Good folks

One of the great pluses of the life I live is the people I meet on the road.  I don’t mean just the casual passers-by in the service stations of life, but the people who take time to speak to me and tell me about themselves, with whom I can reciprocate and then pass an interesting hour or two.  They may become longterm friends or they may just drift into the past like many Facebook friends. A vague memory whose faces are there in the list, but that’s about it. I suppose it’s just the same for most people, I just think I interact with more people than most as I travel and the nature of my work means that I come up against interesting people.

One such meeting happened at Wimbledon, home of the busking fiasco about which I have already written at length.  After the last Wimbledon Village Fair I attended, I had an email from Elena.  She and her daughter had loved the show and she would like to write about me.  Now I dare say you can imagine how Mr Alexander responds to such requests.  From time to time he is approached with similar enquiries and of course he readily agrees.  Are you surprised? I made an appointment for Lena to spend an hour or so in the lorry at the next convenient London gig.  That was last year.

Lena is the Founder and editor of Good Folks magazine.  She calls it an Oral History magazine and it has had two editions so far.  I am the final chapter in the second.  It is a lovely idea and makes for fascinating reading.  The real voices of real people talking about themselves.  Her partly-finished website is www.goodfolks.co.uk

Basically she records the subject speaking and selects and slightly edits (I think) the end result and prints it in the magazine.  I say ‘I think’ because, after reading it for the first time, I felt I was being misrepresented slightly.  The selected (and maybe slightly edited) sections seemed to me at first reading to present a character to whom I couldn’t fully relate.  Of course she was presenting Mr Alexander, rather than me, but even so I wasn’t sure.  Then on the first page she had made a typing (or maybe transcribing) mistake that meant the joke (about the bat) was completely unintelligible.  So I wasn’t pleased initially.  Well pleased but not thrilled perhaps describes it more accurately.  By the time I had finished I still wasn't sure.  Here was the presentation, apparently accurately, of what I had said, but is this how Mr Alexander comes over?  Really?

I’d like to know what you think.  Lena has given me permission to paste it in here.  I have changed the typo so the bat story now makes sense.  I have asked her about the title and I’m still no wiser.  If anyone can elucidate I’d also be grateful.  It is apparently an allusion to ‘White trailer trash’ but I’m still no wiser.  Or why that refers to me.

It makes this blog longer than my usual, so I’ll say cheerio now in case you don’t read to the end,

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

TRAILER WHITE BASH

David, 65, travelling circus entertainer

“Mr Alexander doesn’t smile – not really much. He is not very nice, he lives alone, and he’s brusque and rude sometimes. He is booked for the whole year”

I’m not a clown. I don’t like clowns. Personally. In Britain they’ve adopted personas, which are hysterical and miserable. I’m Mr Alexander.

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Quite regularly, an adult is talking on the phone in a front row – Mr Alexander stops the show. He has a gag – he takes the phone off them and speaks to the person on the other end of the line in front of the audience: “Hello! You’re speaking to Mr Alexander in the middle of the show. Can we just have a big round of applause?! What’s your name? … Mrs Jones. Hello, Mrs Jones, hooray!” And suddenly Mrs Jones realises she is in the middle of the show and Mr Alexander says: “Mrs Jones, I’ve got a little gag for you. What has small balls and hangs down?” And that’s a bat. “And what has big balls and hangs up? That’s me!” He presses the button and goes back.

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For some reason the audience likes him.

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Mr Alexander is very concerned about the way he looks. He has costumes made for him by a tailor. He buys good quality shoes – he spends a lot of money on shoes.

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Or rather what he tends to do – he does some routines when children come in to the show and they get a prize for that. He is quite careful about what the prizes are – quite often he gives fruit. Some children will look at it and just walk away – others will say: “Thank you.” And if a child says: “Thank you” without being asked, Mr Alexander goes to the parents and tells them that they’re doing well. And usually the other parents, of the child who didn’t say thank you, suddenly, they say: “Go and say thank you, Jim!” Mr Alexander is expectant of a certain level of morality and behaviour.

