Friday 22 May 2009

The first Play "Waiting For Gonorrhoea"

WAITING FOR GONORRHOEA

CHARACTERS, in order of Appearance:
Man in kitchen with headache
Soldier 1
Soldier 2

ACT I - Kitchen in a dark house, a man is seen reaching into the cabinet above the cooker and pulling out a glass. He fills the glass with water, puts something in his mouth and takes a drink. The rest of the kitchen is almost blacked out apart from the area around the man.

ACT I - Kitchen in a dark house

MAN IN KITCHEN WITH HEADACHE:"I woke up at five this morning and staggered downstairs with a raging headache. I found the aspirin and swallowed a handful. Something weird had happened…I'd heard footsteps on the stairs, heard doors opening and shutting and incessant whispering in the hall. I knew I was the only one in the house, but still it was weird. At least the footsteps had stopped, and the opening and closing of doors, but I could still hear the whispering."

(Man in kitchen with headache moves over to far side of kitchen and the light fades to black. As the light fades a spotlight picks out the corner near the door and we see two figures crouching there dressed as soldiers)

SOLDIER 1:"Do you think we should?"

SOLDIER 2:"Should what?"

SOLDIER 1:"Should we set the tent up here?"

SOLDIER 2:"Shouldn't we make sure that the general can find his way back?"

SOLDIER 1:"I'm not worried about him but I am worried about his horse, at least I think I'm worried about his horse"

SOLDIER 2:"You look tired now, why don't you go to sleep?"

SOLDIER 1:"OK, I will"

SOLDIER 2:"Yeah, well if I'm in time maybe the general will give me his daughter…..hmmmmm……….yes…..his daughter….I could do a lot with his daughter"

SOLDIER 1:"Yeah, well, you have his daughter and I'll have his horse, I could do a lot with his horse"

SOLDIER 2:"You're sick!"

SOLDIER 1:"Yes, I have syphilis"

SOLDIER 2:"Really?"

SOLDIER 1:"Yes, it's great, makes me glad to be alive"

SOLDIER 2:"Excellent"

SOLDIER 1:"Goodnight"

SOLDIER 2:"Yeah, goodnight, see you tomorrow"

SOLDIER 1:"Yeah, we can sit here and wait for gonorrhoea"

A COLLECTION OF VERY SHORT PLAYS

On the Day that he was born ....


.......well ok the angels didn't get together as such ....but on the day that Alistair H Cronoly was born , Albert De Salvo raped and strangled to death his last victim, Mary Sullivan. Also on that day the "White Elephant" episode of the Avengers was on TV (a rare albino elephant disappears from an animal distribution centre for zoos worldwide) and the Beatles' "I want to hold your hand" was number 1 in the UK

and the moon looked like this on the 4th January 1964















In that same month in 1964 the Holden, Massachusetts Police Department received a call in connection with an accident on Bailey Road nr Chapin. Richard J. Harrington (of Maple Street S. Sterling, Mass) He was alone in the car when he dropped a cigarette on the floor - as he picked it up he lost control of the car and hit two large stones causing the car to flip over onto it's top. The car was demolished - his only injury was a cut over his right eye that was not serious.

In that same year of 1964 Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment

And in 1785 on the 4th of January Jacob Grimm was born -who, together with his brother Wilhelm, wrote the three volumes of Kinder und Hausmarchen (more commonly known as Grimm's Fairy Tales) - it is considered the greatest anthology of fairy tales ever put together with such classics as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin and Cinderella.

These fairy tales were read to Alistair, when he was young, by his mother on her nights off from the tiresome business of whipping and chastising politicians. It is no wonder that in later life that Alistair was inspired to produce his own anthology - but rather than fairy tales he decided his would be an anthology of plays and due to the fact that he held most playwrights in very low regard (Including William Shakespeare of whom he was heard to remark was "a pointless wordsmith who's plays had no point") he decided it would be an anthology of his own plays that he would write specially for the purpose , thus was born "A collection of very Short Plays".
It is impossible to know for sure at what age these plays were written but one assumes it was when Alistair was in his late 20's or early 30's.

Unfortunately Alistair had yet to find a publisher who was on his wavelength (or indeed any other human who was) so there exists only one copy in paper format which I am lucky to own (having paid the reasonable price of £1.30 - after haggling down from £1.50 - at a small secondhand shop in Coventry in 2007) - I have put the collection on the internet before for people to download at a very reasonable price but, alas, it seems the time is still not right for the genius of Alistair H Cronoly so I have sold not one copy.


