Ron Kavana

18th June
Lansdown Pub

Towards the end of the evening, Ron Kavana asks how long he was supposed to play for. Until English pub closing time, replies Dan -- which is to say, about half an hour ago. Ron says he'll just do one more. A voice from the audience suggests a Republican song. Ron embarks on another illuminating, nuanced, meandering chat around modern Irish politics. "I'm not a pacifist. I wish I could be..." He finally comes to the end, and sings a long, relaxed "Irish Ways" which seems to sum up what he'd been saying pretty well. There's a feeling of change running through the land/ The church and the right wing / Finally losing their awesome control / We don´t give a damn for your border /And we are the future, so take heed or look to your prayers! It couldn't have been much before midnight when he leaves the stage; he'd been singing and chatting for close to three hours.

The gig was upstairs in a pub; I gather there was a football match of some kind going on down below. Ron says he never uses a set list: he lets one song suggest another, and he's guided by what goes down well with the crowd. "The...gathering" he corrects himself. There are about 20 people in the audience, five of whom are the support act.

He starts to tell the story of giving money to a drunk in Camden Town and finding that it's a person he used to go to school with. "When I first came to London..." he begins, and it turns into the first line of the "The Old Main Drag" and then the second, and then the whole song: unaccompanied, ancient, haunting; one of the most spine-tingling moments I've ever experienced at a live gig. He's been around for ever and seems to have known everyone. Michael Flatley comes to sessions at his local. A delicate, funny "Galway to Graceland" is attributed to "my friend, Richard Thompson". "Both Sides O'The Tweed" has become "Both Sides O'the Boyne", but Dick Gaughan said this was all right.

He used to open for the Pogues, and wrote "Young Ned of the Hill. "I understand that in England Cromwell is a hero because he challenged the monarchy. In Ireland we see him a bit differently...." He says he loved it when English punks in York or Cambridge happily sang along. A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell/ You who raped our Motherland / I hope you're rotting down in hell / For the horrors that you sent / To our misfortunate forefathers / Whom you robbed of their birthright.

He doesn't lecture; he doesn't even exactly tell stories. He talks: about history and politics and music. Like a lot of people on the underdog side, history seems real and living for him. He seems angry about what was done to his ancestors. He won't use the word "famine": there was no famine in Ireland in the 1840s. There was plenty of food, but it was sent to England. The number of Irish who went to America has been exaggerated: most of the boats were turned away, and the real diaspora communities were in Canada. Quite early in the evening he sings "Reconciliation", an allegorical love poem between the north and the south, almost his signature track. Our fight has run its course / Now is the time for healing / So let us all embrace / Sweet reconciliation. He says that in the 1970s and 80s, he could be booed at Irish traditional music festivals for singing it. He fears that the 2016 anniversary could set everything off again.

The support group are Roving Blades, a local choir, who do Copper-ish, churchy acapella, all rounds and sweetly sing cuckoo. Their agonisingly beautiful version of Tennyson's Crossing the Bar doesn't seem to be on the Myspace site: it really ought to be on a CD. When Ron sings Midnight on the Water, they join in the chorus, from the floor, quiet at first, but then almost another spontaneous performance.

He tactfully says that in the USA, most folk concerts happen in private houses. That's what this felt like. A bard stopping off in tavern to sing songs and tell us what he's seen. Magical. When I first started going to folk night, this is what I imagined they'd be like.

I have no idea who won the football.

Tura lura lay; tura lura lay.

The Lodger was a very nice story. I liked it.

Fish Custard (14)

I usually try to translate cultural references as I go along. I know that I have literally several readers in America, and it worries me that they may not know that "the tube" is "the subway" or that "pavement" is another word for "waistcoat".

It's a good exercise. Assumptions, as a very wise man once said, are things that you don't know you are making. Everyone in England instantly understands that "bobby" means something different from "policeman" and that "Tory" means something different from "Conservative", but it's hard to put into words what that difference is. The Union Jack "means" Britain, and the Stars and Stripes "means" America. I am pretty sure that the Union Jack means something different to a British person from what the Stars and Stripes means to an American, but I couldn't articulate what. Nor cold I articulate why I chose to write "British person" rather than "Briton" or "Brit."

So, before moving onto the one in the flat, I need to ask: what is the American cultural equivalent of "Marmite"?

I remember an article in a Doctor Who Appreciation Society fanzine: TARDIS, maybe, or Celestial Whatnot. It was probably by Jeremy Bentham who I don't think ever really concealed the fact that William Hartnell was "his" Doctor. (There was much less history in those days.) He took it for granted – all fandom agreed with him – that what was then "new" Who, the Phillip Hinchcliff seasons were an appalling travesty; nothing at all to do with the Doctor Who we grew up with, and quite open about the fact that it wasn't meant for children any more. (Whenever you see an episode of New Who that you aren't quite convinced by, remind yourself that what you feel is mild compared with the sheer, visceral hatred that the President of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society directed at the Deadly Assassin.) But Bentham didn't think that fandom was being quite fair. Granted, seasons 12, 13 and 14 had nothing very much to do with the series we all loved: granted all this horror imagery was more suited to a Hammer Horror movie than Doctor Who, granted Robert Holmes had wrecked the Time Lords irretrievably. But at least Doctor Who was still travelling round the universe in a TARDIS. So fans were faced with a Dilemma. Embrace the new series, or give all your love to the early seasons: Hartnell and Troughton and Pertwee. Well, Hartnell and Troughton. But if we choose to stay behind in the past we may very well regret that staying until etc. etc. etc.

So now it comes: the parting of the ways, the day of choice that we have so long delayed.

Does it bother you that the Thing At The Top of the Stairs made absolutely no sense at all, didn't even pretend to make sense and was in any case the product of a Blue Peter "design a TARDIS interior" competition?

Leave. Leave now. Doctor Who is no longer your show.

And that's fine. It's okay to find it ridiculous when fat ladies who sing when they should be talking claim to be 15 exactly, when they are obviously 53 if they are a day. It is ridiculous. So stay away from the opera.

Your hour will come round again. 40 years from now the widening gyres will bring in a world where Inferno and Ambassadors of Death are the latest word in modernity. Until then, there must be no regrets: just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me etc. etc. etc.

You are so not meant to be looking at the wibbly wobbley timey wimey thing at the top of the stairs. You are so meant to be looking at the Doctor and Craig and Sophie. Well, at Craig.

At me. At me.

What if Dr Who came to my house?

continues

If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider buying a copy of The Viewers Tale or Fish Custard which collects all my writings about Doctor Who to date. Alternatively, please consider making a donation of £1 for each essay you have enjoyed.

Fish Custard (13)

"Hi. We're the makers of a TV show about a guy with a Time Machine."

"Ah. You want me to write an adaptation of H.G Wells' The Time Machine."

"No. We produce a children's television series about a man with a Time Machine."

"Oh. What does he do with it?"

"Travels in Time. Goes to the past and the future and meets historical characters and stuff."

"Crazee. Can't see it ever catching on. Why are you telling me about it?"

"We want to commission you to write a story."

"About Time Travel?"

"About people from the present day visiting an historical period. Because you're, like a mainstream writer, who writes period drama. Crossover appeal and all that."

"Any particular historical period you have in mind?"

"No – you choose. The sky's the limit. That's the whole idea. Mainstream writer, thinking outside the box."

"Can I bring historical characters into the present day?"

"Sure. It's, you know, as limitless as your imagination. We generally try to avoid our hero changing historical events too much, though. And he probably shouldn't create established history, either. Saying he caused the Fire of London would probably be a bad idea."

"Or the Fire of Rome?"

"Or the Fire, as you say, of Rome."

"It sounds like a fun, open ended format that will run and run. Here's my idea. Just extemporizing, but could your hero go back in Time and meet Van Goff."

"Van Gock?"

"Van Gow. I'd show all the scenes from the famous paintings – the cornfield, the church, the cafe...and how about this, I'd have the hero bring him some sunflowers, and suggest that he paints them. I'd get lots of irony out of all Van Gock's contemporaries thinking he's a terrible painter, but our hero knows that history will have the last laugh. I'd do a sensitive portrayal of Van Goff's depression, but steer right away from obvious cliched stuff about him chopping off his own ear. I'd probably take the line that he was bipolar. I'd allude to his suicide too. What time does this show go out?"

"Tea-time, but that's okay, we can drop in an 'If You Have Been Affected By' line at the end. Those chaps at the Samaritans get awfully bored if we don't encourage people to phone them, you know."

"But I haven't told you the clever bit yet! The clever bit is that we'll start the story up in an art gallery, doing a Van Goff exhibition. We can show all the paintings, so the young kids will get the references even if they don't know who Van Gock is. And we'll have an art critic doing a tour, talking about Van Gow's life. We'd need a really high class actor to do the cameo."

"I reckon we can get that guy with the tentacles from Pirates of the Caribbean. But we probably wouldn't credit him."

"Great. So he can do some funny dialogue with your hero. Maybe they can compete about who has the best..."

"....Bow tie..."

"Bow tie, great. But then, here's the clever bit. At the end, after the hero has visited Van Gow and got to know him a bit, and Van Gock has even developed a bit of a crush on your hero's beautiful young red-headed assistant, then...and this is the scene I want to write, this is the scene I've wanted to write all my life...your hero puts Van Goff in his Time Machine and takes him back to the present day and shows Van Gock the exhibition. So Van Gow knows that he'll be vindicated and dies happy. He even hears the famous actor lecturing about what a great painter he was, and what a great man he was. And, we'll do this subtly, but wouldn't it be cool if the art critic almost, almost, just out of the corner of his eye, sees his hero for one second, in the flesh! Oh, why I have I wasted my career working within the constraints of narrow social realism! This is the sort of moving, slightly surreal, magical realist material that only the conceit of a Machine that travels through Time can achieve! I hope your series lasts for 46 years and seven months!"

"It sounds excellent. Exactly the sort of thing we're looking for. How does the monster fit in?"

"I'm sorry. I don't quite follow you."

"The monster. We don't feel that a TV series based around a charismatic hero who can visit any historical time period (or, in fact, any place in the universe, but we've played that down, because the punters aren't very interested in stuff set on the planet zog) is exciting enough. So we have a rule that wherever or whenever he goes, and whoever or whatever he meets, there always has to be a monster."

"A monster?"

"That's right, a monster."

"You mean, like a giant chicken or something."

"Exactly. Van Goff, an art critic and a giant chicken."

"You mock me and my muse, Sir. Please do not waste any more of my time. I bid you – adieu."

"What a pseud. I was hoping for something more like Blackadder."

continues

If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider buying a copy of The Viewers Tale or Fish Custard which collects all my writings about Doctor Who to date.Alternatively, please consider making a donation of £1 for each essay you have enjoyed.