A writer thrives, her actor daughter struggles to survive
BY the end of the year, the pandemic has proved a productive time for Carnegie Medal-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean, pictured left, but she and her daughter Ailsa reflected on their mixed fortunes.
“The latest masque, Bellerophon, celebrating the Boxford Roman Mosaic, had to be postponed from summer 2020 until 2021. Disappointing, but there again, the show may be all the more welcome when audiences, starved of drama, are champing at the bit for an outing. The cast certainly are. And it’s such a long time since I wrote the script that I shall be able to watch it without knowing what’s going to happen next.
“In my own village of Great Shefford, the church committee wanted to raise muchneeded funds. Churches have gone very short thanks to the complexities of keeping worshippers safe, and the loss of major fund-raising events. The committee came up with the idea of a play that could be ‘Zoomed’ to its audience just before Christmas. So, I wrote a play set in a church... ultimately, it proved just too fraught by regulations and had to be abandoned. So, I wrote another set not in a church. Then lockdown came, so that too will have to wait. Still, it was fun and it kept me happy and busy. What more can anyone ask right now?
“Is it wrong to say how lovely it’s been? Simply to write and write in peace and quiet. No trips to make, no talks to give, no book festivals or PR to do. I’ve met more people in the village than I ever have before. I’ve put to bed my next novel, The Supreme Lie, which comes out in April. It was due out in September but such a publishing log jam built up, that it seemed better to save it till spring. Happily, my Nativity picture book came out in time for Christmas. I’ve almost finished the novelafter-next, and I’ve joined a host of other authors in writing short stories for various fund-raising anthologies: The Book of Hopes, for instance.
Of course, with family and friends so far untouched by Covid, I know full well there is a buffer between me and the reality of the pandemic. I haven’t been eviscerated by grief or left isolated and lonely, lost my job or fallen out with my husband. My only personal sorrows are for my daughter Ailsa Joy, an actor whose industry collapsed around her like the set of some abandoned play, fetching down the lights, the wings – and the curtain on countless talented artists. One day she was in a play. The next day the theatre was shut, perhaps for ever. The next week she was nominated for an Offie (off-West-End) Best Actress Award – which now reads like a cruel, ironic joke.”