Loneliness and The Gilded Cage

It's been awhile since I produced a Blog post, I spent a good deal of time in March at home in Vermont, during which time I did a fair bit of skiing and a little time gardening as the weather warmed up. I am writing this from the good ship Norwegian Star, where I will be for another week. This is my last scheduled cruise until December and I will be glad of the time on land, I have spent a lot of time at sea this winter season and I have enjoyed my time onboard all the ships, but this was not always the case, and it brings me nicely on to the subject of this blog the so called "Lonliness and the Gilded Cage."

I'm a young 58 years old, I have been in show business since I was 19, and during the vast majority of that time I have been a solo performer. I had a couple of juggling partners when I first started out and worked briefly with my lovely wife Stephanie as "Fizzical Fairytales", but the rest of the time it has just been me, all alone! I am stressing "all alone", because at times it has been very lonely, very lonely indeed.

I can clearly remember my first big contract at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, I was 23 years old, and I had just become a father, and at the time I lived in Reading, Berkshire and Blackpool was some 238 miles away, basically the other end of England, the contract was for June, July, August 6 days a week and then weekends only until November for the "Illuminations"(look up the Blackpool Illuminations, if you are interested). There was no way my young wife Jane and the baby Emily were going to uproot and come with me, this was something I would have to do on my own, besides which it was more money than I had ever earned before, and we really did need the money. And so off I went, I got a room in a boarding house (I'm not sure if those places even exist any more) owned by a sweet old lady who even made us (there were two other boarders both men) breakfast. This must have been a recommendation from one of my managers at the Pleasure Beach. If I remember this correctly my father drove me up with my stuff and dropped me off and that was it, I was on my own.

Now obviously, I had been on my own before, many times, not only that I had travelled fairly extensively alone and at 23 while I was young I was no baby. Blackpool is in Lancashire which is very much in the North of England and I had lived most of my life in Newbury, Berkshire which is very much the South of England and the cultural difference back in 1991 was massive, the two places may as well have been in two separate continents, let alone countries. On my first trip to the shop to buy a loaf of bread the lady behind the counter had to ask me three times what I wanted as she didn't understand my accent, all of a sudden, I felt very out of place. I wanted to go back home right then, but then I remembered the money I was being paid 400 pounds a week, which back then was a fortune to me and at least four times as much as any of my friends were earning. Fortunately the other two in-park entertainers (Street performers) were old hands, and I wasn't lonely for long. But that was the first time I remember the feeling of the so called "Gilded Cage", even if this one was more than a bit frayed round its edges. For the first time in my life I had some disposable income, I could eat and drink whatever and wherever I wanted, but I was all alone.

I spent 5 years working as an entertainer for the Pleasure Beach, and I am very thankful to them for giving me the opportunity to really start my career in show business and I also made some very, very good friends whilst I did so and the organization also sent me to work abroad in Sweden and Germany, which was great, but those stories will have to be told in future posts.

One of the best things about being a Covent Garden street performer was the camaraderie. Everybody who wanted to work on any particular day had to show up for the 8.15 am draw, when I started there in late 1994 there were normally 8 people during the weekdays but usually around 20 at the weekends. Most weekends (and often during the week) a number of us would always have breakfast together and after the shows finished most of us would also go to the pub together, we would also sit together behind the current show with all of our gear. It was a very social, and mostly we were nice to each other (I did say mostly).

Now I think about it, I feel quite lucky, except for those first couple of weeks in Blackpool I wasn't really on my own again until much later in my career. I went from Blackpool to Covent Garden and then to Key West and in all of those places there was a group of like-minded performers who wanted to be friends, the same could also be said of the Renaissance Fair circuit (although that often has a weird and seedy side to it).

There were occasional "Gilded Cages" I remember doing 10 days in Doha, Qatar in 1999, I was put up in the Marriott Hotel, I only had to work for about two hours a day, so the rest of the time was mine. I spent hours doing Yoga in my room to pass the time, I still remember the sunlight on the carpet in the room.

My family and I left Key West in July 2010. My daughter Poppy was going to turn 10 in October of that year and neither my wife Joanna nor I wanted her to grow up thinking that being a stripper was a good career option, and so we moved to Warren, Vermont, which at the time had the second-best school in the state, and we had been told Vermont had the best education in the entire USA. Besides that Key West is a lovely place for a long weekend, but being a two by four mile island of 20,000 permanent residents, not so good for nearly ten years. Vermont was indeed very lovely, however if I was going to work I was going to have to travel.

