off to tenerife
This weekend the blog will be making a visit to Tenerife; assuming that the gig isn't too horrendous (which is a risky assumption) I will hopefully be soaking up a bit of sunshine, and as I have most of sunday free, I may even get to see some of the island.
Not much to report on the show itself, the logistics team sent me a 49 page document about the dinner arrangements, none of which has any relevance to me. No doubt all will become clear as crystal when I get there.
update: The advance party flew out today, and I've already had the first
'we've forgotten...., could you pick it up and bring it with you?' phonecall, in this case it was the felt to cover the set with (conference sets are always covered in felt, don't know why). So now I have to drag a bloody great lump of fabric into town and out to Gatwick in the morning. It's also quite heavy, so it'll restrict my luggage allowance too, no matter, I don't usually take much stuff with me any way. In fact I traditionally forget something vital on every trip, shoes, in the case of a two week trip to Vienna in the winter, by way of an example. I suppose if I could bring myself to pack more than 15 minutes before I was due to leave this might be averted, but previous experience suggests that this probably wouldn't help.
The phantom minicab
When I used to work at Riverside Studios, in Hammersmith, if we happened to have to work beyond midnight (which was not an uncommon occurrence by any means), our management would pay for a minicab to take us home. This is standard practise in my industry, and no doubt in many others too.
One evening in September, we were working on a show called 'Ghetto' ('
blast this ghetto off the stage'-The Times), memorable to me in so many ways (it was written by the boxing correspondant of City Limits magazine, with his gloves on I fear); there had been a late night paintcall, and everyone painting had got rather drunk and fallen over a lot. By this time I was living with the set designer, and we had to get back to Alexandra Palace, where her flat was. As I was the responsible (!) staff member on duty, I was last to leave, having locked the studio and handed over to the night security. We had phoned for a fleet of taxis, and everyone bar us had already gone; as we came out into the gloomy street behind the theatre I couldn't see a minicab, but then a car flashed it's lights from further down the street and we headed over to it. As we drew level, I was rather startled to see that it was a rather elderly Triumph Herald and the driver was not the customary young asian (this was a few years back, when all minicab drivers originated on the indian sub-continent rather than eastern europe as they do now), but rather a woman of uncertain age, but definitely heading towards vintage.
As it was a Triumph Herald, it was necessary to fold back the front passenger seat in order for us to climb into the back. The back seat had a tartan travel rug spread on it (which turned out to be stiff with dog hairs), but we were reassured by the occasional crackle of the minicab radio. Nor were we disconcerted to be asked where we wanted to go, short-term memory loss is commonplace among cabbies. So, having established where we were going, she picked up the microphone, and after speaking briefly to control; we set off.
It became obvious fairly soon that she didn't have a clue where we were going, not in itself unusual in a minicab driver, more unusually, she made no attempt to call in and ask for directions. Eventually I asked her if she wanted me to direct her, and without comment, she passed me an A-Z. As she did so, I noticed that the plug end of the microphone cable was just dangling loose, and had no plug on it anyway. The rest of our journey passed without incident, and in relative silence. I didn't ask for a receipt.
When I went back into work the next day, I mentioned my strange cab experience and one of my colleagues nodded sagely, 'you've had the phantom minicab. As far as anyone can tell, she's either lonely or insomniac, and listens in to minicab radios. Sometimes, when the mood is upon her, she goes and picks punters up, must be mad as a badger, but that that's all there is to it.'
I heard subsequently that the police eventually caught her (I don't imagine they looked very hard), and she was prosecuted, with what result I know not.
Pink Pineapple
The Nottingham correspondant and I spent a thoroughly enjoyable weekend undertaking various explorations and somehow celebrating my birthday along the way. Amongst our activities was a visit to Columbia Road to gather material for a sound/image project that we are doing together.
For the benefit of those who don't know, Columbia Road is a sunday only flower market in deepest darkest Hackney (East London), and is an altogether good thing. As that part of East London is rapidly becoming gentrified (solidly built georgian/victorian terraces, 10 minutes from the city, small wonder), the market has become slightly diluted with shops selling overpriced yuppy tat, but the flower stalls remain the same selling a wonderful selection of miss-spelled flowers and plants ranging from the mundane to the rare and exotic, and, this is the killer, they are very cheap.
If you want citrus, or olives or even hardy bananas, hie you there. I have had occasional hankerings to have a pineapple (and I know you can grow them from the tops), but the beastie in question that I was thinking of is the variegated pink pineapple (AKA Ivory pineapple) Ananas comosus variegatus. I was happy to find both the plain green (with a fist sized fruit) and the variegated, and settled on the latter, a bargain at a fiver.
After a couple of hours freezing to death (it was a very cold and sunny day), we bought some hot prawns and calimari and made our way back, pausing along the way to record some ghost advertising.
I recently discovered the advertising ghosts blog;
http://advertising_ghosts.blogspot.com/I have always been fascinated by ancient ads and trademarkings, and East London is a particularly rich site, if you know where to look, mainly I suppose because there has never been enough money or inclination to change things. Soon, or maybe even sooner, all this will be swept away with the tide of blandification and associated corporate feeding frenzy that the tube extension and the olympics will bring. Check it out now, while it's still there, things are vanishing daily, and what is happening now is relatively benign compared to what is waiting round the corner.
selling, gambling and whinging
Portmanteau blog today, I thought I'd have a moan about people selling you things first off. Why do people insist on selling you things, when you are trying to buy them anyway? It drives me nuts. My favourite example was in the oxfam shop in Banchory (Aberdeenshire) about 15 years ago, I was visiting with my then partner in order to attend a wedding, we had a bit of time to kill and consequently went through the charity shops. The only object of any use I could find in the shops was a small teak chopping board priced at 50p, and I decided to buy it.
Big mistake, as I approached the till, the lady of uncertain age snatched it from my hands and asked; 'will you be buying this then?' I answered in the affirmative, and she then called her colleague from the back office; 'Morag, this gentleman is buying the chopping board, lovely piece of timber that.'
Morag joined the chorus of approval, 'Aye, you can't beat a nice piece of wood.'
This inane chorus went on for several minutes, as the virtue of the chopping board was extolled in ever more extreme terms, my girlfriend, in the meantime was practically on the floor with giggles. I felt quite embarrassed to be buying it in the end.
This weeks job has been a strange one, we were lighting a 'fire and ice' themed party in a weird gentlemans club (we think) opposite the Natural History museum. The house itself was a six story georgian terrace, and the club occcupied three floors, we couldn't really get a handle on what the party was about, although it turned out that it was connected in some way with a big online gambling exhibition currently running at Earls Court. It all seemed a bit strange when we were setting up, with teams of brazilians nailing and stretching white lycra all over the place, and french artists installing projectors and weather balloons in the corridors. It looked fantastic, and you could see it from the top of Exhibition Road. We managed to blow a circuit breaker, while setting up in the garden area, and no-one from the venue knew how to find it, so I'm afraid there's a freezer full of something and an ice-cream fridge that are probably defrosted by now. We were told not to worry about it, so we didn't, someone will get a nasty surprise in a couple of months when they start to use the garden again, I fear.
Pics might follow, if anybody managed to take any.
Eek!
You didn't see it here first, but I still find it hard to believe; London is to be the official starting point for the Tour de France. Insult to injury, salt and wound recipes, all these spring to mind.
I know, because I live here, that our governors have no shame, but even so...
Half the bloody cyclists will fall down a pothole outside the festival hall, and the rest will be mugged as they pass through Vauxhall. Nice bikes only last minutes in certain parts of the capital, I can imagine international gangs of bike thieves converging on the town, a casual umbrella here, or elbow there and you have a microscopically lightweight machine that cost thousands tucked under your arm and away you go. Has to beat stealing enormous bronze statues for scrap, although I'd like to see their yard mind you!
http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=6925
the youth of today
I was speaking to one of my work colleagues last night, and making arrangements to go and do some more clearing at our stores. As my car is having a hip transplant at the moment he was proposing to pick me up on the way back from his parental home in Bournemouth.
'What time?' he asked chirpily.
'Never 'til after The Archers omnibus on a sunday,' I replied.
'What's The Archers?' he asked.
For the benefit of overseas readers, The Archers (an everyday story of country folk) has been running on Radio 4 since the beginning of time, it's the longest running radio soap ever and a peculiar addiction. Serious afficionados insist that the characters and places are real. I am not that bad, but slowly surfacing on a sunday morning whilst people are having traumas about badgers and mastitis is a pleasure that I don't give up easily.
