Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Time to find out whodunnit!! The Centralians are back with their Autumn production, Prescription for Murder , which is running until Friday, 18 October 2019 . Dr. Richard Forth is a busy man in Bere Knighton with a hectic work life, an awkward relationship with an old girlfriend and with a wife, Barbara, who is constantly ill.  When a stranger arrives claiming to know Richard's second fiancee - someone he claims not to know - Barbara's health worsens ... and she is not the only one.  With bad luck spreading as quickly as bad news, it seems someone is trying to kill Barbara, and anyone else who stands in their way. Tickets are selling fast, so it is a good idea to book, though there will always be some available on the door if you decide to come along last minute. And yes, yours truly will be appearing in this as the stranger.  The script called for a good looking young man, but we've had to go with what we have instead, so if anyone wants to join us, feel free ...

With 2019 well and truly under way, The Centralian Players are back with a new production to entertain you, this time a double-bill of two one-act plays. First up is Shadows , written by Josephine Carter , which explores the life of Erica, an elderly lady living alone in a single room of her home, happy with her memories.  When her family comes to visit and move her to a home, the past is ever present, but who is shadow and who is not?

It's that time of year again when The Centralian Players are building up to their final production of the year, this time performing Over My Dead Body , by the late playwright and actor, Derek Benfield . The play centres around Gerald, recently widowed, who plans to spend the rest of his days alone with his memories, not realising his late wife had other plans!  With the help of his daughter and son-in-law, Gerald does his best to keep unexpected visitors at bay and maintain his independence, but memories revive events from the past which are both funny and sad.

For those who enjoyed Steve Barker's debut as a playwright with his production of Awkward! , you will be pleased to hear he has been bashing away in front of his computer for the past year and is about to release his second play on an unsuspecting public. Backstage / Farce is a two-act play about a local drama group, the Bluebell End Players, who are preparing for - and performing - the opening night of their production, A Bit of Slap and Tickle .  As you may expect from a farce, things do not go according to plan as the group battle their way through frayed tempers, bad nerves, and missing cast members!

Now 2018 is solidly under way, the time has come for The Centralian Players to entertain you with their next production; no prizes for guessing the theme of their latest show!! An American Farce,  Sex Please, We're Sixty!  covers the comings and goings of guests and neighbours to the prim Mrs Stancliffe's Rose Cottage B&B, proving that a little bedroom fun can be enjoyed at any age ;-)

In four weeks time, The Centralian Players will once again be performing at Henderson Hall, Abbots Langley, with their production of The Winslow Boy , written by Terence Rattigan  and performed under license from Samuel French . With 11 cast members, this production is larger than normal and sees the debut of the group's youngest member, Daniel Remmington, playing the role of The Winslow Boy, a young naval cadet accused of stealing and his Father's fight to clear his name. If you are interested in booking tickets, please contact the booking office using the details on the poster above; there is no need to pay now as payment will be required when you collect the tickets from the box office.  If you cannot make the booking for any reason, all they ask is that you let them know so they can make the tickets available to others. As the production is still a few weeks away, why not like their Facebook Page or Twitter account so you can be alerted of updates.  Better...

Well, after around 10 to 12 weeks of rehearsing, opening night is finally here ... and I am in NO WAY READY!!! It doesn't matter how often I go through my lines and feel that even if I don't know the exact words I can work with it, as soon as I set foot at the venue - if not before - the adrenalin kicks in, my stomach ties itself into knots and my brain goes completely blank.  Not the best of fight or flight responses if I can't even think of what to do - I doubt I would survive in the wild!!! This has been a tough one to rehearse for a great many reasons, but we have had all the practice available and it is now time for cast and crew to assemble and put on a good show.  So, if you fancy seeing an amateur dramatics company performing a thriller over the next three evenings, why not pop along as there are still tickets available. Deliver Us From Evil by J.D Robins Venue: Henderson Hall, Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, WD5 0AR ( Map ) Production Dates: 18, ...

Last year was a tough one, in so many ways, and I have yet to be convinced that this year will be better, but we will see.  However, in an effort to find something other than work to fill my time and get some of my previous enjoyment of life back, I have returned to the Centralian Players - admittedly after some encouragement from various quarters. In 9 days - Thursday, 26 January 2017, to be more specific - I will once again be appearing on stage at Henderson Hall in Abbots Langley, in a never-before-seen production, titled 'Awkward!'.  The script has been penned by our very own Steve Barker and everyone is hoping that it will eventually be published for other groups to perform. To summarise the plot, think of that moment when your tongue rattled something off before your brain could hold it in check.  Or that situation where you have to converse with someone you have nothing in common with.  Or that moment a piece of clothing let your modesty down.  We'...

