Crotch Grabbing and the Fighting Grannies

Monday 13.12.10 – Saturday 18.12.10 – How quickly the working week comes back around when you only have one day off. Last week I talked about in-car dining, and on Monday I saw another incident, this one was truly marvellous. Sat in an Audi was a man in a suit and he was eating noodles as he drove past. The image of him with noodles hanging from his mouth made him look like his car was been driven by one of the Ood from Doctor Who. I can only imagine he reached his destination with his shirt front stained by the trailing noodles.

In between shows we visit a pub for our lunch and I do a spot of people watching. Sat next to us is three pensioners, the waiter comes over and speaks to one of the ladies, after he leaves, their conversation goes like this: Lady 1 “What did he say?” Lady 2 “Who?” Lady 1 “The darkie.” Lady 2 “He said, are you enjoying your meal?” Man “Who said that?” Lady 2 “The darkie.” The older generation have a lot of catching up to do still, methinks.

I’m made to smile as a young girl opposite sits down and a noise is heard, her mother asks, “Have you farted?”, the girls replies in the negative, blaming the noise on her coat, this leads to several unsuccessful attempts to replicate the original sound. The day ends with The Smiths playing ‘Hand In Glove’ as I drive home through the lanes.

The following day during the break between shows we pop into the Bagot Arms in Sutton Coldfield, this time for just a pint. I pop into the gents and am followed by another man. He steps up to the urinal and opens his fly; nothing unusual by this you may think, until I hear him say, “Out you come my little beauty.” I try not to pee on my shoes as I stifle my laughter.

Funny things, actors, what with their traditions and superstitions, you’d think they’d have enough to contend with? Not in our cast, every time anyone says strange fruit, no matter where we are I have to sing the first verse of the song with the same name, I’ve been known now to sing it on and offstage. Equally Chloë has to do the same, every time anyone says, “What’s This”, she has to sing a verse from the song from the Tim Burton film, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Wednesday is an odd day, as two incidents happen, both of which are similar yet unusual. During one of my songs in the matineé performance, a man reaches out and cups my genitals, shocked I step back and try not to stumble over the lyrics of the song. In the evening performance, I’m halfway through my duet with Chloë when a woman grabs my crotch, once again I’m shocked and try to hold it together, as Chloë sings with a huge smile across her face. Needless to say when we exit we can’t hold the laughter in.

On Thursday we all revisit our childhood, and recount tales of our favourite TV shows and songs. We are talking about the song by Peter, Paul and Mary. ‘Puff, the Magic Dragon’ when someone looks up the lyrics and what we remember as a happy song turns out to be a sad tale of a dragon who loses his best friend and spends the rest of his life hiding away in a cave. As I drive home in the evening with CSS playing ‘Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex’, I spot a small puppy in my headlights. I stop the car, as it’s strange that a puppy would be in the country lanes, so far from any houses. I get out and look for it but alas it’s gone, I climb back into the car hoping it wasn’t lost and had headed off to where it come from.

Once again during my duet with Chloë another incident occurs, this time it’s during the Friday evening show. Two elderly ladies begin arguing and the argument spills into a fight, with them both jousting with a walking frame, we continue on with the son; now experts at singing ‘I Know Him So Well’ whilst laughing

Saturday and we perform our first show only to venture out to the car park to find the van beneath a huge snowfall, we dig ourselves out and head off into the snow covered streets. Essentially what should have been a 40 minute journey back to Stoke took us 4 hours, as we crawled along at 3 miles an hour, eventually due to road closures reaching an almost deserted northbound M5. With more snow forecast for the weekend, we can but hope it doesn’t prevent us completing our last 4 days of shows.