This is a story that was a hugely successful book, one that has been filmed on a number of occasions, most recently directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Saorsie Ronan, Timothee Chalamet and Emma Watson. However, I don’t think that any other version has quite as much charm as this stage play.
It starts with the singing of a hymn by the assembled company, a motif that occurs at various times and is always a delight as the harmonies are gorgeous. They sing Christmas carols at various points in the play which was actually quite marvellous on a balmy June night. Once that has finished we are plunged straight into one of the plays that the talented and driven Jo has written for her and her sisters to perform. It’s a really inspired opening as it takes us straight onto the stage as the natural home of the action. There are four sisters, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy, and they embody passion, romance, service and ambition respectively. Their mother, Marmee and Aunt March are the only adult influences in their lives as the play starts since their father has volunteered in the American Civil War as a chaplain. Marmee is focused on their spiritual development while Aunt March, exasperated by their resultant lack of worldliness wants to see them in good marriages. Jo is completely disinterested in marriage until a young man called Laurie moves in nearby setting in train a series of events that none of the sisters are prepared for and which will change their lives completely both for good and for bad.
The Cast
The actresses who played the four sisters were uniformly excellent and right from the start they were an absolutely convincing family unit. Having seen some of the stories and posts on Instagram this closeness is one that is both on and off stage and it rooted the whole performance in their affectionate and loving relationships with each other.
Grace Molony played Jo with vigour, humour and passion. The character can be played as something akin to a paragon, but the writing and the performance showed both the good and bad sides of her character. She is generous, open and affectionate throughout, but she can also be self centred, quick to anger and oblivious to the needs of those she cares about. The skill of Molony was in making sure that both sides were utterly consistent with the person we saw on the stage. You felt the ambition burning from the first scene as writer and central character of the sisters’ plays but that ambition turns out to be a complicating factor in both her personal relationships and professional goals.
Jade Kennedy played Meg, the eternal romantic who dreams of getting married and starting a family but is worried that their genteel poverty may spoil her chances. She is amusing, wholehearted and loyal to those who love her. She is a character that you wanted to see end up happy because she is instantly appealing. Again, this is a character who can be something of a type rather than a person, but Kennedy brought out her frustrations at the lack of money and the uncertainty she feels about herself and her position in both society and in the heart of her would be suitor.
Catherine Chalk as Beth had probably the most difficult character to bring to life. Her self sacrificing nature and her health battles make her, in some versions, more of a cypher than a character. In this play, however, she is every bit the main driver in keeping the contrasting natures of her siblings in balance. She is not afraid to tell them when they are wrong, firmly but affectionately, and she sticks to her principles throughout. For her, charity is not just a way of helping others, but a way of making yourself a stronger person. Her musical talent gives her a focus and a belief that the future will be better for all of them. In Chalk’s capable hands I felt for the first time that Beth was a living breathing person.
Imogen Elliott was Amy, the youngest of the sisters. She is utterly determined to be rich and to surround herself with the finest things in life. That determination brings her into conflict with Jo and sees her put herself first on every occasion. Her flash of real anger and spite early on when she is unable to go to a dance is genuinely shocking. She balances this out with her feisty nature and her humour along with her growing self awareness. When you first see the family, Amy is about 12 or 13 years old, a challenge for any actor on stage as the portrayal of a young person can easily tip over into caricature. To be honest, I thought that Elliott herself was perhaps 16 or so herself, so convincing was she as a soon to be teenager. She was able to change her portrayal of Beth with alterations in her physical approach, seemingly growing up before our eyes before finally becoming a young lady of poise and beauty. It was incredibly subtly done and marks her out as a real rising star.
On the night we went, Ellie Pawsey played Marmee. She is the moral centre of the family and the play with a firm religious conviction in the role of goodness and charity. Her acceptance of their straitened circumstances occasionally frustrates the sisters and constantly irritates Aunt March. However, her strength and determination in the face of all the challenges give her a steel that gives her a real presence. To balance this out she is a cheerleader when things are difficult, humorous in a subtle way and able to admit that this is something she has had to learn to accept over the years. Pawsey was able to show both sides of her character with warmth, humour and affection.
Cillian Lenaghan played Laurie, the young man who moves into the big house opposite the sisters. He instantly slots into the role of playmate for Jo, who starts to blossom as a result of the friendship. When it turns out that his feelings for her tend in a different direction, it leads to a fracture in their relationship that drives the second half of the play. Laurie is adept at puncturing Jo’s occasional self importance with some affectionate teasing and he is open and honest with all the sisters. He treads a fine line between the romantic and the filial and Lenaghan makes him an instantly appealing character who gives the play a focus away from the relationship at its heart.
Jack Ashton played both John Brooke and Professor Bhaer. I can give no better compliment than to say I genuinely didn’t realise that they were one and the same person until I read the cast list again at the end! His portrayals of the soft spoken tutor of Laurie and the excitable and passionate German academic were completely different physically as well as in terms of character. Brooke is slow and deliberate with a physical demeanour that anchors him to the stage, whereas Bhaer is constantly moving and almost bouncing with passion and excitement. The two of them are such contrasting characters and Ashton showed real skill in bringing out the authenticity of both.
Last and definitely not least we have Aunt March played by the amazing Belinda Lang. It was her presence in the cast that made me so eager to see the play as she has long been one of my favourite actresses. She was a total delight every time she appeared on stage. Her humour and exasperation were perfectly pitched as she played the Southern matriarch with clear delight. I wanted to see more of her, the sign of a great character and a marvellous actress, but it was the occasional and brief nature of her scenes that made her appearances all the more effective. It was every bit the treat I expected to see one of my favourites on stage and I am so glad I was able to get the opportunity.
Final thoughts
I had only seen one version of this story before, the Greta Gerwig film from 2019, and despite trying very hard I was completely unable to get into the book, so I was not familiar with the events that unfolded. This meant that the twists and turns were often a surprise and they kept me gripped throughout. Having not really thought of this as a story that I could really become engaged with, the play proved me completely wrong. The cast made me care about each character and I was absolutely captivated from the first minute to the last. I know that this tour is coming to an end at Richmond, but if and when the play reappears I can absolutely recommend it to anyone who wants two enchanting hours in the company of the March sisters.
A fairly light two months in terms of number of books read – only nine – but that was due to two factors. Firstly, a deliberate decision to slow down rather than gallop through books as I tend to. Secondly, I had a full two weeks off at Easter for the first time in years and when I am not commuting I tend not to read. That’s definitely something I need to sort out when I finish full time work or my June and July reads could be a very short article indeed! Anyway, on with a typically eclectic selection of books.
Godfrey Evans – The Gloves are Off
For any cricket lover with an interest in the history of the game, the name Godfrey Evans is instantly familiar. A wicketkeeper batsman he took the role and started to develop it into a central part of the side. In a sense he was probably the first of the modern keepers, highly influential in the development of the discipline and a larger than life celebrity who was known outside the game. His autobiography is a gem of sports writing and balanced in the way he sees his career. Where he was unfortunate, he makes that case and where he was culpable, he takes responsibility for his own failings. Engaging, thought provoking and fascinating in equal measure, Godfrey Evans brings to life a vanished world both socially and in sporting terms, but does so in a way that is still very modern in terms of the writing. If you love cricket, take a look in the second hand bookshops like I did and if you find it, you definitely won’t be disappointed.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
I have related, at some length, my thoughts on my secondary school, mainly that it was probably the worst time of my life. However, there were some high points to the experience, specifically the way in which I was introduced to books and plays which became real favourites of mine. I studied Macbeth and Great Expectations at O Level and still love both, The History Man at A Level, the finest university novel of all for me, and then this book in General English. In the far off days where education was about opening students’ minds, not just coaching them for exams as it is nowadays, General English was a 2 lesson a week course at Sixth Form level where teachers would get the students to read books and plays that they thought were worth exploring. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was my favourite book from these lessons. The teacher, Mr Worsnop, was also my history teacher at various points during school, so this book was definitely a dual purpose introduction to both historical context and contemporary Soviet writing. Over 40 years later, I found this book and immediately wanted to read it again, so strong was the impression it made on me. It is the story of a political prisoner in a Siberian Gulag, and as such is a reflection of Solzhenitsyn’s own experience. The aspect of the book that comes across most clearly is the fact that each day is a series of little victories and little defeats. Prisoners learnt to relish the former and minimise the latter, and as a lesson for life it is applicable outside of extreme situations. The writing is immediate, claustrophobic and intense, but it is also reflective, positive and inspiring. Rereading this novel was an absolute pleasure and it has definitely made me want to explore some of Solzhenitsyn’s other works. If you are interested in history, politics or the way that the human spirit survives against the odds I think you’ll really enjoy this book.
