After an enforced break – Val and I were away on holiday – I was a little uncertain as to how many would turn up, but in fact most of the usual crew were there, with only Jaime missing because he was not feeling well. This did mean we were able to confirm arrangements for next week’s trip – I have invited them to my house for lunch, and then to visit Thame, hopefully to give them a more personal, less metropolitan view of England.
There were some organisational difficulties. Hamed in particular has problems to deal with; he was understandably upset having just received a text message informing him he had to wait outside his hotel with two bags, in order to be moved somewhere else – he has no idea where. And the phone number given was not answered. So he has ignored it, not seeing it as an official document. But who knows what will happen next?
That done, we warmed up with some silly exercise – they are quite happy to throw themselves into such things now – and then we split into three to work on some scenes based on reminiscence. Sherwan and Aisha were great as a pair of old people jabbering away in some language or other (Aisha was amazed to discover how similar Baluchi was to Kurdish) and Aisha was great, really looking and sounding like an old grandmother.
And I was with Ali. He is a natural clown, but his control is so much better now, and we were able to devise really quite a sophisticated scene which jumped around in time. If you are interested, there is a photo story version below.
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