0099 The Reading

The EX IT sign in the Town Hall Theatre was lit by gas. A smell you never quite forget. It serves to pin the memories of those other times. The sister of the junior mistress at the local school was here to give her reading: 'Scenes from Shakespeare'; whole scenes and all the characters. Imagine. But she had a very special voice. Oh who can know the where and when that life may give its life to life and give it full, and give it whole? And who may know how many years before the fruits burst in the soul? Or what the lights and where the sounds and what they speak, and where the whole? The performance ended. As the lights came on, the audience were still for - seconds? - as if they had forgotten they were not already at home; then walked out into the rainy darkness of the seaside town, past the gaslit EXIT sign; the sea a distant seethe and roar and some were changed for life. So, poetry. .