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Season 1 Episodes

Joining Charles Adrian for the 31st Second Hand Book Factory is part-time artist Henry Blackshaw. This is a mellow half hour of gentle tunes and short literature in which Henry and Charles Adrian look at links between fairy tales and real life and Henry brings a book by one of the teenage Charles Adrian’s favourite authors. Get ready to feel your spine tingle.

You can find out more about the Guild of Silk Painters here.

Another book by Jeanette Winterson, Written On The Body, is discussed in Page One 111.

Not After Midnight by Daphne Du Maurier is also discussed in Page One 167. Another book by Daphne Du Maurier, Jamaica Inn, is discussed in Page One 24.

NB: As of 2022, the only place you can find information about Charles Adrian’s alter-ego Ms Samantha Mann is at mssamanthamann.com.

This episode was recorded in Acton for London Fields Radio.

This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.

A transcript of this episode is below.

Episode released: 22nd July, 2013.

Book listing:

Hansel And Gretel by The Brothers Grimm

Sexing The Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Not After Midnight by Daphne Du Maurier

Links:

Guild of Silk Painters

Page One 111

Page One 167

Page One 24

Ms Samantha Mann

Henry Blackshaw

Charles Adrian

Episode transcript:

Jingle
You're listening... you're listening... to London Fields Radio.

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 45th Page One. This is the 31st Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and I'm at home again. This is Page One On The Run and this time I'm with Henry Blackshaw. May I?

Music
[May I? by Kevin Ayers]

Charles Adrian
So that was May I? by Kevin Ayers. Thank you, Henry. That was your choice.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] That's okay. Thank you, Charles.

Charles Adrian
So, Henry: Welcome to South Acton.

Henry Blackshaw
Thank you. Yeah. I've... It's my first time in South Acton.

Charles Adrian
In the... In the dangerous back woods of...

Henry Blackshaw
It looks nice in the sun. [indistinct]

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's lovely, isn't it, this evening. Yeah.

Henry Blackshaw
Perhaps... I think most places in London look nice in the sun and... So I've got quite a good impression...

Charles Adrian
Good. Okay.

Henry Blackshaw
... so far.

Charles Adrian
I like looking out of my window at sunset and you can see the tower blocks against the peach-coloured sky.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, yeah.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's rather attractive. I would like you to describe yourself. That's obviously the first thing that I ask all of my guests.

Henry Blackshaw
So... Yeah, my name's Henry Blackshaw, as you know, and I am a resident of East London. I live in Spittlefields and have done for about seven years. I am an artist, but also definitely an artist who does his practice in his spare time because I work full time, you know, to... to pay the bills. So I'm not sure if you call it a ‘hobby’ artist or a ‘hobby’ painter but certainly, kind of, like, yeah, [I] do do my work in my spare time. And what else is there to say?

Charles Adrian
That's quite... That's...

Henry Blackshaw
Oh! Sil... Oh, I've recently joined the Guild of Silk W... Silk Painters.

Charles Adrian
Have you? I didn't know there was a guild of silk painters.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Yeah, there is. There's a small band of us and I think I'm their only... well, certainly their only male member, I think. So probably their... the only member under about fifty, I think. But...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. And are they all active silk painters?

Henry Blackshaw
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charles Adrian
Fascinating.

Henry Blackshaw
That, you know, really, kind of, championing the cause... meet up to discuss promoting silk painting. So...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Wow! Very nice. Let's... We're going to talk a bit more about your silk painting later but tell me about the book that you like first of all.

Henry Blackshaw
I brought it with me. It's... I'm really sorry, Charles, it's... I know your... your show is full of really, kind of, exciting niche books but... but I have probably one of the most well-known stories.

Charles Adrian
[laughs] That's fine. I'm no... I'm no snob about niche-ness.

Henry Blackshaw
Good. Good. But it's... it's almost like... Well, I've brought Hansel And Gretel as the one...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh! Great. Well, it's wonderful story. Yeah.

