So this is it then, a blog! If you knew how terrified of computers I am, and how difficult I find setting up anyhting like this you'd be mega impressed!
So what's it about? Basically I suppose to try to get more people to visit my website: www.classinacoat.co.uk and to share some of the things that hapen in my life as a Toastmaster and Master of Ceremonies, and believe me some of these things are worth sharing. They range from the jaw-droppingly "I don't believe he said that" through the excrutiatingly embarrasingly to the (most of the time) rib-ticklingly funny. Anyway, I hope you enjoy things and please feel free to add.
Frank Sinatra sang that he wanted to wake up in a town that didn't sleep. He wouldn't have gone to Ipswich.
In one of our shows, "What-ho Henry" we have a line about Cardinal Wolsey building Ipswich.
"Why?" comes the next line?
"Don't know" is the response.
When I wrote the show I did not realise how apposite the lines were.
Apart from a very small area down by the harbour it is a ghost town.
One would wonder why, when the town is so empty in the evenings, the town council put such a enormous fees on their car parks. As a consequence they have empty car parks and an enpty town.
In the words of that great philosopher of our time, Homer Simpson.....
"Doh!"
Enough of the rant.
Had a fabulous wedding last week at Woburn Abbey for Neal and Claire. It was a delight to be their Toastmaster.
Anyway gentle reader, I must go now. Performing in Dover Castle this weekend for English Heritage.
Well, once again this is to be a short (-ish) offering as I have just a few days at home before setting off touring around this green and pleasant land.
A large chunk of last week was spent in Sherwood Forest at the Robin Hood Festival. Regular readers, I know, will already know this.
We got away with the weather again and it was a reunion with lots of old friends. In particular this year, the inestimable Rob from "What A Palaver" invited a bunch of us to celebrate his 50th birthday.
In a rather amusing aside, Rob (pictured above) fancies himself as a bit of an amateur chef. This being he case he applied to go on "Come Dine With Me" He was rejected because he was "too normal"
I love it.
Many of the usual suspects were there, The Crazy Dutch Regulars, Sloe Gin, Izi (who manages the whole thing - genius woman) to name but a few.
The evening went well and wine was taken. It came to dessert and Jim from "The Singing Plague Victims" was encouraged to stand.
Jim is a genius. He read the dessert menu, and everyone of us, hard-bitten performers that we are, were rolling around the place in paroxysms of laughter. It was an absolute delight. If anyone ever has a chance to see them do.
Regular readers of this page (if you are one of them then you need to get out more) may recall in the past me mentioning occasionally Lynne and Barry, aka "The Duchess" and "Cosmic", erstwhile publicans of "The Bell". Well they left for pastures new and we now have a pub that seems to work.
Well Lynne and Barry apparently moved to a pub in Dunstable. Take a look at this link: Dunstable . I'm sure it is all co-incidental, or are the public of Dunstable a little less tolerant than those of Frisby-on-the-Wreake, because there is this to take into account too, just this week....
So then, back to work. A wonderful wedding at the Sculpture Gallery in Woburn last weekend. It was one of those weddings that was a joy to be a Toastmaster at. The good news is that I am back there this Saturday for the wedding of Neal and Claire. They really are very, very good there.
As well as all of this the acting bit is still bonkers. Wrest Park this week,
then straight to the gorgeous Framlingham and from there all the way down to Dover for the Bank Holiday.
All this rushing around means that I see very little of village life at the moment which is always a great shame as village life is usually a bit of a hoot. Mind you with it being holiday season and many people away things are a bit quiet by all accounts. Although some people have not blames the outbreak of rioting in our major cities on the guy being shot in Tottenham but on the police response to the, and the capture of and subsequent treatment of the Frisby Five allotment raiders.
Whilst on the Isle of Wight I went on another ghost walk. Regular readers may remember the ire and high dudgeon I expressed after the debacle of the walk I went on in York.
This one was better, but still a little like death by ghost walk. It was just too Looooooooooong. The only saving grace was that the bloke could tell a story. He must also have made a PACKET! Nearly a hundred people at £7 a time? Nice work if you can get it. And don't kill them off.
Anyway, I have to go now and set of to the mountainous terrain of South Norfolk.
It was a great few days and for a couple of them the weather was scorching. When I take my shirt off it looks as though I have someone else's head on. It's a completely different colour from the rest of my body.
We were working with some old friends of ours, the fabulous Hautbois.
Rick and Nell are always great fun to share a site with. There were some pirates there too. Did you know that pirate ladies smoke cigarettes? I didn't.
Anyway, we were the second most popular act there. We were upstaged by the donkeys.
However, it has to be said this is not the most humiliating upstaging that I have ever suffered.
I once had a storming arena performance upstaged by a demonstration of an automatic baling machine.
Now I wouldn't have minded if this happened, but it didn't. Still it was at a young farmers' do, so whatever gets you through the night I suppose.
Another couple of bookings in, one for this year and one for next.
The first is on a recommendation from Mahdu's, a large Indian caterer. It is at the Radisson at Heathrow. The other is for the brother of the first English wedding I worked at years ago,that of Gemma and Aaron.
Well, gentle reader that's nearly it, apart from the fact I have been invited to apply for a fellowship of the august body to which my professional Master of Ceremonies allegiances are pledged, The National Union of Toastmasters.
