Dolls, dolls, dolls and going to the theatre

Sunday, 6 October, 2019

I haven’t been to a movie in quite some time. I haven’t been to the theatre in even longer. Last week I did go to a play – a comedy called Dead Funny.  It was put on by a local theatre group called The Tower Theatre Company. 

I had actually seen this comedy advertised in the west end not so long ago but didn’t get to see it. Friends at the pub meet for Nextdoor told me they were going so I bought two tickets and along I went.

Dead Funny has five characters. Two couples and a neighbour. All but one is a member of the Dead Funny Society, a group that meets to honour dead comedians. When the news of Benny Hill’s death reaches them they plan to meet to remember him. Of course everything unravels. I’d say that it wasn’t as ‘dead funny’ as expected but in the second half there was enough slapstick, scandal, and mimicry of the great British comics to make it funny enough.

The Tower Theatre Company are called the busiest troupe in inner London, performing about 20 plays a year. They have taken over a building that has housed a church, a synagogue and a women’s gym, so it’s an intimate space. I’ll definitely go to see more.

Actually the funniest, and most embarrassing, part of the evening was near the end when my phone, which I was sure I’d silenced when we first went in, started to ring. I stumbled out of the theatre space to turn it off, and apologised all over the place when the play ended.

On Sunday, I did something new. I had decided to buy a table space to show (or sell) my dolls at a school fair. I didn’t expect to sell any but I was interested to see what it was like, what people might ask, and to ask them questions about the dolls.

I spent some time from Thursday to Saturday making props for the sale. I made two park benches, a Victorian lamp post, and I made a row of terraced houses with attics and chimneys, which I planned to stand up behind the park bench scene. I decorated everything with painted vines and flowers – not wanting to squander too many hours – and it was cute enough.

I made some notices to go with all of this and put together a tool box with things like tape, clips, pencils, paper and the like. A friend had said she’d take half the table and sell her baby shoes but pulled out in the week before. So I was on my own. Luckily, Krish said he could come along to carry things and help me out.

The morning was very rainy but I’d had an email with ‘rain plans.’ This was the first I knew that it was going to be held outdoors. I hoped that it would rain but it didn’t. Instead it was just very windy. Very windy! It was really clear that I’d need a lot of tape to keep the house pinned down to the table. I managed it but it took about three minutes to figure out that it wasn’t going to work at all. Things were flying around.

 

So I resorted to laying the houses flat onto the table and anchoring the park benches and lamp post as best I could. There wasn’t a hope in hell that my dolls would stand up to much either so I lay them flat on top of the sari fabric we’d taken along as a cloth. Its a miracle the cloth stayed put, with the help of a bunch of clips to weigh it down. A couple of dolls try to launch their way off the table but were rescued.

No sales. A few curious people came by and I chatted with them. I asked them about the value of the dolls and, if they had children with them, I asked about names for the one they showed the most interest in. They were surprisingly uninventive but of course Elsa was popular, as was Rapunzel. Two little girls wanted one but were scared away by the price. I’d decided to try £20 to see how it would go over. I’m still not sure.

The crowd was digital daddies and yummy mummies, the children somewhat precocious. As Krish observed, this was very unlike the Hackney Central crowd.

We stayed about two hours of the four (very happy that I lasted that long) and wandered off to the main road to wait for a bus. The homes here were smaller than our area but quite gentrified.

At Homerton Hospital our bus was held up for quite a long time – Krish says it was ten minutes but it felt much longer – but we made it home with our stash.

I’ll do it again if I see another cheap table top sale. I’m not sure where I’ll go with this. I’m not keen enough to sell the dolls but I am keen to give them homes and regain the space they take up in mine. At the next one I’ll ask any children that show interest how much they want to pay and let them go. That would feel good so I’ll go with that plan.