Mr S Hewitt and I met for breakfast in Buxton on Sunday, where we discovered that the advantage of staying in a Somewhat Old Fashioned Hotel is that you do get rather a nice fried breakfast.
Suitably FILLED with FOOD we set off for a wander round town, enjoying the really rather LOVELY Pavilion Gardens, where we noticed that we were pretty much the ONLY people under 70 unaccompanied by small children. We continued our perambulations by walking up what Buxton casually calls "The Slope" but which I call "A Ruddy Great Mountain". Next morning I had EDINBURGH LEG i.e. the aching leg pain caused by constantly going up and down ridiculous inclines. It was HUGE!
However, once at the top we found Buxton Museum And Art Gallery, which was BRILL. There was an exhibition of the Arto Fuduklian Collection (try saying that after a lunchtime pint) and a GRATE display about the history of the peaks. It was really really good, and we celebrated by going back into town for TEA and CAKE. We are nothing if not ROCK AND ROLL!
After all that excitement we collected our stuff from the hotel and then headed back to the Hydro, which we found even MORE packed with people eating than the day before. Our "performance area" was taken up by a table FULL of a ten-person group considering whether to have dessert. Steve and I beamed MIND THORTS at them until they decided not to (our powers are immense) and while we waited for them to leave we had a chat with a lovely couple who turned out to be from PETERBOROUGH. I always get a bit excited when I meet fellow Peterbrugians out and about, and had a marvellous ten minutes saying "My Dad went to that school!"
When the large group left we were presented with a "thank you for waiting" free pint each by The Hydro, which was very nice of them, and then we FLEW into action sorting out chairs, for LO! we had an audience, and quite a large (for the space) one at that! Everyone was in place by 13:50 so we ended up starting a couple of minutes early on a HUGELY enjoyable version of the show with slightly less mistakes than the day before but just as many LARFS and HI-JINKS. I was unable to hula hoop in the confined space, so at the end I went outside and did a brief display for the assemblage, which was a daft and delightful way to end an extremely daft and delightful hour.
Thoroughly happy with how everything had gone we retired to The Buxton Tap for a well-earned pint and to discuss how much fun it had all been. We've been doing the show for MONTHS now, but it's only in these last three shows that it's really started to feel like it's HAPPENING - suddenly it's all falling into place, with new bits coming in and old jokes (they're mostly old jokes) being HONED.
Back on the train home we both had a little bit of a nap, getting our strength back for the Balham Free Fringe this Friday and the Croydon Comedy Festival a week on Thursday before - YOINKS! - we head to Edinburgh!!
