Thursday 15th November
I know it's only half way through November, but in a very significant way, today began my Festive Season. At around this time of year, towns and cities large and small across the UK begin switching on their Christmas lights. Yes, I know it's too early. Yes, I Know it's only the middle of November. But it's time to turn on the lights and everyone wants a skin character as part of their festivities, so that means it Boon Time for Rainbow, which is all good for me.
So my Festive Season began today. In this business (whatever business I can be said to be in), work is seasonal, so from now until the end of the year I need to work as much as I can, because January and February will be a wasteland. First Switch-on of the year was in Welwyn Garden City with Bart and Homer. They're good characters to take to events like this, because they're mobile and easy to animate and the artists can go to town and have fun with them. We had a pretty full-on evening, with an appearance in the shopping mall, one outside in the town square, a trek across to John Lewis for the third, back for the fourth, to switch on the lights and a final fifth appearance in the shopping mall to finish. It took a little bit of negotiating, as these things often do, especially when they involve a change of venue during the day, but everything went really very smoothly. Well, from our end of things they did; the Christmas Lights failed to switch on when the button was pushed, but everyone had had a fun evening so no-one minded too much. It was a late finish though, by the time I'd been back to Rainbow and then home, and the winter nights are starting to become a little chill.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Wednesday 14th November
As I shuffled up the steps to DSL this morning, it occurred to me that I might have been a bit hasty in trying to go out amongst young people last night, as The Lurgey clearly still held me in its snotty grip. Consequently I was functioning on half-power for the whole of the day, which is not good when you're wielding three feet of sharp steel. A very early night tonight. And soup.
As I shuffled up the steps to DSL this morning, it occurred to me that I might have been a bit hasty in trying to go out amongst young people last night, as The Lurgey clearly still held me in its snotty grip. Consequently I was functioning on half-power for the whole of the day, which is not good when you're wielding three feet of sharp steel. A very early night tonight. And soup.
In which I am laid low by the Lurgey
Monday 12th - Tuesday 13th November
The Lurgey is a widely recognised medical condition. On the scale of seriousness, it lies somewhere between A Cold, which is a moderate inconvenience, and Man-Flu, which as everyone knows is a killer and against which the chances of survival are perilously thin. Men tend never to catch A Cold, or if they do it will barely manifest itself, the symptoms being little removed from the usual personal habits of the adult male (sniffing, coughing, occasionally wiping the nose on the nearest available bit of rag, selective hearing loss and a tendency to fall asleep on the settee). Man-Flu, by contrast, can result in almost total paralysis for a period of several days BUT - and this is a very important BUT - it only affects men who have someone to run around after them for the duration of the illness. Without the presence of a nursemaid, there is simply no point in having Man-Flu, and this is something that the virus seems able to detect as it has been scientifically shown to avoid infecting men who might have to just get on with it and look after themselves. This leaves us with The Lurgey, which comes in a variety of recognisable forms based on the relative quotients of Snot, Thick-headedness, Sleepiness, Deafness, That Weird Hot/Cold Shivery Thing and Need For Soup.
It usually takes a pretty heavy dose of Lurgey to keep me of my feet. I have before now gone into work suffering from fairly serious cases of The Lurgey because I've never believed in taking a day off sick unless you are actually dead (and in any case, if you work in TIE you have no choice. I did - once - miss two days of work on a TIE tour, but that was Man-Flu and it was literally two days before I could get from the bed to the telephone to call a doctor, and then becasue we weren't local no doctor would agree to see us). The downside of this incredible fortitude is that I will almost always contract The Lurgey the moment I have a day off. True to form, I had two days lined up on which I wouldn't have to work, and would be able to get all my TTP homework done. But no, sensing a brief respite from the grind, my carcass let down its defences and in came The Lurgey. result: Two completely wasted days of sleeping on the sofa and sneezing a lot.
But on Tuesday night, I had to get up and leave the house, as Brian had tickets for Kate Nash at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Kate Nash is very close to Brian's heart, not least because he discovered her before almost anyone else, and first saw her playing live to an audience of about six (that's six people, not an audience of six-year-olds. Though more of this later). I'd heard the album and been pleasantly surprised but this was my introduction to Kate Nash as a live performer, and she's become a bit more popular, to the tune of packing out the Shepherd's Bush Empire, which is pretty good going. Once we'd arrived and were having a medicinal beer, we began to notice that those packing it out were almost exclusively about twenty years younger than us, and as we waited for her to appear we fell into playing a desperate game of Spot Someone Older Than Us. I think we got two. Luckily, the Nash was so good that we stopped caring that we were the only people there who weren't teenage girls or music journalists and I was very glad that I'd fought off The Lurgey sufficiently to make it. Great stuff, it was. Completely wasted on the young and healthy.
The Lurgey is a widely recognised medical condition. On the scale of seriousness, it lies somewhere between A Cold, which is a moderate inconvenience, and Man-Flu, which as everyone knows is a killer and against which the chances of survival are perilously thin. Men tend never to catch A Cold, or if they do it will barely manifest itself, the symptoms being little removed from the usual personal habits of the adult male (sniffing, coughing, occasionally wiping the nose on the nearest available bit of rag, selective hearing loss and a tendency to fall asleep on the settee). Man-Flu, by contrast, can result in almost total paralysis for a period of several days BUT - and this is a very important BUT - it only affects men who have someone to run around after them for the duration of the illness. Without the presence of a nursemaid, there is simply no point in having Man-Flu, and this is something that the virus seems able to detect as it has been scientifically shown to avoid infecting men who might have to just get on with it and look after themselves. This leaves us with The Lurgey, which comes in a variety of recognisable forms based on the relative quotients of Snot, Thick-headedness, Sleepiness, Deafness, That Weird Hot/Cold Shivery Thing and Need For Soup.
It usually takes a pretty heavy dose of Lurgey to keep me of my feet. I have before now gone into work suffering from fairly serious cases of The Lurgey because I've never believed in taking a day off sick unless you are actually dead (and in any case, if you work in TIE you have no choice. I did - once - miss two days of work on a TIE tour, but that was Man-Flu and it was literally two days before I could get from the bed to the telephone to call a doctor, and then becasue we weren't local no doctor would agree to see us). The downside of this incredible fortitude is that I will almost always contract The Lurgey the moment I have a day off. True to form, I had two days lined up on which I wouldn't have to work, and would be able to get all my TTP homework done. But no, sensing a brief respite from the grind, my carcass let down its defences and in came The Lurgey. result: Two completely wasted days of sleeping on the sofa and sneezing a lot.
But on Tuesday night, I had to get up and leave the house, as Brian had tickets for Kate Nash at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Kate Nash is very close to Brian's heart, not least because he discovered her before almost anyone else, and first saw her playing live to an audience of about six (that's six people, not an audience of six-year-olds. Though more of this later). I'd heard the album and been pleasantly surprised but this was my introduction to Kate Nash as a live performer, and she's become a bit more popular, to the tune of packing out the Shepherd's Bush Empire, which is pretty good going. Once we'd arrived and were having a medicinal beer, we began to notice that those packing it out were almost exclusively about twenty years younger than us, and as we waited for her to appear we fell into playing a desperate game of Spot Someone Older Than Us. I think we got two. Luckily, the Nash was so good that we stopped caring that we were the only people there who weren't teenage girls or music journalists and I was very glad that I'd fought off The Lurgey sufficiently to make it. Great stuff, it was. Completely wasted on the young and healthy.
Sunday 11th November
Day two of this weekend was Unarmed Combat Boot Camp with Bret. Bret is scarier than Philip, partly because he's one of the guys at the top of the game and he really knows what he's talking about - it was he and Richard who taught Philip ten years ago - and partly because he is that particularly discomfiting combination, The Deadpan American. All of which combined puts me hopelessly in awe of Bret and turns me into a hopelessly clumsy arse whenever I have to assist him. I'm absolutley sure that Bret must think I'm a gormless simpleton, but at the same time he did write me a letter of support for my TTP application, so he must at least believe I have some redeeming potential.
So we began the day with Bret teaching us all the Unarmed techniques which we might never have been taught before, or at least might only have covered briefly, once, five years ago. Things we hardly ever use and would never teach to beginners. Then we moved on to some more familiar territory and things got a bit harder because now we had to demonstrate each move and do it properly. These were all techniques which we use regularly and perform almost without thinking, only now we have to do everything with pinpoint accuracy whilst our every motion is scrtinised by Yoda for imperfections. Then it got really scary, because in the last part of the day we were each given three or four of the most commonly used techniques to teach to the rest of the gang. This meant not only getting it right ourselves, but having to think about how to teach it to someone else. With the someone elses being Bret and Philip. Who weren't smiling much. And then told us all the things we'd done wrong. Which were legion. Any genuine teachers who may be reading this will I'm sure by now be wearing that slightly smug, slightly condescending smile that we've all seen on teachers when they watch other people who aren't teachers try to teach something really really simple and find themselves flailing around in a vat of sticky inadequacy. To all of you I say this: Yes, we know it's really hard. No-one said that teaching anything is easy. Except maybe Geography, which as we all know can be tught by PE teachers in between doing PE. But just you try teaching something that, on the grounds of your successful application you are supposed to know how to do blindfold, to a big, dour American Jedi Master and his seven-foot, black-clad, Undead-17th-Century-swordsmaster underling and see how easy it is.
Suffice to say that each of us left DSL this evening wondering what the hell we were doing there, as we clearly knew nothing and would never be able to speak in front of a roomful of people again. Tonight there was no pub, becasue on top of everything else, I found today that I am in the grip of the Winter Lurgey.
Day two of this weekend was Unarmed Combat Boot Camp with Bret. Bret is scarier than Philip, partly because he's one of the guys at the top of the game and he really knows what he's talking about - it was he and Richard who taught Philip ten years ago - and partly because he is that particularly discomfiting combination, The Deadpan American. All of which combined puts me hopelessly in awe of Bret and turns me into a hopelessly clumsy arse whenever I have to assist him. I'm absolutley sure that Bret must think I'm a gormless simpleton, but at the same time he did write me a letter of support for my TTP application, so he must at least believe I have some redeeming potential.
So we began the day with Bret teaching us all the Unarmed techniques which we might never have been taught before, or at least might only have covered briefly, once, five years ago. Things we hardly ever use and would never teach to beginners. Then we moved on to some more familiar territory and things got a bit harder because now we had to demonstrate each move and do it properly. These were all techniques which we use regularly and perform almost without thinking, only now we have to do everything with pinpoint accuracy whilst our every motion is scrtinised by Yoda for imperfections. Then it got really scary, because in the last part of the day we were each given three or four of the most commonly used techniques to teach to the rest of the gang. This meant not only getting it right ourselves, but having to think about how to teach it to someone else. With the someone elses being Bret and Philip. Who weren't smiling much. And then told us all the things we'd done wrong. Which were legion. Any genuine teachers who may be reading this will I'm sure by now be wearing that slightly smug, slightly condescending smile that we've all seen on teachers when they watch other people who aren't teachers try to teach something really really simple and find themselves flailing around in a vat of sticky inadequacy. To all of you I say this: Yes, we know it's really hard. No-one said that teaching anything is easy. Except maybe Geography, which as we all know can be tught by PE teachers in between doing PE. But just you try teaching something that, on the grounds of your successful application you are supposed to know how to do blindfold, to a big, dour American Jedi Master and his seven-foot, black-clad, Undead-17th-Century-swordsmaster underling and see how easy it is.
Suffice to say that each of us left DSL this evening wondering what the hell we were doing there, as we clearly knew nothing and would never be able to speak in front of a roomful of people again. Tonight there was no pub, becasue on top of everything else, I found today that I am in the grip of the Winter Lurgey.
Saturday 10h November
The second of our Teacher Training Programme weekends opened with a session on Physiology and warm-ups by Janet, who is the best qualified to talk about this sort of thing since at one time she was a fitness instructor. Every member of the BASSC teaching staff has had at least two previous lives before taking up stage combat. Janet, for example, was a fitness instructor but also worked for the BBC creating sound effects (Edge of Darkness was one of hers - the sound of punches to the face in that series were made by mixing the noise of a gunshot with the sound of the biggest bloke they could find being slapped on the back whilst wearing a leather jacket). Jonathan, as I've mentioned before, has lived a great number of previous lives and seems to have been around for roughly three hundred years (looking well on it though). This puts we four trainees in a good position, as we've all come from something completely diffferent: Gordon is an actor, Ronin has managed venues, Sam used to run a fancy dress shop and I have a tattered history of crap jobs streaming behind me like a length of bog rol stuck to the heel of my shoe.
In the afternoon Philip came in to lead another session on theories of teaching, in which I can make it appear that I know far more than I do, by making sure I use long words and sentences with at least three clauses.
At the end of the day, Ronin, Sam and I went to the pub for a couple, where I listened to the lads' torrent of enthusiasm for the future of stage combat with the growing realisation that this was what I felt like about theatre fifteen years ago, whereas now I've really stopped caring.
Hmm.
The second of our Teacher Training Programme weekends opened with a session on Physiology and warm-ups by Janet, who is the best qualified to talk about this sort of thing since at one time she was a fitness instructor. Every member of the BASSC teaching staff has had at least two previous lives before taking up stage combat. Janet, for example, was a fitness instructor but also worked for the BBC creating sound effects (Edge of Darkness was one of hers - the sound of punches to the face in that series were made by mixing the noise of a gunshot with the sound of the biggest bloke they could find being slapped on the back whilst wearing a leather jacket). Jonathan, as I've mentioned before, has lived a great number of previous lives and seems to have been around for roughly three hundred years (looking well on it though). This puts we four trainees in a good position, as we've all come from something completely diffferent: Gordon is an actor, Ronin has managed venues, Sam used to run a fancy dress shop and I have a tattered history of crap jobs streaming behind me like a length of bog rol stuck to the heel of my shoe.
In the afternoon Philip came in to lead another session on theories of teaching, in which I can make it appear that I know far more than I do, by making sure I use long words and sentences with at least three clauses.
At the end of the day, Ronin, Sam and I went to the pub for a couple, where I listened to the lads' torrent of enthusiasm for the future of stage combat with the growing realisation that this was what I felt like about theatre fifteen years ago, whereas now I've really stopped caring.
Hmm.
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Friday 9th November
I had three jobs to do today: To take Oona the Laguna to the Renault palace over at Park Royal for her MOT, to prepare all the stuff I needed to prepare for our imminent second TTP training weekend and to go into The Shop for a pitiful four-hour evening shift. To be perfectly honest, I could have done without the evening shift and had only volunteered to do it in order to keep The Shop sweet so they don't start to think I'm entirely superfluous and let me drift away completely. A single four hour shift is really not worth doing, since by the time I've bought a travel card, eaten in the canteen and had tax deductions taken off I actually take home about a tenner, which is the same amount of money I used to take home from a four hour early morning shift in the newsagent's, long ago at the age of sixteen. I therefore reserve the right to be in A Grump for the course of the evening when doing a lone four-hour shift. And to eat a cake from the canteen.
I had three jobs to do today: To take Oona the Laguna to the Renault palace over at Park Royal for her MOT, to prepare all the stuff I needed to prepare for our imminent second TTP training weekend and to go into The Shop for a pitiful four-hour evening shift. To be perfectly honest, I could have done without the evening shift and had only volunteered to do it in order to keep The Shop sweet so they don't start to think I'm entirely superfluous and let me drift away completely. A single four hour shift is really not worth doing, since by the time I've bought a travel card, eaten in the canteen and had tax deductions taken off I actually take home about a tenner, which is the same amount of money I used to take home from a four hour early morning shift in the newsagent's, long ago at the age of sixteen. I therefore reserve the right to be in A Grump for the course of the evening when doing a lone four-hour shift. And to eat a cake from the canteen.
Thursday 8th November
Birmingham was my destination this grey and murky morning, as I got in the car at 6am and heaved her onto the M40 - a road I'm quickly becoming intimately familiar with. Three shows a week is somehow much, much heavier going than two shows a week, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that in the old days we used to do two shows a day, five days a week, usually with a drive in the middle of the day. I wonder whether I'd still be able to do that now? And what I would look like by the end of the week if I tried?
The school I arrived at was one of those forbidding Victorian constructions whose main hall nestles right in the centre of the building at the furthest point from any given entrance, and which involve a more than usually strenuous get-in. And it was in Birmingham, which we know from experience can add a whole new kind of forbidding to any working day. But on the positive side we were doing Children of Iron, the Victorian play, which suits this kind of big, forbidding old hall, and whose workshop I enjoy the most since everyone gets plenty to do even with a cast of thirty. They were hard work, though far from the worst we've had (who were also in Birmingham), and against all our expectations they really pulled it together in the afternoon and put on a pretty good show. But it was still a hard enough day for me to need a trip to the pub once I got home.
Birmingham was my destination this grey and murky morning, as I got in the car at 6am and heaved her onto the M40 - a road I'm quickly becoming intimately familiar with. Three shows a week is somehow much, much heavier going than two shows a week, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that in the old days we used to do two shows a day, five days a week, usually with a drive in the middle of the day. I wonder whether I'd still be able to do that now? And what I would look like by the end of the week if I tried?
