Author: Andrew Taylor

EVENTS celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in East Grinstead raised £2,400.25 which has now been distributed to town charities as follows:

• East Grinstead Lions: £500
• Meridian Radio: £500
• CVS: £300
• East Grinstead Athletics Club: £200
• East Grinstead Macular Group: £200
• Opportunity Play Group: £200
• Pets as Therapy: £200
• Town Museum: £150
• Rotary Club towards the cost of the town Christmas tree this December: £150.25

Town Mayor Liz Bennett presents a Cheque to the town swimming club

TOWN Council PR Geraldine Durrant is celebrating the release of her latest book, Pirate Gran and the Monsters.

Published by the National Maritime Museum, it is the third adventure of Geraldine’s feisty heroine Pirate Gran, who may have given up a life of crime, but still keeps a crocodile underneath her bed, and finds time to get up to mischief with her old shipmates Fingers O’Malley, Black Hearted Jack and Cut Throat Malone.

“I’ve been incredibly lucky,” said Geraldine. “The books have now been published in Australia, Canada and –  in both Spanish and Catalan –  in Spain.

“And the first two titles in the series – Pirate Gran and Pirate Gran goes for Gold –  are currently being adapted for the stage as an Arts Council project by the Scamp theatre company .

“Scamp specialises in children’s literature and has already adapted books by children’s laureates Michael Morpurgo and Julia Donaldson, so I am as surprised as I am delighted to find myself in such august company.”

The original Pirate Gran was the winner of a BBC short story competition to promote literacy and encourage parents and grandparents to read to their children, and it was the BBC who introduced Geraldine to artist Rose Forshall who has illustrated all three of her pirate books.

Their appearance on BBC London News to talk about the winning story was spotted by the National Maritime Museum who commissioned a longer version for publication.

“Rose is young enough to be my daughter but we work really well together and share the same rather quirky sense of humour.

“I knew from the first moment I saw Gran on paper that Rose had really captured what she was all about and I love the way she works all sorts of visual jokes into the illustrations. She’s absolutely brilliant!

“Our latest book was actually inspired by my little granddaughter Alice who ran into the sitting room one day screaming that there was a  ‘great big ‘normous spider’ in the kitchen.

“When my husband bravely went out to deal with it, he found it wasn’t a spider at all but a dried tomato stalk! So the book is all about the very silly pirate crew of the Black Barnacle  and the miseries they endure when their imaginations run riot.

“They think the terrible roaring they can hear from the sitting room is a monster, but it turns out only to be Grandpa snoring…while the gorilla in the cupboard is actually Pirate Gran’s fur coat. Gran of course sorts everything out satisfactorily and by the end of the book the pirates are brave enough to go to bed with the lights off.”

The two are currently collaborating on a new project, and Geraldine has a book featuring two very badly behaved grannies due out next year – although her new heroines are strictly landlubbers.

“They do say you should write about what you know, so my naughty grannies are largely autobiographical,” she laughed.

THE ladies of the ACE Theatre Company bared their souls – and their assets –  in a production of Calendar Girls at Chequer Mead last week.

The fictionalised film version of how members of a Yorkshire Women’s Institute raised millions of pounds for Leukaemia Research by posing nude for a calendar won numerous accolades including the British Comedy Award.

And the recent release of the amateur performing rights means that this immensely likeable romp is now enjoying a second life on stage.

I am prepared to bet that none of Ace’s Calender Girls has been naked in public before, but they overcome any qualms they may have felt about baring all for their art in this funny, feel-good production.

Humour and pathos were beautifully combined as the motives and back stories of the characters were laid as bare as their flesh.

Dorothy Maynard as the newly-widowed Annie, was touching in scenes with her dying husband John, played with cheerful resolve by Steve Gray, and later when the weight of other people’s grief threatened to overwhelm her.

Chris White played “Chris”, the driving force behind the calendar project, as a woman torn between making a success of something for the first time in her life and neglecting her family, and her eventual reconciliation with Annie, and the realisation that the Calendar was bigger than both of them, was movingly portrayed.

There were two reasons why Alicia Lane landed the role of Celia both of which both required “considerably bigger buns…” and her sassy debut with ACE was greatly appreciated by the male half of the audience in particular.

Veteran actress Kath Lunn played retired teacher Jessie, a woman tired of being dismissed on the grounds of her age. She put in a spirited performance and will be glad to know that no glimpse of her “front bottom” was visible behind her knitting.

While Carrie Hazeel, as the betrayed and tormented Ruth, was touching in her transition from shy introvert to a woman who finally knew her own worth, and was terrific in her show-down with the vacuous ‘other women’, beautifully played by Vicki Searle.

It fell to Kate Gledhill, playing the church organist Cora, to reveal most, in an endearing and heartwarming performance which was, despite being entirely naked, in the “best possible taste” thanks to some deft work by her fellow players who included Robert Barnes as the photographer drafted in to make the calendar a reality, Lynne Fallowell as the domineering WI chairman Marie and Peta-Jane Onslow as the formidable Lady Cravenshire.

Ladies you were brave, you were bold.

But above all, you were beautiful.

TOWN councillors will be making themselves more accessible to East Grinstead residents by taking to the streets once a month with a new mobile “surgery” where they can meet people and give advice on public services. They will be on the High Street on the first Saturday of each month between 10am and noon, and will also be available from time to time to deal with specific issues of concern to the public, and at different venues where necessary.

Some councillors will also continue to attend regular surgeries at the same time on the first and third Saturdays of each month at the town library in West Street.

THE Company of Friends are back at Chequer Mead from 1 – 3 November with their hugely popular Olde Tyme Musical Hall.

For a tremendous evening evening of nimble-toed terpsichore, long-limbed lovelies and some of the oldest jokes ever undusted in public, book now…or it will be too late! Contact the box office on 01342 302000.