Therapy

rememberers: I wasn’t the only one, it seems, to feel that the death of Bobby Moore measured the extent of our decline. There are lots of nostalgic articles in the papers about him and the 1966 World Cup. Our losing the third Test in succession to India this week hasn’t helped national morale, either. India! When I was a boy a Test series against India was always a dead boring prospect because it was bound to be a walkover for England.
     
    It’s half past five. Rehearsals will be over by now, and the cast will be tucking into their meal in the canteen before going off to Make-Up. Ron Deakin always has sausage, egg and chips. He swears he never eats fry-ups at home, but says that sausage, egg and chips go with the character of Pop Davis. He’s quite superstitious about it — got into quite a panic one day, when they ran out of sausages in the kitchen. I wonder if he will be put off by my not being there as usual tonight. The actors like me to be around on recording day, they find it reassuring. I’m afraid I’m punishing them, as well as myself, by staying away.
    The more I think about it, and I can think of nothing else, the worse I feel. I’m trying to resist deciding that I have made the wrong decision, but I can feel myself being drawn inexorably towards that conclusion as if by the gravitational force of a black hole. In short, I can feel myself getting into one of my “states”. The state, c’est moi, as Amy might say. How am I going to get through the rest of the evening? I stare at the key marked help on my keyboard. If only it could.
     
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    Monday morning, 1st March. At about 6.45 yesterday evening, just as Sally was laying the table for our evening meal, my nerve broke. I rushed out of the house, shouting an explanation to Sally without giving her time to tell me I was a fool, backed the Richmobile out of the garage, slithering and sliding all over the drive — I damn near dented the offside wing on the gatepost — and drove at imprudent speed into Rummidge, arriving at the studio just in time to take my seat for the recording.
    It went brilliantly. A wonderful audience — sharp, appreciative, together. And the script wasn’t bad, either, though I says it myself. The story-line is that the Springfields decide to put their house up for sale in order to get away from the Davises, but without telling the Davises because they feel guilty about it, and the Davises keep unknowingly sabotaging the plan by turning up or doing something outrageous just when the Springfields are showing potential buyers round the house. The audience loved it. I expect a lot of them want to move house themselves and can’t because they have negative equity. Negative equity is when your mortgage is more than your house is worth. There’s a lot of it about. It’s a kind of internal derangement of the property market. Not funny, if you’ve got it, but it might make you see the funny side of Edward and Priscilla’s dilemma. Or, to put it another way, watching their farcical trials and tribulations might make you feel better about your negative equity, especially as the episode ends with the Springfields reconciled to staying where they are. I often feel that sitcom has that kind of therapeutic social effect.
    The cast felt the good vibrations coming from the audience and were in cracking form. There were hardly any re-takes. We wrapped at eight-thirty. Everybody was smiling afterwards. “Hallo, Tubby,” said Ron Deakin, “we missed you at rehearsal today.” I mumbled something about being tied up. Hal gave me a quizzical look, but said nothing. Isabel, the floor manager, told me I’d been well out of it, that the rehearsal had been full of snags and cock-ups. “But that’s always the way,” she said. “If the rehearsal runs like a train, you can be sure the recording will be a disaster.” (Isabel is an unhappy hoper.) Ollie wasn’t there: he’d phoned in to say the roads were too dodgy in his part of the world. Several members of the cast decided to stay overnight in Rummidge in view of the weather, so we all went to the bar. There was a genial, relaxed atmosphere, everybody basking in the sense of a job well done, cracking jokes, buying rounds. I felt a huge affection for them all. It’s like an extended family, and in a way I’m the father of it. Without my scripts, they would never have come together.
    Samantha Handy came into the bar, having tucked young Mark up