The school I arrived at was one of those forbidding Victorian constructions whose main hall nestles right in the centre of the building at the furthest point from any given entrance, and which involve a more than usually strenuous get-in. And it was in Birmingham, which we know from experience can add a whole new kind of forbidding to any working day. But on the positive side we were doing Children of Iron, the Victorian play, which suits this kind of big, forbidding old hall, and whose workshop I enjoy the most since everyone gets plenty to do even with a cast of thirty. They were hard work, though far from the worst we've had (who were also in Birmingham), and against all our expectations they really pulled it together in the afternoon and put on a pretty good show. But it was still a hard enough day for me to need a trip to the pub once I got home.
Wednesday 7th November
A particularly early start this morning, as I had to see the Physio before going to DSL. Ever since my unexpected road run around Cardiff during Turtle week, my knee has been feeling suspiciously unstable, but Richard the Physio seems to think it's doing fine - he bent and twisted it around a bit as usual and couldn't find anything worrying, so more than likely I just pushed it a bit further than it really wanted.
With this encouraging news, and the knowledge that I can perform more than ten single-leg squats whilst standing on a wobbly rubber cushion, I went to DSL for what was a fairly gruelling day. By the last class, I was fighting to keep my eyes open and even Philip was tired enough to join me in ballsing up a demonstration of a drill sequence, which is virtually unheard of. Thus it was that, having taken great pride in reheating the remainder of last night's fabulous chilli, I took the opportunity of an early night.
A particularly early start this morning, as I had to see the Physio before going to DSL. Ever since my unexpected road run around Cardiff during Turtle week, my knee has been feeling suspiciously unstable, but Richard the Physio seems to think it's doing fine - he bent and twisted it around a bit as usual and couldn't find anything worrying, so more than likely I just pushed it a bit further than it really wanted.
With this encouraging news, and the knowledge that I can perform more than ten single-leg squats whilst standing on a wobbly rubber cushion, I went to DSL for what was a fairly gruelling day. By the last class, I was fighting to keep my eyes open and even Philip was tired enough to join me in ballsing up a demonstration of a drill sequence, which is virtually unheard of. Thus it was that, having taken great pride in reheating the remainder of last night's fabulous chilli, I took the opportunity of an early night.
Tuesday 6th November
In the tiny village of East Tilbury, on the farthest reaches of the Thames estuary, we found a slightly bonkers school, run by a charming but slightly bonkers head, full of slightly vapid and gormless children.
Now, we were there today to do Penelope Penguin, the one project we have that is designed specifically for Infants. It's a very gentle show, very simple (compared to the others in the rep) and has penguins in it, which keeps me happy. But it is an infant show, which brings it a whole new set of problems (or 'challenges' as schools like to call them). Working with infants is immeasurably more difficult. Their conceptual understanding is less well developed, their concentration span is much shorter and they tend to be far more interested in rolling around on the floor and making random unspecified noise than in working together to tell a story. Or much else, for that matter. Back in the day, infant Seagull shows used to run a half-hour workshop where three actors worked with a team of fifteen childs, and it worked pretty well. My belief is that a whole day working with us is far too much for children that young, and I'm not at all surprised that their concentration wanes over the course of the morning. Add to that the fact that there are now only two of us, and that today we had a group of thirty, and the prospect becomes less appealing by the moment. To alleviate some of the difficulties we've had with this show in the past, Sian has added a new scene featuring a whole phalanx of penguins, for which we have a complete set of brand new penguin costumes, and this does help to a very great extent. But for both of us, this remains a heavy day's work.
To put a final cap on the day, I seem to be succumbing to this year's Winter Lurgey. To combat this, I set to work as soon as I was home making my signature chilli con carne with extra welly, in the hope that I could blast the Lurgey out of my system. Remarkably, this would be the second time within a week that I've made my own food in my own kitchen. I'm starting to remember what it feels like to live in the real world.
In the tiny village of East Tilbury, on the farthest reaches of the Thames estuary, we found a slightly bonkers school, run by a charming but slightly bonkers head, full of slightly vapid and gormless children.
Now, we were there today to do Penelope Penguin, the one project we have that is designed specifically for Infants. It's a very gentle show, very simple (compared to the others in the rep) and has penguins in it, which keeps me happy. But it is an infant show, which brings it a whole new set of problems (or 'challenges' as schools like to call them). Working with infants is immeasurably more difficult. Their conceptual understanding is less well developed, their concentration span is much shorter and they tend to be far more interested in rolling around on the floor and making random unspecified noise than in working together to tell a story. Or much else, for that matter. Back in the day, infant Seagull shows used to run a half-hour workshop where three actors worked with a team of fifteen childs, and it worked pretty well. My belief is that a whole day working with us is far too much for children that young, and I'm not at all surprised that their concentration wanes over the course of the morning. Add to that the fact that there are now only two of us, and that today we had a group of thirty, and the prospect becomes less appealing by the moment. To alleviate some of the difficulties we've had with this show in the past, Sian has added a new scene featuring a whole phalanx of penguins, for which we have a complete set of brand new penguin costumes, and this does help to a very great extent. But for both of us, this remains a heavy day's work.
To put a final cap on the day, I seem to be succumbing to this year's Winter Lurgey. To combat this, I set to work as soon as I was home making my signature chilli con carne with extra welly, in the hope that I could blast the Lurgey out of my system. Remarkably, this would be the second time within a week that I've made my own food in my own kitchen. I'm starting to remember what it feels like to live in the real world.
Monday 5th November
This week's going to be particularly busy, given that we have three days of shows rather than two. Thankfully, we were in Chorleywood today, which meant I had the double luxury of not having to travel on a Sunday evening and being able to take the tube this morning rather than drive. We'd been to this school before, back in February, when we did Grandma's Birthday, and I remembered it as a really good show with particularly able children. But perhaps my memory is starting to crumble a bit in my old age, because the gang we had today were a bit all over the place. To be fair, so were we - Jumble Bag is still running itself in, and we are by no means fully on top of it yet, so there were a fair few snaffs and one or two technical glitches. The Animatronic Bear managed to completely destroy the emotional final scene by gently falling over backwards at the moment the central character is reunited with her father whom she'd assumed was dead. But already I like this show a lot, and I like the shape of the workshop, which makes for a much better working day.
Round to Essex once we'd packed up, to Thurrock for tomorrow's larks.
This week's going to be particularly busy, given that we have three days of shows rather than two. Thankfully, we were in Chorleywood today, which meant I had the double luxury of not having to travel on a Sunday evening and being able to take the tube this morning rather than drive. We'd been to this school before, back in February, when we did Grandma's Birthday, and I remembered it as a really good show with particularly able children. But perhaps my memory is starting to crumble a bit in my old age, because the gang we had today were a bit all over the place. To be fair, so were we - Jumble Bag is still running itself in, and we are by no means fully on top of it yet, so there were a fair few snaffs and one or two technical glitches. The Animatronic Bear managed to completely destroy the emotional final scene by gently falling over backwards at the moment the central character is reunited with her father whom she'd assumed was dead. But already I like this show a lot, and I like the shape of the workshop, which makes for a much better working day.
Round to Essex once we'd packed up, to Thurrock for tomorrow's larks.
Sunday 4th November
The problem with having a normal Saturday night out like normal people do, is that you then end up having a normal Sunday like normal people do, in which the entire day is effectively written off as you wake up late and bumble around with a fuzzy head getting little or nothing done. It didn't help that, after Tom had caught the tube home last night, Brian and I, sailing along on the Good Ship Beerswillage, felt obliged to make port briefly in the Walsingham on our way home. This, as it turned out, was the wrong thing to do.
The morning then largely passed us by, but we were just about able to stagger over to Masterchef, the hilariously inappropriately named caff round the corner, where one can indulge in all manner of vast cooked breakfast combinations before your brain wakes up sufficiently to stop you. Although only about a year old, Masterchef, with its red vinyl bench seats, formica-topped tables and big mugs of sweet tea, manages to capture all that is and was great about the traditional English breakfast caff and is the perfect place to find oneself after a night out.
For the remainder of the day I found myself largely on the sofa having a snooze.
The problem with having a normal Saturday night out like normal people do, is that you then end up having a normal Sunday like normal people do, in which the entire day is effectively written off as you wake up late and bumble around with a fuzzy head getting little or nothing done. It didn't help that, after Tom had caught the tube home last night, Brian and I, sailing along on the Good Ship Beerswillage, felt obliged to make port briefly in the Walsingham on our way home. This, as it turned out, was the wrong thing to do.
The morning then largely passed us by, but we were just about able to stagger over to Masterchef, the hilariously inappropriately named caff round the corner, where one can indulge in all manner of vast cooked breakfast combinations before your brain wakes up sufficiently to stop you. Although only about a year old, Masterchef, with its red vinyl bench seats, formica-topped tables and big mugs of sweet tea, manages to capture all that is and was great about the traditional English breakfast caff and is the perfect place to find oneself after a night out.
For the remainder of the day I found myself largely on the sofa having a snooze.
In which I almost experience a normal Saturday
Saturday 3rd November
The Shop.
It's been three weeks since I was last in The Shop and in that time there has been something of a change. Not so long ago, it seemed that all the staff were leaving and being replaced with Ladies, which was a good thing and made The Shop a nice place to be for a while. (well, I exaggerate. A Tolerable place to be). Now though, most of the Ladies have sensibly run for the hills and been replaced with blokes again. Not only that, but blokes who all look a bit the same so that, with the inclusion of myself, The Shop now seems to be entirely populated by thin men with sticky-up hair and thick-rimmed glasses. Now, some might argue that this could be said of all bookshops, which is a fair point - there is a certain breed of skinny man, usually with thick-rimmed glasses, often in a brown pullover, whose natural gravitation is towards the bookshop - an undemanding habitat in which they can gangle around having pseudo-intellectual conversations about books and planning a variety of false-start second careers. In this respect, The Shop could be seen to be bringing itself inline with other - normal - bookshops. In all other respects however, The Shop remains the bastion of nonsense and inefficiency we're familiar with.
The day passed away quietly enough and at six I went home, the way that normal people do. Then, even more remarkably, I went out on a Saturday night the way normal people do. I'd persuaded Tom to stop in Ealing on his way home from Taplow where he'd been up to Buddhist things, and Brian came out and joined us shortly afterwards. I don't see Tom half as often as I'd like to, since he's at least as busy as I am and probably even moreso. He's currently directing a new opera for a secondary school, which is giving him headaches and driving him into the arms of Mother Beer. This is almost unprecedented for Tom, who as a lifelong Diabetic shunned booze for many years before eventually discovering the joy of wine. As his career progresses however, heis appreciation of alcohol has grown proportionally and our Tom has finally discovered beer, which I am finding fairly hilarious. In fact, a generally hilarious evening ensued as we wandered from our favourite pub, the Red Lion, up to Pizza On The Green and spent a very jolly time, which was exactly what I needed.
The Shop.
It's been three weeks since I was last in The Shop and in that time there has been something of a change. Not so long ago, it seemed that all the staff were leaving and being replaced with Ladies, which was a good thing and made The Shop a nice place to be for a while. (well, I exaggerate. A Tolerable place to be). Now though, most of the Ladies have sensibly run for the hills and been replaced with blokes again. Not only that, but blokes who all look a bit the same so that, with the inclusion of myself, The Shop now seems to be entirely populated by thin men with sticky-up hair and thick-rimmed glasses. Now, some might argue that this could be said of all bookshops, which is a fair point - there is a certain breed of skinny man, usually with thick-rimmed glasses, often in a brown pullover, whose natural gravitation is towards the bookshop - an undemanding habitat in which they can gangle around having pseudo-intellectual conversations about books and planning a variety of false-start second careers. In this respect, The Shop could be seen to be bringing itself inline with other - normal - bookshops. In all other respects however, The Shop remains the bastion of nonsense and inefficiency we're familiar with.
The day passed away quietly enough and at six I went home, the way that normal people do. Then, even more remarkably, I went out on a Saturday night the way normal people do. I'd persuaded Tom to stop in Ealing on his way home from Taplow where he'd been up to Buddhist things, and Brian came out and joined us shortly afterwards. I don't see Tom half as often as I'd like to, since he's at least as busy as I am and probably even moreso. He's currently directing a new opera for a secondary school, which is giving him headaches and driving him into the arms of Mother Beer. This is almost unprecedented for Tom, who as a lifelong Diabetic shunned booze for many years before eventually discovering the joy of wine. As his career progresses however, heis appreciation of alcohol has grown proportionally and our Tom has finally discovered beer, which I am finding fairly hilarious. In fact, a generally hilarious evening ensued as we wandered from our favourite pub, the Red Lion, up to Pizza On The Green and spent a very jolly time, which was exactly what I needed.
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
In which some plans change
Wednesday 31st October - Friday 2nd November
What's this? A day not working? An entire day? At home? What the hell is this about?
Yes, it's true, I had a whole day in my own house, reacquainting myself with it's sorry dilapidation and wonderfully enthusiastic central heating system. And writing class logs from last week's DSL. Little more to say about Wednesday. Oh, except that I actually made my own food in my own kitchen for the first time in months.
And so to Thursday, which saw me in the car and heading up to Wenlock to begin work on the second of our three new shows for this term. Children of the Sreets is set amongst the slums of Sao Paolo, Brazil and follows the lives of children who run the gauntlet of curfews and clearance squads. More thn that I can't tell you, as I arrived to find only the first third of the script ready in finalised form, the rest being cobbled together from Margo's working copies of the old version of the show from the days when Seagull ran companies of three actors. We set off to have a read-through but it quickly became apparent that the bulk of the script wasn't yet in workable form. So having read through what we could, I set off down the road to the Broseley Guest House and its many cushions. Despite the lure of a pub quiz in the Duke of York next door, I showed remarkable willpower in nipping over for a proper pub dinner of liver and onions then returning to my room for an evening of pacing and line-learning, rather than an evening of some beer.
Friday morning saw me pacing once again - I find it impossible to learn lines sitting down or standing still. The only way lines go into my head is by pacing rapidly around a small area and drinking copious amounts of tea. Well, to be honest, the tea has no bearing on the line learning, it's just another excuse to drink copious amounts of tea. Any excse will generally do: reading, writing, watching the telly, being on the phone... If I have no excuse for drinking tea, it tends to mean I have nothing to do, in which case I fill in time by making a cup of tea.
So at midday, Sian and I went over to Cressage Hall and ran through the first scene, which by now I could largely do off book, but which requires very little actual rehearsal as it largely consists of me standing at the head of a class of children talking to them. In a Scottish accent. We'd got as far as running through this scene a couple of times, when Margo rang to say there was no way the rest of the script was going to be ready in time. This was something Sian and I had anticipated and, given that we'd given ourselves five days to work up the whole show before its planned opening on Tuesday next week, we'd already been discussing contingency plans. Sadly, our fears proved well-founded. Given Margo's present illness the script wasn't going to be ready for us in time, and without a script we wouldn't have time to get it ready.
So, a decision having been made, I quickly rang The Shop to see if they could use me for anything tomorrow. Why did I do this? Why? I could have had, of all things, a Day Off! Well, I haven't worked a Saturday for ages and I'm starting to think it would be a good idea to try to keep them sweet before they let me go altogether. Also, I needed to make up for the days of rehearsal I was losing. Unfortunately, The Shop had a free 10 - 6 shift, so back into the car I got and drove straight back down the M40 again.
What's this? A day not working? An entire day? At home? What the hell is this about?
Yes, it's true, I had a whole day in my own house, reacquainting myself with it's sorry dilapidation and wonderfully enthusiastic central heating system. And writing class logs from last week's DSL. Little more to say about Wednesday. Oh, except that I actually made my own food in my own kitchen for the first time in months.
And so to Thursday, which saw me in the car and heading up to Wenlock to begin work on the second of our three new shows for this term. Children of the Sreets is set amongst the slums of Sao Paolo, Brazil and follows the lives of children who run the gauntlet of curfews and clearance squads. More thn that I can't tell you, as I arrived to find only the first third of the script ready in finalised form, the rest being cobbled together from Margo's working copies of the old version of the show from the days when Seagull ran companies of three actors. We set off to have a read-through but it quickly became apparent that the bulk of the script wasn't yet in workable form. So having read through what we could, I set off down the road to the Broseley Guest House and its many cushions. Despite the lure of a pub quiz in the Duke of York next door, I showed remarkable willpower in nipping over for a proper pub dinner of liver and onions then returning to my room for an evening of pacing and line-learning, rather than an evening of some beer.
Friday morning saw me pacing once again - I find it impossible to learn lines sitting down or standing still. The only way lines go into my head is by pacing rapidly around a small area and drinking copious amounts of tea. Well, to be honest, the tea has no bearing on the line learning, it's just another excuse to drink copious amounts of tea. Any excse will generally do: reading, writing, watching the telly, being on the phone... If I have no excuse for drinking tea, it tends to mean I have nothing to do, in which case I fill in time by making a cup of tea.
So at midday, Sian and I went over to Cressage Hall and ran through the first scene, which by now I could largely do off book, but which requires very little actual rehearsal as it largely consists of me standing at the head of a class of children talking to them. In a Scottish accent. We'd got as far as running through this scene a couple of times, when Margo rang to say there was no way the rest of the script was going to be ready in time. This was something Sian and I had anticipated and, given that we'd given ourselves five days to work up the whole show before its planned opening on Tuesday next week, we'd already been discussing contingency plans. Sadly, our fears proved well-founded. Given Margo's present illness the script wasn't going to be ready for us in time, and without a script we wouldn't have time to get it ready.
So, a decision having been made, I quickly rang The Shop to see if they could use me for anything tomorrow. Why did I do this? Why? I could have had, of all things, a Day Off! Well, I haven't worked a Saturday for ages and I'm starting to think it would be a good idea to try to keep them sweet before they let me go altogether. Also, I needed to make up for the days of rehearsal I was losing. Unfortunately, The Shop had a free 10 - 6 shift, so back into the car I got and drove straight back down the M40 again.
Friday, 9 November 2007
In which Jumble Bag lives up to its name.
Tuesday 30th October
Here we are then - the first performance of Jumble Bag. Twenty children in the cast (a good start) and as we're setting up, those early to school are in the hall doing a morning dance workout. So they're used to doing movement. Things are looking up...
It staggers me how children these days seem so completely unused to movement. I know I hardly have any room to talk, given that the only physical exertion I made as a child was in Never Shutting Up, but there are schools we've been into where physicality and movement seem entirely alien to them, where a mere modicum of exertion leaves the children breathless and droopy and where not one child seems to have any sense of rhythm. I'd always thought that rhythmic movement to music was something innate in all human beings, but it would seem not so.
However, the cast of our inaugural Jumble Bag had quite tremendous movement skills, which made the opening tableau of the world's suffering children look superb. Some really strong performances too, especially bearing in mind that this play demands of them some quite sophisticated emotional understanding. Everything was going swimmingly until it came to Jumble Bag himself, who was on a planet all of his own. Note to self for all future shows: Jumble Bag has to be capable; if he's a space cadet then the two big scenes that he's in go everywhere and that throws us off kilter for the rest of the play. All in all though, we had a fine opening show and Sian and I felt truly and pathetically grateful for having had bright and talented childs to see us through it.
Here we are then - the first performance of Jumble Bag. Twenty children in the cast (a good start) and as we're setting up, those early to school are in the hall doing a morning dance workout. So they're used to doing movement. Things are looking up...
It staggers me how children these days seem so completely unused to movement. I know I hardly have any room to talk, given that the only physical exertion I made as a child was in Never Shutting Up, but there are schools we've been into where physicality and movement seem entirely alien to them, where a mere modicum of exertion leaves the children breathless and droopy and where not one child seems to have any sense of rhythm. I'd always thought that rhythmic movement to music was something innate in all human beings, but it would seem not so.
However, the cast of our inaugural Jumble Bag had quite tremendous movement skills, which made the opening tableau of the world's suffering children look superb. Some really strong performances too, especially bearing in mind that this play demands of them some quite sophisticated emotional understanding. Everything was going swimmingly until it came to Jumble Bag himself, who was on a planet all of his own. Note to self for all future shows: Jumble Bag has to be capable; if he's a space cadet then the two big scenes that he's in go everywhere and that throws us off kilter for the rest of the play. All in all though, we had a fine opening show and Sian and I felt truly and pathetically grateful for having had bright and talented childs to see us through it.
In which we battle through Strife.
Monday 29th October
Somewhat inadvisedly, I caught sight of my face in the bathroom mirror this morning and saw a sallow-faced Victorian undertaker looking back at me. My eyes are so tired that the lids appear to have swollen, whilst the areas directly beneath them have turned an unhealthy shade of greyish-blue (curiously enough, matching the seats in my car). Under the hard white light of your typical Travelodge bathroom is perhaps the very worst place to examine your own features unless you value an almost clinically detailed knowledge of every pock-mark and broken vein, and this unlooked for reacquaintance with my knackered visage served only to remind me that it's Hallowe'en in two days' time.
Monday morning in Camberley near Sandhurst. Damp, grey, miserable and we're doing Strife with thirty children, in a hall that's wider than it is long which means adopting a daring crescent-shaped stage. Sadly, the children they sent us had not the highest attention span, and Strife is a difficult show at the best of times. When it works it can be great, although I'm not terribly fond of it, but when the odds are against you as they were today, it can just turn into a trial. From my point of view, much of my morning is taken up with drilling the physical theatre component - ie. all the kids who don't have speaking parts - who in this show appear as a sort of chorus at intervals, physically illustrating the themes underpinning the story. Well, that's the theory. This lot couldn't have physically underpinned the tail on the donkey - no co-ordination, no sense of rhythm and not a great deal of interest in being there. To add to my complaints, my knee (from which, you will remember, a sizeable slice of cartillage was removed in August, and which so far has been healing nicely) is suffering as a result of my impromptu half-marathon around Cardiff on Saturday in my smart shoes (not ideal for fun-running), and this made the Jewish kletzmer dance in the play murder to perform.
To make up for the day, we found a very nice pub to have dinner in this evening, then for once, blessedly, I managed to get an early night.
Somewhat inadvisedly, I caught sight of my face in the bathroom mirror this morning and saw a sallow-faced Victorian undertaker looking back at me. My eyes are so tired that the lids appear to have swollen, whilst the areas directly beneath them have turned an unhealthy shade of greyish-blue (curiously enough, matching the seats in my car). Under the hard white light of your typical Travelodge bathroom is perhaps the very worst place to examine your own features unless you value an almost clinically detailed knowledge of every pock-mark and broken vein, and this unlooked for reacquaintance with my knackered visage served only to remind me that it's Hallowe'en in two days' time.
Monday morning in Camberley near Sandhurst. Damp, grey, miserable and we're doing Strife with thirty children, in a hall that's wider than it is long which means adopting a daring crescent-shaped stage. Sadly, the children they sent us had not the highest attention span, and Strife is a difficult show at the best of times. When it works it can be great, although I'm not terribly fond of it, but when the odds are against you as they were today, it can just turn into a trial. From my point of view, much of my morning is taken up with drilling the physical theatre component - ie. all the kids who don't have speaking parts - who in this show appear as a sort of chorus at intervals, physically illustrating the themes underpinning the story. Well, that's the theory. This lot couldn't have physically underpinned the tail on the donkey - no co-ordination, no sense of rhythm and not a great deal of interest in being there. To add to my complaints, my knee (from which, you will remember, a sizeable slice of cartillage was removed in August, and which so far has been healing nicely) is suffering as a result of my impromptu half-marathon around Cardiff on Saturday in my smart shoes (not ideal for fun-running), and this made the Jewish kletzmer dance in the play murder to perform.
To make up for the day, we found a very nice pub to have dinner in this evening, then for once, blessedly, I managed to get an early night.
In which we pack the jumble bag.
Sunday 28th October
It doesn't even end bloody there! Not even with the completion of my week of Turtle-minding do things quieten down, because this morning with my now familiar quotient of around five hours' sleep behind me, I'm in the car heading up the M40 towards Wenlock. At least today I'm back in Oona the (wounded) Laguna, who seems to be running none the worse for the violence inflicted on her on Monday.
The purpose of today is to do at least two full dress and tech runs of Jumble Bag, which will have its first performance on Tuesday. Surprisingly, it seems to go like clockwork, but then we know all too well how this maight come tumbling down around our ankles with the addition of the random element - twenty to thirty children, all playing a speaking role.
Flushed with success, Sian and I feel the need to run at least once through another play - Strife Between Brothers - as this is the show we'll be doing tomorrow and it's now several months since we did it last. Also, it's a sod. Of all the shows in the rep, this is the one we enjoy least, partly because it's a complicated script for us (and for the childs) and partly because of the way the supporting cast is structured - a few very large speaking parts and a large chorus whose involvement is not less than is ideal. With a group of twenty it's not so bad, but with a group of thirty, as we'll have tomorrow, it becomes a difficult workshop and much less enjoyable. As it happens, our run is disastrous and we stagger to the end of the play scrabbling to remember lines and quite frankly far too tired to be really worried about it.
Since I'll be back in Wenlock at the end of the week, I leave Oona there and we get in the van to head down to Sandhurst. Thankfully, for once I don't have to drive.
It doesn't even end bloody there! Not even with the completion of my week of Turtle-minding do things quieten down, because this morning with my now familiar quotient of around five hours' sleep behind me, I'm in the car heading up the M40 towards Wenlock. At least today I'm back in Oona the (wounded) Laguna, who seems to be running none the worse for the violence inflicted on her on Monday.
The purpose of today is to do at least two full dress and tech runs of Jumble Bag, which will have its first performance on Tuesday. Surprisingly, it seems to go like clockwork, but then we know all too well how this maight come tumbling down around our ankles with the addition of the random element - twenty to thirty children, all playing a speaking role.
Flushed with success, Sian and I feel the need to run at least once through another play - Strife Between Brothers - as this is the show we'll be doing tomorrow and it's now several months since we did it last. Also, it's a sod. Of all the shows in the rep, this is the one we enjoy least, partly because it's a complicated script for us (and for the childs) and partly because of the way the supporting cast is structured - a few very large speaking parts and a large chorus whose involvement is not less than is ideal. With a group of twenty it's not so bad, but with a group of thirty, as we'll have tomorrow, it becomes a difficult workshop and much less enjoyable. As it happens, our run is disastrous and we stagger to the end of the play scrabbling to remember lines and quite frankly far too tired to be really worried about it.
Since I'll be back in Wenlock at the end of the week, I leave Oona there and we get in the van to head down to Sandhurst. Thankfully, for once I don't have to drive.
In which I find Cardiff full of monsters.
Saturday 27th October
Now, I bet you were all thinking that yesterday's outing was the last we'd be hearing of Ninja Turtles and that your author might at long last be looking at a proper night's sleep and a day off. Well, if you were thinking that you'd be all wrong, because once again I was in the car at 6am, heading down to Rainbow to pick up a new set of costumes and artistes. Much as it hurts the brain, eyes and spirit sometime to be going to work at this time in a morning, there is one big plus point, which is getting to take a leisurely drive over Hammersmith Bridge on the way from Ealing down to Wimbledon. For anyone who isn't familiar with Hammersmith Bridge, it's a work of industrial Victorian beauty spanning the Thames between Hammersmith and Barnes, notable for being the bridge Philip Marlowe's mother jumped off in The Singing Detective. The sight of it in the early morning sunlight, and the views it offers up and down this stretch of the river, are enough to make even the most hardened hater of mornings glad to be up and awake and serve on each crossing to remind me what a visually stunning city London is.
At Rainbow I picked up Ed and one lone Ninja Turtle and we set off to the brand new sports stadium in Cardiff, whose proper name I would know if I had any interest in sport. Which I don't. Since investing in a shiny new ipod specifically for playing in the car on long journeys, I've been disappointed to find that for some reason as yet unexplained it makes my ears hurt. Not through using earphones (which I don't, really), nor through excessive volume, this pain in my ears remains a mystery. My only guesses are that either the sound compression is done in such a way that disturbs my personal ear/brain interface whatsit (though apparrently no-one else's), or that along with the music, the ipod is also transmitting the high frequency noise madfe by the hard disc spinning, and it's this that my lug hole don't like. This obviously was a big disappointment to me, who had blithely expected the sound quality to be perfect and wonderful and all my in-car entertainment issues to be solved in one fell and shiny swoop. Now I'm noticing that the pain has noticeably eased, leading me to suspect that I've permanently obliterated some important and delicate parts of my ears.
Cardiff was busy. In fact, Cardiff was packed. Everyone was in Cardiff, and they'd come to see a festival of Monster Trucks. So, as it turned out, had we. We rendezvoused (is that a word?) with the other half of our party, Sandy, Maria and Emily, at the stadium and were told that the road was about to be closed until 11pm, so Sandy and I left performers and skins there and went off to find somewhere to park. This was only the first fun game of the evening. Having spent about half an hour driving in circles round the nearest car park (which, helpfully, was bloody miles away) we then found that we had no change between us. With the clock ticking, we found enough to park Sandy's car, then leaving the keys with her, I set off running back to the stadium in a brave attempt to get the characters out on time. We just about did it as well, and found ourselves in the middle of the Milennium Stadium (that's its name!) surrounded by gigantic distorted vehicles and the fifty-odd thousand people who'd come to see them. For the artistes, this is a nightmare scenario, as not only can they not see much, but add the noise of the crowd and huge vehicles vrumming at each other and their hearing is pretty much done for as well. Our Power Ranger and Totally Spy fared better since they're really just lycra and helmets, but the poor Turtle was reduced to being led around by the hand in a sad underminin of his fiersome ninja qualities.
Feeding the meter half way through the evening meant another run around the increasingly busy streets of Cardiff for me, but then came the week's final act of mercy when it was announced that we would be finished by eight o'clock. Like sweaty and defeated lightning we packed up and lugged everything back to the cars, whereupon I managed to lose any and all of the advantage our early finish had given us by getting lost in the fog and joining the motorway in the wrong direction.
And so at around midnight I finally and for the last time this week arrived at Rainbow and dumped the kit, before turning the plastic Ford towards home and bed.
Now, I bet you were all thinking that yesterday's outing was the last we'd be hearing of Ninja Turtles and that your author might at long last be looking at a proper night's sleep and a day off. Well, if you were thinking that you'd be all wrong, because once again I was in the car at 6am, heading down to Rainbow to pick up a new set of costumes and artistes. Much as it hurts the brain, eyes and spirit sometime to be going to work at this time in a morning, there is one big plus point, which is getting to take a leisurely drive over Hammersmith Bridge on the way from Ealing down to Wimbledon. For anyone who isn't familiar with Hammersmith Bridge, it's a work of industrial Victorian beauty spanning the Thames between Hammersmith and Barnes, notable for being the bridge Philip Marlowe's mother jumped off in The Singing Detective. The sight of it in the early morning sunlight, and the views it offers up and down this stretch of the river, are enough to make even the most hardened hater of mornings glad to be up and awake and serve on each crossing to remind me what a visually stunning city London is.
At Rainbow I picked up Ed and one lone Ninja Turtle and we set off to the brand new sports stadium in Cardiff, whose proper name I would know if I had any interest in sport. Which I don't. Since investing in a shiny new ipod specifically for playing in the car on long journeys, I've been disappointed to find that for some reason as yet unexplained it makes my ears hurt. Not through using earphones (which I don't, really), nor through excessive volume, this pain in my ears remains a mystery. My only guesses are that either the sound compression is done in such a way that disturbs my personal ear/brain interface whatsit (though apparrently no-one else's), or that along with the music, the ipod is also transmitting the high frequency noise madfe by the hard disc spinning, and it's this that my lug hole don't like. This obviously was a big disappointment to me, who had blithely expected the sound quality to be perfect and wonderful and all my in-car entertainment issues to be solved in one fell and shiny swoop. Now I'm noticing that the pain has noticeably eased, leading me to suspect that I've permanently obliterated some important and delicate parts of my ears.
Cardiff was busy. In fact, Cardiff was packed. Everyone was in Cardiff, and they'd come to see a festival of Monster Trucks. So, as it turned out, had we. We rendezvoused (is that a word?) with the other half of our party, Sandy, Maria and Emily, at the stadium and were told that the road was about to be closed until 11pm, so Sandy and I left performers and skins there and went off to find somewhere to park. This was only the first fun game of the evening. Having spent about half an hour driving in circles round the nearest car park (which, helpfully, was bloody miles away) we then found that we had no change between us. With the clock ticking, we found enough to park Sandy's car, then leaving the keys with her, I set off running back to the stadium in a brave attempt to get the characters out on time. We just about did it as well, and found ourselves in the middle of the Milennium Stadium (that's its name!) surrounded by gigantic distorted vehicles and the fifty-odd thousand people who'd come to see them. For the artistes, this is a nightmare scenario, as not only can they not see much, but add the noise of the crowd and huge vehicles vrumming at each other and their hearing is pretty much done for as well. Our Power Ranger and Totally Spy fared better since they're really just lycra and helmets, but the poor Turtle was reduced to being led around by the hand in a sad underminin of his fiersome ninja qualities.
Feeding the meter half way through the evening meant another run around the increasingly busy streets of Cardiff for me, but then came the week's final act of mercy when it was announced that we would be finished by eight o'clock. Like sweaty and defeated lightning we packed up and lugged everything back to the cars, whereupon I managed to lose any and all of the advantage our early finish had given us by getting lost in the fog and joining the motorway in the wrong direction.
And so at around midnight I finally and for the last time this week arrived at Rainbow and dumped the kit, before turning the plastic Ford towards home and bed.
In which I am heard to raise my voice.
Friday 26th October
There may be those amongst you who have been wondering at my decision to stay overnight in my parents' cold and unoccupied house rather than allowing Rainbow to put me up at their expense in a lovely hotel. For those people, I should explain the cunning reason for this - today's first gig was at the Owlcotes Centre in Pudsey, a mere ten minutes drive from the parental home. Had everything gone to plan yesterday, this would have meant a proper night's sleep (a concept that at the moment I'm losing sense of). As it was, it meant a reasonable night's sleep, although my late night journey meant that any plans to stock up with food for the morning went by the board. Thus it was that as soon as I arrived at ASDA this morning, The Lovely Emily took one look at my grey and haggard face and sent me straight off to get myself some breakfast, thereby adding to the wealth of evidence to show that sooner or later all women will feel the need to feed me.
