Sunday, 25 May 2014

Brighton to Bradford, a tour diary


It's called a panorama fail, a brilliant feature of my new iPhone, which I've had for a month and a bit now and am as enamoured of as everyone is of theirs. I got it partly because I'd just lost my camera in Guildford (newsflash, they found it this week) but mostly because my previous pay-as-you-go phone had got too expensive for what it was. In the month Mar-April I paid £70 topping up my phone! Now for £40 a month I get everything, it's fab. Kev F shakes hands with the 21st century. So what have I been up to in this last month?

Travelling. The usual combination of touring with the Socks, visiting schools with the Comic Art Masterclass, and a bit of caricaturing has seen me travel hither and thither. Thus...

Glasgow (my iPhone was brand new when the Socks played at Eastercon in Glasgow in April) then home then back to Falkirk, to Redhill, to Woking & Moreton-In-The-Marsh, Leek, Exeter, North Wraxall near Chippenham, Camden, Brighton via Worthing, Halwill in Devon, London, Bournville, Keighley, Bradford, Appletreewick and home via Howarth, all in the space of the last four weeks.

The new Socks show is shaping up nicely, with last week's UKIP Song (tested in Brighton and London) having been replaced by a brand new Noel Coward styled UKIP Medley, which has gone beautifully in the non-preview environments of Keighley Exchange and Appletreewick Village Hall. If material works in front of people who've never seen the Socks before and aren't already Socks fans, it really has proved its mettle. So that's 3 minutes of solid material, only 57 other minutes to perfect.

Hotel fun has seen Hev and me in Worthing for my Brighton gigs (the nearest place we could afford); the two of us being awoken at 6.45 this morning by a strange man with no trousers barging in through the door of our Bradford hotel room; and my having an unexpected overnight stay in Paddington having missed my train home by less than one minute (making the Camden preview officially the least profitable show of the month in one fell swoop).

I've also managed to squeeze in a morning teaching NQTs (newly qualified teachers) all about my comic art masterclasses, hopefully alerting them to the importance of comic strip in literacy teaching; I've been to the launch of the Edfringe Comedy Festival spinoff brochure; and I've spent an evening caricaturing the great and the good of the Licensing industry, courtesy of the Beano.

The Beano itself has seen a constant flow of my writing for the past 5 months which has been a joy to present to the pupils in schools. There's more still to come, but a little less regularly, especially as I have to devote every spare moment to writing the new Socks show.

Not that I'm resistant to the distractions of the internet..

May 5  Where does Batman go ski-ing? Arkham A-slalom.

May 11  I got my Adele classes and my Peter Benchley classes mixed up. Turned out I was enrolling in The Deep.

May 13  Assembled hordes at launch of brochure

I've nailed the casting for the new Dads Army film: I have the casting. It's: Capt Mainwearing - William Hartnell,  Corporal Jones - Patrick Troughton, Sgt Wilson - Jon Pertwee, Walker - Tom Baker, Pike - Peter Davison, The Verger - Colin Baker, Godfrey - Sylvester McCoy, Mrs Fox - Paul McGann, Hodges - Christopher Eccleston, Frazer - David Tennant, The Vicar - Matt Smith, and German Officer with notebook - Peter Capaldi  

May 4  Now these are fun - Medieval Memes Jesus crucified in a Wine Press? Jesus as a Unicorn?

May 5  What's Batman's favourite Constable painting? The Bruce Haywain.

May 6  I've put my Hohner Guitar for sale on eBay, starting price a fiver. Collect only. Here's me playing it: And...
  
10h  We've stopped all the tennis balls and the tennis racquets getting into the country. Now we need to stop net migration.
May 10  Just looked up the word sepulchral. At first glance I thought it said "relating to the tomb or the internet". Internment. It said internment

May 12  Hi , I've got a text from 7626: "You've used up your data, buy more for £1.99 ..data allowance will refresh 15/5. Why? a) My data has far from run out, and b) 15/5 is day after tomorrow! Why do I keep getting these texts? Who is 7626?

May 6  Vague Batman jokes? We dinnae dinnae dinnae dinnae dinnae dinnae dinnae dinnae know what you mean.



The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are on tour... NOW!

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