AHH.
I’m knackered.
The dress rehearsal of our Halloween Walk. Joanna had met some lovely people who work at Fenton House. They came along to help make up audience, as did Jo who was in it for a decade. One friend had a group booked, totally forgot, and styled it that he was unexpectedly busy when I rang him asking when he’d arrive. I’m glad he forgot so completely that he picked up the phone to me. It meant I heard the penny drop but it also meant we didn’t waste time wondering if he’d show.
So it was me and five women out on the dark streets of Hampstead.
Considering that, it was very heartening to hear them genuinely laughing. I was trying out new material as I always do. This walk is closer in discipline to a standup routine than it is to an acting job, but it has the wonderful get out of jail free card that unlike standup, it isn’t supposed to be funny. I just have to talk to them. And the ladies tonight were all lovely and clever so it was fun.
We had a few pub changes last minute. The Magdala has opened again after greed tried to shut it so we will try and end there when possible. And the manager at our middle pub fucked it. We hadn’t met her in scouting or we would have read it by instinct… People like her get my back up. My instinct is to say yes to everything but snacks. That’s a good way to exist as far as I’m concerned. She’s a “no” person.
We had a great experience a few years ago with that pub, but it all stands or falls on the management. We are asking unusual things in exchange for more punters at a busy time. We are predictable and disciplined, but we operate on nights when pubs are crowded.
Her being an instinctive “no’ person manifests as borderline rude. Having just had a wall in our faces, we walked 2 minutes up the hill to The Duke of Hamilton. We walked in to the Duke having just been repelled, and literally before we had even asked they recognised us and said “Do you need to store some stuff?” They were thrilled to see us, we used them last year, we weren’t gonna use them this year, but they won it right there at the last second. So we rejigged it. Now we’ll go through them instead.
We wanted to bring it to the smaller pub down the hill and we had arranged it as such. We know it can be good for places like that to have guaranteed custom. But everything suddenly felt like it would be too difficult.
Tonight we asked for somewhere to temporarily store a box of masks for the dress rehearsal while we worked out the logistics. She didn’t even ask what they were, how long for, showed no curiosity at all. “There’s no space at all,” she said, with a cellar beneath her feet and an empty private area above her head. “Absolutely none,” she insisted.
Once we knew The Duke of Hamilton were okay with us stopping there instead, we told her to strike us out of the diary. Communication had been tricky anyway between her and Siwan – this was not the first alarm bell.
We told her and she suddenly came across all passive aggressive with “I’m sorry if I “offended” you.” on repeat.
She hadn’t offended us. She’d blocked us, sure but more importantly she’d exposed an instinctive “no” which is Creativity Death. No point wasting time when you hear that knell.
You’ll notice I haven’t named her pub and I won’t. This isn’t a vendetta. It’s just a bad personality alignment. We are Peculiar London. We like Peculiar People.
Book a ticket!!!!! This Sunday we are so undersold it is almost worth cancelling. Go on!!!
Fun fun fun fun etc etc etc etc