The rest of our entourage arrived shortlt after me and the morning proved to be the busiest and by far the most enjoyable of this week's gigs. It was a real shame that we couldn't stay all day. But no, two appearances and off to Derby for the afternoon. The girls went on ahead whilst The Lovely Emily and I armed ourselves with sandwhiches and buns and set off in pursuit. It is a recognised fact that anyone who spends any time with me will eventually end up sharing in my obsession with buns (a word I use as a generic term for any kind of cakestuff ideally to be had with tea in the mid-afternoon). Either this is due to the irresistably persuasive nature of my personality, or the eating of buns really is as important as I make out and people just jump on the bandwagon out of sheer common sense. Either way, the eating of buns is a joyful aspect of life, which I believe everyone should be introduced to.
So we arrived at Derby to find my fellow roadie absent on business of her own, leaving us to do the first appearance without her. Now, I'm usually a fairly placid and unflappable kind of fellow, but this was enough for me. As soon as we came in, I was on the phone trying to find out what the Hale and Pace was going on. Receiving a damp rag of an excuse I proceded to express my disappointment in some well-chosen and forceful terms. She reappeared shortly afterwards and only the most formal of communication passed between us for the remainder of the afternoon.
And then that was it. The Lovely Emily bid us a fond farewell and bolted for her train and we set sail for home in the hope of never having to see a Ninja Turtle ever again.
There may be those amongst you who have been wondering at my decision to stay overnight in my parents' cold and unoccupied house rather than allowing Rainbow to put me up at their expense in a lovely hotel. For those people, I should explain the cunning reason for this - today's first gig was at the Owlcotes Centre in Pudsey, a mere ten minutes drive from the parental home. Had everything gone to plan yesterday, this would have meant a proper night's sleep (a concept that at the moment I'm losing sense of). As it was, it meant a reasonable night's sleep, although my late night journey meant that any plans to stock up with food for the morning went by the board. Thus it was that as soon as I arrived at ASDA this morning, The Lovely Emily took one look at my grey and haggard face and sent me straight off to get myself some breakfast, thereby adding to the wealth of evidence to show that sooner or later all women will feel the need to feed me.
The rest of our entourage arrived shortlt after me and the morning proved to be the busiest and by far the most enjoyable of this week's gigs. It was a real shame that we couldn't stay all day. But no, two appearances and off to Derby for the afternoon. The girls went on ahead whilst The Lovely Emily and I armed ourselves with sandwhiches and buns and set off in pursuit. It is a recognised fact that anyone who spends any time with me will eventually end up sharing in my obsession with buns (a word I use as a generic term for any kind of cakestuff ideally to be had with tea in the mid-afternoon). Either this is due to the irresistably persuasive nature of my personality, or the eating of buns really is as important as I make out and people just jump on the bandwagon out of sheer common sense. Either way, the eating of buns is a joyful aspect of life, which I believe everyone should be introduced to.
So we arrived at Derby to find my fellow roadie absent on business of her own, leaving us to do the first appearance without her. Now, I'm usually a fairly placid and unflappable kind of fellow, but this was enough for me. As soon as we came in, I was on the phone trying to find out what the Hale and Pace was going on. Receiving a damp rag of an excuse I proceded to express my disappointment in some well-chosen and forceful terms. She reappeared shortly afterwards and only the most formal of communication passed between us for the remainder of the afternoon.
And then that was it. The Lovely Emily bid us a fond farewell and bolted for her train and we set sail for home in the hope of never having to see a Ninja Turtle ever again.
Monday, 5 November 2007
In which it all goes a bit wrong for the Turtles.
Thursday 25th October
It was all going so well. Everything was under control. The week was panning out wonderfully. But oh no, it can never just be easy, can it?
For a start, I've got a Ford Focus for the rest of the week. It does the job, I suppose but after driving the Seat, the Ford feels like a cheap plastic crate. Next up, I set off to Rainbow early (I've got to pick the costumes up again, remember) so that I can have a bacon sarn from the bacon sarn van on the way, and I run into Fiona fuming in Starbucks because she'd set off at five this morning, thinking it was a 7am call, when in fact it was a 9. I've worked with Fi quite a bit this year, and she's great, but like all good Yorkshirewomen she can throw herself into a bad mood with tremendous vigour.
The we get to Rainbow and I'm informed of the latest development. Kevin, one of the roadies who took over yesterday should have been with us for the next two days, but it turns out he can only fo today, so they've had to find a replacement. aid replacement is a person of with whom I have it recorded on file that I am not prepared to work ever again. A person so inconsiderate and unprofessional that even my normally phlegmatic demeanour has been stirred up into righteous anger on more than one occasion. Alan in the office apologises. There was no alternative. He's given her a call to rendezvous with us at 4.30, in the hope that she'll get there for 6.00.
So off I go to Lakeside retail park in Thurrock, a swift jaunt around the m25, to meet up with The other three Turtles, Kevin and The Lovely Emily at another big soulless ASDA. Along come the face painter and a new lot of local martial arts childs, and we go through the usual routine. The we pack up and go down to Bluewater for afternoon appearances at another branch of the familiar well-known music retailer, where once again the Turtles pick their way through mountains of stock piled around the floor like a game of premier league kerplunk. Bluewater is busy, and unfortunately rowdy, and one Turtle gets belted on the head and is invalided out for the rest of the day.
By 6pm, we're all done and unsurprisingly there's no sign of our relief roadie. To make matters worse, there's been a horrendous accident on the M25 involving an oil tanker, right around the very junction next to Bluewater. Now, we need to get on the road up to Leeds for tomorrow's gig - it's a fair old run and the girls are tired and fed up. So heads are scratched and phone calls are made and The Lovely Emily abandons us to our fate and gets on the train because her company will pay for things like that. Eventually we come up with a plan in which Fi will take Kevin's hire car and drive the girls up to the hotel, I'll take kevin home to Watford then head on up to Leeds, where I'm staying at Mum and Dad's, and our tardy colleague can follow us at her leisure. Or she can go stick her head in a pig, as far as we're concerned at this precise moment. All this being cleared and re-cleared with the office, this is what we do, so instead of spending the evening in a leisurely drive up the M1 with The Lovely Emily, lots of music and a stop for food on expenses on the way, I end up queueing round the M25 (which is still backed up for miles) to Watford, then driving up to Leeds on my own. In the dark. In a Ford Focus.
I eventually got to Mum and Dad's at about 1am. They, of course, are not at home. They're in France. So the house is absolutely bloody Baltic and I'm forced to go to bed in an old tracksuit of Dad's to keep my circulation going through the night. Brrr.
It was all going so well. Everything was under control. The week was panning out wonderfully. But oh no, it can never just be easy, can it?
For a start, I've got a Ford Focus for the rest of the week. It does the job, I suppose but after driving the Seat, the Ford feels like a cheap plastic crate. Next up, I set off to Rainbow early (I've got to pick the costumes up again, remember) so that I can have a bacon sarn from the bacon sarn van on the way, and I run into Fiona fuming in Starbucks because she'd set off at five this morning, thinking it was a 7am call, when in fact it was a 9. I've worked with Fi quite a bit this year, and she's great, but like all good Yorkshirewomen she can throw herself into a bad mood with tremendous vigour.
The we get to Rainbow and I'm informed of the latest development. Kevin, one of the roadies who took over yesterday should have been with us for the next two days, but it turns out he can only fo today, so they've had to find a replacement. aid replacement is a person of with whom I have it recorded on file that I am not prepared to work ever again. A person so inconsiderate and unprofessional that even my normally phlegmatic demeanour has been stirred up into righteous anger on more than one occasion. Alan in the office apologises. There was no alternative. He's given her a call to rendezvous with us at 4.30, in the hope that she'll get there for 6.00.
So off I go to Lakeside retail park in Thurrock, a swift jaunt around the m25, to meet up with The other three Turtles, Kevin and The Lovely Emily at another big soulless ASDA. Along come the face painter and a new lot of local martial arts childs, and we go through the usual routine. The we pack up and go down to Bluewater for afternoon appearances at another branch of the familiar well-known music retailer, where once again the Turtles pick their way through mountains of stock piled around the floor like a game of premier league kerplunk. Bluewater is busy, and unfortunately rowdy, and one Turtle gets belted on the head and is invalided out for the rest of the day.
By 6pm, we're all done and unsurprisingly there's no sign of our relief roadie. To make matters worse, there's been a horrendous accident on the M25 involving an oil tanker, right around the very junction next to Bluewater. Now, we need to get on the road up to Leeds for tomorrow's gig - it's a fair old run and the girls are tired and fed up. So heads are scratched and phone calls are made and The Lovely Emily abandons us to our fate and gets on the train because her company will pay for things like that. Eventually we come up with a plan in which Fi will take Kevin's hire car and drive the girls up to the hotel, I'll take kevin home to Watford then head on up to Leeds, where I'm staying at Mum and Dad's, and our tardy colleague can follow us at her leisure. Or she can go stick her head in a pig, as far as we're concerned at this precise moment. All this being cleared and re-cleared with the office, this is what we do, so instead of spending the evening in a leisurely drive up the M1 with The Lovely Emily, lots of music and a stop for food on expenses on the way, I end up queueing round the M25 (which is still backed up for miles) to Watford, then driving up to Leeds on my own. In the dark. In a Ford Focus.
I eventually got to Mum and Dad's at about 1am. They, of course, are not at home. They're in France. So the house is absolutely bloody Baltic and I'm forced to go to bed in an old tracksuit of Dad's to keep my circulation going through the night. Brrr.
In which there are no Turtles
Wednesday 24th October
A brief respite from Turtle-orientated activities to spend my regular Wednesday at DSL and, much as I enjoy assisting at DSL, much as I'm learning vast amounts from working with Philip, much as the physical workout does me good, and much as it's the one day of the week when I treat myself to lovely fresh soup and bread from the Lovely Health Food Shop, I found myself strangely unwilling to abandon my Chelonian charges to other hands for a day.
Still, one great thing about doing five of the same class in succession is that I get five lots of stretching and warming up, which does wonders for my car-seat-damamged back. And other bits, I assume. Excet the bit that always makes a loud cracking sound somewhere in my right shoulder.
After classes I headed over to Finchley Road to see Jonathan, President of the BASSC
and all-round good chap, to get some class logs signed off and pick up a load of gloves to sell at DSL. Jonathan is a terribly nice chap with that enviable quiet and effortless authority that comes from having lived a full and varied life and seen more of the world and its ways than seems possible for someone who has only just turned fifty. Being, like myself, a worker of long hard hours and familiar with the early hours of the morning on a regular basis, he can sometimes carry a weary aspect and a slightly grim demeanour, a bit like Daniel Craig's Bond. In fact, he has that rare mercurial quality of appearance that make him a bit like lots of people. He is also, for example, a bit like Patrick McGoohan whilst, weirdly, being a bit like Jeremy Vine, without really being much like any of them. He is, however, an understatedly warm and supportive friend and colleague, who took it upon himself to ply me with food and wine this evening and also made me a gift of a Rapier and Dagger of my own. All of which, food, wine and genial company, put paid to my plans for an early night as it was gone 11 by the time I got home.
On my return I found that my hire car for tomorrow is a Ford Focus. Bit of a come-down from the Seat.
A brief respite from Turtle-orientated activities to spend my regular Wednesday at DSL and, much as I enjoy assisting at DSL, much as I'm learning vast amounts from working with Philip, much as the physical workout does me good, and much as it's the one day of the week when I treat myself to lovely fresh soup and bread from the Lovely Health Food Shop, I found myself strangely unwilling to abandon my Chelonian charges to other hands for a day.
Still, one great thing about doing five of the same class in succession is that I get five lots of stretching and warming up, which does wonders for my car-seat-damamged back. And other bits, I assume. Excet the bit that always makes a loud cracking sound somewhere in my right shoulder.
After classes I headed over to Finchley Road to see Jonathan, President of the BASSC
and all-round good chap, to get some class logs signed off and pick up a load of gloves to sell at DSL. Jonathan is a terribly nice chap with that enviable quiet and effortless authority that comes from having lived a full and varied life and seen more of the world and its ways than seems possible for someone who has only just turned fifty. Being, like myself, a worker of long hard hours and familiar with the early hours of the morning on a regular basis, he can sometimes carry a weary aspect and a slightly grim demeanour, a bit like Daniel Craig's Bond. In fact, he has that rare mercurial quality of appearance that make him a bit like lots of people. He is also, for example, a bit like Patrick McGoohan whilst, weirdly, being a bit like Jeremy Vine, without really being much like any of them. He is, however, an understatedly warm and supportive friend and colleague, who took it upon himself to ply me with food and wine this evening and also made me a gift of a Rapier and Dagger of my own. All of which, food, wine and genial company, put paid to my plans for an early night as it was gone 11 by the time I got home.
On my return I found that my hire car for tomorrow is a Ford Focus. Bit of a come-down from the Seat.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
In which the Turtles enjoy a day by the sea.
Tuesday 23rd October
So, it's 8am on Tuesday morning and I'm sitting on the seafront in Brighton in the glorious sunshine, eating a big fat fried breakfast.
Whenever the M25 is involved in your morning drive it pays to be off early - that extra half hour can make all the difference. So with no need to call at Rainbow first or pick anyone else up, I set off at the crack of dawn with the Turtles and the standees, arriving with time aplenty to have an early morning walk along the beach and a full english breakfast before the rest of the gang arrived.
First venue of the day was the Brighton Sea Life Centre, a tremendous attraction, as it turns out - I must go back sometime for a day out and visit it properly. Not today though, as Team Turtle had a full day's work ahead of us. For we roadies the days this week are fuller than usual, as at each venue we need not only to kit the Turtles up, but we're also pitching in to help The Lovely Emily with setting up the standees and ferrying all the boxes of merchandise in and out. To make things even more fun, The Lovely Emily comes armed with two polaroid cameras and stacks of presentation cards so that everyone can have an official photograph of themselves with the Turtles, requiring the three of us to form a frantic human chain, taking photos, stuffing them in cards and preparing the next film cartridge whilst trying not to drop any of the aforementioned all over the floor.
In complete contrast to yesterday's farcical proceedings, the morning went off extremely well, with the Turtles making two appearances outside in the sunny courtyard entrance, interspersed with Taekwondo demonstrations from local Taekwonding chids. It was a great shame really that we couldn't stay there all day, but with only the briefest pause for me to buy comical penguins from the gift shop, we had to pack the whole lot up again and drive to a big ASDA.
Yeah, a big ASDA. When you've spent the morning at a major tourist attraction where people are having fun and there's nice tea and you're out in the sunshine, moving on to a big ASDA is a bit of a downer. So to make things more interesting, the Turtles staged a pitched battle in the store entrance with the Taekwondo childs, which they lost, and which irritated everyone who was trying to get into ASDA to do shopping, rather than to watch white pyjama-clad childs pretending to kick in six-foot rubber turtles.
Unfortunately I had to drive home via Rainbow to drop everything off, as tomorrow I'm at DSL and Sandy is booked on another job, so a completely different crew is covering the day. I say unfortunately, but it did at least mean that I got to spend a bit more time playing in the nice hire car they'd given me. I don't much like modern cars - they tend to be full of black plastic and have seats that controt your body into the most unnatural positions. But I have quite taken to the Seat Leon - it has a sort of blunt, brutish beauty and goes far faster than is really sensible. They are, of course, ridiculously unsuited to doing Rainbow jobs as their design is not terribly concerned with having enough space to carry several big bags of costume, and is more concerned with looking a bit mean and being able to accelerate with surprising alacrity. In stark contrast to my own car which, being French, tends to accelerate rather more languidly, as and when she feels like it. Put your foot down when driving Oona, and you have the distinct impression of her taking a luxurious drag on a cigarette and stubbing it delicately out before she deigns to pull away from the lights. Still, the seats are comfy, which observation speaks volumes for my advancing age.
So, it's 8am on Tuesday morning and I'm sitting on the seafront in Brighton in the glorious sunshine, eating a big fat fried breakfast.
Whenever the M25 is involved in your morning drive it pays to be off early - that extra half hour can make all the difference. So with no need to call at Rainbow first or pick anyone else up, I set off at the crack of dawn with the Turtles and the standees, arriving with time aplenty to have an early morning walk along the beach and a full english breakfast before the rest of the gang arrived.
First venue of the day was the Brighton Sea Life Centre, a tremendous attraction, as it turns out - I must go back sometime for a day out and visit it properly. Not today though, as Team Turtle had a full day's work ahead of us. For we roadies the days this week are fuller than usual, as at each venue we need not only to kit the Turtles up, but we're also pitching in to help The Lovely Emily with setting up the standees and ferrying all the boxes of merchandise in and out. To make things even more fun, The Lovely Emily comes armed with two polaroid cameras and stacks of presentation cards so that everyone can have an official photograph of themselves with the Turtles, requiring the three of us to form a frantic human chain, taking photos, stuffing them in cards and preparing the next film cartridge whilst trying not to drop any of the aforementioned all over the floor.
In complete contrast to yesterday's farcical proceedings, the morning went off extremely well, with the Turtles making two appearances outside in the sunny courtyard entrance, interspersed with Taekwondo demonstrations from local Taekwonding chids. It was a great shame really that we couldn't stay there all day, but with only the briefest pause for me to buy comical penguins from the gift shop, we had to pack the whole lot up again and drive to a big ASDA.
