Berkoff and Dionysos

Last week, I realised I'd never seen Sophocles' King Oedipus on stage.

Few people would be surprised by that, but I was. These days I don't get to the theatre as often as I'd like but I still think of myself as a theatre-goer. In the past, I've sought out obscure productions of Greek plays – in Greek as well as in English – because of the challenge they pose to today's theatre.

I'm not an expert but, when I struggled through two happy years to achieve a weak pass in Greek A-level, I supplemented my tussles with verbs and syntax with reading everything I could find on Greek history and culture. According to the curriculum, my school didn't offer Greek. Greek, like writing Latin verse, tended to be the preserve of boys' grammar and public schools. But somehow I wangled my way into Greek A-level, which was taught intensively from scratch in the Latin teacher's spare time. I've been grateful to her ever since. I was an unpromising prospect with nothing except a desire to learn to recommend me. There must have been considerable doubt whether I would pass. But the teacher – her name was Miss Blench – did her very best for me, setting plenty of work and urging me to read as much as I could. I think there were four shelves of books about Ancient and Classical Greece in the school library. I probably read every one.

I don't suppose any school would let a pupil take that risk nowadays, what with league tables and so on. But I'm more proud of the grade D I attained (a clear pass!) than any other academic achievement.

My teenage passion for things Greek has subsided now but I still turn to Greek texts from time to time – often in translation with the original Greek beside me, if I can find it, so that I can have some idea of the sound and the way meaning is made. But heading to Steven Berkoff's production of Oedipus at Nottingham Playhouse, I couldn't find a Greek text. I had to make do with a few extracts in The Oxford Book of Greek Verse, which were far too difficult for me.

Instead I thought of the problems posed by staging Greek tragedy today. It's never going to be the same for us as the Greeks. A director could offer a singing, dancing chorus and principle actors in masks and elevated shoes, but it wouldn't have the same effect. The Greeks were as familiar with that convention as we are with drawing-room comedies or Shakespeare framed by a proscenium arch.

Nor does theatre have the same role in society. These days there's a debate about the purpose of theatre and whether it should be funded. There's always someone to say it's superfluous and that, if people want theatre, they should pay for it, however high the prices and however limited their means. The defenders of theatre talk of heritage and culture. They even act like economists and produce charts showing how much money theatres bring into their towns and cities. Meanwhile the government imposes cuts which are made at one remove, leaving the lovers of theatre and custodians of culture to decide whose potential will be stifled and whose lives they will impoverish

None of that would have made sense in Athens, when Sophocles' play was first produced at the Great Dionysia. Performing plays and going to the theatre was a religious duty. Citizens attended to honour the god Dionysos. There was a fund to ensure that those who couldn't afford the tickets could still join the audience. And it was an honour to be the wealthy citizen who sponsored a playwright's work.

As I remember – it's a long time since I worked through those books – the Great Dionysia was also a theatrical competition. A small jury would vote for the best set of plays (three from each playwright and a satyr play). However not all the votes were counted, giving the god a chance to intervene. And the plays were all on familiar topics so the question was not what the story was but always how it was told – and how it honoured the god - in the vast Athenian auditorium.

There was no way Steve Berkoff could offer that experience for an audience seeing a single play from the comfortable seats of the Playhouse. I did wonder whether he would try to bring the audience to a state of catharsis – the state of purification from emotions which King Oedipus achieves, according to Aristotle. But I'm not convinced such a state is possible today. We see the world differently.

One of the main differences is the set of questions we can't help asking about Oedipus: what did he do wrong? what could he have done differently? does he deserve his punishment? But these aren't, I think, the questions Sophocles' original audience would have askes. (These aren't my own ideas. I'm following classical scholars. I don't have my books to hand but I believe I encountered the arguments in essays by E.R. Dodds and Erich Segal.)

Sophocles' first audience believed in curses and prophecies. They probably didn't think about it all the time but the question could even enter politics. When things were going badly, citizens would mutter that there was a curse on the family of Pericles and Alcibiades – not because they thought there must be but because the curse was a matter of historical fact. Electing a leader from a cursed family could cause problems for the city as a whole.

The baby Oedipus was no more than three days old when the prophecy was pronounced – and it derived from a curse on his family. From the time of his birth it was inevitable that he would kill his father and marry his mother. The Christian idea of sin doesn't come into it because his fate was always inescapable. So is the punishment he and his family must endure for his actions – not because Oedipus has committed any conscious or willed wrong but because father-murder and incest are punished by divine law, even if they occur accidentally. What the play shows is not the way we should live but the way the power of the gods and prophecies work out. If it has a moral – and I think it does – it is simply that humans should believe in oracles and honour the gods.

I can see those views at a distance and understand logically that people held them but, like most people, I'm too wrapped up in a world that believes in personal guilt, human responsibility and the innocence of babies to feel what such views mean. Although people today often suffer for the actions of their rulers, few would find it just that a whole city should suffer from plague because its king has acted in the way the gods or Fate ordained. Because our understanding of the world has changed, ideas like this don't work in the theatre of today. Actors need characters they can inhabit and audiences need to sense a world that isn't too distant from their own.

In Steven Berkoff's production (after Oedipus rather than an exact translation) it's surprising how little this difference matters and how much of Sophocles' play survives. Berkoff may have created an Oedipus who is something of a mobster or mafioso rather than a king but Stephen Merrells' arrogant boss fits the play – he is the sort of man who, unfortunately for him, is bound to attract the notice of the gods.

