stage, or ‘rest’ as we luvvies say. I need to fall in love with it again.   But of course, ego plays a strong role. If somebody contacts me and says that they are putting on a show and need me for a crucial role, I will probably say yes. There is nothing like being told that you are brilliant.

“Life is a gift, it would be a shame to send it back opened”, is a line from the recent show I did. That’s why I cling to all the activities I did in my younger life. I want to act, to play sport, to drink beer like I did in my twenties. But I’d also like to sleep. And life, love and age are dragging me inextricably in that direction.