Here we go again!

I always like an early start. This morning it was 3.30am so an early start to the day as well as an early start to the season. An 11.00 am show at the Savoy Theatre in Monmouth so three hours through the murk of the Marches and a traditional breakfast in Monmouth Wetherspoons before getting in. The get in. That's what it's called in the theatre. Lumping all the props in. Setting up.

The Savoy Theatre in Monmouth is a traditional Victorian (built 1859) music hall theatre and it's a great place to perform in. Slightly faded, slightly delapidated but oozing show business atmosphere. Reminds me of when I joined Salisbury Playhouse (the old theatre) fresh faced from drama school thinking I was Gods gift to the acting profession. More about that another day maybe.  No hot shower though which I had been looking forward to, but there was hot water in the dressing room so not so bad.  A raked stage proved challenging for the chair balance.  A rake is a slight slope towards the audience.  It makes the whole business of presenting the show easier with a raked stage, but the chair balance is much harder on a slope.  Never mind it was fine and apart from a couple of juggling drops (not enough practice recently) the show went well. About 150 people, mostly families with small children so it was a bit of a struggle choosing the right boy for the finger chopping routine.  The boy I picked was too young really but there was no choice. He did well until the very last moment before he had a wobble of terror.  I can’t blame him.  He thought he was about to lose his finger in a bizarre public ritual.  His mother hadn’t warned him! He will never go to the theatre again.  He will have a life-long phobia of magicians and theatres.  No it wasn’t quite as bad as that.  I made sure he was ok and came round and came back at the end of the show for his prize.  A finger chopper trick.  And he and his mum were smiling so it was all ok in the end.  Fingers crossed! The boy who sat on my shoulders for the unicycle finale was superb and had the whole place in hysterics.

After the show I packed the props away in the car when the guy who owned the sandwich bar next to the theatre came up.  I thought he was going to tell me off for parking in front of his shop, but no it turns out he and his daughter were in the audience, loved the show and would I like a free lunch?  I had a delightful home made veggie quiche with salad, a lovely cup of tea and a chat.  So thanks to David in his place next door to the theatre in Church Street.  If you go visit and say hello from me.

The show really hurt though!  The first one of the season always does.  The journey back from Monmouth saw me trying to shift around in the car seat to ease the pain of the muscle cramps and aches. My own fault of course for not exercising, training, practicing or even really thinking about the show in January and February.  I’ve made another resolution though.  I’m going to train in March.  I’ve opened up the stage in the workshop and will use the space for a daily workout.  I know that if I don’t, come May when the season really kicks off I will be really suffering. 

The man from the garage came to look at my broken clutch on the lorry and we have a plan, so all being well that will be mended too in time for the start proper.  All the props and flats are out of the trailer and spread round the workshop for renovation and repainting.  A long annual job but it does mean that everything will look good for Llandudno.  And there’s the final build of the new illusion to think about.  The materialising motorbike illusion.  More about that later too.

This afternoon I’m off to Shrewsbury to meet the organiser of the Shrewsbury Flower Show.  I’m there with the stage in August this year for the first time.  I performed there a few years ago but just mixing and mingling so it will be good to be there with the full rig.  Lovely event and a lovely town.  I’m looking forward to it, and, as I hope you can tell, the winter blues have all but gone as the new season can be seen coming up over the horizon with the spring sun.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

IT’s been a struggle

I’m just coming to the end of a really heavy cold, which in turn came just as a really heavy cold was coming to an end.  So if you do the maths you will see I’ve had two colds, one following so close to the other that there wasn’t even a sneeze between them.  This has never happened to me before. It’s a life first.  And it’s been a real struggle.  Apart from feeling dreadful, tired, blocked up, coughing, headaches etc, I’ve also felt totally uninspired for nearly two weeks since my last blog.  It’s been a struggle.

IT has also been a struggle. Information Technology.  I’ve blogged about Cat’s Paw Theatre and our theatre presentation about rape and sexual consent.  The Welsh Assembly government have been deciding whether to fund us for a three year rolling programme to deliver the piece in every North Wales school.  A brilliant contract, if it’s successful.  They need more statistical evidence that the project will deliver real learning, so we were offered the loan of an audience voting device which will allow our audience of young people to answer questions through the presentation and have their responses recorded for our statistics.  So we can ask them questions at the beginning of the session which will show their lack of awareness and then again at the end to demonstrate the bright illumination of education!  Great idea.  BUT…

The kit comes in the form of two briefcases of little numbered clicker devices, a receiver which plugs into the usb and a laptop.  But no instructions.  No manual.  They were lost some time ago and no linked website as the company that made theme has evaporated. Guess who has taught IT twenty years ago and foolishly volunteers? 

