Tomorrow we meet in a small lockdown funeral group to say goodbye to a remarkable man. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past two weeks reminiscing and going through photos to find images to share with his sons, but it still hasn’t yet sunk in that we’re not going to see him again, ever. Andrew Jackson touched the heart of literally hundreds of people in this dale and beyond. With many accounts of his massive contribution to this community there is already talk of some form of memorial shindig event post-COVID and the possible siting of some sort of permanent memorial in recognition of his all-encompassing impact on us all.
The list of organisations he headed or played a significant part in – lately or historically – are numerous. In no particular order, off the top of my head they include the Medical Centre, the Hub, Grassington Players, the Town Hall Committee, Penny Plain Theatre Company, Grassington Pantoloons, Open-Mic nights at the Black Horse, Threshfield Lifeboat, Grassington Festival, the Men’s Shed, the Extraordinary Victorians, Upper Wharfedale Field Society and the infamous Channel 5 Love thy Neighbour. I’m sure to have forgotten some. On top of all that, he managed to write a book or two and some plays. I figure it’s no small wonder he never had a clue about anything on the telly!
Having set the scene, I want to stress that this blog is not intended as an obituary, just my (not so) private and cathartic tribute to Andrew, one which will rest for posterity in my own little corner of the internet on my website. It’s a long read, given that our friendship goes back 30 years. It’s self-indulgent and simply about the significant part he has played in my life during that time. So, you may want to either skip to the end or grab a glass of something!
The hamlet stood….
Where to begin. For me it really started one evening in the bar at Grassington House, circa 1991. It was a Grassington Players thing, post rehearsal or production, something like that. I was a relative newbie and Andrew and I got to talking properly for the first time. We discovered our shared passion for all things Albion (read English folk music and dance). We’d both moved to Wharfedale from more southern parts. He’d been a Cotswold morris dancer, I’d been married to one. He worshipped The Albion Band, I’d toured the world with them for five years – albeit only as the (then) young band-member, Simon Care’s (first) wife. That was quite some feather in my cap in Andrew’s eyes! I’d loved Strawhead since I was a kid, and he was mates with Gregg Butler, so that made us pretty much even on the claims to fame front!
And so it began. One of us mentioned Lark Rise and we both said how we would love to stage it, having seen it performed darn sarf. I remember the sheer elation going home that night, knowing that between us we would make it happen in Grassington.
It reads “For Lark Rise & Candleford Thank you”
Andrew duly directed and I shipped in a bunch of super folk musicians from the Flagcrackers of Craven, the morris team I was dancing with. I played young Laura’s mother. Rehearsals were strange as the Lark Rise show is a series of vignettes rather than a play with a plot – and bear in mind this was long before the televised adaption made it familiar. Between us, Andrew and I managed to cajole the slightly bewildered cast along and used a projector and screen (I believe for the first time at Players) to supplement the live music and action. Miraculously – just as we feared it was never going to gel – the Muse descended and the show was warmly acclaimed by all as truly magical. A year later we staged the sequel, Candleford Green. This time I played the (now older) Laura.
Afterwards, Andrew gave me this wonderful framed picture which I still treasure. I sobbed when I looked at it on the morning after his too-soon death, as the image seems so symbolic of his rustic soul’s departure into the sunset on a Lark Rise haycart.
Our friendship was forged back then in steel (Eyespan) and I believe we truly were each other’s ‘kindred spirits’ when it came to our love of folk music, which, let’s face it, is not to everyone’s taste and certainly does not seem to have much of a following here in the immediate locality.
Along with a devotion for the Dales, we also shared a great love of Thomas Hardy and an unusual hankering for that era which runs very deep.
Mark this
Contemplating the universe together. And Saltburn.
Andrew carried all the credentials of best friend for a number of people, including Mark. And although this blog is about Andrew, I can’t write about him without also writing about Mark.
Especially as I’ve realised just this week that the very fact that Mark and I are together is in large part due to Andrew. Back in 2005, directing for Grassington Players again, he cast Mark and I as husband and wife in Neil Simon’s play ‘Rumours’, which inevitably kindled the natural spark between us that took hold rapidly.
Waiting for Godot together
Andrew and Mark brought out out both the best and worst in each other. Their passion for vino was matched glass for glass, bottle for bottle as often as possible. The two of them could sink a bottle of a bottle of Chardonnay in the time it took me to take my coat off and go for a wee!
They also shared a strange sense of humour and an intellect typified by a shared fondness for Beckett that I could never grasp.
Sue Payne, a former girlfriend of Andrew (circa 2012-3, I think), hit the nail on the head last week in a message to me. She said “Mark…was, I think, his soul mate, his equal and the one he most admired. That’s what I saw anyway in the short time I was there. They were both barmy, brilliant, talented, exceptionally intelligent…but both aware of their vulnerable sides and knew their support for each other mattered to them both.”
It was that relationship that formed the very bedrock of the Penny Plain Theatre Company, formed in 2006.
