Theatre of Limited Facilities

Roger Chamberlain

Description

Roger Chamberlain was born in Sheringham on the Norfolk coast. In 1960 his father George, who was the deputy town clerk, helped set up a professional summer repertory theatre. Roger watched events unfold at The Little Theatre through the enchanted eyes of a seven year-old boy...

Informations

• Publié par: The Tagman Press
• Date de parution: 21 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781906749125
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE THEATRE OF LIMITED FACILITIES
 
Roger Chamberlain

www.tagmanpress.com
THE THEATRE OF LIMITED FACILITIES
First published in Great Britain in May 2013by Tagman Press.
Tagman Worldwide Ltd, 8 Bridge Court, Fishergate, Norwich NR3 1UE
Tel: [phone] www.tagmanpress.com email: [e-mail]
© 2013 Roger Chamberlain
The right of Roger Chamberlain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the authors and copyright holders.
ISBN Paperback 978-1-906749-11-8 ISBN E-book 978-1-906749-12-5
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Designed by Graham Watering Printed by The Really Useful Print Company, Unit 15, Bessemer Road, Norwich NR4 6DQ

www.tagmanpress.com
To Mum and Dad without whom this story would have been impossible
Publisher’s Preface
Exactly fifty years ago for a period of some twelve months I was the resident Sheringham reporter for the Eastern Daily Press and North Norfolk News.  So I wrote all the reviews for the whole 1963 repertory season at  the seaside town’s charming Little Theatre  which is the real life name for the subject of this beguiling novella “The Theatre of Limited Facilities” by Roger Chamberlain.  And the theatre’s actors, actresses,  stage managers, its set designer and director all became friends of mine for the season. And the set designer, an artist-actor by the name of David Alexander, became a friend for life of myself and my wife and two daughters.
Indeed Sherigham’s Little Theatre, was not many steps away along the street from my tiny Eastern Daily Press office which in those days fitted snugly above a shop. Even fewer steps in the opposite direction stood the offices of  theSheringham Urban District Council  where George Chamberlain, father of  author Roger, was effectively the deputy Town Clerk.  Three years earlier in 1960, George had been given special responsibility for setting up and supervising a new repertory theatre in the town’s former cinema – seemingly on a very restricted budget.  At least one cost-conscious councillor appears to have said in a debate on the subject that great care should be taken that ratepayers’money was not wasted on such a project, and in effect, the council decreed rather pompously that it would need to be “a theatre of limited facilities.” Little did the council realise that in that moment it was helping to create in the mind of a seven year-old boy,  the name of an enchanting story featuring the  theatre that would be published over half a century later.
As indicated above, I covered the Little Theatre’s doings as part of my reporting duties – and the reviews I wrote were identified by my initials A.K.G  as can be seen in the photographs secton of this book. Because of all this, George Chamberlain and his wife Helen also became very good friends of mine in that summer of 1963 too. I lived as a bachelor in a flat at nearby Weybourne Hall, just a few miles along the coast, so was often a generously invited guest for meals at their home in The Avenue, Sheringham, which was almost always thronged with Little Theatre actors and actresses, some of whom even lodged there.  And Roger was one of two small lively sons of George and Helen who always seemed to be darting back and forth through the noisy melee. Roger even remembers my driving him and his older  brother Martin in my Volkswagen car along the North Norfolk coast at Salthouse on some weekend family leisure mission.
So imagine the pleasure of finding that by the time I had fully established a small publishing imprint in Norfolk just a few years into the 21st century,  Roger still lived locally and had become --  relatively  late in his life --  a budding author!
I had returned to live in Norfolk in 1998 after roaming the world as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, then returning to live in London and start and bring up my family there.  On a trip to North Norfolk I sought out the Chamberlains at the same address in The Avenue only to find dear George had long since died. But I enjoyed very much meeting Helen again and “mardling” over enjoyable old times together.
Roger then lived just up the street where I visited him briefly too. Then a year or so later I heard that he had begun writing fiction and “faction” with great gusto and alacrity at a new home to which he had moved with his wife Katrina in the nearby market town of Holt. And that discovery has led to this proud publication by the Tagman Press in the early summer of  2013 of  “The Theatre of Limited Facilities.” But there is, in fact, much more to relate than that.
