This is a typical week in theatre land …

It’s always the same – you spend the winter months settling into a routine that doesn’t require too many demands …

Then the spring season comes along and reminds you just what a physical job theatre is.

Most of December and January was spent updating the assets register and portable appliance testing all those bits that tend to get forgotten, like the sound desk, show relay amps, wardrobe irons and so on.

There was one get-out mid January, which I spent most of the time controlling a winch – so my thumb got a work-out and the rest of me just shivered.

Then we hit the last week of January.

First our annual Christmas show came to a close – this time involving a four truck pack – into three trucks …

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The sound system was smaller than we’ve seen for this recurring show – MSL2’s in the key positions with USW subs and E3 for delays with our house JBL and 2nd circle EAW  supplementing them. A few JF60 as front fill and as sidefills for the dancers and the usual selection of Sennheiser and Neuman mics in the pit.

Of course, there has to be weight somewhere and, just for the London production, we had a Cadac J-Type at the sound position. With local UPS. And the PSU’s remoted to our OB route.

And the touring DM1K that was programmed over the last few days of the show.

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In fact, loading all the sound kit into a small footprint was a fairly simple routine of 3D Tetris, even despite the 2am working time.

The bigger problem was the inability to put weight on my right leg.

Space restrictions meant that a few of the empties had been stored in a courtyard. In bringing them back round, I made the mistake of being polite to avoid running down the guy walking past the pavement works.

Not normally an issue but the Japanese lass following behind me decided that I wasn’t fully in control of the two boxes I was pulling along and helpfully turned one of the boxes through slightly less than 90 degrees.

Once the guy had passed, I started off, pushing one case and pulling the second.

These cases were over 5 foot tall but only a few feet long. The first case pushed off okay – the second case as I started off was now perpendicular to the kerb … right at a crossing … with a slope.

The second case didn’t so much follow alongside as gently tip over.

Luckily I caught it.

Unluckily I used my right calf to catch it.

Walking was a bit of a challenge for the next couple of minutes but it had settled down to just being sore after that.

And once we had the trucks packed and sent off, we then had to re-instate our speaker bar.

This is a bunch of angled metal panels rigged by using U-bolts from triangular truss into Unistrut. The bar has it’s limits about a hands width above the height of the panels when sitting on the floor.

Sigh.

And all this spanner madness while the stage boys are kicking their heels waiting to pull the dance floor trolleys from under the pit – which we were using as the floor at the time.

It was a good thing that the lonely dog wasn’t lonely the next morning as I was able to catch public transport home after that out.

Woke up a few hours later, got out and bed and near collapsed as my right leg failed to take my weight.

Slight bruise on that calf – slight but black.

Ah.

Took a few minutes, and a hot shower to lose the limp.

Next morning the limp was back and the bruise was now about the size of a credit card and we had to move our nice light weight sound desk down from the control room to the sound position.

With the lift out of order.

We decided to come back to that.

The lift engineers arrived around 8.30am to set fixing the lift – all before we arrived. They finished sometime after 3pm – as we were starting to ponder the viability of carrying a big heavy sounddesk down a couple of flights of stairs. Typically the extra crew for a last minute extra truck pack in the morning has left just a few minutes before we started.

Nevertheless, we managed to get enough together to get it to the right place for the next show.

This is our sampler event, showing off several snippets of shows that we are presenting later in the year – this time around including a contemporary piece, two ballet pas de deux, a hip-hop troupe, the winners of the Global Dance Contest and a Cuban band/dance company.

This last company were my focus for the next couple of days.

The day after our sound desk moved, I collected a Transit van and myself, a colleague and a black bruise the size of a teacup did the run to our stores in rural Kent.

Amazing how much stuff can be fitted in a Transit when you try – we managed two sets of treads, one pallet sized wooden box, three heavy painted cloths, one light painted gauze, several chairs and some AV cable.

Then the drive back to London to off-load all that at our second stage, drive up to our main stage and load up on 10 pieces of metrodeck, forty legs and a mirrorball (still in that Transit) to return to the second stage to then drive the van back to company I had picked it up from.

All for this cuban company and none of it for the sampler show – they fill the second stage through February.

The following day also started with a pickup for them – this time visiting the National Theatre prop store in Kennington to pick up a swashbuckling sword.  Not admitting to anything on a public site but it’s entirely possible that anyone carrying a black bin liner on the Northern line that day may have had a (very blunt) sword to hand …

Oops.

That evening I finally ended up setting up a show for the first time in a couple of months – for the musicians for this same company again for the piece they were doing on the main stage at the weekend.

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Sound system was the normal EAW/Martin/JBL/d&b rig in the house and onstage (check previous posts with the SWT tag) with the addition of a pair of JF200 to help cover the standing only stalls set-up.

Control again our standard Legend/MediaMatrix configuration with most pieces on CD, the cubans with a live set-up and the contemporary piece plugging in their own sound computer for several ways of playback.

Cubans had Max12 for monitors and used SM57 on brass, SM58 and MKH-40 on congas, SM57 on snare, our Pro 25 on tabla (after the Beta 52 originally specced proved a little too happy to cause feedback), DI’s on acoustic guitar and electric double bass, Beta 58 on vocals and our in-house Sony wireless for two handhelds and one beltpack tx unit with a Beyer headmic – which gave me a little warm-up in the fine skill of radio mic running.

Lighting was all in-house using our VL1000, MAC500, Pirouettes, SL spots, Alto 2K washes, PAR64 pipe ends and SL/Par booms and a plethora of CXi and Rainbow scrollers on most fixtures. There was an addition – three Jarag 20 units as a test. More of these will feature for the hip-hop festival in early May. They come pre-programmed with hundreds of effect patterns but we did find that the fixture library was spread across several pages on our ETC Eos and not entirely logically … good to find out before going into the show though.

Staging was mostly black box with upstage cyc and a full black a bay down- the cubans had a rolling rostra for the percussion section of the band, which we were able to preset behind the full black during the interval for a last section reveal. The Global Dance winners brought around 45kg of green rubber pieces with them (and not the paper that most of the critics believed it to be) and a standing fan.

It was the opening contemporary piece that had the most staging – five rolls of grey dance floor on top of our black marley isn’t so bad but the three dozen full black bin bags that had to drop during the piece were a little more interesting.

Magnets were hidden in the bags – these connected to electro magnets spread out along fly bars cabled back  by Soca to a manual controller. When power was applied (one switch per bag drop) the bag would drop – though whether this was the electro-magnet swopping poles or some mechanical force being applied I never got to find out.

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Something about watching a performer dodging heavy bags dropping out of the darkness made that the moment of the show for me – not that any of critics seemed to notice it.

And the two ballet dancers during their act two warm-ups sandwiched between the large b-boys of the street dancers and the volumptous Cubans.

After the first night, I found myself headed back to our second stage for the second time that month to help a bunch of accountants strike a panto.

Not quite as bizarre as it sounds – a large accouting firm hire out our second stage for a couple of weeks every year to stage a panto (Snow white this year I believe).

While it’s always a big set, there’s also always a big crew, most of whom are happy to help out as they only have to load a truck once a year (as opposed to my once, or more, a week).

This meant I would get home with enough time to get some sleep before going back in on a Sunday for day two of our sampler event.

Bruise still the size of a tea-cup but now a more pleasant mauve colour.

There always seems to be some debate as to whether a specialist or a generalist viewpoint is better in the entertainment industry.

