THE OLD NORMAL
England had been put into a deep sleep brought about by a spell in the guise of a virus.
And similar to that slumbering kingdom in Sleeping Beauty, no-one quite knew when the people would fully re-emerge from their COVID induced hibernation which was keeping the future of the country seemingly forever in suspension.
With all the constant uncertainty in the air, one might wonder how anyone could escape the tyranny of this sickly constraint hanging interminably over everyone’s lives.
As the handsome, yet age worn couple walked through the empty streets of Oxford, they could hear only their footsteps against the cobbles.
If it hadn’t been for the virus, they might have expected to hear the sound of church bells tolling in the distance. But even those familiar sounds had been silenced.
“Even the bells don’t even toll anymore,” Michael said glumly. "Probably an outbreak of COVID amongst the local bellringers or some such thing."
As they walked at the pace of a funeral procession, Michael perked up momentarily as he gazed toward the horizon.
The distant smoky chimney tops spouting particulate matter into the red and orange winter sky recalled an atmosphere to Michael’s mind similar to that of the sodium process of technicolour cameras used most famously in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins.
He knew things like this because he was obsessed with atmosphere.
The atmosphere of time and place.
Identifying atmosphere was something elusive to most people but Michael treated it like an exact science and his mind simply wouldn’t settle until he had distilled the essence of atmosphere wherever he found it, right down to its exact components.
“Wind’s in the east, mist coming in,” he said softly under his breath as his squeezed his wife’s hand.
Smiling, Elizabeth said, “reality is just a foreign country to you isn’t it?”
Michael nodded in agreement with his wife.
“You mean to us.”
“Okay. To us.”
Michael wrapped his scarf around his neck as the bitter wind started to bite.
“Come on. It’s getting chilly. Let’s get back and put the kettle on.”
As the couple walked home, Michael whistled the primary theme from the 4th movement of Elgar’s 2nd Symphony, a personal favourite of his that always bolstered his mood when he was feeling pensive or stressed.
His other unique ability was to select the perfect motif for the specific atmosphere at hand.
“The atmosphere calls for Elgar, I’m afraid.”
This habit might have annoyed his wife if she wasn’t so completely attuned to his sensibility.
If he was the identifier of atmosphere, she was the collector of it, hoarding all sorts of antique objects and decorations for their home in a bid to recreate memories of past times similar to that of the BFG with his bottled dreams. The interior of their home was like a cross between Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Old Curiosity Shop.
Having finally returned home, the couple made a log fire for themselves and played some genuinely scratchy Fred Astaire vinyl on their old record player.
"Some day, when I'm awfully low
When the world is cold
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight."
“Pretty good huh?”
Elizabeth smiled.
“Pretty good.”
The sound of a grandfather clock chiming in the lower hallway further added to the timeless feel to the house they both inhabited.
On the rare occasion when the telephone rang, it was an old 1930’s Carrington classic push button model and so they might as well have been in an old Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant movie for all they cared.
As veterans of the stage the couple were adept at creating theatre wherever and whenever they wanted. Since the pandemic had rendered their already waning acting careers obsolete, they now had to entertain themselves as both performers and audience of two. In many ways they had reverted to those early years of childhood when the imagination and play acting merge and anything is possible.
Rummaging through their numerous costume boxes, they had endless centuries of history available to them to forget themselves in.
Some nights they dressed as Edwardians, other nights Elizabethans or Tudors. When they wanted to brush up on their reasonable dancing skills, they would dust off their jazz age rags and re-create Gatsby like cocktails as they eventually collapsed on their bed drunk from all their imagined fun.
But as the grandfather clocked chimed once again, they sensed the hour was late.
How long could their charade protect them from the fact that funds were dwindling and soon they would have to find ways to adapt in order to preserve all they had left that they hadn’t sold or traded.
It was all well and good to reject modernity and live as if in happier times, but the wolves would be at their door and they wouldn’t be pantomime ones, either.
As they sat out in their wintry garden late one night wearing their moth eaten coats over their latest costume get up, Michael turned to Elizabeth and said,“I sense our time for fun is running out. It may be time for me to get a proper job.”
Elizabeth, who had been dressed up earlier that afternoon as the Snow Queen from Narnia, looked suddenly on the verge of tears.
Clearly even wearing his Toad of Toad Hall make up and costume didn’t soften his sobering statement for her.
They had both known for a long time it was time to put away childish things and there was simply no escaping the matter.
“I’ll make some phone calls tomorrow.”