Roger by the time we met again , had already been battling for some time with diagnosed multiple sclerosisis which had forced him to give up his work as a banker long before retirement age. And somehow the desire to write which seized him quite suddenly following our first meeting in some four decades, gave him an intense surge of  renewed enthusiasm for life.  Perhaps it was something to do with talking together about The Tagman Press and its short history, and the novels and other books I had written over the intervening years since we had last met in Sheringham.
Anyway, a year or two earlier, he had been given as a present a charming, near-antique disablity scooter which he immediately fell in love with, and which he affectionately named “Hetty” And once bitten by the “writing bug”, fantastic stories  about“Hetty”, began to spring into his mind more and more frequently. And he very quickly found himself writing them down at first by hand, with a great and growing  passion.  In that sturdy little motorised buggy, Roger in truth criss-crosses the rough North Norfolk countryside, as well as more conventional roads and pavements in the area, with the greatest  gusto. And it seems likely the fictional stories  he is describing on paper are born out of these exciting real life journeys.
Eventually we expect that The Hetty Stories will themselves become a substantial book or books --  but already two of Roger’s other short stories have been published by The Tagman Press in a new series of Tagman E-Tales, miniature e-books which can be individually downloaded from the Internet like singles can be dowloaded from music albums, for  modest fees of 49p or 99p  The first story  “A Message for Freddie,” is a very moving, absolutely true-to-life story from Roger’s own early childhood experiences --  with a powerful kick in its tail. A second story “Jimmy and Riddlesworth’s Christmas Pickle” is, in direct contrast, pure, comic fiction. And this present publication, “The Theatre of Limited Facilities,” his third to date, is a judicious and intriguing mixture of both truth and and a brilliantly fertile imagination.
Roger has already been interviewed about his writing on BBC Radio Norfolk and has also appeared by invitation  at  the annual North Norfolk COAST Arts Festival. And stories, short and long, are continuing to flow from his pen and computer at an almost alarming rate. The Hetty Stories, soon to be published both as e-books and traditional books, are fast taking on the fantasy image of  Ian Fleming’s famous Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stories.
Roger’s enthusiasm for his new-found gift means he is occupied intensively every day with his writing when his wife Katrina is away from home at her work.  And his  recently discovered gift for combining fantasy and fact in engrossing storytelling forms is obviously continuing to give him the same pleasure that it later provides for individual readers.  His talent for the written word, however, is not to be likened to the phrase describing the fictionalised Little Theatre in Sheringham – it is indeed anything but a “limited facility.”  On the contrary,  judging by  Roger’s continuing prodigious rate of production, his writing gift seems to me to be very much an “unlimited”  facility.  And a summer launch party for this book in The Little Theatre’s foyer bar in Sheringham attended by a sprinkling of the real-life actors and actresses who have affectionately played there over half a century, will have the effect of bringing intertwined  truth and fantasy by a promising new Norfolk writer into a very special and memorable seaside harmony.
Anthony Grey, Founder, The Tagman Press Norfolk, May 2013
The Backcloth
My mother brought me to this hill, the hill where my story starts, over fifty years ago. I can imagine her pointing out to her young offspring the many features in the landscape below: the town where I was born, the cliffs, the beach and the cold North Sea beyond.
Thereafter, whenever I played on the hill, I ignored the little town nestling peacefully beneath its slopes; it never changed. Instead, my eyes were always drawn to the water which lapped or crashed onto the beach far below.
Unlike the town, the sea was forever changing.
In an instant, it could change its colour, its shape and its mood. I watched as it ebbed and flowed like the pendulum in an everlasting clock. It was ticking to its own tune, not ours.
Our ancestors had looked skywards to find a way to mark time and they had ignored the regular rhythms of the sea. Perhaps they had been too hasty?
The railway’s arrival in 1885 had started an explosion of building, which transformed the tiny village of Sheringham into a fashionable Victorian seaside resort.
Wealthy Victorians had found an unspoilt piece of Norfolk coastline which was now within easy reach of London, and three large hotels were rapidly built to accommodate them. Big houses too, as rich families with their servants arrived to spend their summers here far from the choking smog of London.
Inevitably, smaller houses fol