The specialists will tell you that only knowing a discipline in-depth will get you to a point of being able to work on the gigs you choose and are more employable because of your concentrated skillset – the generalists will say that you can get a broader range of gigs and are more employable because of your broad skillset.

I’m inclined to err towards the specialist skillset brigade – but my definition of specialist skillset is not FOH sound or scenic art. Rather my definition of specialist skill would be theatre technician or genre designer – I tend to expect that folks will have a discipline that is their strongest – be it sound, lights or whatever but will be able to drop into other departments as needed, though not necessarily to the same level.

I’ve had this only this week just gone.

Swopping my days off, I came on on a dark day with the aim to PAT various bits of kit that are coming up to their due date – mostly amps. I don’t want to disturb the Christmas show by taking amps out during a performance and I want time to fix any faults that may occur during the testing.

Already I’m needing skills in using a portable appliance tester and in basic electrical maintenance. Only a half hour into this, I get a call on the radio asking if I can bring a microphone and stand to one of the studios for a rehearsal. Picking those up (and also the cable that wasn’t asked for but will be needed to plug in the mic), I get to the studio to find that as well as the vocal mic, there’s also an acoustic guitar to add in. Retrieving the DI for this, I then had to set up the sound system. (Typically, flamenco …)

It’s not even an hour later when I get another call on the radio asking for a hand bringing in a cloth for the Christmas show.

Which is a little odd, as the company didn’t mention anything to me about expecting a delivery. And on their day off?

I head over to stage door and recognise the scenic artist and we bring in a new backdrop cloth for a ballet within a ballet scene, which he’s just brought across from Bristol. He has to get off and that leaves me with a newly painted cloth spread out over the stage.

With company class onstage tomorrow and no crew called, the cloth needs to be flown today. With me on my own, on a show with several large pillars onstage that restrict flying, plus the braile lines and the flown scenic pieces.

Yet I am able to switch on the powered flying system, bring in the only bar that will come to stage level without needing paging, hang the cloth and fly it out, leaving a note for the flyman the next day.

Then back to the PAT.

The next day, after company class, is a runthrough to help a new performer get a feel for the spacing onstage – no lights, sound from a CD player and the only crew being stage management, one flyman and myself. So I find myself helping with some of the prop  and small scenery movements – it helps that we’ve done this show a fair amount over the last few years and we’ve done several of the running plots in that time.

I certainly don’t agree with the idea that one should only have skills in one department – the kinda viewpoint that some of the stricter IATSE members follow. The idea that a crew member pushing a flightcase has to wait for an electrician to come along to lift a cable for the flightcase to continue is just wrong on so many levels.

And if I was a proponent of the one job for one person view, it would have made even those two days very tricky. We’d have needed an electrician for the day’s PAT, a sound guy for five minutes, and a flyman for ten minutes on the first day – and the four different stage hands each to do one move that we wouldn’t know would be needed until we got to the point that it was decided to rehearse that section.

This isn’t about taking jobs away from people but apart from the PAT, none of those jobs were known about in advance. And not having the skill to do them would have made others jobs harder.

a bit of indian drama

It’s during the maelstrom that comprises our last couple of weeks of November that it occurs to me that I haven’t worked on a actual piece of drama for several years.

This realisation hits me during piece number four (of nine) when I’m sitting in the auditorium watching a piece spoken in Punjabi trying to work out how much the float mics are going to be needed.

Obviously there have been pieces with drama in, there’s been a lot of drama over several other pieces, and some very dramatic people, on and off stage but a drama piece with acting, props, scenery and so forth … not since I started full time over five years ago.

And how did drama end up on our dance oriented stage?

That question actually was never answered.

This is all taking place during an Indian festival, curated by a well known Indian fusion composer and a well known British Indian fusion dancer to celebrate different Indian performers by having ten different performers and their companies onstage. I possibly shouldn’t have been too surprised at the inclusion of a drama piece in a dance house festival – four or five of the other pieces were concerts only.

And I knew this in great detail for most of November prior to the start of the festival had seen me pouring through riders to balance all the different sound requirements of the very disparate pieces. All of which seemed to end up a lot more complicated than it should have been for what should have been festival.

The first piece loaded in on the first sunday – we had been aware that this piece had two different stagings which we would need to swop between during an interval. As they loaded in, we were informed that, because of injury, one of the staging set-ups was to be cut.

It’s a pity the rock salt had already arrived …

This company also do need to recognise that sometimes it’s quicker in the long run to not let the performers onstage too early. Not giving enough time to finish doing the technical set-up means that we are forever playing catch-up and that the performers don’t make full use of the extra time they get, as they have to spend some of it it waiting for technical glitches that would have been sorted had the technical departments had more time to get set-up.

Still, the performance on the monday was well received – particularly encouraging for a show that was cut down as advertised due to the last minute injury. Performance two was the next day, the first of the concerts. By contrast this went incredibly smoothly. The company had been rehearsing in a studio the day previously, all the technical details had been sorted and nothing went too amiss (excepting a momentary lapse in the ‘musicians don’t like side light’).

Day four, performance three. Second concert, third sound desk out front. First class performance – if you like mandolin.

Day five, no performance but doing the set-up for performance four. This is the drama piece for which I’m sitting out in the auditorium wondering how to boost a singer with a sore throat above the band around him without wireless mics or obvious reinforcement. For those who don’t understand Punjabi, we’d spent the day adding LCD screens around the house and there were now eight different screens showing the several hundred surtitle screens that one of our techs had spend a couple of weeks transferring into Powerpoint.

Onstage were the rocks that I’d had to hire a van to go and buy – yep I had to buy rocks (no quarries nearby to ‘acquire’). But it was fine, as the wheel barrows also needed for the show were used to transport the rocks. Along with the DVD players I’d rescued from our stores (electronic items don’t store well in unheated warehouses) which would be needed for the next performance.

And as this drama piece only needed half the stage for their fence and pond, we could set-up the tri screen staging for the next day also.

Day seven – this was for me a day off. But for the theatre, this was a two company day with a large delivery of backline and sound kit for later use, with three screens needed for one third of that night’s performance and a small band for another third.

Day eight. Back to a concert, the second monitor desk was set up this morning and we spent the day working out the numerous monitors for a percussionist would was very good but who had decided the afternoon before to turn up onstage several hours before we expected then proceed to bad mouth us – which we had been warned by members of his staff may well happen. I have to say that expecting the technical set-up for a show that had a lot more elements than the band had previously used, and which we had warned them would involve more tech work, to be completed early was a little presumptious (though we did manage to be mostly set-up 30 mins prior to our own scheduled time). And course, having the performers doing their thing meant that some technical work was delayed, which delayed them, which impacted us and so on.

Don’t know who was meant to have told us that the main performer was planning to start early (and working time directive laws prevented us starting any earlier in any case) but someone slipped up there. Still the performance was well received – and was over at the end of the day.

And this was the performance that the day nine company said ‘oh well, they are only musicians, how much time do they need? We’ll come in during the afternoon to set-up for our piece’

And this from the company who on day nine were totally up and rehearsed by mid afternoon, giving everyone a couple of hours of well received break. Didn’t really need the time yesterday then.

Day ten, company nine. Concert five. Two different set-ups for four musicians, solo dancer and aerialist. Nice company, good show, minimal hassle.In fact, more hassle from trying to find appropriate adaptors for the company rehearsing in one of the studios. Hadn’t really been aware of the three phase outlet we had in that studio but everything was sorted by lunch-time.

Day eleven, company ten. Back to the second FOH sound desk and the first monitor desk set-up from the first concert last week (only last week?). Last piece of the festival which will be playing for the next few days. There’s a little bit of projection nonsense but that get sorted in time for the show.

