Odd Thomas Odd Blog

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 ;-)

Okay, I need you to go get your diary - or open your calendar if you are technically inclined.  Go on, I can wait... ... Got it?  Good. Now find 19, 20 & 21 October - I'm assuming it's a 2017 calendar you are looking at!  Anything pencilled in for those dates?  No?  Excellent!  Pick one of them and write the following entry: The Winslow Boy, Henderson Hall, Abbots Langley @ 19:15 Now you have an entertaining evening lined up with The Centralian Players' production of Terence Rattigan's play about a Naval Cadet accused of theft and his Father's fight to clear his name.  To make sure you have a seat, you can book tickets with the Box Office on:  (01923) 227392 Last Sunday saw the first set build get underway and by the end of the day, a large amount of the set had been built and decorated ready for the first rehearsal on stage since auditions back in July. The state of the set when I first arrived The sta...

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'...

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,...

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...

Last night was the final night of The Centralian Players' production of House of Secrets by Peter McKelvey ... and oooooooh, what a night! Aware of how the cycle generally goes with these things - having a good night followed by a bad night - I was rather worried about how the final night would go considering Friday went so well. I think that awareness is what made me so scared and made me shake so much: I came so close to losing control. Its all very well to rationalise something - in this case, that it was the last night so it was almost over - but that rationalisation means absolutely nothing unless you feel the truth of it throughout your whole body ... and I didn't feel that until the first half was over and it really hit me that there was only half the play to go. Then I finally settled into the role properly. By the time the play was over, I have to confess that I was on a high from the adrenaline that was racing through my system, and by the time I got down to see my...

Woohoo, the second night of the play is now under our belts and what a corker it was! All the things I did wrong last night were on my mind tonight, so I was constantly on edge, nerves jangling my system more than a rampant rabbit ever could: though there was no pleasure in this!! The main piece that had me worried was my long bit with Hector as I really messed that up last night. However, we succeeded in getting it pretty much word perfect tonight and, when we both came off the stage, we were beaming like Cheshire Cats ! It probably helped that we had a really good audience that reacted appropriately to the play, laughing and gasping in all the right places. Getting that kind of feedback is great, as you feel the audience are really getting involved with the story, so it helps to bouy you along. There is only one problem with having a good night: because you are on a high from it, the following night tends to run not quite so smoothly, whether due to complacency or over-confidence....

When I first knew I was going to be in The Centralians' next production, I knew immediately that I would need to take the time off work so I didn't end up in a position where I had to work late ... as usually happens when I have commitments outside of work. Wednesday was a prime example of that. I had to work at the customer site to provide some training on several of the plug-ins available for the Immediacy CMS . This seemed to go generally okay and we managed to finish before three o'clock, which left me with some time to work on another job dumped on my lap by The Boss: putting pictures onto the customer's intranet! I'm supposed to be a developer, for goodness sake, not a content management lacky!!! However, I am not a Lotus Notes developer, so trying to work out what the previous developer's have done with the site, and how it works, has been a bit of a problem ... if it wasn't for OpenNTF.org providing a picture gallery template, allowing me to at l...

Crikey, I didn't realise that a whole week had gone by since my last post! Admittedly, things have been a bit swamped, what with being dumped on at work by The Boss and ramping up for the play in a couple of weeks. Whilst I don't mind helping the boss out with stuff, it is frustrating when he disappears off on holiday for two weeks, dumping some application in your lap that he's cobbled together. Three days I wasted trying to fix his code in order to load financial data from a third-party system into the new system at our customer site. The man should not be allowed near a keyboard: his work would make the hardiest of developers cringe in fear or, at the very least, have nightmares about it. Even more frustrating is discovering that he has handed my name out to people to do jobs that we shouldn't even be doing. We might as well be a full-blown department of the customer's instead of an out-sourced solution, for all the freebies we do for them. Anyhoo! Enough abou...

After something of a slow start to the day - namely not getting up until gone midday - I popped down town for a bite to eat and to learn my lines, whilst deciding whether to go to my cousin's birthday party or to get my broken bathroom fan sorted*. Knowing what I am like, I decided to bite the bullet and get the fan sorted, otherwise I would be having a bath in the dark for the next few months** ... I'm not the most motivated when it comes to starting DIY projects, which is odd as when I get into the swing of them, I really enjoy it. So, apologies to my cousin! If its any consolation, I feel really guilty about not showing my face ... again! I will have to find a way to make it up to her. Anyway, I managed to run through my lines once whilst having lunch at Presence again, which caught the eye of one of the staff ... and definitely the most attractive girl there. Well, she now knows where and when the next production is showing and which group is producing it ... is it too m...