Back at the Leeds Grand, this noose welcomes visitors to the fly floor. The sign on it says “Feel free!!” The staircase continues onwards and upwards to the Grid.

This is an overhead view of the fly floor, where the two controllers for the flying equipment are. The wall on the left was originally covered with the counterweight frames in which the balancing cradles ran. The weights had to be loaded and unloaded on a gallery higher above. Surprisingly, the flys are as bright as this during shows as the light does not spill onto the stage below.

A view of the grid. The pink walls are where the stage house was raised some six metres or so above the original structural level. Five cables feed to each bar and the numbers of pulleys reduces across the stage as you get further away from the lifting equipment. (Note how they alternate.) The sensors are to detect slack wires, i.e. ones that have snapped or the bar has possibly fouled by hitting an obstruction.

The hauling equipment, note the five sets of steel wire coils on each drum. Yes, that is indeed the manager in-shot who was our group’s guide for the afternoon and he certainly knows quite a bit about everything about his theatre.

We even saw inside the abandoned projection box of the Assembly Room which was known as the Plaza for many years. The Box is that carbuncle on the roof line, Warren’s words but we all agreed. It will go one day and in the meantime the remains of two Kalee Projectors with BTH lamphouses continue to rust. Talking of rust, we were advised that the wrought iron staircase which can be seen under the Box was probably not a good idea to venture onto…

And finally, a low tech fire alrm. read the label…(Click on any of the pictures for larger versions).

Karen suggested the blog name be tweaked. Our old purple fiesta battlebus has now been replaced by a not quite so old Fabia- official color Stone Grey.

My other car is an Octavia- Dark Blue which isn’t a shade of grey of course. However, there are several listeners in the Morley FM area who think I drive a Pink Skoda- a running gag as we had blagged a 4×4 super stretch Limo for the Morley carnival (reprised in 2006- clip 2).

David is absolutely fascinated with animals. It is a strange mixture of fascinated and terrified- he spots every dog on every journey but cowers if they sniff him. He has previously declared that he is going to be a Vet when he grows up, which is a little worrying as apparently vets have hugely high depression and suicide rates. He has also considered working in a zoo but we have made it clear that it is a calling, not a career.

As a birthday treat, we arranged a keeper for the day event for David last October. After looking around the local ones (and being stunned at the prices) we eventually hit upon a one focussed on children and a (comparatively) reasonably priced one at £65 down at Dudley Zoo. (Now £95 due to overwhelming success).

Anyway the weather was good on the day, the keeper chaperone was great with David and he had a whale of a time. She even made the shovelling out of the shit a bit of fun for him down on the petting farm.

Dudley zoo is unusual in that it is a quite compact site but spirals up a hill to an old castle on the top of the hill so getting around involves a lot of steep paths or a ride on the land train.

David’s favourite bit was feeding the penguins, although he did say they were rather smelly.

As an aside, I once interviewed some contestants live on-stage for a Miss 18 Plus Area final in the Aston area. On discovering a contestant was a Vet, I asked if she had ever had to put her arm into a cow as per James Herriott. When she replied that she worked in a small animal practice, I immediately (and perhaps not thinking of the reaction) enquired as to whether she had ever had a finger up a Hamster…

This definitely gave us a big Woof and when order was restored, we restarted the interview as if nothing had happened… until she said she was a Vet again, at which point we both corpsed…