Anything Goes!

 Wednesday. 8.35 a.m. A bright, but chilly, morning.

Thursday. 8.35 a.m. It's quite frosty and cold this morning. A good deal colder than yesterday morning. The car windows are frozen over, so I have been to scrape some of the ice off, so I can drive to the Oaktree Centre after 9o'clock for our regular Bible study.

I got the printed bank statement with my address on it in the post yesterday morning from Nationwide. I wasn't expecting it, so it means my D.B.S. can be completed at Bridge Builder on Tuesday.

Friday. 10.15 a.m. It's yet another frosty and cold morning, but it's also foggy. You can't see the central shopping centre from my kitchen window, because the fog is so thick. It doesn't look as if it's going to clear at all today.

I am watching David Tennant in the central role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's  production of 'Hamlet.' Patrick Stewart plays Claudius as well as The Ghost. As they are meant to be brothers, it makes sense. It is on the BBC iPlayer, as part of the 400th anniversary celebrations for the publication of the First Shakespeare Folio. There are quite a few programmes on Shakespeare, a three-part drama/documentary on Shakespeare's life, which is very good, and I have discovered a lot of new stuff, one fact being that one of the Gunpowder plotters was a relative of Shakespeare and was executed because of his involvement. Also, a Simon Shama series about the Bard.

I might have mentioned this before, elsewhere in these blog posts, but I am something of a Shakespeare fanatic. I also 'collect' productions of Hamlet. I can't now remember how many I've seen, over the years, besides being an A.S.M. on a production when I was at Liverpool Playhouse in 1971. Carol and I went to see a National Theatre production of the play, which had Rory Kinnear in the central role. I find it intriguing to see how many ways it can be staged. It never seems to lose its power. They have more recently staged what's called 'gender blind' (not sure if that's the right term though.) with Maxine Peake playing Hamlet, although, in that production, I wasn't sure she was a 'he' or 'she'. Thinking about it, having second thoughts, her version might have been transexual. Thinking further, in Shakespeare's time, the female roles would have been played by male youths, because women were forbidden from appearing on stage. Some of the other roles have been gender-swapped, such as Polonius, becoming Polonia. 

Sunday. 12.30 p.m. It is a particularly unpleasant and wet day. I have just returned from the Oaktree Centre. I was scheduled to do tea and coffee, but an entire family were doing just that, so I had time to chat as it was what is called 'Cafe Church', which means there was no workshop, but a time of fellowship. 

My friends Margaret and Mike had invited me to lunch, so I came home to take Alfie out and as I got to my front door, I discovered a parcel, from Evri. It was difficult to read the label because the print was so tiny, so I had to get my reading glasses, but someone had put the wrong address on it. It was for the flat opposite. 

Happy Days Are Here Again! (Or Are They?)

Thursday. 8.25 a.m. 53 years ago today, I began my theatre career as a student A.S.M. at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham. I was thrown in at the deep end, as it were because that Monday was the technical rehearsal of a production of 'Jane Eyre.' It had Angela Richards playing Jane in it. I was very 'green' as they say. In those days, 'rep' or 'repertory' theatre, was in full operation. Most large towns throughout the United Kingdom had their own 'rep.' Plays ran throughout the year, except for a break of a fortnight during the summer for maintenance. Each play would run for two-three weeks, with the next play in rehearsal as a play was in performance. It meant that stage management had to search for props for the next play, beg, borrow or steal items to be used in the next play, so we would scour the town for these items. As the budget for each play was tiny, there wasn't money to buy these items. Most items would come from local businesses, and shops, mostly selling antiques in Cheltenham or quite valuable pieces of furniture. It's amazing. looking back, what we had on loan. These businesses who loaned items got a credit in the play's programme and got free tickets for the play as an acknowledgement. The theatre must have had insurance because some items were expensive antiques (at the time I am talking about, Cheltenham had plenty of antique shops, many quite keen to lend pieces of furniture and other items.) Without this sort of borrowing, the shows would never have been staged. 

It was fairly unrelenting work, because, with one show being performed during the evening, and the next play in rehearsals during the day, there was no let-up. I might be doing props for one show and then operating sound on the next, having to make up tapes of music and sound effects. I didn't get to do 'The Book' until I went to Colchester Rep in the following January as a fully-fledged A.S.M. The first 'Book' I did was 'Billy Liar.' It's quite a demanding job, being in rehearsals from the first read-through of the script, logging all the actors' moves and taking notes on such things as props, practical effects (i.e.: off-stage crases, door slams, gunshots.) and running the show when it goes into the theatre during production week, the technical, dress rehearsal and then opening night and then the actual run. Then, giving the actors their calls via the tannoy system, cueing lights, sound effects and so on and keeping a record of the show's timing, interval etc.

3.40 p.m. The day has been mild on the weather front, although it has been quite blustery. Not a lot else has happened. I have had problems with my Amazon Video connection. Attempting to watch the latest season of 'Clarkson's Farm and have reached the final episode, but it won't play. Technology is fine when it works, but when it decides not to work, then it's annoying and somewhat frustrating. I will leave it and have another attempt later.

6.55 p.m. I have at last managed to get the Firestick to work. I did the old trick which everyone does with anything electrical, and usually when there's a problem with a computer or anything vaguely connected with a computer, which a Fire Stick is. I turned the whole system off at the electrical point and after ten seconds, put it back on. This meant the Fire Stick rebooted itself and, hey presto! I managed to watch 'Clarkson's Farm'. 

I know Jeremy Clarkson is not someone to everyone's taste. He has come out with some controversial things, particularly regarding Megan Markle. But, having watched this show, he has at least had the guts to try something which he has actually got no experience of, that is, farming. He has made some stupid mistakes, but you have to admit, he has attempted to do some quite challenging things. It seems that West Oxfordshire District Council have made his life extremely difficult regarding planning permission, and it looks to me as if they are just being awkward and extremely petty in their actions. 

Saturday. 10.30 a.m. I had to buy some things at Sainsbury's, such as milk. So, having made out my obligatory shopping list, which I find is always best, as I don't want to forget anything I need and it saves time. This was my way of shopping during lockdown, particularly as there were so many restrictions, and it just made shopping faster. But when I went to start the car and back out of my parking space, the steering wheel would not turn, and I got a message on the digital screen saying 'power steering fault.' I also got a red light come on which told me to 'stop.,' which was exactly what I did. There was no way I was going to be able to drive it, so I left it in the parking space and walked to Sainsbury's, which is no more than a fifteen-minute walk. But I didn't buy everything on my carefully composed list, as I didn't want to have to carry heavy bags of shopping. Having now returned home and unloaded my shopping, I have been back to check the car and it seems alright and no problems with the steering. I'm not sure what caused the problem in the first place. Just makes me worry now that, if I drive anywhere, it will then decide to play up, making it impossible to drive.

1.55 p.m. No, I have no idea why I chose the title for this post. I sometimes choose song titles, but anyway, this one is actually not very appropriate at the moment, but I quite like it, regardless of it being totally not connected to anything. We just need some optimism at the moment, so leave it at that.