Some people just don't know what they're missing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/index.shtml
toasty jacket
About five or six years ago I was bought a jacket for my birthday, it was a very nice warm jacket made of a wool/cashmere mix, and is the only tartan jacket that I have ever owned. It was in Black Watch, which is the tartan I actively like (despite not being entitled to wear it). The tartan illustrated purports to be my clan tartan (according to
http://www.houseoftartan.co.uk/ ) all I can think of to say is yuck, although it's quite an entertaining site if it's raining outside, or the cat has already been wormed.
This was the year of jacket catastrophes for me, I seemed to lose them all too frequently, in this case I was doing a show in Barcelona at about this time of year, and it was the last vaguely respectable piece of clothing that I had left despite being rather too warm. We did the show, another pharmaceutical conference, and in my 1.5 hours off out of eight days, I managed to visit the Sagrada Famiglia. On my return to this country, I managed to leave it, and my passport in the company car. I was swiftly re-united with my passport, but for some reason the production manager didn't bring me back my jacket.
It is necessary to understand that you don't necessarily know who you are going to be working with on a show, especially in the other disciplines, so every now and again I have bumped into this particular production manager, and we have joked about it. He took quite a liking to it, and it has been seen at, amongst other things
'The Tweenies' stage show and the last '
Coldplay' tour. However, we have not knowingly been on a show together until today, (back at the home of blubena, tomorrow: a team building african drumming workshop run by a man called Brian from Swindon), when he told me he had my jacket in his car, I haven't got it yet, but maybe tomorrow...
This production manager, incidentally, was unwise enough to declare his love for a girl called Sue T by having her name tattooed in a heart on his arm, unfortunately the lack of expertise on the part of the tattooist means that we are constantly being taken to one side by bewildered clients and asked 'why does he have
suet tattooed on his arm? We've tried blaming it on a boarding school education.
Postscript; I have my jacket back, it needs a wash and it's very crumpled, but it's the first time I've walked out of a gig with more coats than I went in with. Of course, he went off with it after the gig, but he also took the laptop with the CAD drawings for tenerife on it, which have to be drawn up and ready by monday, so he had to come back and remembered to bring the jacket as well. I also ended up with a miscellany of discarded percussion instruments (the conference delegates had them on all their tables), so I think I did quite well, all in all. The african drum workshop was excruciating, but you knew that in your hearts already, the combination of pissed up rhythmically challenged ribena sales persons and ethnic percussion is one that only a sadist could have dreamed up. Still, they seemed to enjoy themselves.
more foxes
It's that time of year again, when a young foxes fancy turns to dreams of love, and round here that means more frolicsome bin bag ripping and much, much more vocalisation. I popped out to buy some stamps from the corner shop just now, and a fox jumped out from behind a hedge and ran across the road in front of me, nothing unusual there, they do it all the time, and are usually so unconcerned that you can walk right up to them. In this case, however, Brer Fox was on a mission, and trotted briskly away from me, yipping as he went. I was able to observe that he/she was in very good shape, and although quite a young specimen, had a fine big brush and a coat in very good nick, no sign of fox mange there.
I was up in Hackney a few days ago, and sitting in a friends car on the Hackney Road, I saw a magnificent male specimen race across the road, through the busy daytime traffic and disappear into a housing estate. I thought little of it, but a little while later I saw the animal re-appear. This time, however, it didn't race across the road, but stood on the pavement by the zebra crossing, visibly hesitating. It then stepped onto the first part of the crossing, just as a bus was bearing down on it; the bus driver stopped, as did the traffic on the other side, and the fox walked insouciantly across to the other side and vanished into the city farm. Just how much more urban can a fox get? I suppose if they learn to push the little buttons to request the lights to change is about as far as that might go.
Warning, potentially offensive post...
For as long as I can remember there has been an abortion clinic in West Ealing, and I can recall many occasions when sad-looking girls (usually Irish) have asked me for directions to this enterprise.
I do not want to get into a discussion about the morality or otherwise of abortions, the fact remains that as long as it is possible for males and females to fornicate, it is likely that there will be a demand for this service, and no papal or fundamentalist edict is going to prevent it.
