Ray Schaufeld's blog

I needed to re-read this to understand how good the storytelling is; the first time I skipped bits as it is a bit who-dunnity. We are taken led the true tale of Agnes Magnusdottir, beheaded for murder in Iceland in 1830. Agnes was imprisoned with an Icelandic farming household until her execution to save money, rather than taking her to a prison in Copenhagen. The farmers had no choice, it was considered their civic duty and they got paid. The...

Hard to do; to make a play with 3 main characters which is confined to one room into a production which works on widescreen cinema. The Young Vic made a cracking good job of it. It helps that Blanche, Stella and Stan do not simply talk, they drink themselves insensible, shout, fight and screw with clothes on. Physical stuff. At least one person in the cinema last night walked out, she did not know the story and the title tells us little. Perhaps...

Prose with added line breaks? Once I got down to a careful read I decided Ruth's poetry has a poetic drive and flow. Often quietly fiery; '.....Fire the best servant and also the most dangerous.' (Fire). Personal and also far ranging poetry. There is a sequence of 19 sibyl poems: Delphic Sibyl, Shinto Sibyl, Blocked Sibyl, Hallucinating Sibyl... Each unit works as a stand-alone and she also captures the weirdness of the job; women kept in a cave...

The most likeable film I have seen for ages! Boyhood takes six year old Ellar Coltrane through his fictional Texan life until his first day in college. The project took 12 years to make, the actors reunite every few years to grow older and go through their relationship changes and housemoves. Ethan Hawke as the hippy musician divorced dad who grows more serious and settles down with the daughter of Bible bashing farmers is particularly real-...

This is the second year I've stewarded Beautiful Days. It's my local festival, pretty much everyone in East Devon who likes music and partying rocks up here. I steward as an Oxfam volunteer, I get free entry, three meal vouchers and access to the crew party and Oxfam gets paid my minimum wage earnings for three eight hour shifts so it's win-win. Having a waterproof tent matters, last year I had a £10 one from a bargain shop, this year I paid £30...

The man's life is his own ballad.Woody, named after the President Woodrow Wilson was born in Okemah in Oklahoma, a town that experienced the crazy short-term prosperity and subsequent slow death and ecological devastion of the oil boom. His father sold real-estate, an occupation that led to physical battles and broken hands. Everyone craved work and jumped trains to seek it. This was extremely hazardous, a person could freeze to death in in ice-...

I was born in 1956; Elizabeth's gently comic tale of a village mainly populated by ladylike but hard-up widows and spinsters is not historically remote. Miss Matty, Miss Pole and the rest practise 'genteel economy' employing 'one little charity school maid' and serving bread and butter thinly cut at their card-playing socials because they can't afford to bake loads of cake. When exciting events arrive, like the magician's performance at the...

A place of haunting savagery. The elements bite, sting, punish; the rocky paths cut feet, hard-pressed drovers mortally break their overloaded horses. In 'Humphy', 'in the thorn hedge, spun like lace between black spiteful bobbins, spider's webs glimmered in the low grey light'. At sea in 'The Prophet', 'the slaps became hammer blows as the wind reared up and the gathering clouds came smoking against them in long black fingers.' Spite, slaps ,...

Radical, prolific, innovative, brilliant; in his short life James wrote over 2,600 poems. He also founded a commune in Jerusalem after being summoned to do so in a dream. Native peoples, a neighbouring nunnery, people in the cities who struggled with homelessness, drug addiction or shared the poet's ensnarement to alcohol, anyone else who cared to pitch in, all were welcome. This was in 1970, if I had known I would have bust my piggy back and...

It's wrong! I sold BI for four months in 1999 and we were simply given the rules, badged up and allocated a pitch. Then we worked. I spoke to a new vendor in my town asking him where the last vendor was. He told me she had been moved because she had not met her targets. She was a friendly lady and a lot of us got to know her and her dogs. The new guy said the changes had been recent 'These days it's more like a business.' Anyone can become...