6.10 p.m. I was cooking my evening meal. Steak, chips, tomato, mushroom and a bit of onion. Well, you can't have steak without a bit of onion, I always say. I had the chips cooking in the oven, along with the tomato. It was time to sear the steak in a pan, which I did. But the oil got on the hot ring and produced smoke. I was annoyed as I knew what would happen next, which it did; it set the very sensitive fire alarm off. It is deafening, and Alfie doesn't like it. It continued to make it's noise, regardless of my waving a tea towel under it. No way of turning it off. I just sat in the lounge with the door shut. Then, around fifteen minutes later, I got a knock on the door and two firemen came in. They couldn't stop it, even with a glove held over the alarm. I was going to use the alarm system which each of the flats in Dexter House are equipped with, which can be set off by one of the red pull cords which are in all the rooms (although looking around the lounge where I am sitting and composing this, there isn't one. One of the firemen pressed the alarm button on the unit on the wall to speak to the operator, who knows who I am if I accidentally set off the alarm (which is reassuring if I had a genuine need for assistance, such as a fall or I had a medical need, such as a heart attack.) The fireman said that the mobile member of staff would turn off the alarm (which by now was giving me a headache, it was so loud.) About ten minutes later the alarm stopped, which was such a relief and I was able to complete preparing my meal and sit down and actually eat it!

I have already mentioned how I discussed having an extractor fan fitted, when the kitchen was refurbished back in July and how many times I have contacted Mears, the company who are responsible for maintenance at Dexter House. I am almost certain that when the extractor fan is eventually installed in my kitchen, then setting off the fire alarm should, in theory at least, be a thing of the past.

Foggy, But Sunny

 Friday. 7.45 a.m. I've been up since well before 6 a.m. Well, that's me. The early bird catches the worm, as they say. Not that I'm a bird, of any sort, you understand. It's just a saying. Well, I'm somewhat surprised to find it's foggy out as I take Alfie out. He doesn't hang around. Does a wee on the bit of grass just outside the door in Dexter House. Then he nips back in, bold as brass, and, as I write this, he's tucked up in his bed, fast asleep. 

It's now sunny, so hopefully, the fog will have dispersed. and we'll have a bright, sunshiny day. Well, I do hope so. BBC Breakfast this morning said that next week we'd have sun and it will be a good deal warmer. Good-o!

I've just put in a load of washing. Just on 8 a.m. Oh dear, we're not supposed to put on the washing machine until dead-on 8 o'clock, otherwise, we'll get our wrists slapped. I didn't mention that I had emailed a parish councillor regarding the lack of a washing machine as well as my non-appointment regarding my upgraded (or, as I write, not.) bathroom. I have been told by Barbara, our SHO, that a new washing machine is on its way, and via another email from the parish councillor, I will have to wait between six weeks and SIX MONTHS before my bathroom can be upgraded. I can't think why, but as they say, things grind slow.

An actor I worked with when I was an A.S.M. at Colchester Repertory Theatre in the early 1970s, Jeremy Child, has died, at the age of 77. I was wondering where it was, out of all the companies I worked with. I have a feeling he was in several plays there, probably 'Private Lives', although he would probably have been in several plays there.  I have, unfortunately, no way of researching, as there's nothing online. I did, at one time, have a large box that contained programmes from most of the plays I worked on, by now, sadly, lost. Many were signed by members of the cast of many of these shows, and they might have had some sort of value, although I doubt it.

One of the flats below mine is having a new bathroom fitted today. So, why have I heard nothing regarding mine? No hint that I might have my bathroom surveyed and me being questioned as to how I want it revamped, for example, having a shower or a bath. Definitely, a bath, as there's nothing better than being able to stretch out in your bath, which I can't do at present, as the bath isn't designed for someone over six feet in height (I know, crazy, but true.) Or a shower so I can actually stand under it. The current one must have been designed for a midget (although we're probably not allowed to say 'midget' or 'dwarf' as it's probably not politically correct.)

Pandemic Burnout

(Wednesday) Oh  no! Yet another press conference about the pandemic, shown on BBC1 tonight with Boris Johnson leading. I get the impression, right or wrong, that all the questions asked by the journalists are censored and some questions are evaded. You're not allowed to undermine the scientists or go again government guidelines regarding the pandemic. Oh dear! I just think Boris should be a good deal bolder and not listen that idiot Witty who keeps on saying that there'll be x thousands of infections and x thousands of deaths as a result of the covid pandemic when his predictions are inaccurate and produced from computer projections which have been out my umpteen thousands. He should listen also to other scientists who have produced far lower infections. Why on earth can't these press conferences go on the BBC news channel? When they're on BBC1 it means the early evening programmes are scrapped, at least one or two on BBC2. Pointless gets moved to BBC2. If people want to watch them, then go to the BBC news channel. I'm not sure it's not on there as well. Why does it have to be on two channels at the same time?

I listen to Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio. She's a good journalist and doesn't suffer fools. She's like me in that she doesn't believe the data that the mad scientists feed the government. I'm no sheep and have to do my own research as regards the pandemic. She was grilling some N.H.S. bureaucrat on the fact that hospitals are probably not as busy as they would be in a 'normal' winter. The testing system is flawed in that it gives false negatives, picking up 'dead' coronavirus. I could go on ad infinitum on this issue. As I've already said in the above paragraph, the government should be listening to a wider range of evidence from a wider cross section of research from more scientists before making lockdown decisions.

I had a weird dream last night. Well, nothing usual in that because most dreams, or at least those we remember, are odd. I was in a theatre. Took me back to when I worked in stage management. It was in Leicester. As I was an A.S.M. briefly at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in the early 1970s, perhaps not a surprise, but it wasn't clearly like the Phoenix. A theatre where some of the auditorium seats had been removed. I sat at a table with other people and one was an academic of some sort. I'm not sure what I was doing there. Was i part of the stage management team? Or about to be acting in a play? It seemed that it might have been a rehearsal. Some of the seats in the auditorium had been removed and some were facing the wrong way round to the stage. That's about it, but I've had several similar dreams, one where I had gone to Northampton (I think. But it seemed like Northampton.) and had been brought in at the last moment to be an A.S.M. or at least a member of the stage management team. I had no idea what the play was that we were involved in but I have had dreams where I am expected to take over a part, without knowing any lines and standing on stage and trying ro recall my lines. I think this is a typical dream that actors are supposed to have, having to take over a role at short notice and be an understudy for an actor who is ill or otherwise incapacitated. I think it is understandable when actors have worries about forgetting their lines.

I have divested the Christmas tree of it's decorations. I am so pleased with that little tree which I got from Waitrose. Absolutely perfectly for the flat. It hasn't dropped a single needle. My experience of 'real' Christmas trees is that, when you come to deal with them at the end of the festive period, you find the floor covered in needles. I have kept it watered during the Christmas period which might be the reason it has kept it's needles. After all, a real Christmas tree is like a house plant which needs care, particularly watering. 

The little Christmas tree is now outside in the community garden. I have given it another water, I hope it doesn't get lonely. It's going to be another frosty night and it won't like getting cold.

I got a text message from Nationwide to tell me that there wasn't sufficient cash in my account to cover a couple of Direct Debits which go out today. My only option was to go into the city centre and take out money from my second account, the NatWest and transfer it into the Nationwide. This had to be done by 2.30. I had around an hour and a half to accomplish this mission. I drove in and parked near the Point and rushed into the shopping centre. The carpark was virtually empty and when I reached the Nationwide I had to wait to enter as they're not letting too many people in and they have a one-way system due to the pandemic. I managed to take out enough to cover the Nationwide payment, from my NatWest account and I then had to wrestle with the cash machine. You can only pay in cash one note at a time and the thing was being difficult. Several of the notes I managed to insert in the slot were disgorged, but eventually I managed to get them all into the machine, but it was a tortuously slow procendure. It was as I walked back towards the car that I realised that I hadn't paid my parking ticket. I was in such a hurry that I clean forgot.

