Second Honeymoon, by Kristina Hanratty
Krista Hanratty - Second Honeymoon
BBC Radio 4: Saturday Night Theatre
Broadcast: Saturday 23rd September 1989 @ 7:45 p.m.
From a small town in Norfolk near Walsingham, Helen Mortimer has been taking care of her husband Larry, a former navy destroyer
captain, who had suffered a stroke five years earlier. When she becomes bed-ridden for a week with the flu, her doctor reads her the riot
act saying how selfish she'd been for not taking a break and how it would benefit Larry to have a change in environment. So, with her
husband put in a home where he is being looked after, she decides to take a break and returns to a hotel in Wesham, Lancashire, near
Blackpool, where she and Larry had spent their honeymoon 18 years earlier.
This is an experiment - coming to the hotel on her own - since she hasn't had a break since Larry had taken ill. But she feels a bit
self-conscious being a married woman on her own. She can't help feeling that people were looking at her at breakfast; going through the list
of possibilities: Divorced? Widowed? But then she meets Ben Harper, 49 years-old and a bachleor. Ben is a writer of naval war stories,
having five books published. He was formally a London architect but when he decided to write full-time, he moved to Wesham.
A friendship soon blossoms into something more and Helen must make a decision where her future will lie....
With Angela Thorne [Helen Mortimer], Martin Jarvis [Ben Harper], Margot Boyd [Emily Buckland], Norman Bird [Dickie Buckland],
Peter Penry-Jones [Larry Mortimer], David King [Jeffrey Fletcher], Joe Dunlop [The barman], Alice Arnold [Phylis, the Waitress], Ken
Cumberledge [The Desk Clerk], and Vincent Brimble [Jim, the Waiter].
Directed by Enyd Williams.
90 minutes.
Jim
