Clippy's log - page 28

18/8 7:10pm. We might as well go in, no point hanging around. As we start moving, a Savoynetter introduces himself to the boys and says "I didn't realise who you were, I've been reading your blog with great interest". Actually that's happened quite a lot this festival.

7:30pm. Ah that Iolanthe overture, we love it. When the curtain rises we look for people we know - and there's a lot tonight. Both Celia and Leila are people we've spoken to at least once, and they're doing a great job of acting the part of five year olds. Charlotte warned us to watch her dancing and acting, and we are by no means disappointed - she is throwing herself into the part with some gusto, and obviously having a whale of a time doing so. She'd be a credit to any chorus! The peers' march is quite something too. There's so many of them they can hardly fit across the stage! Quite a few tenors too, unless they're just basses singing down the octave. Actually there's quite a number here at the festival - Midga hasn't cracked his "collective noun" joke since Trial by Jury. Anyway, Rosuav is reviewing the show so I don't have to. It's an Iolanthe comparable to ours in 2006. Enough said.

10pm. I'm on duty with Rosuav again. David Turner waffles a bit, and often diverges into anecdotes from his own career, which Rosuav never bothers to note, so it's not onerous. Nothing like gunzelling a full length SRHC Blue Train consist at 80km/h between Centre Road and Westall. Not even like getting the numbers and liveries of a triple NR lash-up on PW4 at Laverton. Shut up Clippy, you'll get some gunzelling days soon enough.

10:30pm. We and Elise join Midga in the club. Elise has plenty to say about the singing (some positive and some negative), and the boys echo bits about the tech and crew side of things. Not that it's easy to talk tech when Elise has some music to talk about.

10:45pm. Community singing - including the peers' march up on the stage, for the third time this festival! Midga leaves the camera ready for action but Elise doesn't take the hint. Surprisingly, some of the cast are here already and join us for the march - fairies as well as peers! Charlotte, who has been telling us how she has joined it often enough in theory (I mean in rehearsal), is right in it of course - which reminds all of us (or at least all who were around at the time - Traal is too young to remember) of Jessica from our own show. Happy times.

11pm. Usual cabaret. We don't know many of the songs and it seems Elise doesn't either. We decide to bail early. Charlotte is nowhere to be found.

11:40pm. Elise has twisted the boys' arms and forced them to help her finish the spag. Charlotte is chilling out with a cup of tea - poor thing, she's had a stressful show. She's still too uptight to eat anything much, so Elise tells her own horror story about how to (potentially) give yourself diabetes. I have never had a lingering disease like that - although I have had a broken board and a varicose rivet, each of which put me in hospital for major transplant surgery. Not fun.

1:30am. We leave in order to let the girls get some sleep. It still feels weird for a show to be over with no cast party, but getting to bed before it gets light outside is probably a reasonable alternative. The spag is still not finished so we are invited over for a picnic lunch tomorrow!

19/8 11:30am. The boys gradually become conscious of the fact that they've missed out on Singing from the Bandstand - bits of G&S in the park with everyone joining in. Oh well.

1pm. Have lunch making gear, will travel. Charlotte has only just got up - which is the right thing to do after a show.

2:30pm. After eating and a lot of talking, we go for a walk around the gardens. It's a beaut day out, worthy of any late autumn day at home, and the camera gets a good work-out. We get to see all over the Pavilion Gardens, including a ride on the miniature train (it sure feels good to have wheels on steel rails rumbling under us again), and eat lunch on The Slopes, near the weather station where the birds assemble to have bits of apple fed to them in front of the camera. Midga quite rightly introduces Australian railway philosophy to the English and the American, simply by throwing his apple core into a garden bed. He explained to them that, as most of my faithful readers will know, it was the great Sir Harold Clapp who said "PLANT MORE FRUIT"! It goes over well. At the gardens there's what looks like a jumping castle. Charlotte was almost ready to have a go (she didn't get a chance at one while on stage, and all five year olds should have an outlet for excess energy) but it turns out to be just a bunch of trampolines tied together.