Henry Blackshaw
Exactly. It's my... It's like bringing a dictionary to your literature club in a way. It's...

Charles Adrian
[laughs] Why do you say that?

Henry Blackshaw
Well, you know, it's... it's, kind of... it's such a... an original s... you know, like... like a, kind of... a mold from which, kind of, so many stories come.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm! Right. I see what you... It is... It's a... Well, it's a... Yeah, these are fundamental stories, aren't they?

Henry Blackshaw
[affirmative] Mmm. Exactly. But...

Charles Adrian
Why don't you read us the first page?

Henry Blackshaw
Okay. Right. Here I go.

At the edge of a big forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children. The little boy's name was Hansel and the girl's was Gretel. He had precious little to fill his belly and once, when there was a bad famine in the land, he could no longer even get bread from one day to the next.
At night, he lay in bed worrying, and he tossed and turned and sighed and said to his wife:
“What's to become of us? How can we feed our poor children when we have nothing left for ourselves?”
“I'll tell you what, husband,” answered his wife, “tomorrow, first thing, we'll take the children into the forest - into the very thick of it; we'll make a fire for them and give them each one more piece of bread, then we'll go about our work and leave them by themselves. They won't find the way back home and we'll be rid of them.”
“No, wife,” said her husband, “I'll not do that. How could I have the heart to leave my children alone in the forest? The wild beasts would soon come and tear them to pieces.”
“Oh, you fool,” she said. “Then all four of us will have to starve. You may as well begin planing the boards for our coffins.”
And she would give him no peace till he consented.
”But I'm sorry for the poor children all the same,” said the man.
The two children was so hungry that they hadn't been able to get to sleep either and had heard what their stepmother had said to their father. Gretel cried bitterly and said to Hansel:
“Now we're done for.”
“Hush, Gretel,” said Hansel. “Don't be sad. I'll soon find a way.”
And when their parents had gone to sleep, he got up, pulled on his coat, opened the back door and crept out. There was bright moonlight and the white pebbles outside the house shone like so many little silver coins. Hansel bent down and filled his coat pockets with as many as would go into them.
Then he went in again and said to Gretel:
“Don't worry, little sister. You can go back to sleep now. God won't forsake us.”
And he got back into bed.

Charles Adrian
Great. It's funny because I... I... Now you read it, it's totally about a family who don't have enough to eat and they get rid of their children.

Henry Blackshaw
Exactly.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I'd never remembered that.

Henry Blackshaw
No, it is. And the father is full of regret and...

Charles Adrian
Very briefly, it has to [laughing] be said.

Henry Blackshaw
Yeah. Well this [indistinct] they are...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [laughing] I know it's probably condensed.

Henry Blackshaw
Exactly. This is... This is what's so nice about them, is that they are so finely honed. They are so extremely concise. You know, not a word... not a word wasted. No extra words. But it's... yeah, it's straight to the point really, isn't it?

Charles Adrian
Yeah. Absolutely.

Henry Blackshaw
Their predicament is there. And the... the whole story, really, seems to be about food, as you said. So they...

Charles Adrian
Yeah. When you think about it.

Henry Blackshaw
They're starving. Then they... When they go into the forest, first of all they... they find their way back because they've used pebbles. But when they get lost permanently in the forest it's because they've used to bread instead of pebbles to, kind of, like, lay their path. Then they get to the gingerbread house and they just... obviously they just start tearing [it] apart, start eating it. So it's... They're... They're eating another person out of house and home - like, literally - get caught... One of them - it's Hansel - gets fattened up for the purpose of eating. So he gets put in a cage and fed... he's fed very well to fatten up for the... for the witch to eat. And then finally she gets puts in the oven and she's the one... she gets it in the end. So...

Charles Adrian
They don't eat her, though, do they?

Henry Blackshaw
They don't, no. No.

Charles Adrian
But she's cooked.

Henry Blackshaw
Yeah, she's cooked. And then they... I think then, at the... at that stage, they find lots... they steal her treasures and take them back. The... Their father's wife has died by that stage.

