How it came to pass

What on earth led me to join this strange organisation. One that can take over your life and have you pulling your hair out. One that can drain and frustrate you. One that han reduce you to a nervous wreck worrying about the financial implications of everything you are doing. But also one that can give you some of the highest of highs and stretch your talents to new levels. And one that can provide you with some of the closest friend you will ever make. And in the case of producer here, enable you to meet your wife.
Well now.....
I'm a journalist. In my early years at the Windsor Express I worked with a woman... let's call her founder in Spain... and she was involved in another group, Riverside Players, in Old Windsor. She used to get me to review their shows for the paper, which included a memorable production of Grease for which I stupidly praised the actor who played Danny Zuko to high heaven. It would come back to haunt me later.
I carried on with the reviews even after she had left the paper. Then founder in Spain vanished. Well she and her husband, founder bloke I'll call him, had upped sticks and gone to Malta. I heard nothing of them for a long while.
Then one day.....
I was by now a sub-editor on the paper and took a call from this blast from the past. 'Hello,' said founder in Spain. 'I thought you might still be there. Can you put something in about our next show.' Having ascertained eventually that no, this wasn't Riverside Players, and yes, this was a new group in Colnbrook, I got a brief history of Colnbrook Amateur Stage Theatre.
She and founder bloke had come back from Malta and got together with another person from their Riverside past, I'll call her founder here, to set up Cast in October 1990. They and a few friends and some colleagues from the Surrey Herald newspaper, where founder in Spain was by now working, had formed a committee, thrown some cash together, written a script, recruited some more actors and put on their first production, Yet Another French Connection, in summer 1991. Among this group of Surrey Herald renegades were the man previously mentioned on these pages as Albert, a gentleman who can only be called domefur and that Danny Zuko I praised, who I have to refer to here as virtual dildo but won't explain why. And your imagination will take you in completely the wrong direction there.
When founder in Spain called me it was January 1992. A planned production of The Boyfriend had been dropped. She wanted me to advertise auditions for their next show in the paper. It was Grease. She told me I should come down.
I probably wouldn't have gone to the audition if it hadn't been for one of the other sub-editors, a bloke, saying we should. Well not just the two of us. The third sub editor, a girl, as well. And one of the reporters, now known here as Town Crier.
I rang her back and said we would be coming. She said it was something about newspaper people. We were all, advertising staff like her and the Surrey Herald lot or journalists like the four of us, natural exhibitionists who loved to be the centre of attention and always wanted to be on stage. Whatever the psychology of it, I am very, very glad she called.

Thought for the day: 'Let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start.' Do, Re, Mi. The Sound Of Music. Oh dearie me, that is both tame and obvious. Memo to self - come up with something a little more inspired tomorrow.