"Why do we do it?" This was Linda's question to me on our opening night last week, performing Alan Ayckbourn's Life and Beth with The Centralian Players , and is one that I invariably ask myself in the days approaching any live performance of our productions. Every script becomes akin to a comfort blanket for each member of the cast, with us until moments before we walk onto the stage and returning once again to our nerve-ridden, sweaty palms almost as soon as we are off, soothing away the jitters just by being within easy reach.  That, and the various sweets and cakes that people bring in, encouraging a quick comfort-munch before the next appearance.

Whoa, has it really been 7 weeks since I last posted?  I know I don't have that many readers, but sorry for the silence, things have been a bit hectic here! In fact, so much has been happening, that it's probably easier to give a quick bullet point of the main events, otherwise, this would be something of an epic posting which I guarantee you won't reach the end of! Firstly, I should say congratulations to my parents who celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary at the beginning of September.  They were intending to go away to celebrate together, but decided they would rather have a nice meal with family.  Unfortunately, The Woolpack , where the meal was booked didn't do a very good job of the booking, so the meal wasn't as nice as it could have been. After the rather unfortunate and ironic drowning of my little iPod Nano I wrote about in my last post , I ended up ordering a replacement directly from the Apple site: a nice little fifth generation orange one,...

I could really do with my own Hitchhiker's Guide right now, to provide some useful tidbits of guidance as I move from work-life to student-life ... though the nearest thing to that at the moment would probably be an iPad with Wikipedia Mobile installed on it: just as informative but with all the presentation and flair of an MP. Perhaps a Stephen Fry voice-over would go some way to perking it up a bit.  Or an MP dosed up to the hilt on Pimms. Since last Tuesday, when I actually succeeded in handing in my notice after weeks of dithering, I've had these little nagging thoughts at the back of my head as to how I'm going to survive.  All those thoughts of not being able to get another job and how the bills are going to be paid, all jostling around in the background where I could ignore them until finally, during Friday night, they snuck into my dreams. I don't know how many dreams I had, but the last one I remember was going back to a company I used to work for fif...

All of last week, I was very much looking forward to the weekend just gone: partly so I could escape the work I am doing at the moment (I would be more mentally stimulated watching In The Night Garden for 8 hours a day), and partly because my new hob unit was due to be delivered. When I bought The Hob , the sales guy arranged for a Saturday delivery and said it would be delivered any time between 11am and 5pm, an ever-so-slightly better time window than you would get for a plumber or sparky.  The John Lewis delivery guy whupped the plumber/sparky's ass*: he phoned me at 10:30 to say he would be about 45 minutes and then promptly arrived at 11:15! And there was I, all mentally prepared to spend the day in the flat, tidying and boxing things up, only to find myself free to hit the shops ... which I promptly did, of course.  How could I not with Christmas only just round the corner??? Several hours later, filled to the brim with stress-relief cuppas and carrying numerous b...

Well, the curtain has been called and the set dismantled for another three-and-a-half months as our production of "A Murder is Announced" closes with a record audience number of around 130!! Henderson Hall is not a particularly large place and we generally have a maximum audience of 100, but due to so many advanced bookings for the Friday and Saturday nights, we had to put a couple of extra rows out.  Everyone has been astounded :-) I think it is safe to say that everyone felt Saturday night's performance was bugged by a few little gremlins, but everyone took it in their strides and the feedback from the audience was that it was a very enjoyable production, so smiles all round! As a way of saying thanks to the cast and crew, the producer managed to sneak some little gifts up to the dressing room for when the play closed and we all piled in full of the highs of a complete production ... I now have my very own Oscar!  LOL My first ... and final ... 'Oscar'!! Some o...

Whoever coined the phrase "Out of the frying pan and into the fire" wasn't far wrong! No sooner am I back from the Great North Run than I am straight into final rehearsals for the next production by the Centralian Players , "A Murder is Announced", a fifty-year celebration for one of the group's members. Fifty years! That's a long time to dedicate to a hobby - I usually get bored after just a couple! :-) After three days of technical rehearsals that ranged from absolute disaster* to pretty good run-through, we finally opened last night and that's when the nerves finally hit. Its fine when its just the group of you that learned the script together, but add an audience to the mix and my stomache suddenly starts somersaulting like a clumsy trapeze artist. In fact, its starting its little routine again as I sit here typing this! Andrex is making a mint out or me right now. * Tuesday's technical rehearsal was the worst to date. That said, I have...