Charles Adrian
Okay. Yes, I think, when I was a child, I always thought that, in some way, the father's wife was the witch. I always made that connection, I think. I don't know why that would be.

Henry Blackshaw
But, yeah, it's like you said, it's... Food seems to be the theme. And them learning not to... to live off their parents backs and just sit and to effectively take hand-me-downs off their parents. [laughs]

Charles Adrian
[laughing] Right. It's a very... It's a very conservative message, isn't it?

Henry Blackshaw
Um... If it's conservative? I don't know. I think it's... This is the thing about fairytales, it's... it's... it's more that... it's... it's... For me personally, it's... it's about... When you read it, it's... I think you can... you can also see it as a way of rehearsing that fear of being deserted by your parents. So I think... I think that's why it strikes such a chord. And I think that's why it really has stood the test of time and has become so, you know, retold and retold until it's got into this... kind of, such a crisp, kind of, like, finely-honed form, is because there is something really true in there as well, which is this... this huge fear that we all have that we're going to be left by our... by our providers and what are we going to do about it? And... And that's the nice... I think that's the nice thing, is that what you learn at the end is that you're going to be all right because you're going to fend for yourself. And so you rehearse that feeling of being left alone. So it's a good way of, kind of, like, digesting that fear really. So maybe not always that conservative as they first come across, I think, really.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. So I... Yeah, I was, kind of, think of this slightly Thatcherite “Stand on your own two [laughing] feet”.

Henry Blackshaw
[laughing] Yeah, exactly.

Charles Adrian
But I... Yeah, no, I totally see what you mean. That's... It's... Yeah, it's nice. Let's... I'm going to play the second track now, which continues the food theme and is a clue to the book that I'm going to give you. It's... It's Tori Amos and it's Snow Cherries From France.

Henry Blackshaw
Okay.

Charles Adrian
[Snow Cherries From France by Tori Amos]

Charles Adrian
So that was Tori Amos with Snow Cherries From France and the reason I played that is because the book that I'm giving you is Jeanette Winterson's Sexing The Cherry.

Henry Blackshaw
Okay.

Charles Adrian
Have you ever read that?

Henry Blackshaw
I haven't.

Charles Adrian
Because I think you should. And I say that because - so you know this but for the... [laughing] for the sake of our listeners - I went to see a piece that was in an exhibition in... at the Islington Arts Factory recently, so your... your... one of your silks. Which is... is... is... it has... it has its roots in fairytale, I feel, but is a mixture - no? - of fairytale and...

Henry Blackshaw
And my own story.

Charles Adrian
And your own story, okay.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] So, yeah, I think that was... that was the starting point...

Charles Adrian
Right. Right.

Henry Blackshaw
... with the work.

Charles Adrian
And it was... I found it... I found it really interesting to look at it and to see that, yeah, there's a sort of game with... with the fairytales because they're often clues. Like, I felt like in the top... in the bedroom in the top left, for example, there are these three children on the bed and instantly I was thinking of Goldilocks but... but it's not Goldilocks because there are these three children. You go, “Who are the three children?” And there are a couple of other... there were other rooms like that where I... There was a Jack And The Beanstalk room, for example. But, again, it's not Jack And The Beanstalk, it's something else. And I really liked that about... or it was one of the things I liked about it. And it reminded me of... There were a few books that it reminded me of but this one, I think, does a similar thing, this book. It's really... She really interweaves fable and fantasy and history together. She has these...

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Oh, fantastic.

Charles Adrian
... characters who are quite elemental. The... The main... There are two main characters and the woman is this huge woman. She's called the Dog-Woman. And she's mammoth.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] So she's the matriarch, is she?

Charles Adrian
She's the matriarch. She... She, kind of... Well, she's... she's also an outsider, she lives by the river with her dogs, and she often... she... she kills lots of [laughing] people because she has a temper on her. And nobody ever - there's... there's a lot of discussion of love... Nobody fancies her and... because she's just too monstrous, she's too huge. At one stage there's a guy...

