GENESIS. Act 1, Scene 1

Powered by egg and fruit, we all cycled to the Groundlings Theatre which is an old building in a forgotten corner of Pompey right near the dockyard.
It's full of history because it started as a Beneficial School in the 18th century and has since been refurbished into a theatre and the PuddleDaddies visit it regularly for the Beer Festivals.
The tryout session was with a bloke who used to be in the Navy and he said he'd shot a pirate and saved someone's life in the Pacific and he made us play 'Rubber Chicken' which is a warm-up exercise and we had to give 3 facts, one of which was a lie and we had to guess the lie.
There were only 3 girls and me. We did some singing, and learned about mime. We had to play 'What's in the bathroom cabinet' where you pretend to open some doors, get an object out and the others had to guess what it was. Well, of course, we just stood there holding this imaginary object while the others said "Toothbrush? Hand cream?" ad infinitum so we tried again with actual movements and sound effects and we all still guessed toothbrushes, because we are not very clever.
In the downstairs bit the room is far narrower than the building. We found out why. Of 5 glass display cases, the 5th is a secret door which opens up to reveal the costumes store which is huge. They have 11,500 bits of costume, all for hire.

A girl was sitting there mending so she helped us find and wear a costume: I was an army officer and the rest were princesses etc, because they were all girls.
We strode around and acted out our characters and did a play on the Wizard of Oz and I was a Munchkin, and all I had to do was hide under a table when the Wicked Witch came in.
We explored the stage area which was being used for props painting and the ceiling is like Hogwarts because it's painted with clouds and we went in the sound and lights control booth and played with the spotlights and sound effects and Bud went in the loft while nobody was looking.
After 2 hours the lesson was over but I can tell you there was lots of real actual stagecraft in it.
Then we had a carvery lunch in the Ship and Castle which is a big long pub right outside the Dockyard gates and Jof knew the manager but she knows everybody.
Right on the Hard is the old National and Provincial Bank building, Jof even banked there a long long time ago. But now it is a Dinosaur museum and it had a sign outside saying admission free, and we like that kind of thing.
Upon entering you immediately see Boris the Dinosaur, 20 feet long and the brochure says "Children are fascinated by him". This is true. I was absolutely captivated by just how bad the model is, and you can press a button and hear him roar, or at least his tummy gurgles painfully.
There wasn't much there. Several dioramas behind glass hide down little corridors by the old interview rooms and up the stairs are some cabinets with some really quite good fossils and polished gemstones etc for sale, if you want fossilised fish or tree trunks or bismuth crystals then this is the place to go, not kidding, the geodes are great.
But if you actually read the little blurbs for every exhibit, they're mostly quotes from books by religious nutters and the facts and figures are totally made up and the chart about DNA from Lampreys comes to the wrong conclusion and everywhere is says that evolution was a fable made up by naughty scientists that were all on drugs and that god did it all.
Spread throughout are logic errors where they've started with their own special conclusions and tried to find, make up or generally fabricate evidence to support them. The staff were very quiet because the CSM (Creation Science Movement) doctrine suggests that if you go out evangelizing, people run a mile (no, really?) so they just sit there quietly hoping you'll be as stupid as they are.
I liked the display next to the old bank vault door where it says that sedimentary rocks were laid down overnight. There's a gravestone for Evolution with RIP on it, but no proof of why, but when you believe in magic, you don't need one.
The plastic dinos in the shop were quite good apart from the squidgy ones which make your skin crawl. The fossils for sale are very tempting, might go back for some, put the Fun back into Fundamentalist.
But overall, it's like trying to persuade adults that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are real, and showing a pile of coins and teeth, or a picture of a footprint in the snow as absolute proof.
It's not an argument that'll stop any time soon, because both sides can't believe that their opponents don't understand how wrong they are.
You've gotta laugh at these hilarious people, but because they're funded by hardcore American Class A religious nutters, they can afford a substantial building in a prime location. I wonder how many real people they actually convert, their visitor's book speaks only of existing believers being happy that there's another place where they can brainwash crap into their kid's heads.
Anyway, I had an ice cream and a bonus copper pencil sharpener in the shape of Concorde from the newsagent and we cycled home with lots of bags that Jof had bought while I was acting.
Grandad had been singing in a church in Bosham so he popped in for supper and Jof did roast chicken and I had 4th helpings and got full after seconds of fruit/cream/trifle mix. I read through scene 4 of the school play for him and he played the xylophone on our brass shell cases.