A Very Peculiar Practice
TV series, 1988 (Series 2)
Written by Andrew Davies
Directed by David Tucker
Produced by Ken Riddington
Theme Music: Dave Greenslade, sung by Elkie Brooks
SEE ALSO A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE SERIES ONE
The characters
Peter Davison – Dr Stephen Dakar
David Troughton – Dr Bob Buzzard
Barbara Flynn – Dr Rose Marie
Graham Crowden – Dr Jock McCannon
Joanna Kanska – Grete Grotowska, Polish art historian
Michael J. Shannon – Jack Daniels, Vice Chancellor
Lindy Whitford – Maureen Garaghan, practice nurse
Gillian Raine – Mrs Kramer, Reception desk
Toria Fuller – Julie Daniels
Colin Stinton – Charlie Dusenberry, Jack Daniels’ right hand man
Kay Stoneham – Daphne Buzzard
James Grout- Professor Bunn
Things have changed dramatically at Lowlands University. There’s a new American Vice-Chancellor, Jack Daniels, with his wife and secret service style entourage. The book version has the subtitle A New Frontier.
Stephen is now Head of the Practice. Lynn has departed for Hendon Police College. The practice has new premises too.
The major new character is Grete Grotowska (Joanna Kanska) a Polish art historian, who will co-star through the series with Peter Davison. She is a new lecturer in the Art department. Andrew Davies is still seeing the future. It’s 1988, the year before the Berlin wall fell. Polish was not a well-known accent in the UK … I knew kids of Polish airmen from the War but their dads had long Anglicized their accents. Yet now, apparently, Polish is the second most spoken language in the UK. A Polish accent is familiar everywhere.
I will avoid revealing jokes as far as possible or plot spoilers.
1 The New Frontier
with
Amanda Hillwood – Lyn
Joe Melia – Dr Rust
Oliver Ford Davies – Art lecturer
Simon Russell Beale- Mark Stibbs
Anthony O’Donnell- Geoffrey Perks
Andrew Davies uses Joe Melia, the Creative Writing professor again, as at the end of series one for a self-referential aside:
Dr Rust They love me at the BBC. They want a second series.
For the first ten or fifteen minutes of series two, I had doubts. The new Vice-Chancellor, Jack Daniels, and his security retinue were just a touch over-the-top for a campus. Michael J. Shanon is perfectly Presidential … we once saw Bill Clinton, just after he stopped being president … power-walking through Mayfair, accompanied by Secret Service agents. The charisma bounced off every building, so much so that passers-by stopped and clapped as he passed. This series re-dates the Clinton presidency, but Shannon captures that style. We briefly see Lyn in police uniform to say goodbye.
There is a shift in target. I commented on the future of medical practice that Andrew Davies predicted in series one as well as the focus on universities as businesses. This second series has far more to say on universities, the place of the Arts and on the hounding of aademics
Stephen is now the warden of a hall, and ends up with Jock McCannon cadging the use of his sofa.
Bob Buzzard is delighted at more investment in the centre:
Bob We never need to see or touch a patient again!
Maureen, the practice nurse, is coming to the fore giving DR Bob Buzzard a good telling off.:
Maureen: You are a pathetic, misogynistic overgrown schoolboy with the wit and charm of a Doberman Pinscher!
The episode takes off as soon as Joanna Kanska as Grete Grotowska gets on screen. We get her “attitude” seeing her in a lecture, when she tells off the lecturer for being boring (Oliver Ford Davies in a cameo).
She needs a full medical, and was assigned to Stephen. They assumed she was male, and Maureen has the time off, so there is no chaperone. I know it’s not set in stone in Polish, but I would have assumed Grotowska was female (and Grotowski was male). I also noted another of Davies’ trademark fun with names … Jerzy Grotowski was the Polish director who wrote the seminal Towards A Poor Theatre, on every drama student’s reading list at the time. Anyway, I guess the doctors had not spent so much time with ELT as me.
Grete is aggressive and assumes Stephen is a predator (he has spotted a mole on her pant line). Dr Rose Marie tries to fuel the fire sympathetically, suggesting she should report him for groping. The camera loves her … don’t we all.