Something that continues to fill me with fury, however, is the collection of pious people who gather outside the clinic and pray loudly. I have every respect for their views, and in the case of the women, I have a great deal of sympathy. What I can't cope with are the men, usually well-fed large people in expensive clothes who stand there chanting and doing the rosary with an expression of smug self satisfaction on their faces. Again, I have every respect for their right to hold an opinion, but what right do they have to stand there, symbolic of the cause of these desperate and traumatised girls downfall and seek to intimidate them? If they are praying for the soul of the unfortunate foetus, or the girls, or even for the staff, do they have to stand there in the street doing it? or are they perhaps doing it because it makes them feel better.
My experience of abortion clinics, which dates from my brief sojourn as a medical technician (and was directly linked to my decision not to continue to pursue that career), was that nobody was there through choice, the decision to abort or not to abort was agonised over and never taken lightly, and the staff were always delighted if a pregnant mother decided to keep the child. As a male, I do not feel that I have the right to make that decision for someone else, as it remains improbable that I will ever have to make it for myself, and I have always been careful to make sure that I don't put anyone else in that situation. Apologies if I have offended anyone, I promise the next post will be funnier.
shopping
One of the great bonuses of living in a transition point like Ealing is the massive diversity of different cultures that pass through. Since the war (WW2 if you 're being pedantic) there has been a sizeable population of Poles, not a particularly integrated community it has to be said, my polish school friends' parents as often as not spoke very little english despite having been here for 30 years or more. Nonetheless, through the shared torture that was our schooling, elements of polish culture were gradually incorporated, and the polish deli holds little fear.
When I was at school we also had the great expulsion of asians from Kenya and Uganda and the rise of the corner shop with its irresistable packets of spices and weird pickles. Since then we have had waves of Chinese, Sri Lankans, misc middle eastern and most recently Turks, and it is the latter that seem to have taken the concept of the neighbourhood store and run with it, producing that most marvellous of things the turkish supermarket.
This being a very multi-cultural area, however, they don't just confine themselves to turkish produce; my personal favourite, in West Ealing, is called '
Cudi' and has a huge selection of very cheap fresh vegetables and fruit stacked up outside for you to make your own selection from, inside they have a bewildering selection of stuff, from afro-caribbean spices and ingredients to lebanese breads and sweetmeats.
Naturally, if all you want turkish delight, they have it, loose in great boxes in various flavours, or pre-packed in little trays. Now they seem to have taken it upon themselves to go for the polish market, offering a better selection of sausage and sweetmeats than the more established delis do, and, this is the killer for me, they seem genuinely pleased to sell you things and are polite and friendly to boot. I have to say that the fruit and veg is usually of very good quality, and substantially cheaper than the supermarket offerings too. The best thing of all, is that there are several different stores within a limited area, so the choice is always good.
On pianos.
I've been indulging myself for the past few days by watching the webcams on the Haggis Hunt website;
http://haggishunt.scotsman.com/This preposterous activity is a bit of ponderous fun set up by the Scotsman newspaper, the premise is that you watch the webcams (of which there are eight set up in Scotland and two more in London and New York respectively) and every now and again a haggis will appear in the image. Once you have spotted the beast, you click a little button, and you are entered in a prize draw. In the fevered imaginations of the competition organisers, the haggis is a curious creature, a bit like an inflated duck-billed platypus.The chief charm for me is to be able to look at places like Renfield and Buchanan streets in Glasgow and know what the weather is like.
I introduced the Nottingham correspondant to this gentle pastime a couple of days ago; and last night she was enthusing about the idea of a stay at Gleneagles (one of the prizes); I promised to explain why I felt that this was a prize I could do without. I should perhaps explain that I spend a lot of time in hotels, and the sort of clients who can afford the companies I work for don't go in cheap hotels. The undeniable truth, however, is that it doesn't matter how many stars a hotel has, under the glossy surface they are a pretty disgusting place to be. I've all too often been working in places like the Dorchester, Savoy, Grosvener House, Park Lane Hilton etc etc, when out of the corner of your eye you see the rodents scurrying away. You never want to pick anything up, in case there's something wriggling away underneath it and they always seem to smell bad too.
A few years ago I was booked to light a show, the idea being that we could take this into hotels and perform it for anybody who could afford to pay for it. The show itself was a portmanteau piece; hits from the shows with some sort of a linking theme. We did it a couple of times, and then we were booked for a conference of swedish cardiologists at Gleneagles Hotel. As with almost all of these large hotels, no thought had been given to the logistics of getting stuff in and out, because so many of these operations are 24 hour, large and awkward objects are customarily shifted in the wee small hours. When you're putting on a show, however, this is not really an option. So, we had to unload our set, staging and technical gubbins into the great dining room during breakfast and lunch. Not only that, but the only way in was through the kitchen, while they were trying to prepare 500 meals or so, I'm sure that their day was immeasurably enhanced by the procession of flight cases, stage decking and so forth.
We set ourselves up, with a fascinated, if bovine audience of diners. I need to point out that although we were self-contained, the only item we did not bring was a piano, as most hotels have one or two kicking about the place. The majordomo presented to us, with great pride, a brand new gleaming and glossy white lacquered boudoir grand piano and our MD was suitable impressed. We did the show, our cardiologists had a jolly time and we began packing up. It wasn't until we were nearly finished that the night shift came to collect the piano; it had arrived on a special trolley, swaddled in padding and was reverentially unwrapped and installed. The night crew simply tipped it onto its long side and without removing its legs or making any other effort set off down the great dining room at a brisk trot pushing the piano before them. The dining room is a couple of hundred feet long and can be sub-divided, the divisions being delineated by metal strips set into the carpet. Each time the piano hit one of these strips a bit more lacquer was planed off with a nasty screaming noise. We could do nothing but watch open mouthed, as several thousands of pounds worth of piano was being stripped down to the bare wood in front of us. That, for what it's worth, is why I don't want to go to Gleneagles, that, and my aversion to golf of course.
Whither Tenerife?
Since November I've been booked onto a show in Tenerife at the end of this month. Since November, the details of the job have been nebulous to say the least, and only two factors have remained constant: the client (a large production and logistics company for whom I work quite regularly) and the end client (which is a large and prestigious german car maker).
The basic premise is that we are going out to Tenerife to set up a party and concert for a bunch of journos and assorted industry people who are en-route to Rhyadh, Qatar or somewhere similar to witness the launch of the new QWERTY 2.4 turbo (I made that up, someone did tell me what the car was but I forgot instantly). Theory being that a plane load of assorted social misfits with free booze would arrive in the Middle East in no fit state to admire the new motor, so they'll stop off for a couple of days in Tenerife in a 5 star Hotel and recover from the effects of the flight, before heading off to the (presumably) alcohol free delights.
We will be there waiting for them, with a glittering night's entertainment in a lovely venue, the gardens all lit up and smiling faces everywhere. This is where it starts to unravel slightly, the best entertainment that the island was able to offer was a Tina Turner looky-likey, next I heard that we were to be lighting Rick Astley (who is out on a come-back tour somewhere near you), somehow I felt that this was unlikely to fulfill the feelgood criteria. Last year we lit Will Young in Morocco, and that wasn't exactly top dollar. Latest news is that we are presenting Lemar, I don't have the faintest idea who he is, beyond his origins, but at least he has a future.
The other thing, of course is that we are taking about five crew out, and still don't know what we are doing there, the latest version of the itinerary has me flying out on the Thursday with three others, day off on Friday, do the gig on Saturday and fly back on Sunday, it's all very confusing really. If I ever find out what I'm up to, I'll be sure to let you know.
are they mad?
I see from the londonist blog (
http://www.londonist.com/) that there is an announcement due about London's bid to host the start of the Tour de France. Why?
Is this another attempt to rub johnny frenchman's aristocratic nose in it, or maybe a statement of entente?
According to the Independant, (
http://sport.independent.co.uk/general/article337951.ece), this is not the first time that stages of the tour have taken place in England and it seems very likely that the race will in fact come here. I know it is an international event, but it is so essentially french; the clue is in the name I guess.
This begs the question, what quintessentially english and prolonged sporting event could we offer them in exchange? The first test in the Parc des Princes perhaps, or the Derby in the Champs Elysee? As major sporting events seem to be becoming increasingly stateless and political, what next? Suggestions gratefully received.
get 'em off...
Fascinating to note that one of my old theatres still hasn't learned its lesson;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4589308.stmWay back in the nineties, when I was chief electrician there, we had a one night gig booked in that we knew nothing about. Some sort of american outfit called
'The Chippendales' apparently, when it became evident that they were in fact, a troupe of male strippers this caused not a little bit of consternation amongst the crew. It is important to point out that at this time the Alex crew were so thoroughly unreconstructed as to be legendary, not to say notorious on the No.1 touring circuit, that and the prodigious quantities of ganja that was consumed in the crew room didn't make for an easy get-in for any one if they took agin you. There was a muted rumbling of protest at having to staff this filth (you'd not have heard a peep if there had been naked women involved), and certain men refused to work it.
It wasn't an auspicious start, as we started unloading the props and off came a pool table on wheels, and a mobile shower unit, use your imagination...
It was only when the artistes turned up that the atmosphere began to improve, because instead of the willowy shirt-lifters that the collective imagination had created; these were all-american muscle boys, and they brought their girl friends. In fact the only non-heteros in the troupe were the two little english boy dancers, who kept their clothes on, but provided the choreographic visuals that most of the lumbering americans were ill-equipped for. Rehearsals were a bit of a learning curve for everyone, this was the first venue they had toured into that had a raked (sloping) stage, and the runaway pool table heading for the orchestra pit necessitated some hasty re-choreographing.
There were some members of the troupe who were better suited to the dance element of the show, these guys were african-american and seemed to be well up on the street dance moves that were popular at the time, indeed, one of them was spinning enthusiastically on his head when precession and the slope caused him to spin off into the orchestra pit. Our pit was deep and large, about three feet below the carpet level in the auditorium, and about eight feet below stage level, fortunately he was unhurt.
The audience was separated from the pit by a low wall, about three foot high, topped with a brass rail, this was in sections so that it could be easily removed if required. As the venue used also to do rock gigs, there was a steel reinforcing structure to prevent the crush of the audience from collapsing the pit-rail. In this particular case, the response had been, 'oh, it's only a load of women, what can they do?' and the decision was taken not to put the reinforcing in, nor had they hired the two security guards specified on the rider to prevent people from getting up on stage.
As the day progressed, our performers had their tea onstage, some of them eating a dozen hard boiled eggs (something to do with body building I believe), and we began to get an inkling of what was about to occur.
The first incident(s) started about 5.00, when we heard a muffled scraping and cursing from outside the building, when we eventually investigated, we discovered several sensibly clad middle-aged women shinning inexpertly up the drain pipes on the outside of the building, with an open dressing room window as their target. Subsequently,we evicted several more women from the dressing rooms, and our technical manager got on the phone and dialled up some security guards.
Come the gig, I was only there in a supervisory capacity, as they had their own board operator, so I was able to hang about and watch the audience. It was my habit to stick around front of house and chat to the ushers and other front of house staff, the lighting box was in a former ice-cream sales booth and I would frequently be interrupted by confused punters trying to buy sweets and suchlike, so it was easiest to hang about and point them in the right direction.
It was immediately apparent that us males were distinctly in the minority, I think there was one poor bloke in the audience, and the male members of the crew were hiding. There was an extraordinary atmosphere in the room, a sort of hormonal expectation, and everyone was very excited. The demographic was not what I'd have expected, middle class, respectable, well dressed and good humoured, I was propositioned and groped several times, an interesting experience I suppose.
Once the show actually started, the atmosphere changed, an excited buzz turned into a full throated baying that explained the need for a large PA system. The boys certainly knew how to work an audience (one of them had said to me, in a charmingly self-deprecating way,
'we think of ourselves as bimbobs') and by the time the interval came they had the punters nicely on the boil. A lot of drinking went on in the interval, the troupes' management had loads of merchandise to sell; from t-shirts to nylon thongs, videos to calendars and had specified a half-hour break. As it was, it took about 40 minutes to get them all back in and sat down, and it was with considerable relief that I watched the show up, and made my way backstage to wait for the end.
I had barely sat down when everyone in the building who could still stand was called to the stage; a group of women, inflamed by drink and the relentless come-on being presented to them, had got up and charged the stage, but, instead of going for the steps (guarded by terrified looking security guards), they had diverted to the pit rail, not realising there was a large gap between it and the stage. The pit rail was unable to withstand a determined charge from some twenty women, and had promptly collapsed, and when I got there the orchestra pit was a struggling mass of tweed and wiggling legs. We stopped the show, briefly, to extract the women, check them out and dust them down. It was obvious that there would be a riot if we didn't continue the show, so it was decreed that all available crew members would stand in the gap left by the collapsed section as a human barrier, thus was created, uniquely, the Alex's tweed mosh pit, as during the rest of the show, every now and again, another woman would have a go at getting onstage, and hurl herself porpoise-like over us (bear in mind that we were three feet down). Our retrieval techniques got quite polished, and nobody was hurt, which I think was something of an achievement in the circumstances.
mud, mud, glorious mud
Well, for the time being, that's me done with Bury St Edmunds, I pulled the show out on monday, an unseasonably mild and sunny day that saw midges dancing under the trees and soft cold mud everywhere.
Hopefully the theatre's get-out will not take them too much longer, the tractor that shifts stuff from the tent to the road had created ruts about three feet deep by the time I left. I think the site might have been more carefully chosen; it seemed to be spectacularly badly drained. If they do the show in Nowton Park next year, I hope it won't be in the same place.
While I was spending more time in Suffolk, I became slightly aware of a local controversy; apparently Debenhams want to build a major shopping outlet on the site of the cattle market in BSE. Not surprisingly there has been a lot of opposition, rather more imaginative than in many cases in my opinion. I should point out that my opinions are essentially neutral on this issue, I'm against the lack of choice, blandness and uniformity that 'shopping centres' bring to city centres, but I'm also aware that other people like them. Regular readers of this blog will probably be aware that I view property developers as lower than cockroaches, and just as hard to extinguish.
Anyway, the main opposition group seems to be a group of loons calling themselves
'The Knights of St Edmund', shortly before christmas they had a candle lit procession (in chainmail!) through the town before invoking the curse of St Edmund on the property developers, and it would appear, the christmas decorations. Quite apart from raising uncomfortable comparisons with the KKK and Mississippi Burning, they seem to have taken on board another cultural reference with their campaign slogan;
'Local shops for local people'. I commend you to their site;
http://www.knightsofsaintedmund.com/notes.htmlA couple of years ago, my local council, seeking public approval for yet another shopping centre (we already have two), sent out a questionnaire in a pretence of consultation, amongst the many gems contained within, was the question; would you like Ealing to be more like Hounslow (downmarket) or like Chiswick (upmarket), the concept of trying to create an individual identity for the place having, it would seem, passed them by. Although, historically, Ealing has always been a bit bland, suffering from being the first place where you changed your horses on your way to Bristol. It has always been a good place to go somewhere else from, not an ideal premise from which to start, and a concept that the council has embraced whole-heartedly; why bother to have any arts provision when there's plenty in the adjoining boroughs for example. We are going to have a new shopping centre behind the town hall, all four possible options have been presented for our delight. and all are the sort of stockbrick crimes against architecture that we should be unsurprised to be offered, how you make a choice in those circumstances is beyond me.
By way of a post-script, I spent most of yesterday in a freezing warehouse in Bow cleaning mud off the cables, don't let anybody fool you into thinking that this is a glamorous life, it has its positive side I grant you,but there are some very big negatives too, maybe I ought to blog something about them, but as this is meant to entertain, maybe I won't.
honestly, why do we bother.
I sometimes despair; for a number of years I was in loco parentis/chief electrician at a large, crumbling theatre in the East-End of London. This venue closed for a major refurbishment about five years ago, and in the process of clearing the decks I acquired a few bits and pieces.
As a very occasional guitarist, I wasn't about to let a couple of classic 1970's amplifiers go into the skip, and spent nearly £200.00 having one of them serviced and made lovely. The other one I shoved under a bookcase and forgot about as it had
'f*cked' artistically marked on it in six inch high letters made from PVC electricians tape. It also had a matching speaker cabinet which I shoved into a cupboard at the lighting company I'm associated with, and also forgot about.
As we are moving the lighting company out into the country next month, a gradual process of consolidation has been going on, and we finally moved the last few bits and pieces out of the last couple of rooms at the former chemical factory in Bethnal Green, amongst which stuff was the aforementioned speaker; I was prevailed upon to take it home (it was less subtle than that, but let's not go there). Faced with the storage problem of a large speaker, I decided to have a bit of an eBay clearout,and get rid of those odd, but strangely desirable bits and pieces that I keep tripping over. So I dug the dead amp out from under the bookcase, assuming that it would be useful at least for spares, spent half an hour cleaning tape goo off it, took its picture, and wandered off to do the eBay listing.
In the course of writing the listing, littered with many caveats, it occurred to me that I ought to at least plug the bugger in and see. So I replaced the broken 13A plug, and expecting nothing, plugged it in. It worked perfectly, the pots were a bit crackly, otherwise there was enough oomph for Eric Clapton (he used to use/endorse this particular flavour of amp). I am forced to the conclusion that my predecessors (and successors, because most of them are still there), would be happier to spend 45 minutes creating a PVC notice, than replacing a plug, which would take 2 minutes.
There is nothing in my seven year association with the venue to cause me to change my view, recent events led me to the opinion that nothing has changed: Last week, during the Panto, their new sound desk (estimated cost £20K),went off with a huge bang, stopping the show for twenty minutes, investigations revealed that in the two years since the venue reopened it had never occurred to anybody to clean the airfilters on the sound desk power supply (newly opened venues tend to be dusty). Although they had a second back up power supply with an auto-changeover for just such an eventuality, the previous time the power supply had failed (unreported to any vaguely sober/senior management), they had simply removed the fuses from the back up and presumably hoped that the fuse fairy would replace them. M'lud I rest my case.
The amp has been relaying random snippets from my ipod for the last six hours without showing any signs of distress, here's to eBay.
more bangs...
While I'm on the subject of explosions, and because not a lot else is happening, I thought I'd reminisce;
Sometime in the dim and distant past I was doing a job in Harrogate, the client was a large chain of liquor stores, their chairman was an elderly egyptian with arthritic hips who loved to make a bit of an appearance. The first year I did this, he made his dramatic entrance across the stage as the video screens split and flew out and two rows of seven second silver gerbs fired up (a gerb is a pyrotechnic that fires a jet of flames and sparks into the air, and are identified either by how long they stay alight or by weight). He trundled uncertainly down to the lectern on both his sticks, and everything returned to normal; the customary review of the financial year, normally the point when we techies settle down for a snooze. This particular gig was notable for the extraordinary quantities of industry samples that the delegates were able to consume, it wasn't especially good for me, as I managed to get through three lighting desks on a show that lasted only a day.
By way of a big finish, the whole roof of the conference centre was strung up with popcorn (tiny airburst pyros, lots of bangs and flashes, not a lot else), and we gave the drunken hoards a big send-off.
The next year he wanted more; two things to bear in mind; Harrogate is a large facility equipped with a state of the art fire alarm system, and in the other hall was the annual conference of fire chiefs.
It's also important to realise that our chairman was often the originator of the sillier ideas, the plan this year was for even more pyros, and the chairman would jump through the video screen to an enormous confetti hit with even more, bigger, gerbs. So; the lights dim, we get the opening triumphal video and then a sinister shadow cuts into the image, it's our hero, the chairman, building up speed. Sticks flailing, he crashes through the screen, the confetti cannons go off, the gerbs fire, and he wobbles triumphantly down to the lectern. With the inevitability of perfection, he opened his mouth to speak, and the fire alarms went off. A passing technician had left an interconnecting door open, up in the roof void somewhere, and whilst we were isolated on the alarm system, the hall next door wasn't (fire chiefs don't normally make very incendiary speeches).
So, our hall was evacuated, our slightly shell-shocked delegates emerged blinking into the light to be presented with the sight of a display of senior firemen, fire engines and associated machinery, not only that, but the local fire brigade were not going to be shown up by the vast numbers of senior fire servicemen and sent the whole shop down. Both exhibition halls, all the hotels onsite, every pub and restaurant was emptied out; a bit of a 'whoops' moment.
After about half an hour, it was established that nothing was actually on fire, and we were allowed back in, our client said 'have you got enough pyros left to do it again?' after a moments disbelief it was admitted that we did, we reset, and did the whole opening again, door closed this time.
After that experience, life holds few terrors, shortly after we sacked the client.
