Mental, just utterly mad

Worked like a dog, cold and wet, mad levels of disorganisation, savage working hours, heavy amounts of work, mental whichever way you look at it. Just bananas.

Kind of fun though.
In a masochistic kind of way.

love to all, will report more thoughroughly when I'm granted a few moments of time dedicated to me. Now I have to go back to work, at 9.30PM on a Friday night.
Just the way I like it

I'm the king of the castle

Hello all, well I got away early today and managed to find a bar with free internet (a very very new thing in wexford I can assure you).
Well as you can see from my pictures I'm in a very beautiful place at the moment, the gig at Johnstown Castle is by far and away the biggest and loveliest setting I've done so far. As for the general job it's great to be getting down to some physical work again, lots of it indeed, and a fair bit of the mental lateral thinking is always nice too.
The vibe is most certainly very different this year, I'm trying very hard not to annoy anybody (always a challenge I'm sure you'll agree).

Here's a bit of a Wexford diary that I prepared earlier. Enjoy....

The story so far in sunny wexford.

Here I am, once again part of the theatrical world of lifting, moving, raising, lowering, climbing and crawling, rigging and derigging. This time however it's an emormous tent, approximately the size of an aircraft hanger, recently dubbed the Hindenburg (for the relation it's internal structure bears and the likelyhood of utter disaster). It's mostly the same crew, minus one and plus 2 more, facing the same bizarre organisation (i.e none) of our "superiors".

Our wits are pitted against immesurable incompetance, heavy duty labour, mindless boredom and operatic egos that only just fit inside the 66M/18M tent. But there we go, we are payed fairly well for the task and get to swan around in our own castle. Hooray for opera.

One of the lads already quit cos of the bosses inability organise the preverbial drinking session in the beer manufacturing facility, we've built all of the sets and luckily we get to leave most of them up for the time being (instead of last years heavy duty routine of building an enormous set for 1 rehearsal, then taking it down and put up the other enorous one for another rehearsal, each day we did that, madness).

On the whole the sets look rubbish, but then who am I (but a mere stage monkey, no think just lift, ugh) and the designers have been payed exorbitant fees to "design" a pile of poo which no doubt some other lame arsed toff will sit and wet their pants over, after paying 120euro to watch the show.

Hmmm.

That's opera though, it doesn't matter if the show is any good or not, as long as you get to roll up in a limosine, quaff vastly expensive champagne, swan around in a dinner jacket with a silly bow tie like you own the place, part with inordinate amounts of money on a rubbish evening and then go to a dull dinner party and wow your rich and boring friends by saying "oh, we've just been to the Opera darling" in order to try and make them think that you're remotely cultured, even though you probably fell asleep or just plain hated the show.

All the nancy performers turned up the other day to assail our ears with endless wailing and warbling, mincing and complaining. I heard a great one the other day, it was an italian shirt lifter who complained to one of the stage managers saying "we need rehearsal clothes for thees show, my jeans are get very dirty, it ruin them, can you buy me rehearsal clothes". Well I thought, that will show you for prancing around in Armani togs at work, have you ever heard of "work clothes?" you know the sort, they're grotty and you don't mind getting them dirty, you pay for them yourself, the taxman is even kind enough to re-emberse you for them if you ask nicely, like real people do, you know, the people that clean up behind you when you throw your cigarette packet down on a manicured lawn in the middle of a beautiful garden when there is a bin only 3 meters away from you. Those things.

It's a good job he didn't ask me to buy him work clothes or I might not have been able to contain myself. The most irritating think of all is that he probably got what he asked for, because he's a performer.

Bitter?

Who?

Me?

Never.

Apart from the opera factor, the opera festival is proving to be lots of fun.

I think we got on RTE news this week, cos a TV crew came and filmed us building stuff in the tent, which should be nice (incidentally, my Malaysian TV debut is occurring tomorrow night at 8.30, so I should be on TV in 2 different continents, 8000 miles apart in the same week - marvellous. Shame I didn't get payed for either of them, but that's not the point). We also got to breifly exchange hellos with Bertie Ahern the other day, when he popped in for an offical visit to the Hindenburg.

Not a bad way to cari makan really, even though I do moan. I'm supposed to moan, it's in my contract. No really it is.

As for Wexford town it's still the same (apart from a new 24 hour supermarket which is set to annihalate virtualy every business in town like a monstrous greedy beast that devours everything in its path for the sake of making a quick buck. I won't even deem to give them the free advertising by saying their name, but you can guess who it s I'm sure). That and the bar with free wifi, where now I sit. It's very good for my budget this place, because normally it costs 3euros an hour to use the internet, but instead I can buy a pint for 4euros and stretch it out for 2 hours.

We're in a new house this time, just around the corner from last years gaff. Once again the Irish taste in home decor has left me truely breathless. Last year we had amazingly tastless paintings, and hideous plates hot glued to the kitchen wall amongst other things. This year we seem to be living in a nautical themed retirement home, complete with little plastic black cotton pickers reclining on the mantlepiece ("ahm just a seemple mayne, suh, awls ah need is mah cotton and mah maysteh") miniature lighthouses on the landing, truely tasteless yachts hanging in our brown living room, a wonderful 2 bar electric "fire" (the ones from 30 years ago with the orange light bulbs that turn a little fam with the convection current to give that truely real flame effect - and an incredibly lethal mains lead with live wire exposed, now fixed by yours truely, should I send them a bill?).

We don't have a washing machine or tumble drier. A very smart move when you're trying to organise a house for a bunch of guys whose job it is to get sweaty and filthy dirty all day. Smart move indeed.

Oh did I mention the doors? My word, whoever decided to put 4 tall lads in this house really does need a brain transplant. You have 4 lads all over 6 foot tall, in a house that was built for Hobbits. Quite literally. My mother would even bang her head.

I walked into the kitchen door and nearly broke my chin. No lie. It is very painful to come home to after the pub, I have several new bents in the top of my noggin. I am certain that when I go the way of my father you would be able to use my head as a washboard after this job. Never mind hazards at work, it's the getting to bed that is the biggest danger.

But I am only 1 minute from the sea - I can see it from the front door, so it's not such a bad spot.

Did I ever mention that the man who is ultimately in charge of the whole festival, a big greasy sleasebag of a man, totally odious english guy, very typical for an odious chairman, a smarmy, hideous, bloated frog of a man - a quintessential fat cat who oozes grease out of every pore and smarms his way through life. Did I ever mention him? Well I just did. He's a joke of a man, utterly incompetant, never did a days work in his life, trophy thick wife with big hooters, the kind of guy who comes up to the crew and tries to act like "one of the lads" in front of whichever moneybags bottom he's trying to clean with his tongue, says things like "and what are we doing here" to someone who's holding a hammer and a plank of wood ("erm, carpentry sire").

Well he is the most aptly named man on the entire planet.

His name is Michael Hunt. It really is.

And no, we are never allowed to call him Mike - we actually have it in writing.

I was going to ask him the other day if he'd changed his name by Deed Poll, from Isaac. But I didn't, the crew boss restrained me.