2 Art and Illusion
with
Clive Swift – Professor Piers Platt, head of Art History
Tim Wylton – Mervyn Lillicrap, a psychiatrist
Andre Maranne- Saul Siebermann, art dealer
Stephen still has Jock McCannon camping out on his sofa, bottle of whisky in hand. The story revolves around the Art Gallery that Julie, the VC’s Texan wife, wants on campus. At the same time, Art History is due for the chop, or at least the head, Piers Platt (Clive Swift) is. Platt is involved with Bob Buzzard after a car collision in the staff car park. He has a problem, that Bob can treat, but will only treat privately. (Ah, been there! Done that!) We also get to see Bob and Daphne at home, which is always a bonus.
Stephen has a chance encounter in the canteen with Grete, who invites him to dinner. She is also being pursued by Dr Rose Marie, who is still plotting against Stephen, and tells him off for pursuing Grete. Grete is establishing her punch line in describing herself as a rude, nasty Polish girl.
There’s an ELT (English Language Teaching) point here. It’s a linguistic / cultural issue I’ve often discussed with teachers from Northern Europe. English uses intonation to sound polite or friendly or obsequious. This is not a given in all languages. Even advanced learners say they find it hard to mimic our polite intonation patterns, which make them feel silly, and they value a direct straightforward pattern. This will be interpreted by a native speaker as rudeness. I’m so aware of this, yet I still feel my hackles rise from time to time, as when a Polish delivery driver said, ‘The bushes at your gate will scratch my van. You must cut them.’ Part was using must instead of ought to or better maybe you should think about cutting them. I hope you don’t mind me saying so. But the intonation sounded like an order rather than a suggestion. This is why Grete knows that she comes across to native speakers as a “rude Polish girl.”
Grete is a charismatic lecturer striking terror or adoration into her students. Her boss, Piers is, to put it kindly, a wanker. He sets easy exams, makes life easy for students. As a result he can save himself from the VC’s axe. One of his students is the son of a potential mighty benefactor … millions for an art gallery. This is the student terrified after being failed for plagiarism by Grete, but Platt regrades his paper to a B minus.
Platt is in charge of buying the art for the new gallery from Siebermann’s gallery, and selects two Braques. Julie Daniels, whose dad owns a couple, thinks they look a tad bright.
Julie: They sure as shit don’t look like these!
The resolution at the art gallery opening party involves Grete’s knowledge, Julie’s prediction and Bob’s assessment of Platt’s eyesight.
The episode finishes with Mervyn Lillicrap, a Welsh psychiatrist brought in by Stephen to bond the team at the medical centre. Bob reacts by being aggressive. Jock is sulky … he is the psychiatrist here, he feels.
Finally, Lillicrap is destroyed by a combination of Dr Rose Marie and Maureen, the nurse, after being caught trying to look up Rose Marie’s skirt.
3 May The Force Be With You
Joseph Long- Professor Eugenides
James Grout- Professor Bunn
Phillips Gerardieu – Antoine
This is important in the series in establishing the Grete / Stephen relationship, but overall, I think it a weaker one. It becomes apparent that those major one-episode guest appearances drives the quality, and this doesn’t have a great intervention.
Bob Buzzard has decided that an executive stress clinic will make money for the centre. Two of his test patients are Professor Eugenides and Professor Bunn. The relaxing elixir tastes very much like pink gin. It becomes apparent that the three masseuses he has hired learnt their trade ‘on the job’ rather as qualified physios.
Maureen: You’re an agency nurse, right? Is the money good?
Masseuse About 400 in a good week.
Maureen: No! Where did you train?
Masseuse: Just sorta picked it up as I went along …
£400 then is about £950 now. It all gives Maureen and Mrs Kramer some good disparaging lines. Maureen’s character grows episode by episode. It might be too much for one of the academics.
Dr Rose Marie has set out to seduce the Vice Chancellor and invites him back to her flat, only to find that Dr McCannon, now homeless has turned up on her doorstep after being expelled by Stephen.
The main theme though is Grete. The campus has a “Women Feel Safe on Campus” demo going on at night which doesn’t really suit the filming style … a lot of people running around in the dark. We always felt the campus was pretty safe at Hull and at East Anglia. I remember when Hull university bought up most of a street of terraced houses for third year student residences, there was a peeping Tom issue at the women’s houses, getting in via the back gates, exacerbated by stealing underwear from the washing lines. It was ‘resolved in conflict’ by a vigilante posse of students, and I argued that it was a bad idea at the time because he would only move elsewhere and carry on. But it was 1969. No one trusted the police to do anything.
Jock gets involved with the protestors against animal experiments and helps free some beagles. I felt the animal rights protestors and ‘claim back the night’ protestors got mixed up and confusing.
Grete’s ex-husband, Antoine, turns up from France. He hits her, and wants to kill her too. Karen had a lot to do with Erin Pizzey and women’s refuges in the 70s – it was an amazingly common male reaction to rejection. I fear it still is, and domestic violence was a situation which the police definitely did not want to be told about.
Grete calls Rose Marie on the phone to ask for help, but Rose Marie is otherwise engaged with Jack Daniels, so Stephen is her second choice of refuge. She is to sleep on the sofa, but frightened by the noises of the demo, she joins him in bed … instructing him ‘No sex.’
The trouble is that the French husband only gets to rant and say ‘Merde!’ a lot without establishing much of a character.
4 Bad Vibrations
with
David Bamber- Professor Middling
Paul Higgins- Adie Shaw, music student
James Grout- Professor Bunn
Kay Stoneham- Daphne Buzzard
Clive Wood- Freddie Frith
This is back to several guest appearances with strong roles. Davies excels at creating these characters who are powerful, but will not be seen again. In this case, David Bamber’s Professor Middling, Clive Wood’s Freddie Frith and Paul Higgins’ Adie Shaw. Kay Stoneham as Daphne Buzzard is always a marvellous counterpoint to Bob.
Jack Daniels and his henchman are bent on moneytizing, or weaponizing, the Electro-Acoustic Department with grants from the American ‘Jefferson Organization.’ Electro-Acoustics is run by Professor Middling, a computer nerd, addicted to pre-teen delights such as banana splits, Coca Cola and liquorice allsorts.
Professor Bunn and Stephen voice objections in the Senate.
Professor Bunn: Aren’t those the chaps that give chaps money to find new ways of killing other chaps?
Dusenberry: Forgive me, professor, but that is an ill-informed view. Jefferson funds across a whole range of projects and Middling’s work is purely theoretical.
Jack Daniels: I guess he won’t be wasting anyone at Lowlands, George.
Bunn says that if they found a way of bombing people with Dryden, the English Department might get these huge US grants.
Middling is investigating the temporary threshold shift where people become severely disoriented by sound waves and paying his students to participate. Then they start turning up at the medical centre, falling about and confused.
He is also failing most of his students because he only needs the top half dozen. Charlie Dusenberry, Jack Daniel’s fixer, is now accompanied by a large seriously heavy looking CIA guy.
Adie Shaw is a student in Stephen Dakar’s hall who is waking all and sundry (especially Stephen and Grete) with is noise generated music.
On the relationship front, Rose Marie is still working on seductive play with Jack Daniels, while finding herself pining for Grete. Grete is flitting about between her and Stephen but having sex with neither.
Bob Buzzard and Daphne are having nookie problems. He can’t get round to it. He even submits to psycho-analysis from Jock. Over breakfast, he muses that if Stephen is having sex with Grete.
Bob: He’s got a new totty too. That man is sex mad.
Daphne: She’s not a patient, is she? The totty?
Bob: Don’t know. Suppose she might be.
Daphne: Well, report him to the GMC and get him struck off.
Later Grete anounces to Stephen that she has decided she will change doctors. He understands the signal.
Stephen confronts Middling, who takes him to lunch.
Bob’s old pal, Freddie Frith, has made a fortune from a condom, or ‘rubber johnny’ company. He comes to visit, but Bob is an hour late. Freddie and Daphne have a guilty admission to make. Bob decides he will be a “new man” about it, so Daphne leaves him. Bob goes off the rails. All attend Adie’s concert with incredible noise beyond the threshold.
I think I’ve done enough to say ‘watch it!’ without revealing the best bits.
5 Family Values
with
JoJo Cole – Jo Lentil
Mosse Smith – Chloris Jakeman
James Noble – Glenn Oates
Professor George Bunn, Head of the English Department, has been slowly building as a major character, and in this he becomes the main focus. You will guess where this is going in the next episode too.
Stephen and Prof. Bunn are members of the Senate. They watch Jack Daniels speaking about rewarding the areas of the university … the sciences … that are bringing in the money. Bunn is going to lead the opposition, and simply brushes off Daniels’ efforts to bribe him to keep quiet.
