Week Two

Where else, you ask, can England’s game be seen
Rooted so deep as the village green?
Here, in the slum, where doubtful sunlight falls,
To gild three stumps chalked on decaying walls
Cricket – Sir George Rostrevor Hamilton

This is an image of Harold Larwood and Bill Voce in the pavilion at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. They were the Nottinghamshire spearhead of the English bowling attack in 1931-32. The image shows the two men in their later years at a memorial match in the seventies. I am drawn to the way they wear their ties over their cardigans. Their smile. I think I am approaching a way of writing where we are seeing something that has happened through an old man's eyes. Possibly Larwood or Voce. Sitting on a bench and remembering. And as they narrate our story we revist and relive moments from their lives. I was out with a friend last night and he heard himself speak on an answer phone message and said 'I've forgotten how I speak'. This made me wonder if our narrator overhears himself as a younger man and says 'I've forgotten how I spoke.' What this does is introduce a time loop into the piece and enable it to be more contemporary in the way in which the narrative unfolds. There is something of The Christmas Carol here. Or to locate in more in terms of sport - Field of Dreams. I am also interested in Beckett and the way he often places people in their later years in positions of remembering e.g. Krapp's Last Tape, Rockabye, The Old Tune. The Old Tune in particular features two old men reunited on a bench reminiscing about the past. This could be Larwood and Voce. This reminiscence could be the beginning of the play.