Yeah, a big ASDA. When you've spent the morning at a major tourist attraction where people are having fun and there's nice tea and you're out in the sunshine, moving on to a big ASDA is a bit of a downer. So to make things more interesting, the Turtles staged a pitched battle in the store entrance with the Taekwondo childs, which they lost, and which irritated everyone who was trying to get into ASDA to do shopping, rather than to watch white pyjama-clad childs pretending to kick in six-foot rubber turtles.
Unfortunately I had to drive home via Rainbow to drop everything off, as tomorrow I'm at DSL and Sandy is booked on another job, so a completely different crew is covering the day. I say unfortunately, but it did at least mean that I got to spend a bit more time playing in the nice hire car they'd given me. I don't much like modern cars - they tend to be full of black plastic and have seats that controt your body into the most unnatural positions. But I have quite taken to the Seat Leon - it has a sort of blunt, brutish beauty and goes far faster than is really sensible. They are, of course, ridiculously unsuited to doing Rainbow jobs as their design is not terribly concerned with having enough space to carry several big bags of costume, and is more concerned with looking a bit mean and being able to accelerate with surprising alacrity. In stark contrast to my own car which, being French, tends to accelerate rather more languidly, as and when she feels like it. Put your foot down when driving Oona, and you have the distinct impression of her taking a luxurious drag on a cigarette and stubbing it delicately out before she deigns to pull away from the lights. Still, the seats are comfy, which observation speaks volumes for my advancing age.
In which I begin my association with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Monday 22nd October
For children and teachers in most parts of the country it's Half Term. For me, it's Turtle Week. Because from today until Saturday it will be my sworn duty to transport Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo and Raphael (these being the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) to locations various, there to entertain childs under my watchful eye.
So at 8am this morning I arrive at Rainbow and shoehorn four big red bags, each containing one of our amphibious friends, into the back of my car and as soon as my fellow Road Manager, Sandy arrives, we chug off through central London towards Oxford Street. Almost immediately, things begin to deviate from plan. Having agreed to follow Sandy into town, I'm soon left standing at traffic lights somewhere in Wandsworth pointing in direction unknown, whilst Sandy completely unaware, pursues her circuitous backstreet route without me. Somehow I manage to negotiate the innumerable road closures in Central London and end up in a parking space right outside our first venue, which then takes me a full half hour to pay for over the phone, using Westminster Council's brilliant new Pay For Your Parking Over The Phone system. (To anyone from Westminster Council who might be reading, this new system takes almost exactly twenty-eight minutes longer to pay for parking than plonking coins into a meter used to do. Nice work).
Our first call was the flagship branch of a well-known music and media retailer to be found on Oxford Street - a company I once spent almost a year working for, and whom I'm entirely unsurprised to find just as arrogant and obnoxious a bunch of people as I remember them. There ahead of me were Sandy and our four artistes for the day. Also there were two representatives from our client, a representative from their client, a representative from Warner (who own the Turtles), a face painter and an almost total absence of children (this being Monday morning of half term, when anyone who finds themself not having to go to school would be still in bed). As well as the green lads themselves, we're also carrying numerous boxes of Turtle-based merchandise to be given away. We should also, it turns out, have been carrying a job lot of cardboard standees, which no-one remembers seeing, so calls are made to Rainbow to have them sent over by courier. We should also have received a comprehensive set of instructions as to the week's itinerary, but we haven't. Much head-shaking and hair-tossing ensues from the client ladies. Thus, with the morning rapidly disintegrating into a shambling mess and every one of the persons involved having a slightly different idea of what should be happening, the Turtles go out on their first appearance, do a little dance on a specially onstructed stage and muck about in front of the entrance to the store, trying to entice people in, as there are about five people in the shop. By the time it gets to the second appearance, the girls from S-team (our client), their client and their client's client are starting to relax a bit because they've suddenly realised that we know what we're doing, the standees have turned up, there are now neary ten people in the shop, and things are running smoothly at last. At this point, it's time to pack up the costumes, break down the standees and put everything - costumes, standees, boxes of merchandise - back into the cars to move on to the next venue. Ah yes, did I not mention that? We're doing two venues each day. Joy. There ensues a half-hour period of me running repetedly between the store and Sandy's car which is parked miles away, before Sandy and the artistes are sent off to have a lunch break. All the various clients disappear, leaving just The Lovely Emily from S-team, who will be with us for the week, and the two of us pack up the Turtles and set off towards Brent Cross.
And breathe....
At Brent Cross we find a much smaller branch of the same music retailer, where the ony place available for the girls to get into costume is outside the firedoors in the loading bay corridor. We then have all the fun of trying to get them from the staff area through the store, without kicking over the teetering piles of DVD cases at every corner or causing other demolition. Perhaps I should have mentioned that, despite their heroic ninja status, these Turtles have bugger all visibility, and without someone to lead them and murmer directions their ninja skills largely include bumbing slowly about and bumping into things. For extra fun, they are supposed to be walking all the way down into the main foyer of the Mall to perform their hastiy improvised dance routine but this takes so long and looks so bizarre that after the first appearance it's abandoned and we spend the rest of the afternoon meeting and greeting outside the shop.
With everything packed up at the end of the day, the crew making their separate ways home and me having only to drive a little way round the North Circular to get home, you'd be forgiven for thinking that nothing else could go wrong today. No such luck, though, for as I approach Ealing Oona the Laguna sustains her first injury at the hands of a London Driver, as a small bashed-up Nissan crunches into the side of her then roars off into the night, leaving my poor car with a dent in her passenger door. Well, it could have been worse. No car that lives and drives in London is going to remain unmarked for long.
For children and teachers in most parts of the country it's Half Term. For me, it's Turtle Week. Because from today until Saturday it will be my sworn duty to transport Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo and Raphael (these being the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) to locations various, there to entertain childs under my watchful eye.
So at 8am this morning I arrive at Rainbow and shoehorn four big red bags, each containing one of our amphibious friends, into the back of my car and as soon as my fellow Road Manager, Sandy arrives, we chug off through central London towards Oxford Street. Almost immediately, things begin to deviate from plan. Having agreed to follow Sandy into town, I'm soon left standing at traffic lights somewhere in Wandsworth pointing in direction unknown, whilst Sandy completely unaware, pursues her circuitous backstreet route without me. Somehow I manage to negotiate the innumerable road closures in Central London and end up in a parking space right outside our first venue, which then takes me a full half hour to pay for over the phone, using Westminster Council's brilliant new Pay For Your Parking Over The Phone system. (To anyone from Westminster Council who might be reading, this new system takes almost exactly twenty-eight minutes longer to pay for parking than plonking coins into a meter used to do. Nice work).
Our first call was the flagship branch of a well-known music and media retailer to be found on Oxford Street - a company I once spent almost a year working for, and whom I'm entirely unsurprised to find just as arrogant and obnoxious a bunch of people as I remember them. There ahead of me were Sandy and our four artistes for the day. Also there were two representatives from our client, a representative from their client, a representative from Warner (who own the Turtles), a face painter and an almost total absence of children (this being Monday morning of half term, when anyone who finds themself not having to go to school would be still in bed). As well as the green lads themselves, we're also carrying numerous boxes of Turtle-based merchandise to be given away. We should also, it turns out, have been carrying a job lot of cardboard standees, which no-one remembers seeing, so calls are made to Rainbow to have them sent over by courier. We should also have received a comprehensive set of instructions as to the week's itinerary, but we haven't. Much head-shaking and hair-tossing ensues from the client ladies. Thus, with the morning rapidly disintegrating into a shambling mess and every one of the persons involved having a slightly different idea of what should be happening, the Turtles go out on their first appearance, do a little dance on a specially onstructed stage and muck about in front of the entrance to the store, trying to entice people in, as there are about five people in the shop. By the time it gets to the second appearance, the girls from S-team (our client), their client and their client's client are starting to relax a bit because they've suddenly realised that we know what we're doing, the standees have turned up, there are now neary ten people in the shop, and things are running smoothly at last. At this point, it's time to pack up the costumes, break down the standees and put everything - costumes, standees, boxes of merchandise - back into the cars to move on to the next venue. Ah yes, did I not mention that? We're doing two venues each day. Joy. There ensues a half-hour period of me running repetedly between the store and Sandy's car which is parked miles away, before Sandy and the artistes are sent off to have a lunch break. All the various clients disappear, leaving just The Lovely Emily from S-team, who will be with us for the week, and the two of us pack up the Turtles and set off towards Brent Cross.
And breathe....
At Brent Cross we find a much smaller branch of the same music retailer, where the ony place available for the girls to get into costume is outside the firedoors in the loading bay corridor. We then have all the fun of trying to get them from the staff area through the store, without kicking over the teetering piles of DVD cases at every corner or causing other demolition. Perhaps I should have mentioned that, despite their heroic ninja status, these Turtles have bugger all visibility, and without someone to lead them and murmer directions their ninja skills largely include bumbing slowly about and bumping into things. For extra fun, they are supposed to be walking all the way down into the main foyer of the Mall to perform their hastiy improvised dance routine but this takes so long and looks so bizarre that after the first appearance it's abandoned and we spend the rest of the afternoon meeting and greeting outside the shop.
With everything packed up at the end of the day, the crew making their separate ways home and me having only to drive a little way round the North Circular to get home, you'd be forgiven for thinking that nothing else could go wrong today. No such luck, though, for as I approach Ealing Oona the Laguna sustains her first injury at the hands of a London Driver, as a small bashed-up Nissan crunches into the side of her then roars off into the night, leaving my poor car with a dent in her passenger door. Well, it could have been worse. No car that lives and drives in London is going to remain unmarked for long.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
I begin to feel the weight of what I have undertaken...
Sunday 21st October
Day Two of the Teacher Training Programme, and things started to kick in properly. There was no mucking about now. (although there was still tea). Out came the Rapiers and Daggers, up we got on our feet, and off we set on an exhaustive tour of footwork and weapon techniques. For the whole day - 10am til 6pm, we blasted through each and every technical point in the Star Footwork System (this will mean nothing to you, I know, but trust me), moving onto every conceivabe operation of the Rapier and Dagger. Each technique was performed repeatedly until our efforts met with Philip of Death's satisafaction, whereupon we were grilled on the salient teaching points, the problems we might encounter, the minutiae of variations in technique, whittling and worrying away at any aspects of the criosee or the reinforced parry that we weren't one hundred percent agreed on.
On one level, it's a thrilling sensation to be pushed so rigourously to a point of technical perfection. A palpable sense of being part of an historical tradition of schools of defence stretching back across untold centuries informed my efforts as I valiantly tried to match the sheer beauty of Philip of Death's demonstration of a bind with expulsion. On another level, it's a working day that leaves bone, muscle, sinew and mental activity in ruins (although it's great for toning the buttock and leaves your forearms with that sort of wiry look that I like to think convinces people that I'm far steelier than my otherwise wispy physicality might suggest).
We didn't quite manage to break the back of every technique, but by 6.15 we had to wrap up, holding some of the joy over until the next session. At which point I took to my heels (leaving a set of rehearsal sweats at DSL for next week) to get to Leicester Square for 7.30 and meet Brian at the pictures. We hd tickets this evening for the live satellite broadcast of Ross Noble's stand-up gig, which he was performing in Liverpool, but which was simultaneously being broadcast to audiences in every Vue Cinema in the country. Having run all the way from DSL to Broadway, then from the tube station to the cinema, making it on the button of 7.30, it was then nearly 40 minutes before the show started, which would have given us ample time to furnish ourselves with beer, had we but known. Anyway, Ross was brilliant, well worth the crippling run, and we laughed like bastards for the entire two hours. Watching a live show which is right in front of you, but actually happening three hundred miles away shouldn't be such a strange sensation to anyone who owns a telly, but somehow in the cinema it took a bit of getting the head around. Still, it felt like a unique national cultural event, and when Ross, in Liverool, said that everyone in Leicester Square had probably just gone 'Boo!', we all did, as if somehow he would know. Aren't humans strange?
Day Two of the Teacher Training Programme, and things started to kick in properly. There was no mucking about now. (although there was still tea). Out came the Rapiers and Daggers, up we got on our feet, and off we set on an exhaustive tour of footwork and weapon techniques. For the whole day - 10am til 6pm, we blasted through each and every technical point in the Star Footwork System (this will mean nothing to you, I know, but trust me), moving onto every conceivabe operation of the Rapier and Dagger. Each technique was performed repeatedly until our efforts met with Philip of Death's satisafaction, whereupon we were grilled on the salient teaching points, the problems we might encounter, the minutiae of variations in technique, whittling and worrying away at any aspects of the criosee or the reinforced parry that we weren't one hundred percent agreed on.
On one level, it's a thrilling sensation to be pushed so rigourously to a point of technical perfection. A palpable sense of being part of an historical tradition of schools of defence stretching back across untold centuries informed my efforts as I valiantly tried to match the sheer beauty of Philip of Death's demonstration of a bind with expulsion. On another level, it's a working day that leaves bone, muscle, sinew and mental activity in ruins (although it's great for toning the buttock and leaves your forearms with that sort of wiry look that I like to think convinces people that I'm far steelier than my otherwise wispy physicality might suggest).
We didn't quite manage to break the back of every technique, but by 6.15 we had to wrap up, holding some of the joy over until the next session. At which point I took to my heels (leaving a set of rehearsal sweats at DSL for next week) to get to Leicester Square for 7.30 and meet Brian at the pictures. We hd tickets this evening for the live satellite broadcast of Ross Noble's stand-up gig, which he was performing in Liverpool, but which was simultaneously being broadcast to audiences in every Vue Cinema in the country. Having run all the way from DSL to Broadway, then from the tube station to the cinema, making it on the button of 7.30, it was then nearly 40 minutes before the show started, which would have given us ample time to furnish ourselves with beer, had we but known. Anyway, Ross was brilliant, well worth the crippling run, and we laughed like bastards for the entire two hours. Watching a live show which is right in front of you, but actually happening three hundred miles away shouldn't be such a strange sensation to anyone who owns a telly, but somehow in the cinema it took a bit of getting the head around. Still, it felt like a unique national cultural event, and when Ross, in Liverool, said that everyone in Leicester Square had probably just gone 'Boo!', we all did, as if somehow he would know. Aren't humans strange?
I Begin Gladiator School
Saturday 20th October
The day had to come. The baptism. The initiation. The first day of training for the BASSC Stage Combat Teacher Training Programme was upon us. For the past year, this moment has loomed, black-clad and bearded, upon the horizon. Now, finally, it was a reality.
And it began - as all serious ventures should - with a cup of tea and a biscuit.
The chosen venue for this first weekend was DSL, which I was all in favour of, being a ten minute bus ride from my house. This morning though, I shunned the bus in favour of the gentle jog advocated by my physio, and arrived feeling righteous, pumped up and ready to drink tea.
There are four of us on the course, all reasonably of an age, all with comparable stage combat experience, all very diffferent in style and all far to quick to revert to being naughty schoolboys the moment we found ourselves sitting, notebooks on laps, in DSL's airy front room. Our guide, mentor, master and commander, the notorious Philip of Death, had planned the day to be spent largely in discussion around our own individual approaches to the Training Programme and to teaching, and the day's work involved a good deal of writing in marker pens on big sheets of paper, then talking about what we'd written. All very intellectually stimulating and rather jolly, and not the bone-breaking practical drilling through technique that I was expecting.
That comes tomorrow.
The day had to come. The baptism. The initiation. The first day of training for the BASSC Stage Combat Teacher Training Programme was upon us. For the past year, this moment has loomed, black-clad and bearded, upon the horizon. Now, finally, it was a reality.
And it began - as all serious ventures should - with a cup of tea and a biscuit.
The chosen venue for this first weekend was DSL, which I was all in favour of, being a ten minute bus ride from my house. This morning though, I shunned the bus in favour of the gentle jog advocated by my physio, and arrived feeling righteous, pumped up and ready to drink tea.
There are four of us on the course, all reasonably of an age, all with comparable stage combat experience, all very diffferent in style and all far to quick to revert to being naughty schoolboys the moment we found ourselves sitting, notebooks on laps, in DSL's airy front room. Our guide, mentor, master and commander, the notorious Philip of Death, had planned the day to be spent largely in discussion around our own individual approaches to the Training Programme and to teaching, and the day's work involved a good deal of writing in marker pens on big sheets of paper, then talking about what we'd written. All very intellectually stimulating and rather jolly, and not the bone-breaking practical drilling through technique that I was expecting.
That comes tomorrow.
Monday, 22 October 2007
I bask in the glow of many lanterns.
