I am able to observe everything that happens in the Granary Theatre, Malcaster, by creeping around the ductwork of the air-conditioning system. The system has vents in every room, so I can see everything that happens without being seen. I can also listen to every conversation, which - considering the location of our nest and the way people have to watch out when walking underneath - brings new meaning to the expression 'eavesdropping'. Naturally, I confide everything to my friend, Oscar. Correction: I confide nearly everything to my friend, Oscar.

He is delighted with his new living conditions and so is Cara, although she darts back to their apartment quite often and to the supermarket, but most of her time is spent in the wardrobe and props departments, where everybody is aware that she is carrying young; Edna the galah's egg still nestles in its pouch between her... in her chesticular cavity. The good ship 'PLAYMAKER' made itself useful during the run-up to 'Salad Days' performances by carrying large posters on each side, which may have helped us to achieve 86% houses on average so far and the newspaper crits have been... glowing - very complimentary. It's nice to see a show doing well.

And it's nice to see Oscar out of their flat and joining in with the community again, although he does little more than polish the boat's brasswork, titivate the paintwork and amble in to the bar area where he chats with Rollo and anyone else who can spare the time. Mostly, people visit him on the boat, where they drink coffee and discuss theatre problems. Of course, the power-line run out from the theatre has made 'PLAYMAKER' much more habitable and cosy. I drop in on him between hunting trips.

"They're making plans for you," I informed him during a recent visit.

"Who are?"

"The production committee. They've decided to enlist your aid in making up for the current shortage of directors."

"Have they indeed? Well, they can strike me off their list of possibles, I've retired from directing. And you can stop listening in to their meetings. RIGHT?"

"Right on neither count, Oscar," I said. "They want you to teach new directors."

"Then let them read my bloody BOOK!" he exploded. "It's still for sale; I wrote it all down out of the goodness of my heart - had it printed. God, they make me mad, Jonah! When I came back from the army thirty-odd years ago, they assumed I was the same innocent little set-builder and scene-shifter who had left them at age nineteen. They couldn't accept that, by that time, I had fifty-nine entries on my Theatre CV, including thirty-two as Director - many also as Designer, as well as getting myself qualified as a teacher of speech and drama - and that was thirty-odd years ago and I haven't exactly been twiddling my thumbs since then..."

"O.K., I'm SORRY!" I said, unapologetically. "But don't tell me all that, I've heard it over and over - I'm fed up with hearing how wonderful and experienced you are."

"Well..." he rumbled. "Making plans for me indeed - I've FINISHED!"

"Have you?" I queried, archly, and watched him twinkle at me, conspiratorially. There's no way that this old devil with a passion for good Theatre was finished.

"What have they got in mind?" he asked.

"Well..." I began. "They had an approach from the university drama depar..."

"WHAT? They want me to get involved with those pretentious no-hopers, Jonah? They can get stuffed! I've been there, getting condescended to by those brainless products of parental and educational indulgence. They've been nowhere, they've done nothing, but because they're getting subsidised from my tax payments they think they're entitled to... problem is I'm not affected enough for 'em."

"Shall I take that as a negative response?" I asked.

"BUT!" he punctuated. "IF.... if they recruited a bunch of kids from the Job Centre, instead of those pretentious, matronising posturers copying the excesses of their school drama teachers... if they pulled in some students who had seen life..."

"Apparently they wanted you to give master classes over there at..."

"At the university? No WAY, Jonah. I told you, I've been there." 

"What if they came here?"

So it was that when the Chairperson of the Production Committee came to broach the subject with Oscar, he was already primed. He played it innocently and waited for suggestions to be made before laying down the rules under which he would give directing master classes in the main rehearsal room at the theatre. To his chagrin, several students from the university have signed up to attend at the theatre, but he has been to the Malcaster Jobseekers' Centre to sit in on interviews with people who have been considered unemployable, Then there are the several Players' members who have signed up, together with a few outsiders who heard what was planned.

Oscar has been sitting on the stern-deck, scowling into the distance, his mind cluttered with ideas. Since the stroke, he can't read too easily, so his notes have been big and sprawling. I suspect he won't use them, but, does he need to?

Penny has been fed. I caught her a few flying mice in the canal tunnel, which was easy; she's contentedly incubating her own three eggs and that little one of Edna's, Edna's shut in the wardrobe department with a cloth over her cage to keep her quiet. Cara is arranging the chairs into a big circle in the rehearsal room while Oscar growls over his notes, which he has piled on a little table in front of his chair. His captain's cap is lying on the table with its badges showing. He wears a thin dark pullover and has on his little half-lens spectacles with the brass frames shining. I'm leaning against the grill of the A/C vent and he hasn't a single thought for me. He's always a bag of nerves before any sort of performance, but I've never seen him as twitchy as this. On another little table, Cara has laid out some copies of the book about directing that he wrote.

I watch as the people assemble and it's interesting to read their thoughts. Some of them choose to chat with Oscar, which makes me wonder whether he would have been well advised to wait until they were all sitting down before making a grand entrance to a ripple of polite applause, but who am I to instruct him?

He's a stickler for punctuality. I watch the clock tick inexorably toward the time appointed for commencement of the session, knowing that this will be his cue.

A few seconds before the hour, he breaks off his conversation, hobbles into the centre of the circle and thumps his walking stick on the floor. A silence falls and he begins as predicted, in a firm, clear voice that bears no clue as to his social background: "Lesson Number One: always begin work at precisely the time announced for the commencement of each session," which gets a nice little titter from all of the attendees, but he is not joking. Nonetheless, he smiles warmly around at all of the people, identifying each one and remembering how each had come to be there.

"I'm going to start you off with two words," he began. "If you are making notes, I will be flattered in the extreme that you imagine my ramblings will be worth remembering, but don't hold me to them afterwards because I will be speaking from the wealth of instinct that I have built up during some eighty productions as Director. And don't imagine that all eighty have been unconditional triumphs, they have not; I remember some that have me crawling with embarrassment at the memory. From those I learned far more than ever I learned from the occasional triumphs."

At this point, I check Cara's thoughts where she stands at the book-sales table. She is tempted to chip in with a correction of any impression he might have given that there had been a succession of failures. She could not recall a single production that could be called a total calamity, but neither could she remember one with which Oscar had been completely satisfied, there was always something that could have been improved. Wisely, she keeps her own counsel and yields the floor to her husband.

"But let me give you the two words that I know are unfashionable these days, but which I believe - with a passion - are the most essential ingredients of any and every production in Theatre, whether big or small, posh or kitchen-sink, paid or unpaid...

"Those words are..."

Here, he pauses and sweeps a gaze around his Audience.

"LOVE..." he waits while that word echoes to silence. "...and DISCIPLINE."

He warned them that the words are unfashionable in the 21st century. 

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)".