A Deer Problem

I wake up in Bingham on the floor in my sleeping bag, whilst L is home alone, well, with two collies for company and warmth. She’s intending heading off into work for a couple of hours, which means I have to get a shift on to catch some of that company and warmth before she goes.

I drop her at work before heading on to the park with the dogs where we have a bit of a deer problem. A pack of about twenty of them appear out of nowhere and mug us. I have to say MD was a little star, in fact both dogs were. Not that L and Daughter believe me, ‘yeah right’ was the response I got when I told them. Actually MD was terrified, once he’d ascertained that they didn’t want to play, he hid behind me.

The real problem was when we realised that we’d lost one of their balls. After a long and fraught search, with the deer watching over us, we eventually saw it. Nestling amongst where the deer hooves, so we had to shoo them away before we could get it back.

Then I head over to Derby for what turns out to be a truly awful game of football and a 0-0 draw. Although to be fair, Barnsley deserved the points. How come it’s always so awful when I go.

There is food out when I get home but L has gone to the gym. She plans to go straight to the theatre at the Lakeside Arts Centre from there, which is a pretty stylish thing to do. I try and coax our printer into printing the receipt for the tickets so that I can pick them up from the box office.

Eventually the printer relents and I meet up with L. She slips her hand into my pocket and quickly discovers my guilty secret, the mini bottles of red wine I’ve stashed there. L was the guilty one who purchased them. We’re refusing to pay the theatres prices and usually just go ‘dry’ but tonight we intend to sit outside before the play and during the interval sipping our own.

Then we get brave and try to take one in for the second act. We even have our own plastic glasses because one of the wines came pre-packed already in plastic glasses. The ultimate convenience drink. Unfortunately our plastic glasses are a lot posher and more realistic than the theatre’s own and they think we have real glass ones. They ask us to tip the contents of our impressive fakes into their ‘real’ plastic ones, which is a bit surreal. I can tell one of the staff on the door can see they’re plastic but the other is convinced they’re glass and offers to take them back to the bar for us. I take advantage of their confusion, throw a dummy and make to take our fakes back myself. The lad on the door looks well confused, so I leave him to his confusion.

The play is called ‘Empty Bed Blues’ and is by Sneinton's Stephen Lowe. It’s set in
1929 and is about another local lad, Eastwood born DH Lawrence. Lawrence is 44 and doesn’t look good for age, possibly because he’s dying of consumption. He’s also practically destitute and his latest book, a little piece of controversy called 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' has been banned in Britain. Desperate to get it published and as a last resort he’s chasing the American dollar, just like Premiership football clubs do and Lawrence, along with his wife Frieda visit the estate of a wealthy young American couple on the outskirts of Paris.



This odd couple are Harry Crosby and his sculptress wife, Caresse, pronounced 'caress'. Caresse and he have an ‘open marriage’, which is not a bad contract, in principle. Her name is apparently the much plainer Polly but Harry persuaded her to change it. I wonder what he calls all his other girlfriends; apparently he has quite a few. Oh and they have a dog called Clitoris; Harry has problems finding it in the dark.



It’s a good job Lawrence doesn’t have a weak heart because Harry makes an (almost) spectacular entrance from a cleverly constructed on stage lake containing real water, stark naked. I look at L and can see what’s she’s thinking. It’s not the most impressive of entrances after all and the air of disappointment amongst the female members of the audience is palpable. I wonder if any of them asked for a refund. Lawrence’s wife though seems smitten straight away.

The paradox of the play is that the Crosby’s 'open marriage' clashes with the Lawrence’s more staid view of life, which is odd for a chap who’s just written ‘Lady Chatterley’. Meanwhile the supposedly open-minded Crosby’s are appalled by Lawrence’s explicit novel. Though Lawrence corrects them when they assume he has based the main character on himself. Lawrence explains that he based the book on his wife's affair with their Italian gardener and in doing so reveals his impotence to them. Which probably explains Freda’s fascination with little old Harry.



So you would think Caresse would be glad of a little openness but I think she’s a romantic at heart and doesn't seem so keen on such martial arrangements. Frieda, in fact seems much more of a goer than Caresse and the first opportunity she gets, her kit's off and she in the lake, swimming off for some fun with Harry.



Poor Caresse meanwhile is reduced to showing Lawrence the brassiere she invented and when that doesn’t work she throws everything else at him but even she can’t cure his impotence. So she too heads off into the lake to play gooseberry to the others. Mind you, she's lets the side down and keeps her underwear on. Boo.

That apart, it’s all good stuff and very well acted. The stage set is also excellent. Aside from the real lake, the rest of the set is just as ingenious and comprises of a very effective video-projected backdrop, complete with rippling lake and flying birds, which change to stone walls and a log fire for the indoor scenes. Then later we get some great scenes of the characters swimming across the projected lake.

As a footnote to the play we are told that Harry eventually published a novel by Lawrence but not ‘Lady Chatterley’ instead the less provocative ‘The Escaped Cock’. A cute title but it’s actually about a bird. Not long after that Harry and his latest diversion, a married woman called Josephine, shot themselves. Lawrence himself died a year later.

Afterwards we stagger off to the Johnson's. L having got her round in at Sainsbury’s, leaves me with the more expensive one. I have a dog show early tomorrow but whereas Doggo needs to on the wagon, I’m not bothered. One becomes two becomes three; some plays take more dissecting than others. Although three pints on top of the wine was perhaps pushing it a bit for a 6.30am start.