Some people have barbeques, we have sledgehammers …

Another bank holiday, another bout of DIY.

And yet again, we travelling to a friends to help them demolish something and install something else.

Wife number one and I sold our car for double glazing so we are having to take public transport.

Unlucky us.

So we have packed our tools and some spare clothes and some water and a map to get there and some belated wedding presents and we open the front door and then have to repack as we need the umbrella because it’s raining.

Do you know what Murphy’s Law is?

So we struggle to the train station to find that the announcement man is broken and isn’t writing the sign that say what train is coming to which platform.

So we put our heads together and it hurts cos we moved them together fast so we instead use several years of using trains at the station to guess which platform the next train is coming on.

And by looking at which platform has the most people.

We are all wrong.

So I and wife number one and everyone else dash for the train.

We miss it.

But it’s okay as the station man makes an announcement saying when the next train is.

While the train is still pulling out.

Oh.

Why do station announcers think that anyone, anywhere can hear an announcement while several dozen tons of metal, plastic and glass accelerate a few metres away?

But it’s okay as the station man is waving at us to say where the next train is.

It’s on the platform I and wife number one have just left.

Oh …

So we all cram onto the train and head into town so we can change at another station to get some tickets to travel to yet another station.

We miss that train as well.

Thinking ‘bugger it’, we buy some tea and cookies to cheer us up while we wait for the next train.

The tea is cold and the cookies are oily.

We have to wait 30 minutes for the train to spend 30 minutes getting to the destination station to find out that we have to walk to Mr and Mrs C’s.

Uphill.

At least, it’s stopped raining, I say sunnily to wife number one.

Oh look, stormclouds.

We arrive to find the Present Mrs Ben loading herself into her car. I wander out into the garden to find out why and am handed a sledgehammer.

Do you know why people back away?

I don’t. (where’s my evil smile emoticon?)

While I attack some concrete posts, wife number one says hello to Mr and Mrs C, and Mr Ben and the Present Mrs Ben (when she gets out of the car).

And to Sgt Stub, and Ms L and Mr J.

And to Bailey the Cat.

He’s in charge.

Apparently.

So I take turns in breaking concrete posts then we load concrete posts and shrubs and wire fencing into Mr Ben’s car (Mr Ben has a BIG car – he has all those tools remember).

Then while we have tea and brownies, the Present Mrs Ben and Ms L go to hear the tinkle at the tip.

The tinkle of metal, what were you thinking?

Then we had Mr J a spade and Mr C a shovel and wife number one and I and Mr Ben start to measure Mr C’s wood.

Yes, it takes three of us – it’s 6 foot a section.

The new posts for the new fence of course, what were you thinking?

We measure three times to make sure then we put a post into a hole and Mr C manfully pours water from a watering can into the hole and Mr Ben manfully pours a bag of postcrete in and childfully uses his hand to check that it’s gone all round the post and speedily goes to wash his hand when we mention the ten minute curing time.

Silly Mr Ben.

So once Mr Ben has checked that his hand still works, we continue (with a stirring stick!) and we dig more holes and set more posts, all the time checking with tape measure and string and sections of fence that each post is the right distance apart.

Then we stop for Garfield time (lasagne and chocolate cake).

Mmmmmmm.

Can you say ‘that feels better’?

Then Bailey the Cat says we can continue so we start to attach the sections of fence to the new posts. The first section goes on fine for all you who were expected the posts to be the wrong distance apart.

It was the second section that needs a gentle touch (and a selection of hammers).

And the third section that needing Mr Ben’s gentle touch (with a power saw).

But the fourth section was fine.

And the fifth section would have been fine if the tree hadn’t of been there.

But we knew the tree was there so the fifth and sixth sections are designed to allow for the tree.

By going round it.

Tastefully, of course.

Clever us!

Finally we tidy up, ourselves as much as the garden.

Then Mr Ben and the Present Mrs Ben say they will give us a lift if we help them load the car.

Mr Ben says to take my hand out of his pocket and let go of the keys – a simple yes would have worked.

Oh.

So we go back to ours and Mr and Mrs C and everyone else decide to keep the barman company at the local pub.

Apart from Bailey, who is testing the fence’s structural loading.

By sitting on it.

And wife number one and I get back to ours and show off the new kitchen.

The Present Mrs Ben can’t see it.

So we turn the lights on.

And when I get asked what we did for the bank holiday, I say:

“Well, we went to Mrs C’s to chop down her bush and take it away and measured Mr C’s posts and filled their holes with wood, all topped by brownie.”

Why do I get such odd looks …

helping you work, rest and play

The summer show is one of the hot tickets of the season apparently.

The entire run is sold out and we’ve even put extra matinees on the demand is that great.

It’s something of a departure for us as we don’t normally have musicals in, even ones that have as much of a dance element as this one.
We are a lot more hands off on this one than normal. It’s a tour that’s been doing the international circuit for a while and which then splits into UK and international tours after us (Wimbledon and Greece next) and we are noticing the longer running time – dance pieces are normally down and out inside of two hours. On this show, the two hour mark is the beginning of the second act.

[Shop talk]

Lighting wise, it’s a predominantly moving head rig – most of which seem to be various flavours of MAC2000. Which we prefer, as they just seem to be less fussy than the equivalent VLs. And as the choreography is fixed in stone from the 1st version 50 years ago, lighting positions are fairly standard.

PAR64 with Forerunner scrollers make up the booms and a couple of HMI and some birdies is the entirety of the toured rig, supplemented by our FOH wash in Mccandless friendly colours
A white cyc is used upstage to project still images of the Big Apple denoting all the different locales and there is a two storey fire escape structure either side of stage – automated to move to difference positions for different scenes.
I don’t know what system is being used to control it but it’s works well and hasn’t yet (touch wood) messed up

There aren’t too many surprises on the sound side of things either. That said, the first time I wrote this list it was during a few days off and I hadn’t been in the pit since the show when up.

Oops – so the proper list is as follows

Driven by a PM1D, the system is a ground stack of V-DOSC (6 elements a side plus 2 subs) to each side and a flown cluster of four centre of the pros.

L’accoustic 8XT make up the front fill and a couple of UPM are pointing upstage for the cast. THere are also 2 UPA’s a side flown a few metres up (I can’t help thinking the E12 would have been nicer – purely from a weight – or lack of – point of view. I digress). It’s all powered by Lab gruppen and controlled by Omnidrive processing with a remtoe tablet wirelessly linked in.

The band is 20 strong and is the usual DPA clip mic on strings. Mics on brass and woodwind are all Beyerdynamic MC930; a little unusual but it doesn’t suffer for it. Percussion has a mix of MC930 and AKG C414 on overheads with an SM91 (I think) on the kick and Sennheiser 504 on toms. The cast are all wearing radio mics – about 30 of the little buggers. Most are SK5012s but there are ten or so Shure packs.

Sound effects are rather quaintly played from CD and a couple of PCM81 effects units are keeping the Tascam playback company.

In-house rig isn’t doing much but we do have some of our EAW’s giving a little more high end to the circles.

[/shop talk]

It’s all fairly self-contained so, honestly, we’ve being spending a little more time than normal on the Xbox 360 which is normally used for events.

The rest of the crew know which electrician is on duty by which game is in the console. I have mainly been killing aliens co-operatively with the radio mic runner; the chief has been practising his racing lines in racing simulators. One of the house lighting techs is working on his back-swing in golf while the other has been bringing his own PS3 in and strumming up with a guitar controller.

I don’t really want to go into what that all says about our psyches …

I’m also not complaining too much – the autumn season is shaping up to be a busy one. So a show that, once we got it in and up, doesn’t ask much of us makes a nice change.

It’ll be a while before we get any thing similar in …

Aping it

Readers from our adventures in sunny weymouth will remember that I mentioned GoApe – in particular the Moors Valley course.

Well, I threatened we’d be headed to another GoApe and for the first sunday in August, that was what we did.

Wife number one and I weren’t celebrating a wedding anniversary this time (apparently, you should only celebrate that once a year …) so the Present Mrs Ben graciously decided to have a birthday so we could celebrate that instead.

To get there was a mini adventure of itself.

Myself and wife number one were picked up by Mr and Mrs C early sunday morning.

“15 mins from yours to theirs” they were told by Mr Ben and the Present Mrs Ben. Maybe for the crow but in the real world nearer 30 mins (gotta love that London traffic)

Then we started on the South circular, thought that we could save time going a little south through Norbury towards the A23/A3, failed, had a road closure, drove over A LOT of sleeping policemen (they didn’t wake up), found the A3, found the M25, then the M4 and hence to Wendover to arrive for the 1pm prompt start.

At about 1:17pm.

Luckily, at that point, there were so many people braving the sporadic rain that we were about to blast through the safety briefing and the quick first course to catch up with Mr and Mrs Ben and Sgt Stub in time for the high wire adventure proper.

Photos can be found on my Flickr.com page

As before, it was a most enjoyable experience. This time the stirrups hanging from hemp lines were bigger than my feet and at one point, there was actually a view that wasn’t tree (or ground).

There was also a higher drop-out rate – a higher rate of people not going through all the courses; not people dropping out of the trees.

Firstly the older couple in front of Mr Ben who were surprised when the second course wasn’t at the 6 foot height of the practice run – being instead at the normal 30 foot height.

Then the gentleman in the red hoodie whose vertigo kicked in after course 2.

We also seemed to lose a group of seven or eight before course 4. If you are passing Wendover Woods, keep your eyes open for a group in sit harnesses trying to find a wooden door.

Oh, and for the group of adults who brought their toddlers along to throw sticks at the Go Ape participants during the Tarzan swing – it’s not big and it’s not clever. I believe the Go Ape Stewards were 30 seconds from introducing you to some of the finer points of the British legal system.

Grrr.

As it barely rained while we were testing the tensile strength of trees, we decided to have a barbeque.

I think over the course of the barbeque I consumed (in order): chocolate fudge cake; flapjack; capri-sun; mug of tea (with cow juice); kettle crisp (singular); vegetarian kebab; sausage roll (cold); chinese style rib; burger with false cheese, real bread and interesting salad; satsuma; pear; bottle of water.

Just another regular Sunday lunch then …

Though, I don’t normally have Sunday lunch punctuated with the “whompfh” of people splatting into cargo nets.

We watched a man attempt to fly a kite with no wind in a narrow field lined with tall trees. Sadly, he did manage to take the kite home in one piece.

Of course, this was an English barbeque so the heavens opened once the meat was properly on the grill.

Still, that’s what trees are for (after climbing through them, of course).

When we left Wendover Woods at around 6.30, there were still a couple of die-hards in the trees.

I’m not certain where they hid the brollies.

It took another three hours to get back south of the river to the place we call home (and got to show off the new kitchen to Mr and Mrs C)

The challenge we are left with now though is – Bracknell or Thetford (or maybe Leeds Castle)? There’s another fifteen Go Ape sites around the country …

So many choices, too much work to have time to decide …