The show must go on!

Recently we've been putting together plans for a new venture (of which news very very shortly - watch this space!!! - in fact subscribe to this Blog or like our Facebook page to get the news first ) and in doing this I've really been enjoying working with people with similar work ethics. You kind of lose faith sometimes that there are people who will do what needs to be done, no matter what the hours or how tired you might be feeling. These kinds of people were certainly more common in my younger days, touring round schools in vans. You met with all kinds of obstacles and just got on with it. But they were good times, like...

• Lying on a school floor having been up all night with gastric flu desperately trying to summon the energy to perform without throwing up again when a teacher observed "Just doing your relaxation are you? Nice life..."
• Performing to a school in Birmingham where the teachers had been out for a hefty Christmas beverage at lunchtime and had forgotten we were turning up. they'd told the kids they were getting a movie. Instead three actors in stupid cossies turned up. Mayhem ensued
• Speaking to a 10 year old child in Godmanchester after a performance of 'Animal Farm' who questioned whether Hegel would have needed a windmill had he written the original story. Turns out she was a traveller girl who constantly ran away to the library - her parents burned any book they found her with. I often wonder what happened to her
• Chasing a kid across a Salford housing estate as he made off with our keyboard
• Chasing a kid across a Kilburn estate as he made off with a microphone
• Concussing myself on a low beam at a school in Wiltshire and the look of horror on the faces of the children as blood trickled from under my mask - I acted on without realising. And then a pyro set off the school fire alarm and I was saved
• Dressing up as a polar bear, a pig (2 pigs in fact), an oak tree, a devil, a firefly, a recorder - great cossies

Happy days. Actually, they were. Three shows a day and no money but an absolute determination to do the very best job we could.  And we saw places in the UK we'd never have seen otherwise.