The upshot was 24 lost hours in the depths of pc world.  And I don’t mean PC World.  I mean pc world.  Now to be honest, I’m a Mac person.  The wonderful little machine that just does stuff without having to ask twice or delve into obscure operating systems.  But I had volunteered so on Sunday after the garden club I spent hour after hour under the hood pushing buttons and pressing levers, wiggling this and that or at least the Windows equivalent. I knew it could do what I wanted it to but the how evaded me for hours upon hours of mindless clicking. I had almost given up and had reached device de-fenestration so I took the dogs for a walk and tried not to think about it.  It was, of course you guessed it, then when a possible solution came to me. How does that work?

EUREKA.  I danced naked down the street.  Well metaphorically anyway.  And this week we’ve been trialling the system in Mold.  I’ve even found a way to drop the results onto a spreadsheet and produce graphs galore.  It should keep the evidence hungry welsh dragons in Cardiff happy chomping on the bones for days, and maybe will get us our dosh. Glory Hallelujah!

The second cold has almost gone.  It’s got to the same point that I was at in the first cold that I felt the tickle of the second, so I’m of course yes I'm dreading the third.  Hopefully (although I’d better be careful of that word given my last blog) I shall be well again by the weekend and if the rain keeps off I can put some more stuff in the ground at the garden.  Almost potato planting, traditionally Good Friday was the day it happened as it was one of the few days in the year the men had the day off.

This Sunday we managed to put some fruit trees in, robbed from my old allotment, so there’s some raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb growing there now. The old guys from the Big House were there again.  It’s becoming quite a team and there’s a real sense of camaraderie.  I had bought some mugs and the makings of tea from the 50p shop which they really liked. We sat in the cleared-out shed and chatted and laughed.  Four old cronies together. An outsider couldn’t have said for sure who were the residential patients and who was the loony from the lorry…

All the best from a road near you,

Mr  Alexander

Silver linings

We’ve all been hoping for a silver lining recently. There’s been that much rain and hardly a glimmer of silver.  And I’ve always been someone who looks for the silver lining, but I’m not sure that looking for it helps. The trouble is we all want the bad times to be over; weather, recession, poverty and the other tribulations. Our natural human instinct is to look for possibilities that might be hopeful or that might lead to something better.  Even if it’s only a totally meaningless sign.  For example first thing in the morning if I can empty the ashes from the woodburner and then light the fire before the kettle has finally clicked off then I think maybe today will be, what, lucky, auspicious, hopeful? Little glimmers of hope. This is not a good way to live.

Living hopefully carries such a burden when the hoped-for doesn’t happen. I’ve tried to stop looking and just try to deal with the deluges, but it is really hard. Even the phrase ‘living without hope’ sounds so desperate, so finally, pessimistically acceptant that there’s nothing good out there.  But the more I think about it the more I feel it would be better to live without hope, to just be in the present, mindful of what is happening now and only now, not looking to the future, dealing with life like in TS Eliot’s Wasteland, ‘If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable’.  I’m never sure whether he thought that was a good idea.  But I do know it’s the hope that kills.  If only we could just stop hoping.

There are six old guys at the Big House who have been helping me with the garden.  Mostly with types of autism and Asperger’s.  They stopped looking for the silver lining a long time ago.  You can see that in their eyes.  They have been a lifetime in institutions and giving them hope might be threatening to the stability of the organisation. So the regime surreptitiously discourages hope and that means that there is a huge battle to engage them to get them out to help in the garden. But I think they deserve more than they have at the moment.  They have meals provided, a warm room of their own, washing and laundry facilities, so the basics at the lowest level of the needs triangle are there.  But there’s little else, and even some of the basics are only just that. 

Last Saturday I’d organised it so they came and helped me in the garden for a couple of hours.  We cleared out the largest greenhouse and emptied overgrown pots and seed trays.  They worked hard and seemed to enjoy doing something practical.  At the end I suggested a cup of tea.  They showed me their facilities.  A room with a kettle.  No mugs, teaspoons, teabags, milk or sugar and definitely no hope. I didn’t make any comments but they were obviously both embarrassed that they couldn’t offer me a cup of tea and angry that there was nothing provided.  I didn’t pursue it further but made a mental note to get the makings together for them next week.  But I’ve to be careful not to stir up a revolution of hope in the Big House!

If you like silver linings in films then see Silver Linings Playbook.  A lovely heart warming feel good movie about recovering from mental illness.  Some sensational performances and a story that will fill you full of hope. A great soundtrack and some very funny scenes.  Jennifer Lawrence won the Best Actress Oscar and she is stunning in it.

Only please be careful as it is only a film and if like me you’re a sucker for a good narrative and tend to relive stories you have enjoyed then this one will creep up on you, as it has for me, and make me imagine there might be something worth hoping for.  Big mistake of course.  There’s no silver lining and if you think there is then it’s an illusion and just the reflection of the exploding sun. Eight minutes away and closing fast.

Far better not to live in hope but live like the guys in the Big House realising there’s no point in hoping for a free cup of tea because there isn’t such a thing and the sooner we all realise that the better.

A bit down from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Inspiration

I’ve not been inspired to write in the last few days so there’s some catching up to do.  That’s not to say I haven’t tried.  I tried to write about the theatre stage, I’ve tried to write about the garden and the wonderful six old disabled guys from the big house who turned up on Saturday to help but nothing has really hit the spot.  Until now.

You may have read the blog I did about friendship a few weeks ago.  It’s not there anymore because things have moved on a bit and I thought I would write about that today. 

There were two people whose actions or inactivity had caused me to question the nature of friendship.  The action which left me most upset was by a guy who I had helped out by running him to see a car which he wanted to buy.  I actually did the journey twice and had told him how much the petrol would cost.  He then, quite consciously, gave me a fiver less.  At the time I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t say anything but let the situation seeth and grow inside me until I was bursting with anger about it.  I told a few people and I blogged about it. That made me feel a lot better.  I still felt though that I needed to tell him what had happened.

So I emailed him.  Here’s what I said:

I know you have been trying to contact me and I think you are owed an explanation as to why I haven't responded.

The truth is that last time we were together you upset me and I feel I am past it enough now to tell you why.  

When I took you the two journeys to see and then buy the car I told you the cost of the petrol would be £60.  I then rethought it as I had miscalculated because of the difference between the cost of diesel and petrol.  I worked out the new amount as £50 and told you that on the phone.  You had given me £15 on the first journey which left £35 left.  I didn't ask for the money until right at the last moment on our journey to Queensberry.  I wonder whether you would have offered it without my asking, but anyway I did ask and you gave me only £30.  You made a comment about the shortfall, but it certainly wasn't any kind of promise to pay the extra £5 at some future time. You have not mentioned it since so my conclusion is that you didn't and don't think it matters.  

I am curious as to what made you decide to only give me £30.  Had you thought about it previously when I had told you the amount on the phone and did you think that £35 was too much?  Did you think I was ripping you off? (I wasn't - 77 miles, four ways = 308 miles, 40 miles to the gallon, 5 litres to the gallon £1.30 a litre = £50.05) Or was it a spur of the moment thing because you didn't have enough on you at the time?  Even so you never mentioned it.  If that was the reason then I wouldn't have minded.  I would have said something like "Ok well you can pay me when you can afford it."  But that really wasn't it I don't think.  You just didn't and don't think it was important, and that's what has upset me.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to know what you were thinking.  I'm saying these things only so they may help you think about it and maybe you can take care in similar situations in future.

A few last things about all this.  

I know it's not a lot of money.  It's only £5.00.  In my summer season it probably wouldn't have mattered so much.  I think I would still have felt the same way because of course, it's the principle. It's worse at this moment because at this point in my life is that a fiver meant a lot.  I am currently living (or trying to live) on £30 a week, so that fiver is the dogs’ food for almost a week.

You knew how poor I am.  I told you about it on several occasions, so I was even more amazed that you could think it wouldn't matter to me.

I would never have done the same to you.  In fact, if you remember, I gave you more money than we had agreed for the recent project.

So for all these reasons, plus the somewhat fragile psychological state I have been in recently, that fiver, or rather the lack of it, as you can tell, has really upset me.

I'm not sure what all this means really, other than I felt you needed an explanation.  

I had a reply almost immediately with an apology and the beginning of an explanation which I wasn’t expecting.  He said he had a mean streak and that it had always been a handicap.  He has since emailed me again and said that he has begun to think more and more about what I said and is trying to change this aspect of himself.

I am so glad I wrote that email, as he has learned something from the experience and I am sure it will lead to a closer and more real friendship between us. And I’ve learned something from the experience too.

So the moral?  Don’t bottle up what you are feeling.  Loosen the stiff upper lip and say it, even if it’s difficult to say.  It’s what friends are for.

Something has also happened to ease the other worry I had regarding friendship with the other person I blogged about and that also involves speaking out and being straight, this time with me the one being told!  Painful but useful!  So all’s well that ends well.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander