Thurs 30th – All The Pieces Of The Puzzle!

(Photo's - The boats with their projection screens & the runner coming up on the Sun Stage)

We received word today that rehearsals may go late, at this stage to around 0130 – my, did that stir up a ruckus! You’re on how much a week? What’s your current hourly rate? How many hours have you had to wonder the streets of Doha and go shopping etc. over the last 4 weeks…? SLAP! Grrr!

Tonight was all the sections where there were bits and pieces missing. Tonight we saw the entire ‘Pearl Fishing’ sequence – complete with all 12 boats and 24 divers, the full & complete ‘City Of The Future’ with all the trimmings and a few other smaller sections. It was SO good to finally see it all together. Granted, it’s the night before the gig but it’s there and it’s ready! They stopped, started, re-stopped, went back, paused, discussed, restarted, changed bits and it was great to finally see these sections in all their glory! It was a pretty quiet night on cans, I think everyone was just watching and taking it all in. It was a weird feeling but one of those times in theatre when everyone just knew to be quiet – a collected silence.

We were all pretty sure that the 0130 finish would blow out as the finishing time had altered every other night and tonight was kind of important! I’d placed 10 riyal on 0330 and ended up being the latest taker. Some were ambitious and went for 0200 but I think they had their eyes on the $$ rather than reality! A surprise and sad piece that we rehearsed was the Hero Horse – minus the horse. Due to the last couple of rehearsals with audience, I guess they wanted a back up plan. We’d all assumed that it would be a Cowboy (they’ve NEVER failed the ramp yet!), dressed as the Prince and that they may show footage of the Price from the 2 x reh. Not to be. Guess Daddy Emir wouldn’t like that if it got found out. How or when they were going to decide to run with Plan B I don’t know but the idea was for Qatar’s long distance runner to come up on the Sun Stage, rather than the horse and then run up the ramp! So crap!

When we got wind of it there was a little noise on cans – especially those who had stayed back and followed a horse around & around and then up & down the ramp for countless hours over the last few weeks. Not whinging, just disappointment that they could see this cool section dropping out of the event. We all then started to discuss how we could make an even better way to light the cauldron – it was 0245 by this stage. Paul’s was one of my favourites – hand the flame to the Emir and then fly him into the Cauldron and the flame erupts and the Price rides up the ramp and claims the throne as his own! Ta da! I guess it makes more sense if you have an idea of how the stadium looks, anyway, it was funny!

There was one idea, based on the Orry’s of the preshow section, to have the runner guy do it but to the Benny Hill Theme. Now, as this was being discussed I suddenly remembered that I actually had the music on my iPod (thanks Berns!). Took me a second to find it and then figure out how I could hold the headphones to my mic whilst holding the ‘on’ switch down and pressing ‘play’. Got there just in time as the sun stage opened and the runner took off… I think it went down pretty well and the music nigh on fitted the length of the sequence pretty well. Unfortunately I couldn’t get David Atkins on the line to show him the idea! It would have been slightly more amusing if we could have recorded it and then sped up the footage!

Upon completion of rehearsals on the way back to the Bus, everyone came up humming the Benny Hill Theme and thanked me for doing it – they’d guessed it was me! I guess it was what everyone needed at the end of 10hrs of straight rehearsal! I like those moments – where you do something silly, not for the sake of silly, but to break the mood and snap peoples headspace & to have it acknowledged. I appreciate them even more when I’m on the receiving end. As you may have read, 10hrs of platform tonight! Longest innings yet so Benny was as much for my sanity as the others!

We bumped into Ryan (Shiny) in the carpark and he had discovered that there were no more buses heading back to his Compound & that it was impossible for taxi’s of any kind to come pick him up die to road closures and the security measures that had been put in place. Myself and Adam immediately offered him a beer on the Stoop and one of our Franco Cotzo couches to which he accepted. Oh yeah, 1730 reh, went for 10hrs – finishing time of….. 0330! 50 riyal, thank you very much!

Back on the Stoop by 0400 and we were pretty quiet – bout 7 of us, polished off a slab and then put Ryan to bed on the couch with the chance to get approx 2.5hrs of sleep in order to catch the 0730 bus to start work at 0800, the day of Opening! Myself & Adam decided that as we had offered Ryan the bed, we were also responsible for getting him up and onto the bus. We made a cup of tea and then proceeded to load up PS2 AFL – what better way to pass an hour or so!

I’ll divert away briefly here to inform you that I had also agreed to meet Julia at 1000 in order to head to the airport in a hopeful attempt to book flights to Cairo…! That’s right, we’ve found out that we have Sat thru at least Wed off and we are hopeful that we can get across to Cairo! We had originally planned to go to Dubai or somewhere more ‘local’ but on advice and a little further looking, we discovered that Cairo was only going to be an extra $250! Jules hadn’t been too sure about Dubai and I was prepared to head on over myself & explore for a few days but with the promise of The Sphinx, Pyramids and just all round silliness of Cairo, she was back on board in a flash. Plan was to fly out Sun & return Tues – and there were flights/seats available! The only prob was, as we wanted to fly out within less than 72hrs, you couldn’t book over the Net! D’oh! Hence why we had decided to meet at 1000 and try the airport – remembering that Fri is like Sunday over here but actually observed! Otherwise it would mean an early start on Sat after Opening…! Bad idea!

And now we return you to our other babbling story! So, Hawthorn thrashed Carlton (go Hawks!) and Adam had recovered from his devastating loss by 0715. Ryan was dead! Alarm blaring but to no avail. We started talking to him, lightly shaking him, to shaking him harder to almost slapping him! By 0721 he was conscious – well, his eyes were open. I dashed off to hold the bus, luckily it was our regular driver and he was patient & nice enough to wait. At the beginning they left on the dot every time – now days they’re much more at ease – especially when leaving the stadium and we say thanks in packs of smokes etc. Ryan cam stumbling down, with Adam pushing him along at around 0736 and the driver was a bit befuddled as to why I wasn’t hopping on the bus! Ryan boarded, basically fell into one of the front seats and then managed to semi return the salute given by myself & Adam as the bus pulled away! Phew, right, now off to bed for a couple of hours before having to meet Jules!

Both Jules & I were out on the street by 1000 and the taxi (for once) arrived pretty much on time. We had a dodgy plan worked out that if we couldn’t buy tix at the airport that we’d bunny hop from Travel Agent to Travel Agent until we had to return to the Compound in order to catch the 0130 bus for Opening! Wondered into the airport and of course, because it’s the day of Opening, it’s chaotic. Well, I was on a mission and wasn’t going to let a few Arabs, 100 or so Indians, many officials and men with guns stop me from possibly purchasing tickets! Waded up to a dek that looked like it maybe able to help – tucked away in a very corner. Started babbling to the lady and after much gesturing, pointing and telling small lies about calling people by phone and them telling me to come to the airport and that someone said this and another said that and then having to repeat it all to what I assume was a manager type person – we were issued with tickets to Cairo! Ta da! And we even got them for the Net price which is cheaper than we should have due to the fact that we were purchasing them in person & not on the Net! Mission accomplished! And with a semi flabbergasted Jules in tow we caught a cab back and crashed for the maximum time we could – 1.5hrs before we had to get up and get ready for Opening…!

Would have preferred a decent nights sleep before the big event but hey, what are you going to do…? And no, for the first time in my life, the answer to that question is not “Drink a little more!”