Apart from the fact that I choked on a glass of water and had a coughing fit, the training day at Dreamland in Margate was great. A really re-generating and moral boosting kind of day. The sort of day that Animate do so well (there are not enough of these days) where new members of the team are introduced and general project briefing takes place. It is combined with gentle humour, ridicules tasks and games, serious equipment instruction and communal making session and general team building activities.
Or described another way, a laugh with friends.
The laugh with friends did get out of hand at one point while I choked during a recorded improvisation sound piece. The idea was to create something using sound with random objects we picked up earlier. Stupidly I chose a half drunk glass of water and a knife with butter smeared over it. Initially I thought to make the glass rim ring with a wet finger, however, I was unable to make it work under pressure during the little jam thing going on. Instead I thought to gargle with the water at the back of my throat in a free form solo which I was going to base on a vocal solo I had heard from a track recorded by the muppets. I actually blame Jo for the total breakdown of order which followed. Any cricket fans will remember the laughing fit on air by Johnathan Agnew and Brian Johnstone commentating on the 2nd test against the West Indies at Lords in August 1991 listen here, we kind of recreated that radio clip, with all 10 people in the room totally incapable of anything utterly consumed with laughter at my expense.
What happened was that Jo saw me pick up the glass and I think she realised I was going to gargle and started laughing at me just before I started my solo! It didn’t start well as began to laugh at the critical moment of gargling and I managed only few hysterical squeaks as I began choking . I thought I was going to pull out of it and things were going to be Ok, but couldn’t manage it and burst into a coughing fit. Everybody thought this was very funny and utter melt down came next!
Apart from that it went very well and the Pizza evening meal was great as well.
