Brushstrokes of genius

I am sitting in another favourite place, with a view of great beauty from the window, looking out over the lake at the Nature Discovery Centre in Thatcham for tomorrow’s Green Halloween.  A wonderful variety of wildlife all living within yards of the lorry.  How lucky am I?  A warm log fire, food in the fridge and a good satellite signal for the tv for the Rugby World Cup final.  Just back from a walk around the lake with the dogs and a moment to write about the newly finished painting on the lorry side.

I met Rob through a friend and we were instant friends.  He is intelligent, funny and easy-going with a quiet, courteous manner.  Just my sort of person.  And a real genius with the paintbrush.  At the beginning of the season he had completed about a dozen bricks on the left hand side of the lorry and various things conspired against him completing the job until last week.  As the work then developed I could see what a great joy the end product was going to be.  Rob is a extremely talented and has not only completely captured the brief but he has also enhanced it to such a great extent.  I wanted the side to look like the back of the mansion town house my readers will know already graces the right hand side of the lorry.  Except I wanted it to be the back of a run-down tenement, so the whole lorry would be a little visual joke that onlookers would only see by walking all around it.

Rob has achieved that and more.  His trompe l’oeil painting of a brick built tenement with all sorts of wonderful things hanging off and living on the walls is a superb visual delight. He has also painted the rear of the lorry where the two pictures meet and whether you look from the posh or the down side there is no conflict.  It is clever and funny and I am so happy with the result. It is popular art of a very high calibre.

I have included a photo of it from the new side.

He has also added a range of creatures to the picture.  In total

·      A tortoise

·      A hedgehog

·      A rat

·      Two snails

·      A spider

·      A butterfly

·      A worm and

·      Seven ladybirds

adorn the ivy and the planting.  So I have a lovely challenge to children (and the child in the adults) who visit.  Find the Fifteen Fabulous Fauna.

A tin bath and scrubbing brush, dripping tap, a doorbell and postbox complete the whole picture, all of which look completely real. The bathroom window has steamed up with a message to passers-by and my real lace curtain falls seamlessly into its painted partner, so from any distance you wouldn’t know it wasn’t a real building. The wisteria is always in bloom around the bay window. 

The whole looks even better when the trailer is travelling behind.  My arrival in motorway service stations in the middle of the night brings a flurry of admiring glances.  People who I overtake and then overtake me are treated to the complete picture.  I love it.

I can’t wait till you see it for real. 

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Back to the yard

Returning to the yard after a long and very successful summer season is a real pleasure.  The place has a feeling of slight neglect with weeds and nettles poking up from corners and a bush of overripe blackberries missed and unpicked. My yoga space created last year in one corner of the workshop has cobwebs and dust and needs a good brush.  Everything in the workshop exactly as I had left it but somehow it all seems just that little bit different, as if all the tools had just been caught out in a secret dance hearing my return and hadn’t quite made it back to their original positions.

The leaf colours outside are wonderful and the sounds of crunching as I walk over the fallen ones is especially evocative.  The silence of my surroundings accentuate the small sounds inside the lorry.  The tinkle of the chandelier as I move around, the strange sad sigh my fridge door makes when I shut it, Mimi snoring on the sofa. All sounds ignored and unnoticed during the hullabaloo of summer fairs.

I love this period of reflection and review, time to think back over the highlights of the summer.

Sales of my DVD have gone well and I have received some great feedback from those who have seen it.  It will take a while before I recuperate all the investment in it but if sales continue this shouldn’t be too long.  Rhys is still entering the short version into film festivals and I will let you know how it fares.  BBC2 are showing some interest in a version of it so I will be following that up over the next few months.  I may yet become a TV star. (Be careful what I wish for.)

The show grew nicely this summer.  A couple of new venues including South Shields and Wanstead Park. The latter will become an annual event I think. The shows themselves changed in much the same way as they have always.  Gradually. I used Maff Potts’ ragtime suite as the accompaniment to a silent third show and had the great joy to work with him live at Wallingford Bunkfest. I included fire again in some shows after a year or so without it.  I’m a little ambivalent about fire in the show.  I’d love to hear what you think…

I’ve made a few changes to the lorry.  Foremost amongst these is a solar battery charging system.  Thanks to help and advice from Ralph and Geoff I have now a good quality pure sine wave 2000 watt inverter run from two leisure batteries and a large panel on the lorry roof running the system.  I discovered after a pricy mistake that a standard inverter (called a modified sine wave) doesn’t provide enough startup power for the fridge. However the pure sine wave one will and this means I can turn off the generator for long periods and run all the mains items in the lorry, including the fridge.  Ralph even found a digital meter which tells me how much power is left in the batteries.  I don’t even have to step outside to turn the inverter on as it has an inside remote switch.  I am really pleased with it and next year I plan to extend the system and add two more panels and maybe another battery, which on a hot summer day should be enough to completely power the stage and the lorry which will make me even more ecologically friendly.

Other changes too. I’ve just taken delivery of a new mattress to fit the odd space my bed takes up. The company (www.shipshapemattresses.co.uk) specialise in making odd-shaped mattresses and I’m very very pleased with the result.  It means I can spread over the whole bed and not have odd bits of foam making up the edges.  It's the most comfortable sleep I've ever had.  I even lie in bed in the morning occasionally just enjoying it.  Not something I am used to doing. Overall the lorry is becoming almost as perfect a small living space as anyone would wish for. 

The outside paint job has now taken a huge leap forward.  Rob, (who painted my silent DVD salesmen figure) has this week made significant progress with the other side and rear of the lorry.  I will wait till it is finished before I add photos, but I am thrilled with it and he is adding a wide range of delicate and wonderfully true-to-life fauna and flora to the picture.  His scene-painting experience, skills and expertise are really coming to the fore.  It really is superb.

So we’re ready for the winter, and a lot of Cat’s Paw Theatre work in the pipeline.  More about that next time.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Being on the planet to do something

I have some great emails from people I have probably only met at the end of a show as they pop a pound or two into the hat.  I love receiving them (the pounds and the emails) and always reply, even if it’s sometimes some while later.  I had a lovely email from someone who’d seen the show a few years running in Wallingford and had introduced her family to it and enjoyed their enjoyment of what I enjoy.  Doing my show on a sunny day on a piece of grass at an event in Britain.  She said something significant and it gave me the impetus for this blog so I am grateful.  The email finished with two sentences.  I don’t think she will mind me quoting them;

‘I think the pleasure that flows through you affects us all equally.  Thank you for doing what you are obviously on this planet to do.’

Of course I was flattered by the comments but there is more here and it is worthy of exploring. Despite what I write here in these pages about the difficulties of my life in one way or another, I am hugely favoured and lucky for being able to continue to do what I love doing.  It does continue, event after event, to give me such pleasure to see the effect I seem to have on people.

There was another example on Sunday at the Malpas Yesteryear Rally. One of the regular faces in the audience at that lovely Archeresque event, a girl of about seven who has probably been in my audience there since she could walk, came over at the end of the show and gave me a spontaneous hug.  I does happen from time to time and whenever it does it is very moving.  It is as though they see something warm, something human, in the show and need to share it, to give it back. It is rich and humbling and deeply rewarding, all at the same time.

The email comment catches it precisely, that somehow I seem to be able to focus my pleasure at juggling or magic or unicycling through to all of you.  There’s a human dimension thing going on too.  My efforts (not always totally successful) to do all these weird things with objects becomes a symbol of all our efforts (equally not always successfully) to do things.  Great when they work and funny/sad when they don’t but it’s the trying that is the most important part.  It’s the human predicament to try a make some order out of the human condition.  And to do it all with determination, good will and good humour.  As well as a touch of classic style.   

I try to catch everyone’s eye, person to person, as much as possible during the attempt and make contact with them.  Sometimes hard when there are maybe five hundred people as there were at Wallingford.  I do still try to look directly at the people and I see the pleasure they are taking from me and I try to win over any doubters and cynics. 

Another example from the weekend.  There’s always a few people who never clap at all.  Perhaps it is partly that, as another unsolicited email told me earlier this year after complaining about quiet audiences in Derbyshire.

‘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. 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.’

Again on Sunday at Malpas there were a few there who don’t quite get the convention or the importance of active audience involvement through clapping, cheering etc.  It’s partly that the event is in the middle of nowhere and the only other performance they may have ever experienced in the deep English countryside is Morris dancing.

I looked at the unparticipating audience member while I was on top of three chairs just after juggling the knives, smiled, and said ‘Not worth uncrossing your arms for?’ He laughed and started clapping. And for that moment we shared our common humanity.

Long may I continue to do that with all of you. And keep the emails coming.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Wonderful Wallingford

There are many different things that we measure our lives by. For some people I guess it might be earning a bonus or an annual professional review. Perhaps it’s the opinion of colleagues or of our family. Are we achieving those things we hoped for and dreamed of?  How do we measure our success? What is important to us?  Has that changed?

For me Wallingford BunkFest is one of those events that gives me a view on my work and also allows me a review of how I have progressed. It’s partly because it comes at the end of the summer so I can look back at the whole season and re-think some of the highlights, issues and any disasters and determine what needs to change. This year I have put fire performance back into the show and feel it has given me an edge that was missing from the third show.  I still have it in mind to develop the Materialising Motorbike Illusion, but it needs some investment of money and time.  Definitely a winter project worth considering.

It’s also the nature of how I am funded there that makes Wallingford different.  The committee pay a contribution to my fee because they and I know the public will put money into my hat. As it is a free festival of a very high quality this means that the public is willing to contribute financially to it. And I’m as good as the money they drop in my hat.  This year the people of Wallingford were as generous as ever and I can therefore feel satisfied the show is up to standard.  In addition the feedback was great and made me feel that the show continues to be what I work hard to make it.  I think the crowds were larger than ever and their enthusiastic response to the show was overwhelming.

Over the years the event has seen me in many different psychological and emotional states so it has always given me a period of reflection in a number of other ways too.  I have many good friends in Wallingford and they are always on hand for me to share personal aspects of my life, so I can manage a personal review too.  The summer has been challenging and, on occasion, rather difficult personally.  The VOSA episode in May launched me into a short period of paranoia and worry which eventually proved to be unfounded, but for a time preoccupied me considerably.  Other things also contributed to a somewhat unsettling early part of the season.  However I think I’m over the worst and can return to my winter mode with enthusiasm for the new Cat’s Paw presentation (about which more later) and all the usual preparation for next year.  I have also to focus myself on organising and animating the Ilfracombe Victorian Celebrations.  I’m going to be busy, which is how I like it.

So Wallingford 2015 finished with a blazing hot summer Sunday, allaying all the fears of the previous week that had caused so many Bank Holiday events (including the Isle of Wight Steam Show where I was) to be muddy and rain-swept.  It was a glorious finale to the summer and I can go into the Back End Fairs (only two more to go this year) with energy and enthusiasm.

My newly mounted solar panel on the lorry roof manages to supply enough power for the fridge overnight and thanks to my good friend Ralph I have got it working at peak efficiency and can see at a glance how much power is left in the batteries thanks to the digital voltmeter and second leisure battery he gave me. I plan to augment one panel to a three panel array next year and be completely generator-free on sunny days.

So there is much to look forward to, something I couldn’t have said with such certainty a few months ago.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander