The old man wasn’t there

I had a lovely day in South Shields on Saturday.  I was made to feel very welcome and the shows went well.  It was my first visit to this corner of the North East and I certainly hope not my last.  The small seaside resort town on the south bank of the Tyne estuary is attractive and obviously very busy in summer.  It feels a little like some of the North Wales resort towns, fed from the Industrial neighbourhoods of Tyneside. I couldn’t believe it but I counted ten Indian restaurants in a row on Ocean Road.  There’s a sign of our times. The way the sun sits on the east coast sea is obviously very different from the west and I am more used to the west coast light but I grew to like it for the time I was there.

The park I played in was tidy, well maintained and the local council who booked me do a lot in the way of events with a full open air music programme throughout the summer. The organisers loved the show and my setup with the theatre and lorry and were warm and welcoming.

I did miss Wimbledon.  The misunderstandings which lead to me not being this year there are in the past and I have apologised for my part in those, but I don’t think I will be invited back.  On my return I had a phone call from someone who had scoured the Common for my show and was so worried that I was dead, he needed to check it out.  We had a very enjoyable chat about the show, this blog and the DVD (which features Wimbledon 2015).  I was sorry not to be able to sell it there as I think it would have done well. He said that I had been missed but that the organisers had not replaced me with another act.  His German friend who had become another of my Wimbledon fans had texted him after walking around the Common the night before. ‘The old man’s not there’ she had apparently said in the text. She is in her fifties. I laughed at that.  Why do we never see ourselves as we really are? In my head I am still twenty something, energetic, good looking.  Well thirty… forty?

He was very kind and what he said about my show confirmed that what I am doing this end of my life is somehow right and worthwhile. I know I shouldn’t feel that I need affirmation of that, but I often do, as regular readers of this blog will know. He talked about how the show gave the families, friends and community, old and young something to sit and watch and enjoy on a summer afternoon on the famous London Common. So yes I did miss it, but life and shows come and go.

One old man who wasn’t there at Glastonbury finale was Keith Moon and he was also missed.  My first and only encounter with the Who was at the Reading Jazz and Blues Festival in 1960 something.  My friend Geoffrey and I had escaped the confines of Christ’s Hospital and made it to Reading to see them.  It was the time they had become famous for their finale when they smashed their guitars and everything else on stage.  Geoffrey and I managed to go around the stage afterwards (trying doing that at Glastonbury now) and met them. Geoffrey tousled Keith Moon’s famous hair, “Hello Mooney”, he joked.  By way of reply Keith Moon clouted him one and a bit of a tussle ensued.  Perhaps it is a claim to fame of sorts.  A fist fight with the Who.

Anyway for what it’s worth, this old man is still going strong and hopefully will do so for years to come.  The season is in full swing now and I always know when Hollowell Steam Fair is next on the list that summer is really here.  My favourite steam rally of the year is definitely worth a visit.  A spit from Northampton it is set in beautiful surroundings and has a great deal to offer for a day out.  If you are anywhere near come and visit.  You wont be disappointed, but if you want to see me this year come on the Sunday as I am flying up to Edinburgh for a family wedding on the Saturday and have two friends standing in for me at the stage.  I’ve never flown internally in Britain before so it will be an experience.  It takes just over the hour to fly from Birmingham to Edinburgh.  It will be lovely to look at Britain from that perspective.  I do hope it’s a clear day.

So for next Saturday I can say,

All the best from a cloud above you,

Mr Alexander

City Centrescape

Quite a contrast from the vista of the Devon sea from my back window was the view of Rotherham City Centre. The change is always interesting.  It’s like a film I’m watching from the same seat as the landscape outside my window changes from day to day.  The architecture of Rotherham is grand and epic.  Built when Yorkshire had industrial money to spend on its proud heritage, but now somewhat neglected and with too many shop windows with trompe d’oeil painted frontages and to let signs.

