Wednesday and Thursday Mornings

Wednesday, early. I've put the rubbish out for the binmen. Several black bin bags and one pink recycling bag. The sound of a bin lorry came before 8 o'clock but they didn't pick up the rubbish. I've been out with Alfie round the park and back. It's bright and sunny so let's hope it stays that way all day. Carol's mum and dad are coming up to visit today, but not sure what time they're arriving. Yesterday I managed to cut down some of the grass with the rechargeable grass cutter. It was beginning to get really long. Also, cut down some of the colts foot growing in the grass at the front of the house.

They turned up around 9.30. Carol said she'd had a text to say they were about 15-20 minutes away. I'm not sure which way they came up from Bournemouth. I think via the M25 and then M1. If we go down to Bournemouth, as we have done in the past, we go via the A34, crossing to Buckingham and then down that way.

We had to decide what we were going to do all day. Until 4 o'clock when Carols parents were due to be picked up again for the return journey to Bournemouth. Not too far to drive and somewhere to have coffee and possibly something to eat. Carol suggested going to the Bell Plantation garden centre in Towcester, which we've been to on several occasions. There's a good restaurant there and plenty to do and look at and would keep us busy for an hour or two and the drive up the A5 Watling Street a pleasant journey through some attractive scenery. So Carol decided to drive as she hasn't done so for a while. So, after Carol had got in the car and altered the driver's seat, because when I drive I have to have the seat moved back quite some way before I can drive comfortably, we drove out of Milton Keynes via Standing Way and then onto the A5 near the football stadium.

As we drove towards the large roundabout on the A5 near Stony Stratford, where the road went off in various directions, one into the centre of Stony Stratford and another onto the A5 towards Towcester, we saw signs reading that there were roadworks in the centre of Towcester. It then seemed likely that had we continued up the A5 we weren't going to get to Bell Plantation so we had to decided where to go. It was decided to return to the centre of Milton Keynes or to go to either Frost's garden centre at Woburn Sands or Dobbie's on the A5 near Fenny Stratford. Carol didn't want to go into the centre of Milton Keynes, so we decided on Dobbie's. It's off the A5 on the roundabout just below Fenny Stratford. We had a browse in some of the concessions within the store, mostly in Cotton Traders. Carol's mum tried on some sandals in their sale and bought a pair. We did look through some of the sale items but didn't see anything that caught our fancy. We then went into the café and had lattes and had intended buying scones in the farm shop, but those we came across, really large, around the size each of several ordinary scones from anywhere else, but when we learnt how much they were, around 80p we declined and then drove towards Milton Keynes, with the intention of going to Morrison's. We found that a road was closed off along Watling Street, near Crownhill and Loughton  and had to take a quick decision where to go and ended up driving around near Denbigh School and eventually went to Westcroft to park and shop in Morrison's, buying some scones there along with clotted cream.
Alfie has taken to Carol's dad. He ingratiates himself with most of our visitors. He sat with him on the sofa while we had scones, jam and clotted cream. We watched Countdown on television. When Carol's dad fell asleep (I don't know whether he was really asleep, or whether he was pretending, but making a fair impression of sleep.) Alfie behaved really humorously, attempting to wake him up, prodding him with his paw. He really is a smart little dog. I think he missed him when they eventually left to go home.

Thursday morning. As I write this at 7.15 on Thursday morning, the weather has changed quite considerably. It's raining quite hard. So, it means I can't take Alfie out for his early-morning walk round the park, otherwise we're going to get soaked. We'll just have to wait until it stops. I don't think he's going to like being disappointed.

We have heard nothing as I write this as regards the Housing Benefit claim. I had intended going in to the Council offices on my own, to give them a copy of the newly-signed tenancy agreement. Carol decided to come with me. She was happy to drive and we parked in the multi-storey carpark near Debenhams. It is undergoing maintenance. Probably because it is under new management, like the entire shopping centre, Midsummer Place.

