A short series of articles about a long weekend that we took to Torquay in order to see a sixties show with John Leyton, The Honeycombs and Craig Douglas.
Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to the index page of each holiday. From there you can follow the entire holiday or choose your favourite place or excursion. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009. We were back onboard Ocean Village Two as she made her way down the Adriatic from Croatia towards Greece. Zakinthos is our port for tomorrow.
That night there was a show on the main pool deck with the acrobats and show team. The show opened with singer/guitarist Chris O'Leary - a lad after my own heart!
We were up there early to get a good spot against the rail on the top deck and there was a stiff breeze blowing which soon chilled us right down. "Don't worry, the captain will steer the ship round for the show so the wind won't be felt." He must have forgotten...
Laser beams were shooting out, writing "PLANET" - the name of the show - against the chimney stack of the ship. I always think lasers are more spectacular if you ignore what they are writing or drawing. It's the beam itself that's more spectacular. Then whilst the showteam sang their hearts out and danced about in futuristic costumes, the acrobats gave their performances on trapeze, cloth, swinging hoops and other apparatus way up there in the night sky on the 40 foot framework on top of the deck.
One wrong move and splash!... It was very spectacular - the acrobats were mainly from Colombia and they definitely have more nerve than I do!
By the end of the show my teeth were in danger of chattering and I had to wonder how the acrobats had managed in skimpy costumes and trying desperately to hang onto each other whilst dangling from a trapeze by their feet. "Sorry, love, I was cold..." wouldn't quite have cut it had one of them been catapulted over the side in the dark...
The acrobats deserved every bit of applause they got. I'd have been down from that iron framework like a shot, looking for a woolly jumper and a mug of mulled wine or something...
After the show there was an opportunity to have your photo taken with the cast. Ever the cheapskate, I took my own. I've no idea who the people in the middle are, but they looked to be enjoying themselves anyway!
We went down below and ended up in the casino. Fran loves playing the slot machines. It doesn't do a lot for me so I usually just sit and watch our money disappear! Anyway she was down to her last 10 tokens and the woman from the next machine moved. Fran gave me half the coins and I promptly won 72 pounds much to the disgust of the woman who had simply moved behind us... Sorry, dear, if you snooze, you lose...
Recently Dinah, the daughter of Pat Dailey has been in touch, leaving a number of comments on the post linked above, but she was also kind enough to send me some fabulous memorabilia on the act some of which I reproduce here with her permission.
Some of the posters and programme covers Dinah sent were from shows that my parents had taken us to see, such as the one above right, which starred The Shadows at the ABC Theatre in Great Yarmouth in 1964.
I have a feeling we saw the Val Doonican show at Great Yarmouth too and I remembered with great fondness another show Dinah mentioned - that at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool in 1963 following the theatre's refurbishment and renaming with Cliff Richard as the headlining act. We must have seen that show at least three times that year with various female members of the family swooning...Tuesday morning, 29 January 2008, found us up, washed, and fed and back at the Disney Complex for a day in Disney Studios. This hadn't existed the last time we were at Disney Paris back in 2002, although we had visited the studios in Florida 15 years ago.
The new attraction is the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in which you ride a lift or elevator which suddenly plunges 13 floors. Whilst it sounded fun (or terrifying) from the screams we could hear, the doctors have diagnosed high blood pressure so I was trying to be good and we didn't try it out.
You enter the park through a large building in which it is perpetual night time. This has shops and a fast food outlet. "Fast" is a relative term when applied to food in France. They don't particularly understand why anyone would want to approach food in a rush and I suspect the vast majority of burgers bought there are by us foreigners.
In fact I did wonder over the week whether America has decided there's no way the majority of its citizens are ever going to be slim and attractive and therefore are on a mission to fatten up the rest of the world? It's almost impossible to buy anything other than a burger or hot dog to eat in the parks, sandwiches are just about non-existent and other food outlets very hard to find except for those selling cookies and cakes.
Anyway we only visited this outlet to buy drinks and it was in the middle of the afternoon. There were large queues at just two open tills out of the 20 or so there must have been.
The Studios had a decent restaurant but it was an "eat all you like" buffet which meant you paid for a huge meal whether you ate one or not. It did (for a while anyway) have live music in the form of a jazz band who were truly excellent and it went some way to make up for the lack of live street entertainment that had been everywhere we looked in the Disney parks in America but had been missing everywhere we looked in Paris.
In fairness it was winter of course and no musicians could have played outdoors for very long, but they could have had a go for 15 minutes then nipped inside for a brew! Florida and California don't have to put up with temperatures measured with a minus sign in front and Disney doesn't appear to have given this much thought. Ice cream stalls were still open but I'd have given my right arm at times for a little paper cup with some tomato soup in it!
Given that I was trying to avoid going on rides that may have driven my blood pressure even higher (though we did go on the excellent Nemo ride - more later) we went into most of the show-type attractions.
CinéMagique was excellent and I'd recommend it to anyone. We also went in Animagique which was the Disney characters show. Again excellent for kiddies and entertaining enough for adults, though the somewhat random noise and laughter soundtrack playing incessantly before the show started was so annoying I'd recommend rushing in at the last minute just before the show starts!
We also went in the Moteurs...Action! Stunt Show Spectacular which was well worth sitting in the freezing cold for an hour. It was absolutely superb and the stunt drivers were unbelievably good and hellishly fast in such an enclosed space!
As already said, we went on the Nemo ride and had a 20 minute queue for this, though it went quickly enough, mainly thanks to the two girls in their early teens who were behind us who queued with us for 10-15 minutes then saw a sign which mentioned sudden twists and drops and there was then a prolongued conversation which went along the lines of:
"Do you want to go on it?"
"Yes I'm fine."
"'Cos we don't have to if you don't want to..."
"Do you want to?"
"Oh yes, but, you know, if you weren't sure..."
"Is it the drops?"
"Well it is a bit, but I don't mind going on."
"I don't know do you think we should?"
"I don't know... what do you think?"
...and so on for a while longer until at the last minute they reached a decision and sped back down the line of people and out before they could change each others' minds again!
We watched the parade and I couldn't help but feel sorry for the performers who were trying to give it their all, but again in Florida and California, they do not normally have to perform to "guests" who are freezing cold and struggling against the odds to look enthusiastic and give the impression they are enjoying themselves in rain and typical European January greyness.
Sunny weather definitely helps get in a Disney mood. Going in winter means fewer crowds and less queueing but more discomfort!
There was some consolation in spotting the tell-tale lumps and bumps of layers of thermals under the flesh-coloured tights and bodystockings!
I couldn't help but think there should be more shows with pyrotechnics as I'm sure half the people on the tram tour were just there to warm themselves up a bit when the lorry explodes into flames in the earthquake bit!
And so it started to go dark. In the winter months the parks close at 6 o'clock and there are no firework displays which was a shame.
We made our way to the gates and I turned back to take a final photo, which, even if you can't find any artistic merit in it, at least gives the explanation for the shot the other day of Fran with Mickey Mouse ears! We caught the free shuttle back to the hotel with only a minimum of waiting and were soon back and heading for a meal in the hotel restaurant.
A fabulous night out last night as we went to see the Christmas version of Trevor Payne's That'll Be The Day at the Opera House, Blackpool.
Quite a while ago, before I started the blog that you are reading, I put up a series of web pages about nostalgia.
They contain my own personal memories of the 1950s and 1960s rather than being another news archive but in one of them where I am recalling theatre and variety acts, I mentioned a comedy duo named Dailey & Wayne, who I remembered seeing in variety shows in Blackpool.
I'd searched the Internet and found nothing about them and so I suppose anyone else searching for them would have eventually found my page listed on Google.
And so I got an email from Claire, who's Dad's cousin was Billy Wayne. I replied asking her if she had a photo of the act as I'd found it impossible to find any and she promised to try to find one. She also mentioned the sad news that Billy had passed on some years ago.
Anyway she was as good as her word and the other day this autographed photo arrived and is now, as far as I know, at time of writing, the only photograph of Dailey & Wayne on the web!
Last night we went off to Garstang to see the Garstang Light Opera Group present "Love's Roundabout", a collection of songs about love and marriage, which led nicely to the second half which was Gilbert & Sullivan's "Trial by Jury".
Stop that drooling, girls!'So I took Theo to the audition for Grease last night. We got there with his resume and comp cards in hand, and the whole cast started arriving. We watched and waited. Our appointment was at 7pm.So where's my photo of her??? Dear me, so inconsiderate!
Finally by around 7.20 Sue came and took Theo for an audition. The stage manager or someone went along. I waited and listened to the first run-through of "Summer Nights". (By the way, the girl playing Sandy is utterly GORR-GEOUS! And a great voice too.)'
'Here they came back from the audition, and I push away from the wall so we can leave. But she hands Theo a script and sends him in with the others.Excellent stuff - you go for it Theo!
I said, "So --- you mean you are using him???" Jaw dropped and all that.
"Of course!" she said and looked at me like I had two heads.
Rehearsals are lots - 3 hours on Mondays and Thursday nights, and 3-5 hours on Sunday afternoons. Stepping up rehearsals and run-through in late Oct, and the show starts on Nov. 14 - Nov. 17. He has to get out of school early on Nov. 14 for a Matinee. Shows will be at the Rose Theatre (Toronto, Canada).'
David and Jeannie are round at ours for a meal and brought a load of photos up with them of various Creeping Bentgrass gigs and also this superb pic of David in costume for Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. (See the entry for 29 April)
Last night we had the most excellent night out. We went to the Spring offering from GLOG - the Garstang Light Opera Group - who were staging "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers".
Last night Fran and I went with David and Jeannie to see "That'll Be The Day", a rock and roll extravaganza of a show at the Blackpool Grand Theatre.