The Last Tuesday in Adelaide

The good news? The local Apple shop will diagnose your simple problem for free. The less good news? The power cable is buggered on my laptop, whose battery is already as good as dead. Which means I'll be seeing out the final 6 days in Adelaide with just an iPod (& Heather's ipad possibly, if I beg nicely). So no more Socks videos ( there's an unedited one from the nature reserve which might never see the light of Youtube now) and possibly no pretty picture filled blogs. You lucky lucky people.

 

As it happens words alone are all I need to capture the joy that is flyering Rundle Mall on. Tuesday in the final week of Adelaide Fringe. Whereas the weekends have felt fruitful, with healthy queues building up outside the Fringe Box Office, today has been more a case of seeds falling on fallow ground. Here, in no particular order, are the Top Twenty responses the diligent flyerer can expect from the good passers by of Adelaide:

 

"No you're alright"

"No I'm alright"

Shake of the head

"Sorry"

"Thankyou" (takes flyer)

"Thankyou" (doesn't take flyer)

Person makes deliberate wide berth

Person tries to walk through you

Person goes past with arms folded

"We won't be here"

"But I'm only 13"

Palm of hand held up

Puzzled acceptance of flyer as if they've just been handed a dead fish

Walk past as if invisible

Walk past as if a homeless

Walk past as if a mental homeless aboriginal drunk asking for money

Laugh and walk past

Walk past then laugh conspiratorially while glancing back at you as if you have your flies undone

Person would have taken flyer but you missed them cos you were too busy checking to see if your flies were undone

"We've already got tickets" (1 time in 100 they will mean "to your show")

 

I'm sure I'm not the only show promoter longing for the Shooting of Fish In A Barrel that is flyering on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh where it seems, through the mist of my memory, that everyone who passes by is a tourist from out of town wanting to see a show and desperate for someone like you to give them a piece of paper which will help them decide which one. And who won't automatically assume your show is for kids because it's a puppet show. It is as a result of the Adelaide experience that I have decided that, this August, the Socks will be doing a family-friendly daytime show as well as their comedy- audience oriented evening show. If we had been able to let kids from 7 to 12 years old into our show here, we'd have quadrupled our audiences easily, the punters at The Garden being overwhelmingly families with young kids (if I read there's been a population boom in Adelaide in the last decade I won't be in the least surprised).

 

 

 

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are at The Garden Of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide every night at 7.45 until March 18th. Tickets here.

Four & a half thumbs-up review from The Punch
"Roll up roll up" - Adelaide Advertiser review
"Side-splitting laughs" - FIVEaa review
"Head-slappingly funny" - Festival Freak review
Adelaide Waiting - Socks video