One of my bucket list items was to appear in a play on stage. I achieved this by plying Mr Podgers in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde. This was at Sheringham Little Theatre with the Sheringham Players way way back in the 1970s. I don't remember much about the storyline so had to refresh my memory and so here it is (the plot).
Oscar Wilde’s short story ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ appeared in the same year that Sherlock Holmes made his debut appearance in print, and curiously, both stories feature a man with an uncanny ability to read the details of people’s lives from very small details. But unlike Conan Doyle’s consulting detective, Mr Podgers the cheiromancer in ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ uses people’s palms to divine the secrets of their personalities, and to predict their futures.
Podgers i.e me came to a sticky end when he drowned in the Thames and was exposed as a fraud. I was supposed to play the part with a German accent but it came out as Japanese. That's how bad my accent was. Mind you the producer thought I would forget my lines but it was two of the ladies I was on stage with who did that. It was my only journey into the Thespian world and not something I ever want to repeat. There was a memorable part of the evning when two of us were sent out at the interval to find the guy who was playing a vicar in the second half. He had gone off to a local pub and not returned when he was due to prepare for his entry. I think we did find him and got him back in time. Walking into a bog standard Sheringham pub dressed in a dinner suit and with make-up on must have raised a few eyebrows though.
Then I wanted to run a marathon and I achieved this with the Bungay Black Dog Marathon of 1982. My training was going well as I had worked up to 20 miles running round the village. Then the other threequarters had the stupid idea of giving birth to our first son and all my training went out of the window. Come the day of the marathon and I was pretty ill prepared. I wouldn't say I was bad but an ambulance stopped and offered me a lift when I still had five miles to go. I turned it down!!
A third item on the bucketlist was to have a book published and, hopefully this will be achieved in 2023 and I will report more on this when I know it is definitely happening.
The thing about these bucket list items is I only ever did them once and never wanted to repeat them. I have never had the slightest inclination to appear in another play (mainly because my acting ability is zero) and I have never had the slightest inclination to run another marathon (because my long distance running ability is zero). Such was the difficulty in writing my book on Le Paradis Massacre that I never want to write another book (mainly because it's too stressful).