I admired Louise Jameson's Jocasta too. She seemed softer than I would have expected – sympathetic and believable. I don't shudder in the way the original audience would have done when she repeatedly denies the power of oracles – to the watching Athenians this was the kind of blasphemy that could threaten the city as well as the speaker. For a modern audience this is more understandable. She's a mother who has lost her child and her husband and whose love for Oedipus is, in consequence, tender and protective.

What interested me above all was how the play itself would work. After all, telling a well-known story can mean there's little suspense. But just as children like to repeat the same suspense-filled journey, grown-ups can be interested in how a familiar story is told – and knowing the ending doesn't necessarily spoil the excitement.

I was surprised how well the tension builds. As members of the audience we observe the unfolding of events, alert to every little irony and clue. When Oedipus promises, with an oath as binding as an oracle, that he will punish the murderer of Laius with exile, we already know that he is promising to punish himself. And when we're told of his similarity to Laius, we know this is because he is Laius's son. Yet the inevitability enthralls the audience, as I suppose it enthralls the audience of a slasher-movie. And I found that, whereas I would watch Hamlet, which I've seen many times, for how the play is staged and acted, with Oedipus most of my attentions was given to the way in which the story unfolds. I suppose in that respect the modern audience is very like the Greek audience, who would have seen a number of plays on the Oedipus theme.

There were two points where I was less certain of the production, though this may suggest I'm something of a purist when it comes to Greek theatre. While at times the stylised mime of the chorus worked well – when performing clear emotions or recognizable actions, as, for instance, when a member of the ensemble suddenly became a horseback messenger – at other times I found the movements too vague in intent, though performed with complete conviction. But what a pleasure it was to see such a range of faces. Each chorus-member was both part of an ensemble and a human individual, whose face could at times be transformed into the fixed pain and astonishment of a Greek tragedian's mask.

For me one of the highlights of Greek or French classical drama is the messenger's speech when an actor tells the story of horrors that happen offstage. I'll never forget Robert Edison in the Phedre of Racine, holding a full theatre still and on edge as his mellifluous voice painted a succession of cruel catastrophes. The horror that occurs in my imagination is always more terrible than any that can be shown on stage.

I was unhappy, therefore, at the decision to show Jocasta's suicide and Oedipus's eye-gouging on stage. Even a simple dumb-show distracts from the power of language to shock. The conclusion did allow a moment that moved me deeply: when Oedipus gently embraced and kissed his dead mother-wife. But that gentleness somehow made the ending less bleak and powerful. The play moved me but not to the extent that I felt purged and purified by having seen it. Good as the production was, it offered me no catharsis.

But then, I didn't go to Nottingham Playhouse to worship Dionysos. I'm not sure I believe in him.

Mud and fog

It took a long while to recover from the ice. Gradually I noticed that the cold had become less acute, the pavements were mostly safe to walk on and that muddly brown and a dull, dark green had been added to the dominant outdoor colours of grey and white. There's still mud in the garden where there should be a small patch of lawn. Every so often obscurity returned.

The fog seemed to echo a more general confusion. I don't know how to protest at the cuts with sufficient force. It's not just the loss of public services that puzzles me but the government's willingness to borrow more money so that services can be cut. Raising tuition fees will cost £13 billion in extra government debt - but apparently that goes in a special column in the accounts so no-one need worry. The re-organisation of the health service will cost £1 billion in redundancy payments. Every so often I hear a government spokesman explaining that there won't be any savings till 2015. I thought the economic crisis was supposed to be an emergency.

Meanwhile uncertainty stalks many of us who are neither millionaires nor members of the government. Some people are doing well. The luxury goods market is flourishing. Tesco continues its expansion; its vast retail hangars are no longer consigned to waste land but are intruding in city centres and suburban high streets. Small outposts of supermarkets move into once-friendly streets and undercut the local traders. I'm used to empty shops and office spaces now. Every so often I try to remember what used to be behind the blank glass or below the "To Let" sign but the memory seems to have moved on with the prosperity or extravagances of past times.

I went to rejoin my local library. I haven't been a member for years. Demands of work left me paying too much in fines. I tried using a library near my office instead - I liked the elegant curves of the walls and the helpful librarians ordered books from the County Reserve. But they're turning the building into a Job Centre, cramming the collection into another building and selling off all the books they can't fit neatly onto the public shelves - that includes the entire County Reserve.

Across the country libraries are being closed. Our local library is merely threatened with cuts in hours - and I think it's large and popular enough to avoid the most drastic cuts, at least this year. I missed the campaign meeting so I don't know all the details. But I know the cuts in opening hours, mobile library services and librarians risk won't just wreck a service - they'll wreck lives.

Council spokesmen, whatever their original allegiance, have become passionate advocates of the cuts. Every so often they take a step backward and insist that they don't want to do this - they are acting this way because the government makes them. Every council is fulfilling the government's demands - none is prepared to emulate the councillors of Poplar in the 1920s or Clay Cross in the 1970s and resist and risk imprisonment or bankruptcy. Instead they ask protesters "Do you want us to cut social services instead? Should we take money from children or the elderly to pay for libraries?"

It's not easy to answer those questions - until you look at the children, elderly people and social services who also depend on their local libraries. A library isn't just a place for borrowing books. The crude calculation which assesses the cost of a library at so much per book borrowed ignores the library's full value.

When I consult books in a library I don't always take them away with me. Quite often I look for ideas or information in several books and then return them to their shelves. I use the library as a source of local knowledge. I can consult maps and directories there, find out about clubs and evening classes, see what is happening, enjoy whatever exhibition is on at the time (I particularly like the work of local artists), use a computer if my internet connection is down. Members don't just arrive, choose a few books and then leave. Schoolchildren use the library for homework or just to sit and read for a while. Many locals settle in a comfortable chair for a quiet time with a book or journal. Parents and carers bring their children to special events - storytime for the very young is a particular favourite. I've been to talks, poetry readings, book launches and evening classes in my library - and that's only part of what happens there.

