Wallingford, Witney, Wimbledon, Widnes and winter

Well it’s the end of another season and it’s flown by.  Of course it’s a cliché but Llandudno Extravaganza seems only yesterday but now it’s getting dark at 4 oclock and my usual 6 am start is lighting the first fire of the day.  The prospect of the coming winter doesn’t thrill me.  I’m bad in the dark and it’s come again so quickly.  So tonight I’ve invested in two bars of anti-depressive chocolate while I review the past season; the ups and downs, highs and lows.

A couple of downs.  My ankle injury at the second event of the season was tough, and there’s some on-going problem with it.  I have to be careful.  I’m also in some considerable pain with my right elbow.  Jugglers’ elbow, otherwise known as tennis elbow, has assaulted me from about half way through the season.  It’s responding to treatment – a pressure bandage just below the elbow and liberal application of Ibuprofen gel, but it’s just wear and tear and I expect it to be with me from now on in.

But mostly it’s been ups.  It has been an enormous joy to have Rhys Edwards filming me through the season.  He now has enough for the short documentary which he is going to enter for film competitions next year and for a longer dvd for sale next year.  I will let all my loyal friends know when they are available.  The dvd is going to include original music by Maff Potts of Wallingford and it reflects my performance style to perfection. I am really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

The weather has been very kind.  Only one event when it rained throughout and another late in the season, and even then it stopped for the last day so I could pack down in the dry.  All the rest have been sunny warm and dry. 

And some great events, many old friends, some lovely new ones, some superb memories and all round a classic season, up on last year in terms of bookings overall.  Favourite amongst the new ones was The Vintage Nostalgia Show near Salisbury at the end of May. Shrewsbury Flower Show was special too as was the Crich Tramway Museum and despite weather issues and a few reservations I came to enjoy Beamish Museum.  The old favourites were as ever old favourites! I will always I love Hollowell Steam Fair, my twentieth year running (at least!), despite having to be towed onto the field this year by Autohome! Both visits to Haven Street were special and it looks as though I will be there again for the Island Steam Show 2015, ‘back by popular demand’!  Wallingford BunkFest always makes me feel so welcome and this year was made even better by such warmth and genuine expressions of affection by many I spoke to.  If I ever retired I could retire there! Not that I will ever retire.  I’m not the retiring kind.

The shows have developed considerably.  The last show of the day has now achieved a synthesis.  I am pleased with the new Tommy Cooper tribute and the Umbrella Man routine has now become (almost) solid.  Nothing is ever completely solid. If you’re into it there’s always room for improvement!  But it’s solid enough to depend on.  I am loving Maff Potts’ Ragtime Suite (which will feature in the dvd) and for which I have recently developed a new silent routine and the few new props for the season have worked well, especially the new unicycle.

The lorry has been dependable; only one breakdown which was not too painful and the new axles on the stage trailer have made me feel a lot more confident about its longterm durability.  I wasn’t able to afford the new trailer mover but there’s always next season!

There’s always next season!

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Time present and time past

It took me a while to find the right title for this blog before remembering TS Eliot.  The Four Quartets is a favourite collection of poems.  My father introduced it to us as children and I think it played a big part in his early life as a Christian.  It’s highly complex like most of Eliot’s poetry but at the simple level, (that’s how I look at most things) the words have a great resonance about the human condition.  I particularly like Burnt Norton, the first of the four Quartets of the title, and my title is its first line.  If you don’t know Four Quartets it’s definitely worth checking it out.  Only fifty or so pages and chock full of memorable images.

At Queen’s Park last week the first of my two ‘time past’ experiences.  I had come to the end of the show, sweating and hot but energised as always by a big crowd and a good response which often happens in London – they seem more aware of the subtleties of my show in places where there is still a tradition of theatre – when emerging from the audience came a face from the past.  It’s strange when people I know come up at the end of the show, especially if I wasn’t aware of them in the audience as I try to make eye contact with everyone during a show, but this was a real surprise as I hadn’t seen this face for over twenty years and it was a face I knew really well.

Tim Francis was six when I first met him over thirty years ago.  He was one of the thousands, probably tens of thousands of children who sit, mouths open, in my front row.  In those days I had just moved to North Wales from the West Highlands of Scotland and I lived in a house so I tended to look for shows locally.  Tim lived in Conwy, the beautiful World Heritage castle town on the North Wales coast, and Conwy Festival was an annual event and highlight of my calendar.  Tim was a small six.  His whole family could have auditioned successfully for The Hobbit, and tiny Tim was.  But he was also very keen.  He kept popping up on my front row in different places, and was also very keen to learn how to do some of the things I do in the show.  He quickly learned to juggle and was desperate for a unicycle.  I met his mum and dad and we researched the smallest unicycle in the world (which we had to adapt to make it even smaller for Tim) and he was given it for Christmas.  He was riding it on Boxing Day. 

In the following season Tim would arrive at many of my shows, with his unicycle and a bag of props and sit enthralled in the front row.  What else could I do?  He came up in the finale of the show and did a turn.  He was very popular, he had a wonderful winning way with the audience and he was good.  By the end of the season he became my second apprentice  (I will write about the other two at some point) and we worked him into the show.  He stayed for many years. He was small enough to climb up onto the chair balance with me and to fit into illusion boxes that I built.  He became a better juggler than me and was a great actor so we were able to develop a number of routines which became classics.  I was also working with another performer at the time, Norman Haddock, who was a one man band so the show was very different from the one I do today.  Tim joined the show and so began an era in my life I shall never forget. And I've had a few of those, as we all have!

At some of the events we worked with local community dance and acrobatic groups and that was how I first met Rachel who was the second person who emerged from the audience at my show the following week at Beamish Museum.  In those days Rachel was the ‘Human Fly’.  A fearless eight year old who climbed (without any safety harness) a scaffold construction I used to put up over the stage.  With a group of friends they did a couple of acrobatic spots in the show. She is now 29 and runs the pub in Beamish.  She showed me a photo (see below) which she had from those days.  That’s her on Maxine’s shoulders on the rola bola while Tim and I juggle clubs around them.  That’s the scaffold she used to climb! Norman is playing in the background.

‘Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

Hidden excitedly, containing laughter’

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

A little off, then back on, Beamish

It was partly the weather which for the first three days was damp, foggy and dreich (not far from Scotland and I love that word!). It’s partly the fact that the lorry had to be parked away from the field and it was a muddy ten minute walk.  It was partly that there was no electricity on the field and no generators allowed, so no lighting or microphones (except they used an anachronistic radio microphone in the arena!) This is so the event has the feel of an agricultural show of a hundred years ago. It’s partly that all participants and volunteers (and I) were charged 35p for tea on the field and had no way to make our own. (The public paid £1.65 which is almost motorway prices!)

The place itself, the bricks and mortar, is very impressive.  A huge site and lots for the public to see and do.  But there was a feeling that I couldn’t quite put my finger on; a lack of something.  Nobody said anything to me about the show so I have no idea of whether it was what they were expecting.  Actually I didn’t see any of the organisers in the audience.

On the first two days of the show, it being Thursday and Friday, and given the weather and the time of year, there were not many paying public coming in.  However schools were present on visits and maybe five or six groups from local primary schools arrived early on the field both days.  They had timetabled activities which so easily could have included a shortened show by Mr Alexander.  Some of the more flexible teachers made it possible for their charges to watch my 11.00 programmed show, by bending their timetables, but not all of the children were ‘allowed’ to do so, so only a small percentage saw it.  I thought it was a missed opportunity.  If they had wanted something ‘educational’, I could have even done a short illustrated talk about the Music Hall. It just hadn’t been considered.

I don’t want to seem a lackluster killjoy, as there were notable exceptions.  A friendly woman in the Costume Department who put my wing collar shirts through the Beamish washing machine (but who said that I was not to tell anyone that she’d done it!). When I asked her name to thank her she told me it was Cinderella!  I said she would go to the Ball, which made her smile.  A lovely guy, Tony, who forests with horses and who came over for chats between my shows. A Punch Professor who (despite what you may know I feel about Punch and Judy) is laconic and hardened to the life of the travelling performer and whose daily ascerbic comments made me smile.  Performing Punch has rubbed off on him.  Or maybe he has just found the right calling for his wonderful sharp personality!  And on the last day he gave me a lovely present of a wooden magic production box that he said he never used but thought would suit my style.  I took to him. 

The third day was worse, weather-wise. The organisational issues, if anything, matched the weather.  Half way through my first show came a completely unnecessary PA announcement about an arena event about to start.  Bear in mind I am using voice only and a small amplifier for my music so this announcement was a real interruption of the show, just when I had the audience with me.  I had even asked previously about arena announcements not competing with me!  I stopped the music and waited with the audience for the announcement to finish.  There were some other minor programming issues too through the day.  However, I do understand how much work goes into running these events and I think they were under some pressure.

Do I seem over-critical?  I just wanted it all to be so smooth and easy.  If am asked back, maybe they might listen to a couple of suggestions to improve my contribution to it, and the day generally.

On the last day the sun came out.  This really changed things and for the first time I saw the event’s potential.  What a difference the sun makes.  Especially when you can’t make your own tea! Next year I will definitely set up an illicit free tea stall for participants!

Never mind, next week at Victoria Park, Widnes, the North West Steam Rally should be a great event.  Let’s hope the sun shines. And tea is 60p (or free to you from my lorry!)

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

‘Is this Punch and Judy?’

The five words I dread hearing as I finish my set up, tired yet expectant for the performance day ahead.  I dread it for a number of reasons.  Firstly I hate Punch and Judy.  I dislike the story, the characters, the voices and the ghastly caricatured face of the traditional Punch.  There has only ever been one Punch Professor (for so they are called) whose work I admired and he emigrated to Australia years ago.  His puppets were tiny art works.  They changed, metamorphasised from one strange being to another.  The judge I remember gave birth, Alien-style to a grinning mini-Margaret Thatcher (it was the nineteen-eighties).  And he didn’t condone the violence. Anyway he emigrated and there has not been another Punch Professor to come anywhere near his artistry or humour.

I don’t feel the same about all puppets.  This year at Wallingford BunkFest, the wonderful walking puppet booth and beautifully-created puppets of Piggery Jokery presented their charming and engaging show in front of my stage and the children (and many of the adults) were transfixed and delighted. I was too.

The traditional Punch story though is awful.  The condoning of domestic violence on that scale, in miniature, even in jest, just isn’t funny.  There are too many women (and men) who are and have been victims for it to be anything other than an archaic anachronistic anathema.  I don’t agree with presenting it to children in any form.  It is exactly the same as my feeling about plastic guns, also often given to children as prizes at open-air events.  There are far too many real guns in the world and normalising them in the hands of our children is appalling.

I know I stand the chance of being told to lighten up, it’s only a joke, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. They’re not real guns. They’re only puppets. I say tell that to the victims whose lives have been, and continue to be ruined by a violent partner or parent or family member.  Tell that to the parents of dead children in wars across the world. I’m sorry, there is no excuse for domestic (or any) abuse and I don’t want to be expected to laugh at it just because it’s dressed up in carnival colours in a miniature theatre on an event field.  Or accept and smile at a child who fires his plastic gun in my face.

I also think that anyone looking at my theatre stage and imagining puppets materialising from it must need their eyes testing.  It’s too big to be a puppet theatre.  Surely it’s obvious?  I do try not to be frustrated by the simple fact that anyone asking that question has probably never been to a theatre, and that therefore their only experience of anything vaguely along similar lines has been a Punch and Judy booth at an event somewhere.

