‘Thank you, I loved the show’

One of the things that makes my heart glad is when someone in the audience comes over and says how much they’ve enjoyed the show.  I particularly love the teeny children who edge up to me, shy and embarrassed, but wanting to say thank you. Sometimes I almost wish someone would come over and say something critical but I guess that’s asking too much.  It’s really hard to be self-critical and as I live and work alone I don’t have the benefit of a trusted person to make positive comment and suggestion.

However that’s not the gist of this blog, although it might be of another sometime.  I love it when I have good press and sometimes people feel moved to email me or send photos which I really enjoy receiving. So when I received the following letter I thought that it was very special and Tom has kindly said I could blog about it:

hello Mr Alexander,

you don't know me, in fact we have never met but I wanted to share something with you and thank you for changing my life.

In the 80s I lived in chester on Parkgate Road, i was a keen magician and did the occasional kids show... I was in my teens.

One day i was hanging around in Chester City Centre, it was a beautiful summers day. Just outside browns a guy rides up on a unicycle pushing a cart (while riding), he spread a rope out and began to draw a crowd.... swept the pitch with a broom, made a hankie disappear, rode a tall unicycle while juggling burning torches. The show was phenomenal, the crowd was massive and at the end, when he held his hat out it was full of notes (I actually remember him asking the audience to make sure that their tip were all folded up nicely). I remember that the guys name was Mr Alexander, and have remembered that fact for nearly 30 years.

I now live in North Carolina. During the week I'm a school teacher ( teaching american history... oh, the irony!) but at weekends I'm a magician, busker, unicycle rider.

And i wanted you to know this. I've seen the "best" magicians in the world. I've seen goshman do his salt shaker routine, seen incredible magicians and jugglers.... but none compare to the show you did in the 80s on the streets of Chester.

I still talk to people about the Mr alexander Show and how it inspired me to perform, how one day... even now... I hope to do a show as great as yours and...having found your website thought it may be nice to e mail and say thank you... for inspiring me to do what I love and do it well. 

so there you go... thank you.... I will remember your show forever.

best

tom hughes

Now if you know me (the REAL me, not the Mr Alexander me) you’ll know I’m not really the sort to blow my own trumpet too loudly, but this letter was really special and here’s what I said in reply:

Hello Tom

I'd had a terrible night of stress and the nightmares reflected it. I wont bore you with all the reasons for the stress but there are many.

I sleepily turned on the iPhone and read the first of two emails. More stress.

I almost didn't bother with the second. A name I didn't recognise. Tom Hughes. But then I do like real emails and not spam so I did. His email gave me hope. Not that I was completely losing it but I was certainly questioning some of the basics. As you do waking in a lorry on a cold December Northern European morning.

Tom's letter retold the story for me of my strange life as a roving entertainer and of the serendipitous effect of it on the people who have seen it over the years.  Not that I have a huge inbox of praise but I do have a few! And many people do come over at the end of a show as they did in Portsmouth last weekend.

But somehow Tom's letter was special. Not only did it lift me at a particularly low moment (I do have a few of those) but it reminded me how those 'little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness' can roll on across the universe, gathering size and momentum and continue to have such a profound effect for good.

Tom's letter has reconfirmed why I do what I do. It's about much more than a half hour of entertainment. It's about a celebration of life, it's about following dreams, doing something with thought, dedication and joy. And it's about reaching out, particularly to the watching children, that these values are worth pursuing. Even if I am not aware at the time how much of all that is being noticed or understood.

So thank you. I will your remember your letter forever.

Best wishes,

Mr Alexander

And I guess that’s it all said really. If you’re thinking something nice about someone, or you have had a good experience as a result of something someone has done that has made a positive difference in your life, make sure you tell them about it. Pass it on!

All the best from a road near you…

Mr Alexander

"Do you do children's parties?"

I guess it’s the question that I am asked most often at the end of a show.  Of course it’s also the one question many entertainers dread.  I’m not sure why they don’t like being asked.  Is it that they think they’re above such things?  Maybe they think they are worth more.  As if entertaining a group of thirty over-excited over-chocolated seven year olds was somehow below their credibility and reputation.

Personally I always answer ‘Of course’.  However there’s always the essential problem of logistics and cost and so in the end I only perform at a few in the year.  Recently though I have performed at two and they were so different I thought I’d write about them in this blog.

The first was for a five year old boy and the second a six year old girl.  Boy’s parties are always harder.  The two or three token girls at the boy’s party feel slightly uncomfortable and huddle in the corner whispering whilst the boys craze around the hall, the mums retreat in fear to the kitchen to heap crisps, Maltezers and cocktail sausages onto paper plates, whilst the token dads hide in the corner and pretend they aren’t really there.  This is a woman's job. All the adults look desperately relieved when ‘the entertainer’ arrives and greet the saviour of the day who they hope will bring some sanity and meaning to the chaos.

And that is the job.  In my two recent parties, I felt one failed and one succeeded.  Well not failed entirely but I only managed to keep the thirty or so five year old boys focused for about half of the allotted one hour’s ‘traffic on the stage’.  They began to lose attention, wander around and make more noise than was comfortable. Whereas the girl’s thirty-five guests (mostly girls of course) stayed the course with almost rapt attention and probably would have gone on longer.  The first left me tired, slightly battered and frustrated, the second was energizing and uplifting.

What was different about the two events? It would be easy to blame the problem on the gender.  Boys are definitely harder to deal with.  But in the end it is the one year’s age difference that is the key. Five year olds have only recently been used to sitting up straight, not calling out and not punching their neighbour when they don’t have their way.  The school experience is one that the six year olds have fully taken on board and it is this ‘trick of the trade’ that I use extensively in the children’s party show.  Six year olds will respond to the teacher’s voice, the teacher’s look and the teacher’s expectations of good behavior. 

So my show for children’s parties is based on that simple technique.  I become a teacher who also does magic.  I expect good behavior and wait quietly until I have it.  I expect them to sit up straight and not call out (and that’s just the adults!).  And I always learn the names of the naughty ones, so I can praise them by name when they are good but also look serious and disappointed when they don’t.

So yes of course I do children’s parties.  But I must remember to insist that the children have had at least a year in school before I do.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Living on the road

I was suddenly aware that this weekend is my second anniversary of living in my lorry fulltime.  How time flies when you’re having fun.  So today’s blog in my very occasional series is about the joys and some of the tribulations of living peripatetically!

I have touched on some of these things before - the teaspoon test?  I was talking to friends in Harbury at their wonderful triennial Victorian Street Fair and they agreed that their attics and some of the spare rooms were just Repositories of Rubbish! If they were sensible they would put the old TV on Ebay immediately while it was worth something and not just stash it away and find that it now really isn’t!  Or give it away in one of the excellent Freecycle groups.  The happy recipient will come and take it away free!  And we’ll feel magnanimous! But no, it’s got a value, mostly sentimental, so it is stashed away for a rainy day, because, following that law that says if you have the space, you’ll fill it.

When living in a lorry it can’t stay because it has physical weight, it costs diesel to drag it around the country and that means it has to justify itself.  My rule is simple.  If I haven’t used it in 12 months, it goes.  To a friend, to Freecycle or most likely to the Recycling.  October is decision month and there’s a few things going this time.  And the beauty/utility rule still applies.  To come into the lorry it has to be beautiful or useful, but ideally both.

This means that living is very basic and simple.  I like that, it clears the mind and makes me aware of how little stuff anyone really needs.  Most of the world lives like this and have no choice.  Sorry to claim the moral high ground but I’m not living on the road to prove anything to anyone.  I just like it.

The fact of having to source water, even on occasion having to carry it from a tap to the lorry, to dispose correctly of all waste materials, again by carrying it all makes me feel in touch with myself in a way I never did when I lived in a house.  What comes in and what goes out (of the lorry and myself!) is somehow more distinct in my life now.  I certainly think about it more and that feels like a good thing.

What do I miss?  My allotment and garden, but I do have some plans in that direction, not for another Heath Robinson trailer with begonias and broccoli but to work as part of a co-operative with some adults with learning disabilities near my yard in Chester.

Of course there are moments.  Like this weekend when I found at 10.00 pm after a hard day’s juggling in Harbury that my leisure battery had died so the fridge wouldn’t work, I had no water and no tap around, the leaking power steering fluid reservoir on the lorry was empty so it was back to manual steering (VERY heavy doing a three point turn in a narrow Harbury street which I had to do with the whole village looking on), and then the generator refused to start.  All I could do was go to bed and hope there was enough ice in the freezer part of the fridge to wait until morning without the food rotting.  

But there was and I limped back to the yard and will obtain a new battery today and meanwhile can plug into the mains at the yard.  And there’s a tap with a hose…. So no, I haven’t yet cut all the umbilicals with 21^st century plugged-in living.

Maybe someday I will, but until then, like the rest of us, I am very grateful for those luxuries we shouldn’t take for granted… like 240 volt mains and running water.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Windy Wimbledon

I love the Wimbledon Village Fair.  I think I’ve done it now for five years and it’s been a real pleasure every year.  Living for a night or two on Wimbledon Common is part of the pleasure.  The first year caused great consternation from the Wimbledon wardens (affectionately known as the Wombles!) as it is completely forbidden by Act of Parliament to park overnight on the Common.  But an Exception was made and now I am the only person officially permitted to live overnight the night before the Fair on Wimbledon Common, watching the sun set over the little pond and listening to the local teenagers complain about school and parents and watching the dog owners.

The Fair is a really great local London event.  It’s classic.  Fabulous food franchises of many hues and tastes.  Local charities and organisations with stalls and gazebos.  And lovely crafters, makers and sellers with some great wares.

But what really makes it is the public.  The people.  I love the spirit here.  They have no problem with the show, its eccentricity and theatricality.  Actually unlike many places where people find it hard to understand quite what it is I do.  Wimbledon just lets me be the odd British showman that I am and they enjoy it in a unique way.  This year again, I had some great feedback from people who come back every year to see the same stuff but they are so kind and complimentary that they make the very long journey and the exhausting setup and pull down worth every agonising hour.

This year the wind nearly killed it.  Gazebos took flight and the vision of young people hanging onto gazebo poles as the wind lashed the space was universal.  But we survived.  The Great British Determination. And underpinning that, a real warmth and care that I believe will and would defeat any future aggressor. It is classically British.  That is not to say it is white and middle class.  Amongst the nicest feedback I had was from a British Asian whose mum had seen the show last year and had given me some very personal gifts.  He made a special effort to come and talk to me after the show and was very complimentary.  And his mum had remembered that I was there and she apologised through her son that she couldn’t be there this year.  It is that sense of care and warmth that makes Wimbledon Village Fair a real success.  May it go on forever…

So I say ‘Well done Wimbeldon Guild’. If you didn’t make it this year, try to come next.  I will definitely be there.  DV.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

A wild wet and windy week in the West

Well another dreadful June week at the Ilfracombe Victorian Festival.  Not dreadful in terms of the spirit or the people, just the weather which has been autumnal at least and wintery at worst.  The extraordinary group of replica Victorians who organise and promote this wonderful week have yet again provided a fabulous fantasmagoria of festivities, and most make or source their own costumes and props.  But what is most remarkable is their spirit.  They are warm and welcoming, creative and kind.  I watched them closely in the Finale Ball last night and my heart warmed to their gentle eccentricity and the genuine friendship they showed me and each other.  If there is a way such a spirit can defeat the enemy of the weather then we do stand a chance of victory.

This has been the second year I have been here and along with many of Britain’s towns it has the feel of a place in wartime.  And in wartime British people try to make the best of things, put on a brave face, show the stiff upper lip, keep right on till the end of the road.  The big difference is that in wartime there’s a sense of hope because we might win, we might see the bluebirds again.  But how can we win against the onslaught of the changing climate?  There’s no real enemy. OK we can do our bit, separate the rubbish, bike instead of car, change our boilers and insulate the house but somehow all that seems a drop in the ocean when whole countries are not doing the same.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t do it though. For my part I am spending a small fortune next week having particulate filters fitted to the lorryhome (check them out if you’re interested on http://www.astra-vt.com/Pages/CCRF_technology.html ).  This will mean my conscience can breath easily and maybe those following me down the motorway can too!

It also means I can travel into central London without having to pay Boris’ Emission Zone charge of £200 a day.  Which is where I will be next week on the common at the Wimbledon Village Fair.  Let’s hope the weather has improved by then, but we wont hold our breath.  Except that you wont have to any more if you’re following me down the M6.

See you on the road sometime.  Do wave or beep if you’re a friend….

Mr Alexander's Travelling Show