"Are you trying to get to the theatre?" asks a young woman squeezing her way between bags of rubbish on one side, and a family on the other, in a very dark alleyway.
Honestly, I know I've told you before about my fringe theatre theory. The one where, if you're ever lost, you should just head for the scariest, narrowest, alleyway, and pray you don't get murdered. But seriously, this is just too on the nose.
We're behind a shopping centre.
In Hounslow.
I don't know what the crime rate is in Hounslow, but I am definitely about to become a statistic.
"Yup we..." says the family's mum.
"You know how to get there?"
The mum nods. They know how to get there.
So do I. Because the Arts Centre Hounslow has a very fulsome set of instructions on their website. They have to. It's not exactly simple. You know when the first thing they do is send you to another website to check the opening hours of a shopping centre to see what directions to give you, things are about to get complicated.
Tonight, the Treaty Shopping Centre closed at 6pm. The show starts at 7pm.
Which means I'm sneaking through a set of iron gates and making my way down a very dark alleyway, complete with the aforementioned rubbish.
There's a sign pointing the way to the entrance.
At least, I think that's what it is.
To be honest, I can't read it.
When I said it was dark down here, I really wasn't kidding.
Well, whatever it says, there's a door here, with a brightly lit stairwell on the other side, which looks promising enough. The family disappears inside and I get out my phone to take a picture.
But someone else has appeared. A man. He stops right in front of the door.
I hang back, waiting for him to move, but he's on the phone. Giving someone directions. Very loudly. He sounds like air traffic control, if planes were being landed by a man standing in the middle of a busy airfield while screaming into a megaphone.
I wait.
"Where are you?" shouts the man. A small pause as the person on the other end gives their answer. "No! That's no right."
He gives the instructions again, even louder this time, but the person on the other end isn't getting it.
Even worse, he's still standing in front of the door, right in the way of my shot.
I start editing a blog post.
A whole 1,000 words proofed later, the man on the phone sighs. "Look, I'm not there. That's the point, isn't it?" and he says goodbye.
Thank fucking gawd for that.
I bring up the camera app, take my photo, and go in.
Then I start climbing up the stairs. They don't look particularly theatre-y, but Nirvana is pumping out from somewhere, and signs for Jack and the Beanstalk have been posted on every level.
At the top, the pistachio walls have been brushed with white paint, and someone has painted "Arts Centre" with an arrow on top.
Found it.
I follow the arrow.
On one side there's an open door. Inside I spy rows and rows of chairs. That must be the theatre.
It's empty.
I turn the other way.
More white paint with more arrows.
I find the one for the box office and follow it.
"I'm so lost and confused!" wails a small boy as he walks past me.
You and me both, kid.
By the looks of it, I appear to have landed in Wonderland.
The walls are covered in painted clapperboard. As it, painted to look like clapperboard. By a cartoonist.
I find the bar. There's a haind painted sign advertising a writing station for letters to the North Pole. I’ll give Hounslow this, they're keeping their artists busy. There's even one on the other side advertising "Twanky & Sons," which I can only presume is leftover from last years' panto.
What it doesn't have however, is a box office.
I turn around and keep on going.
There's a little room here. Painted trees and painted bricks and painted roof tiles make me feel like I've stepped into a book of faerie tales.
The kids think so too, and they are dashing about pretending to be knights and princesses and whatever else they can conjure up in their cute little heads.
Over the other side, is another door. And passing through the door, is a queue.
I join the end of it, figuring there is probably a box office at the other side.
This queue isn't moving very fast.
In fact, I would go so far as to say, it isn't moving at all.
I look around, trying to work out what the hold up is, and spot a man draped in an official-looking gold chain.
Oh. A Mayor.
I've spotted quite a few of them on my travels. Mayors love amdram. And panto, it seems.
He's chatting up the people in the queue, and they are loving it.
I go back to editing my blog post.
We shuffle forward. Painfully slow.
"I am the reverse Mayor!" the Mayor declares as a small child asks what would happen if he didn't wear his chain.
He's sure making this queue go in reverse.
Many, long, minutes later I make it to the front.
"Hi! The surname's Smiles?"
"Hi!" says the box officer as she sorts through a pile of papers on her counter. I look down. Every single one is a print out of an eventbrite e-ticket. "Do you have an email?" she asks.
"Probably..." I say. I don't know. I get a lot of theatre emails. I stopped reading them months ago. "Is that all I need?"
"Yup," she says. "That's your ticket."
I look pointedly at all the print outs and then leave. I could print my own if I wanted one of those.
You got to admit though, that's one strange mix of being paperless and having a fuck-tonne of paper floating around.
I find myself standing near the large windows overlooking the closed shopping centre before.
The space is filled with sofas and armchairs, placed to enjoy the view.
There are sunflowers in the window and a huge tree made of branches built overhead.
The Mayor makes his way over. The people on the sofas rotate towards him, just like those sunflowers would at dawn if they weren't fake. And looking out over a shopping centre.
A woman starts telling him about how she never talked as a child.
Another asks for a photo.
I think that's my cue to leave.
I go back to the bar.
It's busier now. The two barmen are rushing about serving people. One of them is wearing a slinky Santa hat. I mean thatit's a spring, bouncing around on top of his head. Not that it's all satin and lace and leaving nothing to the imagination. The other barman is very much not wearing a Santa hat. Something for everyone here.
As more people crowd in, I'm pushed further and further into the corner.
"When we go in, you're going to need to sit down in a chair," a mother warns her energetic son.
And then the Mayor arrives.
"You lot going to the panto?" he asks a group of children. "Obviously!" He moves over to another group. "Enjoy the show!"
You know, I'm beginning to think he's following me.
Well, I'm over it. I'm going in.
I slip out of the bar, back down the corridor, and into the theatre.
A slim stage is lined either side with rows of chairs. I'll admit, I don't know much about panto, but I had no idea you could do it in traverse. Hounslow is really pushing the form out here.
I find my seat. Second row from the back. As far away from the action as I could get.
The chairs around me begin to fill up.
There isn't much room between the rows, necessitating plenty of knee-swivelling.
The Mayor comes in. He takes his seat on the opposite side of the stage. Front row centre.
"There's the Mayor," says a lady sitting behind me. "It must be good if the Mayor's here."
"Yeah, I thought that," says her companion.
"He very friendly!"
A very tall man with massive hair comes in.
"Hello! Hello!" waves a group a few rows ahead of me.
"Do you know him?" asks the Mayor-lover. "He's very friendly."
He sure looks it.
A kid wearing hi-vis ear protectors runs in and jumps onto the stage.
The other children are outraged. "Off! Off! Off!" they shout at him.
The kid with the ear protectors doesn't hear them. Can't hear them.
Obviously. Because of the ear protectors. He takes a circuit of the stage, and then runs off again.
The big man with the bigger hair is trying to get in my row. "Sorry," he booms.
"Sorry," I say, doing the knee-swivel. "Am I in the way?"
"No! I'm in the way."
It's true. He is in the way.
"I thought he was in the show," says the Mayor-lover.
An usher comes over. "Is that your pushchair?" he asks the women sitting in front. He points to a pushchair that has been left in front of the set. "Do you mind if I just pop it behind the curtain?"
"I can't seeee!" whines a small child. The mum goes to talk to the usher, and a seat in the front row is found for them.
"So sorry about this everyone," trills a man as he clambers into my row. "I've got a giant bag."
A family arrive. The daughter is in a wheelchair. The usher rushes over. "Can we move this?" he asks gently. "The barn is going to open you see? If she can just go behind the black line..."
The girl and her wheelchair is duly moved.
By the door, I can see the box officer. Her hands are filled with eventbrite print outs. The usher runs over to give her the thumbs up.
I think we might be ready to start.
At last. I'm exhausted.
I check the time. Ten past seven.
It's going to be a long night.
As the lights dim, I realise that not a single person has checked or even asked to see my ticket this evening.
They're trustworthy here in Hounslow.
"Can you see?" a mother asks her little one.
"I can't seeeeee."
Another mother leans over. "At the back you can kneel upwards." This interjection doesn't seem to help. "My daughter is going on kneel upwards. On the chair. So she can see." She demonstrates this upward kneeling with a meercat motion of her hands.
"Oh, I see. Thank you!"
The cast come out, all bright and shiny with massive grins. It must be the beginning of the run. They won't be looking so chiper at the end of the month.
The Mayor gets out his phone and starts filming.
On stage, the cast gets on with the business of panto. The cow moos and bats her truly astonishing false lashes. The faerie throws around handfuls of glitter. The Dame lobs sweets.
Two crash down by my feet.
I lean forward and grab one, offering it to the girl sitting nearest me. She shakes her head, so I put it on our buffer seat.
"Oh look," says the Mayor-lover, her hand sneaking forward to whip the sweet off the chair. "This landed on the chair."
The Dame looks out into the audience. "Tony!" she says, spotting she Mayor. "Tony the Tiger! Our lovely Mayor, Tony."
A pretty baby sitting in front of me begins to scream. Her mother bounces her around but it's no good. They go outside.
The screaming continues. Pouring into the room. The audience begins to look around. It sounds like the baby is dying. Or, possibly, teething.
Jack's brother Billy tries to teach us a call and response.
"You sound like you've spent a bit too much time at the bar," he groans as we fail to keep our end in time with one another. "Almost as if the show went up late."
