Theatre life’s ensured I’m no stranger to wearing a mask

Temporarily walking with two sticks, I’m trying to open my electric gates, check on my taxi’s progress and don my mask at the same time.

Sticks clatter to the ground, key fob follows, my glasses have steamed up and I seem to have phoned my friend in New York.

She won’t be pleased, it’s the middle of the night. And as I struggle to get my dodgy knee to follow me into the back of the cab, I discover I’m mistakenly in my neighbour’s Uber.

I scramble out. It’s started to rain. I phone the taxi driver but she can’t understand my muffled voice through the mask.

She swears blind she is outside my house but she’s actually on the wrong side of the river.

We get cut off. I try again but get through to the Bristol office. I give up and head across to the bus stop, where I discover I’ve forgotten my travel pass. I’m steaming up again.

I head back to home and blissful isolation, avoiding getting run over on the near invisible crossing by a hair’s breadth. This reminds me of being sent home early from school when those 1950s smogs came rolling in!

After 45 years with Natural Theatre I should be used to uncomfortable headgear. Practically all their street theatre scenarios involve inserting one’s head into some kind of surreal facial appendage.

Performing as one of their famous Coneheads, for example, involves encasing one’s head in skin-tight latex, plus one is obliged to maintain the friendly alien’s permanently surprised expression by keeping one’s mouth open for the duration of the walkabout.

I’ll spare you the post-performance dribble nightmare.

Wearing the company’s trademark flowerpot masks seems simple. Just pop it on. But apart from the restricted vision (six tiny holes), your face is enveloped in suffocating foam padding.

The best way to keep the thing from rotating and thus leaving you blind, is to grip the foam with your teeth. And this before sanitiser spray became the norm. With luck, the previous wearer wasn’t a chain smoker.

Apparently when the flowerpot people were introduced to Margaret Thatcher, they all poked their tongues out inside their masks!

After a particularly long, hot performance in Rome, our noses took several days to return to their normal shape.

Appearing as caryatids on the Acropolis at Athens Festival involved wearing extremely heavy plaster Ionic capitals on our bonces.

Well, I say that, but as it happens mine was made of featherlight fibreglass, a fact that I managed to keep from my compatriots until some time later when we were packing to go home. Still suffering from cricked necks, they were none too pleased.

Our most controversial headgear was the silver lurex stocking masks worn by the characters known as The Normals.

These hilarious bowler-hatted faceless bureaucrats were a hit with the public but the authorities invariably took exception.

Faced with an expressionless stare, police the world over would interpret this as insolence.

This resulted in countless arrests, a full-blown court case (we were acquitted) and even a beating.

So, wear your mask on all occasions but be careful what expression you wear under it.

A masked face can be misinterpreted!

Ralph Oswick was artistic director of Natural Theatre for 45 years and is now an active patron of Bath Comedy Festival