Great weekend. As an intro though, specifically for the people from work who mentioned they had found this page recently - at no point did I drink too much and become annoying, I am a fine upstanding member of staff. Probably you can go back to work now.
Weekend, great, started with comedy up at the Tower Theatre. Was not the building I thought it was, it's a big solid old church converted into a nice theatre. Little bit cold and a bit big for the comedy I thought. Also we were sat in tiered rows and not "club style" like at Lanterns. This has got to make it a bit tougher for the comedians, particularly as they weren't huge names. I don't think I'll mention the names here. First comedian was just not good, not bad, a few laughs, but not very good. Second comedian was dreadful, he really really bombed. It was awkward and embarrassing and a bit sad. He was American and maybe his comedy was a bit American and gentle. Possibly he was in the newcomer slot, where we have seen some awful bombing acts, he did say that he'd been given the shortest slot of the night. Not sure he expected anyone from the crowd to bellow out "thank god for that", this stopped him in his tracks and I think I saw tears. He looked like he might have gone down better with a cruise ship audience, it was gentle comedy for elderly americans.
It was not all bad, the compere was Maff Brown and he was great, sharp and funny and involved the audience but without too much of the repetition that you can find when people talk to the crowd. This might be a Folkestone thing, as when you ask someone in audience what they do, generally they work for SAGA1 and then the comic has to make a joke about old people on coaches. This was a work do, everyone knew it and might have geared their material accordingly.
Headlining comedian Steve Day was also very good. Where the first two comedians struggled with our crowd, he was particularly impressive as he's deaf - how did he gauge the reactions of those of us sat higher up in the dark?
A good night, and all free as it was a leaving do of a friend at work. I hear the following night's "real" Lone Star Comedy Club at the same venue was better. I will be along to the next one (the next one after they move it back into central Folkestone).
Saturday, food fair in Canterbury. Great weather, so we were sat out in the park eating and drinking and it was lovely. There was a good band playing from Canterbury's equivalent twin town in Italy, which I think I just googled is Certaldo. They were a performance art type act, all in matching boiler suits marching and playing saxaphones and things in sync. We stayed and enjoyed, and drank a bit too much cider and headed in tow town.
The rest of the day, ppfff who knows. We went to Karls Food and Wine and had a drink in the garden there, very civilised. Then on to The Dolphin and Bramleys and I'm not sure were else. I think there was singing on the bus home, sorry if you were there and it did not sound like singing.
Sunday, nice relaxing day. Had dinner round the in-laws, beat Clare at Scrabble and watched quite a lot of TV.
I'd love to have that weekend all over again, I had a great time.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone. Married + dad to two, I am a full stack web engineer, + I do js / nodejs, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubs, parkrun, eating, home-automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.