A lengthy aside here. When I was at Hull, Drama and American Studies, both Arts Department, were innovative arts subjects. Hull was one of the few universities doing either. They were early in focussing on acting for TV and film too. Then at East Anglia, I was in English and American Studies, but Malcolm Bradbury was already testing out his Creative Writing syllabus (it started the next year) on the postgrads. You could innovate in the humanities then.
Ten years later, the focus was fast switching to our lack in science in the UK, as well as more vocational subjects. Patrick Bishop, author of Bomber Boys, expanded on that in a talk I saw. If you had A level sciences 1939-1945 you were straight into Bomber Command, which had the highest death rate in the British forces. In other words, we killed off a lot of our science-oriented gene pool. The shift to science reached its peak in the 1990s when one of my kids was made to do a “humanities” GCSE rather than history and geography. Even more recently, one grandkid could choose history OR geography. Having A levels in both, I can affirm that there is a powerful connection and you need to study both, whatever your eventual interests. The curriculum was being squeezed … schools were encouraged to offer two languages instead of one, Information Technology needed fitting in. Cross-country running in pouring rain was being dignified with the title Sports Sciences. Something had to go. Humanities took the hit.
There was also the rise of the vocational subjects, and vocational universities. Surrey and Bath were initially said to be ‘science universities.’ Bournemouth was media, art and hospitality. Bunn believes, as I do, that the meaning of a university is to study the whole range of subjects. A university with no English department or no Philosophy department is not a “university” in his terms. He’s a man of the 60s … when I was at Hull, there were nine students in each residential floor unit, and they went to trouble to ensure a balance of arts, sciences and social sciences within each floor unit.
Back to the story … Dr Rose Marie is still engaging in a lot of massaging and non-penetrative sex with the Vice Chancellor, and so is privy to his need to silence, or get rid of, Professor Bunn. Opportunity arises when two disgruntled women English students complain that the poetry Bunn sets has a sexual dimension. (Um … it’s poetry).
Julie Daniels is consulting Rose Marie and Jock about her suspicions about Jack Daniels’ sex life. She takes a liking to Jock, and in spite of his comments that his libido went ten years ago, she says she fancies older men.
Meanwhile, Grete and Stephen’s affair continues, and Bunn invites them to dinner. As we have found out, in the privacy of his own home, Bunn is a nudist … and a very happily married nudist too. Grete is interested for her studies of the male nude and asks to come and photograph him. She mentions this to Rose Marie along with his nudist lifestyle at home, and Rose Marie sees her chance. She calls in the disgruntled women.
Rose Marie: Jo, Chloris, I think you should confront Professor Bunn as soon as possible. And if he refuses to see you in his office, as he has done, then I think you should go to his home and have it out with him there.
She knows what will happen. You know what will happen.
Bob Buzzard’s story continues. Unhappily divorced he chats to Glenn Oates (Oates being an Imperial hero name) a young Geordie athlete in the changing rooms and discovers he is a famous middle distance runner. Bob is delighted, tells him how he worshipped an athlete at school, invites him for a drink. He finds that Glenn can’t get deep tissue massage at Lowlands and offers to do it for him.
Then Bob invites him to his house, which has piles of filthy plates and cups. Bob has fallen apart on domesticity. The lad is gay and has understandably got the wrong idea, to Bob’s shock.
Jock turns up and asks to stay with Bob having been chucked out by Stephen and then Rose Marie).
What this episode is building to is one of the nastiest aspects of 21st century universities: the hounding of academics with any hint of non-PC views. Nowadays, vociferous pressure groups can wield enormous influence. Locally, cyclists are getting whole areas turned into “pedestrians and cyclists only.” I agree wholeheartedly with pedestrianisation, but walking freely along quiet streets with small children does NOT involve lyrca clad males using the same street as a Velodrome at 25 to 30 mph. What percentage of Bristol turned out to topple Colston’s statue in the river? Then J.K. Rowling is hounded by people giving one star reviews online to a book not yet published, because she had the temerity to suggest that “people who menstruate” was a daft expression to replace “women”. Which it is. Bunn is ripe for setting up.
More asides: in an internal American Literature exam we were given extracts from three poems to assess. One was part of Allen Ginsberg’s Sunflower Sutra. As no doubt everyone will remember, it contains these lines (I added the asterisk because of search engines!)
the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the c*nts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamo …
Would Bunn get away with setting an exam with that with these students of 1988? What about now?
6 The Big Squeeze
With
Robert Lang- Lord Thickthorn, presiding over Bunn’s “trial”
Mark Drewry – Harry Pointer, union rep
Mark Addy – Mal Prentis, Union Entertainments Officer
Perry Benson – Johnny Graftin, Union External Affairs Officer
Leticia Garrido – Consuela
The medical centre is finding students suffering from malnutrition, as the university shoves up rents on campus accommodation. It’s brought up in Senate which results in a rant from the Student Union representative. He is perfect. Of course a suit and tie. Of course a beard. I have been on committees with this guy. He is a future Labour MP (I knew three of those too).
This goes no way at all towards appeasing student feeling. Even the silent-majority of head-down, hardworking students. This isn’t going to satisfy my members. Now as I say, this is off the record, but I wouldn’t rule out total lecture boycotts. I wouldn’t rule out rent strikes. I wouldn’t rule out sit ins.
The threat is as ever, ‘I wouldn’t rule out …’
Stephen goes to meet the Student Union reps who are drinking a fine claret. They call it ‘claret’ too, which I never did. The entertainments officer Mal Prentis is played by Mark Addy … a fabulous actor he became, too. Watching the three trade union leaders with their snouts in the trough, I’m reminded of Leon Rossellson’s 1962 song Battle Hymn of the New Socialist Party (to the tune of the Red Flag):
The cloth cap and the working class, as images are dated.
For we are Labour’s avante-garde, and we were educated.
By tax adjustments we have planned, to institute the Promised Land
And just to show we’re still sincere, we sing The Red Flag once a year.
We will not cease from mental fight till every wrong is righted,
And all men are equal quite, and all our leaders knighted.
For we are sure if we persist, to make the New Year’s Honours list.
Then every loyal labour peer, will sing The Red Flag once a Year
Jack Daniels wants to get rid of Bunn, and dangles carrots like a job in Harvard at three times the salary. He won’t budge.
Rose Marie in bed with Jack Daniels is about to get the brush off, but her pay off will be Dean of Women … she wants Head of the Medical Centre too, and wants him to get rid of Stephen. To get it, she will deliver Bunn’s head on a plate (Bring me the head of John the Baptist! indeed)
Bob Buzzard still has Glen wanting to see him, almost tearful because he will fail his subsidiary to physical education, English. Professor Bunn has given him an F.
Jock is chipper and bright with a tie bearing lone stars (Julie is from Fort Worth in the Lone Star state). To Bob Buzzard’s surprise, as a favour to Jock, Julie Daniels has lent them Consuela to clean up the kitchen and prepare them breakfast.
Bunn faces trial in the senate, defended by Stephen. Rose Marie has to nail her colours to the mast, speaking for his accusers.
Grete has told her over a glass of wine, laughing, that after the photo session Bunn gave her a bag of toffees. Rose Marie reports this to the senate as “enticing girls to come and see him naked and offering them sweets” which sounds far worse and is a straight lie.
She also tells Rose Marie that after Antoine tried to kill her, she slept in Stephen’s bed. That’s all she did, ‘sleep’ (No funny business, she adds) but Rose Marie knows she was still his patient at the time. That one is stored for use.
The senate “triakl” of Bunn for ‘gross moral turpitude’ is presided over by Lord Thickthorn (Robert Lang) who is presumably the Chancellor (an honorary office). Robert Lang is another of the masterly cameos in this series.
So Rose Marie goes flat out for George Bunn clashing directly with Stephen.
Stephen That’s not a fact! That’s just an opinion.
Rose Marie My expert opinion. As a medical practicioner.
Then Bob Buzzard accuses Bunn of failing poor Glen Oates unjustly.
Grete Grotowska’s speech saves the day in his defence. Fascinating. We are at the start of the eras of the desire to punish people for holding different views. Just this week, Van Morrison came out with a song about No More Lockdown. Four lines were quoted and all and sundry rushed to attack, with the Telegraph calling him ‘a mad old man.’ Fine, it’s paranoid, it’s a daft view, I don’t agree with him but … where does the desire to punish come from? Belfast is pressing to have his freedom of the city revoked. Why? Because they don’t like the sentiments of a song they haven’t yet heard? Is he Belfast’s most famous citizen or not?
Take David Starkey, the historian. He has become famous by expressing contrary and often nasty right wing views waspishly on BBC’s Question Time. It’s what he does. It led to many lively debates which is why they kept asking him back. Then over the Black Lives Matter / statues debate he put his foot right in it. Being a pedant, he pointed out that slavery cannot have been intended as genocide or there wouldn’t be so many African-American and Afro-Caribbean people around today. For a pedant, this is simply a statement of the definition of genocide … deliberately trying to kill all people of one race. As I studied slavery in detail, I can also add that in the early 1860s, $1300 was a major investment, and therefore slave owners didn’t pay that intending to kill the slaves. He was held up as defending slavery, which he wasn’t. OK, he’s a thoroughly unpleasant man, but that’s how he sells his books. So refute or ignore him. But no, he has had fellowships removed. He must be punished, publicly shamed, lose work, not simply argued down.
This is what they intend for Bunn. Grete saved the day, and as Daniels makes a smarmy announcement that he is pleased Bunn is innocent, Bunn says he’s leaving anyway to take up a fellowship at Oxford. Good luck with that, Oxford is simply more subtle than the Lowlands Universities of this world. However, it was 1988, he was near retirement, I’d say he’d be able to live out his fellowship before he was aware that Oxford was not any different.
7 Death of A University
with
Mark Drewry – Harry Pointer, union rep
Dominic Arnold- Sammy Limb
This one has the smoky reek of the apocalypse, with Jock McCannon reciting extracts from the Book of Revelation throughout. A major character here is Sammy Limb, a motorcycling patient of Jock’s. Sammy will be the one who sees that the union reps and the management are in league.
The crisis of market forces and student rentals is coming to a head. We soon realize that the union rep, Harry Pointer, is in league with the management as they promise to replace his Montego with a Mercedes. They want confrontation. Jack Daniels is hard line on the rise in rents because he wants to clear the residences to make space for corporate clients.
Jack Daniels: we’re offering them a choice, and choice is freedom. They can lie around on welfare checks or they can get off their butts and work their way through college the way we did, Charlie. We’re giving them a chance to stand tall.
Charlie Sure we are …I’m assuming in practice we’ll be evicting 90%, 95% of them.
Jack Daniels Well, yeah. I guess that figures.
Back at the health centre, the arguments are turning violent between Bob and Rose Marie, while Nurse Maureen feeds the starving students with tea and cakes. Then Bob turns on Jock too. She interrupts their meeting:
Maureen What we need round here is a bit of hard work from the doctors. Do you know they’re stacked up four deep in the waiting room?
Sounds exactly like our local practice. Bob Buzzard spends his time on the phone to Bogota … he’s selling them arms. There will be a twist. He is also creeping around Jack Daniels, deliberately losing to him at squash and swimming.
Then Lyn returns to see Stephen … she’s now a police chief inspector. Grete is jealous and upset, but Stephen makes it clear who he is in love with.
Rose Marie is fast becoming Cruella de Ville, promising to find evidence of Stephen sleeping with Grete when she was his patient in return for a job for her. Daniels makes it clear he wants Stephen to resign:
Jack Daniels: I want you the hell out of MY university. I hear you’re sleeping with your patients and I don’t like that kind of stuff. We go for family values here. So I’d guess I’d like to see your resignation, Steve … I’d hate to see you … What do you guys call it? Stuck off.
It’s all going to erupt. Sammy and Jock interrupt Harry Pointer:
Jock Reclaim your university!
Jack is going mad muttering about Camelot (he sees himself as JFK) and wants the police in to clear the sit in. Stephen has a final confrontation with Stephen:
Jack What do you think? A university is about being kind to dumb old farts? You think a university is about a lot of middle class kids getting their rocks off? The university is bigger than all of us. Don’t you understand yet, you dumb ass bastard? These students are expendable. You are expendable, and ultimately, Steve, even I am expendable … I’m bored with you now, Steve. Why don’t you go and screw yourself?
I commend John Bath’s Giles Goat-Boy … a world in which the world is a university. Or vice versa.
My novel The Women Came & Went takes place during the Hull 1968 sit in, when the authorities were too sensible to allow the police in. We sat in the doorway all night waiting. Two police vans were right outside, and they stared at us, and hit their arms with their fists … they were raring to be unleashed, but they never were. Here it erupts in total violence … an American scenario, that no British university was stupid enough to allow to happen. Here, Lyn tries to stop it.
The end is looking at the ruined, deserted campus a year or two later. Stephen and Grete have a baby.
At the end, the two nuns have become three … the third is Rose Marie and we realize they are the three weird sisters from Macbeth.
SEE ALSO: A VERY POLISH PRACTICE (in preparation)
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