My young fans

I received a lovely email and will copy it here.  It was from Kirsty, whose fabulous wedding to Lawrence I was lucky to attend and entertain a couple of years ago.

Kirsty wrote about her daughter Evelyn who I think is nearly three. "Evelyn just said to me: "I want to see Alandar" I was stumped. "Amanda?", I asked, thinking it might be a child from school. "No!" was the response. "Alandar" she repeated. "Alandar?", I asked. "No" was the response again. Evelyn tried a different tack: "I want to see 'one alligator, two alligator'. The penny drops! "Mr Alexander!" I exclaim. "Yes!" says Evelyn. "Can we take our coats?’ “ I love the final comment about the coats.  I’ve no idea what it meant but I love the wonderful innocence in the non sequitur.  For those who don’t know the alligator reference comes from one of my routines which had obviously been particularly memorable for Evelyn. And of course I love working with children, even though in my shows, as they run, I tend to perform to the adults in my audiences and assume the children will also follow on too.  It’s a psychological thing.  I am not only a children’s entertainer.  I play to the child in everyone, including the children, and this is the difference I think.  I try to entertain the children and amuse the adults.  Or is it the other way around? Many adults tell me they love the expressions on the children’s faces as they watch and of course, once in a while, I stop my show’s frantic gallivanting to notice it too.  I try to look at myself through those wide eyes and their burgeoning view of the world.  I worry what will happen when the children who receive the million pound note I sometimes give as a prize present it at the checkout with a trolleyfull of toys. I grieve over the early loss of innocence brought about by our connected lives and I worry about the planet we are leaving for them.  But for that half hour I know that I seem to be able to weave a spell that suspends time along with the harsh realities of our lives and creates a world that echoes the innocence and wonder with which children view everything. It’s that world I try to draw the adults into as I perform, and it seems I am progressing in that life endeavour.  Practice makes progress. It certainly had a lot of practice at Shrewsbury, the first syllable to be pronounced I was firmly told, as the small rodent and not to rhyme with ‘show’.  The Shrewsbury Flower Show was lovely.  The stunning Dingle garden in the park where the show takes place is an award-winning masterpiece, timed to look its very best for the Flower show.  The marquee displays are worth the huge entrance price I guess, but £26 for an adult is by far the largest entrance fee at any show I attend.  Maybe I’m just moving up in the world.  At least the children come in free which means there are many of them for me to play to and for.  As a bit of a gardener myself, I gazed in awe and wonder at the displays of vegetables and fruit, the cut flower creations and the immaculate bonsai. Much like the awe and wonder with which the children, my young fans, along with many of the older ones, gaze at my show.  So it’s all good. All the best from a road near you, Mr Alexander PS Sorry about the strange formatting in this chapter.  I've tried various ways to solve it without joy and have given up trying!

A challenging week

I try to believe that there’s never a problem, only a challenge.  In that case it’s been a week of challenges.

I left the Isle of Wight on a beautiful summer morning. Sitting with the dogs on the sun deck watching the reflections and the boats on the sparkling Solent was a great joy.  A time to reflect on the season so far and to look forward to my return to the Island in a few weeks for the 40^th Isle of Wight Steam Rally.  I must have been feeling too relaxed, or maybe my attention was being drawn to my audio book, as I clipped a railing close to a roundabout as I drove out of Portsmouth.  I knew it wasn’t too bad by the crunching sound, but, stopping in a layby, I found the lower front corner of the box of the lorry, luckily on the not-yet-painted side, was scraped and dented.  It enfuriated me of course, particularly as I had only myself to blame.  I don’t share my mystery benefactor’s view of myself! I’m an idiot!

I have developed a philosophy about such problems, sorry, challenges of the physical world.  I believe that the only way to approach them is that their restoration and renewal improves the end result from the original.  So after a long and otherwise uneventful drive back to my yard and a good night’s sleep, I set about the repair.  It soon became obvious how I could improve the damaged corner and the result is very pleasing.  If only everything in life could be repaired so positively!

On to Shrewsbury Flower Show.  A new one for me, but I had some misgivings as the email trail was sparse, entrance tickets had not arrived as promised and a site visit back in the winter had not been conclusive in terms of the pitch I was to be allocated.  The event is the second largest flower show in Britain.  First of course is Chelsea, and the Shrewsbury Flower Show knows its place.  It is Very Important in the same way that some aspects of the town are, so I guess that’s to be expected.  But it also can be a victim of it’s own attitude. I arrived to find they had squeezed me in a tiny corner behind and very close to the lecture theatre in which the renowned gardener Pippa Greenwood was to be giving her Very Important Talk.  The thought of blasting Miles Davis across her horticultural tips briefly offered an interesting anarchic possibility, but one I pushed quickly from my mind and asked the Show Director to re-site me and the reasons.  Luckily I had arrived in plenty of time so this was managed very easily and I set about setting up.

Come the next challenge.  The Shrewsbury site is Very Sloped.  I was struggling to level the trailer and made the second mistake of the week resulting in the breaking of one of the trailer’s leveling jacks.  Being a stalwart of Steam Rallies I knew that there had to be a corner somewhere on site where there were chunky pieces of timber which was what was now needed, and with the help of the Director and what I took to be his assistant, who happened to be doing a site inspection at the time, found the right person and the right bits of timber.  Onward and Upward.  Literally for the rear of the trailer.

As I was finishing the setup the next day, a well-dressed couple approached.  They sported Very Important badges showing they were the Chairman and the President!  Both charming and helpful.  I immediately recognised the Director’s assistant who was now wearing the Chairman badge.  Foisted by my own assumptions!  The President was a man of the cloth and looked the part.  Avuncular, well-meaning and straight out of Oscar Wilde. He admired the nuns painted on one of the boxes on my theatre.  We joked about their expressions and he asked what I did.  ‘I do three set shows a day with improvisation between shows.’  His eyes widened, the pupils dilated and his mouth dropped open.  ‘Sex shows?’ he gasped, casting a disturbed sidelong glance at the Chairman.

So my introduction to Shrewsbury was interesting.  The shows are going to have to be really good if I am to repair that problem first impression.  Sorry, challenge.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Laurel and Hardy or Norman Wisdom?

This blog is like the No. 29 bus.  You wait ages for one then two come along at once.  It’s just that I need to feel a little inspired by a subject and have felt a little uninspired of late.  I write this at the witching hour, which for me is between 3.00 am and 4.00 am.  Woken by a very bizarre nightmare, which thankfully is rapidly fading into my murky subconscious, I realised I had been inspired by yesterday.

The Isle of Wight Steam Railway is run by people who love their jobs.  I spoke a little last time about a Steam Rally where it felt as though the organisers had lost the plot and sacrificed a great idea to the money god.  Well the opposite is true at Haven Street on the Isle of Wight, home of the Isle of Wight Steam Railway.  Here the love of those who work and volunteer filters down to everyone.  This simple phenomenon has created a real haven for everyone who visits.

Yesterday, despite the occasional, poorly-timed deluge, visitors had a splendid day riding steam trains, making rope, holding owls, listening to Victorian singers, doing Victorian dances and watching Mr Alexander.  From the look on their faces and the kind comments made they were caught in the spell of love for what was being woven. My good friends, the re-enactors, the Victorians were there too, all in full regalia and in good spirits (as they always are!).  A grand time was enjoyed by all!

As the Victorians were staying on site, I had promised an evening film show for them. At some events I drop a screen on the stage and show films.  I love the occasion of it.  A warm evening, the sun just set, and the flickering images on the screen slowly defining themselves as the darkness grows.  A classic film. It was to be Norman Wisdom, A Square Peg.

As a curtain raiser, I put on a firm favourite of mine, Way Out West with Laurel and Hardy. See it again before you die.  It has every element of joy, every trick of early cinema, and classic moments of great hilarity, created, as they always were, by artistry, dedication and hard work.  The audience of Victorians, now in mufti, fell about and the occasion was made even more wonderful by one of their number, Pauline, dressed in 50s usherette costume, giving out free popcorn and ice lollies in the interval.  You have the idea.

Come the Big Feature.  What a disappointment.  It seems almost heretical to say it, but Norman Wisdom’s supposed masterpiece was not very funny.  Hardly a single laugh greeted what became an endurance test for most present.  Of course they were far too kind to say so, but A Square Peg was definitely in a round hole.  Apart from a lovely cameo by the ample Hattie Jacques, the rest was pretty dire.  What did we find so funny in just post-second world war?  It felt lame and uninspired, certainly by comparison and just after the classic from twenty years earlier.  Perhaps it was just a trick of history.  Way Out West was from a very different era, and maybe we needed that distance to find it funny.  A Square Peg was somehow too modern, yet not somehow modern enough to benefit from all the current awareness and artistry of today’s screen magic workers.

I have been lying here thinking of what else made the two so different.  It has something to do with the magic of the relationship between Stan and Ol.  The wonderful difference of their status that makes their classic clowning so riveting. The relationship between Pitkin and ever-present Mr Grimsdale pales into inconsequence by comparison.  And Norman’s physical clowning skills, sad to say, are not a patch on the wonderful Oliver Hardy, whose huge girth seems no obstacle to his delicate and dancer’s finesse of movement.  Even the sad clown moment when Norman’s diminutive anti-hero declares his love for a young Honor Blackman was lame and a bit embarrassing. From the first film though, the haunting, gentle dance Stan and Ol give us to the close harmony of a cowboy choir will remain one of my top ten film moments of all time.  The sequence with the rope and the donkey is sheer comic genius.

Seek out Way Out West from your local film library.  It is an hour of heaven.  Leave Norman Wisdom to your memory of him. He’s better off there.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Netley Marsh revisited

Well it’s been a while since I put fingertips to keyboard, so this is a catchup on all things Alexander since Adlington Carnival, only a few weeks ago now but seems like an age.

The first important development is that the stage trailer is now safe and legal.  I had been worried about the axles as they really weren’t to a high enough spec. Although I have not had the trailer weighed recently, my feeling was that it was heavier the two tonne rating it came with, so the ‘can do’ guys at Chester Trailer Centre did their magic and it now is rated at over three tonnes so ample room for moderate expansion.  New axles and new heavier, chunkier tyres and tows a dream!  One less thing for me to worry about.  The down side is that the old electric mover which allowed me to finally manipulate it into tight pitches where the lorry could not go will have to be replaced as the previous one does not fit the new tyres.  I’ve booked the job in for next week.  Vast expense but I had a new booking at Beamish Museum for four days in September so my thought is that will pay for it!

My weekend off was rare and most enjoyable. A rare opportunity for me to relax, reflect and catch up on myself mid-season.  It’s been a classic season so far.  Not without its dramas (my ankle is now fully recovered) and some lovely new events the memory of which I will savour over winter nights. And meeting old friends from all.

My return to Netley Marsh Steam Rally the following weekend was typical of the best.  I hadn’t been there for a couple of years as the event had clashed with Welland Steam Rally.  For a number of reasons I had gone off Welland.  I didn’t like the monster banging machine, the ‘Sonic Cannon’ which they trundled into the arena at the end of each day.  The noise terrified all the dogs on the site, mine included, which meant that we had to take a two mile walk away from the event to escape it at the end of every afternoon, and even then it could be heard and my two became scared and unworkable.

But more significantly, the people at Welland had an entirely different attitude to me and to the event and I wasn’t sure why. Until someone told me that the Welland Steam Rally was run on a ‘for profit’ basis.  Major difference. Netley Marsh is organised by volunteers for charity (as are most of the other steam rallies I attend).  It showed, and it’s odd but it filtered down to every level of both events.  At Welland it felt as though I was there just to do a job. I had no real feeling of welcome or pleasure when I met up with the organisers and no-one from their organisers said anything to me about the shows.  Good or Bad. I don’t think they even watched them.

An amazing contrast then this time at Netley Marsh.  Those in charge made me feel really welcome.  They returned several times during the set up to ask whether everything was OK and there was real warmth from many people about my being there again, and this carried on through the weekend and it made the event a great and memorable success.  It was lovely to be back and I have already confirmed the booking for next year.

Now of course there were people at Welland who enjoyed the shows and spoke to me afterwards, but they were visitors or stall holders who knew me.  At Netley it was the organisers who made the event such a great success I believe because the warmth and enthusiasm for the event was not linked to the amount of money they had to make from it.  It’s amazing how leadership attitude can filter down so obviously, and not just in corporations and big organisations.

A week later and I’m at another place whose volunteers really make it work, but I will save the Isle of Wight Steam Railway for a blog of its very own.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander