Christmas day is over and Mo has gone to bed so I thought I’d do a quick blog as I won’t have time tomorrow :O)

We got up at 8am and normally we don’t touch our presents until we get back from church. However, Dave knew what I was getting and begged Mo to let me have it to bring to church - he so wants one :O) I was allowed to open it first and quickly charge it while we got ready.

We arrived at church raring to go. Christmas morning service is always better than the carols by Candlelight as it is a more relaxed family atmosphere. It’s not ‘the preacher and the congregation’ we are all just a group together - all taking part. We also sing all the old favourite carols, which includes Away in a Manger and Once in Royal David City etc.

After singing about six carols we have a time when the children bring their presents to show everyone. Once they are done, the adults who got presents do the same. Dave made me get up first as he knew what I had ;O) I must say it got a great amount interest. Dave made me give a small demonstration so I took a photo of them all watching me and then showed them. He also made me show them that it turned automatically as you turn the phone. They were very impressed. Actually, It does even more than I thought!

Going to church always starts our Christmas day off lovely and brings back memories of our childhood to me.

When we got back we had a special Christmas fried breakfast, which I really enjoyed. The only time I ever eat one :O) We then opened our presents and both played with our toys for a while. Sindie and Gary popped in to borrow a lead and that was nice.

We had dinner late (because of the breakfast) and it was very enjoyable too!

It’s been a lovely day for us, and I hope you all had a lovely time too :O)

5 Comments Stumble it!

The dress rehearsal date came and I was really concerned as half of them were forgetting their lines constantly. Some were still not actually acting, they were just saying their lines and standing not doing anything. I thought this show was going to be a real shambles and not as good as last years. Somebody reminded me that it was the same last year at that point. I decided not to worry or get stressed over it as it wouldn’t change a thing. It would either work or not. That part of it I wasn’t in control of. I’d done my part, the acting was up to them.

Dress rehearsals are held with an audience - a large group of people from the centre for people with learning difficulties. They make a great audience as they enjoy anything and are a very responsive audience.

The opening video came on, followed by the puppets who basically introduce the story. The audience cheered as they saw the puppets. They made such a din chatting and laughing at them that they couldn’t possibly have heard the puppets speaking :O) We moved into the show…….

I was very pleasantly surprised as it was going really well. If anybody forgot their lines the others would ad lib so it wasn’t noticeable. I had tried to instil this in them so many times and finally they all did it. Not that many lines were forgotten. I was amazed. I should have remembered that some of them don’t actually ‘act’ until they perform to an audience (even though I wish they would) It was going well. This particular audience applaud at the end of every scene, which must be an encouragement for the team.

All in all it was a success!

This was only a rehearsal, and as such there were a couple of scenes that we hadn’t rehearsed - last minute additions and scene changes. The final scene could have been better and the curtain call was all wrong so I made some changes which I typed out and was only able to hand them on the night of the official show, about 30 minutes before the start. I did a quick run through with them and that was that. No time to rehearse it properly.

The room filled up with a paying audience now but I wasn’t too concerned as it had gone well at the dress rehearsal. Sandie & Len and Sindie & Gary came along with Livvie, and Emily who had brought a friend.

My concern had been that we were tackling quite a serious story, and wondering if maybe it might be a little ‘heavy’ for Christmas. That was why we added all the multimedia and puppets. We also made one of the characters funny throughout. Was it going to work and lighten the more serious parts? I think it did. I won’t spoil the DVD I am doing for you all by telling you any more.

The new ending worked! I was thrilled. I have to say that I am very proud of the team, they all worked so hard and pulled out the stops when it mattered. The biggest problem was a child running around with the noisiest toy in the world. It sounded like a football rattle! I had to really chop the video about to eliminate that when making the DVD. Thankfully we had a video of the dress rehearsal so I was able to do it without losing part of the show, even though it wasn’t as smooth as I would like.

Saturday night was not as full as Friday and I was a little sad at that. The last night is important and it would have been better for the team to have seen a packed room. Never mind, the feedback we received was great and we’ve been told that we must put this show on again as it would be criminal to only do two performances of it.

I have the idea of putting a lot more work into it, improving certain scenes, polishing it up and doing it again next year. Maybe we could hire the local theatre and put it on there. It is only my thoughts at the moment but we’ll see :O)

Here are a couple of photos of the main characters.

Obviously the four wise men :O)

Jhalil, played by Pam

4 Comments Stumble it!

At Sandie’s request a couple of clips from the letters.

4 Comments Stumble it!

This blog is probably a bit late, due the the fire surround blog but I’ll do it anyway.

This is the second year that Mo and I have put on a Christmas show for the local community. Last year we did “What Christmas Carol?” which was very well received. This year we did a totally different type of show.

“The Fourth Wise Man” is a story about exactly that - a fourth wise man who keeps missing the moment and never makes it to the Nativity.

As it was a slightly serious story (unlike Scrooge) I decided to fill it with multimedia to break the scenes up. We wrote a lot of humour in also, with one character that is funny throughout.

We decided to have three sets of ‘Wise’ men - Adults, children and puppets! Firstly so that it would appeal to an all age audience and secondly, as we had a mugging in the story, we decided that using the puppets for this would be better than having violence on stage. It actually added humour to the violence so it worked.

I was faced with a huge amount of videos to make so got started on that immediately. Filming puppets is not an easy thing, in fact it’s harder than anything I have ever filmed. The first attempt was a bit of a failure and it mostly had to be scrapped. Eventually Sindie and Livvie came round and we set the stage up in our lounge! Without proper lighting and equipment it was not as good as I would have liked but I was able to get enough video to add to the little bit I was able to save of Emily’s puppetry to complete the two songs the puppets sing. Before too long I managed to get all the puppetry stuff filmed.

When we were talking to the TV people about the show we had written for TV, we were told that filming puppets was a specialised field and would need a special team of camera men. I now see what they meant.

The show introduction.

The song “Wise Man”

The Song “Manger Zone”

The mugging

While all this was going on we were meeting up with the team regularly for rehearsals.

I also needed to get video of five letters being written. For this Gary came to the rescue. While I got the surface to rest on ready Sindie set to roasting some paper in the oven. Everything had to look like it was feasibly written 2000 years ago. Sindie had picked up a twig on her way round and I broke a biro and inserted the inner tube into the centre of the twig for a writing implement. Gary wrote out about four letters (in full) as I filmed constantly from several different angles. It worked great! The only thing that didn’t look reasonably authentic was his rings - he couldn’t get them off.

I had a few other videos to create, making twelve in all but they all went without too many hitches. The main problems I had was sourcing various music clips and video clips that needed to be inserted in my videos. That took me forever!

We also had two original songs in the show. One that I wrote the lyrics for which needed the music arranged and to be recorded, and one that was written especially for the ending. This was the important part of the whole show so it needed to be written carefully. I left that totally to our music man. I had enough to do :O)

I then moved on to some props - scrolls and maps, the gems and head bands for the wise men. At the very last minute I was faced with having to make the costume for Jesus! Someone had let us down. Sandie came to the rescue there and gave us a lovely Victorian sheet. It came out nice I thought ;O)

What would we do without family?

The next part will follow soon

7 Comments Stumble it!

Ok, as promised, a final update on our work.

We have now finished the room, until we are rich enough to buy new fitted carpet. Mo patched it up best she could and we decided to try and cover the missing bits with a rug. We were going to buy a large rug and cut it in around the fire but as we were looking for one I suddenly thought. Why spend a minimum of £50 on a rug just to cut up. We already had a smaller one and it was the right colour so we decided to see how that would look.

Once we saw that it would be ok we set about cutting it to shape. Again, I measured and marked and Mo cut it. This is how we seem to do most things ;O)

Here are some photos of the finished room, along with just a few Christmas bits. It’s all we had time to do this year. All photos are clickable to enlarge.

The corner cabinet is some old thing we got from freecycle just until we can sort out a new one, after Christmas. It won’t be a corner one though.

We usually have lights everywhere but Mo made up for it by setting up our disco light. Here is a little video of it.
It isn’t as fast moving as the video though - thank goodness!

I have included two other photos. One for Gold Anne - The gold fairy :O)

and the other of my guitar - just coz it’s lovely :O)

And now a before and after so you can see the difference.

We can now relax and enjoy Christmas :O)

4 Comments Stumble it!

Mo had channelled out the wall behind the old skirting board for the wires to tuck in. Once everything was in place she set to, sawing the new skirting board pieces and getting them in place. She stuck them all in place and then put filler where needed. I was impressed, she did a good job of it. She then ran trunking around the top of the skirting board on the longer runs and put all the wires in. After that she made the fire stand out of concrete slabs which she very cleverly cut to size too!

We left the cement to dry overnight. The next morning she went out and brought the hardboard backing and the special stone spray paint we had chosen on the web. It was hard to know what colour to pick as we don’t know what carpet we are going to have. We went for one that matches our suite in the end.

Close up of the surface

While that dried we had dinner. After we had eaten, we fixed it up, put the fire in place and stood back to admire our work. At this point you are expecting me to say that we noticed something really bad, but I’m not - it is lovely and yes, we are very proud of ourselves :O)

We now just have the wall to touch up above the new skirting board and get some sort of rug to put in front of it all.

Are you ready?

scroll down!

A bit further….

And now with the TV too

Unfortunately the fire doesn’t photograph well and the flames can’t be seen. You’ll have to take my word for the fact that It looks better than the photo.

