There are times when I
wonder what I am doing in this business.
Perhaps it happens to everyone. A
seminal moment - you look around, shake your head and say, 'What on earth am I
doing here?’
I am in a small petting
zoo just outside Hawarden in Flintshire. It is deep and dark December and bitterly cold. I have just set up the show in a corner of a
marquee which I am sharing with a vintage fire engine. It is slightly surreal. There is no-one here except a very occasional
toddler in a push chair on their way to Santa’s grotto. I have a friend who is down to do a circus
workshop in the marquee next door. We
take it in turns to return to the caravan to warm up. But at least we do have a
place to warm up. There are a number of
stallholders who are behind trestle table in other marquees with no heating and
no-one to sell to. They have probably
paid to be here on the promise of the footfall of thousands. So really there’s nothing to complain about. The time will pass. I will be paid. We have a caravan to warm up in and a kettle
for tea.
Well the above is now
firmly in the pre-Christmas past and a dull memory to be filed in the folder 'Gigs I’d rather not remember’. And that
folder is thankfully not very full. Most
of my gigs are wonderful, and some are spectacular. There’s a welsh word which means more than
glorious – ‘bendigedig’ - just saying it makes you feel good, especially if you
smile at the same time. So I always have a few bendigedig gigs, though as
adjectives follow nouns in welsh it ought to be gigs bendigedig. Anyway enough of that.
I drove down to Burgundy
for Christmas via the Eurotunnel to spend a week with my sister who now lives in isolated
splendour in Southeastern France. I ate and drank far more than anyone should
and whiled away the hours with twelve others, including four children, the sons
and daughters of my sister’s children. I
think that makes me a great uncle, though I can’t be sure. It was a good opportunity to practise some
closeup magic. It was fun. The drive was epic and I scared the bejesus out of one french driver as, after six and a half hours driving I felt good as I was nearly there and came out of a little village onto the left hand side of the road and cursed the driver coming towards me on the wrong side of the road. I did realise just in time and swerved back to the right, but not before he made a very Burgundian gesture at me. Poor man.
And the new website is
about to be launched. I did it myself on
Squarespace and quite enjoyed the process.
The front page photo was taken at Widnes in October and makes the set
and the lorry look splendid in the late September sunshine.
And we are now in the down
time. For me this year and almost ever
for the first time I’m not feeling too down.
Partly because I’ve cleared up a few debts this year and therefore have
fewer financial worries. Partly as
summer 2019 is already looking very full and with some new shows, including a
long boat trip down to the sunny Guernsey in August for their West Show. A slow boat but I love boat trips and an overnight
cabin on the way back. I’m really
looking forward to that.
And Martin Orbidans is making a
very welcome return this summer. He will
be with me from June to August and will be accompanying all the shows. He has made a compete recovery from
everything he was suffering from and we are planning some new routines
integrating him even more fully into the shows.
All in all, it is looking
good. So after the pre-Christmas tale above of ‘What am I doing here?’ it is
now clear. In my seventieth year I shall
continue to present shows at all my favourite events and any new ones who would
care to book me. And continue to develop
new ideas and routines for them. And I
look forward very much to seeing you all again later in the year.
All the best from a road
near you,
Mr Alexander
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