Sudbury Spoone
For those unfamiliar with the exploits of Penny Plain, I should explain. We decided to have a go at street theatre and threw ourselves into it with a passion. We were to each create our own Victorian persona and together we would be Hardcastle’s Mighty Excelsior Theatre Company, a bunch of very poor (in both senses) actors. Mark became Malvolio Hardcastle, the bombastic frontman and I, Tess Tiquelle; who is mostly pathetic and terribly vain. Unwittingly we all created personas that actually reflected the worst sides of ourselves.
In our heyday we played arts festivals, folk festivals and historic venues during the summer and for the home crowd at Christmas, our Mummers plays, songs and dancing became an integral part of the annual Grassington Dickensian and other Christmas events.
Tom Lee gets his comeuppance
Fascinated by local folklore and spooky tales, Andrew, aka Sudbury Spoone, drafted the scripts which we’d workshop into shows such as Tom Lee, the tale of the notorious Grassington murder, the Bargueest (of Trollers Ghyll) and, my favourite, The Entire History of the North.
Bizarre humour lay at the heart of everything, overlaid with a healthy dose of dubiously disseminated folk tradition. The well-loved Human Vegetable Machine was invented as a circus booth type of interactive entertainment.
And at the very heart of it all, Andrew’s inner man, Sudbury Spoone. I notice I have unintentionally been writing of Penny Plain in the past tense. Tess finds it hard to imagine going on without him at this point and Malvolio has penned his own tribute here.
Artistic flair
Mind Your Head
Quiet apart from his theatrical talents, Andrew was also pretty artistic. Often involved in set painting and design for Panto and Players, he also painted Penny Plain’s stage and the Human Vegetable Machine.
We had a low ceiling between the split level kitchen and dining room at Chapel Street and Andrew painted a lovely calligraphy warning Mind Your Head for us. Of course it rarely stopped any of us banging our heads but it was a nice talking point all the same. I hope it’s still there.
His most recently adopted hobby though was pyrography, and I am so thrilled that his Christmas gift to us this year was this beautiful Green Man chopping board, which is also so obviously a self-portrait of Sudbury. We will always cherish it.
A doctor in the house
It was always handy having Andrew on hand for a quick consultation about the ailments of the day over a glass of wine, but probably my best memory of Andrew the GP was the day in, I think 2005, when he called me on the phone. His colleague Ian Kinnish had, (whilst actually seeing Daniel for a sore throat) spotted that I looked anaemic and sent me for a blood test. I didn’t think much about it, having been anaemic a few times since childhood.
When Andrew rang, I assumed he was phoning about some thespian matter, so was somewhat surprised when he said he was ringing in an official capacity with my blood results. “I’m not quite sure how you are actually walking around”, he said, jovially. “You appear to be deficient in every single vitamin and mineral.” And so began the long journey to my coeliac disease and osteoporosis diagnosis a year later and subsequent life on a gluten free diet.
When the going got tough
We were generally always there for each other. When Mark was in penury, fairly early in our relationship, Andrew and Angela gave him a home in the basement flat at the Coach House. We spent many evenings upstairs with them, laughing, drinking and putting the world to rights.
A few years later when their marriage sadly imploded we were able to return the favour and Andrew moved in with us for a while at Chapel Street where we did our best to nurse his broken heart. We were also on hand later through an emotional rollercoaster of subsequent relationships. Mark hefted Andrew’s bookcases so many times in and out of one lady friend’s house that he eventually vowed ‘never again’!
Some have said Andrew was ‘a ladies man’ but I don’t see that as fair. He clearly loved with a passion, but his life was always so full, cramming evert minute of every day with several worthwhile activities, that his poor succession of wives/girlfriends struggled to compete for his time. They were inevitably left with the end-of-the-day Andrew; inevitably tired and running purely on caffeine, alcohol and cigars, to the obvious detriment of his health. I felt for them all, yet I’m pretty sure they would each do it all again.
One of his greatest strengths, yet also one of his most annoying traits was his wish to be all things to all men. I can honestly say that in the entire 30 years I knew him we never once had what you would call an argument. That’s not to say we always saw eye to eye but his incredible ability to to try to appease always won over. It meant he was able to effectively walk a tightrope between warring factions inevitable throughout the community, building bridges and smoothing troubled waters. It could be enormously irritating when you knew what he really thought about something but had to watch him opt for compromise, but achieving that is no mean feat in a village like Grassington, especially when dealing with many powerful personalities.
Campervan cohorts
The customary camping nightcap. Whitley Bay 25th September 2020.
In recent years, we found a new hobby to share. Andrew had had a motorhome for a few years, and when we finally sold our house on Chapel Street, freed from the mother of all mortgages, I invested a chunk of the paltry proceeds to buy a campervan from a specialist supplier Andrew recommended.
He joined us on our first adventure, showing us the ropes with electrical hook-ups and other new-fangled strange arts known only to camping and caravanning fans.
After that we enjoyed several convoy jaunts together – Bentham, Saltburn, Halifax and just a few weeks ago, in the lockdown lull at the end of September, we managed a final fling to Whitley Bay. Little did we know it would be his last trip anywhere.
His deterioration in these final weeks was so fast I’m left with regrets that I never had the chance to tell him how great a part he has played in my life. Most definitely a starring role.
And so, goodnight and thank you for all the laughter, the songs and of course, the vegetables.
Exit, stage right. Curtain.