Enter Laird Street Readers

Unexpected Pleasures in the North End, Birkenhead

“I’d never have thought it possible for me to read Shakespeare and actually understand and enjoy it. The reading group has opened up a whole new world.” Dorrie

I had taught extra-mural English for years so I thought I knew what to expect from the new project. Adult returnees to education were invited to join a reading group “for pleasure”. We would mainly read short stories, I thought, because we could get through them in our weekly two-hour session. But at the first meeting, when I asked people what they wanted to read, they said, “We want to read things we wouldn’t read on our own… difficult things,,, the classics! Shakespeare!”

“I read Cranford as a twelve year old at school and found it very boring. I had forgotten all about it. The unexpected pleasure of the reading group has been reading it again, discovering real people within the pages. It’s been a pleasure to rediscover ‘classics’ once ignored!’ Margaret

A year after the end of the project the group still meets every week. We do our reading in the library, out loud, with the old men reading newspapers listening in. Sons and Lovers and Andrea Ashworth’s marvellous memoir Once in a House on Fire, Frankenstein, Truman Capote, Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskill, Russell Hoban and poetry old and new, but above all, Shakespeare. Stopping (sometimes for hours!) to talk about anything we don’t understand, we’ve read Othello, The Winter’s Tale, As You Like It, and King Lear. And we’ve had some fabulous reading. On our way to see Othello at Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre, Jackie confided, “I’m just worried the actor playing Iago won’t be as good as Dorris.”

“The reading group has opened up new avenues for me… Twelve months ago I knew hardly anything about Shakespeare, but I’ve had great pleasure in seeing the plays come to life by visiting a variety of theatres, including our day out in Stratford.” Michael

None of us knew what to expect at that first meeting. I read a short story ('Schwartz' by Russel Hoban) in which a blocked writer faces up guilts he has not wanted to remember. Perhaps, the story suggests, there is a kind of life after death, perhaps all our lives are connected.

I put ‘Blue Monk’ on the tape deck. … if there had been a fly sitting on Monk’s hat while he played, its tiny presence was copied in the recorded music; if it had been raining at the time of the concert, the unseen wet and shining streets, the reflections of headlamps and tail-lights, streetlamps and traffic-lights, the unheard hiss of tyres and the sound of rain, all were in the simulacrum concert on the tape. Was the double helix of each of us, I wondered, a recording of all the lives before us?

“He’s been smoking the funny stuff”, someone laughed when I’d finished. We talked about lives, guilt, responsibility, afterlives. Frank, an ex-shipyard welder, shook his head and said,

“Say what you like, there’s that paragraph about the fly. It’s like a bloody big rock in the middle of the road. You’ve got to get round it, or go under it, or climb over it… but whatever you do, it’s there. Whatever you think about the afterlife.”

In another early session, we read Tennyson’s poem, ‘Crossing The Bar’. Dorrie, great grandmother, pub singer, and soon to be revealed to us as a talented actor, began to cry as I read,

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!

“Sorry,” she wiped her eyes brusquely. “Buried my daughter five months ago.” Despite the hankie, the tears continued.

“Shall I stop?” I asked. People were nodding. But Dorrie insisted, “No, go on. Go on. I’ll be all right”. Still crying, still reading.

Twilight and evening bell, 
and after that the dark!

At the end of the session, while we were packing up, I saw Frank reach across the table, ‘You did well,” he said quietly to Dorrie. She was new, he’d just met her. Moments like that are what I love about the group.

“I was paying my first trip to the theatre in two years (due to illness) and coincidentally met a friend from the past. I looked along the row at the people she was with, a reading group, all their faces were lit up – alive! Alive! – and I thought, I’d like a bit of that. So I joined at the next meeting. To read in a group is an unexpected pleasure – a wonderful, moving, enlightening experience. What’s more, it’s great fun!” Pauline

A year down the line, we are at Stratford, sitting by the riverside on a beautiful June day, having a picnic before seeing As You Like It.

“In the reading group I have read things that I’d never have read alone. The most surprising thing has been Shakespeare. Two years ago that would have been a foreign language to me – something clever people knew about. It’s very exciting.’ Moira

It seems a long time now since the group stood outside a bleak, freezing January crematorium, shocked at the speed with which a brain tumor had ended Frank’s powerful life. When Margaret had been to visit him in hospital, he’d been reading Tolstoy. But something of his still lives with us; we often imagine what he’d have thought of whatever we’re reading. And in the Stratford sun we think of him, how he’d have relished our day out, especially the presence of Moira’s daughter Jessica, the next generation, getting an early taste of this passion which we are enjoying later in life.

“Since school I’d never read anything but sauce bottles and newspapers. The things we’ve read in the group have opened up an entirely new concept for me – I’m trying to catch up on some of the great literature that’s around. The reading group is the highlight of my week…”   Elon

King Lear, William Shakespeare
Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Poetry Anthology
As You Like It, William Shakespeare
Once in a House on Fire, Andrea Ashworth