We walked through the shopping centre towards the Council offices and signed in at reception and took the numbered ticket and sat and waited until our number came up. Carol saw two of her former pupils from the Academy who had just got their 'A' Level results. Very good and now ready to go off to university, one to Coventry and the other to Northampton. We didn't wait too long to be seen by a staff member. I have to remember that the desk you go to isn't the red digital number, which is the number you get given on the ticket when you first arrive at reception, but the one above the digital display above each desk. It appears our application for Housing Benefit is currently being dealt with and the delay is because of a backlog of applications. We should get some of this back dated and hopefully by the end of the month when our rent is due. We gave them a copy of the newly-signed rental agreement which the lady on the desk photocopied.

Having done with the Council offices we walked back into the shopping centre. Carol said she needed a coffee. She hadn't drunk her tea she had at breakfast. At first I suggested Marks and Spencer's, which is the first shop you encounter as you walk in through the entrance. There is also a Costa, but she didn't fancy that either. We went through to Midsummer Place and went to Pret A Manger. She needed the loo so I stood at the till and ordered, two lattes, mine with caramel, hers without and two chocolate croissants. They were made very swiftly and I went to a vacant to wait for Carol to reappear. We sat ate the croissants and drank the lattes. Very good. I will say Pret is very good. This particular branch is well stocked and pleasant. There is another branch further along in the main shopping centre near Middleton Hall. You don't have to queue as long as you have to at, say, Costa's, which only has one till. I think most of their branches are like that and the queues can be considerable. It makes sense to have several as Pret have. From Pret we walked back towards the carpark near Debenham's and drove towards Lidl where we bought some food for tonight's meal. When I got home I went out again to top up the gas and electric at One Stop at Garraway's. No good running out of electricity, because it might mean the freezer defrosting which could be a disaster. I then took Alfie out for his walk, because by then (around 1.15) the rain had stopped. Alfie came across a Great Dane being walked. He did his usual running around in circles thing and attempting to be friendly, but the dog wasn't interested. Alfie was small by comparison to this dog, which was around five times his size. I don't think it knew what had hit it, and looked somewhat dazed. It might be large, but somewhat thick in comparison to Alfie. Small in stature by large in his mind. Alfie seems fearless somehow, regardless of his small size.

Booking Theatre Tickets

On the 26th of May Carol and I will celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary. We've been searching for a theatre production to see near enough to the actual day and have chosen to go and see a show at the Derngate Centre in Northampton, called "Running Wld." It's based on a Michael Morpurgo book, the same author who wrote the book "War Horse," which was adapted for a production at the National Theatre with great critical acclaim and which is still touring. We've yet to see that. With my background in theatre, and, in particular, puppetry, these shows seem very appropriate.

We thought it would be easier to book on line, so we went on the Royal and Derngate website. It should be a relatively easy process to find the relevant day we wanted to go, a Saturday, so a matinee performance. Easy enough to find. Then we had to register to use the website. It was simple enough and then we found for some reason it wouldn't accept our address. Several more attempts, changing the password needed to book tickets. It just would not work and I tried on Tuesday morning again (yesterday) with no success. By now it was getting annoying and frustrating.  On Monday we'd even attempted to ring their box office telephone number but it was closed (odd, considering it was a performance day and you would imagine it would be open up until 'curtain-up' time for whatever shows were on that day. As there are two auditoria at the Royal/Derngate there would be two shows running together with a small cinema which is within the centre. But it was not operating, so further annoyance.

So yesterday evening, when Carol got home, we rang the box office again. This time, after a bit of a wait, I managed to get through and booked two tickets as planned.

I have a particularly special love of the Royal in Northampton,  there long before the Derngate was opened, which is next door and now part of the same complex. I think it was here I got my interest and love for theatre. In 1968 I had been on an A Level course at Mander College in Bedford and was supposed to go to Bristol University to do a drama course. I had originally intended getting into television to do Floor Management, but my results on the two A Level courses (or, at least, the 'mocks'.) were not very good so I changed my direction by approaching regional theatres (or 'repertory' or 'reps.') to start off as a Student A.S.M. I wrote to as many theatres as I could (using 'Contacts,' the directory of theatre and associated industries in the theatre, television and film world.) and got interviews at, amongst others, Northampton Royal Theatre and Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham. I had an interview at Northampton but the Everyman post I was offered began well before that at Northampton, so I began off working at Cheltenham on the 16th February, 1969, thrown in at the deep-end on the technical rehearsal of a production of 'Jane Eyre.'

Yesterday I just had to get out of the house. The constant 'tap-tap-tap' and 'bang-bang-bang!' coming from next door's garden was beginning to really get on my nerves. They've been doing more work on their tiling since Saturday. I couldn't believe this was going to continue into the week. So I went into the centre of Milton Keynes and spent a good hour in the main shopping centre. Having parked where i usually park, near The Point (it's beginning to get really dilapidated and tatty. It might be closed, but the site is a real eye-sore.) I couldn't walk straight into the shopping centre because the road and paved area around that side of the shopping centre was blocked off with temporary fencing, because workmen were ripping up the old pavings and re-paving this area. I have to say it was beginning to look really shabby so it's a good thing they've decided to redevelop all this. I don't think it's been renovated since this area was built in the late 1970's. Several shops within the shopping centre have re-located. W.H.Smith have moved into a smaller unit and H.M.V. has now done the same. They probably realise that they don't need such big units. Neither now don't have a second floor. I suppose Smith's would not need so much space because they don't have a record department. Likewise, H.M.V. just don't have the selection that they once had. It's mainly D.V.D's. I imagine all this is down to being able to download music from sites such as iTunes. With Sky you can download films onto your Sky + or Sky Q box and therefore don't require a disc although you can buy and keep both downloads and then be sent a D.V.D. copy of the latest film releases.

Working In Theatre- Part 4

It makes me laugh, looking back, but at the time I was offered my first job, back in 1968, when I was at Mander College in Bedford (now plain old Bedford College. Don't ask me why they changed the name.) and I was failing my A Levels miserably, there was a story going  around the place, when I said I was  going to work in 'rep', that I'd actually got a job AS A REP!  I can't think why I would go off and be a 'rep' supposedly going from door-to-door selling something such as brushes, insurance or encyclopedias, or from company to company selling something else. Why would I do that? I have no selling skill and I can't imagine myself doing such a thing. But, thinking about it, if you didn't realise that 'rep' was short for 'repertory' I suppose you could confuse it for the selling-type of rep. It just goes to show, looking back all those years, the sort of way people can have an ignorance about something, how you are more or less expected to follow a certain path in your life, and that, if you veer from that path, you are, in some way, thought of being a bit odd. I really do hope things are different now, where children at school who want a career that is slightly different from 'The Norm'  can do so without being made to feel they're odd in some way. Perhaps that was what it was like in the late '60's. I wasn't exactly given much help with my career-path with teachers at school. I think anything to do with 'The Arts' and 'Theatre' was thought of as 'not being a career', that it was 'insecure' and that it would be better if you found something else to do with your life. Perhaps it wasn't actually verbalized, but, looking back, it seems as if that was what was going through people's minds when I had said that I wanted to do something 'artistic' as a profession.

I recall several of the plays that were produced during my time at Colchester. One being "Loot" a somewhat controversial play by Joe Orton. This is an extremely black comedy, to say the least. It may not be considered to be so controversial by today's standards, but when it was first staged, I imagine in the mid-1960's, one has to bear in mind that in Britain there was still censorship in theatre, so a great deal of what was portrayed would have had to be vetted before it could be staged. I think Orton's intention was to shock, and this play could definitely be said to shock. I'm not sure what sort of reaction it had on the Colchester audience in the early 1970's, but I would imagine that they would be fairly conservative in their tastes. The post of Lord Chamberlain had been abolished under the 1968 Theatres Act, the government official who had power to censor plays and licenced theatre premises.   So one can imagine that theatre managers at the time would  have been keen to put on plays that formerly would have come under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The play is about a couple of  young men who are planning a bank robbery. What was so controversial was the fact that they used their  deceased mother's coffin to hide the money that they had stolen. Stage management had to create all the bank notes, coffins and even a corpse, which is within a shroud. Also, we had to find a glass eye, which was supposed to roll across the floor at one point in the play, but this was actually artistic licence, as an actual glass eye isn't like a glass marble and won't roll at all.
We had to have two coffins as well as two 'mini-coffins' or caskets. One of each had to be so constructed that the side could fall out on a hinge and had to be made to look as if it had been in a fire, with  the effects of scalding and fire on it.  Off stage, before it went on stage, we used a smoke gun to add smoke, which added to the whole effect. This smoke came out of the coffin when it appeared on stage. The hinged section had to fall open on cue to reveal the hidden cash inside and that also had to look as if it was burned. We had to create bundles of £5 notes, which had been created by myself and then Roneoed (this was before the more modern photo-copying we have today, which would have made the whole process so much easier.) and then we cut up bundles of newspaper the size of the £5 notes and glued together with the tops and bottoms glued on and then painted as near as possible the colour blue of genuine £5 notes. In all there were supposed to be a few thousand pounds-worth of notes, so you can imagine how much work went into producing all these mock Fivers!  These bundles of notes did look quite convincing from the audience, but not so real on closer inspection. No, certainly not forgeries of real fivers! Also, they weighed a good deal more than real fivers. The story in the play is that the two men go off to their mother's funeral having removed the corpse from the coffin, which has been on stage from the beginning of the play, then they conceal the money inside the coffin and then there is a traffic accident on the way to the funeral which is why the coffin is burnt and they bring the second coffin back with the burnt-out effects and the hinged side which, as I say, has to be revealed on cue to show the audience and not a police inspector who comes in at the vital moment.
The corpse was actually a mannequin with hinged joints, very realistic with movements when moved about, but then is concealed inside a shroud, so when it is picked up it moves in a very realistic fashion. Quite eerie if you didn't realise it wasn't real!
During the  final week of rehearsals the actors got to use the 'prop' coffins and other items which had been constructed in the theatre workshops, which were elsewhere in Colchester and one Sunday we had to bring them over to the theatre and carried them through the town streets. It must have looked very odd to members of the public who saw all this! I don't suppose they would have realised that the coffin was not real! All these items were later hired out to other theatres for their own productions of "Loot", but I think our work and efforts producing these props were extremely good. It was one area of my stage management duties which I  really enjoyed.

Yet another production staged at Colchester Rep when I was there was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I had been involved in several other Shakespeares over the years, beginning with “A Winter’s Tale” and “Romeo and Juliet” at Cheltenham, “King Lear” at Ipswich Theatre and “Hamlet”, which was the first production I was involved in at Liverpool Playhouse.

The production  of “Dream” was something of a cut-price affair, as regards the casting. As with most Shakespeare productions, most of the parts are ‘doubled up, ’ one actor playing one or more parts. This means, for example, that the actor who plays Hamlet’s Ghost in “Hamlet” will probably also play Claudius, and in “Dream” it is  traditional for the actor playing  Theseus to also play Oberon, King of the Fairies.

At Colchester, the fairies were done in a different way from the usual. I don’t know whether it worked, but I was involved. A couple of us stage management had to operate torches with coloured gels in them, standing on ladders ‘off stage’ and shining these lights over the top of the set, and unseen by the audience. Actors spoke the lines through microphones and we had to move the ‘spots’ of light produced by the torches in synchronisation with the lines spoken by the actors. I’m not sure it worked, but at least it was different. I don't know, actually, now I come to think of it, whether the lines hadn't been pre-recorded, and we worked the lights to the recorded voices, but I'm not sure on reflection.

 We also had to be ‘walk-ons’ during the ‘Play-Within-A-Play’ scene, handing out sweets to the on-stage audience. I remember having to appear in the production of “Winter’s Tale” at Cheltenham, as well as “Romeo and Juliet.” I think it was all part of being a member of stage management in those days. I do recall, though, that one of my cousins saw me in “Dream” as she had come to see the production when she was at school, and, not knowing I was working at the theatre, was somewhat surprised to see me on stage! Also, I had these two school girls who saw me when I was having a meal in a café near the theatre, and recognised me from my ‘walk-on’ scene in the production and thought I was a proper actor and kept following me and I suppose it was quite nice while it lasted, but I wasn’t going to go on to become an actor so I didn’t think any more of it. I did say that they should be looking at the central characters and not minor ‘walk-ons’!