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Got a few bits and bobs done and a little bit more packing for the move. We're not going to go until August at the earliest, but I am trying to take things across whenever I go into town. Really it was supposed to be an exercise in throwing things away, but not much is ending up in the bin (though still working my way through old receipts and accountancy stuff).
I had packed away most of my photo albums already, but one had fallen under some detritus in the cupboard and included a few random pics from University and the first year in London 89-90. We didn't have cameras on our phones then and every shot was precious on our cameras with actual film in them, so there isn't much record of this time. But there was this rather nice photo (that a member of the audience took) of legendary Oxford sketch group The Seven Raymonds (there were five of us and none of us were called Raymond) in their last ever gig. TV's Emma Kennedy (though Williams back then) is on the left, then comes future journalist and author Tim Richardson, next is the musician Mike Cosgrave (who would become best known for composing and performing the jingles on Twitch of Fun as well as arranging the traditional theme song of Stone Clearing), don't remember who the next guy is and then me. This photo was taken at the Teddy Hall Summer Fling (the stupid poster for it can be seen in the background and if I remember rightly proved properly controversial as a student at another college did kill themselves in that manner that same term - after the poster came out, but amazing they still used it). I think this would be about May 1989 so 35 years ago. That can't be true. My calendar must be broken.
Happy days (mainly) though of performing in that troupe from January 1987 to May 1989. We had a fair amount of success within the safe confines of University, taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 1987 that no one came to see, but then doing that show in the first week of the new term and putting "Direct from the Edinburgh Fringe" on the posters and selling out every show. I remember our first paid gig which would probably have been around May 1987, where we performed in a college bar and made £10 each and I couldn't believe I had made money from comedy. I was going to frame the money, but I spent it instead.
I was going to criticise Baby Reindeer for the unlikely scenario where Donny's show was put on in a pub in the same room as people were drinking, and then I remembered that in that first Fringe we were booked to do sketches in a pub - it wasn't our main show, but we did get paid for it, so again I was amazed and delighted. I don't know why anyone would have put us on as entertainment in a pub full of grown ups, but it went OK from what I recall.
Originally there were six of us, but there was a bust up that first Edinburgh and two members left and Tim stepped in. So there were seven of us all together so the joke didn't work. No wait, there were eight, because another actress was drafted in in that first Edinburgh at late notice. So there were eight Seven Raymonds and the hilarious joke still worked. It was that Fringe that the notorious ventriloquist dummy incident happened. I don't think you can count Ally and Sally as part of the group though, even though they appeared in one sketch.
Look at those kids, so full of hope and fun. And they were right to be. They've all had a decent crack at life. If I could just go back and chat to the young man on the right. I'd only have one thing to say to him:
In 2003 an Australian will offer to make a dildo of your penis - say YES!
But would that young buck listen to the weird long-haired grey-haired old man who appeared through a rift in the Universe and then disappeared again? Yeah probably.
If I find a dildo of my own penis in this move then I will know that it happens eventually and that he listened. Though I would have found it in my previous move, so I guess it either doesn't happen or he doesn't listen. Idiot.
