Car Passes MoT

I'm somewhat relived that the car, my beloved Renault Captur, has passed it's MoT. I took it to Bleak Hall Motors in good time, arriving at 12.45, a good 15 minutes before the time it was booked in for. I sat and read my book, Breaking The Code, Gyles Brandreth's Westminster Diaries, from the early 1990's until well into the 2000s. It's actually a signed copy which I bought, I think, from Postscript, an on-line and catalogue bookseller which has good discounts on the books it sells. I have always liked Mr Brandreth, a good presenter of a range of television programmes such as 'The One Show,' and he's into subjects that I like, such as words, literature and being on Radio Four panel shows such as 'Just A Minute.'  I was told that the brakes on the Captur will need work doing, so I think I will book it in sometime next month, although the timing belt needs replacing.

I've just finished reading 'Zippy and Me,' by Ronnie Le Drew.  The book was crowd-funded and published by a company called Unbound.  I payed £30 and part of this went into the fund to produce and publish the book and all the ancillary work that would be needed to get it produced and I got my own, signed, copy, which arrived in the post about two weeks ago. I have a passing connection with Mr Le Drew, because in 1971, after I worked as an A.S.M. at Liverpool Playhouse, I needed work and eventually went to work as a technician, not exactly stage management, but near enough, working for the puppet company run by John Blundell, at the Midlands Arts Centre at Canon Hill Park, Birmingham. Ronnie was one of the puppeteers and it was from that job, operating a follow-spot on one of the shows, it might have been their production of Pinocchio or Peter and The Wolf, that I got interested in puppetry and my career (such as it was) took off in a slightly different direction. It's quite a difficult job, operating a lime (follow-spot), purched up high above the auditorium in the Studio Theatre at the Arts Centre, and attempting to follow various puppets with the light. It was a 'black theatre' production, which means the puppeteers are swathed from head to toe in black, even their faces are covered by black gauze, so that the audience can't see them, but the puppets are lit in such a way that they stand out clearly. I had to be able, at various points in the play, to turn off the follow-spot, and at another point, put it back on and accurately manage to pick out a specific puppet a bit later on, but do it in such a way so as not to illuminate the operator, no mean feat. Staring with concentration on a circle of light for any length of light tends to have a quite bad effect on your eyesight and you soon have blobs of light in your eyes for quite some time afterwards, which makes accuracy with a hot followspot, which needs to be kept at the correct angle otherwise it can tilt down, although you have handles on the back and sides to hold on to and knurled knobs which allow you to screw them up to make the thing stable.

I might have been a  trainee lighting assistant (I don't think I was exactly) and the man in charge of the lighting was a bit of a prankster. I was no more than 20, and what you would call 'green.' He would clamber up a ladder or onto one of those platforms that wheel about the stage, I think it's called a cherry picker, for he purpose of adjusting the lighting above he stage, or to take out the bulbs in several of the lights. I was detailed to stand below, presumably to steady the ladder, and he would undo a bulb and then throw it down to me below, where I was supposed to catch it. Much larger bulbs than your average domestic bulb and probably a good deal more expensive, so if I dropped the bulb, heaven forbid, I was in real trouble, but this never happened, fortunately. I also helped with the making of some of the puppets, which were going to be used in the next production which was a show based on two Hans Christian Andersen stories, The Emperor's New Clothes and The Steadfast Tin Soldier. The other puppeteer who went on to become well known was called David Claridge. I seem to remember it was he who designed the sets and puppets for the Hans Andersen double bill. He was responsible for creating and operating Roland Rat, saviour of TV-AM and the character went on himself to have his own television series in the 1980s.

I would have liked to have become a puppeteer there and then, but, first, there were no vacancies in the company, and, secondly, I wasn't a trained actor, because of learning lines and having some sort of experience of performance (apart from a few 'walk-on' bits-and-pieces when I was a Student A.S.M. at the Everyman, but certainly nothing concrete. So, if I wanted to become a puppeteer I would need to work for a company which used a pre-recorded soundtrack of the dialogue and work the puppets to that tape. Not always a particularly good way to work puppets, because once a recording is made it is 'fixed,' which means you can't vary each performance for the different audiences you would be playing to. In a 'live' performance, as with any play, the actors can vary the speed of their delivery when there is an audience reaction, for example, if they laught at a specific line, and would vary from performance to performance.