I suppose those who don't use libraries can't imagine that a quiet place with large quantities of books could be at the heart of a community. And those who want measurable results for statistical analysis won't find what they want in by counting loans and library users. Nonetheless public libraries seem as precise an image as I can achieve of what is good and valuable in our culture. They represent what I understand by the word "civilisation."

I'm not a councillor. If I were, I don't know whether I'd have the nerve to face prison or bankruptcy. But the defence of Britain's public libraries, from which I gained so much as a child, is pretty high on my list of priorities - and I'll do what I can to save them. In this government's age of austerity we need our libraries more than ever.

A white duvet

As the train passes the nature reserve, I can't tell whether the huddled ducks are floating on water or held fast in the ice by their legs. The train's speed doesn't give me a moment to work out whether the ducks are living or, as I briefly fear, a pattern of compact corpses against the white-grey landscape. The cold has returned.

I wasn't quite housebound in the first winter freeze. The cold tore at my throat when I left home and my calves felt weak after the morning and evening expeditions to work. The walk to the station, which I can usually do in five minutes if I must, needed twenty as I balanced on the ridged ice and compacted snow which formed the new surface of our suburban streets and pavements.

Like many people, I developed a cold and fierce, hacking cough but I was lucky. Services and deliveries halted but I had food in store and my son was prepared to venture to the corner shop – and further – in temperatures ten degrees below zero. The cold sapped my appetite but there was food and drink when I needed it. I missed one Russian class and two evenings of fencing but reached work on time every day.

The Russian tutor, from Novosibirsk, found the winter mild and flourished in the cold. Our shivering must have amused her but she smiled sympathetically. My desire to visit Russia – or anywhere – diminished. But walking back from the class, teeth chattering despite the layers of warmth in which I'd swathed myself, I caught sight of a duvet in a doorway.

It seemed to be a clean duvet, without a cover. I was struck by its whiteness compared to the grubby pavement-surface of trodden ice and frost. Heaped snow quickly acquires the colour and texture of charcoal when it's near a busy road.

I wondered if I should inspect the duvet. There were a couple of bags close by which suggested that this was someone's night-time home. The temperature was minus seven, and falling. I didn't want to take a step more than necessary in case I fell. I was a couple of yards from the doorway and did my best to inspect the duvet from a distance. I was almost sure there was no-one huddled inside it. I walked on down the hill, my feet searching for secure footholds, wondering if I should have done more.

If I had seen the resident of the doorway, I would have had to stop. At least, I think I would. No-one should sleep in a doorway on such a night. If I couldn't find a hostel place – and I wouldn't know where to start – surely at least I could buy a rough sleeper a cup of coffee, a meal or a night in a hotel. But there's nothing to be done about an empty duvet, whose owner was, I hope, warm somewhere else.

Days later, I mentioned my dilemma. “No-one will be sleeping out in this,” one friend declared. I knew, because I'd checked, that there were emergency hostel places and was briefly reassured. But then another friend spoke of going out with the soup run. In the English midlands, in the twenty-first century, human beings are finding what shelter they can in doorways, cardboard boxes and caves. They are queuing for soup in the coldest winter for more than forty years, just as cuts and economic anxiety leads charities to plead for more donations.

The latest snowfall hasn't been so bad here. From a distance it looks like a thick scatter of icing sugar on earth, grass, leaves and cars. Close to, it's evident that the snow is hard and sharp as tempered steel.

Next year our local council is cutting 200 hostel places for homeless people. I'm saving for loft insulation and double glazing. On my few daytime expeditions, I see beggars crouching in doorways. None of them haunts me as much as the memory of that white duvet next to the blackened snow and white-grey ice.

Transit camps for the poor

Growing up in our block of flats, there were always small tasks for children. I had slim, flexible wrists and was in demand whenever a neighbour accidentally let the front door slam behind her and found that she was locked out. I could slide my fore-arm through the letter-box and, using a hooked kitchen utensil, pull the inside door handle down until the door opened again. Sometimes I'd be offered sixpence as a reward but I was sufficiently well-schooled by my parents to refuse it, unless the neighbour was particularly existence. Helping out was a way of life.

Often someone would run out of a basic food. I would be given a cup to ask the neighbours if we could borrow flour or sugar, with the promise to return it the next day. Back then, the shops shut at 5.30 and shopping was a daily activity. Best of all was running out of milk. Only one of our neighbours had a fridge and borrowing milk meant drinking milk that was icy instead of room temperature or, in a hot summer – and despite our efforts to cool by evaporation in a sink full of water – not far from going off.

I don't recall envying the wealthier neighbours. I enjoyed the excitement of rummaging through jumble sales for books, ornaments and clothes (my order of priorities). I would have liked a holiday and wished my mother could have better shoes – but she insisted her canvas plimsoles were comfortable and children are apt to take parents' reassurances at face value. Mum did her best to convince us that holidays were boring, though Butlin's sounded terrifically exciting. Instead we had Sunday school outings and days out roaming Putney Heath, Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common. Sometimes we walked as far as Kew Gardens or took advantage of our cheap tube fares to explore London's (mostly free) sights and museums. There were always books, libraries and sometimes theatre trips to Shakespeare in the parks or plays, musicals and ballet from the gods of the nearby theatres.

As a small child I observed and marvelled at all kinds of glamour: I remember golden beehive hairstyles, possibly tinted by the hairdresser, and stiletto heels. One neighbour invited us for drinks at Christmas and we sat nervously in her pristine living room where she offered a choice of tea, squash and Bristol cream. (Mum disapproved of the sherry - she thought it the first step to alcoholism). Usefully, one neighbour acquired a telephone and gave us all his number for use in emergency. We were instructed in the routine of the phone box – when to press button A and button B – and learnt to deliver a quick message in ten seconds should we depend on the return of twopence for the bus fare home. The telephone and fridge-owner even had a small car. He worked as a chauffeur and once, resplendent in his chauffeur's uniform, gave me a lift into central London. I'll never forget how he stood and saluted as I emerged from his small grey morris minor.

I suppose we were still in the post-war atmosphere and believed we were “all in it together,” whatever “it” was. Linked by our need for council houses, we were a surprising jumble of people: young couples with children, older people, respectable types who had lost homes in the war, ex-servicemen and women, refugees (some with numerical tattoos we didn't mention), people with shady pasts. There was a loving father who occasionally vanished into jail for a few months. One glamorous woman was said to be “on the game” but “a very good mother..” There were loving marriages and couples who fought. Being a child, I probably missed a great deal – it was more exciting to explore “the woods,” “the bomb-site,” to “go trespassing” and to dream of the big adventure of going down the steps of the underground air-raid shelter. I needed occasional risks - children do when they feel secure.

I still visit my parents in the council estate where I grew up. I don't get there often enough and these days I feel like an outsider. The atmosphere has changed – we're no longer in the post-war world, in which progress was taken for granted. At some point during my childhood a council house ceased to be a badge of respectability and “council tenant” became a term of abuse. Perhaps the upper middle classes needed someone new to fear and despise. Or perhaps they always did fear and despise people like me and I didn't know it. I remember the rants in the press about the evils of tower blocks - I loved and still love the high-rise block in which I lived – and the new acquaintances who examined me for evidence of neurosis or criminality, if they didn't (as some did) cut me dead on discovering where I lived. At around that time, people on the estate seemed to lose a certain self-confidence. It didn't help to know that an address might disqualify you for a desired job. I was assured, by people who didn't know my background, that council tenants were stupid, ignorant and never read books, went to museums or walked in London parks. I was told that people like me were vandals, racists, criminals and scroungers who didn't care to know right from wrong. The transition from home to wider society was uneasy. I learnt to keep quiet about my background and to mimic the nonchalance of the rich.

There was a shortage of council homes in London. For a while councils bought up big houses in wealthy areas and converted them into flats. Then the policy changed. Under Mrs Thatcher, tenants were encouraged to buy, at a substantial discount, and councils were not allowed to spend the proceeds on further council homes. We were to become a home-owning society. My parents, who had paid more than the value of their flat to the council in thirty years of renting, took advantage of the discount and used Dad's redundancy pay to buy their flat. While the policy as a whole seemed dodgy, I was glad for them. There were voices on the extreme right of the tory party suggesting that tenants with spare rooms should be moved. After bringing up a son and a daughter in a 2-bedroom flat, Mum and Dad finally had a little extra space – a room where their children and, eventually, their grandchildren, could bed down for the night.

There's more to that flat than extra space. Mum and Dad, who are still there and approaching their nineties, know the neighbours. They visit a familiar GP and are greeted by adults who remember Mum from the days she worked as an infant helper at the local primary school. The bus drivers recognize and lower the platform on the bus so that Mum can get on without difficulty. The views are the familiar views of Richmond Park. It's changed a little from my childhood by storms and the fall of trees. There are no longer sheep in the park and I don't know if the parrots who arrived in the 1980s survived the last harsh winter. But you can still hear the bark of foxes at night and the rough call of rutting stags. Sometimes you can look down on a hawk as it stoops for prey. When I stay there in summer I'm often woken by the rowdy clamour of the dawn chorus. It all brings back memories – memories cherished by my parents who have now lived there more than fifty years.

The sale of council houses brought changes, of course. Flats were the least popular part of the council's housing stock. It wasn't just the contempt in which tower-block dwellers are held which caused that. Anyone buying a flat has to contribute to maintenance, repairs, renovations and upgrades for the block as a whole – my parents had to put money aside for bills which can run into thousands or tens of thousands. So far they've managed. They are secure in their home with their memories.

Other neighbours bought, then sold and moved away. Tenants died and were replaced with new tenants. Suddenly individual and families on the council house waiting list needed more than inadequate housing to qualify and reach the head of the list. Desperation helped. So did illness or personal disaster. The shortage of council houses made it harder for relatives to live near one another – grown-up sons and daughters sometimes stayed as tenants or carers but many found themselves driven from London. I have a four-hour journey each way when visiting my parents and that's not unusual. I still feel comfortable on the estate. The sight of library, maisonettes and tower blocks among the trees tells me I'm coming home.

Now even faster change is arriving. It sounds as though the Big Society will mean higher rents, lower income for people on housing benefit (some of whom work at several jobs for low wages) and insecure tenancies. People who can't find work for a year will be punished by a cut in housing benefit, although their housing will be no cheaper. Rents are set to rise to 80% of the private equivalent rent – and in London that will be high if the housing shortage continues to contribute to landlords' profiteering.

It all worries me but it's the insecurity that nags at me most. If council houses are allotted only for a short period and, as has been suggested, those who are luckier with pay or promotion are rewarded with eviction, there will be no chance for a mixed community to grow. At the same time, the jobless – and the latest projections suggest unemployment is about to rise by 1.6 million – may also be punished by eviction as their housing benefit falls. Will they join the council outposts in Slough or Hastings, where cheaper landlords are said to be offering bulk bed-and-breakfast accommodation for the needy and homeless?

If all this happens, children growing up now on the council estate where I lived will never have the secure childhood I had. Their parents will take less pride in their homes as they wait to be moved on. If they are cautious and anxious they will save any spare pennies and pounds for the cost of the move and the demands of the next home. They will hesitate to root themselves in a community of temporary dwellers. Schools and doctors will see pupils and patients who pass through and never settle for education or care.

I'm concerned for all who live on the estate where I was so happy. I fear that these policies will swell a tide of anger and despair, leading at times to wide, directionless anger. I know how I feel when my security is threatened – and how my anger is trebled when those I love are at risk.

I fear that my parents, who still take pride in their flat and its views, will wake one morning to find themselves marooned in a transit camp for the poor.

Seeing the naked youth

Just as I succumbed to a horror of a cold – combined, inevitably, with a busy period at work – the East Midlands offered a cultural cornucopia of events. I missed too many, some because they clashed with work or other events and some because I feared to interrupt a reading or performance with a hacking cough. At least I made it to a recital by Trevor Pinnock, which included works by Couperin, Bach and Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and to a range of poetry events including a small but well-attended celebration of National Poetry Day in Leicester and the first reading in the Nottingham Poetry Series.

I also attended a reading at the first Beeston International Poetry Festival. I hope it's the first of many. The festival, organised by poet, professor and jazz-man John Lucas, offers bargain-price (£3!) and free events at small venues including shops, libraries and the splendid Flying Goose café which also hosts a series of literary events through the year. I hope to attend further Beeston poetry events and will blog about them later. This paragraph should be seen as a taster and an advertisement for the rest of the festival – details can be found by clicking here.

However the major event of the cultural calendar – at least as far as the national press is concerned – must be the arrival of the British Art Show, In The Days of the Comet. It's a quinquennial event and this year it opened in Nottingham, taking over four venues: Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham Castle, the New Art Exchange and One Thoresby Street. By luck, I found myself invited to the preview and finally well enough to take advantage of the invitation.

Previews are strange events, half party and half excitable tour of art. There are speeches too and, as I walked up the stairs towards the Long Gallery at Nottingham Castle I realised that listening to speeches would be the first part of my duty. At first the combination of microphone and echo so distorted the sound that I was reminded of the opening of Chaplin's City Lights. Perhaps they aren't speeches at all but an installation, I reflected. But they were speeches and, as I moved round the gallery, the sound became clearer. There were several references to the cuts and quite a few to “bonking bunnies”. “In the Days of the Comet” seemed an apt title for the show – if the Comet was a metaphorical reference to George Osborne's hacksaw.

There was something strange about the roughness of the art in the 19th century grandeur of Nottingham Castle. But hints of destruction also seemed apt both for the castle's past - the locals set it alight and watched it burn in the Reform Bill riots of 1831 - and for current anxieties. "It feels like the end of days," a colleague remarked a week or so ago, and her words chimed so well with my own feelings that they have haunted me ever since.

While some works were carefully wrought - sometimes for wealthy patrons - others spoke of change, anger and destruction. I couldn't see all the art clearly for the crowds at the preview and have decided to go back and see the exhibitions again when they were less crowded. I certainly couldn't give the video installations the time they demanded. But I was mesmerised by a mysterious monochrome work with people and peacocks that turned out by a tapestry. And I gazed at what appeared to be a cross between a bombed and deserted house and the kind of cart tugged through battlefields by Mother Courage. It was fragile, dilapidated and strangely beautiful.

Downstairs in the castle café there was free champagne, provided by the exhibition's sponsors, for any visitor with the patience to get through the crush. I met my friend Katie there and we savoured a moment of cool luxury on the castle balcony before returning to look once more at the art.

We were both tired - Katie had come straight from teaching - so decided to leave our visit to the New Art Exchange for another day. Instead we made our way to the Nottingham Contemporary which was also so packed that it was sometimes hard to view the exhibits. I was pleased to find work by the remarkable Alasdair Gray on show - I'm so fond of his fiction that I often forget that he's an artist and designer as well. I hoped to spot him among the hordes but, if he was there, I didn't see him.

Tiredness induced frivolity. Katie looked at what appeared to be a giant teddy-bear's head made out of canvas and wondered if it would be possible to use it for camping. We inspected the guy ropes and looked for tent flaps before sadly concluding that there was no useful entrance to the main space. Then I saw the fire.

It was plainly meant to be there. As I approached I could see that the flame occupied part of a metal park bench. Perched next to it was an extraordinarily accurate life-size model of a bearded young man wearing only a pair of blue y-fronts. As I got closer, I realised that it was not a model at all but a young man, sitting very still and gazing at the flame beside him. There's something strange about being invited to stare at a semi-nude man in an art gallery. I became aware of textures, flesh tones, the unnevenness of toes, softness, imperfection, vulnerability.

Katie and I read the notice together. It informed us that the flame would be lit once a day and that, once a week, it would be tended by "a naked youth." "But he isn't naked," I whispered to Katie. She instantly urged me to complain. But how could I complain to a still youth who was involved in a work of art?

Katie considered other grounds for complaint. He wasn't tending the flame, merely watching it. As if to reinforce her comments, the flame extinguished itself and went out. We wandered back in the direction of the youth, who had started engaging in conversation with visitors. But we were too late. Just as we arrived at his bench, a curator appeared holding a dressing gown which the youth put on before departing round a corner.