Terry Pratchett – Unseen Academicals
I love the Discworld novels and have read the majority of them over the years. This one is a later entry to the series and is one I have been meaning to read for quite a while. The story, as the cover indicates, revolves around the game of football, though it does have a typical Discworld twist as it has become almost a religion with its own mythology. The Unseen University is full of wizards who combine the power of magic with the complete inability of certain academics to show any hint of common sense! The bulk of the common sense comes from below stairs and the sub plots include dwarf fashion, the way that minorities are treated and the way that servants are treated. As with all Discworld novels there is a lightness of touch throughout that makes the satire and the philosophy accessible and entertaining. Sir Terry was one of the greatest novelists of the last 100 years and I think it’s only the genre of the books that has stopped him from being acknowledged alongside Dickens and Christie in the highest ranks of writers.
P. D. James – The Lighthouse
This is the penultimate Adam Dalgleish mystery and it is undoubtedly the most reflective and downbeat novel of the series. The police work revolves around the death of an author on an island that is meant to be a haven for those in the public eye. There are no shortage of motives flying around, and at points you wonder if this might stray into Murder on the Orient Express territory. In this book, however, it is the personal that takes precedence over the professional as all three members of Dalgleish’s team find themselves at crossroads in their lives and have to decide which way to go. If this is the first Dalgleish novel you read you would find yourself hard pushed to care, but if you have got to know the team in the other books it makes this a refreshingly deep read.
Peter Robinson – Cold is the Grave
This is the eleventh in a series of twenty eight novels about DCI Banks. It is a series that was suggested by a contributor to my #CastawayCollection challenge on Twitter where I asked people to choose 10 books, 10 films or TV series and 10 albums to take to a desert island. I have now read three of them and thoroughly enjoyed them. It is hard to get noticed in the ongoing detective series genre and DCI Banks is definitely something of an overlooked figure by many, but his mix of faults, failings and detective skills definitely makes him well worth checking out. In this book, Chief Constable Riddle, his regular antagonist, asks Banks to find his missing daughter. Initially reluctant to accede to this off the record request, he decides to assist the Chief Constable but the case, initially simple and apparently finished with, explodes back into Banks’ life in ways that he could never have anticipated.
David Gower – Gower The Autobiography
You would expect anything written by David Gower to be entertaining and classy, just like his batting, and indeed it is. What you might not expect is the way in which he settles scores and makes it clear that he has been failed by captains, like Graham Gooch who turned from great friend to implacable opponent even though they were in the same team, and coaches who did not understand him or, in the case of Micky Stewart, even try to. What’s so strange about that, you may ask? Well, this autobiography was written while he was still playing and while he harboured hopes of getting back into the England team! David Gower was always his own man and, as this autobiography makes clear, far stronger and far less insouciant than his batting would have you believe. He talks openly and honestly about the highs and the lows and, by the end of the book, he has shown himself to be a much more complex character than his public persona ever hinted at. It reminded me how much I loved his playing style and how much I idolised him as a player. I definitely need to go back to YouTube and watch him in action!
Helen MacInnes – The Salzburg Connection
This is definitely not the type of book I would ever choose to read normally. The sprawling espionage novel usually leaves me cold, and there were times when this novel from the 1960s had that effect, but by the end I have to admit to being gripped even if I couldn’t remember how each of the characters fitted in to the story at a number of times throughout the book. It is always good to test yourself with something different, and I really did appreciate the quality of the writing, but I think it’s a one and done for me in terms of that particular genre. My wife, on the other hand, was always a big fan of books in the espionage genre and she says it’s one of the best so if you are tempted to discover a writer who was terrifically successful in the 60s and 70s this is a really good start.
Helen Moat – While the Earth Holds its Breath
The subtitle is ‘Embracing the Winter Season’ and it chronicles the author’s attempts to tackle her dislike of the coldest and darkest time of the year. For Helen Moat, as for many others, that dislike had become Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. It is not something I could relate to, given that Winter is a time of the year I really love, but the book seemed to be very much up my street with her travels to Lapland and Japan, two places I have visited during the Winter season and which I really enjoyed. Moat is such a gifted writer that she immediately drew me in to a condition and thought process that I had never understood and explained it with real clarity. Ever chapter starts with a quote that sums up the content in some way. Some of them were profound, some beautiful and all were thought provoking. The journey to a form of acceptance is not a smooth one. There are times when the old experience of SAD rears its head, but when that happens Moat is reflective, honest and fascinating. It is a beautiful book that reminded me why Winter is my favourite season, and why I should start appreciating some of the little things even more.
Andrew Gant – Christmas Carols
Yes, I know! What on earth am I doing reading this in May? Perhaps some of my fellow commuters may have been wondering that when I took the book out of my rucksack every morning and evening! However, for me the love I have for Christmas means that I can read books or watch films to do with the festival at pretty much any time of the year. To read the stories behind the carols was absolutely fascinating, especially ones which I love and which are as familiar to me as anything else in my life. It turns out that they have backgrounds that you couldn’t even imagine. My favourite fact concerned While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks which was sung to the tune Cranford, better known as ‘On Ilkley Moor B’ah Tat’! Andrew Gant is an incredibly engaging writer who brings songs and their history to life in a way I haven’t seen before. There are words and music for each carol at the end and I was singing them in my head with a sense of how important they have been in my life over so many years. Whatever time of the year you read this you will appreciate both the scholarship and the quiet humour. It’s a must read for music lovers, social historians and popular culture devotees – and of course Christmas lovers! I am all four so it was perfect!
Five by Chris Boddington Review
Chris Boddington is an artist who never fails to engage his audience because he never settles for the safe option with his music. He continues to explore his huge musical hinterland and brings something new to the genre with every album he releases. Five is an album with 8 tracks in a tightly packed 30 minutes that bristles with ideas and an enthusiasm for dance music that is indefatigable. Give it a go. You’ll be glad you did.
Track 1 – Invisible Man The electronic accompaniment to Invisible Man reminds me of the brilliant Dead and Gone by T.I. with Justin Timberlake. It gives the track a real immediacy and a flair that starts off the album with a bang. It shows Chris’ knowledge of the different areas of the EDM scene through the ages, especially as it connected with the rap scene of the early to mid-2000s in particular, and his ability to pick out the sound of any era whilst making it entirely his own.
Track 2 – Do It This track is another rhythm heavy lyrical performance which means that this track has an unsettling edge to it and Chris moulds the tune around the words to great effect. At times you are listening to the lyrics, but then the tune hits you with its originality and intriguing use of effects that put me in mind of a chipmunk for some reason! It is a really complete and fascinating song that demonstrates the disparate influences that Chris can put together.
Track 3 – Hustlin’ This track is based around a jangly, almost C&W style guitar riff that draws you in and shows that Chris can make a dance tune in pretty much any genre. It’s like a really chilled Cotton Eye Joe. The lyrics are more in the background of this song and this allows you to concentrate on the great tune. I really enjoyed the more playful air to it as it contrasts very effectively with the heavier opening pair of tracks.
Track 4 – Marrakech This is my favourite on the album. It has an Arabic tinge as the title suggests and comes out of the speakers like the best of the Karma Lounge style tunes. It is simply hypnotic and absolutely sublime, and just the type of song to end a night of dancing under the stars in an open-air club. Musically it is an absolute gem that stands comparison with any dance track you care to name.
Track 5 – Odyssey Another really good tune that weaves in and out of what sounds like another blissed out track. It complements Marrakech very well, having a similar style but slightly more rapping that gives it another club friendly vibe that cleverly raises the pace and benefits from a heavier edge. One of the things that Chris has always done well on his albums is to create a cohesive sound that threads its way through the tracks.
Track 6 – Say Your Prayer This has a female vocal which is a throwback to a jazzier sound and, in places, has a feeling of the late 80s to it, but the tune is much more from the 2000s. It sounds as if two disparate songs had suddenly met up and realised that they suited each other, and this is why the track works so well. You realise that there is a lot going on here, and this is the result of Chris’ musical magpie tendencies and his ear for a song working together brilliantly.
Track 7 – I Like When U The Pet Shop Boys would recognise the use of the echoing lyrics, stealthy synth and occasional guitar break from their early albums, and I don’t think they would be too unhappy with the comparison. There’s a hint of Domino Dancing and a stripped back Surburbia which makes this song another favourite of mine on a strong and highly listenable album.
Track 8 – Loca The final track has a Spanish language vocal that brings it a completely different feel from the tracks on the rest of the album. The tune is also completely different with an increasing BPM and what sounds like the early internet dial up tone! This is Chris telling you that he has one more surprise up his sleeve and it is, by turns, hypnotic and completely let off the leash.
As the Sullivan-Barnes family reaches the third and final decade of the experiment, we are promised that the gadget count will go through the roof, but it’s the humble television that causes the first hint of friction. There are now three TVs for three bedrooms belonging to Adam and Georgie, Steff and Ellie, and Hamish. The children can’t wait to get their own choice of viewing, but Georgie questions whether they need a television in their room. Adam says he has missed it, which causes him to get a frosty glance in return! Georgie’s worry about the family splitting up looks like it is already coming true in the first year of the new decade. Hamish is looking forward to staying in his room far more, as he did in 2009 (their modern day), whereas Ellie is more uncertain as to whether it’s really a positive thing. This situation gets more acute outside the bedrooms when the Game Boy arrives in 1991 and, as Adam observes, Hamish only needs to communicate for food and drink! Even Adam is ambivalent about the situation as he says he has enjoyed talking to him over the previous two decades.
In 1992, it’s time for satellite TV, and it was very interesting to recall, as the programme does, the snobbery associated with the dishes when they first arrived. It was seen as something almost shameful to have a dish on the side of your house, and certain assumptions were made about you if you did. As Georgie observes, it indicates couch potato, despite only having 5 extra channels! As mobile phones were still too expensive the family are given pagers, which I never saw outside of hospital dramas (!), to help organise a shopping trip for the millennium party they are going to hold at the end of the experiment. The ‘girls team’ found it very easy to use and send messages via the pager, but the ‘boys team’ proved that any technology in the world was only as good as the person using it!
1993 was a year that reflected the disquiet about increasing technology and the use to which it was put. There was a huge moral panic after the murder of James Bulger and technology, particularly the ‘violent’ video games of the time, which were cast in the role of the evil influence. To reflect this, the tech team deliver new consoles with a selection of popular games of the time, together with a note asking Adam and Georgie to look at the games and decide which are suitable for the children. They decide that Mortal Kombat was so poor in terms of the graphics that it was comical rather than disturbing. The main issue was the total incompatibility of the two gaming systems, Nintendo and Sega. Both Ellie and Steph, and Hamish, want the Nintendo to play Super Mario, and Adam decides the only fair way to decide it is to toss a coin. Hamish, perhaps as a result of the 1980s experience sees it as his right to have it and he complains bitterly leading to a battle of wills between Adam and Hamish. The coin is tossed and Steph calls correctly, so the girls get the Nintendo console while he is left with the Sega! That wasn’t happening in the 1980s because the girls found the BBC computer so boring, which indicates that both genders were equally happy to play video games, something I saw with my own children. It begs the question as to why it is still seen as a largely male preserve to this day.
At the end of 1993, Georgie gets a mobile phone, which would have cost the equivalent of £1400 in 2009, to reflect the fact that she has the highest status job in the family. She is amused by Adam’s apparent discomfort at not having one of his own! However, Adam has been given his own digital camera which he will use the following day when the family go to France to celebrate the 1994 opening of the Channel Tunnel. It’s interesting to find out that in 1994, no one could make or receive calls from aboard, so there turns out to be no point to Georgie taking it over there. Adam’s cutting edge technology is little better as the memory holds eight pictures with a resolution of half a megapixel. As there is no preview screen Adam is unaware that the pictures are so dark and grainy. The model he is using would cost the equivalent of £740 in 2009!
By 1995 the prospect of remote working looked to have become more of a reality as laptops and mobile phones now allowed workers to communicate with their offices. In practice, however, they were more likely to work at home after work rather than from home during the day as the internet was not powerful enough or available enough to support full time working. As we have seen recently, businesses are very suspicious of working from home even when it has been proven to raise productivity, probably because it has shown that the majority of workers not only don’t need micro managing bosses but actually perform better when they have proper autonomy and can decide on the structure of their working days.
When an early Sony console arrives, complete with games like Tomb Raider, Adam immediately commandeers the living room for a ‘lad’s night’ leaving Georgie despondent as this was what she had been dreading. She is sitting in the kitchen listening to Adam and his friends enjoying the games and, as she mentions, it feels very exclusive and a pointer to the future. The children, banished from the living room go upstairs to their own rooms as they would have done in 2009 leaving a completely atomised family unit. Although the amount of technology has grown exponentially across the 90s, it’s still not enough. Ellie wants a mobile phone, but is told that she can’t have one because she ‘will look like she’s mugged a yuppie’! Then Steph wants the internet which turns out to be less unlikely than I thought. By 1997, surprisingly, over 6 million UK people were already surfing the ‘World Wide Web’ so it’s time for the Sullivan-Barnes family to find out just how good, or not, the internet was in it’s early days.
It’s quite incredible to think that Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, who is interviewed in a fascinating section from CERN, decided to make the World Wide Web completely open and free to anyone to use. They could have made it subscription or payment based and put it in a silo along with all the intranets that were developed from the 1960s onwards. By putting the code in the public domain and allowing anyone to use it they completely changed the world, and arguably the brains of nearly every human being on the planet. It is unarguably the most important scientific and cultural moment in history.
The internet of 1997 was delivered through a phone line with the noise that became so familiar to so many of us, and the websites, just 1.5 million at the time, were much more primitive due to the lack of processing power. Steff comments that the internet is rubbish! Georgie tackles Adam that night about putting a games console in the living room, something they had agreed would not happen during the experiment. Adam tries to protest that it’s a PS1, but the look that Georgie gives him betrays her view of that feeble justification! In 1998, the children finally get their mobile phones amongst a blizzard of technology including smoothie makers, digital cameras and pretty much anything else that could contain a microchip. There are so many deliveries that year that even tech head Adam gets annoyed by the constant churn of gadgets!
There’s a very interesting conversation at the dinner table on the penultimate night. Ellie wants to see the adult only status of the living room in 2009 reversed. Adam is very reluctant to allow that to happen as he regards it as his, but he is outvoted by the rest of the family. In response he makes the condition that the family can come in but that he (and maybe even Georgie!) will decide what they are watching. It’s interesting that with our modern mobiles everyone in a family can once again be in the same room but they can be completely separate in terms of what they are viewing. I think, on balance, I prefer that, because at least there is the opportunity to communicate with each other that doesn’t arise in a house where everyone is in different rooms.
We return to the Sullivan-Barnes family a month after the experiment to see what has changed if anything. Interestingly, while Georgie has come round to the view that technology is absolutely central to the children, Adam has decided that they need to do more things together as a family, so the living room has indeed become a place where the family can come together.
Final Thoughts
I remember really enjoying this when it was first shown back in 2009, and I found it fascinating once again. However, much as you never read the same book twice, because you bring different experiences to bear on each reading and understand and react to it in a different way, so you can never watch the same film or TV programme twice. When I first watched it my oldest child was 16 and my youngest was 8, and we were not able to afford new technology, so we often had gadgets that were a year or two behind, sometimes more. I remember looking at the Sullivan-Barnes’ home and thinking I’d love to have all that tech. Now, all but one of the children has moved out and we have powerful mobile phones, superfast broadband, hundreds of channels on our TV, a bread maker in the kitchen and many other gadgets. However, what I notice now is that the tech is in the background as we have come to terms with its centrality to our lives, and we have seemingly reached a plateau of innovation. All new phones look the same, laptops are pretty much identical and the only reminder of the old incompatibility is Apple with its insistence on tying people into their technology to the exclusion of all other operating systems, the main reason I have never wanted any Apple products. Now, when the children visit we spend time together, generally happy in each other’s company but with phones at the ready to distract us, use IMDB to find out who that actor was(!), or to communicate with people outside the house for a variety of reasons. Technology is both all enveloping and less important as we have found ways to navigate modern life. I wonder how the Sullivan-Barnes family look back on their time on this show? I wonder if they have made changes since then that have stuck? It would be fascinating to find out, and who knows, they might even read this! If they do, I raise a glass to them for being part of this experiment.
Oh, and one final note. I have created all the pictures to accompany this series using AI in WordPress and I have to say it is probably the most tangible (or non-tangible) form of technological progress I can think of. Even a year ago, AI like this would have to be paid for but now it is available to all of us.
Episode 2 The 1980s
The Sullivan-Barnes family found the 70s a very spartan decade in terms of technology, but the 80s promise to be very different decade for these gadget lovers. Fashion wise as our first glimpse of them shows, things have certainly improved from the flare dominated 70s. What will their house look like though? Will it still have the more closed off and smaller living spaces of the previous decade or will it showcase a more spacious way of life? Well, first impressions are of a brighter and more spacious looking sitting room, although the flowery old fashioned look that was popular at the time is not to Adam or Hamish’s taste, the latter comparing it to a granny’s house! Adam loves the huge hi-fi and Steff is impressed with the sleeker television, although she mentions that she is looking forward to having more channels. Georgie has to tell her that the fourth channel doesn’t arrive until 1982 and that’s it for the decade! The parents bedroom is now dominated by a four poster bed that looks awful! On the plus side they have their own ‘futuristic’ phone. Steff and Ellie have the nightmare inducing Cabbage Patch dolls in their room, but on the plus side they have their own tape player. It’s a very feminine house, which is interesting because it reflects the increasing influence of women when it came to decoration. Was it because women were taking full time jobs alongside their partners and therefore looked for more say on how their shared finances were spent? Was it that they were seen as more adept at coordinating interior decoration? Was it due to the marketing power of brands like Laura Ashley? I think it’s elements of all three myself that moved us from functional to ‘pretty’ in the home. It’s very funny watching Hamish and Adam trying to mark their territory in this feminine house! Adam in particular is adamant (no pun intended) that the man of the house would not allow women or children to touch the hi fi centre! Georgie, Steff and Ellie send him out of the room in retaliation.
In the kitchen, the microwave that the Sullivan-Barnes family have delivered by the tech team was not very popular in the early 80s because there was a documentary that erroneously equated microwave energy with radioactive leakage. It was an early example of fake news and the sales took a long time to recover even when the fears were proven groundless. I’d forgotten how incredibly large and heavy the early microwaves were. The use of the technology to cook the meal turns out to be very time consuming and a family meal that started cooking at 7pm was not ready to eat until nearly 9pm. However, one time saving gadget was available in the lounge, a very early remote control which is huge by today’s standards.
The kids are initially perplexed by their handheld games which were, of course, incredibly basic in 1981, although at the time they looked cutting edge, but they soon start playing them in silence. Adam has his Walkman and, like I did when I was training to go into the RAF, was soon off pounding the streets to the accompaniment of music on his cassette tape. Even Jude, who was only two when this was made, was captivated by a Speak and Spell gadget. It may not have been advanced, but the new tech was already pointing the way towards a more atomised future within the family structure. Georgie has the only new gadget that could be seen as inclusive, a polaroid camera, but even that required her to separate herself from the family to record their experiences. I remember that steady disconnection myself as a teen as I went upstairs at every opportunity to play records or watch television.
A really interesting section was the interview with Simon Webb of the National Museum of Computing. He reflects on the firms that produced Jupiter Ace, Oric-1 and Dragon 32, brands that disappeared without trace while the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and the BBC backed Acorn succeeded. Apparently the deciding factor was the availability of software in an era when no two computers exhibited any compatibility whatsoever. Obviously, in the case of the Acorn, the government putting one in every school helped enormously. I remember that the Computer Club at our school was restricted to those that the teachers thought would benefit most, so that of course meant the maths high fliers. I never got to touch the Acorn at school and I was at work when I bought my own computer for the first time. What a difference from today’s classrooms when paper based tests and exercises are virtually unheard of, and screens distract almost everyone from the actual content of the lesson. The family end up choosing the BBC Computer, but Georgie is really worried about the effect it will have on the children. Hamish is determined that the computer should be in his room but he is outvoted because everyone needs to be able to use it. However, as Steff observes, the males in the household will end up dominating it. In this, if in nothing else, Adam and Hamish are very much 80s men!
It’s interesting, from today’s standpoint of specialist computer programmers, that the expectation was that all children and older computer users would learn to code for themselves. Hamish quickly gets used to the idea, but Ellie watching the TV being taken over by very basic graphics is less impressed. However, the girls are more excited when a synthesiser is delivered, and Adam and Georgie star struck when Ultravox keyboardists Chris Cross and Billy Currie arrive to demonstrate how to play it!
1984 was the year that VHS and Betamax battled to become the biggest format with the latter having 25% of the market as the aficionados proclaimed it the better format. However, VHS won out because of the the simple fact that more home video tapes and films were produced for that format. We were quite early adopters as I remember having a video recorder in our house in 1981. When the VHS player is delivered, so is a camcorder, which Hamish once again decides is his area of expertise. In fairness the music video he makes with his sisters is actually very well put together, from the concept to the execution. To test the VHS recorder, they need a VHS tape. It takes Adam over 2 hours to find a shop with a VHS stock, but when he gets back the tape recorder mysteriously fails to work. Ellie keeps quiet about the fact that she tried to put a Betamax tape into it!
The CD player arrives in 1985 for the Sullivan-Barnes family and in this case it seems to be Adam who is out of step in wanting to keep his vinyl. Recent years have proved him right, that’s for sure! The repaired VHS player is very much a family thing, but the computer is still a ‘boys toy’ much to the frustration of the female members of the household. 1987 saw the mainstream adoption of microwave meals as both parents working became a much more universal situation in the 80s. It was great to see Ceefax at the end of the decade, but I had forgotten the recipe page!
The issues with the hardware which the 1980s was plagued by made things incredibly difficult for earlier adopters. It is interesting how quickly the gender gap arrived with the men and women wanting different things from their technology and the tech replacing the role of DIY in some ways as the medium through which men demonstrated their ‘prowess’. Having watched this again, I find myself in agreement with Adam who admits that all the amazing technology of the 80s was frankly ‘a bit rubbish’!
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 