The George Gunn

Sunday 00:15 a.m.
                            We went to the Netherbow tonight, the Domestic Bliss, Poisonous and moi, to see George Gunn having a book launch for two plays.
                             I met George in the early 1980s when he and I were members of the Playwright's Workshop. Now, that I come to think of it, I don't think you could be a member of the Playwright's Workshop. Dr Bob McAuley and George Byatt seemed to do the organising for it when I started to go there after I had a play produced on the radio, and George told me he was an anarcho-syndicalist. George was one of my favourite people. No, I think I was a member of the Playwright's Workshop since I went along to the play readings there for several years. Being organised by the anarcho-syndicalist, it was a wonderful organisation. I used to get the plays I was trying to write for the radio read there, which was invaluable. They would give public readings of anything you handed in. This was a wonderful facility and I think they were the best of folk really.
                             George Byatt "directed" a version of Busted for me at the Playwright's Workshop. I met Dr Bob whilst having a beer in what was called The Shakespeare before the reading and he had on his hippy tie. George had two women play the policemen. Victoria Hardcastle and Fiona Knowles. It must have been one of my best nights ever. It was the first time I ever had anything done in public. Really wonderful people.
                              George Byatt was a bit of a mentor for George Gunn, and just a fantastic guy. He passed away about ten years ago, George Gunn told me last night. George Gunn has been organising The Grey Coast Theatre Company for the past eighteen years. Eighteen years!! He's helped develop acting/ directing etc talent from Caithness for all this time and this is a truly heroic endeavour. I take my hat off to that.
                              There were some other folk I knew there. Gerda Stevenson played Tibetan singing bowls and sang a song with Gerry Mulgrew playing the guitar, whom I don't know personally. Gerda Stevenson acted  in the second play I had on the radio, called Clocking Out, and is probably the most talented, clever person I've ever met. She had a gut wrenching, heart breaking poem in the Scotsman some time ago about a still birth. I think the Domestic Bliss kept it. She really is a brilliant actress. In fact, she's from a totally brilliant family, and if you're reading this sometime you've googled yourself, Gerda, I'd like to marry you when the Domestic Bliss is dead, and I will have hundreds of your children. Tonight she only played the singing bowls, sang a song and read out a brilliant poem about George Gunn. She was only warming up. That wummin is a star!
                               I've only spoken to her a couple of times, once when she was in this play what I wrote. She said she didn't know anything about drugs and asked me what her character should sound like in various scenes. I said, she's speeding in that one so be fast and a wee bit nervous. She's stoned in that one,  so be slow and drawl a little. Then you're listening to it through the big speakers in the radio place and she is immediately bang on the money. Women are much better actors than men. They have more variety.
                               I'm a bit shy with people and I didn't get a chance to speak to her tonight. But I did speak to George Gunn. And I did speak to Kevin Williamson. I met Kevin through the sensei and reverend and he was the boy who set up Rebel Inc.
                               Then I spoke to another person!! I spoke to David Campbell. David gave me four hundred pounds twice when he was making wee plays for the Educational Broadcasting unit of the BBC and David is a one off. He stays in the flat in Dundas Street with the original slate flagstones in the lobby. One of my wee plays was the last thing he produced for the BBC unit. They'd brought in a rationaliser who didn't like the producers sitting around talking and drinking coffee and having thoughts. David objected to this idea that he wasn't allowed to sit and drink coffee and hang out and have thoughts, so the boy got rid of him. So the beginning of the last playet he produced has this schoolgirl vomiting at the start. It goes on and on. He spent ages on the vomiting. The actors were worried that there would be no time left on the schedule for the play. Then there's the announcement: Produced by the Educational Unit of BBC Scotland. What a clever guy as well. I told him how shy I was. He said I should come and visit him and I think I will.
                                So, I spoke to three people tonight and I did not run away. There were a couple of others I should have spoken to, but I didn't. But three in one night is bloody good for moi!
                                 And it was so nice that folk were there for George Gunn. He deserved everything nice that folk said about him. He told me what he was really pleased about was that he'd brought some actors/ writers/ directors, etc. through behind him. And that is wonderful!
                                 George told me once that the Scottish Arts Council would pay money for writers to go into schools. The schools were supposed to pay half and the SAC pay half. George said he'd settle for the £30 from the schools. The dole in those days was about £40 so £30 was worth having. So I got George to come to the school where I worked several times and also got some other folk to come, just for half the money they should have had. Then I got the sensei and reverend to come every Friday for ages and ages to this other school I worked at, and then they changed the system.
                                   George showed up at the old Traverse once pissed out of his face. He'd been at a art thing where there was free plonko collapso and he told me later that all he could remember was up to the bit where he left there and hit the cold air outside. So he's sitting in the banked seats of the old Traverse between me and the Domestic Bliss. There's a play reading going on quite a bit far below us. George at one point starts to keel over, like he's going to tumble down these banked seats and end up in the acting space. I remember trying not to pay any attention, and perhaps thinking: Fung you, you drunken basturn. But it would have been difficult for the actors to have continued with anyone lying flat out on the acting space, and I just waited and waited till George hit the tipping point, the bit where the situation was irretrievable, and I caught him by the back of his jacket and pulled him back.
                                   Should I have intervened, Jack? Should I have just let him tumble down those wonderfully banked seats which were like those in the Greek amphitheatres and splodge onto the stage? It wouldn't have mattered to George, I'll tell you that, Hotboy. Due to the tons of physical jerks I've performed in my life, my timing is perfect, by the way. It was the tipping point I caught him at.
                                     He is a very nice man. That is why so many folk showed up this evening to be there for him. At the end of the day, what can you say?
                                     What can you say about Vincent Van Gogh? Except he liked colour and he let it show!