Cruise ships are wonderful places if you are on vacation with your family or friends, even as a solo traveller they are a great way to meet friends if you attend the correct events. As a performer on a cruise ship whilst you are expected to be friendly with the guests, you shouldn't be over friendly and entering a passengers cabin is strictly forbidden. At the same time the crew are usually busy, so again there is limited time to hang out. And since Covid the crew bar is not as welcoming as it used to be, if indeed you are allowed in at all, which varies from ship to ship.

My first cruise ship gig was in 2012 and once again I found myself in the Gilded Cage. When performing on a cruise ship it's normal to perform on two nights of the cruise, that is two completely different 45 minute shows performed twice each, an early show and a late show, obviously the show nights are as far apart as possible and the length of a cruise is usually between 7 and 14 days. Therefore, there is an awful lot of downtime. There is only so much practise you can do as the theatre isn't available every day, other people need rehearsal time too. The gym is another option and most performers I know who work the ships tell me they spend a good hour in the gym per day. There is mini golf and of course if you really want to you could eat and drink yourself to death, however public drunkenness is frowned upon. There is usually a library and of course you can watch all the other shows. Nowadays, we even have decent internet, but that was not the case in 2012. The one thing you cannot do, however, is get off the boat (at least not while it's moving). And my first cruise was a transatlantic crossing, which meant no shore days at all, for 10 days. By the end of day one I had explored the entire ship, I started to really miss my children and I had no way to call them to see how they were and hear their voices, and that really hurt. My show obviously was well received, and I went on to get a bunch more cruises. The shows were great, but the downtime was horrible. I really resented being taken away from my little family in Vermont. Now, when I am doing a cruise contract, I bring along my guitar, I practise Spanish and German, I also have this blog, I go to the gym for an hour or walk five miles round the ships promenade deck and as my children have grown up and left home I don't miss them so much, also we have far better internet onboard now so I can call anyone I want to. I still go to most of the other shows.

Then there are the fairs. State and County fairs pay well, very well. But they are always a long way away from my home in Vermont and that means staying in either a hotel or an AirBnB and most of the time all alone. I choose this life, so I am not blaming anyone here but myself. Fair contracts tend to last 4 to 12 days, but normally there is at least a day of travel on each end. The obvious advantage fairs have over cruise ship work is that you are in a city which you can explore and the surrounding areas. However, most days, particularly if it's hot (and most of the time it is) after three shows (even though they are only 30 minutes long) I am too tired to do much. This is one reason many performers have alcohol and substance abuse issues. It is so very easy to go back to your accommodation and either drink or do whatever until you pass out, especially if you are all alone.

Living in hotel rooms for long periods of time may sound fantastic, but the reality is not so great. During my years on the road I have learned how to make Jalapeño poppers in a microwave from scratch, open beer bottles using drawer pulls and to never eat the pre-made omelettes from the breakfast buffet. One of the first things I always do when I get home is cook for myself.

The place I most ever felt the Gilded Cage surrounding me was the Middle East. (I have already mentioned Doha) Pre Covid I, like many other entertainers, had a number of contracts there, particularly in the city of Dubai. The hotels are always clean and if you are lucky there may be some other acts to hang out with. But Dubai itself is souless. Sure it has some amazing architecture, a pretty nice beach and "Little India" is interesting for a bit. I really don't understand why anyone would ever want to actually live there. Shopping (at least for me) is not a leisure activity and while there are some lovely restaurants mimicking French, Italian and American establishments it's all a little bit fake and very sterile. Drinking is not really an option here, you can but it is very exspensive and public drunkness is very, very much frowned upon. If you are on your own in Dubai it can be a very lonely place indeed.

This post may sound a little negative, an over-privileged man whining about his lot and in many ways it is. It's also very honest. Lonliness has been one of the hardest issues I have faced in my career and at times I struggled with alchohol and substance abuse. I mention all three of my wives in this story. While this has been a great journey and I have been, seen and done so many incredible, wonderful and indeed joyful things. It has taken it's toll upon me and my family. I missed many important moments in my children's lives and for that I am sorry. Being a (dare I say it) somewhat successful performer is not such a bad thing, but in the journey here I could have been less selfish with my ambition.

I have spent much of by life balancing things and upon things, but perhaps what has eluded me the most has been balancing my career agaisnt my family.