Tea With Alice Salon 30

Hallo Patreonites!

Updates and thinking:

The last few episodes of The Gargle podcast have been so much fun, and I just recorded an episode of a BBC Radio sitcom last night (rehearsal call time: 1am, recording call time: 4.45am, Bed time 6.30am. Current daytime condition: fuzzy).

I was a villain character (opposite a pretty anti-hero lead); a self involved eco-poseur running a conference on a private island. I got some boos from the audience which was delightful, as someone who has always secretly wanted to be cast as a villain in an action movie (without ever having pursued acting in any way).

Last week I did CHRONOS as a Zoom Show at the Nowhere comedy club - it was meant to be an appendix show for the Bondi Festival run in Sydney (to make the show accessible for non-Sydney based friends), but it ended up being a floating island of one show in my bedroom at 11am after having about eighty litres of blood taken that morning (a coincidentally timed medical appointment unrelated to the show that I didn’t reschedule because it was so nice to have a reason to get out of the house). I’ll see if I can put up a copy for those of you who are interested. Let me know in comments or dms if you’d prefer I release it (as a Patreon only thing):

• In Audio only.
• Wait til it can be recorded in front of a real audience.
• The whole odd bedroom performance as is.

Tea With Alice has started to fall more into a regular rhythm in my head again after feeling a bit piecemeal and Sisyphean for the last while. Not within the show, but in the process of putting out the show. I’d record an episode and then just have the files unedited on my desktop for days or weeks. It’s not just tea with Alice. I’m literally MONTHS behind on invoicing. An odd block to have; not the work itself, but the follow through - the business of the work feeling heavy. (I still need to find a Secretary to help me find a Secretary)

I have been enjoying the Tea With Alices but there’s something about life not being in its regular rhythm for the last year that’s made it feel uphill to ask people to have tea and thinking talks with me. Particularly when it can’t be in person. Zoom just isn’t the same as sitting in a tea shop together - something about seeing a small reflected homunculus of your own self in the corner making faces while you talk I think throws most people out of the kind of unselfconscious open range I like in real-life-over-tea-chats.

It maybe also feels like people want comfort food, rather than challenging chat… or maybe that’s just me. Anyway, for a multitude of reasons, many of which are ineffable and behind the curtain, things seem suddenly more doable despite Sydney going into an increasingly extended lockdown.

The little writing meeting I had on Friday was very nice - just having people in a zoom room together working on our separate things is something I’ll do again.

All of which rambling aside:

Tea With Alice Salon 30 is here!

That’s quite cool - they do add up. Last week’s ‘open to all levels’ salons was very fun. It’s been a really lovely thing to do, and this week’s one is UK time, tuesday 10pm. Which is 7am Aus east coast time. I’ll send through the passcode to subscribers at Afternoon Tea and up closer to the time.

Topic: Tea With Alice Salon 30

Time: Jul 20, 2021 10:00 PM London

(Or your parallel local time, stick it in your calendar)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82973045487?pwd=bC9VOFJRSERBK0t2c2VObkNpb2k1QT09