From September 2010, every month for two years, Glyn and I would carry four 4.5' square rostra 176 yards from Glyn's dad's chip shop to Mostly Comedy's then-venue The Croft before/after each gig, in all weathers, for a step in the venue floor to render them invisible when we put them in place. It was an utter ballache. Nine years on, these chunky wooden bastards still bug me.
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| The Croft's stage was hardly the Palladium. |
And when I say "all-weathers", I genuinely mean all-weathers. The worst was snow, although it's not like a sunny day made it any more enjoyable. Not only were the rostra heavy, but they were also very cumbersome. They were wide and a nightmare to keep purchase; it was like holding a butter-coated tombstone with clammy hands. Navigating from A to B was akin to a scene from the Eric Sykes / Tommy Cooper film The Plank with equal slapstick; my knuckles practically dragged along the floor at the end of Orangutan-like arms by the end of our journey.
To add insult to stretchy-limbed injury, they weren't even how we wanted them to be. When I mentioned to my dad that we needed to buy a stage to give our acts status whilst performing at the far end of what wasn't an ideally shaped room for a gig, he said his mate Dave could build us one if we wanted. We were delighted and very grateful but asked him to wait until we'd explained our requirements to Dave as it needed to be the right size to do the job and fold away small enough to fit into the back of Glyn's Renault Cleo.
A few days later, my dad called me excitably with the news, "Dave's built it."
I was now in classic awkward Ephgrave territory, expressing outward gratitude and inward, "Why didn't they wait?"
I hadn't even given them the measurements of the space the stage needed to fit. What if it was too big?
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| An old setlist still in pride of place. |
Thankfully, it wasn't, though there was no way you could fit one of the four blocks into a car, let alone all four. And what took the biscuit was once you put it in the venue, it was the same height as the step-up in front of it. So what we had was less a stage and more a floor extension. And once the deathly heavy cunt was in place, you had no idea it was even there.
Love it.
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| Four well-known faces treading our boards. |
At the time of writing, Mostly Comedy's three venues on, in a space with a stage (albeit an inordinately high one that's almost a precipice). And while every venue's had its plus and minus points, I don't miss The Croft's Invisible Plinth. How could I, when I'm still storing it?
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| Glyn never faced the right way. |