Tour Finale

backstage dressing room selfie yellow orla kiely coatsinks and random stuff backstage props water bottlesoutside the shed with white trainers on outside shed yellow mustard coat oral kiely beretI’ve currently got a kidney infection and today is the first day I’ve been at my laptop, hence the silence over the last week. I’ll spare you the grim details but aside from the obvious problems there have been a lot of annoying side effects. Due to the location of the kidneys, stretching out my back really hurts which makes walking and moving around difficult, and my tablets are making everything taste horrible (even water!).

These photos are from the end of my tour with Rhum & Clay. It brings to a close my two years of working with the company and it was quite weird to be finally saying goodbye. I’m so lucky I got to work with such a brilliant company so early in my career; I’ve learnt an invaluable amount from them and gained so much experience and confidence as a composer.

The last three weeks of the tour were in Exeter and I was back and forth between London for two of those weeks, which meant a lot of hanging around on cold train platforms with my bassoon as you can see. There’s also a few photos of the backstage area – backstage often have to double up as green rooms and dressing rooms and they are invariably messy; lots of shoes, caffeine, remnants of props, bolts of black fabric, LX tape and empty water bottles. My natural environment!

Thank you so much to Rhum & Clay and everybody involved in the tour. I’m so proud to have been a part of it!backstage long mirror selfie random stuff from in the dressing roombassoon dress matching mustard coat

Oxford

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Welcome to Oxford! I’m currently touring the show ‘A Strange Wild Song’ with Rhum & Clay. Touring is an odd one; whilst on the surface it means lots of exploring and impromptu nights out in new locations I feel I should tell you that touring ALSO involves lots of travel, unfamiliar beds, constant packing and maniacally refreshing Google Maps on the motorway. I was lucky enough to have a day off in Oxford last weekend to explore!

Following a late brunch at Georgina’s Cafe (recommended by Bel) in the covered market (worth visiting just for the ornate signage) we then wandered around the picturesque cobbled streets watching drunk students in caps and gowns (some sort of term beginning event?!) and enjoying the 1960s publishing house aesthetic that seems to affect the whole town. Even the front of Oxfam is in mahogany and sepia! We spent a lot of time in a stationary shop called Scriptum. It was filled with beautiful quality stationary, traditional writing implements and random “gift” items: inkwells and quills, parchment notebooks, beautifully illustrated copies of classic books, ornate decorative hot air balloons and a glass case of venetian masks. Rob and I both managed to justify buying stickers (stickers!!) and notebooks before heading on to a museum which I shall blog about next.

I’m next touring to Leicester, Derby, Exeter and Devon; any suggestions gratefully received ! You can read about the show here and listen to some of my score here (I’ve blogged about it here and here).  And BIG thank you to Bel and Luke for your invaluable suggestions. :)oxford covered market interior arches roof georginas cafe sign decorative visual merchandising VM shop interior furniture homewares oxford turl street visual merchandising VM shop interior furniture homewares oxford turl street shop front outside aesthetic oxford window oxfam oxford exterior interior road pretty architecture laila tapeparade college oxford universityFacebook/Twitter/Bloglovin