The local youth group was something to do on a Friday night. It was a place to catch up with your friends and run around the church hall for a couple of hours before being picked up by your parents. But within this social gathering of carefree young people there existed an elite, highly specialised unit. Rather than play games for a couple of hours, they devoted their time to the noble art of puppetry. I was then as I am now – in total awe of their talent. More than anything, I wanted to be included.
The local youth group was something to do on a Friday night. It was a place to catch up with your friends and run around the church hall for a couple of hours before being picked up by your parents. But within this social gathering of carefree young people there existed an elite, highly specialised unit. Rather than play games for a couple of hours, they devoted their time to the noble art of puppetry. I was then as I am now – in total awe of their talent. More than anything, I wanted to be included.
The puppetry division of the youth group went around to various churches performing short skits to entertain children. These days, of course, attempts to entertain children have been abandoned in favour of the PS3. The scripts were devised by the group themselves. Whilst the results were hardly Shakespearian, it ought to be remembered that there’s not a single work of the Bard suitable for performance in a Sunday morning church service.
The puppeteers were the closest thing to a performing arts ensemble in the greater Hastings area. I had no creative outlet to speak of at the time and I desperately needed something. But like any high-level team, they didn’t allow just anyone to bowl up and start doing sketches; you had to earn your place – by building your own puppet. After declaring my life’s ambition was to become a puppeteer I was handed a needle, thread, foam and off-cut material, along with the direction to ‘get cracking’. When Neil Young sang about ‘needle and the damage done’, I doubt he was talking about sewing a puppet. But as I got to work, I harpooned myself so many times that my hands looked as if I’d just been juggling a couple of echidnas. Whilst my desire to perform ran deep, the needle ran even deeper. By the end, I needed so many bandages that had I sewn buttons for eyes, they would have passed for puppets.
Nothing went right. Whilst I worked as closely to the blueprint as I could, the results were not as other puppets. Whereas the others were neat and in proportion, mine was fundamentally skew-whiff. Without exception, it was the plug-ugliest puppet to ever have the misfortune of being created. It had an over-sized head that gave it more than a passing resemblance to Humpty Dumpty after he went out backwards off the wall. It was more likely to frighten children than entertain them. In a desperate bid to mask its hideous visage, I decided to give it a feature that distinguished it from every other puppet in the company – age. Thus ‘Grandpa’ was born by means of some white carpet for hair that skirted around its skull and a pair of crudely fashioned wire glasses.
When I unveiled Grandpa, there was a slight gasp from the other puppeteers. After a short intermission and some heated debate, I was permitted to enter the fold. It was a dream come true. Not a particularly good dream – probably one of those you enjoy at that time but of which you can’t remember a single detail once you wake up kind of deals – but a dream nevertheless. I finally got a chance to do something creative. I even got to sneak a couple of jokes into the script. Initial misgivings aside, with the introduction of an older cast member, the puppet troupe went, if not from strength to strength, then at least from one morning church service to another. The thing about puppetry is that it is physically demanding. We would kneel behind the curtain and hold the puppets above our heads. Some of these skits went for ten or more minutes. After the first sixty seconds or so, the blood drained from your arm and you began to lose all feeling. Your knees started to cramp and you experienced a strange sensation along the length of your spine. I realise that many people might suggest that knees don’t get cramps, but I can only say in response that these people have never been on the business end of a puppet.
There’s an old expression about someone having the weight of the world on their shoulders. Nobody talks about having the weight of a puppet on their shoulders but they should. When you’re knees down behind a curtain and trying to operate a puppet that, all of the sudden, seems to weigh a lot more than it did ten minutes ago, you know what physical commitment is.
Before I was ever in a band, I was in a puppet troupe. During my first major public performance, everything was going perfectly until disaster and a chronic case of hand-cramp struck. Let me say that when the mouth on the puppet no longer moves, it’s not puppetry – it’s just sticking your hand in the air. It would never happen in this day and age. At the very first sign of muscular paralysis, a team of trainers would be all over you, squirting brightly coloured electrolyte drinks into your mouth and giving your arms and shoulders a rub down. Back then, you were abandoned to the forces of nature. From behind the curtain, I could hear people starting to snigger. It soon blossomed into full-blown laughter, drowning out my wonderful dialogue. It was here that my life as a puppeteer began and ended. For the most part, I try to put it out of my mind but it’s a losing battle. Even today, I can barely pick up a sock without wanting to put it over my hand. For I may have left puppetry, but it has never wholly left me.