It’s all been happening here in Malcaster over the past month. In a way, I’m pleased that my reports to you have been reduced from weekly to monthly, especially at this time of concentrated owl activity, but it’s difficult to know how to fit it all in.

It is said by those who think they know about owls that we move energetically only in pursuit of food and sex. Well, that may be true for most species, but we of the strix theatricus genus have a lively interest in all matters theatrical, which we put to one side during our annual breeding and child-raising season. In infancy, our parents find for us a theatre and a mate, a theatre on which to make our nest and a mate who has similar standards and interests which will absorb us for the rest of our lives. We do not attract state benefits and we do not raise young unless we are sure that we can provide all necessities to independently support them. I invite you to compare these facts with the practices pursued by human beings – ‘quackers’, as we call you lot – before you condemn us for sometimes making a lifetime’s breeding commitment with a close relative. For instance, my lovely wife – Penny – is also my mother, but she became available in my hour of need because my father – Wobble – was involved, sadly, in an unfortunate incident with a hang-glider. It is therefore perfectly natural that our own son and daughter of this year’s brood are making plans to take advantage of a fortunate coincidence and move in together to the old Riverside Theatre, which has recently been bought by Oscar’s friend – Sam Adams – for restoration to its former purpose and provision of a small bachelor-flat for Sam to live in. We felt that it would be incomplete as a theatre and as a home without a pair of owls to safeguard its best theatrical interests and Sam’s personal ones.

Fortuitously, we also learned of a vacant theatre in the Midlands, where our other daughter – Barby – will soon set up home with a strix theatricus from nearby Stratford-upon-Avon. (How pretentious can you get?) Apparently, a conservation-conscious member of the theatre affixed an owl nesting box under the eaves some years ago, without any occupation thus far apart from an inquisitive squirrel who is about to get evicted and possibly eaten. The members there are in for a big surprise and Barby is becoming excited about her upcoming nuptials.

So that’s this year’s brood more or less settled. We look forward to receiving regular reports from Barby, but still we don’t know what will happen to the bloody galah we got lumbered with due to Edna’s carelessness. I mean, you can’t keep a pink and grey cockatoo secret for long and this one is definitely not the soul of discretion. He spends most of every day flapping around our nest and advertising our presence.

The old Riverside Theatre is quite another story.

Later this year, the Granary Players celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their re-opening as a theatre company in the town’s old grain-store, a stately stone building that has stood beside the wharf of the Great Surrey Canal since a couple of hundred years before even the canal was driven through. The building stood empty after the end of hostilities (the last lot with the Germans, that is), so the town’s alderpersons were delighted when Sir Jeremy Akehurst – the famous actor, long before he was knighted - made an offer to finance its conversion and occupation by what became the Granary Players. Some of you may recall Jottings No.25 in which I confided to you how the necessary funds were acquired by virtue of heavenly intervention, followed by proportional appropriation by two frustrated 14-year-old actors called Oscar and Sam.

Malcaster Players, as they were then known, before they moved into the granary, occupied the Riverside Theatre, a tiny temple of dedication to the thespian arts, a gem of perfection that could seat about fifty people. It was built on stilts as a precaution against the springtime surge of waters into the River Mal, when the flood-plains always disappeared to a considerable depth, but the theatre remained clear, dry and accessible by rowing-boat. Because stilts were installed on three sides of the theatre only, the area underneath it could lend itself well to open-air performances, with the river’s bank providing a natural raking whereon Audience-members could sit. At intervals on summer evenings they would stroll and sip their G&T’s in idyllic surroundings.

The Players, with all manner of good intentions, retained their tenancy of the Riverside Theatre for use as a sort of workshop studio, but in truth it degenerated into a derelict scenery store and was later occupied unofficially and on a casual basis by townspeople who pursued an interest in substance-abuse, with their visiting friends from other conurbations. Sam’s offer was welcomed by all concerned parties except members of the Surrey Constabulary who had become accustomed to knowing where they could find all the local villains and drunks whenever they wanted them. Little did they know that Sam’s financial stability was founded on funds nefariously obtained, but then augmented by his own considerable efforts over the ensuing fifty years.

Ever since Sam’s arrival back in Malcaster, Oscar and Sam had revelled in each other’s company. Sam has temporarily taken a small suite at the Peacock Hotel, quite near the granary, but every evening sees him together with his old school-friend. Often Cara joins them, either in the galley or in some local pub or restaurant, before they repair to the theatre for further reminiscence and lubrication with Rollo at the bar.

Gwyneth, however, does not join them. While, in those halcyon days of the mid-1950s, she had completed their teenage foursome, she had devoted the rest of her life to waiting for Sam to return and marry her, as he promised he would when he introduced her to certain carnal delights. To be fair, Sam possesses several attributes – apart from the wealth he retains by having avoided entrapment - that guarantee him success with the lady quackers. He is tall, cheeky and humorous, with curly white hair that was once blonde. And... do you remember Virginia, that dark lady who played ‘Portia’? Well, I caught Sam thinking nesting thoughts while chatting with her.

Sam and Oscar were big pals all through school and they made plans to go on to drama school together, but it was when parents kept legal control over their progeny for twenty-one years. (We owls have had enough of our kids after a couple of months and kick them out.) Oscar was made to study for his accountancy exams while Sam’s parents made him learn a proper job at Parnell’s aircraft factory. As soon as they could, however, they escaped into National Service. That done, Oscar returned to Malcaster, to marriage with Cara and a lifetime’s dedication to Theatre at the Granary. Sam took himself through drama school and then, unable to get work as an actor, bought his yacht with the drabs of the football pools winnings and took off to anywhere in the world where a competent electrical engineer was required on an oil refinery. Oil refineries are usually located near the sea, so he could moor his accommodation, do his paid work and run speech and drama classes in English in his spare time wherever he happened to be. In this way, he had many adventures and led a richly fulfilling life.

Not all of the Granary’s members (including Gwyneth of course) approved of the new venture into training new directors and actors for the Granary, but Oscar and Sam pressed ahead with their plans. As a failsafe background plan, Sam pressed ahead with his design for the Riverbank Theatre and secured planning permission, while starting the actors’ workshops in the rehearsal room whenever it was free. Oscar – who commanded quite a lot of local support and could handle the objectors – progressed the selection and interpretational phase with his two trainee directors, Skap and Sinead. They had decided to present a sort of double-bill of a scripted one-acter with another shortish home-grown play that they would develop in workshop with Sam’s new actors.

So far, they have studied many plays and ideas, but I can see a pattern developing in which Skap takes the improvised play while Sinead seems to be veering toward “The Good and Faithful Servant” by Joe Orton. All of the students are becoming excited about this play, even though it is slightly dated. The situation is undeniably relevant and humorous, the jokes are good and it shows a stage toward the mess that most quackers have got themselves into in their working lives. Much of their discussion and preparational work progresses in the galley of the good ship ‘Playmaker’, where I can perch on the oil-lamp’s bracket and listen in until Sam bursts in sweating and grinning from his workshop, completely disrupting the work with his chattering and usually with two or three embryo actors bobbing along in his wake.

In the Granary itself the atmosphere is not entirely so happy. From the box-office triumph of ‘Salad Days’ the three lads from the hairdressing salon have gone on to construct another set on the stage. They make a lot of fun out of what can be an irksome task, and their designs are always perfect. Virginia is helping Cara with the wardrobe and props for it. Luckily, they’ve got Andrew Messenger as stage manager, so at least the staging stands a chance. Rehearsals continue next door in the studio. I lurk behind different grills of the air-conditioning vents and watch it all happening, listen to the arguments between the cast and director. I thought they said the play was by Henry Gibson, but it turns out to be by a Norwegian bloke with a similar name. It’s called ‘The Wild Duck’, which I hoped would have an ornithological theme, but it’s all these quackers yapping nonsense at each other. The director has given himself a part called Gregers.... oh, it’s a mess. I hoped they’d have a rip-roaring comedy to end the season, but I can’t see the Malcunians paying to watch this load of old cobblers.

Gwyneth has got herself involved with the Ibsen thing, which saves her from gazing doe-eyed at Sam all the time, but she keeps disappearing for a weep.

So, as far as I can see at the moment, it’s all down to the experimental work being led by Sam and Oscar. Sam’s having a ball with his actors; I watch him feeding them with information and advice, then standing back and letting them use it. He chips in good-humouredly with well-chosen snippets of guidance, or he stops them in the middle of their work to describe a whole new area of stagecraft. He’s got fifteen young students who are keen to learn all he can teach them while Oscar, Sinead and Skap work away in the boat’s galley, narrowing down the material, analysing every snippet, then standing back to see the big picture. It’s all so incredibly exciting!

And from time to time, Sam and Oscar wander round to The Laurels. Oscar has kept in touch with Sir Jeremy Akehurst ever since he gave up his flat and moved into the old people’s home, oooooo a couple of years ago. You’ll understand that I have my own rather pragmatic and owlish views about how elderly and infirm beings should be “taken care of”, but you quackers are free to do it your own way. It was worth keeping Sir Jeremy alive to see his handsome old face light up the first time he saw Sam with Oscar, both of them going to visit the old theatreman who taught them so much when they were young. The three of them sit telling tales, yarning and laughing, until the nurse trundles Sir Jeremy off to bed, tired out but very, very happy.

He seems determined to see the Granary’s fiftieth anniversary.

Jonah was a very experience director, teacher and writer who sadly passed away in February 2006. He was also the author of the highly successful "Playmaker - The Craft of Directing Plays (The Way I Seen It)".