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Almost like an ogre...

Charles Adrian
She is! She's very like an ogre...

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] ... in her cave. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
... but also maternal and loving in... in the way that she feels inside. But you also see how she seems from outside and from outside she seems very harsh and flinty. Anyway, she... so she... there's... that... that character is in the centre and then you've got this other... her adoptive son but you don't know where he comes from. She just finds him by the side of the river. And he's a traveller, both in the world and in his mind. And he... So some of the more fantastical tales come from him. But let me read... I'll read you the first page.

MY NAME IS Jordan. This is the first thing I saw.
It was night, about a quarter to twelve, the sky divided in halves, one cloudy, the other fair. The clouds hung over the wood, there was no distance between them and the top of the trees. Where the sky was clear, over the river and the flat fields newly ploughed, the moon, almost full, shone out of a yellow aureole and reflected in the bow of the water. There were cattle in the field across, black against the slope of the hill, not moving, sleeping. One light, glittering from the only house, looked like the moat-light of a giant's castle. Tall trees flanked it. A horse ran loose in the courtyard, its hooves sparking the stone.
Then the fog came. The fog came from the river in thin spirals like spirits in a churchyard and thickened with the force of a genie from a bottle. The bullrushes were buried first, then the trunks of the trees, then the forks and the junctions. The top of the trees floated in the fog, making suspended islands for the birds.
The cattle were all drowned and the moat-light, like a lighthouse, appeared and vanished and vanished and appeared, cutting the air like a bright sword.
The fog came towards me and the sky that had been clear was covered up. It was bitterly cold, my hair was damp and I had no hand-warmer. I tried to find the path but all I found were hares with staring eyes, poised in the middle of the field and turned to stone. I began to walk with my hands stretched out in front of me, as do those troubled in sleep, and in this way, for the first time, I traced the lineaments of my own face opposite me.

Every journey conceals another journey within its lines; the path not taken and the forgotten angle. These are journeys...

Henry Blackshaw
That's fantastic, isn't it?

Charles Adrian
Yes.

Henry Blackshaw
Oh, thank you. Yeah. Looks good.

Charles Adrian
I hope you will enjoy that. Let's have a little jingle and then... and then we'll come on to the book that you're going to give to me.

Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.

Charles Adrian
So what have you... what have you brought that you think I should have.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Okay. Mine... Mine for you is - I hope you haven't read it - it is a short story. Well, quite a long short story. It's Not After Midnight by Daphne du Maurier.

Charles Adrian
Oh no! I haven't read... I... I love Daphne du Maurier. I spent a lot of my teenage reading her books but I didn't read this one, No.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Good. But you haven't read this one. Excellent. Shall I read the first page?

Charles Adrian
Go on, yes.

Henry Blackshaw
Okay.

I'm a schoolmaster by profession. Or was. I handed in my resignation to the Head before the end of the summer term in order to forestall inevitable dismissal. The reason I gave was true enough—ill health, caused by a wretched bug picked up on holiday in Crete, which might necessitate a stay in hospital of several weeks, various injections, etc. I did not specify the nature of the bug. He knew, though, and so did the rest of the staff. And the boys. My complaint is universal, and has been so through the ages, an excuse for jest and hilarious laughter from earliest times, until one of us oversteps the mark and becomes a menace to society. Then we are given the boot. The passer-by averts his gaze, and we are left to crawl out of the ditch alone, or stay there and die.
If I am bitter, it is because the bug I caught was picked up in all innocence. Fellow-sufferers of my complaint can plead predisposition, poor heredity, family trouble, excess of the good life, and, throwing themselves on a psychoanalyst's couch, spill out the rotten beans within and so effect a cure. I can do none of this. The doctor to whom I endeavoured to explain what had happened listened with a superior smile, and then murmered something about emotionally destructive identification coupled with repressed guilt, and put me on a course of pills. They might have helped me if I had taken them. Instead I threw them down the drain and became more deeply imbued with the position [sic] that seeped through me, made worse of course by the fatal recognition of my condition by the youngsters I had believed to be my friends, who nudged one another when I came into class, or, with stifled laughter, bent their loathsome little heads over their desks—until the moment arrived when I knew I could not continue, and took the decision to knock on the headmaster's door.
Well, that's over, done with, finished. Before I take myself to...