For that reason I have decided to put in this blog every single play from that collection as I am determined that Alistair H Cronoly will become a household name.

So next time I post it will be the wonderful and thought provoking plays of Alistair H Cronoly prepare to be impressed and amazed ..............

Monday 18 May 2009

Time Slips

Alistair was always interested in the function of time and it's effects on perception - at school he was for a long while confused by time and as a result it wasn't until his early twenties that he learned how to actually tell the time. This next poem deals with his thoughts on time and how inevitable destruction awaits us all no matter how old we are or, indeed, what time it is. In Alistair's world tea time and breakfast time were one and the same - age had no meaning.


Time Slips
Time twists the head off the dog
Wrenches at the heart
Splits the soul in two
And vanishes into the silent dawn
Beaten back by the gorse bush fire
In retreat
As fire falls from the sky
With the naked eye
Watching
Payback time
You killed some of our donkeys
We'll kill some of yours
My president is bigger than your evil madman ruler
Yeah but my ruler is no worse than your evil madman president
Slipping back in time
An eye for an eye
Turn the other cheek
But not this week
Time for war
Time to kill
Beating time into submission
Watch the world burn

Poem 15

I thought I would start with this poem first - as the first 14 were indeed rubbish (just finding his feet as it were) So here we go......Poem 15

Poem 15
Convoluted thoughts, strangled and tied up
By design and desire
Caught in the crossfire
Serpent like slithering in the mud
Hands covered with dried blood
On the shores of the sea
The remains of a tree
Washed up, bleached white
And carved with initials
And dates and crude rhymes
From distant times
And the wine was sour
But we drank for an hour
And felt sick
In the pit
But inhaling the fumes
And the poisoned air
Seemed fair
As we caught sight
Of a light
In the sky
That took all our dreams
And exploded them sky high
Then rammed the images
Down our raw throats
And made us choke
On the thorns of a rose
As we struggled to speak
Of days when we’d meet
In the old schoolyard
Like a pair of wild cards

Friday 8 May 2009

An Introduction to the Poems of Alistair H Cronoly

As promised we will now delve into the poetry of Alistar H Cronoly. The beginnings of his sojourn into poetry were shaky to say the least but he progressed quickly and soon became a published author. We will start with a little known poem of his that was hurriedly written on the back of an envelope and was found amongst his possessions when he sadly left us for another world. I start here just to show the pathos and humour of the man that some (misguided) people called the butcher of poetry

Here is the poem called simply PIG, it is a deep and meaningful poem that captures what it's like to be a pig in the modern world and also contains a degree of sadness that hitherto was unknown in his poems. .........

Pig
I came across a pig
Who mouthed the words "I dig"
For truffles I presumed he meant
But he was stuck in cement
With no bucket and spade
And a degree in the building trade
But the cement was dry
And that was why
I came across the pig
You dig?
As I am sure you will all agree this toe dipping into the poetry of Alistair has surely caused a desperate desire to dive fully headlong into his wonderful world of words....and in my next posting I will show his wit and dexterity of language - surely his pen is mightier than the sword (although he tended to write in pencil)

Thursday 7 May 2009

A brief history and comedy failure

Alistair H Cronoly was born 4th January 1964 in the small midlands town of Kenilworth, an unremarkable place then as now. His father Benjamin R Cronoly worked in a local factory making toys and his mother Betty Buswell was interested in rubber wear and worked part-time as a dominatrix serving many a shamefaced police chief and politician.

His schooling had been uneventful and as he described it "A pointless exercise in a pointless place" needless to say he acquired no qualifications and left the local posh school without prospects in 1980.

His parents were keen on allowing Alistair the freedom to express himself and so they bought him a guitar and he proceeded to spend long lonely hours in his bedroom trying to master "House of the Rising Sun" After two years of practice he decided the guitar was not for him and the neighbours decided that singing was also definitely not for him either. Alistair remarks of this period in his life as "An exercise in pointlessness"
It was now time for Alistair to enter the workplace and so began the hunt for the perfect job....

Alistair, clearly influenced by his parents careers, began work, in 1983, in a rubber toy factory called Rubber Toys N Stuff where he stayed for two years. It was whilst on one of the factory's regular social outings to the seaside (Western Super Mare) that Alistair discovered that people would often laugh at him and this caused him to contemplate the idea of becoming a comedian.

There exists an old audio cassette tape (BASF C60) of his one and only comedy performance where it was clear his career did not lie in this direction. He had managed to convince the landlord of a local pub that he was an experienced stand up comedian and (un)luckily this show was recorded by Alistair himself who was convinced that one day he would be as big a comedian as Lenny Henry. This tape still exists and is owned by the author of this blog. It is badly damaged and it's not easy to hear much of the show at all - an extract of that show is transcribed below and it is clear that the genius of Alistair H Cronoly was yet to rear it's ugly head.....



EXTRACT TRANSCRIBED BY N COLEMAN

AHC: And welcome on stage Alistair H Cronoly

Audience: small applause

AHC: Good evening ladies and gentleman.

Right, before I start I would just like to warn you that I use the f word quite a lot and if anyone is easily offended then fuck off now

Ok, I'm here to have a laugh so lets …. Er …no you're here to have a laugh so let's hope I'm funny. Tell you what lets go to the end of the show and see if there's any laughs for you.

And so the Irishman’s fat mother in law punched Jim Davidson in the face

Thank you and goodnight

See ya, you've all been great

AUDIENCE: one or two claps and a light ripple of laughter

AHC: Nah not funny, you might as well all fuck off and demand your money back.

For those of you that are going to stay here's a joke for you

Knock knock

AUDIENCE: one or two people say, "who's there?"

AHC: C'mon Knock knock

AUDIENCE: more people shout, "who's there?"


AHC: Fucked if I know, anyway there was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Welshman in a pub. The Englishman turned to the other two and said "Fancy a drink?" The Irishman said "yes please" and the Welshman said "yes please" so the Englishman bought them both a drink and one for himself and one for the barman.

Did you hear the one about the fat girl who couldn't stop eating? Well she died.
Did you hear the one about the fat man who couldn't stop eating? He died as well
Did you hear about the man who shot himself with a gun? He also died.
And the girl who hung herself? Guess what? She fucking died as well.
It's a fine balance between life and death. A fucking fine balance.

AUDIENCE: one or two laughs and some nervous applause

AHC: Don't worry if you don't like the jokes, it's probably 'cos I haven't told any yet. I'll get to them as soon as I can remember them. Ah….why do people over the age of 60 have a fall rather than fall over? What's that all about? 60 is some sort of magic age that once you reach it you turn into some old person who smells of piss and has a fall every twenty minutes. Might as well move into some shabby fucking retirement home where you can sit watching telly and dribble down your chin while nubile nurses bring you your food. Sounds like a life plan to me.

AUDIENCE: virtual silence

AHC: Hmmmmm…don't seem to be going down to well. Here's another thought (tape is in audible for a few seconds) ..and I don't even have a dog

AUDIENCE: laughter - not a lot but the most so far

AHC: Now then here's a thought, what is the point? Huh? C’mon then, anyone who can tell me what the point is can have £100 right now.

AUDIENCE: one male voice shouts out "To make us laugh", another shouts "Live life to the full"

AHC: Ah fuck off, the point is the end of something. A knife comes to an end at the point. A pencil has a point at the end. The point is the end. That's the fucking point. The end.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As we can see a comedian he was not and Alistair remarks on this period of his life as "A pointless effort at amusing pointless people"

In the next post I shall introduce you to the passion of Alistair's life - Poetry - and I will take extracts from his only published volume of Poetry.....copies of this book are very hard to come by as there were only 7 copies made. I have, however, in my possession many un-published pieces some of which I will share as we gather momentum on this fantastic journey into the mind of a genius

Alistair H Cronoly
Author, Artist and Failed Comedian
courtesy of the Cronoly Foundation

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Alistair H Cronoly

Alistair H Cronoly was at various times throughout his life a poet, a comdedian, a novelist, a playwright, an artist, a song writer and a man of letters. I feel it is my duty to pass on some of his thoughts and words as he was never fully recognised, in his day, as the genius he clearly was.

I will therefore educate you all to the ramblings of Alistair H Cronoly

My first duty will be to introduce you to the great man and give a brief history of his life - this will follow in due course..........