And it’s a lot easier than we suspected to rent eleven matching cajons.

Yes, really.

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For a festival, we did a lot of changes over the two weeks. Mostly a black box staging, each show used a different amount of stage, different numbers of risers (or none) and had the musicians in different places.

Several different lighting rigs – which were all general cover, special spots and pipe end colour washes, with some moving heads.

Sound wise, our EAW rig stayed in place for the two weeks. The first piece brought with them the hired PM5D they had been using in rehearsals. Mics were a mix of in-house and hired but nothing out of the ordinary and monitors were a mix of d&b Max12 and Tannoy V12’s.

We did find during the set-up for this that our subs were out of phase – a wiring issue from the last time we’d switched back from stereo to mono feed. We were also a little cautious of the MediaMatrix at this point – it had been out of commission for a few days after a new version of Real VNC had been installed without a reboot – thanks Windows.

The second company brought in a Digidesign venue out front with a M7CL on monitors and supplemented our speakers with Martin W8L ground stacks, also using a Max 12 a side for front fill. They used Sennheiser radio mics (5012) and IEM’s (I think the Evolution G2 but I didn’t do much of the monitor world set-up). Mics were motly hired in but were the usual Sennheiser, Shure, AKG, Neuman suspects.

Day three had us putting in our Midas Legend 3000 and outboard (Rane EQ, dbx compressors, Yamaha SPX990) and using our max 12.

For the weekend batch of shows, we added in a bunch more Max 12 for day’s seven, eight and nine, though they were mostly as backup for day eight. This being the technically complicated concert, the company were adding seven orchestral musicians to their normal band set-up and were putting everyone onto IEM – though they won’t having any rehearsal time with the IEM in use and changed the layout during the only rehearsal the day before (they didn’t mention that either). A Midas Heritage was installed for monitors and we became very glad for the earphones we had purchased a couple of months back for the last flamenco show (details here). Lots of percussion backline, keyboard, bass amps and a metal bucket acquired for the water drum.

The IEM were Sennheiser PSM range – which weren’t great to be honest. Co-ordinating the frequencies of 13 packs was a nightmare before they arrived and we were a little disappointed with the audio quality. We also used a C420 with a Sony radio transmitter for the main performer- the less than DPA quality and cardiod pattern good for rejecting the percussion surrounding him.

The Heritage stayed up for the next couple of shows, though the backline and IEMs were returned.

A quick note – is it just me or are percussion stands surprisingly difficult to fold down? Every other stand in the world is very simple but there just seems to be more knobs and more sticky out bits on a hi-hat than there needs to be.

I digress …

Some of the IEM’s came back for day nine but three is a much easier number to deal with. Then we packed up both Midas desks in preparation for the return of the Venue/M7 combo. This second show had a little kerfuffle for a couple of spoken bits and we ended up adding one of our Sony beltpacks with a Beyer headset mic for one section, and had a selection of cardiod, omni and lav mics for another bit – which I think ended up with Schoeps collette instead.

The musicians were upstage of a white gauze with another white gauze running up and down stage to each side. These all went up a little premature and we did have to do some work off ’scope and MEWP that would have been easier at deck level – mainly getting a projector up.

We started with a 6,000 lumen F3 but weren’t entirely happy with the output so switched to a Panasonic model. It may have been a DLP but was brighter and more importantly, could be rigged on a bar downstage of the whole gauze edifice and still come out at the same size. As the F3 was missing it’s remote, switching projectors was for the best.

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This festival really did highlight the importance of prior planning. We had been looking at this in earnest for over two months before the first show and had several people working on this in the weeks leading up to the beginning. There was a lot of paperwork, and a lot of going backwards and forwards to find a balance between the demands of the riders and the costs. For a couple of us, the entire of november was this show, not just the two weeks of performance.

And the difference in days between the company who had invested time and money into the rehearsal process and stuck to schedule and the company who came and went as they pleased was blatantly obvious. One company we would welcome back with open arms – the other we’d be very cautious with in the future.

The biggest thing the audience noticed was the reduced performance on the first night and the reviews for that were possibbly the best for the entire two weeks – the power of a charismatic performer.

I mentioned that I hadn’t worked on drama for several years – based on the piece I saw, I don’t miss drama all that much. I do prefer the least cluttered aesthetics of a dance show for the most part – which is not the same as simple staging. I did get a strong sense of college plays from watching that piece and that comes form an experience that college shows seem to have a lesser level of professional sheen ( I generalise of course, but I do maintain there is a visible difference between the work of a group of students and a company that have been established for some time).

I also mentioned in my previous posting (way back in October) that I hadn’t been on a sound desk for a while. I didn’t push any faders this time around but I did get to thinking that, for all that I believe most shows are improved with a live backing, I’m not certain how much I actually enjoy working with musicians. I think that my mindset is very much along the technical side of things – much as one of the casual staff said while he was working on the festival ‘ great at plugging things up – not hot on the pushing of faders’.

And while I can name shows that have been a challenge and joy to work on the sound desk, most of them had a strong playback element.

I remember on one of the hip hop festivals that I was on the desk for, Ihad a lighting work placement student with me for some of the show, just watching.

He mentioned later, that he couldn’t believe how much I was doing on what was essentially a CD track – one that I was playing with levels of the track and around the house, pushing the flourishes and using the dynamics of the track. And that may be another reason why I haven’t really missed working on drama.

Though there was a move to add more soundscape work to drama, a lot of the pieces I worked on were sound effect heavy shows and there’s little live dynamic alteration you can do with a straight door bell or bird song. But with a track for a dance piece, as long as the dancers can hear all their marks, there is room to work the sound. That’s the fader work I miss sometimes.

But my skillset is the set-up rather than the nuance of live sound. I don’t have golden ears, more’s the pity, though my hearing is still more acute than many around me – but I can work out signals paths and arrange a bunch of hires easily enough.

And I do notice the irony of spending years saying ‘I don’t want a desk job’ and now spending more time on Excel than on a Midas

So the festival has come to a close, there’s a huge pile of (unused) rock salt taking up room in our courtyard, I’m knee deep in costings for a potential show next summer and the winter show is just around the corner (not panto but an established seasonal favourite).

Mostly harmless – damned by faint praise

Last week I was actually back behind a sound desk.

It’s one of those perculiaraties that promotions for persons in a physical job tend to get them doing less of the physical labour that got them the promotion in the first place.

Having stepped sideways from sound tech to production tech, I spend a lot more time with my fingers on keyboard than on faders. Normally I don’t miss it too much – but it is nice to get more hands on once in a while.

The show was a mixed programme of work from a transatlantic ballet choreographer, with some old and some new pieces all presented in a more American format with an introduction from the choreographer himself at the top of the show and short video clips between each piece. Of course, the video clips ended up as more of a tourist video of Martha’s Vineyard than the behind the scenes style of the Ballet Boyz , for example.

The first piece of the night was a Ligeti score for two pianos with a section for harpsichord – a mix of group and pas de deux; the dancing style clean classical lines and obviously of ballet origin.

