A Line Of Picnic Benches - Fri Jul 10

Something’s been biting us – those of us who’ve been wearing three-quarter length shorts, anyway. I think it’s something in the Suffolk Punch Beer Garden where we dutifully arrive post-workshop, -rehearsal and –show almost every evening in Ludamus Fortnight. As t’was and t’is and shalt ever be. Lug the picnic benches into a long line down the bottom end and ruminate on the day’s labour. Although this year we’re getting moaned at by the bar staff cos they’ve got to walk a few yards down to us to collect the empties! Honestly… I can’t believe we have the temerity to expect them to do that! I mean, it’s not as if it’s their job or anything! ;-)

Anyway, something’s been biting us. One of them bites that when you scratch it it gets worse. My calves look like I’ve got the plague.

Don’t worry though, I’m not going to segue excruciatingly into some kind of “bitten by the Theatre Bug” trope. We were all long-since bitten by that particular insect anyway – and infected with a fatal dose of whatever poison it happens to carry. (Typhus Andronicus? Molièria? Bard Flu? Hmmm…. Ahem.)

There are precious few joys in life akin to the all-embracing feeling of Doing A Show, especially so cheerful and friendly a show as a Ludamus Show (but I’ve found it with other companies too over the years). The camaraderie that develops when you’re squashed into tiny changing rooms, buttock-to-chin with your fellow actors; when you're frantically running around scouring the barely-lit dock for lost props; when you're wearily running the weaker scenes over and over again at the end of a twelve-hour day; and when you're trying to work out how to move a full-scale shed on and off stage as subtly as possible etc. It can’t be matched.

Has there been time for anything else? Well, not really – that’s part of the fun! Everything else gets pushed to one side for a couple of weeks, and for some reason I find that really quite a pleasant thing. I’m sure it’ll all still be there next week, when I can address it all in the post-Show comedown.

Having said that, I’ve found the odd hour here and there to plod ever on through the Monkey Kettle Inbox. And Diane and I have finally started our epic quest to explore and map the Brickhill Woods. That’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years – our ultimate aim is to produce a giant canvas replica of the paths and clearings of that beautiful place.

And because my brain’s too fatigued to concentrate on anything too heavy, I’ve put Ulysses and the Canterbury Tales to one side for a bit and have been flipping once again through The Letters Of J R R Tolkien. I was particularly glad to rediscover that he has the same views on The Hobbit as I do:

“It was unhappily really meant, as far as I was conscious, as a ‘children’s story’, and as I had not learned sense then, and my children were not quite old enough to correct me, it has some of the sillinesses of manner caught unthinkingly from the kind of stuff I had had served to me, as Chaucer may catch a minstrel tag. I deeply regret them. So do intelligent children.”

Amen, John Ronald. I say again, if in doubt, hit The Silmarillion.

Right then. Second Night. What have I forgotten? “How come when MY Nanna come round, SHE’S always naked and covered in blood?” “MY Nanna”. “MY Nanna”. “SHE’S always”. “SHE’S always”.

(wanders off, still muttering lines under breath)