After a small joke about Boris being a growling monster, the humour stay local. Richmond is too posh. The highstreet has two Greggs on it. And some other stuff I don't understand but I presume is hilarious if you live around here.
And then the beanstalk grows.
"Can I borrow the coat on the back of your chair?" Jack asks someone in the front row. "I'll give it back!"
After trying, and failing, to cover up the massive stalk with the small pink coat, he does indeed hand it back.
"See you on the other side!" calls Jack as he climbs. "Of the interval, I mean!"
"And now a twenty-minute interval," booms a voice over the sound system. "Go to the toilet and make sure you go to the bar and buy lots of lovely booze."
Thank gawd. I'm not sure I could have taken much more of that.
I lean down the move my coat out of the way and find that other sweet. I slip it into my bag before the Mayor-lover can get her hands on it.
When I look up, the Mayor is on his way over.
He's come to talk to the family of the girl in the wheelchair.
"Where are you from?" he asks them.
"Hounslow."
They're local-credentials established, he asks how they got in, if there's a lift, and what education options there are.
I keep my head down. After all the Richmond jokes, I'd hate to think what they have to say about Finchley.
The air fills with smoke as haze is pumped in, and the Mayor makes his retreat.
The cast is back. Still bouncing with energy, and if anything, even shinier then they were in the first act. I hope they had a quick glug of something from the bar too.
They power on.
Footsteps boom and the children all look around, expecting to see a giant.
There is no giant.
They flop back down in their chairs.
More booming.
And a massive giant appears.
Fuck! That's good.
Terrifying.
He's not happy. He's hungry. So hungry he's been forced to eat Richmond. Too crunchy by half with all those diamonds.
Our villain, Fleshcreep, sinister in his top hat and tails (he must be from Richmond) offers him Daisy the cow. We all boo. Much to his annoyance.
A very small toddler climbs up on stage, and his brother is dispatched to fetch him back.
The boy in the ear protectors isn't letting toddlers have all the fun.
He makes a break for it, leaping up on stage.
Fleshcreep guides him back off with a small sneer.
As the plot reaches its crescendo, so does the band, and the cast launch into their version of Bohemian Rhapsody, with Daisy tackling the Scaramouches with a chorus of moos.
Battle won, giant defeated, and Fleshcreep broken, I think we are at the end.
But there is one more thing.
The sing along.
"I wrote it ten minutes ago," says Billy, as a huge board is brought out with the words to The Proclaimers' hit.
As one, we declare our intention to walk 500 miles, and then 500 more.
Billy isn't impressed.
"Are there four children who can help me?" he asks.
Hands dart up and Billy hauls their owners onto the stage.
Four children.
Then five.
Then six.
"But no more. Once we had seventeen!"
But they keep on coming.
Billy turns anguished eyes onto the audience. "May I remind parents that the car park charges," he says.
He gets a microphone and starts asking who he has with him. "And what do you want to be when you grow up?”
"I don't know and I don't care," is the reply from a sassy ten year old girl.
Billy goes on, finding a Spiderman wannabe, a future nurse, scientist, and doctor.
Gosh. Perhaps all those funding cuts for the arts are paying off. The kids of Houselow are STEM-crazy.
More children start creeping their way onstage.
Billy orders them to line up, and marching in time, they walk those 500 miles together.
And then... they're going to do one more song. "You didn't think it was going to last so long," says Billy laughing hollowy. "Well... neither did we!
"I'll be back for the finale that should have happened ten minutes ago!"
We have to promise something first though. There are going to be buckets on our way out. And we need to drop whatever change we have into them, so that the Arts Centre can continue to make shows... just... like... this.
And so they sing. One more song. Pulling the Mayor up on stage with them to boogie on down.
A few kids join them.
I, on the other hand, am getting myself out of here.
I don't think I've ever felt so overwhelmed by a performance, and I need some fresh air and the quietness of a dark alley right now.
I bypass the buckets.
The usher is opening the doors.
He leans forward, struggling with the second one. I push it open for him, and hold it until he's got in.
In the stairwell, an arrow points to the car park. Up.
There's no sign to say where down leads.
A family goes up.
I go up too.
And find myself in the car park.
I wander around not sure how to get off this shopping centre roof.
There's the exit for cars. A sign instructs they should drive dead show.
I should probably go back in.
I look around.
There are no cars.
Fuck it.
I head for the ramp, my feet quickening as I decend. One level, then two. I'm running now. I can hear a car somewhere behind me.
Three levels.
I turn another corner.
The ramp is merging into a road. I leap off, across a barrier, and onto the pavement just as a car appears. Thank the theatre gawds it was driving dead slow, or I would have been as dead as a Richmond resident.
Breathing heavily, I push the button for the green man and reach into my bag to find my scarf.
My fingers land on something small. A Maom.
At least panto has some tangible rewards.