The Long Way Home, Jumaan Short

The Long Blog Home

Like Old Mother and Dog Boy on their journey to Emblisi, on our travels around East Anglia we have also met many diverse and interesting people.  We have experienced the kindness of strangers - locals often provide us with home-made cake and tea and help us sweep up at the end of the show (hint!), we have won gifts in raffles, (well, everybody but me), restaurants have stayed open for us (it took a lot of persuasion and we ate it in the Travelodge reception), local publicans have offered us drinks on-the-house, generating lively debates on the demise of the British Pub and Tiger Woods (OK, just one publican and it was more of an impassioned argument.) 

Similarly we have offered help in return - mainly to broken-down vehicles along the country-lanes.  Alright, I didn't exactly. Penny, James and Theo did. Well I'm not very good at pushing cars and it was pouring with rain and, after all, her husband was on his way.  So not quite the A-Team, but the EA Team have been chugging along in that tough third gear.   Susan and Will (Eastern Angles' new apprentice), actually protected us from a fight amongst travellers.  There we were having a quiet, quick drink after one of our shows, and in tumbled several men attacking another with a mallet and mini-baseball bats.  Will quickly shoved a chair in the way of them as they headed in our direction and Susan embraced Penny and I as if we were refugee children being torn from their mother's breast.  James ran out the back-door and Theo blended in to the wall.  Typical actors, they weren't even after us but we had to make it in to our own drama.  Lucky I had our gun props in the back and Odessa's bandanna headscarf - we made a get-away alright.

We recently stayed in a B&B, which was somewhat particular.  On arrival, we were welcomed by a vast collection of dolls. In the dining room, the reception room, corridors and bathrooms there were dolls of many kinds displayed for our pleasure.    Now if it wasn't for all those freaky Chucky-style films, I would have quite happily embraced one of the dolls in my room and had a companion for the night (it would make a change), however still scarred by these films from childhood, I did my best to avoid eye contact with the creatures - sorry I mean dolls.  However, they were placed, well everywhere so this was a pretty difficult thing to achieve.  I eventually developed a half closed eye squinting look when wondering around the room.   This seemed to do the trick.  However, I had not noticed the piece de resistance - right in the centre of my huge four-poster bed was a tiny newborn baby doll, eyes shut enveloped in swaddling clothes.  This one I feared the most - it's always the cutest, most innocent ones in the film that come alive and strangle you in the night.  But I felt bad to smother it with a pillow - sorry I mean conceal it away from my direct vision, I mean after all it was a very pretty doll and I appreciated the collection, so instead I placed it at the very end of the bed and slept on the very other end of the bed with the light on.  I awoke in the night, blurred vision, caught a glimpse of the child and thought I was Mary!  Still as my senses returned, I thought - my little niece would love this place!

So after all these adventures, we have just finished one week at The Sir John Mills Theatre, Ipswich and boy has it been nice to settle for a while in one place and not have to unload and load the van every night.   It also means my injuries from this activity have had time to heal.  I may be getting stronger but I've certainly got a lot more bruises and cuts, I will never be a hand-model again.  It's good we're back on the road on Tuesday though; I wouldn't want to miss out on anymore educational escapades.   After all it's back home to London in a month and there's certainly less kindness to strangers there...