7 Comments Stumble it!

Well, we started making the new fire surround and it was made more difficult because we wanted to hide all the cables inside the surround. This meant that I had to work out where each cable would be coming from and which side of the room, then allow an entry and exit in the surround to make actually putting it up easy. The intention is to have my mac wired into the TV for playing movies, photos and music. I needed to allow for VGA and sound cables coming in to the left side and exiting on top at the centre. Then the Sky, Tivo and DVD recorder all coming in from the right and exiting top centre. Some need to exit at the shelf for the new speaker, and some need to travel up to the Screen. A major brain teaser!

I marked and Mo cut all the pieces to size and I glued them in place.

I decided that we should use trunking on the wall to make life easier, so proceeded to measure everything out and pray that my menopausal brain wouldn’t get it all mixed up :O)

This has been a mammoth job for us and we are rather proud that we did it all on our own - the surround I mean. The day came to put the screen up and I was adamant that I couldn’t do it with Mo. After much saying that I could, and me saying I couldn’t, she finally phoned Len and he came round immediately to help. It would have been a nightmare without him :O)

We leant the fire surround against the wall just to make sure it was the correct height.

TV goes up!

Looking good.

Wow! a picture!

No more work then?

We are further along now but that will be my next blog in a couple of days :O)

5 Comments Stumble it!

As instructed by the plasterer, Mo gave the plaster a coat of paint to seal it ready for the Artexing.

The Artex man rang up to say he could come earlier than planned and that he would be here Wednesday lunchtime instead of Saturday. That was just right as the plaster had dried and Mo had just painted it ready.

He arrived on time (which is unusual for Yorkshire men) Mind you he had an accent so wasn’t originally from Yorkshire - maybe that makes a difference ha ha!

He seemed very unfriendly and abrupt and we were not looking forward to the time he would be in our house. We made him a cuppa before he started and both sat quietly while he got his tools ready, not knowing what to say. That, as you all know, is very unusual for us as we get on with everybody and have no difficulty chatting to people.

He coated it with what seemed like diluted paint and waited for it to dry before he was to set too with the Artex. Suddenly he stood up and said “You know all the lost details from the Tax office? I just received a phone call and I am one of them” This then broke the ice and he chatted all through the artexing :O)

We had been told he would use use a sponge wrapped in a plastic bag. He didn’t, he used a large, square, flat thing with soft spikes on it. It didn’t take him long at all. He slopped it on with a big brush and then skimmed over it with this flat thing. Hey presto! Once he had gone, I went over all the edges (as you would expect) with a wet cloth wrapped around my finger, tidying it all up and making sure the edges couldn’t be seen.

We painted it today and I have to say that you’d be hard pushed to see the join :O)

All that is left to do now is get some skirting board and the wood for the new fire surround - and build it of course. Then with a large rug in place we will be all ready for Christmas :O)

We are so sick of all the mess. We can’t wait.

6 Comments Stumble it!

Friday evening our next door neighbour (not the one doing the plastering) came to remove our gas pipe. Unfortunately our floorboards where not cut anywhere. Not even where the pipe came out of the floor. Just look at the hole it left, soooo neat.

That meant that he had to saw the boards. Extremely noisy. I took a photo with no flash so he wouldn’t see me ;O)

Unfortunately that cost us £20 - still the plastering is free.

He is the spitting image of Leeta’s John so I asked if I could take a photo of him to send to Leeta so she could see. After reassuring him that it wasn’t for one of those ‘dodgy’ web sites I took it but not only did it look nothing like John, it looked nothing like him either ha ha ha!

Saturday our other neighbour came in to plaster our wall. He came at 2pm and left at about 4pm. He did a much more thorough job than we had thought he was going to do. he said “A quick skim” and that’s what we expected. Actually he plastered the wall properly and all for free! He was very thorough and gave us lots of little tips while he did it.

He totally refused any kind of payment - even a box of chocolates for his wife :O) What a nice chap he is. He is a landscape gardener that moved into building also. He also told us about a wood place that is quite a bit cheaper than Firth, so we’ll have a look there for the wood we need.

It really is coming on now and It shouldn’t be long before it’s finished - less the carpet, of course :O)

5 Comments Stumble it!

Today, our neighbour popped in and put the scrim on, and will be back Saturday morning to plaster the wall. Mo filled all the holes.

This evening the man who did Sindie’s Artex came and quoted £50 to do it for us. It would cost us almost as much to buy the stuff and then have to struggle to do it ourselves, and probably make a mess of it, so we decided to go with him. He is coming Saturday week to do it.

In the meantime, we can plan and buy the wood for the new surround, and cut it all to size ready. That way we can put it up as soon as the wall is finished :O)

Oh how nice it is to be free to get excited, now we have Sindie’s positive news :O)

6 Comments Stumble it!