clurb.net

AJ James compered with the same routine he’d spectacularly failed to impress me with at Durham. (-1)

Tom was a shuffling superstar (+1) with banging Japanese tunage and outrageously gay yellowness (+1) but-I don’t know whether anyone noticed-he dropped a little bit (-1).

Chris from Harrogate and/or Huddersfield ‘did staff’ very badly and for a very long time. (-1) It would appear that I have a low tolerance for watching a scruffy bloke jig about waving things in circles whilst failing to have any rhythm or skill or style. (-1) He aggravated me most by having the audacity to look pleased with himself as well (-1). For shame, that man.

Hazel. Now there’s an interesting one. The last time I saw Hazel she had blue hair and was grungy and earthy and smelly in a cool kind of way. But now she looks almost like a productive member of society. And one who’s just discovered her inner-slut at that. Not a good change. As bizarre and interesting a divergence as this is, however, it really shouldn’t have been displayed on stage. Particularly not as a hula act. When the girl-bless her-can’t do hula. At all. (-1) Getting your legs out is all very well and good, but you should really know what to do with them once they’re in the public eye, as’t'were. I was left with a feeling of complete embarrassment by the time she’d walked off stage. Possibly not the reaction she was looking for. (-1) An awful, awful three minutes.

Jamie was awesome. Cocking up and nearly taking out the light and walking away and starting again is entertaining. And hilarious. (+1) And it was nice to start the second half with something energetic. Bonus points for ‘kicking it old skool’. (+1)

Tiff and Josh impressed me mightily. There was good juggling there as well as physical comedy which actually managed to be funny. (+1) They had synchronisity, and a plot line and nary a flappy wrist in sight. (+1) Much more of this please.

Duncan’s routine seemed vaguely familiar but I couldn’t be certain because it was obscured by some French cunt’s fat fucking head. (-1) I still think he should finish that routine half way through. It does drag somewhat. (-1) 

Ben was the last act which seemed a little bizarre. A very quiet, contained end to the show. He had shiny balls and was clever with them and threw them really high. (+1) And that was about it. Bit boring really. (-1)

Leeds show scores: -3

Mike the Compere’s jokes were atrocious; well done, but nothing in comparison to the stuff ^Tom_ had been spouting earlier in the day.

Vincent went old skool on our collective ass with balancy juggly type stuff. He fell through a big hoop (+1) and struck various poses (-1). It was alright *shrug*. He loses points for having the air of a man stood in front of a classful of children in his underpants. (-1)

Helen and Freya were a woman and small child doing acro stuff. I think it was supposed to be cutesy, I don’t know. The girl frankly (and understandably) looked like she didn’t want to be there whilst the woman was blatantly loving it. (-1) There were a couple of interesting foot-crotch manouevres that led to a nice pose or two (+1), but other than that it was a big wobbly mess that was painful to watch. (-1) And the idea of all that special girly mother-daughter time that went into it (with the buying of the props and the picking of the music and the making of the costumes) just turns my stomach. (-1)

Barnesy picked up the pace a bit by rawking, thoroughly. Points for lots of knowing glances towards the audience and in-time-with the music bits (+1). Bonus points for being able to watch Suzanne look utterly proud all the way through. Bless. (+1)

Pretty Simple did their stealing act again which is still rather entertaining (+1) but not as good as it was at York (-1). This time around, I noticed the pointlessness of having one of the blokes on stage for the first bit of the act doing absolutely nothing at all. (-1) I felt this was made up for, however, by Annabod’s terribly arty, graceful hand swooping throughout. (+1)

AJ James finished off the first half by being what I at first considered to be ‘a twat’. (-1) He did some somersaulty type thing and was briefly ‘an upside-upside down twat’ but that seemed to be about the extent of his repertoire. (-1) The whole act had a certain cringeworthy air of unfunny stand-up to it, but fair play to him, by the end of it all I had been slightly won over by some quite spectacular lines about chess ages, headbands and something or other about Benazir Bhutto on a rolla bolla. (+1)

Mike did thank yous before the interval. Oh dear. (-1)

Ronan has apparently “improved [poi]; made it better, made it more interesting…’ Not sure myself. What I did notice was that he wore ridiculously stupid trousers. (-1) The routine itself left me a bit spacy and day-dreamy, like all poi acts with their damned hypnotic tedium. (-1) He did a bit of swinging things at the end that struck me as being exactly like massive Astrojaxs though. And that pleased me. (+1)

Duncan treated us to a nice bit of Shirley Bassey which I bopped to, verily. (+1) After watching this act though I am definitely quite decided that I don’t like diabolo acts that go from lots of tricks with one to lots of tricks with two. It’s unnecessary and really long most of the time. I’d much rather people chose a number and stuck to it and were really really good with it and then stopped. (-1) He is really rather good with three through. (+1) Bonus points for pulling off a spectacular save with three which afforded the biggest round of applause of the entire routine. (+1)

At this point, I was getting annoyed with Alan who had progressed within the space of about half an hour from being amusingly tipsy to annoyingly tipsy. He’d lost the ability to modulate the volume of his voice and obviously felt a very pressing need to carry out a conversation (albeit one-sided) throughout Duncan’s act which as far as I could tell had nothing to do with Duncan. Or diabolos. Or anything, really. Bad form, sir. Very bad form. (-1 for Alan, +1 for everyone who had to put up with it)

Mike did the disappearing biscuit trick. Bravo, that man. (+1)

Matt was coolio. He managed to turn me gay or something with his parasol trick. Whilst I’m normally quite of the opinion that parasol stuff is super hard and very cool and worthy, all I could think was ‘That’s a very pretty parasol.’ (+1) He also had lots of bananas. (+1) His devil stick bit seemed to involve a lot of standing perfectly still at the beginning (-1) but ended up being a rather jolly clap-along bit (+1) up until the point where it started to get just a tad long winded. (-1) But that was ok because he’d had lots of bananas. (+1)

Dave Kelly was infuriatingly droppy (-1) and infuriatingly talented (+1) in equal measure and his insane tennis racket skillz have earnt him my eternal loving respect for ever and ever, amen. (+1) He would have got bonus points on the basis that I thought he’d made an effort to look dapper, but no. If anything, (according to Barnesy) he’d made even less of an effort than usual. I feel let down (-1).

Sindy Steel (?) was perfectly adept at isolations and mesmerised me with movement. (+1) And ZOMG! The ball went through her tummy! (+1) Unfortunate man-legs though. Hmmmmm. (-1)

Jon Udry was, as usual, terribly energetic (+1) and young (the bastard [-1]). He doesn’t look like a golden retriever any more though, and that’s a shame. (-1) It felt a bit ‘here’s a trick, and here’s a trick, and here’s another trick, oh and here’s a trick, and yeah you can clap while I think of another trick’ (-1) but it was alright, really. The usual, y’know. Fun. And it was club juggling, which helps. (+1)

And there you go. The show. Finally. I hope the slight disappointment of reading my review after such anticipation of it as I’m sure everyone felt conveys to you the sense of ‘meh, alright’ I felt upon leaving the hall having watched the thing.

Durham show scores: +1

[Edited for maffs n'that.]

Durham Convention this year was, as usual, ZOMG amazing! We cunningly broke the journey up there into two by staying at my parents’ pad on Friday night so we could play with their new puppy, Milly. She’s awfy cute, although she did say goodbye by headbutting me.

We got up to Durham in good time, at any rate, and I was duly impressed with the coolio key passes. I got a curly c. Then practiced kick ups and booted a club round the hall for a bit. Then I met Miark and did silly stuff with him. Then I met ^Tom_ and we did more silly stuff (including a quick game of Le Jeu Slappie - although he was rubbish at it). And then, to the accompaniment of some of ^Tom_’s dreadful jokes, we went for lunch, which ended up being really nice chippy chips. Nom nom nom. I remarked on it at the time and was met with dirision but will happily repeat myself-wandering through a little town and joining a random queue in the street is terribly evokative of Stalinist Russia. In my mind at least.

When we got back I messed around in the hall some more with four clubs which was working very well. And five clubs which was not. I still haven’t quite figured out optimum grippage of three in one hand. Then just as I was about to stick some music on and hunker down to some proper practice Alby walks through the door. And he’d brought supplies of Coke. Wahey! Hugs all round, n’that. Bit of passing. The usual.

We spotted Ali from rec.chat at one point and sneered quietly to ourselves. We several times told Mamph in no uncertain terms that we weren’t doing Chocfest only to watch her completely disregard the fact. I found a Maddy and after being grossed out by various piercings giggled merrily for the rest of the day. We watched Barnesy look ever so slightly stressed out about his routine. I got a hug off a still commendably grizzled TP, and the very little bit of passing we managed to fit in turned out not to be too awful.

Pug grub for tea. Maddy and I listed illnesses as we walked down into town. The old woman in the pub said something along the lines of “Och, the more the merrier!” in a terribly twee Scottish accent which warmed my cockles. And then there was steak. More nom nom noms. Maddy had a plate of mango. I don’t know why. We passed notes like naughty school children, injected innuendo into the conversation of other tables, and generally laughed uproariously.

Then back to the school just in time for the show. Incidentally, our walk back through the cemetary was the most hilarious walk back through a cemetary I’ve ever done. Well done, everybody. Show was sat through. And then to the hall again for another four or five hours of the most civilised, continental sitting-around-the place that I’ve done for a long time. Alan had outdone himself in preparation and had brought along the remnants of his Belgian beers, a box of quite delicious German chocolates and several big slabs of smoked meat products. We added to the pile both the chilli and the watermelon Milka Alan had brought back from Herxheim. It was quite a spread. And it attracted rather a lot of attention. Connie scared me with her instant and unreserved love of watermelon chocolate. Annnabod’s ‘what’s this, will I like it, oh, it’s not too bad, wait a minute, my God that’s rank, I can’t believe I’m still eating it, christ, it’s gone fizzy’ face was priceless. I lasted until about 2am before conking out and wandering back to the van for what I thought was going to be a freezing cold, godawful night, but turned out to be swelteringly warm. Hurrah!

Ewan greeted me in the morning with a big fat cuddle, on the off chance that I could be swayed with bribery. I found Alan in the hall looking haggard and hung over. Serve him right, the lush. Then there was more coke, a bit more passing, a lot more sitting, and then more meat. By this point my guts were rebelling, but I just about managed to choke down some sausages and bacon. Ooh, and a slice of fried bread. Nom nom nom again.

And then it was all over and we had to go. High winds and roadworks made the journey not quite as pleasant as it could have been, but we found chocolate teacakes at the services which helped. Fak and Void managed to pass us twice and I saw a field of queuing sheep. A good omen.