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Often at a county show, somewhere on the ground will be some idiot selling plastic guns, so a child will sit in a front row with a plastic gun pointing at Mr Alexander. Mr Alexander just won’t have that – he will say political statements like that there are enough guns and terror in the world. Parents don’t expect an entertainer to be taking issue with things like that. But there is this edginess about him – I can’t stop it.

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When I’m him – I’m totally him.

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Mr Alexander was a bit rude to a woman at the Wimbledon Village Fair – because she was so brusque with him. I used to go to Wimbledon every year, but last week I fell out with them because I had an arrangement with the organisers there to take a hat round in order to pay the emission zone charge. I didn’t take it all – a part of the money from the hat went to them. That arrangement had been going for a long time, but then the new organisers said that she had never heard of that and all of my money from the hat had to go to them. So I said: “I can’t afford to come to London, then” and they cancelled the show. Today I got a call – I got booked for the day of the Wimbledon Fair for the same money, and no worry about the emission zone charge, because it’s right up north. Marvellous!

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Mr Alexander is a profoundly tragic character. In real life I’m a quiet and very happy man. I’d never do what he does. I buy old clothes in charity shops, I live on my own, I have 2 dogs.

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I don’t have a home – I have an address, a yard in Chester – but it’s only for correspondence, you have to have it for legal purposes. I live in a lorry – this is my home, and I have a trailer – this is my theatre. The trailer goes on the back of the lorry. I’m not linked to anyone, to any physical place. I can move it around.

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I love this space. It’s not a proper caravan. Originally it was a lorry that was owned by the NHS and they used it for some sort of screening, like breast screening. I bought it about 10 years ago. I think I paid 6 thousand, but then I added lots of things: a window in the roof, a satellite television, which is great – I can get television everywhere. I have air conditioning, I have a little wood-burning stove – it keeps me warm in the winter, fabulously warm, and I added a bay window at the back, which has the flavour of a gypsy caravan.

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Lots of people have things that are extra to their lives that they don’t need. When I last lived in a house I counted the teaspoons – I had 23. Why?! So now I have 1 – because I need only 1 – but that’s a nice silver-plated teaspoon, I bought it in Sheffield. I’ve got 1 big saucepan and 1 small saucepan. I have a sofa, which is a guest bed. I have a shower, I have hot water – there is a big 100-litre tank and a big gas tank, so I fill it up at petrol stations. I have a fridge. I have everything. I have a sculpture that my mother made – that’s me and my brother, we went to a funny Church of England school and wore this strange uniform with the preaching bands. My home is like anyone’s home – you have things around you that you love.

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What is great about living like this – you become very aware of things you bring into your life and things you have to exclude from your life. I’ve just come through the whole strip down of everything – I needed to reduce the weight of the lorry. I’ve had a real problem with the VOSA [The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency – ed.], with the people who deal with lorries and their licences, that sort of thing. I was pulled by the VOSA – they have these different stations down the road and little men in a van drive in front of you with a light flashing, saying: “Follow me to the checkpoint.” Before they let me go, but this time they said: “You can’t drive away. It’s too heavy.” So I had to spend a long time cutting it to the very, very basics.

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At the moment I’m painting the lorry, so its left side is painted like a front of a mansion house I’d live in if I won the lottery – if I did the lottery – it is very posh. And on the back – I’ve just started on the bricks on this side – it’s painted to look like the back of a very run-down Liverpool house with laundry hanging up and an old dustbin. The trailer, which is my theatre, is modern, but I painted it to look antique.