Very few of the shops were open. I think W.H.Smith and Boots were open, along with banks. Probably they are what they call 'essential.' 

I got back to the car to find a host of crows either sitting on the cars or all over the ground, like a swarm of flies. Very reminiscent to the Alfred Hitchcock film 'The Birds.' A couple were sitting on my car. Not the sort of bird you'd want to have an argument with, considering the look they give you with their beady eyes and their sharp and pointed beaks!

(Later) Boris is given ANOTHER press conference! How much more of this can a person endure? It's getting so tiresome. I know we have to be told, but endless ramblings and those miserable faced scientists and their graphs. Just turn off the television or watch another channel, which is exactly what I did. I put 'Pointless' on, which was on BBC2.

Flooded Milton Keynes and Bedford

 (Monday) I put BBC Breakfast on at around 6.20 and they were reporting 'live' from Bedford. The centre of the town is flooded and all along the Embankment and around Longholme lake the river has risen and engulfed the fields around the River Ouse, all places I know well.

Although I wasn't able to visit Chloe and family in Worcester over Christmas, I was able to chat with her via Skype, something I haven't done before. It was great to not only chat, but she gave me a guided tour of the extension to the house which is more or less completed. She didn't show me upstairs, because the children were asleep in bed (it was around 7 p.m.). There is a new utility room and the downstairs wet room off the kitchen as well as an office. I hope that probably next week we can have another chat and this time have the boys involved as I haven't seen any of them since last Christmas because of the pandemic.

It's a good deal colder this morning. I was out with Alfie at 7.45a.m and not only was it a good deal colder, but there was a fog hanging over the centre of Milton Keynes which I could see from Oldbrook Green. I am making sure that I wrap up to keep warm, with my Oddballs woolly hat on as well as gloves (which I managed to find.) My hands get really cold and can get so cold they become numb. Something to do with having had a heart attack. Your extremities, such as your toes and fingers, can be affected. I ought to explain that Oddballs is a brand of clothing, utilising brightly coloured and highly patterned clothing, particularly underwear for men and women. Originally set up to sell these items and the profits going to cancer charities, initially for research into men's cancer, particularly testicular and prostate cancer but now also women's cancers. A good cause and I have bought quite a few items, and because of Carol's cancer, I thought it highly personal to me.

I've been out again with Alfie and it was really quite foggy. Well, not too thick that you couldn't see a hand in front of your face, but a good deal thicker than it was earlier.

(Later) I've been watching a documentary on YouTube, called 'The Cult of Doomwatch,' which was an early 1970s drama series which had storylines about what happens when science goes wrong. I remember it quite clearly and it had some really frightening storylines. I have a connection to it as one of the leading actors, Simon Oates, was a guest director when I was at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham in 1969, working as a student A.S.M. I'm desperately trying to remember what he directed. I have an idea that it was 'A Day In The Death of Joe Egg,' written by Peter Nicols. I may be wrong and unfortunately I don't have any way of finding out. I used to have a whole box full of the programmes from plays I worked on. You always got given one on the opening night of the plays I worked on. Some were signed by the cast. It's a pity, as they would be great to look through. I even had production photographs, but they also went astray years ago. I expect they went missing along the way as I've moved quite a few times over the years.

(Tuesday) I've been doing on-line surveys for several years now. You sign up to various sites and give as much detail about yourself and then you get an email with a link to the survey. You have to do a quick survey to show if you are eligible and if you qualify you do the survey, which can take up to 20 minutes and you get rewarded points which accrue and can be turned into cash or vouchers for well-known brands. I usually get Amazon points which you can spend as you wish from their site or else turn the points into vouchers for 'bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Marks and Spencer, John Lewis or any other high street companies. Don't expect to be able to make a great deal from these surveys, but as the Tesco ads tell you 'Every Little Helps.' I am also on a site called Consumer Pulse (you have to be invited. You can't just sign up to this site.) You have to input to their site when you buy products such as clothing, shoes, books, CDs, DVDs etc and the points build up and can be turned into vouchers for such companies as Sainsbury's, Argos, B and Q etc etc. I had reached a good payout of around £100 so I decided to redeem them, turn them into Argos vouchers. You usually get your vouchers sent to you, as paper vouchers, but because of the pandemic, you get them as eVouchers which can be spent on-line. I was expecting them to come in a couple of weeks which is what normally happens, but I was surprised to find they were sent in an email, as a string of letters and numbers. So, I thought I'd spend them. I got to the Argos website and managed to select some items, a new toaster (the old one is beyond repair, frankly, and it took ages to toast a piece of bread.) I found a Breville toaster and decided on that. Then, a new electric kettle. The old one is a Russell Hobbs and it has a Brita filter in it. The one I chose is similar but made of glass. That's ordered, but won't be ready for collection until tomorrow, Wednesday. Also ordered a plate rack for the kitchen sink, bath mats and a 'Welcome' doormat, which might be helpful in preventing mud and other bits and pieces coming into the flat. I got the toaster on Sunday and I had to go to the Argos store in Milton Keynes to collect it. Click-and-collect only and you have to queue up and it took about 20 minutes to get to the check-in. They don't allow you inside the store. A member of staff takes your details, your order number and another code which identifies you as well and the item ordered and it's handed over. 

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.

EastEnders Does Joe Orton

We thought we'd watch EastEnders last night, just to see what on earth was going on. I had accidentally strayed into soap land the other evening when I was sitting and working on my laptop. The television was on and I wasn't watching as my concentration was elsewhere. Then EastEnders came on. (See earlier post where I discuss this.) So I was somewhat fascinated to see how things were developing, hence what follows.  As I've mentioned in an earlier post, Christmas in soap-land is always fraught with drama and excitement. Possibly this will be the only episode we'll bother to see for the rest of 2018, but who knows? We have a television set in our bedroom, so if it's too awful we could always just fall asleep, due to the boredom. So, what on earth IS going on in Walford?  Possibly not boring. Someone is in intensive care. I assume they are. I couldn't work out if the 'someone' was male or female. Carol insists it's female. This is a soap stand-by. Have someone or other involved in an accident of some sort, traffic, house-fire, shot or whatever, so they end up in hospital, in intensive care, miles of tubes, things stuffed in their mouth, bleeping monitor at bedside, and family members come in and stand or sit at their bedside, tears running down faces, gloomy, not sure if they'll pull through (the patient, that is, not the family.) Usually this is done when an actor wants to leave the show, or hasn't decided to sign contract to remain, so the producers do this to their character. They die if they don't sign the contract, or they live if they do. They can remain on life-support for endless episodes. Harrowing and dramatic, but probably incomprehensible if you're not a regular viewer of the show (as we are.) Who is this character? Why are they in intensive care?

