Kindle joy

 

Those lovely people @ Amazon turned this..

 On my way to work yesterday I managed to collect from the post office the replacement Kindle that the very helpful and apologetic 'Alex' from Amazon had sent me. Overjoyed would be something of an understatement.

I'd gotten up early enough to allow myself time to go and get the new kindle, and to then stop off somewhere with free wifi in order to get it synced and up to date with my books.

..... into this !!

This I did at the McDonald's in Havant. Admittedly this was rather cheeky of me, standing suspiciously by a pillar (not wishing to take a seat as I thought that would have been one infringement of their hospitality too far). Not having used their free wifi before, I had to take some time to setup an account with 'the cloud'. Easy peasy. Whilst I was doing this, the power kept flicking off in McDonald's. OK, so dodgy looking man, with strange looking hat, standing next to pillar, with strange device... when he walks in, the power starts going off. Hmm. That's.... strange. One of the workers did, in the end, come over and ask me if what I was doing would have any effect on the power situation. I thought it was quite funny, but I guess had I been in their situation I would have thought the same thing, and she was perfectly nice about it.

God I've missed my kindle. The real coup for me was the service given by the guy at Amazon. Such a shame that it is not the norm elsewhere. I've just got to package up and send back the broken one.

Last night I went with Helen, Bill, and Lin (and her friend Mo) to go see Phoenix Players' show, It Runs In The Family (by Ray Cooney). It's a very fast paced, farcical comedy which was very tightly written, acted and directed. It's a great script and we all really loved the show. There were some brilliant performances from some of the cast with particularly shining efforts from Ben McCready, John Lewin and Jeremy Fletcher.

After the show we decamped to the utterly deserted pub over the  road. Sadly for such a lovely pub, it looked like we were the source of the entire evening's takings. In the conversations, what we'd figured out was that Lin's friend, Mo is an artist, and she has wonderfully offered her services to create our show's poster. We tried (as best we could) to explain the point of the show - having to remind ourselves first - and what the characters are like - so that she could get some ideas of what sort of things to incorporate into the poster design, and figure out what sort of thing it was that we were looking for.

There is this excitement building about the show, coupled with the 'calm before the storm' that is the final few weeks of production. Need to get our thumbs out of our proverbial arses to make sure that people know about the show. If we don't we are going to go to all this trouble and no one will come see it.

Just when you think things can only get worse....

Well, lots of things are going down the shitter at the moment, but I am really glad to report that the play certainly isn't one of them.

We had a bit of a sad realisation last week when it suddenly dawned on us that we had fair few people coming to the workshop/rehearsals that were never going to actually be able to be in the play. (due to previous commitments). A mild, ok, less than mild set of panic set in, shortly followed by the determination to find a way of resolving this issue as soon as possible. (Or ASAP, as Jamie would say).

So, Helen and I asked the people at this weeks session to confirm if they were going to be able to be in the show, and also in which characters they were interested. This revealed real surprises itself, as has always been the case in our previous plays, what we normally find out is that the people that have shown themselves to be best at playing a particular role, the ones that shine at one part or another, are the ones that are interested in it. We've never had auditions, we've never really needed to. It always works out that in the workshop sessions and 'energised' readings of parts of the play someone stands out for each and every role.  Everyone shines at one role or another, and this means that there isn't so much a competition for any part, more an evolution and natural progression.

It also means that everyone has a chance to do something they enjoy and are really good at. It's so simple, and works so well, we really don't understand why there other drama companies don't seem to do the same.

With the people that we've got, which initially we thought was actually much less than it works out, we have been able at this point to definitely cast several of the roles in the play.

It wouldn't be right for me to announce them here, before we've had a chance to speak to everyone, and I don't want to kill the dramatic and exciting reveal at next weeks session.

The roles that we aren't immediately able to cast right now, we need to give those interested a chance to play with the characters. This will help us, and them to see who is the best person for that part.

I was starting to think that we were so short of people that we couldn't continue with the show, but as it's turned out this isn't the case. Isn't the case at all.

This has, in no small way been made possible by the help of The Phoenix Players. They have been great in putting people our way that aren't being used in their currently play (which is on the month before ours), and some of those (Steve, Allison) have been absolutely fantastic in helping drum up more interest and exposure. They've put us in touch with a chap that has a half hour slot on a local radio show, and will be able to raise the profile of the company and hopefully get along the last couple of people that we need. He's also going to be try and get us mentioned the big screen in Portsmouth Guildhall Square. It really does go to show that it's not what you know, its who.

So even if work is like a pile of dog excrement at the moment, I am at least revitalised, recharged and invigorated by the things happening outside. I can actually achieve things, I can get things done, make things happen. Not so useless after all, eh ?