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People call it a vintage circus. I put on retro music, my routines are pretty classical – Chinese linking rings – everybody likes Chinese rings – juggling with knives, balancing on chairs, riding a unicycle. But an interesting thing happens – people who have seen the show several times will say: “I’ve not seen that before” – and that’s been there for 40 years! I think what happens in the show is that I do take the audience into some other way of thinking, other way of being, and it somehow encloses the audience and me and the space in a little bubble and the set helps slightly – they sit here and they see me and all the strange things that I’m doing and the rest of the world goes off and they’re somewhere else and I say something like: “The baby is in the cradle as a part of a chain of life and one in all and all in one…” I don’t know what class of people they are, whether they’re rich or poor, Tory or Labour, whether they live in a mansion house or caravan, but for that half an hour their problems and troubles and wearies and worries are gone and they’re in this world with me and it’s fine to be there, life is good and warm and self-affirming.

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People don’t laugh so much at the show – they’ve almost been hypnotised into this world. It’s what a magic theatre does for everyone really. I suppose that’s why the show is successful.

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Do I believe in magic? Real magic happened this morning. I was mending something, I spent a lot of time trying to get that tiny thing out and then it just came out. I do believe in a very practical sense of magic in people’s minds.

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I have this special relationship with children. I do know that they hold me in a very special kind of reverence. When I take a child into this world he is being amused, he is being respected. There are children who come to see me every year – they make their parents come and I’ve known them from 3–4 year olds right the way through to 14 year olds. There is a family who come to see me whenever they can and I’ve known this little girl from being literally born and now she is 6. Last time her mum told me that she is a non-stop chatterbox and she regularly talks about Mr Alexander. There is a song called “Mr Alexander” and she knows all the words. But when I saw her she went totally mute – she just stood there looking at me and didn’t even say: “Hello.” It was quite sweet really in a nice way.

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Occasionally I do children’s parties – there are always people who want something different for their children. But I’m not a children’s entertainer – I entertain the child in everyone. That’s a big difference. There is a child in everybody – that’s the person I’m entertaining. Some people don’t let the child out of themselves very easily.

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When I was a little boy I wanted to – I didn’t have a clear vision, but I think I’ve always wanted to have my own theatre. I have my own theatre with which I can do everything.

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I travel everywhere – all over the UK. Sometimes I go to Scotland, sometimes to London. I do private parties only because people do want me to be there – otherwise I don’t have to. For example, this little girl – her mum and dad got married 2 years ago and wanted me at their wedding. The places that I like best are county shows. I came to this show in Hertfordshire 2 days before – the organisers were quite happy with me staying 2 days extra. There was nothing here virtually, just a huge field, and you see the show arrive – sheep, cows, horses – and also I can spend time putting the show up, mending something and thinking about the show.

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You have to be Mr Alexander with organisers of county shows and fairs – if you want to get good terms.

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Sometimes I do rush – I finish here at 4 o’clock on Sunday, then I have to pull it down very quickly because I have to drive sort of 200 miles, and to set up and be ready to work the following day at 12 o’clock.

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A lot of the shows that I go to have farmers’ stalls and at the end of the second day usually they sell everything off cheap – they don’t want to take it back home again. So you can buy some really good stuff like a fresh free-range chicken for 2 pounds, which is great. There are always bargains to have. I eat chicken and lots of fruit. My dogs always have fresh meat and brown rice.

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I try to stay healthy. I don’t work in an office in a smoky horrible environment and drink and smoke and take pills. I’m not depressive, I’m always in the open air, I do yoga, I keep fit. I’m hard working, but I also exercise – I mean that I believe that the things that I do as a part of the show, particularly like juggling, are very good for your mind as well as for your body because they are keeping your reactions. I’d never break a mug – my hand will catch it before it’s even falling off.

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I don’t go on holiday. I don’t need “to escape from my reality”, “to change the picture” in order to rest. On the contrary, I try very hard to stay centred in the now, to be mindful. My reality is very enjoyable.

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My world in a funny way is both very small and tight and also broad and open.

