couldn’t I have been sat next to sweet freckle-faced Suzie Barnado?
JARVIS GOES TO DRAMA CLUB
MARCH 8th 1991
Drama Club was brilliant tonight. We played a game called Meeeoowwwmmm Screeech! where we stood in a circle and passed a toy car around. If we had the car and somebody shouted Screeech! we had to quickly stop and pass the car back in the opposite direction. We also played another game where we stood in a circle and one person had to leave the room and while they were gone one of the others would be made leader. When the person came back the leader would do small movements and the others would copy him and the person who’d left would have to guess who the leader was. It’s difficult to explain on paper.
MARCH 15th 1991
At Drama Club tonight we sat in a circle, Pamela started a story and threw a tennis ball to one of us. When we caught the tennis ball we had to carry on the story. I would have been brilliant at this but I’m rubbish at catching.
MARCH 23rd 1991
At Drama Club last night we made a short list of ideas for our spring production for Local Heroes of History Month. It’s going to be brilliant. Very brilliant.
MARCH 30th 1991
Tonight everybody stood in a circle and one of us had to be a murderer and one of us a detective. The murderer had to kill everyone else by winking at them and the detective had to guess who the murderer was before they’d killed all of Drama Club. Just before it was time to leave Pamela told everyone to stand in a circle for a new game. She told us to close our eyes. The next thing that happened was everyone started singing happy birthday and when I opened my eyes Sandra had brought in a birthday cake for me. I blew out the candles and everybody cheered and someone started shouting ‘Bumps! Bumps!’ but I don’t like the bumps and so they let me off. It’s not actually my birthday until tomorrow but I didn’t let that spoil it.
APRIL 6th 1991
I was very disappointed to not get the role of Sir Francis Drake in Drama Club’s production of El Draco for Local Heroes of History Month.
The actual medium of delivery of that last entry probably tells us more than the words themselves. I’ve taken it out of context. Here it is back in the context I found it.
Jarvis Ham
Ham and Hams Teahouse
Fore Street
Mini Addledford
Devon
Pamela Finch Masters
The South Hams Am-Dram Players
The Hall
Parsonage Road
Devon
6th April 1991
Dear Pamela,
I was very disappointed to not get the role of Sir Francis Drake in Drama Club’s production of El Draco for Local Heroes of History Month.
Yours faithfully
Jarvis Ham
PS: I feel I can no longer attend Drama Club
After Jarvis leaves Drama Club the diary action goes quiet for a bit. And then this is published.
JUNE 7th 1992
And then it all goes quiet again, because Jarvis has always been a slow reader.
Until.
DECEMBER 2nd 1992
DIANA (REVISED)
When you came to Devon that day
To open a leisure centre
When you pressed a button and turned on the flumes
When you played snooker for the press
And then when you went walkabout
When you walked about past Milletts, past Marks and Spencer
When people gave you flowers
And they sang happy birthday
When I waited behind the barrier
When I waited
When I reached out
And most of all when you touched my hand outside the Wimpy Bar
And then you were gone
Were you sad then?
We’ve just turned onto the A38, onto the Devon Expressway. The trees are now too far apart to touch each other. If you look out of your window to the left you’ll see Dartmoor in the distance. There’s a jack-knifed artic and traffic backed up behind it over on the right, London and the North are up ahead and Jarvis Ham is in the seat behind. He’s reading The Stage newspaper. He’s taken his shoes off again.
These shoes:
The Devon Expressway. It sounds a bit sci-fi doesn’t it, like it’s a monorail across the moon or something.
It isn’t.
The A38 is a major English trunk road that runs for 292 miles from Bodmin in Cornwall to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and the Devon Expressway is a forty-two-mile stretch of the A38 between Plymouth and Exeter. It’s not important.
‘Actors wanted,’ Jarvis says, reading out loud from The Stage (the newspaper, he’s not on a stage – God forbid). ‘To be represented by an exciting new agency and personal management company.’
‘You know those things are always a con. They just want your money.’
‘Okay,’ Jarvis said and scanned the ads again. ‘Lookalikes wanted then. Who do I look like?’
‘Whom,’ I said.
‘Okay. Whom do I look like?’
I