Friday 19th October
Tech day. I like Tech Day. Tech Day is the day when we get out all the lighting and sound equipment and work through the script, inserting lighting states, sound cues and every possible effect we can shoehorn in - bearing in mind that we have to be able to opearte everything between the two of us, whilst simultaneously performing, changing costume between every scene and cueing the cast of childs who will have forgotten most of what they're supposed to do (often becasue they're too busy marvelling at how cool the lights are). When you get to be involved in designing the tech and making the tech work, Tech Day is fun. Actors hate tech day. I love it. It involves ladders, cables and plugs and semi-obscure terms that are enjoyable to use purely because you sound like you know what you're on about, and you know that to so many other people you know this fact alone might make you seem impressively knowledgeable in a very minor way. 'Do we have a spare fresnel?' for example, is the sort of thing you can say on Tech Day. 'Three and Five lanterns and the Profile should come up on the box' is another. 'Put up the FX then take everything out but the profile for a general wash' is yet a third. Even more exciting than all of this is the presence in Jumble Bag of an Animatronic Bear. Animatronic Bear began life as an ordinary teddy bear, before the operation which replaced some of his internal stuffing with some mecchano and two servo motors which work off a remote control device used in the 80s to operate remote control cars. Animatronic Bear can now turn his head from side to side and raise and lower his arms. He can also twitch convulsively when he is switched on and off, make faint but audible motorised sounds like the new Daleks do and fall over sideways whenever he makes too expansive a gesture, as if his traumatic surgery has left him suffering from narcolepsy. Oh, and his pre-recorded voice sounds very like a sleepy Stuart Maconie off of Radio 2. For scenes in which the child-actors have to carry the teddy bear, Animatronic Bear is replaced by Stunt Bear - his undoctored double. In all other respects, Stunt Bear is much the same as Animatronic Bear, except that he looks a bit gay.
With Tech Day in the bag and everything packed into the van, I got back into Oona the Laguna and back onto the motorway, back home to Ealing ready for my first weekend of expensive torture at the hands of Philip of Death. Read on, if you dare... (or, you know, can be arsed...)
Tech day. I like Tech Day. Tech Day is the day when we get out all the lighting and sound equipment and work through the script, inserting lighting states, sound cues and every possible effect we can shoehorn in - bearing in mind that we have to be able to opearte everything between the two of us, whilst simultaneously performing, changing costume between every scene and cueing the cast of childs who will have forgotten most of what they're supposed to do (often becasue they're too busy marvelling at how cool the lights are). When you get to be involved in designing the tech and making the tech work, Tech Day is fun. Actors hate tech day. I love it. It involves ladders, cables and plugs and semi-obscure terms that are enjoyable to use purely because you sound like you know what you're on about, and you know that to so many other people you know this fact alone might make you seem impressively knowledgeable in a very minor way. 'Do we have a spare fresnel?' for example, is the sort of thing you can say on Tech Day. 'Three and Five lanterns and the Profile should come up on the box' is another. 'Put up the FX then take everything out but the profile for a general wash' is yet a third. Even more exciting than all of this is the presence in Jumble Bag of an Animatronic Bear. Animatronic Bear began life as an ordinary teddy bear, before the operation which replaced some of his internal stuffing with some mecchano and two servo motors which work off a remote control device used in the 80s to operate remote control cars. Animatronic Bear can now turn his head from side to side and raise and lower his arms. He can also twitch convulsively when he is switched on and off, make faint but audible motorised sounds like the new Daleks do and fall over sideways whenever he makes too expansive a gesture, as if his traumatic surgery has left him suffering from narcolepsy. Oh, and his pre-recorded voice sounds very like a sleepy Stuart Maconie off of Radio 2. For scenes in which the child-actors have to carry the teddy bear, Animatronic Bear is replaced by Stunt Bear - his undoctored double. In all other respects, Stunt Bear is much the same as Animatronic Bear, except that he looks a bit gay.
With Tech Day in the bag and everything packed into the van, I got back into Oona the Laguna and back onto the motorway, back home to Ealing ready for my first weekend of expensive torture at the hands of Philip of Death. Read on, if you dare... (or, you know, can be arsed...)
Thursday 18th October
Having somehow managed last night to make food for myself, do a load of washing and pack a bag for two days, I was in the car at 6.30 this morning, heading back up to Wenlock for a really huge bacon and egg sarn and a third day of rehearsal. As it was, we largely ground to a halt around three this afternoon and went out hunting and scavenging for the remaining bits of costume instead.
My accommodation for the evening was the Broseley Guest House - a rather stately Early Victoian building in the village of Broselely, where I last stayed when we rehearsed the existing three shows in January. As then, the Broseley Guest House was warm, full of cushions and immediately made me want to have a nice big snooze, possibly for several days. Instead I sat in the dining room with my laptop and finished a class log from last week's RADA class before repairing to the pub next door to find that I was too late to get any food. This was a good thing though, as I have no money to pay for having food in a pub, and the mere fact of being in a pub involves all the senses to turn towards the acquisition and drinking of beer. Which also requires money. Which I don't have. Through a mighty effort of will, I managed to escape from the pub after only one pint and be in bed by ten, considering sleep to be of more immediate importance this evening than eating. Quite often I have to make the choice between the two, and most often, sleep wins.
Having somehow managed last night to make food for myself, do a load of washing and pack a bag for two days, I was in the car at 6.30 this morning, heading back up to Wenlock for a really huge bacon and egg sarn and a third day of rehearsal. As it was, we largely ground to a halt around three this afternoon and went out hunting and scavenging for the remaining bits of costume instead.
My accommodation for the evening was the Broseley Guest House - a rather stately Early Victoian building in the village of Broselely, where I last stayed when we rehearsed the existing three shows in January. As then, the Broseley Guest House was warm, full of cushions and immediately made me want to have a nice big snooze, possibly for several days. Instead I sat in the dining room with my laptop and finished a class log from last week's RADA class before repairing to the pub next door to find that I was too late to get any food. This was a good thing though, as I have no money to pay for having food in a pub, and the mere fact of being in a pub involves all the senses to turn towards the acquisition and drinking of beer. Which also requires money. Which I don't have. Through a mighty effort of will, I managed to escape from the pub after only one pint and be in bed by ten, considering sleep to be of more immediate importance this evening than eating. Quite often I have to make the choice between the two, and most often, sleep wins.
Wednesday 17th October
Up at a relatively civilised hour for once, and a fine strong stroll up the Broadway to DSL for class assisting. This being the first DSL Stage Combat session of this term, you won't yet know anything about it will you? Well... DSL is a rather cosy little Drama School up in Ealing - that is, the main, nice, relatively posh part of Ealing as opposed to the scruffy, Pound-Shop end of Ealing where I live. It's based in a big white cosy old house with a cosy paved corner outside where the exiled smokers huddle around the glowing ends of cosy tabs. They run a one-year course for post-graduate students, so there's a much smaller, cosy number of people in it. Having auditioned unsuccessfully for a place on five separate occasions, I now get to spend time in the cosy staffroom, lolling in their settees and listening to cosy chat about the world and work of the cosy people who teach there.
The combat teacher at DSL is the redoubtable Philip (who, as it happens, is also the co-ordinator for the Teacher Training Programme) and the daily format is of five classes from 9 til 6.15, which means that we teach the same class five times in succession. Good in that Ronin (who is also assisting alongside me) and I get to see the same class five times, honing our knowledge and skills as we go. Bad in that we get to see the SAME CLASS. FIVE TIMES. Which can hurt your head a bit. Especially if it's one like today's - Rapier & Dagger 101: the students' first encounter with the shiny world of stage weaponary. It's the class where Philip has to lay all the groundwork, which means lots of standing around absorbing and not a lot of doing, except in the brain area (which as we know hurts much more than being hit with a sword). Around four o'clock comes the point of vertiginous head-swimmery, when you suddenly lose all concept of what time it is, what day it is, how many sessions you've already done, how many are left, how many times you've heard everything Philip has to say and whether you'll ever escape this Escheresque world back into a place where things only happen once and then stop.
And so, reeling slightly, drunk on the minutiae of swordplay, I opted for an early night whilst I had the chance.
Up at a relatively civilised hour for once, and a fine strong stroll up the Broadway to DSL for class assisting. This being the first DSL Stage Combat session of this term, you won't yet know anything about it will you? Well... DSL is a rather cosy little Drama School up in Ealing - that is, the main, nice, relatively posh part of Ealing as opposed to the scruffy, Pound-Shop end of Ealing where I live. It's based in a big white cosy old house with a cosy paved corner outside where the exiled smokers huddle around the glowing ends of cosy tabs. They run a one-year course for post-graduate students, so there's a much smaller, cosy number of people in it. Having auditioned unsuccessfully for a place on five separate occasions, I now get to spend time in the cosy staffroom, lolling in their settees and listening to cosy chat about the world and work of the cosy people who teach there.
The combat teacher at DSL is the redoubtable Philip (who, as it happens, is also the co-ordinator for the Teacher Training Programme) and the daily format is of five classes from 9 til 6.15, which means that we teach the same class five times in succession. Good in that Ronin (who is also assisting alongside me) and I get to see the same class five times, honing our knowledge and skills as we go. Bad in that we get to see the SAME CLASS. FIVE TIMES. Which can hurt your head a bit. Especially if it's one like today's - Rapier & Dagger 101: the students' first encounter with the shiny world of stage weaponary. It's the class where Philip has to lay all the groundwork, which means lots of standing around absorbing and not a lot of doing, except in the brain area (which as we know hurts much more than being hit with a sword). Around four o'clock comes the point of vertiginous head-swimmery, when you suddenly lose all concept of what time it is, what day it is, how many sessions you've already done, how many are left, how many times you've heard everything Philip has to say and whether you'll ever escape this Escheresque world back into a place where things only happen once and then stop.
And so, reeling slightly, drunk on the minutiae of swordplay, I opted for an early night whilst I had the chance.
Tuesday 16th October
Our second day spent rehearsing Jumble Bag. It's not at all a complicated show, think I at this point when we've yet to add all the tech, costume changes and cast of extras. No, actually, I don't think it's a complicated show at all. Which, given the piecemeal nature of our rehearsal process, is a bloody good job.
We finished at 5, so I could get straight back on the road back down home for classes tomorrow.
Our second day spent rehearsing Jumble Bag. It's not at all a complicated show, think I at this point when we've yet to add all the tech, costume changes and cast of extras. No, actually, I don't think it's a complicated show at all. Which, given the piecemeal nature of our rehearsal process, is a bloody good job.
We finished at 5, so I could get straight back on the road back down home for classes tomorrow.
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Monday 15th October
One of the things about The Autumn is that you can eat porridge. Theres nothing I suppose, to stop you eating porridge any time you like - it's great when you roll in from the pub, for example - but the warm, stodgy, comforting oatiness of it is really geared to the dark end of the year. When you crawl out of bed at half five, in the dark, before the heating has come on, and you have a long arduous day ahead of you, a big fat steaming bowl of porridge sets you up for the day like nothing else. And if you neglected to eat anything the night before but went to the pub instead and had several beer, porridge both packs out the growling gap that is your stomach and soaks up any remaining booze that might be swilling around in the pipes. There is the downside that porridge takes a good ten minutes to make, if you're doing it properly, which means having to get up that bit earlier still - you need to calculate your sleep to porridge need ratio quite carefully.
On reflection, going to the pub last night was a bad idea, but with the application of porridge, I was out of the door at 6.45 to pick up Sian at the Travelodge and head to Maidenhead. At a posh girls school today, to do Children Of Iron, the Victorian play in which we recreate a Victorian schoolroom where the childs get beaten with a cane before we send them to work down the mine, take a brief sojourn on the canals and finally experience a mining disaster where a number of the supporting cast die. Luckily we save most of them, so we can all have a jolly morris dance at the end. Being a posh girls school, our group of supporting actors were used to being in plays and produced an exceptional performance in which they remembered nearly everything (which doesn't happen often). When this happens it tends to catch us out a bit, because we suddenly realise how many of our own lines we don't know properly.
Once we'd got packed up, around five, we drove back up to Wenlock so we can have another day's rehearsal tomorrow. I managed to get some work done on my class logs in the evening, which surprised me.
One of the things about The Autumn is that you can eat porridge. Theres nothing I suppose, to stop you eating porridge any time you like - it's great when you roll in from the pub, for example - but the warm, stodgy, comforting oatiness of it is really geared to the dark end of the year. When you crawl out of bed at half five, in the dark, before the heating has come on, and you have a long arduous day ahead of you, a big fat steaming bowl of porridge sets you up for the day like nothing else. And if you neglected to eat anything the night before but went to the pub instead and had several beer, porridge both packs out the growling gap that is your stomach and soaks up any remaining booze that might be swilling around in the pipes. There is the downside that porridge takes a good ten minutes to make, if you're doing it properly, which means having to get up that bit earlier still - you need to calculate your sleep to porridge need ratio quite carefully.
On reflection, going to the pub last night was a bad idea, but with the application of porridge, I was out of the door at 6.45 to pick up Sian at the Travelodge and head to Maidenhead. At a posh girls school today, to do Children Of Iron, the Victorian play in which we recreate a Victorian schoolroom where the childs get beaten with a cane before we send them to work down the mine, take a brief sojourn on the canals and finally experience a mining disaster where a number of the supporting cast die. Luckily we save most of them, so we can all have a jolly morris dance at the end. Being a posh girls school, our group of supporting actors were used to being in plays and produced an exceptional performance in which they remembered nearly everything (which doesn't happen often). When this happens it tends to catch us out a bit, because we suddenly realise how many of our own lines we don't know properly.
Once we'd got packed up, around five, we drove back up to Wenlock so we can have another day's rehearsal tomorrow. I managed to get some work done on my class logs in the evening, which surprised me.
In which I am put into the Jumble Bag
Sunday 14th October
Okay, here we go. This week is where the real fun begins.
Up at 5.30 and in the car just after 6 to drive up to the Historic Market Town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire, home of Seagull Theatre. We have this week only to rehearse up the first of three new productions which will go into the rep this term, and this means that I'll be up and down the M40 like a rat on Romford High Street.
In Much Wenlock live Sian and Margo, the owners and Co-directors of Seagull Theatre, although Margo, now in her sixties and less active than she was, is taking more of a back seat, while Sian is out on the road doing more than she did when they were running three teams of actors. First stop for me then was the cottage, which the Seagals now share and which is also base of operations for the company. Then on to the village hall in Cressage, which we use for rehearsals and where most of the company's actual hardware (sets, props, costumes and electrics) is stored.
The first new production, entitled Jumble Bag is actually a very simple show - as always, the complicated bit doesn't come until we get into schools and have our supporting cast of childs to factor in. So today was largely about the two of us just getting the feel and shape of the play, putting in some very basic blocking for ourselves (which very often goes to shit as soon as we have the supporting cast anyway) and trying to remember lines. Typically for Seagull, it's a play that doesn't pull any punches, telling as it does the story of a group of refugee children escaping from their village as it's taken by an invading army, and ending up in a refugee camp where one of them is suffering from the trauma of losing her younger brother on the way, and will only talk to a teddy bear (who luckily can talk back, so that's something at least). Despite this apparent bleakness and misery, it also manages to be quite jolly in places. Honestly.
As we have a show in Maidenhead tomorrow, we packed up at five and drove back down to London in the van, where I dropped Sian at Heathrow Travelodge, then went home and allowwed Brian to persuaded to go round to the local for beer. We used to be enormously fond of our local when it was an unremarkable crap pub, full of the same gnarled old Irish people on any given night, but where we knew all the staff and they often stayed open late and let us in even if we polled up just before midnight. Tonight was the first time I've set foot in there since it's suffered a garish makeover and been turned into a hideous blond-wood, red-wall rodeo diner monstrosity, losing it's entire cast of regulars, old staff and warm crap-pub homeliness in one fell swoop. Well, good luck to them. We ended up staying for four pints, which was foolish but necessary since I've just read the first draft of Brian's most recent play and had to grill him about it. And to have a proper discussion about artistic endeavour requires beer. We all know that. I'm happy to say it's shaping up to be a very good play - without giving too much away, it's about a stalker stalking someone who looks a bit like a celebrity, and has its genesis in my having been mistaken for David Tennant on a number of occasions (though to my knowledge, I haven't yet been stalked, unless its by a very skilled stalker who I am as yet unaware of). When the play is put on, I hope to have a mention in the programme notes.
Okay, here we go. This week is where the real fun begins.
Up at 5.30 and in the car just after 6 to drive up to the Historic Market Town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire, home of Seagull Theatre. We have this week only to rehearse up the first of three new productions which will go into the rep this term, and this means that I'll be up and down the M40 like a rat on Romford High Street.
In Much Wenlock live Sian and Margo, the owners and Co-directors of Seagull Theatre, although Margo, now in her sixties and less active than she was, is taking more of a back seat, while Sian is out on the road doing more than she did when they were running three teams of actors. First stop for me then was the cottage, which the Seagals now share and which is also base of operations for the company. Then on to the village hall in Cressage, which we use for rehearsals and where most of the company's actual hardware (sets, props, costumes and electrics) is stored.
The first new production, entitled Jumble Bag is actually a very simple show - as always, the complicated bit doesn't come until we get into schools and have our supporting cast of childs to factor in. So today was largely about the two of us just getting the feel and shape of the play, putting in some very basic blocking for ourselves (which very often goes to shit as soon as we have the supporting cast anyway) and trying to remember lines. Typically for Seagull, it's a play that doesn't pull any punches, telling as it does the story of a group of refugee children escaping from their village as it's taken by an invading army, and ending up in a refugee camp where one of them is suffering from the trauma of losing her younger brother on the way, and will only talk to a teddy bear (who luckily can talk back, so that's something at least). Despite this apparent bleakness and misery, it also manages to be quite jolly in places. Honestly.