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I travel from the beginning of May a way through really till December. There is a little break in October, but November and December are very busy with Christmas. I don’t have shows between January and March – I park the lorry and trailer at the yard. The trailer needs things doing to it – everything has to be repainted or refurbished. I take it all out, clean it, mend it, put it back together again. I do some prop-making maybe and I think about the show – I give it a huge amount of thought in terms of all sorts of different aspects of the performance, starting from how I am standing, what side I’m showing to the audience.

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Awful time. I don’t like not doing shows. I write a blog instead and if you read my blog over the winter you will see me going down, down, down. Then I find a way up.

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If I could afford it, I’d go down to Portugal for the winter – to work. I have a friend who also lives in a lorry and he is also an entertainer and once a year we meet in Oxfordshire because he gets booked at the same event as I am. We go there a couple of days in advance and just talk and catch up for all the year. Every winter he goes down to southern Portugal – he has a busking spot in Faro. He is a clown, but I love his persona – his clown is very gentle, very introverted and quiet.

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I was born in London in Southgate. I lived in London for many years, but now I don’t like London very much. Partly because it costs me 200 pounds a day to go into London – the emission zone charge – which is a lot of money. And partly because I think people seem often to have lost their way a little bit in big cities, lost a focus of life. Somehow people in the countryside are more focused. You have to get away from a big city in order to discover true reality.

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Still, I wouldn’t like to live in a village. I can have that anywhere. In 2 weeks I’m going to Devon and my lorry is parked right on the beach – I will have this huge view of the sea and rocks and the setting sun over the sea, and I’m right on the edge. For 10 days I’ll have that wonderful view and the next week I’m somewhere else – there is a little Tramway Museum in Derbyshire, so it’s all little vintage houses that they’ve rebuilt. I live in all of these places – that’s why I don’t want to live in any one of them.

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I live in the caravan not because I couldn’t afford a house. I had a house 5 years ago as well, but there was no point in having a house – I was hardly ever there – so I rented the house out. I’ve always had a lorry, I always lived as a gypsy anyway.

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If I were rich? I would still carry on doing this – oh, yeah! Definitely. I’d probably give more away – to charities. I try to give money away as much as I can – I gave some money to the Nepal Appeal recently. But I haven’t got a lot of money to give because the money I earn during the summer has to last me right the way through the whole year. I buy props for the show – I always improve the show.

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I’ve bought a new trick. One of the magicians who I used to love when I was a child was Tommy Cooper – the huge man in an Egyptian fez. He did a routine with multiplying bottles. So I’ve bought multiplying bottles from a magic dealer this year. I have two tubes and lots of bottles appear out of the tubes and I end up with having lots of bottles all over the table. Tricks are usually very, very expensive – I bought 3 boxes of them and each box was about 40 pounds. I also bought a new tailor-made waistcoat last year, but that will last me a few years.

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Living on the road makes me into a natural outsider. I’m an outsider in many ways. I prefer to be slightly detached from communities and places – I move through them, observe them, work with them and then move on, and that I like. That sense of being an outsider is very special to me. I’ve lived in communities of course. I felt fine, but I was always treated slightly oddly because I have that sense of distance from people and I think people are suspicious of that. It’s not their problem – it’s my problem.

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I don’t go to parties either. I don’t like small talk very much and I don’t have so much in common with most people. Most people, once they know that I live in a lorry, think of me: He must be either a dirty hippy or gypsy. Suddenly their preconceptions about somebody who lives in a lorry clash with their immediate view of me and the way they react to me – because I’m obviously fairly intelligent, I can talk, I’m a good speaker. They find that difficult, I find it difficult – so why would I do it?

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It’s me and the dogs and my work and my home, and that’s it. I can move that little world somewhere else, set up my world again, do my show, move on again, move on again. That suits me.

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I became a travelling circus entertainer because of Margaret Thatcher.