The second piece was from a duo set to a couple of very recognisable pieces of musics from Arvo Part, the lovely Spiegel im Spiegel and Kyrie and the even more recognisable Air on a G string by Bach – all from CD and not live, more’s the pity. The piece inself opens with one of the dancers ‘trapped’ in an upright wooden box and the rest of the stage in darkness. As the piece progresses, she is able to force her way out and join her partner for a duet which ends with him trapped in the box. It’s not a happy piece but was my favourite of the evening. Several critics were dismissive of the use of the music – but if it’s a nice peice of music, I fail to see the problem. That said, older readers won’t be too surprised to hear that I really struggled to get the idea of cigars out of my head …

The final piece was a group work of modern ballet with flouncy costumes and additional lighting projection from a visual artist. Nothing was out of place but there was no spark to it, no moment, for me, at least, of ‘wow’. It had an orchestral backing but with less than two dozen players, there was no huge ‘live’ impact. A harmless piece but no bite.

[shop talk]

The two ballet pieces were black box set with cyc upstage, the central duet full black box with a 7foot tall box upstage centre (which was screwed into the floor during a pause – cue marley moving to avoid screwing through our expensive dance floor).

All costumes were firmly in the modern dance mould – mono colour trousers, dresses and tops for all the pieces.

Lighting was mostly general cover for the first and third pieces, with abstract projection for the warmer lit third piece. There was a tendency for only areas of the stage to be lit (now we lit only stage right, now we add centre stage as the dancers move into it) which for me lagged behind the dancers and was a little distracting. A full stage wash would have made the cueing easier and would have allowed the dancers a little more space and made them mode visible. It belonged to the mindset of only lighting what needs lighting, which can be fine but added up to just dark areas of stage rather than a tight area of light. Not very pretty.

The second piece did benefit from lighting design from the school of shadows, with some tight focussing on the inside of the box and a very monochrome colour pallette.

Soundwise it was a generic set-up – a few C414 and C3000’s for the piano’s and orchestra – not a complicated show to mix for in any way. Which was useful, as the sound position was in the control room and driven from a Soundcraft LX7, a useful small desk but not the nicest to use for live work.

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Overall, not a bad show but missing the flair of our recent Diaghilev production.

This company would benefit from being able to perform together as a full-time ensemble, rather than the per season troupe that they currently operate as – but limitations of funding don’t respect artistic merit, more’s the pity. Is the lack of bite a consequence of the lack of funding, or vice versa? I don’t want to see any company going under but only time will tell, here.

Still, it’s useful for us to have a quiet show after the aforementioned Diaghilev pieces, and doubly welcomed as we ramp up for the up-coming Indian festival …

What happens next …

And we return … week two of the four choreographers piece.

We left the action looking at timecode for the offstage quartet.

In the end, the timecode wasn’t much of an issue – the bigger issue was that the choreographer for that piece hadn’t realised that the quartet were in the wings. I’ve no idea why.

I do know that the several hours I spent setting up the quartet and grand piano in the wings on the saturday were pulled apart in minutes the Sunday morning to move the quartet into the orchestra pit.

“Don’t we have an orchestra in the pit?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Yes we did have to work out how a 65 strong orchestra was going to manage with a Steinway and four strings in it’s midst – a lucky bit of programming meant that the quartet started the evening, with an interval to set up the orchestra.

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The composer was one Olafur Arnalds, a young Icelandic composer who has some very atmospheric pieces, similar (in my minds at least) to William Orbit. He was at the piano with his own copy of Qlab along with a effects pedal and sample pad. The string quartet with him had DPA4061 clip mics, though an absence of proper clips meant we go a little creative with tie wraps – finally have a use for those things.

The Steinway was miked with a pair of C414 clamped to the framework as it was a minimumly raised lid.

Olafur had two Tannoy V12 as monitors and the quartet shared two more Tannoy V8. To deal with the timecode from the AV position all five ended up on in-ears (and Behringer headphone amps absolutely suck! I really don’t recommend them.)

We were able to minimise the impact onto the orchestra and could swop from one to the other in around ten minutes – labelling everything to death.

The orchestra had five SE300 with CK91 heads positioned fairly evenly about the pit with additional C3000 at the conductors rostrum.

And all the above was specially in for us as it’s all playback on the tour …

[/shop talk]

This show seems to have really caught poeple’s attentions. Reviews have been mixed; from zero stars to four stars and have even been mixed for the different pieces in the show.

The temple of cock has been the main talking piece – some absolutely vilifying it and some saying that it’s exactly in the Diaghilev mindset. Some have questioned having this piece to close it, some have wondered why it’s not earlier.

The answer – practicalities. It’s easier to have the piece with screens onstage first, switch to the blackbox/scanachrome pieces in the middle then spend the second interval setting up the temple and come in earlier the next day to reset back to the screens.

Personally, I’m prefering the central pieces (a solo and a duet) – the first piece doesn’t seem as vibrant – though it is based on Shackletons trip to the Antartic so vibrancy may not be the point.

And the final piece just seems to be as shocking for the sake of it. The first night had walkouts and actual boos doing the curtain calls (who sits through an entire piece they didn’t like?) but was causing laughter in the stalls on night three.

The choreographer on this seems to be going to extremes to live to the ’surprise me’ concept – I’d have been more surprised if the piece had been more involving than in it’s current form. Some dance in it would have been nice also for a piece that celebrates dance.

Still.

One reviewer was of the opinion that the boos shows that we are still stretching the comfort zones, pushing the boundaries.

That’s all very well – I’m just thinking that we’ve had several pieces recently that haven’t reviewed well, haven’t sold well and the only pieces selling are the ones that have the support of public opinion. It’s very well to be pushing the boundaries but I wonder sometimes if our boundaries are set further than that of the audience …

And whether or not that’s a good thing …

Temple of What?

I’ve already mentioned our next upcoming piece.

Celebrating the centenary of the Ballet Russes, we have four choreographers coming to together, each working on their own piece with their choice of fellow artists (lighting designers, composers, video creators and so on) which will all be put together for an evening of performance all next week, followed by an international tour.

The main brief for this was to follow Diaghilev’s comment to Cocteau: “Surprise Me!”

All very laudable.

But we knew that it was just going to be a busy couple of weeks for us here.

It’s never going to be a great start when a theatre built as a receiving house moves to produce a work. There just isn’t the creation space for performers or designers, there’s no storage space for any set/costumes/whatever and so our events department, who have the unenviable job of overseeing the booking for our rehearsal studios, have been playing a very delicate balancing act of trying to keep four separate companies with consistant space to devise the new pieces, while still keeping other bookings coming in and working around whichever incoming company is on the main stage.

This includes the offsite rehearsals of course.

Then there was the fun issue of moving a wooden floor into one of the studios.

I say fun … I may not mean fun.

The floor arrived on the same day that myself and a few of our regular techs were scheduled to load two complete wooden floors back into our storage space in the depths of Kent. The rehearsal floor was supposed to arrive first thing in the morning and be loaded into the lift to go to the third floor studio – to be finished inside an hour so I could take those floor loaders and coerce them into loading our floors – all this while Apple set up an event on the main stage.

My first clue something was awry was walking in to find a large wooden block by the lift. Not really knowing about the rehearsal floor at this point, I didn’t think too much of it and walked straight past.

Walking onstage to be asked “can we borrow you for a moment?” always arouses suspicion. That’s about the line I use when I require a couple of victims to lift our sound desk. And when the initial inquiry is followed with “just how guys have you got in today?” just confirms that something nasty is about to occur.

Trying to ignore the vague sense of impending doom I get when Mr Ben or Mr Best Man ask me if I’m available (never free!), I’m walked back to the large floor piece I ignored earlier.

“This needs to go up to the studio on the third floor!” I’m told.

“This piece of 10 foor by 6 foot by 1 foot decking made with heavy wood and with an overhanging platform top on two sides?”

“Yes” I’m told.

“This piece of 10 foot by 6 foot by 1 foot decking made from heavy wood and with an overhanging platform lip on two sides that’s by our 8 foot long lift?”

“Yes.” I’m told “How many guys have you in today?”

The quick amongst you will have noticed the slight descrepency – that two foot different between platform length and lift length.

That two foot equals three stories of stairs that double back on themselves or about 20 minutes of five guys lifting heavy wood to and fro.

And that was the first piece.

“Tell you what” I’m told after we got the first section up (of four) “let’s wait until lunchtime so the company can rehearse”

“tell you what,” I reply “as the truck we are meant to be loading now is here, why don’t we finish this now?”

“Can’t you load that later?”

“Nope, later we have to unload that truck a number of miles away.”

“Oh”

The joys of people assuming that a lift will take a load without checking first.

Oh, and we are going to come back to this particular dance piece – it’s one of the four …

So having manhandled one floor up stairs, and swearing that Gallowglass can have the fun of moving down to another studio, back up to the first and then down to the stage over the next couple of weeks, we retrieve the truck driver and start loading the two wooden floors that we were expecting to move this day.

Wood was often supplied in 8′ x 4′ sizes and you hear a lot about trucks, trains and transit being built around this size. Well, the internal measurement of a standard 18 tonne truck is around 7′10″. So rather than the two sets of floors (each across two wheeled pallets of similar sizes) being a straight load, it involves the heavier floor (read more expensive) being loaded on it’s pallets offset with the lighter floor (read the one we care less about) having to go on a sheet at a time and stack on edge in the available space.

Our offsite store is a single cage in a warehouse in an industrial estate in Marden, Kent – a village that I’m sure only exists as it has an industrial estate in it. Certainly it gets two trains an hour – one in each direction.

We arrive ahead of the truck to find that the entrance way is blocked by the unloading artic of the touring company who own the building.

Ah.

So we duly have to unload our truck outside, reversing the loading.

In about our only good fortune that day, the artic leaves right after we finish taking the floor off and we can wheel the floor to our store.

It takes a little bit of pack-tetris to get in into the store, currently home to several productions worth of odd items (not bad for a receiving house) but we manage in short order and return to the station in time to see the train leave – apparently mid afternoon the schedule changes – who knew?

Time rolls on.

It’s now the week before we start to shoehorn the four pieces on to the stage. I get a call saying that the cloth has arrived and needs to be unloaded.

“Okay. What cloth?”

It transpires that one of the four has a Scanachrome backdrop. All very lovely but we’ve a totally different production on the main stage, a rehearsal in the studio theatre and an event out front. And the print has been supplied in a state of partial unroll. Oh and it’s five hours early

Sidenote – it is possible to deliver too early. Much as I dislike late deliveries, if I’ve specified a time for delivery then I’d like it to be that time. There are many good reason why something can’t be received earlier – in this case, it was a matter of space and bodies to move the goods – of which we had neither.

Oh and the truck driver was near to reaching his drive time limit.

Sigh.

Still, we managed to get in somewhere (and the creases will fall out once it’s flown, probably)

And the production week has now arrived.

Before I go into the shop talk, it’s important to look at the staging a little more. And it’s about this point that my family may want to engage the parental filters – there will be rude words (and I don’t just mean the crew swearing).

Each night of the performance will see the four pieces all put on – with two intervals. So we’ll start with piece one, interval, piece 2, quick pause, piece 3, interval 2 and final piece. And the pieces seem to be following a black box set-up with minimal set-up (he says) apart from the final piece that is, and there’s no real nice way of saying this, a temple of cock.

No, this isn’t some reference to last year’s peacock show, or to any other avian creature.

[shop talk]

(like what I did there )

Lighting wise is a little bit of guesswork with it being the premiere here. There’s a lot of generics up in the air alongside a few movers and a couple of large projectors (one overhead and one pointing upstage) with booms for side light. Scrollers are in abundance.

The company have chosen to use a Strand 520 from one production desk with a Strand 550 from another. I know the 520 is going on the tour – where the 550 fits into the puzzle I’m staying out off.

Soundwise, it’s a little more complicated than could be expected at first.

Basic system is our normal Midas/Mediamatrix/EAW with Max 12 sidefills. In terms of outputs, the operator has split the signal all over the path so each level of the theatre has it’s own matrix feed and groups feed the stereo subs, delay lines and so on.

There is also a flown pair of EM121 onstage acting as source for playback and additional stage monitoring.

Inputs come from the onstage Catalyst system that controls video playback for one of the pieces, including a MIDI feed that links Qlab and the sound desk; additional audio inputs from Q-lab; from a mixture of AKG mics on the orchestra for a third piece; and from more mics and some processing from an offstage quartet and Steinway 10′ from the last piece. There are also a couple of flown rifle mics and three flown DPA overhead with four of our Sony radio packs also in use for one of the pieces. The radio packs are attached to chairs mostly by cable ties, but I did found that no local hardware shop sells square saddle clips. Cheap handles can work though …

The opening piece has a few mirrored flats with projectors set-up behind them but is otherwise a blackbox. Pieces two have the scanachrome backdrop for one and a black backing for the other. The final piece has three large plastic flats on three sides with german masking behind. That’s going to be a fun interval change.

The hard flats are basically a slightly impressionistic mock painting of naked men at one of those parties that women most definitely aren’t invited to.

[/shop talk]

As far as we can determine at this stage, the first three pieces seem to follow the neoclassical ballet/modern dance mould quite closely. The last piece is really designed around the ’surprise me’ brief and seems to be particularly aimed at ribbing Catholics with pregnant members of clergy, rape scenes, and an electrocution to finish. With the Pope in a starring role and the constant backdrop of naked, intertwined men, the final piece is constructed entirely with the aim of being shocking.

Wonder how well it will go down in Rome later in the tour?

As far as we are concerned, it seems to be shock for the sake of shock without any reason for inclusion. Of couse, we haven’t seen the piece yet so we could be mistaken …

But it’s this final piece that had that lovely floor, it’s this piece that the constructors had to come back in to cut yet more holes out of the flats (the gap between naked men has ceased to be other naked men and is now gaps to see the black serge behind – maybe that’s deliberatly based on the creator of the Ballet Russes – naah …), and as two of the flats have to be stored flown out then brought in during the interval change and turned 90 degree to form the side walls (while LX strike the booms), this is the piece that has a sweepstake on the length of the first night interval change (from 20 to 50 minutes, place your bets here), it’s this piece that has all those onstage mics and the floods and LEDs set into the raised wooden floor (and which lights have been mostly cut AFTER getting them to work), and it’s this piece that cost me a nights sleep.

Not nightmares from the constant cock, mind but an actual night of not sleeping to finish adding lights.

Each piece has been given roughly two days to tech and rehearse before we put it all together – mostly this seems to be fine. However, one of the original ideas for the temple of cock was to outline all the figures with fairy light (remember this whole show has to tour …)

Sadly, this wasn’t cut merely trimmed down so the lighting crew spent the better part of a day working out how to line of the figures with so-called unbreakable fairy lights – so far not broken par se but we like a challenge …

In any case, the end of the first day saw one figure outlined and two more figures needing to be as completed as possible with two remaining strings of lights and one night.

Having already being at work for twelve hours, what I wanted to do was go home to my bed. Instead, myself and several other luckless techs found ourselves spending another eight hours drilling cock.

The flats are made from two layers of hard plastic with internal supports, kinda similar to a cheap conservatory roof. to install these fairy lights, the spacing had to be marked on the front. Then a pilot hole drilled (either carefully pulsing to avoid ripping the fabric stuck on the front – or scoring with a knife first). Then a second hole had to be drilled from the rear to widen the hole (and this had to be drilled into a scrap bit of wood to further avoid ripping the cloth).

Then a third drill had to be used for the rear layer of plastic to fit the fairy light housing in.

Then it had to be inserted, which would normally involve a bit more knife work to make the hole in the fabric wide enough as the speed of the drill was enough to melt it to itself.

Then it had to be glued into place with a hot glue gun. Then the wires had to be taped against the flat so that they can’t catch against anything.

And where the string crosses a brace, then most likely a bulb will have to be black-takked to stop the light spilling through

And where the string crosses an upright support, the string needs to be able to break to allow for touring so the strings have to be arranged that one of the connectors lines up there, or the string cut and re-wired to accept IEC plugs and sockets (which are definitely one of the most annoying connectors to wire up).

And the stage left figure starts a metre of the floor and goes up to around 6 metres so that all needs to done at height.

But it’s not too bad as the stage right figure is only a few metres tall.

And the strings are around 20 metres, with a light less than every 10cm.

That’s a lot of holes to drill.

As it turned out, we didn’t manage to break any of them, in the sense of having broken glass. We did manage to kill two or three individual bulbs though (that’s what the black tak is also for …).

On the whole, you can see why this particular piece is not my favourite. And that’s before the standard devising rigmarole of all the artistic types butting heads and all the technical types getting short-tempered (and callouses)

There was a reason why I’ve been at a receiving house these last few years (at least one).

Still, the cock shop has been stashed for a couple of days while the projector pieces go through their tech. And contrary to popular belief and experience, it hasn’t been too painful so far.

Of course, the mirrored flats only went up today, including the piece that’s flown point down at our increasingly vunerable dance floor. And the issue of time coding the composer for the offstage quartet is yet to be addressed …

I’ll sign off here for now … there will be more …

cushion of customs

I’m going to skip pass the Apple conference we hosted (no iPhones there so you aren’t missing anything) and pass the the Canadian troupe with the red velvet curtains, mainly as I didn’t work on them and couldn’t give much more info.

Another smallist show graced our boards last week as we gear up for a couple of large incoming shows, one a four choreographer collaboration and one another festival (details on both of those will follow, probably maybe)

This show also has dancers from around the world and is set, appropriately enough, in an airport departure lounge and was with us briefly after Poland before turning around and visiting Paris straight after.

Not a huge issue til we, and more importantly they, found that the journey from Poland had been a little rough on the kit

[shop talk]

I’m starting with sound again, mainly to get it out the way. Entirely our system this week, only the playback source was brought in – a Macbook running QLab. A couple of PCC160s downstage and a Beyer MCE90 midstage in the wings each side were used for a little light lifting of some spoken words. A single T12 was added to our normal Max12 sidefill to act as a source speaker for the main set item, a mockup of an airport departure board.

Lighting wise, the show is a mainly conventionals rig with overhead washes. A single VL1000 is used for some solo spots, one of which has to traverse with a dancer.

Control is from a Strand 300, at least it is normally. While I was fishing two loose screws from the circuit innards and hunting for a 2A slow-blow fuse replacement, the company lighting tech got his first taste of ETC Eos. And no sooner had I got power back to the 300 then the companies nearly brand new DMX shutter on the projector stopped accepting DMX.

[/shop talk]

I’m dropping out of shop talk here, but it’ll still contain some technical content. The airport departure board set piece was flown and was the major item, other than 13 black wooden chairs scattered around the black box staging.

Rather than being an active piece, the words of the board were cast onto the screen from a projector flown on the number 1 lighting bar.  The words on the board change throughout the piece and are often a trigger for the next section – the dance equivalent of the Hollywood device of receiving advice from public display boards.

This requires careful lining up so that characters look like they are part of the screen rather than being projected onto it.

Which is a problem if the projector doesn’t work.

Randomly the projector would not accept any kind of VGA signal input during the set-up though the next day was (mostly) fine. And while the companies lighting board ran through an afternoon’s worth of soak test (for power, not water absorption), we found that the VGA to ethernet adaptors being used to send the video from the laptop at the sound control position wouldn’t output to VGA at the same til – which was a little dull when most of the second circle couldn’t see the airport board and were reliant on our screens permantly rigged for surtitle use.

The only way we managed to get signal to those screens was to use the VGA output of the projector – this ended up as about a 60 metre run to the VGA splitter used to feed the 2nd circle screens. all of which was fine until one of the VGA:ethernet adaptors glitched during the first show.

The projector will hold the last image for three minutes when it loses a signal before shutting down – so the first we knew of any problems was the loss of all images. Luckily a quick reset managed to bring it all back without pausing the show.

So of the technical kit the company brought in with them, it all suffered a failure at some point within 24 hours of being  through Polish customs … it may be a big co-incidence … may be …

Anyone know how powerful an X-ray has to be before it starts to fry electronic equipment?

The show is fairly short (yay!) and each of the dancers brings their own skills, whether it be kathok or classical dance. I’m sure they’d appreciate cushioned seats one day … and I presume that they don’t look at real airport lunges the same way any more …

Silence is golden

Typically it goes from one extreme to the other.

After the demand for noise with last weeks flamenco, this weeks continental visitors required no noise at all.

The choreography demands that the dancers take cues from the breathing of the other performers – which can be surprisingly hard to make out over air conditioning, rack fans and a thousand people watching your every precise move.

Kinda a shame then that the rackmounted control equipment for our powered flying system has a number of fans that very definitely don’t run on silent bearings …

[shop talk]

We’ll start with sound as I’m already touching on the issue.

Once again we’ve swopped out our EAW JF260 with d&b E12. They sound better, are much much lighter and have lots going for them, apart from the hire cost, of course. The rest of the system is our usual in-house set-up other than the desk which is a DM2000, another regular kit visitor.

Monitors this week are being done by a pair of flown Q-10’s from upstage and a pair of our Max 12’s downstage.

Staging is black box and black marley with a large number of wooden chairs used by the dancers during the piece.

There’s a fair bit of lighting about the place – bar height is less than 6m, short for our stage and there’re a fair amount of lights on floor stands and short standing scaff poles.

This company showing two pieces on our stage this time and the second piece has even less lighting – flourescent fixtures predominant, including tubes that live and switch on at a 19m flown height – illuminating the mostly bare stage that is required for the second piece.

All the chairs are replaced by a baby grand and a few small flats with the rear facing towards the audience.

[/shop talk]

Both pieces use a lot of repetition and can be challenging to watch if you don’t have a high boredom threshold – the critics were split fairly evenly and we managed to get walk-outs – and let’s be honest, people walking out of a show is a bad thing. Despite sayings to the contrary, I do suspect that bad publicity is worse than no publicity in this case

No frontiers may be all seen before

it may say flamenco without frontiers on the tin … for us it’s just another show.

It starts as any newly devised show starts with tech requests coming in last minute – never the best idea over bank holiday weekend.

Still, hire companies are used to the score with flamenco shows so the last minute requests for kit are taking on board without missing a beat (I worry sometimes if our PITA fee goes up on these gigs …)

[Shop talk]

Despite being for one company and not several, this ends up being equivalent to our standard flamenco rig.

Five elements of Q1 on two Q-subs ground stacked to each side of the pros with a single C690 on front fill – all powered from D12 amps supplements our in-house EAW rig with our Max 12 on sidefill detail onstage for the few dancers.

Control is our Legend out front with a whole heap of dbx compressors and Lexicon, TC and Yamaha effects. Playback is from Macbook – though I never caught which software was in use. Graphics are KT DN360 – which I have to admit I’m going off – not from the sound but that I don’t entirely trust the input connectors – there never seems to be a catch and there’s far too much play with the connector for my liking. We dropped a hire company for a time because of these but I’m starting to see that with other hire, which makes me wonder about the quality of the build now (and brings that hire company back onto our list)

Monitors are mostly in-ears this time around – Sennheiser packs with Shure ear buds – and it does make the stage volumes a lot easier to deal with.

This is particularly useful as the ArrayCalc shows an awful lot of low end spilling from the stacks. There’s not much we can do from these – getting an extra Q-sub a side would allow a CSA set-up which would work wonders there but would then raise the high elements above the stalls. The engineers on flamenco seem to be able to deal with the low end so we go with it for now … for now.

Anyways, monitor desk is a H3000 with outboard as per FOH. The majority of mics are DPA4067 and 4061, the cardiod pattern preferred for more control on the pattern . All are on Sennheiser 5012 packs. The few wired mics in use for performers were SM57, SM91 and SM98, mostly on percussion instruments. A mere four PCC160 along the front and two MKH60 for the stomps – far less than the 25 we normally expect.

FOH desk was full to the gunnels (sp?) and even the larger monitor desk was getting a workout. bss active splits took all inputs to both desks and to the multi-track recording that took place each night. And we even had to break out our small 12 way LA Audio splitter once the company added extra channels of mic. The LA Audio MS1224 normally gets used so we can monitor our in-house Sony radio mics so it was nice to actually use it in anger, for what I think is the first time of supplying phantom power.

Set was the standard flamenco floor screwed into a second floor laid on top of our none shall screw into sprung floor. Musicians were arrayed in a semi circle with traditional flamenco one side and Venezualan on the other. Upstage were a number of banners in white and primary colours which were flown in and out during the show and were lit in a variety of colours, ‘overwriting’ the base colour as desired.

Lighting was a little more involved than the standard top and sides – mostly due to a batch of MAC600s. Other than control from our ETC Eos, and some incidents with Gateway PSU’s blowing up, I can’t say much on lighting – I’m normally a little busy …

[/shop talk]

The show itself was pretty good – not as overbearing as we expect from a flamenco show but still more amplified than I think such a show requires.

I mentioned in shop talk that it was traditional flamenco arrayed against venezualan instruments – guitars and cajon against cuatro and tambora (which is was) but I also remember reading somewhere that the cajon has only been in the flamenco tradition since the 1970s … long enough to be a tradition but I wonder now what they used before.

The two styles seemed to mesh reasonably well to me (as they should) though the critics didn’t seem to think as much of the non-Flamenco parts. I wonder if the presence of non-flamenco show  took them by surprise – despite the title of the show. It was a to and fro musical exchange with the obligatory mash up at the end, though that didn’t detract from the show.

For us all these show reinforce is the necessity of pre-planning, tidy install, GOOD labelling and quick thinking.

And earplugs.

It does always leave me wondering though why shows that place such importance on the sound (and rightly so) bring only one engineer. They don’t expect the engineer to be in two places at once (not always anyway) so why not bring monitors and FOH. I would have thought the extra cost would be worth the investment for ensuring the show always sounds it’s best. On this occasion, our in-house engineer had worked with the company before and the show was well-received.

Ah well, another one gone and more to come …

No wacka-waving here …

Had another of those holidays where we actually go away and don’t help someone move house, or remove fence posts, or rewire a house.

It all kinda came together a little oddly.

‘ Let’s go visit family in Wales’ said Mr and Mrs C. ‘ Let’s spend a few days in the rest of Wales first as a small holiday.’ ‘Let’s see if a couple of friends what to join us.’ ‘How many have we got joining us’ – ‘over half dozen and we don’t know at least one of them.’ ‘Oh’.

Mr and Mrs C were making their way from Caernarfon in North Wales past Cardigan Bay to Swansea. Mr Ben and Mrs Mr Ben had decided to spend the same week camping in Snowdonia. Sgt Stubbs had agreed to come along with Mr and Mrs C and test the capabilities of his liver. Wife number one and I decided to spend several days in North Wales. Jon-O was to come up for the weekend and young Kevin was to spend the weekend finding out what Mr and Mrs Ben saw in camping.

And all this arrangment took place via the medium of Facebook – modern looking people that we are.

Mrs C mentioned that for the couple of days in Caernerfon they would be staying at the Menai Hotel.So we duly switched on the Internet and hunted down said hotel in the glorious town of Bangor.

Wife number one had been looking after most of the organisational arrangements but on the train up, I did remember something about Mr Ben going to Caernerfon before coming to say hullo to us but didn’t think much of it.

We arrived in Bangor and carried the bags up what would turn out to be a comparatively shallow hill, past a local Morrisons and reached the B&B&B of the Menai Hotel (that’s Bed and Breakfast and Bar to the uninitiated).

As we signed in, we casually asked if Mr and Mrs C had signed in yet.

“No one of that name will be signing in at all.”

Oh.

Headed up to our room, we sat for a moment wondering the absence of Mr and Mrs C. Then we remembered the free Wi-Fi and the mention of Caernarfon and did a little searching.

Who knew that there was Menai Bank Hotel?

Anyways, Mr and Mrs Ben and young Kevin turned up to say hello. Young Kevin was a little nonplussed to be back in Bangor as he’d already spent a couple of days exploring Bangor town – only to find, to be honest, that there wasn’t much to find there.

We meandered down from the Menai Hotel on to the high street and noticed that post 6pm on a Sunday is a very bad time to try to find any kind of something to do.

Even the fish and chip shops were closed.

The choice was between Yates and Weatherspoons.

We choose the former and there was a minute or two of ‘have we made the wrong choice?’. Then the football game finished and the pub emptied, leaving us to enjoy a very good pub meal in relative peace.

It was still early when the others returned to their campsite to set up beds for the week. Wife number one and I wandered down to the third B of our hotel to see what they offered. I noted the chocolate fudge cake for later consumption, there was a single dart board, digital jukebox and two pool tables that even had a selection of different sizes cues.

The next morning, we ate a continental breakfast of toast, Alpen and tea then made sure we had our all weather gear handy. Today the plan was to scale the tallest mountain in Wales names after a lord with the intent of meeting Mr and Mrs C, Sgt Stubb and Jon-O at the top.

Yep, we were planning to brave Snowdon. Though while we were looking at the what we thought would be easy Miners Track, the others were going to take the train to the summit.

It seems a little like cheating to take the train up a mountain but hey …

By the time we had left Bangor, reached Pen-y-Pass, saw the lack of parking spaces, started to drive down Llanberis Pass, parked under a rock, caught a double decker bus back to Pen-y-Pass and posed for the obligatory pre-walk group photo, it had passed midday.

The timer started and we began. It took about five minutes before we doffed the all weather coats and fleeces and put on sun glasses. It was a little surprising, though welcomed, to be out walking in North wales and not be rained on.

We walked past several of the lakes on the mountain and frowned slightly at the presence of grey clouds obscuring the summit itself. Mr Ben was on the track on the way up, and I don’t just mean on the Miner’s Track. As we reached Llyn Gladow, I was the first to spot the subject of his search, half-hidden in ruins.

It cheered up Mr Ben to see the sleek green lines of a land Rover part way up Snowdon. We continued up and, after a quick asthma attack from Mrs Mr Ben, by Glaslyn Mr Ben was even more pleased to find a white long wheel base Land Rover – which is a nifty trick to manage up a single stony track.

Unfortunately, at Glaslyn we also found the highlight of Miners Track – a steep scramble up to join with Pyg’s Track.

It was about this point that wife number one reached her stride and we began to range ahead of the other three.

For those still curious as to why two land rovers were up the mountain – at least one of them was providing transport for the team who were building steps up the steep near climb where Pyg and Miners meet. not bad for a day job “What did you do today dear?” “Well we put steps onto Snowdon.”

At the point where the track we followed reached the railway up and the path up from Llanberis, we pretty much walked straight into the cloud we’d been viewing earlier.

Back on went the fleeces, coats and hats.

We reached the summit a little over 3 hours after starting up for a view that could be measured in metres.

Then, in true English spirit we had a cup of tea.

However, in, not quite true, English spirit this wasn’t drunk luke-warm from a thermos – rather it was drunk inside the cafe at the top of Snowdon.

I had jokingly asked a fellow mountain walker on his way down if he’d left the kettle on for us – he said yes and that the sausage sarnies were very good. I didn’t go for those – instead wife number one and I shared a Welsh Oggie (it’s a Cornish Pasty) and a cream scone.

Then Mr B blinked nicely at the station master and we managed to buy tickets for the train journey back down the mountain.

Some of you might think that taking the train down is also cheating – bear in mind, firstly that we had made it up the mountain. And secondly, by the time we were down and had reached the bus stop to return to where we’d parked it had gone 6pm. After last nights close down of Bangor we were a little cautious – it turned out to be a good thing we were as the last bus of the evening up Llanberis pass was at 6.17pm.

Back in the car and we went firstly to the campsite in Beddgelert where Mr and Mrs Ben and young Kevin were staying for showers and clothes and tea from a wok then up to our hotel in Bangor via a quick stop at a local shop to purchase a puncture repair kit

Apparently Mr and Mrs Ben’s air mattress wasn’t Welsh sharp stone proof.

We left them in the bar and had our own showers and changes then all headed off to meet the others who had been up and down the mountain and had then gone underground to a slate mine.

Readers concerned that we had chosen Yates over Weatherspoons last night can rest easily that we meet up in Caernarfon Weatherspoons.

The food wasn’t as good though, and the chocolate fudge cake was sorely lacking (I do speak as an expect chocolate fudge cake consumer).

We were dropped back off at our hotel to leave Mr Ben, Mrs Mr ben and young Kevin with the fun task of breaking into their campsite which closed at 10pm (about as we were all ordering dessert) and then attempting to repair the air mattress. In the Dark.

Jon-O returned home the next morning via Bangor. A crafty bit of scheduling last night meant that yet again wife number one and I could enjoy a lie in then get picked up – this time in Morrisons cafe. Morrisons do a good coffee and bacon sandwich.

We travelled this morning with Mr and Mrs C and Sgt Stubb with the intention of meeting the other others (keep up) in the car park for Port Meirion.

Unlike the vague hope of meeting at a tourist exhibition yesterday (I doubt that Weatherspoons counts) we did actually manage this time and all headed off to look at the set of The Prisoner.

It is a very picturesque town but in our usual vein, we were there for ice cream and cake. Wife number one and I stopped for cake and tea while the rest made do with ice cream for now and a stroll past the concrete boat to a sea side tower.

Meeting back together we got distracted again by the cafe – this time for lunch proper (Welsh stew I think I had) then meandered through the acres of ground that lie in the Port Meirion estate, including the Dog graveyard and a tree stump with numerous coins embedded in the top.

Expensive way to stop people sitting down, I thought.

Choosing not to wait for the castle to open for dinner, we returned to our respective cars (myself and wife number one now back with the Bens) and departed. Back to Beddgelert for us and I finally succumbed to the lure of cream tea. It came with a piece of Welsh cake which I left til later as we had the debate of cream or jam first on the scone (it is quite patently jam first BTW).

It now being around 6pm, we decided to head back to our hotel. Via Argos

Why?

Apparently Mr Ben’s brand new puncture repair kit didn’t repair punctures all that well.

It also seems be be nap time … and here’s the proof:

I have comfy shoulders

Argos was open (contrary to Bangor tradition) and we found on the same business park estate an open Tesco. Why the two ladies wanted to go clothes shopping at 7pm on a Tuesday in North Wales, I have no idea but they weren’t going in my holiday bag so …

My credit card yes but I have to draw the line somewhere.

We stopped at the bar again to allow Mr Ben to show off his pool shark tendencies then they left early to avoid a repeat of last night.

Apparently the catering truck driver was a little miffed when he had to drive through a hedge because some idiot had parked his Land Rover on the approach to Beddgelert campsite in an attempt to break in and repair an air mattress.

I say attempt as the air mattress wasn’t repaired, of course.

Slightly less of a lie in the next day and a distinct lack of orange juice and marmalade at breakfast but we made it to Bangor to see young Kevin board the daily train to London (the one that Jon-O boarded the previous day and the one that wife number one and I were scheduled to be on the following day

Mr and Mrs C had kidnapped Sgt Stubb and were even then subjecting him to a day along Cardigan Bay. Brutes.

The four of us left decided that what people don’t do enough of is visit power stations. So with some slightly suspect map reading from the Sat Nav we made our way to Dinorwig – the Electric Mountain.

Actually it’s a slate pile with a lake top and bottom.

When we got there, it turned out we would have to wait over three hours to get on a one hour tour. There was a shop selling cake – the decision wasn’t difficult.

In fact the biggest reason was the horizontal rain that started up as we were at the wrong end of the car park. The slate museum was not very far away at all and we could have gone there and come back.

This was true Welsh rain though and the shop had caramel shortbread and chocolate cake.

Two and a half hours later, the craft fair, gift shop, art exhibition and two science bits (some banners and a machine to demonstrated the power of an empty tube with a hole in the lid) we were wondering if we’d made the right decision.

Three hours and five minutes later when the opening video presentation to the tour was audio less, we were really wondering. Then it was CountryFile explaining about the tour and things were really getting to a point.

Luckily at that point, they decided to drive a bus into the mountain to keep us entertained.

Actually into the tunnels under the mountain so we could see for ourselves what a power station using pumped water looks (and sounds) like. If you have an interest in big machinery and don’t mind being underground, it’s interesting.

Otherwise, Snowdon is just across the road …

Our interest sated, we checked the map to see what no longer rain-swept part of North Wales, we wanted to visit in the late afternoon hours of Wednesday.

“Anglesey” said Mrs Mr Ben randomly.

So we did.

We didn’t go to Holyhead – deciding to stop in Rhosneigr instead.

Nice if you have an interest in kite flying (the kite was back at Mr Bens house) or wind surfing (so was the turtle wax) but nothing else, on the island appealed.

That said, the fish and chip shop in Rhosneigr does a brilliant chips and fish – and even has Vimto in a can!

Bypassing Llanfairpwllgwyngyll on the way back, we stopped for a quick Kodak moment past the Menai bridge then returned to the bar for the final time to try the food at last and have one last game of pool.

Not bad but again the chocolate fudge cake was disappointing.

One final lie in then a brisk walk down to the station to catch the regular train for our return to the Big Smoke. Mr and Mrs Ben staying on to visit the slate museum and drive along the coast scaring sheep.

More photos can be found at Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomhares/sets/72157622211736733/

More photos can be found also on Facebook – if you know where to look …