Another one bites the dust

I suppose it was inevitable but the reality of it is nonetheless hard to accept.  My one remaining booking for Fylde Show at the end of September has been cancelled.  So the travelling theatre in all its repainted splendour, new stage floor, new booth for Martin, every flat re-varnished, props gloriously gleaming – all will remain in lonely lockdown for 2020. The spike in Preston has spooked the local authority and they couldn’t allow it.  I do understand. 

 

I spent a long night last night working with a wonderful video man - check his show reel out here - https://www.victorpennington.com/. If you are looking for a video solution to anything then he’s your man.  He travels. I asked him to film a short show for Barking Folk Festival which is going online next month and we spent an exhausting but fruitful few hours together.  I think the end result, which I will share with you once it is edited and ready for viewing, will be as good as it could be considering my ambivalence about video.

 

However I found the filming process exhausting and it took quite a toll on this old frame of mine.  A night of pain with cramp was the penalty.  The sort of cramps I generally have after the first few shows of the season.  By August I am usually well into the swing of it and l am leaping around the stage in my usual flouting of the accepted laws of nature; that a 70 year old man shouldn’t be jumping anywhere, and certainly not squeezing through folding chairs, balanced on a plank.

 

So you are the first to hear it here.  Next season will be my last with the stage.  There I’ve said it.  I’ve been working up to telling you, keeping my counsel.  But I need to embrace the obvious (you can’t embrace anyone else these days) and the pandemic has been the precipitative push I needed.  My intentions are still in the process of being worked out in detail, but the shows I do next year will allow me to finish paying off debts and to find the next keeper of the theatre.  Big Doc Marten red boots to fill.

 

I designed and built the theatre in 1984 and steered it through all its different stages.  Three different and extremely talented artists have responded over the years to the challenge of painting my dreams. From sitting on the winched-down side of the Billy Boy Brown and the Circus FG 550 truck bought from Martin ‘Zippo’ Burton when I was his first Ringmaster, through the seasons in a box trailer towed behind my Hobby and the ridiculous American motorhome I once owned, through to its current bespoke and beautifully-painted trailer, towed behind my lovely live-in lorry.  Apart from the (painted) poster on the back wall alongside the stage door, I have never personalised the theatre to Mr Alexander.  It was always a theatre in which Mr Alexander happened to be performing.  I always knew that it would outlive me, indeed it was designed to do so.  And now the time has come for it to move on.  And yes, of course I will cry. 

 

But it is the right thing to do.  I have written recently about the new rules that must govern outdoor shows.  Indeed I have helped to write some of them with pages of risk assessments.  However the thought of this new way of working doesn’t make me feel excited or happy. I would rather remember shows as they used to be, with hundreds of families overlapping each other, fighting for a square foot to sit, watching bunched up children alongside total strangers in the Summer sunshine, than be part of them as they will have to be from now on; sitting masked in bubbles, avoiding contact, the scent of sanitiser swirling in the breeze.

 

I can’t do this quickly or overnight, so a final season will allow me to say goodbye to the many, many lovely people who have watched the show, who have invited me to their celebrations, festivals and events and have been so much part of my life for getting on for fifty years.  I hope my talented and trusty troubadour friend Martin will tinkle the ivories one final season. And of course I will be still be around in some form.  It isn’t a death sentence or a terminal illness, thank goodness.

 

It might be in video, it might be in other forms.  I need the time and space to think about what I am going to do.  A bucket list of sorts I suppose.  Perhaps I can teach.  I have ideas for an entertainment school. I know I have a way with words so I hope you are pleased that the blog will continue.  If I had a good memory I could tell my story but to be honest it has all blurred into an impressionist painting of a life, probably painted by Degas or Lautrec. Trying to make out all the little details that would be the backbone of any biography would be boring and bothersome.  (I do like alliteration).

 

I know there will be many who will shed that tear with me.  But courage, mes braves.  Life goes on.  There will always be shows.  There will always be entertainers, storytellers and shaman.  Shamen?  Shamans?  Shapersons?

 

All the best from a road near you,

 

Mr Alexander

 

 

Anxious times

We knew where we were in lockdown.  Locked down.  Cleaning , disinfecting.  Putting up the shutters and gritting our teeth.  Together, united in adversity, we clapped and saved the NHS.  Our leaders spelled out the statistics, the dangers, the risks, the rules.  There was a Brit stiff upper lip stoic confidence in our demeanours. We knew what we had to do.  We stood behind our leaders, we helped our neighbours and marvelled at the birdsong.

But what now?  Hoards invading beaches leaving tons of ocean plastic detritus, no more daily briefings, changes of tack, indoor events on then off.  1 metre / 2 metre? Bubbles in bubbles. All the uncertainty has left me feeling far more anxious than before and there is evidence that many others feel the same.

 

Living in border country in England but close to Wales is even more bizarre.  I had occasion to pop over the border a few miles and called into Lidl on the way back for a few messages (how I love that Scottish word for a few supermarket purchases).  I was shocked.  Not a mask in sight.  I hadn’t heard but the Welsh First Minister had thrown out the requirement to wear masks indoors in Wales.  No wonder the roads west were so jammed this weekend with the masses longing for mask-free aisles making desperate bids to escape the nightmare filmset that our English shopping experience has become.

 

So should I just ignore the Welsh First Minister and wear a mask anyway or ignore Boris, refuse to wear one and speak in a welsh accent if I am challenged?

 

The anxiety is palpable everywhere. So much work potential gone.  Redundancies all over the place.  People radically adapting their life choices.  I have been asked to make a short video show for Barking Folk Festival’s 2020 online event.  I have performed there a couple of times and have written about the event previously. I met a guy who is a video genius.  Check out his work here https://www.victorpennington.com/

He is going to help me put the film together.  He was doing a major contract filming at an International School in Berlin when the pandemic happened.  Suddenly it all went and he is now working in his local pub trying to pick up the pieces.  A bit like me, but without the pub.

 

My video family show project is still ticking on.  I didn’t realise there was such a steep learning curve with managing the software and the hardware and deciding on what I really wanted to do and whether there would be an audience out there anyway that would justify the expense and how to market it and so on and so on.  It hasn’t been easy although there are a lot of excellent free and not so free tutorials on how to do it.  I’m Youtubed out currently and am going to step back from it for a bit and assess where we all are.  If anyone knows maybe they will share.

 

I do know I am enjoying volunteering for a local non-profit organisation in a deprived housing estate on the edge of Chester.  Live Laugh Lache (the estate is called The Lache) is a group of local people who decided to act on their beliefs and have set up a shop in the centre of the estate. They collect out of date but still usable food from local supermarkets, bring it to their shop and you can fill a carrier bag with whatever there is for £2.  I am working as a volunteer there on Friday mornings and, once the shop is set up for the day, I have been doing some magic for the families in the delightful little garden they have established at the back of the shop.  Magic Fridays I call them.  I have a few more children popping in every week.  We wear masks and do it at a distance of course.  The group have all sorts of other positive plans for community development and the place is full of hope and positive intention. We all could do with a dose of whatever they are on.

 

Currently it’s the only thing I am doing that I don’t feel anxious about.  It’s good to have at least one of those things in our lives and it’s amazing what even one can do to reduce the load of the rest. I strongly recommend volunteering as a path through the dense undergrowth of anxiety that seems to be growing up around us.

 

All the best from a road near you,

 

Mr Alexander