Sawing the Lady in Half- Downsizing.

They handed back the keys today, so Terry from the Bike Shop said. He has sold one of the properties in his portfolio to one of our mutual neighbours, a chiropodist cum surplus body hair waxer. The sitting tenants, our friends who fled as refugees from a sink estate in York 10 long-short years ago, and whom we persuaded Terry to let rent the apartment above his shop premises on our guarantee, were not part of the deal.

On Monday Jack and Linda left the backstreet. We loaded their boxes, bed and a few items of furniture into the hired Luton van and took them to the ground floor council flat (lounge, bedroom, shower room and kitchen) set in a quiet cul de sac for the old and the disabled who could still manage to live independently in the community, that they had been granted by the local Housing Authority.

It was more than the end of an era. It was the end of a commonality we had shared for a quarter of a century. Friends and acquaintances come and go, some last longer than others, are attached to various activities that change along with those activities, as it normally happens that once the common denominator is taken away, the friendship cannot survive.

It has been different with Jack, and latterly his third wife, Linda. Friendship with Jack has survived through many different shared hobbies and activities, many frustrations, many arguments, illness, injury, relationships and partnerships. It has been more a familial relationship, one that no matter what, you are stuck with whether you want it or not; like that cliché, “a friend is someone who is your friend even though they know you well.”

The last thing we took down, and the first thing to go up in the new flat was a black and white picture of a clear skinned man in a tux with quizzical eyes and puckered lips conversing with a rabbit in a top hat. It felt disjointed, as if it did not belong even as a memory. The relationship felt severed in the same way.

Jack’s stroke in 2002 finally brought the reality home to him that no matter how much the stars in his eyes twinkled like duff bulbs round the mirror in a third rate seaside theatre green room off season, he was not going to make it big as a thespian after 25 years of Am Dram and walk-on extra work for budget movies.

Somehow though, the dream was still there. We did not keep it alive, except on the sense that we acknowledged the dream- the stroke gave the dream a validity it never really had, and keeping those lights switched on helped to get Jack’s speech and motor ability back to a workable level, albeit not workable enough to ever be able to live the dream professionally. It was possible to write in special parts in the Living History shows that took his disabilities into account and used them within the script.

Jack had one trump card in his life, one thing that gave him the dignity of having something that other people coveted. Despite two messy marriage break-ups, his daughters refusing to have anything to do with him, losing job after job as an HGV driver due to ‘unfortunate incidents’, equally ‘unfortunate incidents’ that dogged many of his personal relationships, friendships and professional engagements, not to mention the stroke and other illnesses, perennial desperate financial straits, he had something that gave his unique status among the inhabitants of our small pond.

Jack had an Equity Card, proof that he was a professional actor.

You could not be a member of the Actors’ Union, Equity, unless you had a job as an actor, and you could not have a job as an actor without an Equity Card. It was your classic closed shop. And Jack had an Equity Card, as he would drop casually into any and every conversation he possibly could, especially those which were held within earshot of people who would love to have an Equity Card and could not get one.

Jack got his Equity Card because he became a conjurer and a member of the Magic Circle, which got him stage work in Pantomime and Variety Shows, mainly in down-at-heel seaside towns, with companies existing on threadbare reputations. Jack’s main work would come at Christmas as he was a practised Pantomime Dame. He would start to get into character around September when the historical re-enactment season ended, and would still be flouncing around camply in May as it was getting underway.

It was just as well that Linda had made him sell his Conjurers’ illusions, just before this bombshell was dropped. He had held out for years, but eventually given in, accepting the fact that he was not going to top the bill , or even get work at children’s parties, ever again. He had hung onto the dream for as long as he could. The old, the outdated, and as he stammered out, the ones about to cross the line between unwanted and collectable had been entered into a Magic Auction. He was not allowed to tell us exactly what he had taken to the Magic Auction, and certainly not even Linda was allowed to go to the Magic Auction to see what happened at a Magic Auction, and the only people allowed to buy from Magic Auction were people sworn to the secrecy of the Magic Circle. Only magicians who were members of the Magic Circle were allowed to enter the portals of the Magic Auction. So how much or how little Jack got for his tricks was between him, the Magic Circle and his residual, but conveniently intermittent speech impediment.

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Jack had recovered well from the stroke, although diabetes took its toll and he has had part of his foot removed. Linda aged suddenly when she became a grandmother at the age of 47. It was like she stopped wanting to be fit and well and gave up working in the various shops she had been employed in since leaving her husband in Essex and going off with Jack, whom she met when he was a Bingo Caller at a Holiday Camp up north and she was on a week's knees- up with her sister.

Jack’s inability to work in either of his preferred fields meant that if she earned over a certain amount in wages, he could not get benefits, and as her income was very limited, it made more sense to give into the arthritic hip and knees, the Meniers Disease and the other health problems and be signed off too.

At the new flat we had to take the window out in order to get their sofa in. Their life is still too big to fit this new phase, and should not be shrunk .

Hopefully we can help them expand this frame that they have allowed themselves to be cut -and- shut and prematurely squashed into.