Symbolic of it all were the three men I watched plying their strange trade on a corner under the impressive stained glass window of the old Town Hall. They were probably Polish but maybe another slavic country.  They looked at my stage and unicycle “Circoos?” they asked. “Theatre” I replied. They nodded, uncomprehending. Three heavy bags of sand and a bottle of water and a plastic sheet were their raw materials and a recumbent dog with a puppy on its back was the subject, recreated daily on the same two yards of Rotherham pavement with the same three bags of sand.  It wasn’t art - the dog had an almost human face and there was no change (or life) in the sculpture from day to day.  It was just mindless repetition of something done thousands of times. I saw two day’s sand dogs and watched as one or other of them occasionally brushed sand from part of the canine construction. I seemed that one man did the actual sculpture then left and the other two took turns in minding it, collecting the pennies and five pence contributions and then scraping the sand back into the bags for tomorrow.  Perhaps the lead sculptor tours the north of England doing the same sculpture, leaving it for the minders, doing the job for a set fee in each town.  I have certainly seen a similar sand dog in several British city centres.

It was this strange, sad and slightly futile occupation that seemed to reflect the efforts of those who still ply their trade in the town centres of Britain.  At 5.30 pm the place dies.  By 6.30 the place was deserted and strange, like Zombie Apocalypse town, the sand scraped back into the bags.  No-one lives there anymore.   All except me last Friday night, the last little showman at the end of the world, plying his trade then moving out, like the men with the sand dog, leaving the vacant shops and deserted doorways to the broken eyes of the CCTV cameras.

The shows went OK considering all the above.  Well-attended but reticent audiences cowered into the street corners in case I brought them up and asked them to do something. But the eventual response was warm and genuine, except when it started to rain, giving them an easy excuse to leave early, running back to the kind of entertainment they understood.  A Saturday night of Britain’s Got Talent perhaps. Or a Football final.

Am I being hard? Possibly, but it felt like the Last Little Show at the End of the World in Rotherham on Saturday. The one saving grace was a guy who had come to take photos and was obviously adept at the job.  I thought I had seen him somewhere else so I assumed he was a press photographer.  It wasn’t until he asked me to pose at the end of the show and a card notice dropped from the bottom of his camera (see below) and I recognised him from one of the audiences from Crich Tramway Museum and put two and two together and ended with the realisation that he was the guy who had written eloquently about the audience reaction at Crich (see my previous blog).  I laughed and thanked him. He has become a one man movement trying to persuade me to carry on performing to audiences who often seem not to understand what I am doing or why I'm doing it.  

He made my day.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Worlds apart

From the spectacular seascape of Ilfracombe bay (see below), palm trees and sea spray (and seagulls) splashing the lorry to the urban vista of downtown Rotherham with Boots, Poundland and Shoezone in my immediate vicinity. It’s not quite the sublime to the ridiculous but it comes fairly close.  I do enjoy such contrasts though and I’m not casting nasturtiums.  It is all part of the job and territory.

Ilfracombe Victorian Celebrations were once again enjoyable and diverting, although I felt they were very reduced this year.  Like many such locally developed and managed events, the committee are under great pressure to find the required funding and has dwindled in numbers over the last few years.  The writing was clearly on the wall this year so I decided it was time to step in if I was to be able to be back there next year for this lovely event.

I spoke to a lot of local people while in the town, in particular to the movers and shakers of the community.  I wrote and presented a short proposal to the gathered numbers in the attractive and central Emmanuel Church.  Basically I have offered to come out of retirement and lead the event.  Here’s what I offered:

I attend and perform next year free of charge to the committee.

In return, the committee appoint me (unpaid) Artistic Director of the event for one year. This means I will take on the organisation of the fund-raising, marketing, publicity, planning and programming of the event in collaboration with the committee. I will do this mostly by email and phone though I will come down to Ilfracombe for a week in the early new year to do an intensive period of administration and organisation.

I will involve as many of the existing organisations in the town as I can and get them to participate actively in the event.  I have already spoken to and had the ‘in principle’ approval for this involvement from many several key people and groups. 

If the above is agreed by the committee, I intend to run the event for nine days as before, but will lead up to the second weekend which will be called a Victorian Gala Weekend and will be a spectacular climax to the week.  I will work closely with education providers during the week leading up in all the schools of the town, doing workshops and involving all the Junior and Infant children in the event.  I will do a presentation at the High School for the older ones. I will encourage and persuade the major organisations and elements in town to get involved again.  The existing events organised by the committee can still continue and be part of the programme, but I would like a say in their planning and timetabling. I will particularly encourage the Steam Punks nationally to make this an event not to be missed.  I will have the poster, programme and publicity re-designed to reflect these dynamic changes. I will put the event on the calendar UK-nationally (and hopefully internationally) and fill the town with visitors for the week.

I will take on the organisation of the Gala weekend in total, thus relieving the burden on the committee of some of the major headaches for planning and running the event. I will rethink the procession and decide how this will feature within the week. I would change the flavour of the event to reflect some of the other, not so obvious, aspects of the Victorians and Victorian life.

I will raise funds locally and nationally for the above and am confident I will find the funds to make the event. The funds will go through the committee’s accounts and I will keep the committee fully informed of progress at every stage.  I would start the work immediately I have the committee’s approval and will be available to anyone who wants to contribute to the event, its planning or organisation.

I am determined to make the 2016 event a spectacular success and believe I have the energy, enthusiasm and skills required to do so.

So there we are.  I’m letting myself in for a busy twelve months if they agree.  

In the meantime I’ve the rest of my summer programme to present.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

South West to North East

On my way up to Rotherham after a great week in Ilfracombe, not without its highlights and interest which I will relate in my next chapter, I stopped for a break at Gloucester services.  If you are ever travelling the lower end of the M5, stop here, if only to wonder why all our motorway services are not like this one. Run and owned by the same family who run the Tebay services, it is a real joy and testimony to the fact that feeding large numbers of people wholesome and real food is not impossible.  I had a wonderful steak and stout pie, chips and roast veg with delicious gravy.  Yum.  I also bought a locally-sourced pork chop for my tea.

While I was there enjoying the airy and attractive décor I had the following email which the writer has allowed me to copy here.  It is a response to my review of the somewhat quiet reception I had at Crich Tramway Museum which I wrote about recently.  It made me smile and then laugh out loud. They begin with a quote from my blog.

The four-day stand in Derbyshire was very successful and the crowds turned up in abundance... The audiences however are quiet...They seem to enjoy the show but just didn’t let anyone, least of all me, know.

Derbyshire is totally different to the south of England (and to the areas to the north, south and east). Most of it is just a blob of empty space in the middle of the country, where you have to search the map with a magnifying glass to locate any towns. Goodness knows how you ever found Crich.

With all that nothingness, we do not attract many visiting performers. The weather can also be off-putting at any time of year and outsiders are often deterred by little things like snow falling in the middle of summer. Your performances took place during a lengthy spell of good weather - that spell started on the morning of your performance and finished just after you left.

The few resident entertainers that perform here have developed acts that involve a lot of wild leaping around to keep warm, which is why when the folk of Derbyshire are told that there will be street entertainment, they can be pretty certain that it will be the local Morris dancers or a visiting Morris team from the next village. During major festivals, the street entertainment is more varied and we have previously been treated to performances from the likes of Man Friday Morris from Leicester, (although they apparently disbanded shortly after their last visit).

I think that you actually misinterpreted the response to your show for the following reasons:

1. No matter what you did, most of the audience seemed to be anticipating the moment when you would pull out a couple of handkerchiefs and start a Morris.

2. Derbyshire audiences have learned to avoid eye contact with performers for fear of being dragged into a 'stick dances' where the performers kick their legs out while thrashing around with pick-axe handles. Many audience members have developed evasion tactics that include pretending to tie shoe laces or moving around slowly with a pronounced limp.

3. Loud applause or cheering have the same effect on performers as eye contact and we know from experience that such actions are asking for trouble. They also use too much body energy which can be fatal if the temperature drops.

I am pretty sure that you had never before seen anything like a Derbyshire audience; likewise, they had never seen anything like you, but they did like you, I can assure you of that. Only one person walked away during your show and he was heading for the privy with a somewhat agitated child. I know that you saw him walk away because you commented on it, but did you notice how several people with 'bad legs' rushed forward to claim the space that he had vacated?

And so I come to the disruption that you have caused to my family life. There has been a mark on the wall calendar for several months advising me that I am required to provide transport to Manchester this weekend. For the first time ever, I have refused a family transport request. I have done this in order to come and see you in Rotherham this Saturday.

I suspect that this is one of the few times that someone from rural Derbyshire has ever left the county to see a performer that they have previously seen.

The bottom line is, we did like you; very much.

I shall look forward to meeting the writer at Rotherham.  I loved the response.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander