Happy

Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy. Happy.

Just a bit happy.

That is all.

Well, woke this morning and not one part of me wanted to go swim, but go swim I must and go swim I did. Drove to Ilkley where I can use my wetsuit and where it is outdoors. Swam 5 miles. The sponsored event is 6.2 miles, so I feel that I will probably be able to do it. Actually swam okay - quite fast, about 2 hrs and 35 minutes, which isn't too shabby. A nice bloke paced me for the last mile, said he'd seen me last week - and I was grateful for that.

I have been blessed by many, many lovely people this week. People coming out of their way to support me and our young people. I am so touched by that. Really. And the gifts for Maud. Naturally, she is delighted. Although Cailleach, that ball does squeak some!

It is incredible to me that people would come and show their support for The Silence of Friends and in addition say such lovely, kind things. The story was based on Snotty's story, and whilst I'm never wholly pleased with anything, I was reasonably happy with this. I had to find several additional siblings but I did try to find a framework that enabled the young people to shine. It was a tough story, but a story they wanted to take part in telling. And truth is stranger than fiction. In fact, Snotty's family were here in the UK: Irish father, and German Mother and three siblings, and that was it. That was all the family the siblings knew. No one else. No path backwards. No history. And their German Mother was difficult, challenging, very tough to be with and around.

When she died, all they had was a diary that she and her husband had completed. One writing from the front back, about their experience, and the other writing from the back to the front. Ilsa (the mother) wrote about how she had a husband, Hans, and a daughter Barbel, and they had both died, and then she became displaced and came to England to meet Wally, the Irish soldier she had first seen in Dresden. And once the children were born, that was the family unit.

About 15 years ago Ilsa died, and by chance, one of the siblings, Steven, was still living in their family home when a letter arrived from Christine and Elis - a cousin and her partner, looking for Ilsa. Ilsa's older sister, Maidi was still alive and was desperate to see her younger sister, Ilsa, before she died. It was too late for this - Ilsa had smoked like a chimney and her health had been impacted on. Maidi was too late.

But the children - Ilsa's three children, including Snotty, went. They went to what was East Germany, which is why Ilsa was able to stay unconnected, untethered for so long. This is fewer than 10 years ago. The siblings walked into a community hall and found all of their extended family - nearly - waiting for them. Dozens of relatives, people who looked just like them. The impact on Snotty was to provide roots, a sense of belonging, connections. The impact was extraordinary.

It was then that they began to ask about Ilsa's other child, Barbel and her first husband Hans. Maidi looked puzzled by this and asked what they meant. It transpired that Ilsa had adopted the story of another girl who lived close to them so that her story of displacement had a ring of authenticity. She held this story for more than 50 years - never elaborated, never told her children anything and never changed her tune. Her family were all there - including her father, the station master at the local train station, who was alive until the 1980s - but Ilsa never returned. She just insisted that all her family had perished in the war. All gone.

So, The Silence of Friends, grew from this real life story. It took the station master to be a good man, who had stayed silent, complicit if you like, as train after train of 'prisoners' - that is Jewish people - were taken to the East, never to return. It was a short play - 50 minutes - but the present, the consequences of Ilsa's denial of her history was juxtaposed with the history of her father waving the trains in and out. The play also told the story of a Jewish woman and her daughter, who through the course of the play journey from wealthy individuals to a passenger on one of those trains heading east. When the time came, the Station Master could not or would not hide her - that is a quick summary, but it was a bit more complex... I was interested somewhat in the story of ordinary Germans, and how fear holds you still, and unable to act.

For me, this has resonance with today. Whilst we are silent, or standing by, as witnesses, things are being done in our name. Am I complicit in things by simply not acting, by simply not speaking up? I ask, like everyone, what can I do? What can I do? All I can do is write a piece that allows 11 young people and their director to go and read history, to learn about what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 40s and for them to understand that it only needs for us to be silent in the face of prejudice and hatred, for it to happen again. I worry that time is coming soon. All I can do is find a way to provide young people with the some tools to ask questions.

Yesterday afternoon I saw two extraordinary pieces of theatre. One, The Rain that Washes Away - a one man show about the story of Christopher Maphosa and the persecution he faced in Zimbabwe at the hands Mugabe. It was deeply affecting.

The second, another single hander Dark Vanilla Jungle by Philip Ridley was a draining watch of the disintegration of young woman caught in the grasp of a group of men, who groomed and abused her. I have to say that the first 50 minutes was - whilst graphic and disturbing - a totally brilliant expose of how such men operate on someone so vulnerable. Painful and awful, I found the final 15 minutes, her disintegration, too much, not badly written but just too much for me to deal with. But perhaps that was the point?

Grooming is a subject that I need to write on. I have known that for a long time and some of the cases that have come to court around Pennine Lancashire have reminded me and now I am determined to do so.

Blimey, what a lot I've written! I saw ten pieces of theatre whilst in Edinburgh in addition to our show. So I am a bit full up! I never got to tell you about Transit, from A point Theatre or The Man who Planted Trees!

The kids have received a poor review today from a young writer who found some of the piece tedious, particularly the sisters and he didn't get the historical shifts. He's welcome to his opinion - but I was so pleased to be able to direct them to PaulaJ's assessment, and say, it's always a matter of one opinion against the other. I was so pleased to be able to say to them, "How do you feel about it?" and to know that they were able to make an honest assessment for themselves.

Thanks again to DavzoBroon, Shev, Lizzliloo, Cailleach, PaulaJ, Cathaber and OB 4Buttercups and their friends and partners. :-)I was thrilled to meet them all.