No blog for Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Why? Well it's been a bit busy, that's why. I'm not going to talk about work, because that's almost as bad as talking about problems with printers. No, I shall tell you of the fun of Saturday and tomorrow I shall run through Sunday and let you know just how good our rehearsal was tonight.
I brought the second batch of postcards home with me from work on Friday night and the task for Saturday was for secretary, director her and producer to tour the bookshops of the area leaving them by the tills.
Of course we started in Langley... with a cooked breakfast. We managed to get the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker to put a poster up in their windows. Well the sandwich shop, the greengrocers and the hairdressers anyway. Plus a couple of others if we get lucky. And we paid (grrrr!) to put them in the Post Office and hardware store.
I think it might have helped that I was carrying a cuddly rabbit that secretary had bought in the Age Concern shop. I asked everyone behind the counters if they would like to say hello to George. Maybe they said yes out of sympathy. Maybe they said yes to get rid of me. Or maybe they said yes because they thought it was really amusing and if the play was as funny as me then it would definitely be worth seeing...
Slough was on the map for two reasons. I needed a haircut. Barber in Queensmere. 15 minutes. £10. Secretary happy. Director her happy. Sorted. The other being to visit the town's two bookshops, which the pair of them did while I was having my locks shorn. We were going to meet footnote and woman in street, but woman in street couldn't make it, so Maidenhead, where they were going, has been put on hold for the time being.
Then we split up. Secretary went off to Uxbridge while director her and producer headed for Staines on the way we picked up some sponge, black and grey wallpaper, burgundy wrapping paper, silicon sealant and medical tape. And probably some other stuff I have forgotten. Why? Well firstly we planned to make up my deathly mask later that afternoon. Secondly we wanted something to cover DEATH's books and Albert's book of spells.
We visited Ottakers or Waterstones or whatever the main bookshop in the middle of Staines is and then went to Books etc at Two Rivers. The sales assistant at the back counter wasn't too sure about taking the postcards. But. She called her manager down. And. He turned out to be a Pratchett fan. So. He was quite happy to take a pile of them.
Then director her and I had one of those moments which really make such an exercise worthwhile. Like they say, if you don't ask, you don't get... thus I asked whether he and his team would put a card in each of the Pratchett books on their shelves. He didn't like that idea, but when it was suggested that we could do it... he said the immortal word 'Yes' (or something rather longer but basically meaning the same thing for practical purposes).
For the next 15 minutes director her and producer could be seen working their way through two-and-a-half shelves worth of Pratchett books. It's about as good a direct marketing campaign as we are likely to get. The manager did OK out of it - we ended up buying two books ourselves.
We ended up back at home (arriving at exactly the same second as secretary) to work on DEATH's mask, only to find, after director her had gone to work fixing in the blue lights and the sunglass lenses, that the switch to turn the lights on was broken. Yet another job for set man.
So that was it for the day. Well apart from secretary testing me on my lines for about an hour and a half. It's the first proper session we have been able to do. We should have done it ages ago. Hey ho. Consequently though, I got no work done on the programme. That is my biggest current concern.
Thought for the day: 'Two budgies on a perch. One says to the other: "Can you smell fish?"' Source unknown. Well it's obvious really...
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