The Return of the MacBook!

(Friday) I was informed by both email and text message, that the microwave oven I'd ordered through the Currys website would be arriving between 12.20 and 1.20 this morning. It arrived more or less dead on time and I had to sign using one of these crazy digital devices where it's virtually impossible to sign your signature properly. The parcel came via DPD, the courier company, who very kindly kept me informed of my microwave's journey from the warehouse. Very crafty to be able to keep a track of a delivery and to give fairy accurate information as to when a parcel is going to arrive. I had also ordered a box from Bilbliophile books a couple of weeks ago, a paperback of Gyles Brandreth's diaries of his time as an MP and, to make it even more worthwhile, it has been signed by him. I've always liked his style and erudite manner whenever he appears on The One Show and such radio programmes such as Just A Minute. I had wondered where this book had got to, but it arrived in the post, earlier in the morning, along with a DVD of 'The Favourite' which I got from Sky as part of my subscription, so I have that to enjoy at some not-too distant point in time.

At last! The telephone call I've been waiting for came at around 12 midday today (Friday) to inform me that the MacBook was ready for collection from Currys. They had found a couple of viruses on it and they were removed. So I went off to Curry's no sooner had the microwave been delivered. One lest thing to wait around for, but it's fixed and I feel a good deal happier that that rather nasty incident over the scam had been resolved. Although I got a telephone call earlier, one of those strange computerised calls, saying it was from BT, but after what happened exactly a week ago, I have my serious doubts that it was actually from BT. As a consequence of this I have now rung the real BT (well, I do hope that it was the REAL BT.) and informed them of the call last week. Apparently they are attempting to stop these malicious and false calls. You can get your provider to put some sort of software in their system to stop these sorts of calls, so I might call Sky, who provide my landline telephone and see if they can stop these calls and hopefully prevent a repetition of last Friday's incident.

Saturday morning. I've been out early with Alfie. Any idea that I might get some sort of lie-in because it's the weekend has completely gone out of the window. Alfie doesn't realise it's the weekend and that either of us could do with a rest. I did get up a bit later than usual, but not much. It would have been around 6.40 but the time we set paw and foot on the path outside the front door and the set off towards Eaglestone Park. Alfie came across a young bird as soon as I let him off his lead. I think it was a newly fledged starling. It was fluttering around in the long grass. Alfie, being a Yorkshire Terrier, showed his terrier instincts, and wanted to catch it. I had to prevent him from picking it up. I'm not sure what he would have done with it if he had, and I wasn't going to find out, so I had to pick him up, but when I put him down again, he tried to follow the little bird. No doubt the fledgling was being watched by it's parents from the safety of a nearby tree. But I managed to distract Alfie long enough for him to not follow the birdie. Then, in a tree at the rear of a garden which backs onto the park, we saw several squirrels playing in a tree. I thought they would make a really great photo and got out my iPhone in an attempt to get a shot or two, but it's not easy trying to get a decent shot with a Yorkshire Terrier in tow and pulling on his lead and barking. The squirrels were running up and down the trunk of the tree and then leaping from branch to branch above my head. They move very quickly and are extremely adept at hanging on to the very thin and bendy branches. But in the end I lost sight of them and we walked on along the path.

My car needed fuelling. The gauge in the car was showing low. I could have gone on for a few more days, but I didn't want to put diesel in until it was really necessary. The Renault Captur is a very economical car to run and I can go for several weeks on one tankful. I have been going to the BP station on Childs Way, behind he Xscape building, basically because it's convenient and I get Nectar points. When I got there it now seems they are going to give up on Nectar and set up their own points system. Annoying, because it means if you join it you have to have another card or app on your phone if you intend collecting them. At least with Nectar there are several places that give them if you shop with them. I also go to fuel there early because there's less traffic and it's easier to get out onto the road afterwards.