The next stage

I think that if there was any question about whether I'm in the right industry,  the past two days would have answered it.

I'm exhausted,  I ache, I spent yesterday on a construction site and today in a warehouse (full of literally thousands of bottles of Vimto...)  building stages and taking names.

It's a physically exhausting process. And one that is almost never seen in public. I feel like I should document it because it really is an incredible process, and a fantastic world to be a part of. After the event brief, after the design and after the manufacture comes the test build which is what I've been working on.

Yesterday I spent all day hauling 60kg steel stage decks around a building yard, making scaffold structures and and fitting the stage together way above my head. The work is so intense I could feel the pressure on the individual vetabrae of my spine, and later our after-uni pool game took far too long because no one could bend down.  I went over to my mum's house and dozed off with/on my dog before I'd even taken my hard hat off.

 

Today was similar.  We were in a huge, cavernous warehouse building a stage for Tiny Tempah's tour. When people see the stage in summer it will just look decorative,  but again, hundreds of work hours, many many tonnes of staging, many expletives expelled. One hour in, I trapped my thumb in some scaffolding,  later, I got a metal splinter down the side of my hand, slammed my knee into a solid hunk of metal, broke a nail and went over on my ankle. Not so much an occupational hazard as me just being hungry.

But I love it.  I love the hard work and the noise and the stress of working to a very immediate deadline all the time. I love the pre-show nerves, being able to perform in my own way for thousands of people without having to go onstage. I also love the banter that can only exist between people who have been working for 18 hours solid at 3am.

Also we learnt how to put a staircase together on live TV in under a minute. I'm not even joking!