Most writers who’ve spent their entire working life writing, have one; that special project which, for one reason or more, never quite happened. A brilliant, Booker-prizewinning novel, a magnificent Oscar-achieving screenplay, an unforgettable, multi-series TV drama gleaning both Emmy and Golden Globe glory: all bringing peer praise and universal public acclaim. Many of those lost masterpieces have never made it onto paper, floppy disc, or computer screen, but remain forever swirling in the imagination. Others struggled through a few repeatedly re-written chapters, scenes, or even lines, before being consigned to the bottom drawer of the desk, to be returned to later, temporarily gone but definitely not forgotten, out of sight but never entirely out of mind.
My own unacknowledged magnum opus was a film script, and so convinced was I that it was destined to take me to Hollywood and beyond, that I wrote four drafts, each one, to my youngish mind at least, getting better and tighter, relentlessly carrying me ever closer to the first day of principal photography. My movie was an historical drama, based on true stories and set in the East Anglian Fens during the latter years of the nineteenth century. It was meticulously researched, and I still have a bulging box of faded photocopies of newspaper cuttings, birth, marriage and death certificates, and my own handwritten, sometimes over-excitedly scribbled notes, which I can now barely read. The story revolved around Fen skating and a fictionalised version of two real-life feuding families. Yes, I hear you, not another film about feuding families? But mine was different, honest.
My on-screen epic centred on ordinary, working men, teak-hard men, who for most of the year toiled for a pittance on the land, working the flat, bleak, windswept Fens. But some of those men had a special skill, and in the depths of winter, when the Fens froze over for a few weeks every year, they would briefly become superstars. They raced over a measured 400-yard course, turning at each end around weighted barrels placed on the ice. They mostly wore everyday clothes, usually a thick jumper tucked into belted trousers, pushed into heavy socks. Their skates were known as runners, and were no more than wooden pattens, with spikes underneath that were driven into the soles of heavy working boots and fixed on top by leather straps front and back. They were basic, to say the least; I have an ancient pair hanging in my garden shed. The racing was similar to modern-day speed skating, but harder, grittier, tougher – like my script.
Not another film about feuding families? But mine was different, honest
Those feuding families, the Smarts and the Sees, dominated, one generation after another, although challengers poured in from home and abroad, especially Holland and Norway. The sport attracted huge crowds, particularly Londoners, with special trains run from London Liverpool Street to Ely and Littleport. Fortunes were won and lost on betting, some of it dodgy, as certain competitors were known to “throw” races they should have won. Most of the skaters had nicknames, the greatest of all being several times world champion William “Turkey” Smart, so-called because he stuck his head forward like a turkey as he raced. At the end of each short season, these legends went back working the land, a few quid richer and with a trophy or two stuck on the mantlepiece. The crux of the story was that the Sees never beat the Smarts, so you can probably guess the end, with the notorious bad boy gaining unexpected redemption at the very last moment.
I could see it all, I could hear it all, I wrote it all. The weather-etched faces, the clipped, rough accents and terse dialogue, the icy breath of the racers, steam rising from their bodies, the mist over the moody, mysterious Fens, with the massive bulk of distant Ely cathedral looming through hazy, wintery sunlight. I wanted to get everything right, including how skating felt. So, I went to an ice-rink to try it for myself and spent half an hour clinging nervously to the side railings. “Turkey” Smart would have shaken his head in despair.
Eventually, I hawked my completed script around, but it never got close to being made, although I did receive a very generous, handwritten postcard from legendary film producer, David Puttnam, who wrote that he “loved it”. And that fourth draft did gain me a literary agent and my first television commissions. It would never be made now. The story was, and remains, too exclusively white, too macho male – and in my version the female characters were stereotypically female. I hold my hands up to that, with apologies. I wouldn’t write it that way now.
Strangely though, what struck me most on leafing through the research material was the weather. The numbing cold as temperatures plummeted and the Fens froze solid. Thick, strong ice, safe enough to withstand the thumping impact of the skaters, those weighted barrels, and the crowd spilling onto the edges of the course. Global warming ensures that those sights are gone forever. But some years, during cold winters, a few shallow areas of flooded Fenland still freeze over. Then, hardy folk pull on their skates and venture onto the ice. A haunting reminder of times past, but old “Turkey” would hardly believe his eyes.
Robert Rigby is a journalist, author, scriptwriter
