A fairly straightforward day, bizarrely, and a relatively free evening, with the exception of attending the School Play (for which I've been frantically creating props and backdrops for weeks.) It was great fun, and I'm always amazed at how well the children do onstange- not only do they remember their lines, but they remember the songs, where they're meant to be at any one time, when to come off and on, and actually ACT. I've met adults with less capability onstage than that lot. It was brilliant, especially when Superman turned up and waved his sparkly thing about to wake Snow White up. I think it should tour the West End, frankly.
The rest of the week will not be straightforward, as we're all frantically trying to pull together a monumentally underehearsed Christmas Show at the cinema. Given that it's happening on Saturday, and I haven't even learnt some of the songs yet, this ain't looking good. Still, when it's over, it's over, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
Hopefully, after that's over and done with, I can find enough time to clean and oil the Morris, and then somehow drive it to Orford on Sunday to have a nice quiet dinner for two with my new medical friend. I'm actually really looking forward to seeing her again, and rather wishing it wasn't shaping up to be such a slow burner, this being dependent on her busy job and the not inconsiderable distance between here and Essex, which is where she lives. I'm used to things either not happening at all with people I'm interested in (most common) or happening in the blink of an eye (less common but terribly romantic and exciting.) But then, it's only the second date, but she is lovely, and somehow I feel quite comfortable with the thought that it's going somewhere, although I have nothing to base this on.
On the other hand, the mini blonde Judy Garland has scampered off to Germany, so nothing doing there for a while. Probably nothing doing there at all, but she does seem delightfully attractive and bubbly and arty and sexy, and probably fickle and immoral and unreliable as well, like so many people I become attracted to. These qualities are a definite nuisance, but the relationships tend to be quite exciting and the perks not inconsiderable.
Still, I think if i'm looking fo reliability, quiet understated prettiness, humour and genuine-ness, then I'll be dining opposite it on Sunday. Which is a very warming thought. Maybe I could keep it in the car to demist the windscreen.

Of note this week. Some time ago, I sent an email to the East Anglian Film Archive, (logically, an Archive of East Anglian Film) in an attempt to track down an interview between Pam Rhodes and my father, Humphrey. At the time (we're talking about 1978) my father was the rider of a sidecar team racing fairly regularly at Snetterton, having switched to sidecar racing after a crash on a solo mount. As part of a series of 'Pam Rhodes' Challenges', they filmed a sequence at Snetterton where she interviewed my father, and was then taken around the track ('fast', according to the archive synopsis) in the sidecar combination.

For those who don't know, my father, who was a motorcycle mechanic and should have been an engineer or a restorer, were it not for the characteristic indolence and lack of drive that is also disturbingly present in myself and my brother, was killed in a motorcycle accident on his way home from work when I was 13- so, about 1995, I guess. I can't actually remember the date, beyond it being in February, which seems odd- but then, why would I want to remember the date of that? It has nothing to do with who he was or how I remember him, only when he stopped being who he was, which I find slightly macabre to commemorate.

So, all that said, this film, which I've never seen, has been located in the archives, and we should be going to see it at some point. Which is, now I'm facing it, a thoroughly bizarre concept.
Given that I was thirteen at the time, I never got to know my father as a man, only as a father, with the demographic that that relationship implies. I remember him as a good father, if a somewhat inflexible one- television was a pet hatred, and his temper could be short were he in the wrong frame of mind, or children imposed themselves on what he saw as his own personal time or space. That sounds maybe a little harsh, but in retrospect I'm very glad that he was the father he was, and both my parents gave me a strong grounding in the simple matters of manners and values, and sense of decency and propriety, all of which I still see as important. He was also, on many occasions, enormous fun as a father, and ultimately very loving, in his way, a way that was very much tempered by a rather well-to-do and non-demonstrative upbringing of his own.

However, all this is as my father, and as I grow older I miss him more, as (I suspect) I'm outgrowing the Dad I knew, and the Humphrey who would have been around now is someone of whom I have very little knowledge. This is why I've started to look around a little more to see what can still be found, and what I can learn of him, hence my enquiry about the film.

