Although refusing to play Oberon in an extract of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for an evening arranged by Mrs. Brace - he was 'King of the Fairies' after all, and there was no way on earth I was prepared to lay myself open to the ridicule that was sure to follow from my mates if I cooperated - I did agree to recite the "I know a bank..." speech from the play. It was a revelatory moment. I stood there, on the stage in Big School (old school...lots of history...silly names...) faced out into the darkness and was taken over. My concentration was complete, my voice aware of the beauty it was creating, and my arms - indeed my whole body - became weightless. Big School was actually the class-room where William Shakespeare had sat in just over four hundred years before (and was probably taught Physics by the same teacher we had), and whether you believe he wrote the stuff or not, I experienced transendance, something extraordinary. It was a magical, humbling moment. Giles "Gunner" Adams, our old form master, came up to me afterwards and quietly told me that my performance of that speech was the best thing he'd ever heard. So aware had I been of the quality, and also my lack of participation in its delivery, I felt no pride in any achievement, merely humility at being allowed to have been the one through which this beauty had shown itself to us all in that room that night in 1977.
