Puppets and pedestals

A young teacher with dreams of opening her own school. A closet homosexual accountant. A horned, porn addicted furry monster. A slutty club singer and a graduate fresh from university, wondering what to do with his newly obtained degree in English. All residents of Avenue Q, a small street, somewhere on the outskirts of New York, around Brooklyn, and all characters looking for direction and ‘purpose’ in their life.
Ka and myself went along to the Kings on Thursday night to see Avenue Q, a musical show, originally on Broadway, then produced by Cameron Mackintosh in London and now touring the country. A strange, weird, comedy musical with three human characters and a bunch of puppet characters who live and interact together just like a certain educational kids show based in a New York street. In fact, a few of the characters in Avenue Q are direct rip-offs of characters in Sesame Street and although Avenue Q makes its influence no secret, it certainly shouldn’t be viewed by the kids.
Unlike Sesame Street, the puppeteers appear on stage alongside their characters, unhidden but remaining anonymous to the storyline. Some of the puppeteers don’t even voice the characters they’re operating and some voice more than one puppet in one scene. Throughout the story the various characters deal with their varying issues which are all generally around the themes of growing up, becoming an adult, finding direction in your life and the realisation that life is what you make of it and will suck if you don’t put the right amount of effort in.
Songs in the musical included, ‘Everyone’s a little bit racist’, ‘You can be as loud as the hell you want when you're makin' love’ ‘If you were gay, but I’m not’ and ‘The internet is for porn’. Good fun but Sesame Street this was not.
On Friday we had our last day in the Blantyre office. As of Monday morning we are now based in the Hamilton office, in the middle of the town centre.
No more easy journeys, nipping down the expressway to work. No more free parking. No more colour ink for the printers – for some reason. The dust was already gathering over the large empty desks which once acted as posts for the office’s many employees. The desks now lie computerless and ownerless. Large piles of computers, monitors and keyboards lie at various corners of the open plan space, already gathering a thin layer of dust, cords wrapped up around them. Chairs sit, bunched up in groups and drawers lie with the remnants of employees belongings left behind, unwanted and abandoned. In Paula’s old pedestal drawer the biggest collection of ‘Now’, ‘Chat’ and other ‘Hello’ style magazines lie, piled up, a whole history of Jordan, her boobs and her boyfriends lying unwanted. Alison’s old George Clooney picture the only reminder of her presence. An old VHS and a half bottle of some kind of mad dog left in Davey Clyde’s pedestal drawer along with a pile of PC game magazines. The old white Christmas tree lies dishevelled on it’s side, under the old board filing shelves. My old Mac still stands obediently awaiting my return from the PC I have now been lumbered with. Along with all the other old Macs it will lie there in the Blantyre office, inactive and unused until such a time comes along when a bunch of grumpy builders or cleaners stomp into the dusty office, years down the line, when it will finally be cleared and it’s contents skipped. Their voices will echo through the large office which now lifeless and near forgotten. No more shouting from Cameron or Diane, no more Bennie Spoonhalls, no more arguing from Julie and Margaret, no more wonderful tales from Paul, no more mumbling under the breath, no more swearing, slagging, newspaper flicking, phone answering, tea slurping and typing. Not in the Blantyre Prepress office anyway.