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westhammerer
11:25 Wed Jul 5
Re: Cheap holidays in warm destinations in January
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I am a circus entertainer and was travelling back to the UK from Kuwait with five other performers after an event. There were two of us who love the game of backgammon, so, once settled at the airport, we set up a board to play.
Engrossed in multiple games, we suddenly became conscious of our names being called over the PA system for the last call for our flight and leapt into action, heading off at a run along an enormous concourse, up flights of stairs and onwards, only to find that we needed to take a shuttle to another terminal.
Alighting this at a sprint, we found there was another considerable distance to the gate. Thankfully, we made it in time and when we relayed our story to the gate staff, they told us that it was a 45-minute journey to get there from where we’d started. We had made it in 12,
So, Kuwait would be my suggestion.
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westhammerer
12:11 Thu Jul 6
Re: Cheap holidays in warm destinations in January
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People like to romanticise life on tour,under the big top, clown water flower et al...
But it;s basically like any other job, except with different, crazy, working hours. Wake up at 9, eat, go to work at 10, work till 8, beer till 3, sleep till 17. We had ten or more shows per halfweek, with mondays off, sometimes.
Some cities were awesome (Barcelona and Amsterdam), and others were bleak as fuck (Dusseldorf... I dont miss your cold damp dark winters. Or your cool springs or languid autumn). I laughed a lot, but I also cried a lot. Its all fun and awesomeness until one of your loved ones back home has a paper cut and youre halfway across the world and not with your family, where you should be.
Anyway.
A typical day (for me) would be to wake up around 9.30ish, have breakfast - obs avocado toast with marmite and nutella side, warm up on my instrument (gotta practice those long tones, scales and technique), and either run some errands or go to the big top if we had an afternoon rehearsal.
Afternoons on site would be used for soundchecks or adjusting music cues (if we had a sick acrobat or different horses, music would have to be changed a bit), or band meetings. (Accrobats and equestrian artists would train, do yoga, reblock dance routines, or warm-up and train horses, etc).
Then came dinner (avocado on toast with marmelade and peanut butter side) , make-up, line check, soundcheck, and show time. We'd be done around 11PM, and off the site around 11.30. A lot here would depend on the access to recreational drugs, yoga studios, and glory holes.
Depending on the city we were in, Id bike home or take the train/subway. Once or twice a week, Id go out for a drink with tour mates.
Fun stuff:
It was pretty cool to live in all those awesome European cities.
I got to work in a new environment - as a trained classical musician used to work in an accoustic milieu - chamber emsemble or orchestra -, working in a 7 piece showband with soundmen, microphones, headphones, preamps, horses, clowns, elephants, trapeise artists, lion tamers, and all! was golden exprience, I now know how to work efficiently in a recording studio).
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