As we have a show in Maidenhead tomorrow, we packed up at five and drove back down to London in the van, where I dropped Sian at Heathrow Travelodge, then went home and allowwed Brian to persuaded to go round to the local for beer. We used to be enormously fond of our local when it was an unremarkable crap pub, full of the same gnarled old Irish people on any given night, but where we knew all the staff and they often stayed open late and let us in even if we polled up just before midnight. Tonight was the first time I've set foot in there since it's suffered a garish makeover and been turned into a hideous blond-wood, red-wall rodeo diner monstrosity, losing it's entire cast of regulars, old staff and warm crap-pub homeliness in one fell swoop. Well, good luck to them. We ended up staying for four pints, which was foolish but necessary since I've just read the first draft of Brian's most recent play and had to grill him about it. And to have a proper discussion about artistic endeavour requires beer. We all know that. I'm happy to say it's shaping up to be a very good play - without giving too much away, it's about a stalker stalking someone who looks a bit like a celebrity, and has its genesis in my having been mistaken for David Tennant on a number of occasions (though to my knowledge, I haven't yet been stalked, unless its by a very skilled stalker who I am as yet unaware of). When the play is put on, I hope to have a mention in the programme notes.
Saturday 13th October
The last time I'll have the chance to make my own food for a while, so that's what I did, in between learning lines and reading, reading and re-reading the BASSC Policies and Procedures document, which I need to be 'familiar with' by the time the actual training starts.
Then an evening in The Shop, siting on the Olivier stall, which is an easy enough night, if long and dull. Today was The Lovely Sam's last day in The Shop, which is a real shame, as she made it a much sunnier and sillier place. She wil be missed.
The last time I'll have the chance to make my own food for a while, so that's what I did, in between learning lines and reading, reading and re-reading the BASSC Policies and Procedures document, which I need to be 'familiar with' by the time the actual training starts.
Then an evening in The Shop, siting on the Olivier stall, which is an easy enough night, if long and dull. Today was The Lovely Sam's last day in The Shop, which is a real shame, as she made it a much sunnier and sillier place. She wil be missed.
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
I detail a late shift in The Shop
Friday 12th October
A full shift in the bookshop, or as I shall refer to it hereafter The Shop, today – luckily a late one, so that’s 3-11pm. Late shifts allow for beer the night before, since you can lollop out of bed at a disgraceful hour and don’t have to look or smell respectable until at least half past one. Unfortunately late shifts are the shifts that casual staff get most often and a run of them can put paid completely to any hope of functioning socially in society.
Something of an exodus is taking place in The Shop as Sean, the longest serving (and suffering) bookseller leaves this week, the lovely Sam is leaving after only a couple of months and our newest full-time recruit started and left within the week so I never actually got to meet her. There are a number of good reasons to want to leave The Shop, not least the fact that It’s A Shop, and not a job you want to hang around in forever when there’s no hope of any kind of promotion. There are other reasons too, but those are the personal property of the leavers and none of anyone else’s business. They have, obviously, been discussed and dissected at great length by We Who Remain. Personally, I find it hilarious that someone wasn’t even able to stand a week of it before she ran for the hills. Go! Run! Don't look back!
Late shifts are dull because once the shows have gone in you don’t see many other humans until they come out, usually around 10 – 10.30pm, then you don’t hear another living soul until you can finally lock up at 11. After a late shift I tend to get the District Line home, partly because the overground from Paddington is anyone's guess after 10 (as is Paddington itself, where I was once knocked over by having a youth thrown at me by another youth who appeared to disagree with him), partly because Ealing Broadway is the last stop on the District so you can fall asleep happy in the knowledge that you won’t miss your stop, and partly because it means I can walk over Hungerford Bridge and look at the river, which is something I never get bored of. For reasons of leg build-uppage and Not Wanting To Hang Around Outside Broadway Station With The Scrotes and Prossies, I avoid waiting for the bus and walk home along the posher roads, so I get home around half midninght. Brian is customarily still up and pissing around on the internet. When does that man ever sleep? Oh, in the morning.
Thursday 11th October
Class assisting today at RADA. A major irony that has not escaped my notice is that I’m now sort of teaching in a number of the Drama Schools at which over a ten-year period I consistently failed to get a place. Thus having been told by nearly every actor training centre in th UK that it would be beyond even their capabilities to train me as an actor, I am now in their schools teaching their students how to be actors. Even though I can't do it myself. I know. They told me. Some people would say that this is a common phenomenon in teaching (and lets face it, how many teachers have we all met who are little more than frustrated somethings) (or little more than frustrated). Good teaching practice and old-fashioned manners forbid me from writing anything here about what goes on in the classes I assist at, or the students I assist. Sorry. Imagine it for yourselves then tell me what you imagined and I'll tell you how close you were.
Class assisting today at RADA. A major irony that has not escaped my notice is that I’m now sort of teaching in a number of the Drama Schools at which over a ten-year period I consistently failed to get a place. Thus having been told by nearly every actor training centre in th UK that it would be beyond even their capabilities to train me as an actor, I am now in their schools teaching their students how to be actors. Even though I can't do it myself. I know. They told me. Some people would say that this is a common phenomenon in teaching (and lets face it, how many teachers have we all met who are little more than frustrated somethings) (or little more than frustrated). Good teaching practice and old-fashioned manners forbid me from writing anything here about what goes on in the classes I assist at, or the students I assist. Sorry. Imagine it for yourselves then tell me what you imagined and I'll tell you how close you were.
Classes finished at five, so I grabbed a quick pint with Sam before hopping on the Northern line down to the NT to change clothes and dump some kit in the office before catching a train out to Richmond for beer with Brian and Jamie. In this respect, if in no other, the NT is fantastic. Given that when I do manage to make a social occasion (and for me, nipping out to the pub is an occasion) I’m often coming from work or class somewhere else in town, the NT provides an ideal place to perform a quick change and dump anything I can't be arsed to carry with me for the evening. There’s even a shower in the changing rooms for if I’ve had a particularly sweaty class, and what’s even handier is that if need be I can plant a change of clothes in the office ready for my next shift at work. I used this splendid facility a lot last year when I was a manager and the office was mine to do with as I would, but even since then no-one has ever raised any objections to me offloading bags of PE kit and the occasional sword in there. In this way, I’m able to perpetuate my air of mystery by magically appearing somewhere in a different set of clothes.
In Richmond we went to a cripplingly expensive pub and had a silly old time until Jamie’s stomach bug finally got the better of him and he was forced to admith that Dr Beer didn’t hold the cure. Brian and I then went to a much better pub for a couple more before heading home.
You will find that beer plays a significant part in my life. See how many references to it you can spot.
Saturday, 13 October 2007
I experience the calm before the storm.
Wednesday 10th October
By an incredible stroke of luck, I managed to remeber to get up and make my appointment with the Physio at 8.15 this morning. At the beginning of August I underwent an operation to have a huge sliver of cartiledge removed from my left knee, which had stopped working as a knee should, and consequently I now have the task of building the knee back up to its former strength. Its former strength being fairly inconsiderable, I thought this wouldn't take too long, but it turns out I used to have more muscle in my leg than I ever would have believed, and it's taking quie a while. Rebuilding it involves a lot of squatting and bending around on the stairs.
Given that I'd been expecting this month never to let up for a moment, I'm slightly confused by having spent two days this week largely in my own house. This has allowed me to eat real food that I've made in my own kitchen twice in one week (a thing almost unheard of at Leonard Mansions). I've also written one complete class log on time and learnt around half of the script for the new Seagull show, which we start rehearsing next week.
This evening to my third place of work: the bookshop of the National Theatre. This momentously unattractive building on London's otherwise funky South Bank can only be understood if considered in the same light as other iconic offspring of the Late Seventies, say Blake's 7 - which may have seemed daringly modern and edgy at the time but now look hopelessly wrong to the point where they can no longer be taken at all seriously. In this way, I suppose Denys Lasdun can be seen as the Terry Nation of architecture. Inside, as many before me have noted, the National Theatre resembles in almost every respect a car park, the only difference being that fewer of the corners smell of piss and it is marginally cheaper to park your car for a day than it is to buy a drink at the NT.
I originally jopined the NT bookshop as Deputy Manager but knew within a week that I'd made a terrible mistake. I held out for a year before bailing out to work with Sian, but stayed on the books as a casual bookseller, thus achieveing the unusual distinction of having effectively demoted myself. The bookshop itself is unique in many respects, most of which can be traced directly to the all-pervasive influence of its manager, a man so extreme, so absurd as to be a phenomenon in his own right. To attempt a snapshot summary would not do this monument to pomposity the justice he deserves, so I'll drop things in as they happen.
This evening's shift was in the gloomier of the two satellite bookstalls, where the dinge of the surroundings is offset by the opportunity, away from overseers, to get on with your own stuff or more often than not just dick around on the internet. This went on until 10.15 - an early finish for an evening shift, so I was back home before midnight. Just.
By an incredible stroke of luck, I managed to remeber to get up and make my appointment with the Physio at 8.15 this morning. At the beginning of August I underwent an operation to have a huge sliver of cartiledge removed from my left knee, which had stopped working as a knee should, and consequently I now have the task of building the knee back up to its former strength. Its former strength being fairly inconsiderable, I thought this wouldn't take too long, but it turns out I used to have more muscle in my leg than I ever would have believed, and it's taking quie a while. Rebuilding it involves a lot of squatting and bending around on the stairs.
Given that I'd been expecting this month never to let up for a moment, I'm slightly confused by having spent two days this week largely in my own house. This has allowed me to eat real food that I've made in my own kitchen twice in one week (a thing almost unheard of at Leonard Mansions). I've also written one complete class log on time and learnt around half of the script for the new Seagull show, which we start rehearsing next week.
This evening to my third place of work: the bookshop of the National Theatre. This momentously unattractive building on London's otherwise funky South Bank can only be understood if considered in the same light as other iconic offspring of the Late Seventies, say Blake's 7 - which may have seemed daringly modern and edgy at the time but now look hopelessly wrong to the point where they can no longer be taken at all seriously. In this way, I suppose Denys Lasdun can be seen as the Terry Nation of architecture. Inside, as many before me have noted, the National Theatre resembles in almost every respect a car park, the only difference being that fewer of the corners smell of piss and it is marginally cheaper to park your car for a day than it is to buy a drink at the NT.
I originally jopined the NT bookshop as Deputy Manager but knew within a week that I'd made a terrible mistake. I held out for a year before bailing out to work with Sian, but stayed on the books as a casual bookseller, thus achieveing the unusual distinction of having effectively demoted myself. The bookshop itself is unique in many respects, most of which can be traced directly to the all-pervasive influence of its manager, a man so extreme, so absurd as to be a phenomenon in his own right. To attempt a snapshot summary would not do this monument to pomposity the justice he deserves, so I'll drop things in as they happen.
This evening's shift was in the gloomier of the two satellite bookstalls, where the dinge of the surroundings is offset by the opportunity, away from overseers, to get on with your own stuff or more often than not just dick around on the internet. This went on until 10.15 - an early finish for an evening shift, so I was back home before midnight. Just.
I feel as though I am at school again, and take refuge in the past.
Monday 8th October
Training as a teacher of Stage Combat involves some fun stuff and some non-fun stuff. The fun stuff, as you might imagine, is the bit where you get to wang swords around, grunt a lot, look kind of cool and get a pretty good aerobic workout. The less fun aspects are the endless hours of drudgery involved in writing up detailed 'Logs' on all the classes I assist at. It's uncomfortably like being back at school, which sensation brings with it all the familiar old feelings of pressure, guilt, frustration, neck and back pain, eyestrain and general sulkiness at not being able to watch telly or jeff around with your mates instead. As I hauled my angst-ridden carcass to the end of my time at school, I promised myself, so miserable had the past seven years' academic toil made me, that I would never put myself through anything like it again. Inevitably I ended up going to University a little over a year later, towards the end of which I promised myself that I would really never put myself through anything like it again. Why then, I find myself asking with uncomfortable regularity, have I undertaken a training course requiring a vast amount of time spent sitting at a computer, when I could instead have been training as a plumber right now? Up and about. On my feet. Making stuff work. Doing stuff (albeit with my hand down a bog pipe). It's a difficult question, and one for which I have no immediate answer. Lets see if one appears.
Amidst this reoccurring train of thought, I managed to finish my class log and learn some lines for the new project I'll be rehearsing next week, and so busy was I that I almost forgot that I had to drive to Amesbury this evening, ready for work tomorrow.
Tuesday 9th October
Time to introduce the second of my part-time jobs. Some years ago, when I hilariously thought that I was going to be an actor, I even more hilariously thought that the way to start being an actor was to work in Theatre In Education - or TIE, as it is known by those who know and those who try to forget. This assumption is of course WRONG. Take heed, any budding young actors who may chance upon these scribblings: working in TIE is a way into working in more TIE
AND
NOTHING
ELSE.
It is not acting, neither is it teaching, and neither of these professions recognise it as being an acceptable foundation for building a career with them. It therefore exists in a curious hinterland all of its own, populated by young people who have 'trained' at minor Drama Schools, or haven't trained at all, but who still think that they can be actors. I was one such deluded clown, and I took the turn into the cul-de-sac of my career with a company called Seagull Theatre Of The Gorge.
Now, having been fairly scathing of TIE, I have to back-pedal a bit and explain that, for as much as it isn't acting or teaching, it does provide a service and sometimes that service can be quite good. Not often, but sometimes. A strange and unloved area of the arts it my be, but within it you will find the bad, the good and occasionally the superb. Seagull, my first and best experience of TIE, belongs to the lattermost category and I undertook two tours with them, lasting a full year of my life. Not long after this, the company closed after 30 years in business, and that, I thought, was the end of an era. By this stage I had long since abandoned any claim to be an actor of any kind and was working wherever I could, largely in shops. Then suddenly one day, an email arrives from Sian, co-director of Seagull, wondering if I would be interested in some work. Seagull is reborn in a cut-down form, and Sian needs a working partner to take reworkings of the old productions out on the road, two days a week. Well, it was a way to escape from the pit of despair that I then called a workplace, so I closed my eyes and leapt back into the Lion cubs' den.
Hence my late night journey last night to the Travelodge at Amesbury. Given that we generally stay away on the evening before a gig, I'm becoming monotonously familiar with Travelodges. Which doesn't take much doing, of course, since they all look exactly the same.
We currently have a rep of four productions, and today's was Grandma's Birthday, my favourite of the lot, partly because it's a reworking of one of the shows I toured with back in the day and partly because it's just really nicely written. I think I'll leave my description of our working day for another time, otherwise Too Much Exposition all at once, which writers tell me isn't good. Suffice to say then, that since I was in the car today and not too far away from home, I was back at a reasonable time and managed to make my own food. Always a luxury.
Training as a teacher of Stage Combat involves some fun stuff and some non-fun stuff. The fun stuff, as you might imagine, is the bit where you get to wang swords around, grunt a lot, look kind of cool and get a pretty good aerobic workout. The less fun aspects are the endless hours of drudgery involved in writing up detailed 'Logs' on all the classes I assist at. It's uncomfortably like being back at school, which sensation brings with it all the familiar old feelings of pressure, guilt, frustration, neck and back pain, eyestrain and general sulkiness at not being able to watch telly or jeff around with your mates instead. As I hauled my angst-ridden carcass to the end of my time at school, I promised myself, so miserable had the past seven years' academic toil made me, that I would never put myself through anything like it again. Inevitably I ended up going to University a little over a year later, towards the end of which I promised myself that I would really never put myself through anything like it again. Why then, I find myself asking with uncomfortable regularity, have I undertaken a training course requiring a vast amount of time spent sitting at a computer, when I could instead have been training as a plumber right now? Up and about. On my feet. Making stuff work. Doing stuff (albeit with my hand down a bog pipe). It's a difficult question, and one for which I have no immediate answer. Lets see if one appears.
Amidst this reoccurring train of thought, I managed to finish my class log and learn some lines for the new project I'll be rehearsing next week, and so busy was I that I almost forgot that I had to drive to Amesbury this evening, ready for work tomorrow.
Tuesday 9th October
Time to introduce the second of my part-time jobs. Some years ago, when I hilariously thought that I was going to be an actor, I even more hilariously thought that the way to start being an actor was to work in Theatre In Education - or TIE, as it is known by those who know and those who try to forget. This assumption is of course WRONG. Take heed, any budding young actors who may chance upon these scribblings: working in TIE is a way into working in more TIE
AND
NOTHING
ELSE.
It is not acting, neither is it teaching, and neither of these professions recognise it as being an acceptable foundation for building a career with them. It therefore exists in a curious hinterland all of its own, populated by young people who have 'trained' at minor Drama Schools, or haven't trained at all, but who still think that they can be actors. I was one such deluded clown, and I took the turn into the cul-de-sac of my career with a company called Seagull Theatre Of The Gorge.
Now, having been fairly scathing of TIE, I have to back-pedal a bit and explain that, for as much as it isn't acting or teaching, it does provide a service and sometimes that service can be quite good. Not often, but sometimes. A strange and unloved area of the arts it my be, but within it you will find the bad, the good and occasionally the superb. Seagull, my first and best experience of TIE, belongs to the lattermost category and I undertook two tours with them, lasting a full year of my life. Not long after this, the company closed after 30 years in business, and that, I thought, was the end of an era. By this stage I had long since abandoned any claim to be an actor of any kind and was working wherever I could, largely in shops. Then suddenly one day, an email arrives from Sian, co-director of Seagull, wondering if I would be interested in some work. Seagull is reborn in a cut-down form, and Sian needs a working partner to take reworkings of the old productions out on the road, two days a week. Well, it was a way to escape from the pit of despair that I then called a workplace, so I closed my eyes and leapt back into the Lion cubs' den.