We saw the youth later, in the bar. By this time he was wearing a check shirt and looking cheerful. Frivolity was taking over. Katie drew my attention to the visitors' shoes and fashion sense. Then she suggested we were too tired for more art - and indeed we were. We headed, briefly, to a cocktail bar before going home.

It's comforting to know that the exhibitions continue till January. That should give me the opportunity for several visits. I may even attempt a more serious review. In the meantime, the first newspaper reviews are being published, and they're good.

Dolly in the downturn

Wherever I go, I find myself wondering what will survive. Announcements of cuts have speeded up and I feel battered already, though the axe is still poised to fall. These months are a reversal of the norm, as if convalescence came before serious illness. Everyone seems to be waiting for things to get much, much worse.

It's hard to make culture a priority when so much else is under threat. How can I value a trip to the theatre or art gallery – even a book borrowed from a library – above the local day centre for people with mental health problems (under threat of closure)? Yet I notice that many of the activities offered by that day centre depend on what are broadly termed "the arts". The people whose lives are improved by help and friendship at the day centre also improve their lives by sculpting, painting, writing and singing. They share their skills with one another – and arrange local trips to take in the exhibitions which I also enjoy.

Millionaires never have to do without the arts. As patrons they commanded poets, painters, sculptors and musicians - they could buy whatever entertainment they fancied. I'll always be grateful to those millionaires who gave money to build theatres and public libraries. But my sympathies are with those who lived on the fringes of culture, grabbing whatever they saw and desired, without any sense of entitlement. I've always grabbed at culture.

Now the wealthy men in our government are snatching back. Education in arts and humanities will be restricted to the very rich and those prepared to embrace enormous debt. Were I young now, I'd have to give up my dreams of a good education. Meanwhile opportunities for self-education are being snatched away. Library hours are being cut. Soon galleries and concert halls will close and theatres will darken – though I suppose millionaires will continue to enjoy their holidays abroad and whatever command performances they choose to buy.

Until then, I'm grabbing as much culture as I can fit round work and a heavy cold. I've seen two shows at Nottingham Playhouse (She Stoops to Conquer and Twelfth Night – both excellent fun) and, most recently, a new play, Dolly by Andy Barrett, which is touring the region. I caught it at the Darwin Rooms in Derby.

The Darwin Rooms aren't a typical venue for New Perspectives, the theatre company behind the production. It's one of those small, regional touring companies which rarely get noticed in the national press touring the region. Mostly performances are in village halls and sports centres - the actors move around the region, setting up temporary stages, lighting rigs and sound systems for a night at the time.

I haven't seen the company before but they seem to take rural settings as their starting point. This play was set in Rosslyn near Edinburgh - according to the play a small farming community where any outsider was instantly identified as a visitor to the research laboratory. It picked up themes of ambition, success and failure. Farmer's daughter, Bettina, longed to be a country and western singer like her idol Dolly Parton. Her story was told in parallel to the story of the first cloned sheep, created at the Rosslyn Institute.

To my surprise, I found myself warming to the enthusiasm of the researchers as they explained what they were doing and why it was so difficult. Ethical questions lurked in the background - as did the desire of mourners to use cloning to bring back the dead. But the playwright and production trusted the audience to think through the questions - they weren't hammered out but left for thought and discussion later. The play was more interested in celebrating human achievement, whether the success of scientists in an improbable project or the ability of Dolly Parton to write and sing songs about triumph in the face of difficulty.

When I say that my favourite performer was Dolly the sheep, this is not a criticism of the cast. They almost convinced me that the two puppets - Dolly the new-born lamb and Dolly the adult sheep - were real and I held my breath for a moment when Dolly was born and presented to the waiting scientists. It still seems unlikely that messing around with theories, formulae and test tubes can produce a warm and breathing creature, let alone a sheep of character.

But even if ambitious and imaginative scientific research escapes, I don't suppose the idea of science will warm people through the cold isolation of the cuts. Dolly Parton, for all her artifice, may be a better source of warmth. She can, on occasion, be very funny - and she has a clear sense of what it's like to go without.

In praise of Alphand

Paris again, and luck brought me to a quiet apartment in the 14th. I looked it up in my history of Paris and found familiar names: Denfert-Rochereau, Raspail, Montparnasse. I knew them from books and metro maps - it wasn't an area I knew at all and had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that I was very tired and it was time to take things easily.

I'm also trying to budget carefully without being absurdly stingy. Like so many people, I'm anxious about what George Osborne's statement of cuts on the 20th October will bring. Every time I hear him there seems to be an additional note of relish in his tones. As the millionaire heir to a baronetcy he's cushioned from any temptation to join the "welfare-scroungers" he condemns. I remember interrogations by job centre staff in the 1980s; they made it plain that my pregnancy was proof of my feckless laziness and told me off severely for wanting to breast-feed my baby. However much I wanted to escape from memories and fears, they were bound to gang up on me. Sleep wasn't easy; three nights in a row I was carried back to England in vivid nightmares.

Days were for calm wandering. Last year I visited a wealth of museums and monuments. This year I looked for the free Paris city museums and wandered vaguely, sometimes taking buses with only a vague idea of their destination. Suddenly I came across the rue Soufflot, which leads up to the Panthéon. But I turned, strolled in the opposite direction and found myself at an entrance to the Luxembourg gardens where Parisiens strolled, watched their children and sat, in considerable numbers, on the white metal chairs provided. Some ate picnics but more had brought books and enjoyed the sun and the calm as they read.

As I strolled, I seemed to have found an August Paris that was in holiday mood and not over-run by tourists. I gazed at the pond and the palace which houses the Senate, reflecting that no government building in London is so lightly protected - but the people seem to have a sense that they own the gardens and the city.