Dot dot dot.

Charles Adrian
Great.

Henry Blackshaw
That's the first page.

Charles Adrian
Wonderful. Thank you very much. Okay. I will enjoy that. Thank you. So that's... that's it for today. Thank you very much, Henry.

Henry Blackshaw
That's okay. Thank you. Thank you for dinner.

Charles Adrian
Oh, it's my pleasure. My pleasure.

Henry and Charles Adrian
[laughter]

Charles Adrian
It's, yeah, the least I could provide for your... for your trouble.

Henry Blackshaw
A trip to Acton. [laughs]

Charles Adrian
[laughing] Indeed. Indeed. I'm going play the last track, which is the second track that you suggested. I put that here at the end because it's...

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Oh great. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
... quite repetitive. So if any of our listeners get bored of it, they can just stop listening at any point. [laughs]

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Well, no. They... They need to get to the middle eight. You need to include the middle eight.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] The middle eight is very good, yes.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] ... or otherwise there's... That's what it's going into, yeah.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] The middle eight is very good. Okay, yeah, so hang on until then. Fine. I was a bit confused by this. I watched this on... on YouTube. I've never seen... So this is the theme from Midnight Express by...

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Mmm hmm. Soundtrack, yeah.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... Giorgio Moroder.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Moroder. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
I have no idea what was going on in this film. Is it a film?

Henry Blackshaw
It is a film. It's an American film from the seventies. I, like you, haven't seen it. I think Midnight Express is about a... it's about drug dealer who gets caught in Turkey and it's about his exp...

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, he's a drug dealer.

Henry Blackshaw
Exactly. It's about... It's based on a true story, I think.

Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah, because he got... he got beaten up quite a lot. Okay.

Henry Blackshaw
It's based on true story about his experiences in a very foreign, exotic jail...

Charles Adrian
I see. Okay.

Henry Blackshaw
... but Georgio Moroder has done this part of the soundtrack.

Charles Adrian
Yes, I see. It is... It's a... It's a great tune but it goes around and around and around.

Henry Blackshaw
[speaking over] Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah.

Charles Adrian
So this is the theme from Midnight Express by Giorgio - or [rolling the r] Giorgio - Moroder.

Henry Blackshaw
Yes.

Charles Adrian
Thank you, Henry.

Henry Blackshaw
Thank you, Charles.

Music
[(Theme From) Midnight Express by Giorgio Moroder]

Charles Adrian
[imitating music] Boo boo, boo boo, boo boo. Well done if you got this far. This is Charles Adrian. Just a couple of plugs before this podcast finishes. First of all, London people: on the 28th of July, which is a Sunday, at 10:15pm, I'm going to be doing a preview performance of my Edinburgh show An Evening With Samantha at the Bedford in Balham. So that's 77 Bedford Hill, SW12 9HD. It's going to be a Pay What You Can performance as part of the PBH Free Fringe preview weekend. And then, of course, anybody: if you're going to be in Edinburgh in August, I'll be performing the show An Evening With Samantha from the 3rd to the 24th of August, starting at 7:45pm every night at The Street, which is Venue 239 if you have a Fringe programme - or if you get hold of a Fringe programme. For anybody else, that's 2 Picardy Place in Edinburgh. You can find out more about that at samanthaman.co.uk. Or find me on Facebook: Samantha Mann - and in that case it has two ns. Or tweet @MsSamanthaMann. Yeah, that... those are the ways. Or... Or look it up on edfringe.com. My show is called An Evening With Samantha and I would love to see as many of you as possible there. Thanks very much.

[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]