Alby and I are up to a whopping 11 catches back-to-back.
I say 11. I lost count after we smashed through our 7 catch record and I started grinning inanely. It felt 11ish though.
And I hereby announce my intent to learn 4 clubs synchronous, after Darren thoroughly annoyed me with his refusal to acknowledge my 4 club prowess on Monday.
I’m going to pwn him like he’s never been pwned before…
Lizzah is gone and I am sad and lonely.
We gave her a marvellous send off though. With balloons and cake and party poppers (which weren’t defective) and a cheap plastic banner and those blowy things that go pffft. And there was lots of yelling of ‘Surprise!’ and squeals of delight. And then later there was pizza accompanied by faux champagne which got spilt all over Alan’s carpet, and much hilarity ensued.
We bundled her off home with all of the balloons stuffed in her car and with pressies galore and everyone got a big Lizzah hug.
And then she was gone and it was quiet. And I felt a bit like crying.
I miss her because she is my best girly friend and I don’t have many of those. And I wish she’d come back.
Pics curtesy of Alby here.
I think it’s fair to say that Nigel didn’t work well as a compere on the night. At least, I didn’t hear any laughing coming from my bit of the audience. The character was there, certainly, but having slightly more of a vested interest in the performers this year, I thought he was a touch too mean. Aside from that you could feel the energy and good humour just leach out of the audience every time he came out on stage. Not impressed. (-1)
Josh and Chris did the same routine they tried at Leeds and did it much, much better second time around. (+1) Less droppy, more synchronised, fluid and accomplished. I enjoyed it all. It’s always nice to see the more hoik-it-up-and-catch-it-again breed of teenage boy actually pick up a club or two as well. (+1)
Plumsie came on next and promptly made me feel sick with all manner of terrible emotions. (-1) He gets an extra point knocked off for making me sit through the entirity of the first half feeling annoyed that he hadn’t had the foresight to have that reaction ten minutes earlier and save the audience the angst of staring at an empty stage. (-1)
Void did kendama stuff for a bit. I don’t think I’d ever seen a kendama act on stage before (+1), but I hadn’t been missing much. It was a fair crack at an advertisement and it was done with Void’s usual wit and penache, but my abiding reflection seems to be that I just really don’t care how long it takes to put a ball in a cup. Not really my stage prop of choice. (-1)
Tom, the cheesiest young man I have ever, ever seen in my life came on to do a bit of a variety act. It was all terribly polished and silicon coated (+1) with the most wonderful dramatic pauses for applause but the instrumental Abba put me off somewhat (-1) and I’m afraid that after a very giggly day, I found the whole thing unspeakably hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
Young, small, cute David got well and truly stuck in with throwing and catching things very well. I thought it was all nicely accurate and measured (+1) and whilst he could really benefit from a little more personality (-1) I certainly wasn’t having any difficulty watching him. It was all good. (+1)
The cake competition got rattled through with marvellous speed and efficiency (+1) and I got the feeling that the same was attempted with the raffle. Raffles by their very nature, however, (and in this case by Jim-Bob’s droning voice and irritating face) drag excessively even when they’re being whizzed through. (-1)
I saw an arrangement of green clubs when the curtains parted for the second half and immediately felt terribly, terribly sick again. (-1) Plumsie returned. But fair play to him, my husband has got fucking humongous bollocks. (+2) He was the droppiest thing I’ve ever seen and gave off an air of wanting to get through it and go home (-1), but he occasionally smiled and made the audience feel good, and his hard-hat spin was really nice. (+1) Regardless of his score, or how well it was received, or how sick and angry and upset he made me feel with the stress and worry of it all, I’m awfully proud of him. And he looked quite beefy.
The (Pretty Simple?) students did a nice bit of stealing n’that in quite an understated way. They’d obviously put a lot of thought and effort into it (+1), but it was a bit too up-your-own-arse performing arts for me (-1) and I ended up having a conversation through most of it.
Norbi was true to form. The new routine smacked quite loudly of the old routine in very many ways (-1) and the new props were-I don’t know whether anyone noticed-the old props with a bit of sellotape on them. (-1) Very ‘meh’.
Rachel the hula girl was fantastic. She was wiggly and swooshy in all the right places and managed to seem like a completely filthy bitch. (+1) I liked.
The Hitmen were very European, it has to be said, and not a little like Get The Shoe, but managed lots of really nice stuff. (+1) Chief amongst nice stuff was the shooting of clubs, the shooting of finger men, and the arrangement of bodies on stage. It’d never occurred to me before yesterday that a passing routine could benefit from not always being square on to the audience. I was impressed. (+1) If I had to criticise, it went on just a touch too long for me to maintain my impressedness all the way through. (-1)
Erik Borgman flooded the room with his professionalism and talent. And sexy accent. He got a relatively reserved audience laughing and clapping like nobody’s business and did it all effortlessly. (+1) There’s a lot to be said for a tried and tested routine. Especially when I haven’t seen it before. I don’t think I can mark him down on anything. But I will mark him up for having wonderfully bouncy hair. (+1)
Chocfest scores: +4
It were reet good, n’that. We got up early and enjoyed a terribly chummy ride up to York in Alby’s car.
There were lots of people milling around when we got there so we chatted briefly to nice people before Alby whisked me away to the special-gym-for-antisocial-people in order to practice stuff. It soon became apparent that my juggling dial was set to ‘Poor’ that day. Eight seemed reasonable but everything else felt a bit shit. It transpired that Alby had taken us off into the empty hall because he was embarrassed to be seen passing back-to-back with me. I proved my worth, however, by managing six catches (our new all-time record), but only after intensive giggling.
And the giggling continued throughout the day, culminating in my having to be ushered out of Ian’s passing workshop before I wet myself and sustained any further embarrassment after screaming loudly and throwing my clubs in the air at the exact moment the group hushed en-mass for further tutelage.
Miark did as promised and brought me something shiny. It was overpriced chemically sugar-water in a spray and it tasted vile, but it was still shiny. I picked up my first kendama a bit later on and managed a good half hour with it before exhausting it of its entertainment value. Miark and I passed with Dr Helen until we broke her. We then managed about three catches between ourselves before being rudely interrupted by Mr Barnes. But not before I learnt what an ‘F’ was. Lizzah and I spent five minutes trying to talk Adrian out of having things done to his face and succeeded only in making him feel marginally worse about the whole thing. I obtained a moral victory over Alby by drawing with him at Scrabble (although I’ll admit I did have a little bit of help from Darren). And Mini introduced us to a new game. With blocks and men who fall over n’that. By the way, Min; I’ve still got it with me. I’m planning on spending a day or two mastering it before it gets consigned to the black hole of J-mail.
In the midst of my merriment I did occassionaly bump into my husband, who looked harried and nervous for some reason.
We went on a wild goose chase at dinnertime trying to find a sit down place up around Tesco. Frankie & Bennies had a 40 minute wait, the pub across the road had a 30 minute wait. We eventually found a quiet little chinese place that seemed glad of our custom. Food was alright but we had to leg it out of there to get back on time for the show.
T’were a good day, all said. I saw Maddy for the first time in ages and got a few random hugs from others. Not a great day for the juggling but you can’t have everything.
