At our Oct ’26 meeting Simon apologised for deviating from his advertised talk to give us an entertaining dramatic performance in which he played all the parts. The play concerned a writer, Arnold Cartilege, whose life and career is revealed through the words of several characters in a short play called “Writing in Sand”.
Other characters spoken by Simon, in varying tones and accents, were Piers (Arnold’s son), Robbie, Mary and Grace – a poet. From the play we deduce that Arnold was a light versifier who worked for Punch. The play is set in the 1970’s/80’s and has some humorous comments on mini-skirts – “short enough to be interesting but long enough to cover the important bits’ and on writing “ I love writing but I hate the paperwork”. Also featured were comments on the pity of war (6,000 dead in WW1), the sadness of a missed opportunity for a happy marriage with Grace the poet, and the fact that she never married. She and Arnold had long ago a shared token of half a sovereign each, but failed to reconnect, perhaps because of the disruption of war.
Simon wrote the play for the Arundel Theatre Trail and is now in his early 80’s. He was perhaps thinking of how a writer in his later years wonders whether his work will survive or is it just “Writing in Sand” doomed to disappear and be forgotten?