‘Is this Punch and Judy?’  Today, setting up once again after a sad two year absence at the wonderful Queen’s Park Day in Kilburn.  I gave my usual reply, “Do I look like a man who beats his wife and throws the baby down the stairs?’  I think this reply is quite clever.  Too clever really and I wont use it again because of what happened next.  The guy looked puzzled and repeated his question. ‘Is this Punch and Judy?’ Of course I repeated my answer and this time he looked a little put out, looked at me as though I was mad and said ‘What’s that got to do with Punch and Judy?’

I have spent some time wondering what went through his head when I replied to his question with my question.  I think, after much thought, he had probably had heard the phrase ‘Punch and Judy’ without knowing what it was or what the story was about.  Oh dear. Anyway I wont use that reply again.  It was too clever and too patronising.  If people have never been to the theatre then they do not deserve to be mocked by me.  I shall just smile and patiently say ‘No it’s a magic show, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.’  And I will not come over as a grumpy pompous old git, too clever by half!

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

What are you selling?

My local event really, only a leisurely half hour’s drive from my yard, the Malpas Yesteryear Rally is a classic British back end fair.  With the sun out of the evening sky and smoke curling up from the various showmens’, bodgers’ and shepherds’ hut chimneys as ancient woodburners are fired up.  Elsewhere on the field trusty transits spew khaki tarpaulins, poles and bearded men of the road who set up their encampents by the sparse illumination of rusty paraffin lamps.

I am as one with these people.  An outsider observing at a distance all their wonderful ingenuity and eccentricity but also one of them.  I share their simplicity and ease of living, en plein aire, coping equally and stoically with drought or storm and doing the thing they love. As I write, I have in my view a caravan awning full of oxo tins, four classic aircraft cockpits cunningly coaxed onto trailers, a curious collection of ancient garden equipment and a guy whose raison d’etre I cannot as yet fathom, but whose cleverly constructed abode has at least two free-standing woodburners, several hand made tressle tables and above which flies the de rigueur flag of St George.  No doubt tomorrow I will discover this man’s burning passion perhaps for welsh lovespoons (unlikely I guess, given the flag) or model fairgrounds.

And that’s just in my view.  Elsewhere there are sundry stalls and sideshows, a steam fairground with some really ancient classic rides, a superb museum of vintage caravans, several horse drawn, and gatherings of steam, army and commercial vehicles.  Standing engines, miniature steam engines, marquees of local foods, crafts and beer tents. The whole effect is truly one of yesteryear, yet with something added from the twenty-first century - an understanding of the importance of heritage, of conservation and respect for the best of the past.

But there is, above it all, a sense of a nomadic community, settling together for a few days to celebrate their humanity in all its vibrant colour, creativity and common purpose.  And very British in its eccentricity; people’s willingness to help and support each other, to respect each other’s business and of course to have a strong opinion on anything and be ready to voice it.

An old guy came up to me when the stage was all set up. ‘What are you selling?’ he asked.  As often the right reply failed to emerge from the grey matter.  ‘Entertainment.’ I said a trifle lamely.  I could or should have said ‘Dreams, fantasy, happiness in a half hour celebration of our common humanity.’

A little later someone else came over to chat.  She asked if I recognised her.  I apologised.  I meet so many people. She said I taught her son literacy using circus fifteen or so years ago.  I remembered an education project back in my murky past, where I taught children who had learning difficulties by encouraging them to learn juggling, unicycling and trapeze.  ‘He was having difficulty with reading at the time,’ she went on,  ‘He’s 21 now. He starts at university tomorrow… so that’s another of your success stories!’

So this is me. The shaman, the storyteller, the troubadour and teacher whose role is to entertain and amuse, to educate and divert at these tribal gatherings.  Maintaining the age-old tradition of the travelling showmen, actors, jugglers, tumblers, clowns and magicians who have always been there and I trust always will.  From Stonehenge to Woodstock and on to Malpas Yesteryear Rally, the show must go on.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander