Shrewsbury seguay sensation

Shrewsbury Flower Show has seen the flowering of a new mode of travelling life for Mr Alexander.  I’ve blogged about the hoverboard/seguay/electric skateboard previously and my walkabout burlesque character Verity who inspired its original inclusion has come out at a couple of venues this summer, but it has not been until Shrewsbury that the device itself has really come into its own.  I love it.  I’ve spent a lot of time practising on a range of surfaces and now feel very comfortable on it.  Not without a few bad falls initially but that’s only to be expected. It is so wonderful to use, quiet, easy and fast and personal energy saving, and even more significantly saving on knee use. And my poor knees do suffer from all I expect them to do. Local travelling around a show site will certainly never be the same again.  It is controllable, safe and wonderfully economical and eco-friendly. It also provides a small additional height so provides a kind of mobile stage, on hand, or rather feet, at any time. I have been using the off-road version for floating around the showground and travelling into town and the smaller wheel version for onstage experimentation.  I can ride to the shops or for a drink and carry it inside without anyone even noticing and it hides under the table until I leave.  (Yes I’ve had the occasional beer this year.  Nothing too dramatic but an occasional pint or two. It’s nice to be back in the pub.)

I am going to spend some time choreographing a dance using the smaller board on the stage to Noel Coward’s moving and emotional  ‘I’ll see you again’.  It emerged as these things do with the computer on shuffle play.  I think I need a prop that will work with the floating quality of the movement the board allows. And maybe a story.  Perhaps a theme linked to the First World War.  The variety theatre has always been a vehicle for examining war and I came of age with and loved Joan Littlewood’s ‘Oh what a lovely war’.  Noel Coward wrote Bitter Sweet in 1929, but it still has a flavour of the war which had finished eleven years earlier and offers a wonderful possibility for a story.

Anyway the potential for the board is great and I think by Wallingford Bunkfest I will feel confident to use it comfortably in shows as well as between times and I am developing some other characters with elements that hide the board.  I have to avoid overusing it though as I’ve not had so much fun since I learned to unicycle and it’s tempting to try lots of different routines on it.  I’ve managed juggling on it. And bending down keeping the balance on it is interesting, especially when the ball is four inches below the feet and I’m standing on wheels.  The sort of thing I like experimenting with.

The Shrewsbury show was very enjoyable.  It’s not been a great season thus far but this show changed things.  The weather has been pretty dreadful and my state of mind has matched it, but I now feel things are on the up again.  The weather was warm without rain (the first of the season when it hasn’t rained at sometime) and I felt good about things. It’s about time.  Family and friends have kept me on the positive side this season and I will always be grateful to them.

The ‘last show of the day’ has changed.  I feel I am discovering something really positive, different and creative with it.  First show three chairs ‘Showbusiness show’, second two, ‘The Classic’ and the third no chairs.  A silent show.  And a change of costume. Quite a different feel but I am enjoying it with potential for improvisation and experimentation.  It met with approval from the cognoscenti Shrewsbury audience if their generous contribution to my hat is anything to go by.  Apparently I’m ‘quite good, sometimes’. I’ve always said you’re as good as the money in the hat and this weekend has been very pleasing in that regard. I don’t do what I do for the money but there are times when I need money more than others and this year has been and continues to be a difficult one for me financially.

Anyway enough of all that.  Without these challenges life would be far too easy and we couldn’ t have that.  Creativity comes from chaos. The best things in life are hard.  Nothing good ever came easy. Certainly true of the hoverboard.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Netley to Hinckley to Heckington

It’s all in the location. Not just the style and theme of an event but location can make a huge difference to the success of my contribution.  I have been concerned for a couple of years about my pitch at Netley Marsh Steam Rally and this year it was made considerably more difficult.  I am beside a main ‘road’ leading to and from the main arena and this year was at least a yard closer to it.  This of course resulted in problems for the vehicles coming past my audiences.  At times it felt like perfoming on the M6. At least the organisers this year closed the road for the middle part of the day but it meant the exhibitors had a slightly longer detour to the ring and expressed their dislike in no uncertain terms.  I thought one man would have a heart attack as he lambasted me for having the audacity to prevent his tractor taking the route they had always taken.  His wife even said that if she had children there was no way she would let them watch my show.  It is fascinating how shows bring out all the best and worst of people.  The showground becomes a microcosm of the world as a whole.

The location in Hinckley is as near perfect as I could wish for.  A gently sloping market square with a level patch at the top for the lorry and stage.  Easy access and the sun facing me and not in the audiences’ eyes.  Travelling performers must have occupied this spot for centuries. I love the few town centre gigs I do. Britain’s town centres are in sad and rapid decline due mostly to the ease of out of town shopping and the burgeoning of the superstores.  Towns like Hinckley are becoming ghost towns with mostly charity shops and only the usual national chain stores. The town centre managements who are addressing this issue may be fighting a losing battle but I applaud and support their efforts.  The management of Hinckley Town Centre are brilliant.  Helpful, supportive and imaginative.  The result a sweet stand and good audiences. Hinckley used to be sock central for Britain.  All the sock makers have left town.  I bought a pack of socks from the town’s TK Maxx.  They were made in Taiwan.

And so to Heckington Show in Lincolnshire. This was a new one for me and I had been looking forward to it.  Advertised as the ‘largest Village Show in the country’, it certainly was big.  I was to be part of what is called the Heritage area, and had offered to come for busking money only as it was on my route south from Hinckley, I wasn’t booked that weekend and they wanted to see whether the show would fit into their Victorian theme for 2017.

Maybe because they weren’t paying me, maybe because this year's World War I theme didn’t quite fit what I did, maybe it was the style of the area which was populated mostly by re-enactors and there wasn’t a lot of available space (strangely as there were large open spaces alongside the area), but all in all it was a disappointing stand.  There were other performers on the area who all needed their time slots so I could do no show buildup or wind down.  No improvisation between shows so I just was standing around for much of the time.

The worst aspect was that there were fireworks on the Saturday night and everyone there said it was usually the best display around.  So I made plans to leave in plenty of time with Mimi and Blue.  Heckington has a railway station so we caught the train to the nearest small town Sleaford and enjoyed a meal near the station in a sunny pub garden.  The event organiser had said the fireworks were scheduled for 9.45 and the last train was due back at Heckington at 10.15 so it all seemed good.  When we arrived back at the station and walked into the village the place was deserted.  This was unsettling because if the fireworks had finished the place should have been heaving with the 30,000 people who attend.  I met another dog walking couple who told me the fireworks were late and had not yet started. They were heading home speedily.

This was a nightmare as I was in a strange village late at night with two dogs who become very disturbed by fireworks.  We started walking away from the show site but hadn’t gone very far when the display started.  My two started shaking and fretting and all we could do was hide behind a transit van at the side of the road and sit it out. Horrible for them.  Blue shook so badly I thought she was going to have a fit. When I returned to the show site afterwards my neighbours said the horses in the ring who were there as part of the World War 1 show had been so terrified they had almost broken out of the ring. 

I wont be going back to Heckington.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Clock swap

‘Hey Mate!’ The Liverpudlian twang was unmistakeable.  The two words rhymed perfectly and the ‘t’ of the ‘mate’ was almost sibilant, hissed through closed teeth, ‘You wanna hand? I’m bored and I can help if you wan’ ’.  The speaker, a gangly youth called across the divide between my yard and the big house. He’d heard me sweeping and scraping the weeds and accumulated detritus in my yard.  ‘Yeh sure come over.’ The arrival of the youth a few minutes later was accompanied by a torrent of self description, his name, Jonothan and an endearing introduction, ‘I can’t read or write much but I know how to mend a bike.’  My sort of man then. 

This was my memorable meeting with the newest member of the Barrowmore community and someone I immediately warmed to.  Within half an hour I had been treated to a life history and some priceless pearls of wisdom.  I wish I could remember them all.  Amongst the best was his description of his favourite pastime, skip rifling.  ‘Some people think I’m not normal but I think it’s them.’

A young man of twenty seven, tall, thin as two yards of pump water, sporting various home-crafted tattoos and a stooping way of looking at you like a shy dog, always looking for approval and encouragement.  Which of course I gave him.  He disappeared to reappear minutes later to show me his bike which he had decorated himself and acquired various parts from Halfords’ skip which he confidentially assured me was the best around, ‘and he had permission to go through it even though he had once been questioned by police for stealing by finding but they had left me alone when I told them I had permission.’

He told me he loved my workshop. ‘A real man cave’ he said, appreciatively eying the array of tools, wood and piles of all sorts in my man cave.  ‘Can you help me with a clock?’, disappearing to reappear a minute or so later with two motorbike brake discs and a plastic wall clock.  He explained what he wanted to do and I warmed to his creative thinking.  He wanted to use the attractive polished disc as the background to the clock and the mechanism and hands of the wall clock to provide the mechanism and hands.

Within ten minutes with Jonothan watching closely and continuing the running commentary of aphoristic truths, interspersed with observations about people’s attitudes to him, I had achieved his horological vision.  The glue had to set so we left it and he said he would be back the following day.  He had noticed the pile of unicycles and I lent him one, preceded by a quick unicycle lesson.  He went away glowing.  Lovely. He put the first smile on my face I've had for a while.

The following day arrives Jonothan with bike, rucksack full of skip presents to give and an apology he had forgotten he had to go to see his mother in Chester.  He pulled out a pack of new coping saw blades, a reel of soil Ph tester strips and a clockwork Smiths vehicle clock which he said an old guy he used to know had left him after he died. On the plate into which the old man had inserted the clock was a scrap of probably 1950’s newspaper cartoon with the saying ‘It’s a shame to throw it away – there must be something you could make with it.’ A relic of the days when ‘Make do and mend’ were giving way to the affluent post-rationing days I found myself in all those years ago, and in many ways still inhabit.

He made me a present of the clock as a swap for the brake disc clock he had taken back to his room just before.

I now have jigsawed a suitable hole in a suitable location in the lorry for the quietly ticking clock in place of the battery one I had there before.  It keeps perfect time too.

I think I’ve made a friend, cemented with a fair clock swap.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

No more two day weekends

It’s not that I dislike one day events.  The drama of the concentrated celebration always makes for memorable afternoons in the British summer.  Some of my favourite gigs are one day wonders. There was a time when I’d do two single day events of a weekend and not even catch my breath.  But time is taking its toll on my poor old frame and the knees particularly are complaining about all that work, travelling, setting up and striking.  Not to mention the shows which of course are still and have to be a concentrated burst of energy.  So it’s time now not to take more than a single one day booking of a weekend.

A catch up then since last time I wrote.  Hollowell Steam Rally was its usual self.  Yet another new location on the field this year as always swapped about by organiser Allen Eaton and this year finding myself next to my colleague and co-performer Greg Chapman who I meet up with a couple of times a year. It meant we could alternate shows and I could have a bit of a break while he did his escapology and juggling shows.  It is always a gentle lead up to and get out of the Rally as I try to arrive with a day or so to set up and I’m always invited to the helpers’ meal in the beer tent after everyone has gone on the Sunday night.  I feel a really strong part of the event and it is a traditional feature of my year.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been going to it annually for thirty years. How times have changed and not at the same time.  It wasn't a memorable Hollowell but you have to have the background so the foreground detail stands out.

Then the following week the two one days at Witney followed by a new venue; Southwell Racecourse in Nottinghamshire.  Witney Carnival always means a catch up with Pedro, alias Pete Dodd of Pedro’s Travelling Show.  He does a flamboyant circus workshop and lives in his lorry too.  The only other person I know who does.  Every winter he drives through France and Spain and busks in Faroe on the Algarve.  I envy him his freedom to do that.  Anyway we spend a night over a meal catching up on some of our news and then say goodbye for another year.  Maybe next year if I stick to my vow not to perform twice in two venues I can spend some more time with him.  We have a great deal in common.

However this year I had to hurry a pack down and hit the road by 7.30pm.  Three hours drive from Oxfordshire and arrive alongside a deserted racecourse in Nottinghamshire for a quick bit of shuteye before a 6.00am set up and shows all day.  The manager of Southwell Racecourse was a lovely man and the Family Race Day event had his stamp on it.  A real family occasion. Totally unlike Family Race Day at Chester Racecourse which I used to do where it was an excuse for people to get drunk and behave outrageously. At Southwell everyone was polite and looked as if they were having a good 1950s style day out with their families. My friend Colin arrived from Sheffield and it was lovely to have his moral and real help taking everything down as I was by then too tired to think straight.  He earned his Level One Bunting Engineer qualification. I had to get back to Chester for two final days of Cat’s Paw.  Hence by Tuesday I was like a piece of chewed string and an injured knee giving me some considerable pain.

If you detect a note of the blues then you’d be right. Perhaps it’s just the obvious fact that something has to change.  I am 67 this year and still doing a young man’s show.  I’m asking for trouble really so it has to change before trouble changes me.  Currently I am contemplating a year off.  How on earth I could afford it with all my financial demands I’ve no idea but I do think I need to regroup, rethink and realise my limitations.  I’ve never been very good at that.  Your advice as always will be welcome.  I have quite few readers who also write to me and I welcome any constructive comments. I feel some of the joy has gone from what I do.  It doesn't show in the shows.  Not yet anyway.  But it has to change before it does.  Pedro just does the gigs he loves doing, but I can't afford to do that.

What with the madness of Brexit, the change of political leadership and some other major demands in my life, the winds of change are blowing not just through our pathetic excuse for a British summer.  It’s so cold this morning I’ve had to light a fire. It’s July.

All the best from a strange road near you,

Mr Alexander

Loanhead for you, Loanhead for me

I worked my way north for four days from Ilfracombe to Loanhead last week.  The longest trip ever between gigs in my travelling life, it was both relaxing and enjoyable to watch Britain unfurl through my lorry windscreen.  The best was the last day of course.  If you are ever planning a road trip to Edinburgh from anywhere in the West of Britain, I thoroughly recommend the A701 crossing from Moffat.  There is always a temptation to cross further South from the M6, but the A701 is by far the most sensational route in terms of scenery and natural beauty.  It is also not such a major hurdle, once you have made a reasonably easy climb out of Moffat, the remainder of the trip follows the peaks of the hills with some amazing vistas opening at every turn.

Scotland’s galas are special, and Loanhead’s one of the best I have attended. I think they are closely tied into ex-mining communities and a way which historically they allowed hard working families to have a day to really look forward to every year, and which allowed for one local family’s child to be promoted to Gala Queen for the year.  It is a fascinating tradition and galvanizes the community in a way which doesn’t happen elsewhere.

I arrived a couple of days early which allowed a slow and easy set up on the field, the town’s Memorial Park. The day before the gala all the local schools (during school time) arrived for a special show in the park.  Part of the show involved them all singing the Loanhead Gala song

Loanhead, Loanhead Gala Day (repeat three times)

L-O-A-N-H-E-A-D

Loanhead for you, Loanhead for me

I had the song earworming through my head for the whole stay.

The gala day itself is over almost before it has begun.  A big parade to the park arrives at 1.30, three shows with the last one at 3.30 and then everyone was gone.  Luckily the promised rain didn’t arrive and the afternoon ended in warm sunshine and very well-attended shows. 

Also on the field was a colleague, Andrew Van Buren with his illusion show, and it was a great pleasure to have a few minutes to catch up with him.  Andrew’s father Fred started a family tradition of illusionists which is wonderfully told in a DVD which Andrew gave me.  Andrew is establishing a celebration of the life of Philip Astley (1742 -1814), the ‘father of modern circus’ in Astley’s home town of Newcastle next year and I look forward to being involved with that.

As I was setting up on the field the day before the usual line of portaloos were being run alongside my pitch.  As I watched it became obvious that the line of toilets would reach right into the space that my audience would occupy.  I went over to the men and asked them to stop as it was obviously some mistake.  The leader of the men was a Glaswegian and built like a brick version of the plastic toilets he was unloading.  He also had anger management issues.  Why is it that Glasgow male citizens often have this classic character trait?

You can imagine the situation as I remonstrated that the line of toilets couldn’t come into my audience space and he insisted that he was placing the toilets where he had been told to do and I could just ‘F*** off’.  I managed just in time to find a committee member to ask angry toilet man to put them elsewhere, but not before he threatened to drop a toilet which he had lifted single-handed from his truck onto my head.

Oh the joys of open-air entertainment.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander