I won’t bore you with telephone and email exchanges between me, loss adjuster and cleaners and scaffolder except to report that something is going to happen. The scaffolder has promised that he will contact me next week and then arrange to install the scaffolding in the theatre auditorium. This will take a couple of days. I will then inform the cleaning company and ask them to arrange to come in and clean the walls and ceiling etc. and hopefully get rid of the still dreadful smell. So at least there is some movement …….
And now a bit of reminisence. Eric Bramall, as a boy started building his first puppets during the years of World War II and often told me how scarce were materials and resources. He recalled that little was wasted and most things were recycled. He said carving wood was impossible to buy so the only chance of getting hold of seasoned wood was from old furniture or perhaps look out for old gate posts being replaced. When he died, 50 years after the end of the war, I found a couple of logs of fruit wood under his bench, layed down when green and set aside for use when seasoned.
He also told me how lucky I was to be able to pop along to a ironmongers (hardware shops which are now largely extinct) and buy a vast assortment of adhesives, nails and screws and fittings. In the war years even the basics were in short supply. I remember when I was a boy screws were never thrown away and even old nails were carefully extracted and straightened if bent and carefully stored for re-use.
Eric said that screw eyes, especially small sizes, were impossible to find and it was a few years before they came on the market again. Now screw eyes are essential for marionette making and so puppeteers had to make their own. This whole reminisence was triggered by my finding yesterday in an old box of mixed screw eyes two that were obvious examples of his work. They have apparently started out as two brass screws with their heads sawn off. The shank has been hammered out, flat and wide enough to drill a hole of a size to take the linen carpet thread which was used for marionette strings. Since there are a minimum of eleven stringing points on one puppet quite a few hours must have been spent in just fashioning the screw eyes.
I thought you might like to see them:
