The play I'm directing at Hampstead is partly about how significant events in our lives are not signposted. And, indeed, it is only retrospectively that this day stands out in my memory.
I must have been 11 or 12 and had been sent to stay with my step-grandparents just outside Brighton. Looking back I can see that I was sent there so that my mother and their son could try and sort out a very unhappy relationship. I was miserable as a consequence of that marriage, but adored my step-father's parents, Ronald and Dotty. Ronald was a landscape gardener, a small gentle Welshman with a very severe stutter. He never said much, but I would find notes pinned to teddy bears and he made me beautifully-iced birthday cakes.
One afternoon, Ronald offered to take me to Brighton for the day, to see the waxworks and the Dolphinarium. I remember a walk along the beach that seemed to last forever. Ronald talked. He talked to me about his past and about my future. How to grasp my fate, how he knew he would be proud of me. We walked and walked.
I remember the adult world opening up to me as something more than a sordid option. At the time being a grown-up looked a horrible, nasty life. I didn't want to be one - it seemed to me to be all arguing and having an awful time. But he made me realise that it didn't have to be like that, that I could be anything I wanted to be. I remember seeing an almost silent man in a new light. And I remember feeling ready to grow up.
I never saw Ronald again. When I got home, my mum was leaving my step-father. I think Ronald knew that I was going to have a difficult time. He was a very special man.