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?
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
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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