With the LHC called to a halt for a short while, perhaps Brian Cox would like to consider measuring the impact of the collisions going off inside my head? Okay, there is no guarantee of catching sight of any Higgs Bosons but he may get to witness the IT Certainty Principle, the laws of which state that for any piece of IT work, the chance of implementing that work is inversely proportional to the amount of effort involved! I don't know about particle accelerators but I seem to be caught in a project accelerator, with everyone poised to see what kind of big bang I'll be generating ... hmmm, geeky intros are never a good sign!! I guess you could say that things are not going all that great right now. As the above suggests, I've been putting huge effort into projects that have then been canned and very little effort into projects that have actually seen the light of day. Currently, we are having to put a tremendous amount of effort into three major projects that are to be ...

Blogging is good for you. Fact. Well, good for Bloggers, not necessarily for the readers! If this article in Scientific American is to be believed - and there's no reason it shouldn't - blogging can be quite therapeutic, helping patients recover from surgery, and improving sleep* and memory. I can certainly agree with the memory aspect as it is approaching two weeks since my last post and I attempted to log in with the wrong credentials, something I hadn't had a problem with before. I guess you could argue that blogging is like Regaine for those with rapidly diminishing follicles: you're fine while you use it on a regular basis, but stop for any period and it quickly disappears back to its natural state. Unfortunately, my natural state is dazed and confused ... so, back to the keyboard!! What with work, rehearsals and training, I haven't really had a lot of time to do anything: I haven't even had the opportunity to learn my lines for the play , let alone ta...

Once again, time has run away with me ... not so much to spend eternity with me as to dump me in the middle of nowhere and run away into the night, laughing like a disturbed seaside attraction . Okay, the disturbed laughter was actually me whilst spending every evening last week watching all twenty-four episodes of Boston Legal, season 3 , so apologies to the neighbours for the late night cackling ... and apologies to any ladies out there that may end up suffering my interpretation of Alan Shore's approach to pulling! Whilst they can all tell me where to disappear to, my colleague in the drama group isn't going to have much of a say as she has to kiss me in the next production. Poor soul. Last week, we were psyching ourselves up for kissing for the first time, both as nervous as the other and both giggling like kids: I even made sure I had a shave on the day and had a packet of mints to hand, just in case. As it turned out, all that prep wasn't required as she had a migra...

My training for the Great North Run seems to have gone totally to pot. I had started to work towards training on a Monday and a Wednesday night, but with the return to the drama group last week, Monday is now blown out of the water. I can hear your shouts now: Run to drama! Well, Monday, I did exactly that ... and I won't be doing it again! All decked out with shorts, sports vest, iPod gear and a change of clothes in my rucksack - complete with mandatory flannel and can of deodourant - I set off for rehearsals. Before I had even left the flat, I knew it was a bad idea, but I was adamant that I had to catch up with the running, so forged ahead. Boy was it a hard run: if you look at my graph for the day it looks like a seismograph output for a small earth tremor. Not that I moved the earth that night. If I had, the reaction would most likely have been, "Is that it?". I'm putting it down to running a lot earlier than I would normally so, mentally, I had not really p...

Just over one week ago, the Centralian Players had auditions for their October play, a celebratory production for one of its members who has been with the group an amazing 50 years! Personally, I can't see myself staying that long at anything as my interest in any activity waxes and wanes more frequently than any lunar cycle.  Not that I'm fickle, I just get bored easily and if the past few years are anything to go by, I will be leaving and rejoining the group so often that I would have to be around for another 70 years before I ever actually achieve 50 years with the group. To be honest, if I am around for another 70 years, I am more likely to be getting a telegram from Royalty than treading the boards with anything more than the Old Man Slipper-Shuffle. But I digress, as usual... With only around 25 people in the group and two thirds of those willing to be on stage, it was pretty much inevitable that those who wanted a part in the next production would get one: and yes, I di...

Somehow, despite not posting very much recently, I have managed to ramp up another 100 posts in the past eight to nine months ... and it took me eighteen months to do the first hundred. Either I'm bored with too much time on my hands or there is a lot more to talk about ... or I'm just talking more crap than ever before. PLEASE don't comment on that! Anyhoo, it seems that Time is once again hurling itself past me like a million lemmings off a cliff as this is now my fifth attempt at writing this post since last Thursday, all previous attempts ditched due to lack of ... well, time ... and at the rate I'm going now, it won't be complete by the end of today, either. So, on with it... Thursday Thursday night had me visiting my friend TrickyFaerie and her hubby for another amazing dinner, topped off with an excellent chocolate birthday cake complete with cream, strawberries and chocolate fudge layers ... excuse me while I just go clean up the dribble! I really do need to...