The bizarre element is that for fifteen years, all we've had are a few slightly paling photographs (sadly, Dad was behind the camera more often than anyone else) and what bits and pieces we have around. All my tools were his, and I abuse them as diabolically as he did. But with the film, there's suddenly a situation where I'm no longer looking at photographs, I'm looking at my father, at twentyeight, exactly the same age as me, moving and talking and living and breathing and actually being Humphrey, doing what Humphrey does and just being a bloke, and I've never really met this person who exists within and outside of my father. It's an extremely strange feeling. How will I react to him? To what extent will I be looking at a reflection of myself? I simply don't know who this man is that I'll be seeing on film. I want to see him, because I love him and I miss him, and I need to know more about him, but it's a thoroughly strange concept. I guess at the end of the day, we're all amazingly fortunate that we've got this opportunity. But it is such a strange thing, in anticipation.

Well..

Long and exhausting week, involving wires, women and song. Ok, it's not the usual tryptich, but it'll do.

Naturally the wiring was for the concert, which, after a LOT of labour for Craig and myself went extremely well, apart from the lunatic FOH organiser serving wine from the stage end of the church, so droves of shambling geriatrics were picking their uncertain way through mazes of live mains leads and live (and extremely hot) 500w halogen floodlights on stands. Relaxed I was not. However, we managed not to fry any of the ageing population, and apart from being told beforehand that a spotlight would be superfluous, and then finding the singers wandering about the audience in a manner that would make a follow-spot extremely desireable, the whole cheap Heath Robinson setup worked extremely well. I am going to mount my stolen spotlight on a follow-spot type gimbal (probably using a cast-off bicycle headstock) just in case I need one again. Very annoying.
What's also becoming rather annoying is that the work we're doing as an unofficial stage team is growing, and we're still on the same money, i.e. nil. We basically did a twelve hour day, including our attendance at the concert, and doing that for nada is a little galling to say the least.
Furthermore, when I'm not doing that, I'm attending rehearsals for the Cinema Christmas Show, which is drastically underehearsed, somewhat overambitious, requires me to remember an awful lot of lyrics and basically pull a colossal rabbit out of an extremely tiny hat. This is not a euphemism. It is, however, something that requires a lot more time than I'm equipped to give to it. I can't wait for it to all be behind me.
It's also eating up time I could be spending with my new Junior Doctor friend, who is charming, funny and extremely attractive. For the first time, I'm actually going on a second date with someone I've met online, and I'm really looking forward to it. I need to find somewhere handy for both of us and good for dinner on a Sunday evening. I feel that, once we get to know each other, she is someone I could be very interested in.
Inconveniently, but generally how these things go, I've met someone else I could be extremely interested in tonight, someone who looks like a blonde Judy Garland, or, to put it another way, positively edible. Charming, funny, stunning, creative, etc etc. Amazingly, I have even acquired a number, which is unusually august for me. I'm very attracted to her, although I stringly suspect the Southwold Vultures will get their grubby paws on her before I do. Interestingly, she goes to the same college as Bethanie, although I don't believe they know each other. That would be scary. Depressingly, she's broken up for Christmas, which means The Evil One will be returning at some dreadful unspecified point. I don't really need her hanging around. But this lass is lovely- although maybe I should be learning from my (many) mistakes and not hanging around with these arty creatures anymore. It's never yet done me any good- they seem to stagger through life expecting everyone else to run to a snap of their fingers and behave like every day is an episode of Eastenders. I guess there are exceptions, but I haven't met one yet. Whereas, my medical friend is levelheaded and pretty, likes children, has a good brain, and finds my life interesting because it's very different from hers. I think the dizzy, arty girls I've always knocked around with have seen my life as a kind of threat to their 'creativeness', in that I might just be able to do something that they would like to do but can't, or just be more 'individual' than they are.
I do fancy the Judy Garland girl, though. How muddling life is. I don't think she should take precedence over the Medical Friend, though. That may not be wise.