Hence my late night journey last night to the Travelodge at Amesbury. Given that we generally stay away on the evening before a gig, I'm becoming monotonously familiar with Travelodges. Which doesn't take much doing, of course, since they all look exactly the same.
We currently have a rep of four productions, and today's was Grandma's Birthday, my favourite of the lot, partly because it's a reworking of one of the shows I toured with back in the day and partly because it's just really nicely written. I think I'll leave my description of our working day for another time, otherwise Too Much Exposition all at once, which writers tell me isn't good. Suffice to say then, that since I was in the car today and not too far away from home, I was back at a reasonable time and managed to make my own food. Always a luxury.
Monday, 8 October 2007
I reacquaint myself with the Broadsword and am given a coathanger by a top stand-up comedian.
Sunday 7th October
The judicious application of Cheese On Toast on my return from the pub last night meant that I bounced out of bed with nery a wince this morning to get myself over to Stratford East and one of the Stage Combat classes I assist at. On the Central Line I had time to mull over the odd dream I'd been having just before I woke up, in which I'd been decorating my parents' house in France, when my Mum poked what I think was a hanging basket with a stick and a rat dropped out and scurried across the floor. I managed to pick my feet up before he coud bite me on the toe, but instead he jumped up and bit me on the hand, hanging on with his front paws and gnawing at my knuckle while I wondered how to get rid of him. I like to think of dreams as being predictive of the future, mostly because it annoys my more intelligent and pragmatic friends, but also because there have been a number of instances when things I've dreamed about have actually come about. Wondering then what could be signified by being bitten by a rat, I arrived at Stratford Circus.
There are two classes back to back, a beginner class, in which they learn Unarmed Combat (that's Thumping People) and Rapier & Dagger, and an intermediate class which this term is on Broadsword. Both are taught by Janet, who I've been assisting for a year or so and who is one of only two lady teachers in the organisation (both of whom, oddly, are Very Little. I often wonder if there's a connection, you know, in the way that Very Little dogs are always the most aggressive). Stratford differs from the classes I assist at in Drama Schools in that it's open to anyone, so the class is a mixture of actors and real people, and given the nature of the subject, the real people can tend to be, shall we say, quite individual. No, we'll say a bit headmental. In this year's beginner group we apparently have two students who genuinely have 'mental health problems'. The exact nature of the problems are unspecified, but from my observation it appears that one student's condition is that He Is A Robot. Now, I appreciate that part of Startford Circus's remit is to be inclusive and to offer all comers the chance to take part in classes, but I have to question the thinking behind encouraging people with 'mental health problems' to learn how to fight with swords. Still, lets hope I'm proved wrong and that they turn out to be brilliant at it. Rather than to kill people.
From four hours of slinging swords around, a quick change and a tube to Hammersmith to see an evening of comedy at the Lyric. Getting there early and meeting Brian in the pub allowed for the possibility of some beer, then we were thoroughly entertained by Phill Jupitus, Harry Hill and two new lads, one of whom was very good and one of whom largely relied on having Funny Hair. The last time I met Harry Hill he was watching me onstage, dying a slow and painful death in a show at his daughter's school. Afterwards he came over for a chat, and he's a lovey chap and much shorter than you realise. During the show this evening, he asked the audience to name an animal. I immediately shouted 'Penguin!' whereupon he proceeded to make me one out of a coathanger, which I carried home in triumph to add to my growing collection of penguin-related things. In the bar afterwards, I was interviewed by the BBC for The Culture Show, who were asking punters what they thought of the new comedian with the Funny Hair. In truth, I thought he was rubbish, but being by now quite pissed and holding a penguin made from a coathanger I praised his confidence and rapport with the audience and was told by the lovely BBC girl that I sounded like a comedy agent. Nearby, two blonde girls tried blatantly to crack onto Richard Herring, the compere for the evening, who was having none of it, despite most of his material having been about only doing these gigs in order to find women who are prepared to have sex with him.
On the way home, I am thoroughly ashamed to report that I bought and ate a doner kebab. I deserve to be bitten by a rat.
The judicious application of Cheese On Toast on my return from the pub last night meant that I bounced out of bed with nery a wince this morning to get myself over to Stratford East and one of the Stage Combat classes I assist at. On the Central Line I had time to mull over the odd dream I'd been having just before I woke up, in which I'd been decorating my parents' house in France, when my Mum poked what I think was a hanging basket with a stick and a rat dropped out and scurried across the floor. I managed to pick my feet up before he coud bite me on the toe, but instead he jumped up and bit me on the hand, hanging on with his front paws and gnawing at my knuckle while I wondered how to get rid of him. I like to think of dreams as being predictive of the future, mostly because it annoys my more intelligent and pragmatic friends, but also because there have been a number of instances when things I've dreamed about have actually come about. Wondering then what could be signified by being bitten by a rat, I arrived at Stratford Circus.
There are two classes back to back, a beginner class, in which they learn Unarmed Combat (that's Thumping People) and Rapier & Dagger, and an intermediate class which this term is on Broadsword. Both are taught by Janet, who I've been assisting for a year or so and who is one of only two lady teachers in the organisation (both of whom, oddly, are Very Little. I often wonder if there's a connection, you know, in the way that Very Little dogs are always the most aggressive). Stratford differs from the classes I assist at in Drama Schools in that it's open to anyone, so the class is a mixture of actors and real people, and given the nature of the subject, the real people can tend to be, shall we say, quite individual. No, we'll say a bit headmental. In this year's beginner group we apparently have two students who genuinely have 'mental health problems'. The exact nature of the problems are unspecified, but from my observation it appears that one student's condition is that He Is A Robot. Now, I appreciate that part of Startford Circus's remit is to be inclusive and to offer all comers the chance to take part in classes, but I have to question the thinking behind encouraging people with 'mental health problems' to learn how to fight with swords. Still, lets hope I'm proved wrong and that they turn out to be brilliant at it. Rather than to kill people.
From four hours of slinging swords around, a quick change and a tube to Hammersmith to see an evening of comedy at the Lyric. Getting there early and meeting Brian in the pub allowed for the possibility of some beer, then we were thoroughly entertained by Phill Jupitus, Harry Hill and two new lads, one of whom was very good and one of whom largely relied on having Funny Hair. The last time I met Harry Hill he was watching me onstage, dying a slow and painful death in a show at his daughter's school. Afterwards he came over for a chat, and he's a lovey chap and much shorter than you realise. During the show this evening, he asked the audience to name an animal. I immediately shouted 'Penguin!' whereupon he proceeded to make me one out of a coathanger, which I carried home in triumph to add to my growing collection of penguin-related things. In the bar afterwards, I was interviewed by the BBC for The Culture Show, who were asking punters what they thought of the new comedian with the Funny Hair. In truth, I thought he was rubbish, but being by now quite pissed and holding a penguin made from a coathanger I praised his confidence and rapport with the audience and was told by the lovely BBC girl that I sounded like a comedy agent. Nearby, two blonde girls tried blatantly to crack onto Richard Herring, the compere for the evening, who was having none of it, despite most of his material having been about only doing these gigs in order to find women who are prepared to have sex with him.
On the way home, I am thoroughly ashamed to report that I bought and ate a doner kebab. I deserve to be bitten by a rat.
In which I am saved from wasps and surrounded by pies.
Saturday 6th October
The central heating has been turned on, signalling that it is now officially The Autumn. This is no bad thing as far as I'm concerned, as the arrival of The Autumn means I now have licence to eat great heaps of big fat brown food with total impunity. I was in the middle of making myself such a big fat heap of food last night, when out of nowhere there appeared not one but two gigantic wasps. I've never worked out where these mysterious Winter Wasps come from - my nearest guess is that, like Sleepers planted in Britain by foreign intelligence services, these wasps infiltrate our houses during the summer and lie in wait, appearing and unleashing their stripey evil just when we least expect it. Well, the first wasp, having played North By Northwest with me around the whole of the downstairs of the house, was eventually hastened to its grave with a rolled up magazine, whereupon the second - stricken with grief or following instructions from its masters not to be taken alive, I'll never know - performed a bizarre suicide by landing on the top of the gas cooker, dragging itself to the edge of the ventilation hole and hurling itself over the edge into the grillpan below, where it met a swift and firey end amidst the sausage fat.
And so to today: Up at 5am and out of the door at 6, into a shiny new Vauxhall Vectra to take Beefy and Lamby to the East Midlands Food and Drink Festival. To explain, one of my various irregular jobs involves road managing for the company who make those big foam rubber cartoon character outfits you see at events having their pictures taken with terrified children. The costumes - known in the industry as 'Skins' tend to be filled by out of work actors and my job as Roady is to take them to the gig, dress the character and act as their minder whilst they're out in front of the public. Venues and events are many and varied - from trudging round an empty shopping centre for a day to running amuck in the gardens of Buckingham Palace on the Queen's birthday. So this morning it was down to Wimbledon to collect my artistes and the costumes then up the M1 to Melton Mowbray, the spiritual home of the Pork Pie, where the grounds of a stately home were playing host to several marquees full of fantastic foodstuffs. Things didn't begin well, as not one of the Hi-Viz vested yokels posted along the track knew anything about us or our contact, mysteriously named on the jobsheet only as Brian, and in brackets, (Mr Barbecue). Eventually having been passed around five different people, none of whom had a clue who we were or what we were doing there, we were shown to a luxurious room in the Hall itself, replete with tea and posh biscuits. Trouble was, it was a good ten minute walk from the Marquee where we were supposed to be appearing, and a ten minute walk for a standard human can easily be a twenty minute walk for a Skin character. With a bit of luck and help from Brian (Mr Barbecue) who turned out to be a genial chap who made beefy jerky, we finally found ourselves a somewhat less luxurious unused space behind someone's stand, which we made our home for the remainder of the day. From there, everything was plain sailing and with pork pies all around us we entertained the massed crowds of food fanatics, appeared onstage with a celebrity chef none of us had ever heard of, were hassled by the intriguingly named 'Ladies In Pigs' who were most disappointed that we hadn't brought Mr Sausage with us and were off home at 4 with a bag of beef jerky apiece curtesy of Brian (Mr Barbecue).
As I'd made it home by 9 there was time aplenty to meet Housemate Brian and the lovely Renate in the pub for booze and silliness.
The central heating has been turned on, signalling that it is now officially The Autumn. This is no bad thing as far as I'm concerned, as the arrival of The Autumn means I now have licence to eat great heaps of big fat brown food with total impunity. I was in the middle of making myself such a big fat heap of food last night, when out of nowhere there appeared not one but two gigantic wasps. I've never worked out where these mysterious Winter Wasps come from - my nearest guess is that, like Sleepers planted in Britain by foreign intelligence services, these wasps infiltrate our houses during the summer and lie in wait, appearing and unleashing their stripey evil just when we least expect it. Well, the first wasp, having played North By Northwest with me around the whole of the downstairs of the house, was eventually hastened to its grave with a rolled up magazine, whereupon the second - stricken with grief or following instructions from its masters not to be taken alive, I'll never know - performed a bizarre suicide by landing on the top of the gas cooker, dragging itself to the edge of the ventilation hole and hurling itself over the edge into the grillpan below, where it met a swift and firey end amidst the sausage fat.
And so to today: Up at 5am and out of the door at 6, into a shiny new Vauxhall Vectra to take Beefy and Lamby to the East Midlands Food and Drink Festival. To explain, one of my various irregular jobs involves road managing for the company who make those big foam rubber cartoon character outfits you see at events having their pictures taken with terrified children. The costumes - known in the industry as 'Skins' tend to be filled by out of work actors and my job as Roady is to take them to the gig, dress the character and act as their minder whilst they're out in front of the public. Venues and events are many and varied - from trudging round an empty shopping centre for a day to running amuck in the gardens of Buckingham Palace on the Queen's birthday. So this morning it was down to Wimbledon to collect my artistes and the costumes then up the M1 to Melton Mowbray, the spiritual home of the Pork Pie, where the grounds of a stately home were playing host to several marquees full of fantastic foodstuffs. Things didn't begin well, as not one of the Hi-Viz vested yokels posted along the track knew anything about us or our contact, mysteriously named on the jobsheet only as Brian, and in brackets, (Mr Barbecue). Eventually having been passed around five different people, none of whom had a clue who we were or what we were doing there, we were shown to a luxurious room in the Hall itself, replete with tea and posh biscuits. Trouble was, it was a good ten minute walk from the Marquee where we were supposed to be appearing, and a ten minute walk for a standard human can easily be a twenty minute walk for a Skin character. With a bit of luck and help from Brian (Mr Barbecue) who turned out to be a genial chap who made beefy jerky, we finally found ourselves a somewhat less luxurious unused space behind someone's stand, which we made our home for the remainder of the day. From there, everything was plain sailing and with pork pies all around us we entertained the massed crowds of food fanatics, appeared onstage with a celebrity chef none of us had ever heard of, were hassled by the intriguingly named 'Ladies In Pigs' who were most disappointed that we hadn't brought Mr Sausage with us and were off home at 4 with a bag of beef jerky apiece curtesy of Brian (Mr Barbecue).
As I'd made it home by 9 there was time aplenty to meet Housemate Brian and the lovely Renate in the pub for booze and silliness.
Friday, 5 October 2007
In which I make myself know to the public at large.
Have you ever read David Copperfield? It's the first novel in which Dickens uses a first person narrative, and with each chapter title the hero of the story tells the reader a little - tantalisingly, amusingly little - about what is to happen within the next few pages. Copperfield was my introduction to Dickens thirteen years ago and this style of chapter naming struck me at the time as both unusual and charming. It wasn't that unusual for its time, of course, but it was fresh as a shower on a hangover to me.
Today, I finished Peter Ackroyd's biography of Dickens an was disappointed. As a book, it looked reassuringy big, and Ackroyd seems to be fairly well regarded as a biographer. Only he's not very good at writing biographies. Yes, it includes a thorough itinerary of Dickens's life - the where he went and with whom, the what he wrote when - but it doesn't give you a great deal else. As usual, Ackroyd is more interested in talking about London than he is about concentrating on his subject, and the picture he paints of Dickens is done so in the broadest and most nebulous strokes as to make it little more than idle fancy. Ho hum.
I've actually spent a whole day at home today, which is unusual. At the present time, I have three jobs, all of them part-time, tow of them on a 'casual; basis. 'Casual' in this sense meaning that my employers have absolutely no obligations towards me, and can choose to give me work or not at their whim. Work, for me, is therefore a bit of a game of chance. If there's work there, I have to take it, because I never quite know where the next pay packet is coming from. If I get no work one week, I need to make up the difference the next. If I get no work for two weeks, I live on toast.
Having said that, for the next two months I shall be unceasingly busy, and don't appear to have a single day of Not Working until mid-December. This is, on the whole, good.
Except that I'm also supposed to be training as a teacher of Stage Combat (more of this later), which requieres not only practical classroom time as both student and teaching assistant, but endless hours of writing up notes, known for some reason as 'Logs'. This takes up a lot of time - moreso for me because I have terribe eyesight that doesn't like working for hours at a computer. All of which means that training and work are in constant competition for my time. This is, on the whole, bad.
The purpose of this Blog, then, is an attempt to record how I spent my time in the last three months of this year, in case the sheer volume of work ends up killing me. Wish me luck.
Today, I finished Peter Ackroyd's biography of Dickens an was disappointed. As a book, it looked reassuringy big, and Ackroyd seems to be fairly well regarded as a biographer. Only he's not very good at writing biographies. Yes, it includes a thorough itinerary of Dickens's life - the where he went and with whom, the what he wrote when - but it doesn't give you a great deal else. As usual, Ackroyd is more interested in talking about London than he is about concentrating on his subject, and the picture he paints of Dickens is done so in the broadest and most nebulous strokes as to make it little more than idle fancy. Ho hum.
I've actually spent a whole day at home today, which is unusual. At the present time, I have three jobs, all of them part-time, tow of them on a 'casual; basis. 'Casual' in this sense meaning that my employers have absolutely no obligations towards me, and can choose to give me work or not at their whim. Work, for me, is therefore a bit of a game of chance. If there's work there, I have to take it, because I never quite know where the next pay packet is coming from. If I get no work one week, I need to make up the difference the next. If I get no work for two weeks, I live on toast.
Having said that, for the next two months I shall be unceasingly busy, and don't appear to have a single day of Not Working until mid-December. This is, on the whole, good.
Except that I'm also supposed to be training as a teacher of Stage Combat (more of this later), which requieres not only practical classroom time as both student and teaching assistant, but endless hours of writing up notes, known for some reason as 'Logs'. This takes up a lot of time - moreso for me because I have terribe eyesight that doesn't like working for hours at a computer. All of which means that training and work are in constant competition for my time. This is, on the whole, bad.
The purpose of this Blog, then, is an attempt to record how I spent my time in the last three months of this year, in case the sheer volume of work ends up killing me. Wish me luck.
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