I decided that this week in Paris would include time spent wandering in gardens, partly in tribute the engineer Alphand who decided that a city needed parks as a body needs lungs. The Park of Montsouris was one of his creations and only a short bus-ride or long stroll from the wonderful boulangerie where I could enjoy an espresso with mini-croissant or brioche for a delicious and leisurely breakfast.

Montsouris is made for slow wandering, though excellent small playgrounds allow parents to rest can watch their energetic children. There's a lake, trees and curving paths. It's easy to get lost, so I did. Gradually the gardens of Paris unpicked the nightmares and brought me back to calm. I knew it wouldn't last - and much as I love Paris, it has its own anxieties - but Alphand's gardens gave me the breathing space I needed.

Waiting for the end

After the tame bribes of the election campaign, we're preparing for disaster.

The strange thing is that, long before the election campaign, we knew there would be cuts and that they would be severe. In the debate of the three prospective chancellors, all three agreed that the new government would impose cuts that were deeper than those made by Thatcher. But when the election campaign proper started, the candidates and parties slipped into the conventional mode of offering little inducements to voters: funding for this and that project, the promise that some groups of people would be better off. It was as though the entire country colluded with the leaders and candidates in an act of voluntary amnesia so that we could all enjoy the spectacle of the election campaign and participate in a limited political debate without considering the future.

On one level there was a serious public debate. For the first time in years people seemed to be taking their power seriously. Wherever I went – on the train, in the pub, in corridors at work – people were discussing the election and agonising how to cast their vote. I was agonising too. But there was a sense in which the major debates of the last few years had been forgotten. We seemed to have stepped back in time so that the parties could posture in their familiar roles rather than addressing the current crisis. A great deal was made of family values and immigration. The NHS was defended and “welfare scroungers” attacked. There were occasional mentions of Europe and Britain's need to defend itself. I was struck by how little was said on civil liberties and Afghanistan – and how all parties offered to spend more money on pet projects rather than talking about what they would cut. Meanwhile the newspapers assessed parties as much on the power to spin and present themselves as on any substantial policies. Looking good on TV or choosing the right poster designs was treated as a vital qualification for office.

On the day of the election, I heard several people remark that now the difficult times would begin. And then we held our breaths for a few days as though hoping that the failure to hand any party an overall majority would mean that the economic crisis would go away and we could all sit securely in our jobs, if we had them, and rely on the frayed safety net the welfare state continued to provide.

There was never going to be a happy ending. Even if a Labour -Lib Dem-Nationalist-Green coalition had been formed (and the arithmetic was against it), we all knew the cuts were coming. The only remaining question was where they would fall – and that had hardly been discussed in the election campaign. No party wants to threaten the jobs and income of voters. The coalition cabinet looked like a parody of the new parliament: overwhelmingly male, white, public-school educated, Oxbridge graduates, mostly millionaires, distinguished by the kind of overweening self-confidence and self-righteousness that politicians and the press sometimes praise as “leadership.” No-one speaks of followership, that quality of subservience that all strong leaders require.

I haven't been surprised by any of the proposed cuts – and I don't think they're different from anything the relaxed-about-the filthy-rich, market-driven New Labour party would have required. Perhaps Labour would have delayed for a year but perhaps not – politicians were never going to be good about keeping their election promises. I am shocked by how much the Liberal Democrats conceded, and how quickly. Abstentions on tuition fees, Trident renewal and nuclear power ensure they will pass. If abstention is a fig-leaf, it's transparent. They may be working toward an end to the detention of children but they have hooked up with a party happy to deport asylum seekers – including unaccompanied children – to Afghanistan, apparently on the grounds that they will be safe there. Documents exposing the previous government's enthusiastic involvement in extraordinary rendition and torture have been published but that was as a result of a court judgment – our new, human-rights loving government was just as keen as its predecessors on a cover-up. It's the same with the treatment of children in privatised jails; brutality was authorised by New Labour but the coalition government sought to keep the evidence secret – and, so far as I can see, advice on how to hurt and injure children in prison has not yet been withdrawn. Every so often a cabinet member says something on human rights or civil liberties that I applaud but I don't trust them a bit. And I note that the Labour Party, while opposing cuts in a half-hearted sort of way, has stepped up the kind of rhetoric that prevents me from voting for its candidates. Labour assumes its potential working-class voters are fearful racists, who cannot see beyond narrow self-interest. No, they are not. They insist civil liberties and human rights are a middle class concern. No, they are not.

I support moves towards greater equality. I am not “relaxed about people getting filthy rich” when the evidence of poverty is clear. I want to a society that combines concern for individual freedom with a belief in equality, that welcomes internationalism at a human level rather than supporting uncontrolled corporate globalisation, in which companies are more powerful than countries or their citizens. There is no major party in England that promotes these views, though I know plenty of people who share them.

Meanwhile, I wonder what the government's rush to cut and privatise means for my neighbourhood and for me. I'm angry at local cuts that don't affect me directly; the county council plans to close centres which support people with mental health problems – people who are unlikely to campaign on their own behalf. The theatres, galleries, libraries and arts projects which I love must be at risk – the benefits supplied by free or very cheap access to culture cannot be quantified easily in a balance sheet. Given my age and my work in the public sector – combined with the level of projected cuts - I should probably prepare to face unemployment. Every so often the polite millionaires who rule us remember to say that public employees are valued and that the contribution they're cutting has been provided with care and dedication. As they cut contractual rights and sell the welfare state's fixtures and fittings to the private sector, they assure us we're “all in it together” and that “everyone has to make sacrifices.” But there's another aspect of their rhetoric which has been picked up by the screaming editorials of the right-wing press. They insist I do a “non-job” and look forward to a “gold-plated pension.” I'm luckier than most. I simply wonder if I'll be able to pay off the rest of the mortgage, how I can help my children and what I can do if my elderly parents need help.

I'm trying to be positive about the possibility of unemployment. I'm planning a T-shirt for the day I sign on. It will feature the words “WELFARE SCROUNGER” in big letters. Meanwhile I'll make the most of my free time to enjoy free culture, write like mad and campaign against the government for a better, kinder world.

Who pays?

Apparently we saved the banks. Now it's time to face the question of who pays.

The political conferences are full of politicians competing as to who can be the most threatening, though Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, ditched the word "savage" at the last moment and chose instead to talk of "serious cuts."

The Confederation of British Industry, combined with university vice-chancellors, has decided that students should pay for the university through higher fees, higher interest and cuts in grants. Oh yes, and their degrees should do more to train them for work in industry. Leaving aside the question of why students should pay to be moulded in the way employers demand (shouldn't they develop a capacity for original thought that enables them to remake industry and shape the future?), there's clearly a problem in the economics of what the CBI and vice-chancellors suggest. The economy needs money now - the suggestion that students are lent more money from 2010 or 2011 won't bring in any repayments until 2013 at the earliest, even if all graduating students walk straight into well-paid jobs.

It's an uncomfortable time. There are plenty of shrieks of "Not me!" which is to be expected. But there's also a great deal of finger-pointing, usually at individuals and social groups. Comments in newspapers and on-line forums are directed at the usual groups: immigrants, asylum-seekers, single mothers, the poor, the unconventional. "Punish them!" editorials and commentators demand. Facts on how little the poor and needy receive in benefits are no use - anecdotes of luxury are everywhere. Nor does it help to point out that the poor have to spend most of the money they receive, thus returning it to the economy. Spending by the poor is instantly labelled fecklessness.

I don't have a solution - I can't see any way of finding these impossible sums without hurting the economy more and damaging even more individuals. (Withdrawing troops from Afghanistan would save money and lives, but it wouldn't be enough.) Every cut brings its cost. There are bound to be cuts in public servants who include nurses, teachers, ambulance drivers, cleaners, lollipop ladies, and many others on whom we rely. Most will be entitled to redundancy pay and benefits - and in many cases it won't be enough for the rent or the mortgage. The newly unemployed will become the newly desperate. They will cut their spending (savagely, of course) and this will have an effect on all the businesses which depend on selling services and minor luxuries. Lots of small and large businesses are just keeping going. With less money coming in they will first shed more staff - that's even less spending money in the system - and then collapse.

The government has to look for cuts which affect the fewest people and from which the economy can recover most quickly. Logic points to taxing the rich and inherited wealth - money that doesn't circulate in the system. It's not going to happen. There are too many millionaires and too few paupers in government. But even taxing the wealthy won't solve the problems. I don't know if the kind of redistribution and rationing employed in World War II would help. My mum remembers the Second World War as a time of plenty after the scarcity of the 1930s - rationing fed children who were used to going without. But I'd worry about the centralisation and trust in government that requires, particularly when I look at the way the three main parties are funded.

The more I listen to political debates, the more I realise that no-one has a solution. I hear stale rhetoric and the rehearsal of prejudices and realise these are going to influence what happens next. It's going to be nasty. I don't want to speculate any further. I'd rather not think about the future but it's lurking and waiting to hit me in the face.


Note: the illustration is by the street artist Meek. I hope s/he doesn't mind my use of it.

Hope

I remember the opening of Roehampton Library. The class above me at primary school went to watch when Noel Streatfield declared the library open. I was so jealous. Surely none of them loved books as I did? Surely none of them had worked their way through all the library copies of Noel Streatfield in Putney Library, a bus ride away. After missing the library opening I wrote to Noel Streatfield and she wrote back - a lovely letter that I treasured for years.

Libraries mattered to me even more then than they do now. Libraries were so many things: they held information and imaginative possibilities; they were warm and friendly; they were staffed by librarians who could recommend books I'd never heard of; they had desks, tables and, in Roehampton, sofas on which I could lounge at full-length, exploring book after book.

Libraries mattered most when I was poor. In Bidford-on-Avon the library was a van which arrived once a week for two hours. It wobbled when I climbed up the stairs to enter it. There were no desks or sofas and very little space. Choice of books was limited: there were never more than three in the poetry section (one was always about Shakespeare) but they changed from time to time. I still lurked there, carrying my small baby daughter in a harness that made it impossible for me to browse the lower shelves. Books were more than life - they were the possibility that things could be different. The world of the imagination is also a place of hope.

In times of crisis and falling incomes local governments focus on what they see as their core tasks: rubbish collection, streets, schools and all the services that councils are required by central government to provide. Libraries - and museums, art galleries, leisure centres, theatres - are facing cuts and closures. But hope too is a necessity. Taking these things away damages the poor more than the rich. It's like putting a lever in the gulf between rich and poor and forcing it to ten times its width.

In The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Frank Owen, the main character, says: “What I call poverty is when people are not able to secure for themselves all the benefits of civilisation; the necessaries, comforts, pleasures and refinements of life, leisure, books, theatres, pictures, music, holidays, travel, good and beautiful homes, good clothes, good and pleasant food.”

When councils close libraries they deprive the poor of one of the benefits of civilization. They close off imaginative possibilities and stunt lives. If the council burnt books there would be a protest. But books are killed just as surely if they're thrown into landfill, pulped to make motorways, or locked away unread.