Dabbing her tear with a tissue, Elizabeth nodded in agreement.
And as he went to top up their empty glasses with more wine, nothing came out.
They had drank the last bottle from their cellar.
“Make believe wine it is, then!”
Too old and impractical for most employers to accommodate as part of their staff team, Michael found no door was open to him as the harsh lockdown winter approached and increasing poverty for him and his wife loomed.
Visions of him and Elizabeth turning into malnourished skeletons rattling around their inherited home came to mind as he wandered the eerie and lonely looking streets of Oxford.
All those times he took such romantic scenes of the city for granted now filled him with a sense of dread.
The prospect of a future without the stage also concerned him greatly.
Reluctant to return home just yet, Michael took refuge in an empty church which for some reason was open, much to his surprise given the latest mandated restrictions across the country.
Although he felt reassured to be in this spiritual place, he was disheartened to find all the pews had been replaced by standard looking chairs that could be easily moved around as they would in a community centre.
Everything was being replaced, even the furniture.
Even God.
It was his fault for slumming it at one of the smaller churches he supposed.
He was then suddenly seized by the desire to head off to Christchurch and so he duly left the pedestrian church for something closer to his idea of atmospheric divinity.
But to his great upset, when he reached the grounds of the cathedral he found it was closed, citing the threat of the virus as reason enough to keep its doors shut.
As he stood outside the maginficent and historic cathedral, he felt truly forlorn.
Everywhere he went, doors were closing on him.
Sitting beneath a stone carved angel sculpture, Michael with head bowed started to weep.
“Michael?! Is that you?!”
Michael turned around to see a familiar face emerge from the misty gloom.
“David! What are you doing out here?”
David, a Dali looking like creation with a lobster antenna moustache stepped forward closer to David.
“I’ve got to stretch the legs. This lockdown thingy is just too depressing.”
“Lucky we have a decent looking jailyard to walk around, I reckon.”
“Dear old Oxford.”
“I just want to go back to the old normal.”
“Alas yes. But I fear we’re now all consigned to to the tyranny of the future with all its incessant momentum.”
And then as quick as a flash, an idea popped into Michael’s head.
“The old normal!” Michael repeated the phrase to himself.
“What’s that?”
“You just gave me an idea.”
David was clearly bemused by Michael's sudden change of tone.
"I did?"
Michael put his hand on David's shoulder as a gesture of gratitude.
"You did."
“Am I your muse now then?”
“You might just be!”
And with that Michael shook David’s hand firmly and started into a light sprint a la George Bailey at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life when he realises he’s still alive.
“I’ll call you!”
David stood, perplexed at his friend’s most peculiar behaviour.
"Make sure you do!"
A few weeks later, word of mouth quickly had spread amongst those starved of culture and human connection on the theatrical grapevine.
A newly conceived underground pop-up theatre called “The Old Normal” was established in clandestine fashion in Michael and Elizabeth’s shabby yet grand bohemian house.
Between the large disused dining room and the back garden, they had created an intimate venue for their audiences to sit and enjoy theatre in secret, a timeless place where all the worries of the modern world were forgotten and no-one was permitted to mention the word covid or vaccines or else they would be brought up onto stage to carry out a heavy forfeit.
Candles, holly wreaths and stylish christmas lights all added to the magic of their new and forbbiden venture and for the first time in a while, they sensed they might be able to survive the winter without resorting to street theatre or begging bowls.
And for those fortunate to enjoy this unique and precious event, they were gifted in return for the small price of their tickets a reminder of why culture and its practicioners are so essential to the well being of hearts and minds.
It was Christmas Eve, December 2020 and while the streets were empty outside, the warm glow of The Old Normal theatre inside the secret location was reminiscent of ancient times when people sat round camp fires and enjoyed eternal tales of magic, comedy and tragedy. Mugs of mulled wine infused the place with an atmospheric aroma that recalled christmases past of happier times.
The current performance was that of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol and Elizabeth & Michael with the help of a small versatile cast had expertly and beautifully adapted the classic festive story for their small stage.
As Michael delivered a definitive Scrooge for those privileged enough to witness it, Elizabeth had managed to play the entire Cratchit family with her unique ability to contort her face and provide a wide array of differing character voices.
As Scrooge reflected on his redemption and the play drew to its close, both the audience and performers were completely focused and attuned to the magic of the drama.
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
The words seem to hang in the air as both cast and crew were completely absorbed in the moment, free of worry and grateful for humanity’s spark of genius wherever it could be found.