Then we had another plot, involving a coffin, Billy Mitchell as a funeral director, and a whole gang of 'hard' men, including Mr 'Potato head' Phil Mitchell grunting and scowling (as he always does.) in a scene which was more a cross between Joe Orton's play 'Loot' and a piece by Harold Pinter than your average EastEnders storyline. Had they hidden some ill-gotten cash inside the coffin of someone's dead mother? Or whose corpse was it anyway? (Good name for another play, methinks, a farce perhaps, or even another television show of some sort.) It did smack of Orton, as I know the play well and worked on a production at Colchester Rep when I was an A.S.M. in the early 1970's. Anyway, I just hope the Orton estate doesn't sue the producers of EastEnders for plagiarism or something. It was all a real muddle, particularly as we weren't sure what was going on, or who was who (or whom.) Was someone pretending to be a priest, or at least a man of the cloth, or a vicar?  This character began to speak a load of gibberish, sort of stage Latin. Was he supposed to be attempting to say the Last Rites? More laughable than anything. Then they decided to take the lid off the coffin and I assume put the loot inside and, for some unaccountable reason, the corpse fell out. I don't think it was necessary, but I think they got complaints from some viewers as a result, or I expect they would. Who on earth would want Billy Mitchell as a funeral director? He's fairly incompetent at the best of times, but the thought of him organising a funeral leaves much to be desired. Not exactly realistic. I felt sorry for the person who had to be the corpse. I assume it was a real person and not a dummy. They would have had to remain still and not breath for a long time, although there were no shots of the corpse, except very brief glimpses. Had they got the wrong coffin? I assume that what was going on. Billy Mitchell selecting the wrong one, no doubt.

Are we to assume that the stolen cash is put in a different coffin and Billy buries the wrong one? In the play 'Loot,' the hearse taking the coffin to the cemetery is involved in an accident and later the coffin and a casket, which contains the hidden money from a robbery, gets burnt and returns to the home of the deceased wife of the central character, so it'll be interesting to see if they pinch this plot idea from the Orton play. I don't think I can be bothered to watch to find out. The whole thing is too absurd and not worth the effort to watch, but never mind. They have had gangsters in earlier episodes of EastEnders and it got ridiculous and unrealistic. People with guns and things in a soap is going too far if you ask me. Not just in EastEnders, but I seem to remember something similar in Brookside and we know what happened to that particular soap opera. It got cancelled. Just a good way to lose viewers when things get unrealistic and crazy.

One assumes the cash has been stolen in some sort of robbery. I didn't discover where it had come from. If you're a regular viewer you would obviously have learnt all these details, so watching one episode it does take a while to fathom out what is going on. No context for any of the current goings-on. A bit like picking up a novel, probably quite a long one at that, and just opening at a random page and reading and expecting to understand the plot and characters from only reading a couple of pages. New characters have been introduced since I last watched EastEnders. Some have left, and old characters have reappeared.

Appearing On Stage

I was never employed to be an actor when I worked in theatre. I was first a Student A.S.M. (Assistant Stage Manager), and then a fully-fledged A.S.M., and then moved up to become D.S.M. (Deputy Stage Manager). There were times when a production required a few more bodies on stage, not necessarily speaking parts (a bit like 'Walk-On's in television or Supporting Artistes.) usually to fill up the stage, to flesh out things in a similar way. I think the second play I worked on was a production of Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" and myself and other members of stage management were expected to don costumes and become 'Gentlemen' and 'Ladies' of the court as well as 'Rustics' in the country scenes, meaning we had to wear tights. No, don't laugh. O.K. if you must. Classically, actors are always talked of as becoming 'Spear-Carriers,' generally in the background of Shakespeare productions, usually the first appearance they make on stage. As such you have to stand very till so as not to up-stage the actors who are acting 'down-stage.' You have to make sure you don't distract in any way. Towards the end of my time at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham they also did a farce called "They Don't Grow On Trees," which was about a family seeking to employ a nanny for their children, and one actress (Vivienne Ross in this case) playing a range of weird and wonderful characters throughout the course of the play. One of these women was supposed to have escaped from some sort of institution, I don't know, a mental unit or something, and she was chased by men in white suits (myself and another member of stage management.) We were supposed to rush in and attempt to catch this woman, and I think I even had a couple of lines (a rarity.) and we were supposed to chase this woman through a window. Unfortunately, the audience laughed so much during this scene that my lines were completely drowned out! Perhaps if I'd had more experience of timing I might have got a laugh myself, but never mind.

Generally in stage management when I was working in theatre, there were various levels of stage management. I was employed as what was termed a Technical A.S.M., meaning my job was doing things like the book (described in detail in earlier posts.), looking after props, sourcing them and setting them and generally making sure they were set correctly, operating sound (recorded or 'spot' sound effects, such as off-stage things like door slams or breaking glass.) Some members of stage management were termed 'Acting A.S.M's' meaning they were expected to do some stage management duties, but were often cast in minor roles, such as maids, gents, in small speaking parts, as a sort of first step into acting, possibly those who had left stage school and were breaking into the profession.

Later in the season at the Everyman Theatre they did a production of 'Romeo and Juliet' and myself and another member of stage management were used during the opening scene where we were involved in a stave fight, supposedly part of the feud between the Montegues and the Capulets (I don't honestly think it was very convincing) but yet another instance where we had to fill out the stage to make the scene more convincing than it might otherwise have been.

In an earlier post I talk about my time at Colchester Rep. I was involved in a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which was a very budget-conscious production and consequently some characters, for example, the fairies, weren't cast as humans, but were created using torches which made 'spots' of light which stage management had to operate from the side of the stage. The voices were done by some of the cast speaking off-stage into microphones and the voices conveyed on stage via loudspeakers. I know, I wasn't  actually acting or performing but I was still part of the play. Two of us were in the 'Pyramus and Thisbe' 'play-within-a-play' at the end, as courtiers and guests. Definitely making an appearance, even though we didn't have lines.

I'm forgetting that I also appeared on stage during the performance of "Voyage Round My Father"  at Greenwich Theatre I when had to push on stage a large judge's chair. Although, saying that, as stage management, you were often seen pushing either chairs on stage, setting props, changing bits of scenery, or whatever. In this case I can categorically say I have been on stage when Royalty has be in the audience, and in this case it was Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden who were in the audience for one special performance. Stage management weren't supposed to be 'seen' as such, so we were often dressed in black. You went on, placed whatever item it was, a piece of furniture or a prop, and then disappear quickly. Also, during performances of the music hall which was staged at Greenwich when I had to set a stool by the piano for the incomparable Max Wall, and on one occasion I came on from the opposite side to which he was expecting and got a round of applause and some laughter! Also, during the pantomime at Greenwich, myself and another A.S.M. had to open and close the large doors which made up the set, and had to join in with the opening number. No use just standing stock still with your mouth shut. Also, performing a sequence which was done in U.V. light, when Dick Whittington and his cat get cast adrift on a raft at sea and we had to operate the model raft with puppet cat and Dick Whittington in it.

Creative Writing

I didn't continue with the writing course at Milton Keynes Academy. It was really far too basic. I have rung and I'm getting part of the fee refunded. I am now doing an on-line course through something called Futurelearn. I've done a couple of these free courses, one on Shakespeare and another on Hadrian's Wall. I can recommend them highly. I have signed up to do another of their courses, starting in January, on William Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet.' Should be interesting as I have a particular fascination with the play and have seen a couple of stage versions as well as the Kenneth Branagh film version which is uncut as well at the B.B.C. Shakespeare television production which has Derek Jacobi in it. I was involved in a production of the play when I was an A.S.M. at Liverpool in 1971. Hamlet was played by John Castle and Ophelia by Joanna David.

Working In Theatre- Stage Management Duties- Part 2

We had to find all manner of strange things for use as props in shows I worked on. Not only did me have to find, from whatever source, but sometimes we would have to make props. Particularly shows such as pantomimes, where you could let your imagination run riot and make things larger than life. Huge great clubs for hitting giants over the head with. Larger than life lollipops. Shopping trollies which had mocked-up petrol engines on them so that when the Dame appears on-stage it seems her shopping trolley is propelled by a lawnmower engine, complete with some  smoke coming out of the exhaust. You name it, we had to produce it.  I worked on a production of 'Macbeth' at Greenwich, and it was necessary to make a head of the actor who played Macbeth. If you know the play you must know that at the end he is killed by being beheaded and his head has to be brought on stage. We had to get the actor playing Macbeth, Alan Dobie, to agree to having his head cast in plaster. Not an easy thing, and not something that I would want as the thought of having my head covered in plaster of paris and straws put up my nose to allow me to breath wouldn't be pleasant. He did agree, and then, once the two halves of the mould were separated, the inside of the mould was filled with latex so a cast could be made. When it was finished the finished 'prop' head was very realistic, and it had stage blood applied, along with hair and it was extremely life-like.

In an earlier post on here I describe how, when I was working on a production of a play at the Century Theatre, Keswick, we had to create a dead chicken, which had to match exactly a live one which was on-stage and then is supposed to go off stage and be killed, and how we had to take some of the live chicken's tail feathers and put them into the 'prop' chicken (which, incidentally, has had its head chopped off, which made making the prop one easier!) Also, I mentioned in another post the production of a show called "Loot" by Joe Orton which I did at Colchester Rep where we had to build a set of coffins and caskets, one of which has to be built so that it can return to the stage burnt out and with a trap on the side which hinges down to reveal piles of burnt £5-notes inside, as well as the piles of Fivers as well as a convincing 'corpse' which is covered in a shroud and has to be articulated so when it is carried it appears as convincing as a del corpse, with articulated joints, limbs etc.

Food always caused a bit of a headache. Particularly when we were working with very little money. In a play we did at Liverpool Playhouse called "June Evening" (and which I did the book for, incidentally.) we had to produce an ox's heart. The play was by Bill Naughton, who wrote the plays "Alfie" which became the film starring Michael Caine as well as "Spring and Port Wine (which I was involved in at the Everyman at Cheltenham.) We did manage to find a butcher who could provide us with the real ox's heart, which we then had to cook before-hand and then put on stage. The set was a street, with two houses opposite one another, one being a home with kitchen and living room, and on a revolve, which turned round to show the interior at the correct time during the action of the play. The opposite house was a shop, rather like a corner shop, and probably a bit like one of the shops that are portrayed on "Coronation Street." As it was set during the 1930's we had to stock the shop with appropriate items and so had to contact various manufacturers who provided us with cans and packets, appropriate to the period of the play, in order to make the shop convincing. When this shop was fully stocked up and dressed, (again, on a revolved), it was quite heavy and to get it to revolve was quite an effort.

Alan Ayckbourne's plays nearly always have food in them somewhere. In "What The Other Half Love" at Keswick there was a meal at the end of one of the acts, we were supposed to produce avocados for the starter for one of the couples who are giving a dinner party. We couldn't afford to have avocados for every performance we did so we bought a real one and then cast it in a sort of papier mach material and then lined these halves with aluminium foil and then used mashed banana to fill these half 'shells' or 'skins' and it did simulate real avocado quite convincingly. In the same production the main part of that meal was supposed to be a casserole, but, again we were on a tight budget and had to use bread soaked in gravy to simulate the real thing. I don't think the actor's got to eat it, thankfully!

At Ipswich Theatre, the first show I worked on was 'Roots" (the second of the Wesker Trilogy of plays.) The whole play revolves around a character who doesn't actually appear. He is supposed to appear at the the end, and the mother produces an elaborate meal, which includes a trifle. As is wasn't eaten, we managed to construct it out out bread, cake and shaving foam. It was incredible to see how the glade cherries got bleached by the shaving foam, and made me wonder what on earth it was in shaving foam that could have that effect on glade cherries and what would it do to your skins if you used it to shave. We also had a large Victoria sponge on the stage, also never eaten, and it got so stale that it was like a piece of wood by the end of the play's run and it could almost have rolled across the floor like a wheel!

Learning To Drive, Lorries and First Cars

I was learning to drive at the time I went off to work as a Student A.S.M. at the Everyman Theatre in 1969 (details of which are described fairly fully in an earlier blog post.) During the season break I returned home and did my driving test in Bedford but failed miserably. Not keeping up with the traffic and failing to turn either right or left when I should have done were the reasons for the failure. On returning to Cheltenham I continued with some more driving lessons and then passed successfully. My parents bought me my first car, a Ford Anglia which came in two shades of green and cost the princely sum of £75. Amazing when you think about it, but I suppose in 1969 with amount people earned per week, that was probably quite a lot of money. I think my first proper wage was somewhere in the region of £10 per week. The cost of a gallon of petrol would probably have been in the region of 30p. That little Anglia, christened Henrietta, got me about quite successfully. It had one peculiarity. When it rained and you needed to use the windscreen wipers, they went fast when you drove slowly and slowed down whenever you drove fast. Don't ask me why. Just the way the car operated. So, if it was raining and you were driving up a hill and in a low gear, the wipers sped up. Going down the other side of the hill and you went a good deal faster, they slowed down. 

It took me a good deal of time to pluck up courage to go off and drive on my own, probably because when you learn to drive you always have someone in the driving seat next to you. When you first learn to drive on the public highway, it takes some time to get used to having cars coming towards you, even if they are on he opposite side of the road. When I did eventually get used to driving myself then there was no problem. That little car lasted a few years. I had it when I worked at Colchester Rep, then Midlands Arts Centre and drove me up to Liverpool. I think that was the first time I'd driven on a motorway. At that time you had to drive through Birmingham because Spaghetti Junction hadn't been opened then so to get from the M1 to the M6 you had to negotiate the centre of Birmingham. It seems so simple now when driving north. When I went to work at Greenwich I had to drive into the centre of London, after one of the shows we did, because I had my own car, it was decided that I could use it to return some props to the suppliers around Covent Garden. I'd never driven into the centre of London before and had to go round Marble Arch during rush-hour which was not something I had ever contemplated doing before (and, frankly, don't really want to do now, as it happens.) I think I just more or less shut my eyes and just went for it (metaphorically, not really, you understand.) I do remember once when I worked at the theatre in Watford having to drive a large lorry into central London with a load of furniture on the back, including a piano. Unfortunately this lorry had a fault. You could only turn off the engine by stalling it. I went with another A.S.M. in pouring rain and we got lost in Covent Garden and went the wrong way down a one-way street and ended up having to reverse out, which wasn't something I wouldn't wish to repeat.

A Holiday Prize- Part 2

We got to Dover and had a rather nice meal in a restaurant. All paid as part of the prize. I remember having some sort of fish, but I think it might have been Dover sole. Probably never had it before as we only ever had fish and chips at home. We had taken anti sea-sickness tablets for the crossing and as a result the ferry crossing was not much as a memory as I was drugged up with the medication which made it actually worse than being sea-sick! Pity, as I'd have probably enjoyed just taking in the voyage. We got to Dunkirk and then resumed the journey through France. We went past Cologne as we saw the cathedral and at one point the Opel car plant. Strange how you remember such small details, 45 plus years later.

I actually kept a journal of the whole holiday and it was typed up by someone at the resort where we stayed. They must have worked in the administration office or something, and it was printed out for us. I have no idea what happened to this book. Just got lost, unfortunately like a lot of things that get lost when you move house and things get packed up and misplaced. I suppose today I would have written it like this blog and written it as we'd travelled through Europe and over the days of the rest of the holiday. It's so easy to write this on a lap-top, rather than write into a book, as it can be published on-line and have photographs added taken with a digital camera. But this holiday was long before all the latest digital technology. I seem to remember quite a few photographs being taken as well as some Super 8 film, but, there again, I think all this got lost. A real pity as I'd have liked to have included it all in this blog. Today you can so easily take photographs with mobile phones and then up-load them to the internet etc etc via Facebook and other websites. You could take a maximum of 35 shots with a conventional camera and had to wait some time before they were developed. We seem to take for granted that you can take limitless photographs with a digital camera and erase the worst ones and don't have to wait for them to be developed.

When we got to the north of Italy, having come down from Austria through the Brenner pass, we seemed to loose the second bus somehow or other. I seem to recall that the coach we were on was somewhat smaller than the second coach and as a result must have been able to travel faster. We must have travelled together for most of the journey but somehow the coaches got separated. When the slower coach caught up the driver got lost somewhere and attempted to turn round in a rather narrow road and the coach got stuck in the ditch and we had to get out and help push it out. It must have been very embarrassing for the driver as it's not something you want to happen, particularly as it was late at night and we were behind schedule.

We eventually got to Rosapineta Lido and found it to be a rather pleasant place near the sea. Not actually a great deal to do. We spent a lot of time merely relaxing, which was all we wanted to do after such a long journey down through Europe and the fact that the itinerary had been so out of step with the planned itinerary. Also, being over six foot tall and having to sit in the rather cramped confines of a coach which had seating which didn't take into consideration people who were over a certain height (I still have this problem. I find the seating on coaches and to some extent carriages on railway trains do no take into consideration a person's height. It can be extremely uncomfortable. I just want to stretch out, but this seems impossible.) Also, some rather inconsiderate people who were also on the coach with us insisted on making a great deal of mess where they sat, leaving litter around their seats and never cleared up after their children and whenever we left the coach for whatever reason, for toilet stops or to have a fleeting tour of a town or village on the journey through Europe, on returning to the coach  they sat in a different place and we had to sit within their dirty leavings which wasn't pleasant. Just one of the disadvantages of coach travel I suppose.

We made friends with another family, the Cottons. Henry and Sue and their two children who would have been around the same age as my brother Sandy. We seemed to spend quite a lot of time with them over the course of the holiday. They came from Liverpool. When, a few years later, I went to work as an A.S.M. at Liverpool Playhouse I decided to look them up and it turned out, merely by coincidence, that Henry was actually on the board of the theatre! I believe he actually became chairman of the board of directors of the Playhouse a few years later. He was connected to a department store in Liverpool, Owen Owen and was probably manager or something, but I'm not sure exactly. We did keep contact with them over the years and they visited us at Malting Farm a few years after the Italy holiday, but we seemed to loose the contact which is a shame. I suppose with modern technology, for example, the internet, it would be very easy to keep in contact, through things like Facebook.

We went to Venice for a day-trip. I have to say it was well worth all the travel down through Europe. A really unique place and I'd love to have the opportunity to visit again. The only real negative was it was a bit smelly, but apart from that a quite amazing place. I just wish we had the photographs we took. I don't think you can ever take enough.

Another trip was to a town called Chioggia. The company who'd set up and promoted the competition we'd won, Trutex, used this as an opportunity to take photographs of some of their products. I have a feeling my brother was used as a model, but as it's so many years ago I don't actually remember much about it. I don't know what they did with the resulting photographs. Perhaps they used them for advertising, posters or brochures but I'll never know. I don't actually know whether Trutex still exists. I know they were based in a town somewhere in Lancashire, but knowing that most of our clothing is today made in the Far East, and a lot of the old textile businesses in and around Lancashire and the North of England were closed down, I very much doubt it still exists, or if it does, it's most likely been swallowed up by  a multi-national company or conglomerate.

We ate pizza for the first time on that holiday. I'd never eaten any before we went to Italy. At Rosapineta Lido they had a real pizza oven which they used to cook proper pizza. My mother was taken with the coffee and mocha, that is coffee with cream and chocolate on the top. We tried to reproduce this when we got home to England and w even bought pizza but it didn't have the same taste as the genuine Italian article. These are foods we take for granted today, you can get mocha coffee in places such as Starbucks and Costa and pizzas are sold in Morrisons, Asda and Tesco which taste almost genuine and you can order them via the internet or telephone and they are delivered to your door. How things have change over the last almost half-century since we won that competition! I can't imagine my father eating pizza, or any sort of foreign food if it comes to that. He was a 'meat-and-two-veg' man and somewhat stuck in his ways, so i don't think my mother would have attempted to present pizza to him at a meal!

The weather during the holiday wasn't particularly good. I suppose the company got the use of the place we stayed cheaper because I presume it was 'off-season.' We did have some relatively warm and sunny days, but most of the time I seem to remember it rained. I think it rained when we went to Venice, which didn't exactly enliven the atmosphere or add anything to the tour. I imagine if it had been later in the year (the time we went was during the Easter holiday, April I think.) so the weather was much like the weather in England at the same time of year. There again, the old 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' comes to mind. It was a free holiday, so we didn't want to let a little thing like the weather spoil things.

So, that is all I remember of the holiday. We returned to England via journeying back through Europe. I used the experience for a presentation at school when I got back, and the whole thing faded from memory which is rather sad and I've never been abroad since.

As a final coda to the above. I have now Googled Trutex and have found that it does still exist as a company. They make mostly school uniforms it would seem. It's based in Clitheroe, Lancashire and they sell a lot of their products through a website, as do most modern businesses. I'm really glad I have found that and that it's still doing business.

If anyone reads this blog and came to this post as a result of what I have posted regarding Trutex or the holiday to Italy, please do leave a comment. I'd be really interested to hear from you, if you were another prize-winner or were in any way connected with that holiday I'd love to hear from you.

Working In Theatre- Part 9

As an A.S.M. (Assistant Stage Manager) you are expected to undertake a variety of different duties as part of your job. These can range from working on The Book, which involves being in rehearsal from the first read-through, being in the rehearsal room and making notes of all the moves the actors make during the blocking during the early stages of the rehearsal of the play, right through  until the show goes onto the stage, giving cues from the prompt copy, for sound, lighting, spot effects (ie door slams, glass crashes, flying, etc  etc.) You might be expected to run the props for a play, being in rehearsal and 'plotting' props (properties) for the whole show, making sure that they are set in the correct place on set and off and that the actors get their 'personal' props (smaller items that they carry on themselves, from umbrellas, glasses, books, handbags etc. as well as things like letters, money and so on inside wallets, pockets etc.) This plotting is essential because most, if not all, props are vital to the play in some way or another. For example, if the play is a thriller or 'who-dunnit', where there is a murder, some of the props might be clues for a policeman to discover such as a revolver or knife and if it is set in the wrong place it might ruin the story of the play in question. During the rehearsal period sometimes these props can be moved to a different place on the set (or even off) and it is important for the person on 'props' to note exactly where these changes are made.

Sometimes you can expect to do some really odd things which might otherwise not be seen by the audience but which will have quite an important part to play in the over-all production. One such thing I recall was on a production of a play called "Busman's Honeymoon" at Liverpool Playhouse. It is an adaptation of one of Dorothy L. Sayers 'Lord Peter Wimsey' novels. During the course of the action  Lord Peter (Played by an actor called Neil Cunningham) uncovers a vital clue which leads to the discovery of  how the murder was done and which is the central to the  whole play. One of the characters is murdered by the fact that he/she is knocked unconscious (I'm not certain now if they weren't supposed to be killed, which I imagine they would be as the whole play revolves around a murder.) by a swinging flower-urn which is suspended from the ceiling of the set. For some unfathomable reason Lord Peter decides that the clue to this is hidden up the chimney of the cottage in which the play is set. He decides for some reason best known to himself that he will fire a rifle up the chimney to dislodge the item which is supposed to be hidden up there. (Are you with me? I hope so, as this is quite complicated to explain.) To achieve the desired effect of soot and the object (which was a chain or something, if memory serves we correctly.) it was necessary for myself to be standing off-stage on a ladder above the mocked-up stage fire-place. Actually rather precarious, not just because I had to balance on the ladder, but to also be responsible for a real weapon. (What would health and safety have to say about THAT I wonder ?) At the correct point in the play I was given a cue and had to fire off the hand-gun to simulate the rifle being fired by the actor playing Lord Peter Wimsey and at the same time tip the chain and mocked-up soot down the chimney (actually sawdust which had been dyed black.) Thinking about it now it must have looked really odd to anyone watching, someone standing on a ladder with a pistol, firing it off as  a prop rifle appears through the stage fireplace and then throwing down pretend soot. The things one does for one's art!

Working In Theatre- Part 7

After "A Voyage Round My Father" the next show was a pantomime, just in time for Christmas 1970. There is something about panto which I don't particularly like. It's all corny and rather stupid. I know it's 'traditional' but I much prefer my theatre to be a little more imaginative. Everyone  seems to  not care that they know the story, no more so than the classic pantomime plots of Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack and The Bean Stalk etc etc. This one was 'Dick Whittington.' There was one difference with this one, the roles of Jack and Alice  were played more realistically with Dick played by a man and  Alice Fitzwarren played by a girl and not the more traditional roles of  Principal Boy and Girl, although it did have a Dame, the cook, played traditionally by a man, in this case an actor called Bill Stewart. Also, at the end, it didn't have Alice marrying Dick, for some reason, a sort of almost feminist slant, but it didn't really work for some reason. It doesn't make sense if the hero doesn't marry the heroine. It was almost like a musical in that it had a completely original score with some very good lyrics, unlike most pantos that have pop songs sprinked freely amongst the plot, as well as a rather unhealthy mix of soap stars and television 'names.' Also, strange variety acts that are put in, basically just to fill up the running time and having not a great deal to do with the plot of the show.  I suppose the stars draw in the audience and I imagine this will be a lot of children's first experience of live theatre. Maybe it will be their only experience of theatre all year. Possibly most adults, unfortunately. Also, it's the one show that the theatre manager can make a good deal of money from ticket sales and help to prop up ailing productions during the rest of the year. Although I might not be a lover of pantomime, I did love working on them, as the atmosphere backstage was always very good. Hard work, though, as there would be a lot of scene changes, a great deal of hauling on ropes to 'fly' out clothes and generally enormous flats to be moved around the stage.

The first dress rehearsal ran for over three hours, which was thought to be far too long, so, unfortunately, quite a lot of material had to be cut, and some of it was good material. I suppose when you have a children's audience it's not a good idea for a show to run too long, and some days we would do three performances, a morning show, a matinee and then an evening performance. A very long and tiring day. So you can see why the running time was best kept to around two and a half hours at most.

The stage at Greenwich is a thrust, and there is no curtain or 'tabs'. Also, absolutely no sort of grid over the stage, so nothing could be flown', so the designer for this panto had to be ingenious to allow scene changes and to allow a fairly wide range of settings. As there was no sort of arrangement for flying, you couldn't have flown cloths for settings as you would have for a pantomime in a traditional proscenium theatre.  The idea that was used was that it had a sort of children's book feel, and the main up-stage area was a sort of toybox, which, at the beginning of the show was closed. It was broken into two, hinged sections, like large doors. Myself and another A.S.M. were to be responsible for opening and closing these 'doors' and we had to time it such that they opened and closed precisely, and particularly when closed, otherwise it would have looked awful. Behind these doors any sort of scene change could be done, with the downstage area being used for some scenes, and then the doors opened for the next scene.

We were both involved in the 'Storm' scene. This was done in U.V. light (ultra-violet) which means that certain bits of scenery, props etc are painted in a substance which reacts to ultra violet light from tubes or bulbs. The scene was when Dick Whittington and his cat are caught in a storm at sea and then shipwrecked on a desert island (or something. Not sure of the exact plot now.) Myself and the other A.S.M. had to operate puppet versions of Dick and the cat, and they end up on a raft or something and this is all done in complete darkness, so you can imagine how difficult it must have been and to cover a scene change. I think this would have been my first experience of puppetry in some form or another.

 Most pantomimes have a 'song sheet,' the bit in the show where one of the principal characters does a song and this song is brought in from the flies and the audience is involved, there's a lot of participation and children are bought on stage and usually one half of the audience sings one line and the other half alternate lines, or something similar and one side wins. I think you get the idea. Well, the pantomime at Greenwich was no different, except that instead of the songsheet being flown in it was painted on a sort of sign board and myself and the other A.S.M had to bring it on stage from the wings. The participation for this section was done by Derek Griffiths and one other character, don't ask me who it was no, as I've forgotten. All went the same each performance for around four weeks until the last night. Instead of us coming on and merely holding the board for the audience to read and sing to, WE were more or less forced to join in, and couldn't leave the stage until we'd done a song and dance across the stage. Our exits into the wings either side of the stage was blocked so we couldn't get off-stage, so we were more or less expected to do something! Such is the atmosphere of doing pantomime.

The next show to come in after Dick Whittington was not the usual play, musical or whatever. It was a month of music hall. The theatre had been rebuilt from what had been a former music hall, so I suppose it was only right that it should hark back to it's origins. On the bill for one week were two famous stars of the past, Elsie and Doris Waters. This intrigued me as my grandmother had piles of old 78 r.p.m records, and some of these had these two on them, doing sketches from around the time of the Second World War. Another 'act' was a drag act called Mrs Shufflewick, actually an actor called Rex Jameson. And the final star was the best as far as I was concerned, the legendary Max Wall. He did most of his iconic act, including him wearing his famous wig, those strange trousers and short jacket which seemed several sizes too small. My involvement was that I was supposed to go on and place his piano stool in place so that he could come on and sit down and then play the piano, if 'play' is the right word, I don't know. Well, rather in the style of the pantomime and the song sheet, all went the same each night, I'd come on from exactly the same side and put the stool in place, and Max Wall would say, in his inimitable way 'where's me st . . .o . . .  o. . . l?'  (I have since discovered that the on-stage character he played, which involved the amazing walk, poorly-fitting suit along with the 'bald' wig, was called Professor Wallofski. Apparently this was, according to John Cleese, the inspiration for The Ministry  of Silly Walks  sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus.) But one night I decided to be different and came on from the OPPOSITE side from normal, and got a round of applause from the audience. So, I can say I've been on stage and performed with the legendary Max Wall.

Working In Theatre- Part 5

I'm moving ahead somewhat in time to late 1970. I got a job as A.S.M. at Greenwich Theatre. I had kept the impetus going with work, even when one job came to an end and I was out of work. I wrote a lot of letters to various companies across the United Kingdom and I got the Greenwich job because a cousin on my father's side of the family had come to stay and mentioned Greenwich Theatre to me as she lived in that part of London, Eltham if my memory serves. I think Greenwich Theatre had only recently opened, but I'm not sure.  I wrote a letter to the theatre and lo and behold I got asked for an interview as they had a vacancy for an A.S.M. I went for an interview and was offered the job. I lived with my cousin Helen at her flat in Eltham, which was fortunate.

The show that was running, if I remember, when I went for my interview, was a play called "The Servants and The Snow" by Iris Murdoch (not related, as far as I know, but I suppose if you have the same surname as someone you are bound to have a common ancestor, the same way that Rupert Murdoch must be related to me somewhere along the line.) It might have been in rehearsal, as I think I saw them rehearsing on the stage when I went for my interview. Some of this is all a bit vague as my memory isn't too clear. Well, it was over forty years ago.

I started there working on a show called "Down The Arches" which was a sort of musical documentary about the building and opening of the London to Greenwich railway. It had Derek Griffiths in it, who is perhaps best know as one of the presenters on "Play School," the children's show that ran for years and was probably one of the first programmes on air when BBC2 opened in 1964. I remember he did an extremely good mime during this show. I was involved with the lighting, sitting in the control box at the rear of the auditorium and helping to set up the lighting cues on a very complex lighting board. Nowadays I expect this would be all computerised, you no doubt just press a few keys and the lighting changes are done automatically, fades and all, but in those days there were no such luxurys and it took about three of us to set these lighting cues up quickly enough before the next cue came from the prompt corner.

Then the next show in was "A Voyage Round My Father" by John Mortimer. This had started life as a BBC production, one of the Plays of Today single dramas on BBC 1. It may or may not have been done on radio, but I'm not sure of that. It had the same director as the original television production, Claude Watham, and the designer had worked on this, but I can't remember his name. It had David Wood, Mark Dignam and Trevor Bannister in it. He went on to play Mr Lucas in the BBC sitcom "Are You Being Served?"
The set for this show was rather complex. To allow for quick scene changes, part of the set was a revolve at one side of the stage. The remainder of the set consisted of several large multi-sided 'forms', for want of a better word, which were supposed to be winched up and down stage to make more 'scenes' and then projectors where used to project photographs onto the sides of these 'forms' so you could have a scene in a park or garden with projected flowers, trees etc or an interior of, say, a courtroom with wood panelling as you'd get in a courtroom or buildings for streets for an exterior. This might have seemed a really good way to stage the play ON PAPER, but once it had been constructed it wasn't going to work as expected. A false floor had been built over the actual stage floor, to allow special track to be laid, so the 'forms' could run along the false floor and cabling that pulled the shapes up and down stage with the added complication of motors inside these shapes so they could revolve at the same time as moving up or down stage. I hope all this makes sense. It might sound complex, but it is quite difficult to explain.

Working in Theatre- Part 3

I have talked about my first foray into stage management, starting at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham in February 1969 in an earlier post. I am working from memory, so excuse my lapses because what I am recounting took place a good 40-or more years ago. While  it's fairly fresh in my mind I have decided that I want to write something about my time in this before it all fades completely. Writing the last post, about summer holidays at Frinton-OnSea, has set my memory going as I used to drive from Colchester home to Bedfordshire  at weekends along the same road, the A120,  as we used to use on our way to Frinton  (Frinton is a relatively short drive from Colchester.)

 I finished in Cheltenham in the December and almost immediately got a new job working at the Rep in Colchester. I had Christmas at home and then went off in early January to begin work. The company was in the middle of a run of the annual pantomime, 'Aladdin.' I was able to see this from the audience, as I wasn't immediately called on to work on this show, which gave me a week or two to 'find my feet' as it were. Having been a 'Student A.S.M.' at the Everyman in Cheltenham, I was now officially a fully-fledged A.S.M. (Assistant Stage Manager) and now part of a team which consisted of several other A.S.Ms, D.S.M., Stage Manager and Production Manager. Michael Ashton, who had been Artistic Director at Cheltenham had also been Artistic Director of the Colchester Repertory Company. I like to think, but I'm not sure whether this is true, that it was because of this connection that I got the job.

Colchester Rep in those days was based in a very cramped building, converted from an art gallery in the 1930's.  This was located in Colchester High Street. It has since been replaced by the Mercury Theatre, built in the early 1970's. I remember it had it's foundation stone laid by Eric Porter, or else he 'cut the first turf' or whatever they call the first stage of  work on a building. He was in the highly successful 1960's  B.B.C. costume drama series "The Forstyte Saga" playing Jolyon Forsyte. The stage was very small. There was very little wing space and the back wall, which was curved, was as far as the stage went. If you had to cross from stage left to right, or vice versa, you had to go UNDER the stage. There was no stage door. If you wanted to get in to the theatre from F.O.H (front of house) you had to go through the men's toilets (!) There was a door which linked from front of house to back-stage through the toilets. When I was first shown the way, I thought it was very odd to be taken through the toilets, as you can imagine! You had to climb through a window in what was the 'props' room in order to get out of the theatre from the rear and go through a graveyard to get out to the street.There was no room above the stage for 'flying', that is, there was no grid on which bars could be suspended on hemp ropes so that scenery could be hauled up and hidden from the audience view. It was, of course, possible to suspend lighting and a certain amount of 'masking' as in other theatres, but if you were doing a show which required cloths, as in a pantomime, they had to be 'rolled' rather in the fashion of a window blind, but on a far larger scale. This was how most of the scene changes were done in 'Aladdin.'

The show which followed 'Aladdin' was 'Beyond The Fringe' which had been hugely successful in the early 1960's and launched the careers of Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennet, Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore. I got involved with the rehearsals for this, which included 'propping', going out and finding items which would be used during the show's rehearsal period, as well as setting, striking and generally stage managing the actual performances of the show.
"Beyond The Fringe" has some very famous sketches within it, including "Take A Pew", "One Leg To Few" and a really brilliantly funny pastiche of  Shakespeare. Of course we didn't have the original cast in our production. As with most 'rep' productions, which are, in effect, re-stagings of shows which have run in the West End, but have actors who have to be very versatile and play a range of different roles over a number of productions. I believe Giles Block was in the company when I was at Colchester, but I'm not sure whether he was in "Beyond The Fringe."
One of the productions in the season was "Billy Liar" by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.  This was an adaptaion of a book by Keith Waterhouse, and has since been made into a film, starring Tom Courtney, as well as a musical, "Billy" which starred Michael Crawford and was quite successful when it ran in the West End in the mid 1970's. It was also the basis for a situation comedy starring Jeoff Rawle. This was the first time I was responsible for 'The Book" for a show. This is the duty of stage management and whoever is responsible for this is not only in charge of prompting during rehearsals and the actual performance, but also for the general running of the show from the prompt corner, giving cues for lighting and sound, but also making sure the actors are on stage in time for their entrances. You are responsible for the prompt copy which has all the moves the actors make which are given during the blocking stage of rehearsals, which usually take place in a space away from the theatre, such as a church hall, although most modern and well-equipped theatres have their own purpose-built rehearsal spaces within their main buildings or can be some way away from the theatre. You are responsible for making sure the actors get their 'calls' for rehearsal, costume fittings and other things connected with the production. Another member of the stage management is responsible for sitting in during rehearsals and taking note of where props are used as well as where they are set, and then, later on in rehearsal, producing these props, from whichever source, hiring, begging or borrowing from local businesses around the town and taking care they are not broken or even stolen and then set in the correct place during rehearsals and then when the play is running in the theatre.  During the run of the play you have to 'call' the actors via Tannoy, giving the actors time to get to the stage where they may be waiting to go on, in their dressing room or the Green Room, the actors waiting room or common room if you like. I still don't know why this is referred to  as a Green Room, but it is a tradition of theatre for it to be called that. It isn't generally because of the colour as most of the Green Rooms I've been in over the years have never been painted or at least decorated the colour  green. It may be that green is a peaceful colour, but I'm not sure.