A Spirit Of Mischief...

Sir James Matthew Barrie is a bit of a hero of mine. A huge hero in fact.

Though he died forty six years before I was born, my life has been directly affected by his work of absolute genious, "Peter Pan".

The story of Peter Pan inspired me as a child. It filled me with curiosity and hunger for adventure. Though I'm not supposed to, I'll let you in on a secret. For the first decade of my life, my birthday wish whilst blowing out my candles was "I WISH I COULD FLY". I desperately wanted it. It took a further fourteen years to come true however...

My adult life has been equally effected by Mister Barrie's work. There's the same tingle of excitement it always gave me as a child, his beautiful use of the English language and the inspiration he has given me as a writer and then, of course, there's the fact that I've played Peter Pan more than any other role on my resume. 
I love playing the part. I'm currently playing my fifth Pan and it still doesn't get boring. There is a brilliant moment that always comes when you're dangling in your flying harness over the audience. When the lighting is just right, you catch sight of a small child's face in the crowd and you can see by the amazement spread across their face that they truly believe Peter is flying before their eyes. It gives me great pleasure to know that those children are experiencing that same spark of adventure that I did when I was a little boy.

I would have loved to meet James Barrie and ask him a million questions. Though the book is a work of happiness, youth and joy, it is pregnant with a deep sadness. There are so many points from Barrie's own life that made it into the book.
The sad demise of his mother after his brother David's death and her one comfort being that he would remain a child forever.  Barrie's attempt to dress as his brother David and stop growing up so that she could have her favourite son back. The death of five year old Margaret Henley who referred to Barrie as her "Fwendy" and the use of the word as the leading lady's name. Barrie's unusual and possibly unhealthy love for the Llewelyn Davies boys and their "Boy Castaways" adventures that inspired the lost boys, Wendy's brother's John and Michael and possibly even Peter. 
Was Neverland simply a place that Barrie invented to house all the sadness in his life and turn it into something beautiful? I guess we'll never know for sure...
I'm very grateful for Peter Pan and all the way's the 'little boy who would not grow up' has shaped my life. As a young writer at the beginning of my career, I can only hope to one day write something that comes even remotely close to Barrie's piece. As a performer I am very aware that I am slowly getting older and one day will be too old to play the role of Peter... Though I'm wishing for a few more yet.
And finally, as someone that stands for keeping one's inner child alive and healthy, I'm fixing my eyes on the second star to the right and I very much believe in fairies.
x

Thank You Elsie and Frances...

One of my fondest childhood memories is spending hours at a time, hanging around the bushes at the bottom of the garden, waiting to see fairies. 

I know... "How did this boy not grow up to be a heterosexual?" I hear you say. But that is beside the point. I was six, possibly seven, and had become utterly seduced by a book my mother bought on the subject of "strange and unexplained phenomena." 

In it was a detailed account of the "Cottingley Fairy" case, in which two girl cousins (Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths) hoaxed a series of five Fairy photographs using paper illustrations copied meticulously from a children's picture book. The "hoax" part of the chapter had little to no effect on me. I was far too young to even attempt reading the journalistic piece. All I knew, there in plain black and white print, was photographic evidence that fairies existed and it thrilled me down to the bone. It was my first taste of addiction.

I must have spent hours searching for the tiny, winged things that leaped about the pictures, willing them to appear.

I would sneak to the very end of the garden, scale the compost heap, climb though a broken panel in the garden fence and wander around the neighbouring woodland. Eyes alert for signs of magic.

On one occasion, I found a tiny scrap of pink fabric caught on the branch of a low growing thicket. I kept it for months under my bed, believing it to be a fairy garment of some kind.

As an adult, I understand that this may seem like a pointless subject to write about. But those fairy photographs left as big an impression on me as, years later, a tattooist would leave on my skin. They were what fueled my creativity and love of storytelling and suspended disbelief. They distracted me from the fact that I most certainly did not fit in at school. I was always the slightly odd child that others puzzled at. They provided me with endless intrigue and delight and carved out my love of the "left of life."

In my older years, the fact that the Cottingley photographs have long been proven fake, makes absolutely no difference to me. They are real in the sense that two little girls were gifted with a secret that no-one else knew about. The pictures were nothing more than paper cut-outs taken on a shaky camera but they fooled an entire nation. They even fooled the likes of Harry Houdini and great thinkers including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle into becoming avid followers of fairies and folklore.

Before she died, Frances admitted the hoax to a magazine reporter, BUT, she only admitted to faking four of the five pictures. The fifth picture, known as 'the sun bath' and the only photograph to feature neither Elsie or her ten year old cousin, she swore was genuine. I guess we'll never know.

This blog is simply a nod in the direction of Elsie and Frances... The delightful tricksters... Thank you ladies, for putting a tiny bit of magic back into the world x