oh no, the baby's back again.
I'm grateful to Ruby in Bury for bringing this to my attention, but the burghers of Bury have trundled out their unexploded baby again. This time I was able to get a picture in daylight, so the full unexpurgated horror is now available for your perusal.
Whilst on the subject of mawkish horrors, I was doing a show at The Tramway in Glasgow last week. In all the years I have worked for Scottish Opera I have travelled past on the bus on my way into town without finding a need to stop. On the other side of Pollockshaws Road, where the bus drivers change over, there is a monumental masons, and among their more conventional offerings was this item:
Finally, I spotted this excellent example of stencil work in Sheffield, on a wall next to the offices of the company I'm working for.
I hope these images don't spoil your tea...
Ruby can be found at:
http://livinginburystedmunds.blogspot.com/
lies, damned lies...
Looking at the blog statistics gives a curious view of what the world is looking for, or maybe it gives a better idea of what makes my world turn. The two most common reasons that people visit the blog, apart from referrals, are searches about Sumatran Kopi Luwak coffee, the so-called lemur shit coffee, available from Imperial Teas and Coffees of Lincoln at £60.00/125g, and searches about 'The Shoe People' an unlamented childrens cartoon series from the 1980's. Memorable mostly for its' theme song (quoted elsewhere in the blog).
When I created that entry I neglected to inform you that the theme song was written by Justin Haywood, late of the Moody Blues, and also responsible for that 1960's slow number 'Nights in White Satin'. I have to confess that the latter song caused me some confusion when I was young, as I thought it was called 'Knights in White Satin', possibly best to draw a veil over the images that might suggest themselves.
http://www.imperialteas.co.uk/articles/rarecoffee.htmlhttp://www.classickidstv.co.uk/wiki/The_Shoe_PeopleI promise I'll say no more on either subject.
let the train take the strain...
Two days in a row I have needed to make journeys by train, normally I'm very sanguine about most forms of travel, after all, I've done a 23 hour train journey across Russia with a dance company and I figure I've paid my dues. Yesterday I went to Oxford to meet the Nottingham correspondent and her mother for lunch; a straightforward and short trip by car. Unfortunately, as my car is sitting in Sheffield (I have a 7.5 tonne truck instead), I had to take the train.
It was sort of ok until I got to Reading, where I had to change to a Virgin train bound for Glasgow (apologies to my cousin who actually takes Mr Branson's shilling), there had been a cancellation, and the train was stuffed to the gunwales. No matter, I thought, I'm only on for twenty minutes, so what if the other passengers have to lift their suitcases above their heads each time someone needs to pass because there's not enough room for luggage. I wedged myself into what I hoped would be an endurable position for my brief journey and we set off. Two minutes into the journey it started; it was a student, bastard son of E.L.Wisty, en-route to Birmingham Uni, blessed with a penetrating voice and a limitless set of opinions (did you know that nazi-ism started as a form of satanic worship and Hitler merely jumped on the bandwagon?). He was sat in state with a trio of mesmerised pensioners, whose ever more frantic chorus of 'that's interesting dear' had no more than a contrapuntal effect on the ever more demented stream of piffle that this child was spouting. It was at this point that the guard announced that due to engineering works our travel was to be delayed, and my twenty minute journey became fifty. I swear that the child had perfected cyclical breathing, because his increasingly grating monotone never ceased for the duration of my trip. The passenger who was wedged in opposite me, and had presumably already had several miles of this bollocks already, met my eye as we pulled into Oxford station, and said wearily; 'that gobshite's got the perfect face for a punch'. I looked back, as I left the train, and you know what? He was right.
I just have to record that the rest of my day was perfectly civilised and proper, and we had a nice lunch.
Today, I had to go to Bury St Edmunds for a panto production meeting, the journey out was uneventful, and the meeting very useful. My trip back was less fun; my train was cancelled without explanation or information, the next one was in an hour. Most of the passengers dispersed, I opted to sit on the platform and make phone calls. Twenty minutes later, a train appeared, unannounced and unidentified. The conductor then chased about all over the station in search of lost travellers, and we got under way. At this point I realised that the automated ticket machine had issued me with a single and two receipts instead of the return I had wanted (and thought I had paid £30.00 for). The conductor was about as sympathetic and helpful as it is possible to be, she issued me with a permit to travel, wrote me a note for the conductor on the next train, and even phoned the line controller to say that there was a possible problem. Needless to say, no-one inspected my ticket on the next train.
It was with a sense of relief that I headed for the familiarity of the tube, of course it was buggered and it took me another two hours to get home. Never mind that I spent nearly nine hours travelling today,what made the final part almost unendurable was the person who had a mission to entertain; he was a tall thin bloke, young and dressed in black, unexceptional appart from wearing a cyclist's mask (aha! you say, a careful dickhead, happy to shower bullshit on an unprotected audience, but not prepared to share their bacilli). Despite his best efforts, and in the face of extreme provocation, he didn't manage to get more than a polite negative from his unwilling audience. I swear he was wanting to do a magic trick, second only to mime on the list of tube intolerables in my book.
That is why I fear 'chat on the tube day' this friday is doomed (
http://www.hannahscafe.co.uk/page26.htm ), but feel free to prove me wrong.
Thanks to Annie Mole (
http://www.london-underground.blogspot.com/ ) for bring the latter idea to my attention.
the electric carrot of Sneinton
While I've been touring about in the middle of England, I've been staying with the Nottingham correspondent, in the multi-ethnic melting pot that is Sneinton. I was concerned to see that the christmas lights were already up and working in early october, closer investigation revealed signs saying 'Happy Diwali' and also for 'Eid' (the festival marking the end of Ramadan). Presumably now that these festivals are over, a council bloke will come round to change the signs for ones celebrating another festival. 'Happy Hanukah' and 'Winter Solstice' any one?
A couple of slightly jarring notes, to my mind, firstly the Alladins lamp might be considered to be culturally insensitive, and the electric carrot just doesn't do anything for me.
Balls to Warwick.
The Nottingham correspondent and I had cause to visit Warwick a couple of weeks ago; our mission was to visit an architectural ironmongers and buy some forged hinges for a pine cupboard she had just bought.
Even when I spent several months a little further down the M40, I rarely had cause to visit Warwick. I have always felt that the unholy trinity of Warwick, Leamington and Stratford was one to avoid unless absolutely necessary, as they seem entirely dedicated to separating Americans or expensive home-counties ladies from their cash, with little ceremony or reward.
Warwick was in the throes of a street fair, so the streets were clogged with fairground rides and 'hook the duck, win a dying goldfish' stalls. Despite my cynicism, there are several shops in Warwick that are worth a visit, my favourite used to be a second-hand guitar shop, which usually had one or two beautiful instruments. On our way to the shop (now sadly a shadow of its former self), we passed an interior design shop. As a designer, I can't resist looking at overpriced tat, and this establishment didn't disappoint. Apart from the faux french mirrors and indian candlesticks, they seemed to feature these strange balls.
Imagine, if you will, a basketball covered in astroturf. These were being marketed as an alternative to hanging baskets in these drought ridden days, no inconvenient watering required.
Forget that a green football hanging outside your house looks a tad peculiar. The enterprising gentleman, whose shop it appears to be, has managed to persuade several of the shops in the streets to sprout his balls (see ill.), judge for yourselves. Should you wish to know more about them, a discreet e-mail to me and I'll point you to the website (no name, no shame!).
that ol' man river...(a tale of woe)
This has been a funny old tour, a mixture of nostalgia and horror as I've revisited venues that I toured to a few years back. In the case of the space we're performing in right now, it's where I got my first full-time employment more than 20 years ago.
It's such a contrast, when this company tour in Europe, we go to huge festival size venues; the stage at the Volksbuehne in Berlin is large enough for them to have mounted a five a side football tournament between Berlin theatres (complete with spectators onstage), they lost. We are generally looked after and appreciated, even though there is a faint air of mystery about the whole thing. In the UK, we've been touring to Arts venues mostly; University theatres etc. The whole experience has been thoroughly dispiriting; I have seen more institutionalised technicians than I care to. It's not that they are necessarily bad at their jobs (although in some cases...), but they are diabolically managed; in one nameless venue somewhere in Shakespeares county, they have a technical staff of fourteen, almost all of whom seem to be managers of one sort or another and yet the rider for the show (lighting plan, technical requirements etc), sent out in August, was never passed on to the people who were actually due to put the show in.
This has been a recurring theme, you negotiate with a production manager or some such, and he agrees to stuff, but the requirement is never passed on. Thus when you arrive on site you are inevitably wrong footed, because they claim never to have been given the information.
Currently we're in West London, a venue down by the river, and I think it has been the worst fit-up I've done in an age. My disappointment is drawn partly from my own nostalgic enthusiasm for the theatre, as I have mentioned, it was where I got my first proper job, and I had the best time ever. We had international companies, circus, concerts and crazy art exhibitions all at the same time, I regularly worked twelve hour days, six days a week and couldn't get enough of it. The space is now sadly diminished, in spirit and in reality, the big studio space is now a TV studio, knocking out a stream of low-budget game shows, chat shows and 'yoof' programmes, and the arts centre bit is very much the poor relation. The foyer is clustered with media types and PA's shouting into walky-talkies, meanwhile, in the theatre space, we have two semi-skilled technicians to do everthing (rig sound and lighting, put up masking, lay out the seating and so on), a big call by anybody's standard. Add into this heady mixture an inability to read a lighting plan, or to use the technical equipment properly and we're heading for trouble.
One of the pleasantly civilised features of working with this company is the custom of putting the show in a day before the first performance, generally speaking we arrive about ten, rig the lighting and flash it out by lunchtime, colour and focus in the afternoon, and then I either program the lighting desk in the afternoon or do it next morning. At six o'clock on the first day down by the river, the lighting rig was still down on the ground, bits of it were working, but not a lot. After a certain amount of discussion, we made a strategic withdrawal, having extracted a promise that it would all be working and coloured up by morning. Surprise, surprise, when we came back next day, all was much as it had been, although we were regaled with stories of how late they had worked. By lunchtime on the second day I had focussed two bars (out of nine) and we had a soundcheck and press to fit in before we performed. All I can say is that we got there, but the rest of the day is a bit of a blur.
It has been a shock to me that theatre technicians in this country can be so poor and unmotivated, we're not talking grunts here, but people with real reponsibilities. It makes me wonder where all the eager little techies I used to train have gone. Actually, I realise that a dead and dying venue isn't going to keep staff if they are so badly managed and paid so badly, but this shouldn't necessarily apply all over the country. It all comes back to management I'm afraid; if you stand still long enough in an arts environment someone will promote you, so the dross floats to the top.
Apologies for a not very entertaining posting, there's not much fun being had at the moment. Still, I promise that the next post will be more full of joy.