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I was a teacher at a primary school in Scotland. In the 1980s a primary school teacher had much more decision-making power. There were certain things that you obviously had to teach – how to read, how to write – but apart from that, how you did that was left to you. I used to break rules all the time – we would take all the desks and build them up into a boat like a pirate ship, and all the children would be in a story. I used drama a lot. That was in a beautiful part of the world – in a little fishing village. The school looked down over the harbour, and we used to go out in boats quite often. You obviously can’t do it now because of health and safety. And we used to go down to the shore and look at things. It was about this sense of adventure and fantasy all the time.

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I quit the job because Margaret Thatcher heard about the national curriculum in France – on Tuesday at 10 o’clock they all are learning maths and all schools are doing this particular exercise. She got that idea, and then suddenly instead of having the freedom of a primary school teacher you had been told what you had to teach and how you had to teach that. It became very prescriptive.

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She did a good thing for me, though. I gave up teaching and decided I was going to become a travelling entertainer full-time. I was always an entertainer, even before I was a teacher. I went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School for 2 years to learn acting. I played in the theatre in Salisbury.

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I suppose I also wanted a wider audience. This village in Scotland was miles from anywhere, very, very rural – it was 14 miles to the nearest supermarket. Once you’ve done a show in the village, you’ve done the show to everyone and you can’t do the same show again.

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When I left teaching I started running circus workshops – at some point a circus became a tool for teaching life skills and I was involved in that movement. When you’re learning to juggle, for example, it is the model you can apply to anything you learn. If you’re comfortable with learning, then you’re probably going to be a good worker because you can adapt to any change. Our attitude to failure is fundamental in the process in which we learn – if you become angry with your own failure, then it’s unlikely you’re going to get past the failure, because it becomes a block. Whereas if you see failure as part of a process towards succeeding, then the failure in a sense is a tool that you use in order to achieve what you’ve been wanting to achieve, and a circus is a great way to learn what you’re not very good at.

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What I used to do – you take a class of disaffected young people of 14–15 years old, who got into trouble and out of school basically. I gave them unicycles and what they do – because you can’t teach somebody how to unicycle, you can only encourage somebody to learn – so what happens is that the teacher becomes irrelevant in the learning process. He is not a demigod here passing down all the essential knowledge to his poor little deprived idiot pupils. Suddenly, your relationships with the pupils change entirely – the process becomes very democratic, kids suddenly are able to do something for themselves. They realise then they’ve got a barrier and that barrier usually was put in their minds by a teacher, and how they would learn anything in their whole lives depends on that very early bad teaching experience – they will always go back to it, and this is what you try to break.

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My parents didn’t like the idea of me being a performer – they wanted something proper. I think my father, particularly as a teacher, was very happy when I became a teacher. Still, they would have been proud of me, I think. Why? I’m the luckiest person I know. What I do, it gives me such pleasure, it gives other people such pleasure and I’m able to do it financially, physically, morally – I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. 

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I’d hate to retire. There is a possibility that I’ll stop doing what I’m doing – an injury. A lot of things that I do are scary – I balance on 3 chairs, I juggle big knives. But I’ve never been injured, touch wood, because I try to be very centred doing it and I warm up very carefully. I’ve been practising the same routines for 40 years – I feel very confident in doing them.

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Will I settle down one day? No! I shall never settle down. There is nothing wrong with me. I just don’t want to live in a house. I don’t want to have, you know, a wife and children.

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Nothing is wrong with wives! I was married for 32 years and we had children – she had children, they weren’t mine genetically. They’re very happy for me, they have their own children now and I’m very close to my ex-wife, she loves what I do – she just fell in love with somebody else, and that was it… She is not with him anymore. She lives alone too now. We both discovered in late middle age that we actually both love living alone.

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Ambitions? They’re interesting, aren’t they – ambitions? I’ve done well so far without them. A big goal? I have to do a driving test in 4 weeks so I can go up to 11 tonnes. I have a lovely mini motorbike, which I go on to the shops, but that was too heavy and I took it out. If I pass my test, I can take my bike back!