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If I had a Television, I'd only Shout at that Instead




  Being such a sagging trifle of tired this weekend, all I could was sit watching Agatha Christie mysteries on Youtube and shout along with them. In the midst of which something from The Body in the Library reminded me of how damaging laissez-faire attitude can be.
  Here's what I was shouting along with the various Marples and Poirots:

   Basil Blake once called Arthur a fossilised old b-u-g-g- etcetera. 
  I found a body. No, it's my body. I found it. In the quarry. 
  And we know fully well why she has her best nylons on, the silly great lump.
  Arthur just gets a little avuncular at tennis parties. You do understand, Jane? After all - I've got my garden. 
  A platinum blonde in our library!
  He called me Nemesis. "Let Justice Roll Down Like Water, and Righteousness Like an Everlasting Stream".
  Remember Edith: always a pointy little mountain and not a dumpy little hill. 
  Oh, dear me. I've been so terribly, terribly stupid and must telephone to Inch at once. 
  One sees so much evil, I fear, living in a village. 
  Grizelda...such an unfortunate name for a vicar's wife. 
  Mrs Church is a country woman - she'd know her mushrooms!
  Janet would explain quite convincingly how the mice had eaten the end of the cake and give herself away by smirking as she left the room. 
  You've got your central heating on.
  Now, Florrie Small, don't prevaricate. 
  I must advise you not to continue using your maiden name in the village.
  There was a lovely picture of the Cheviot murderer in the paper last Sunday. 
  That was stupid, very stupid. People don't put good heathrugs in dustbins. 
  I couldn't get her spangles out. 

   It was the the thing I shouted that reminded me of the dangers of having a laissez-faire approach. Except we're dealing not with spangles in this case, but with glitter.  Oh, and champagne! 
  We acts tried time and time again to make the executive producers of an international touring show do something when the booker they were going through stopped paying us. They did nothing. The booker then sacked our stage manager, who had been chasing him for unpaid monies more aggressively than had the rest of us, and instead employed someone with no experience of stage management. (But who he wanted to bum). Again, the executive producers did nothing. They were then sued for two thousand pounds by a theatre for the cost of repainting a stage 'after the forbidden use of both glitter and champagne being chucked about in the finale. We couldn't get the glitter out of the stage surface from being stuck on by the alcohol...'
  The executive producers paid. 
  Our dropped, properly trained stage manager would have known that, following earlier complaints, it was never champagne being used for the finale these days, it was carbonated water. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

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