Thursday, June 30, 2011

I Don't Practise Banter Here

So the lazy days came to a shattering halt this morning as I squeezed myself out of the door to go and start setting up the Glassblower for next week's shows. Having looked at the room properly with everything in place I am convinced it's an excellent venue for previews - which is probably a good thing given that we're about to stage 23 of them over the next 4 weeks. Hurrah. It's a little bit like gigging in Oscar Wilde's living room in my opinion - what can go wrong?


Tomorrow I've been offered some work at a well known fashion outlet. Whilst I'm thrilled about having something to do in the daylight hours, there are two things I'm not so thrilled about:

1. Technically I'm not starting the job in the daylight hours. I am starting at 6am. Who the hell needs well known fashion at 6am? I'm juts not sure a pair of jeans has ever been so desired that it requires the staff to be awake at ridiculous o'clock. Thank heavens it's only two days or I think the phrase burning the candle at both ends would barely cut it.

2. I don't want to work in a well known fashion outlet. I am not fashionable - I like jeans and I like t-shirts. Occasionally I will wear a dress if I'm feeling particularly spangly. I am already nervous about the prospect of trying to assist people politely when they're seriously considering whether something containing more sequins than cotton.


Yesterday I had a brilliant day catching up with a good friend from the comedy world - between several cups of tea and a march around London trying to track down some fudge to satisfy my craving, we caught up on all my harebrained schemes for being hilarious and he managed to convince me yet again that it was exciting not terrifying. As much as I'm a miserable bitch realist, it is nice to have at least one friend who is just permanently convince you're always going to make it. When there's more than one of you - it seems more likely that things will work out and you feel like less of a crazy person. I'm going to need that at 5:45am tomorrow when I'm on a train to go and help people decide which shade of skinny jeans makes them look most like Peaches Geldof.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Commit Mint Tissues

Blue sky, cloud free,
Summer's day - torturing me.

There. That was a mini poem about how miserable it is to be completely sunburnt while there's a beautiful day outside and you're scared to step into the light in case your sun just decides to abandon ship completely and go and live on someone who doesn't keep frying the crap out of it. My nose is peeling and it now looks like a delicate lace. A gross delicate lace that no one in their right mind would put up in their windows. Unless you had no contents insurance and you needed to put people off burgling you by saying, This house is so gross we use delicate nose skin in the windows.

I tried out 10 minutes of new material at a gig last night - I hate doing new material, I find it very difficult to say anything in the right order and it always feels like taking two steps backwards. When it's just a case of poking a new joke into an established bit it's not too bad, but when you're testing a whole new set piece it's like charting new territory. It's difficult to describe it if you've never done stand-up comedy, but, when you're working with an old set you know all the peaks and troughs. Speaking through it almost becomes muscle memory for you and you can have complete faith in yourself that the majority of it will hit home as long as you perform well.

With new material, something that seemed a really good idea in your mind or notepad, is all of a sudden spilling out of your mouth. It's a bit like getting half way through explaining your weird dream to someone and then realising you're telling them about screwing a monkey with the face of Matilda - it's just not something they're going to want to relate to in public. New material doesn't have rhythms yet and the only way to get them is to keep on speaking it until you've got enough votes for the best bits to know what to keep in and what to leave out.

With me, new material very rarely sticks to what is on the page - it'll always start with the jokes and ideas that I've prepared but then I find myself reeling off down tangents and sometimes it even surprises me. Last night I went from temp work to magic to relationships without any clue where I was going. I discovered that I have a fundamental issue with the way people create magic in fiction which is not something I've ever given more than a milisecond of thought to in the past. I'm going to need to write a strongly worded letter to any author who has previously used the concept of magic in a piece of fiction and tell them that I'm disappointed in their fundamental lack of imagination.

It's weirder when you start talking about something more personal and all of a sudden you've revealed something to the room that you're not even sure is accurate, let alone something you particularly want other people to know. I think I told a bemused room half full of people in Camden that I am terrified of commitment. The only part of this that surprised me was that I said I was scared of it - not that I didn't like it, or that I didn't want it etc etc. I said I was scared of it. And I think I am. I'm beginning to wonder if stand-up does occasionally cross the line from entertainment to therapy for at least the person holding the microphone.

I try and avoid really personal material - I often use real stuff and then butcher it for the laughs - a mercenary clown if you like, but to be able to speak quite openly about things that are powerful is probably my ultimate goal for stand-up. I saw Rufus Hound performing a few months ago and he completely moved the boundaries for me in terms of what is possible for laughter and public speaking. I think it surprised me so much because I didn't expect it from a TV personality - but that's completely the point of his performance I think. He talks about the purpose of the human race and whether we've lived up to expectations of what we could achieve.

Is it still stand-up comedy? Is there room for a new genre when comedy is not just about making you laugh - it's about stirring you and making you think? Is it motivational speaking on steroids? What role do comedians fill when they've moved on from whimsical punch lines and bashing politics they don't understand? There's a lot of snobbery between comedians about material - good jokes vs knob gags. It's almost like just making people laugh got too predictable - now we have to make them laugh while they're thinking.

I don't think it's a bad thing. I think comedy's an evolving beast - I just wish  was evolving as fast as the format.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A Certain Who The Hell Knows

Listen folks, we've hit a brick wall.

I really need to go to Tesco. However, going to Tesco is going to require cleaning my teeth. One of the reasons I need to go to Tesco is to buy toothpaste. I could go foul mouthed (grubby teeth, not swearing at check out assistants) but then I would feel pretty gross. Also, going to Tesco is going to require getting dressed which I've so far avoided in favour of allowing my skin to cool as much as possible with air exposure so that when I go to my gig tonight I'm a little less Percy Pig-esque. This sun burn is going to have to go down soon or I'm going to run out of pink things to compare myself to.

So, I have two choices... I can either go to Tesco with gross teeth in the nude or I can stay here and hope that Tesco get wind of the supplies I need and come running with many bagels and a box set of the Gilmore Girls so that my afternoon will be as relaxed as possible.

I've still not gotten over the thrill of being able to do my own supermarket shopping - I feel like a proper grown up when I've got a trolley before me and I'm trundling down the aisles. I like to make sure I go up and down all the aisles and look at stuff and then nod wisely as though I already have it in my cupboards at home. I don't like people to imagine that I only actually have one cupboard in the kitchen and it's full of stuff that is only there because I really don't want to eat it but I don't feel like I should throw food out because I am very poor.

About once a week I go and look in the cupboard and decide I really still don't want to eat Fruit & Fibre with  risotto rice and shaved nectarine on top. Then I defrost a bagel and wonder how long it will be until malnutrition sets in. The trick to getting a good supermarket trip right is to not go hungry. Never, ever, ever step inside the sliding doors until you have a full stomach. If you do not heed my advice you will find yourself heading home with bags and bags of Doritos, garlic bread, chocolate muffins and Pepperamis. Then you'll spend the rest of the week wondering why it didn't occur to you buy toilet roll or any of the other essentials that were definitely on a list somewhere to be made. So what if there is still no toothpaste? The nine bags of Haribo I bought whilst dying of starvation have now rotted my teeth to mini nubs anyway so the toothpaste is probably defunct anyway.

The problem with starting a blog at 11am about how you really need to get dressed and get on with your day and then noticing it's nearly 2pm and you've neither finished your blog nor left the house is that you start to wonder if narrating your life for no particular reason is getting in the way of living it. Not that I consider being clothed and walking the 100 yards to Tesco particularly living but it seems to be the best I can do.

Oh and ball crumbling bags of lemon curd I've now dawdled so much that it's raining like mad outside and if I do go to Tesco I'm going to get drenched. Perhaps a good reason not to bother getting dressed though and let the storm work it's magic on the sunburn? Balls to today. 

Monday, June 27, 2011

Alone Some

I am all alone with my Day-Glo skin and really not loving it. I don't like to be on my own - I'm not one of those people who likes an awful lot of time to themself. I like to be quiet sometimes and not be bothered but I like to do it with someone else in the house so that I can go and see them if I need to. If I were a dog I'd be the sort that chewed your shoes when you were out but only did it because I love you so much. What an appealing reason to neither get a dog nor form a strong attachment to me.

This afternoon I leave the Shire to go back to London and I'm a little bit dreading it. I have no job this week which means a whole tonne of days to have to entertain myself while everyone else in the known universe is at work. On Thursday I can obviously round up all the local teachers to go on some sort of outing, or maybe I could get a day's temp work as a teacher to plug the gaps but I think that's unlikely to be approved at a senior level. "Why is that blood orange teaching Year 3?"

My Day-Glo skin has also ceased to be amusing to anyone except my blonde sister (who has now scarpered to Newquay). She was incredibly unamused last night when I insisted on sleeping in her bed and then used her arms as ice packs to take some of the power out of my own ambient cheeks. Face cheeks. Please. I'm wearing a selection of moisturisers today - I smell like Boots and I'm slightly clammy to the touch. I really hope London will be a more understanding collective than the people of my house have been so far.

Perhaps it's a good thing then, that I have the house to myself, logically speaking my skin tone will be marginally less flamboyant by the time I see another human being? Robins might not try to mate with me when I step out of the front door. But for the time being I don't really know what to do with myself. I watched a very terrible film about Brides earlier (never marry Kate Hudson or Anne Hathaway) and then when I switched that off the History Channel was showing a programme about what would happen if humans died out and the dogs from the Marine Corps took over the world. What? Is there so little to talk about on a Monday morning that we've really descended to that level of hypothesising?

I suppose, for research purposes, I should have stayed on and watched the show as there's bound to be some good footage of dogs talking or climbing walls, but I just couldn't face it. When I'm by myself it's like I revert to the mental age of about 18 months and I don't have the ability to conceive of things I can't see. If there are no people around, I struggle to imagine there are people anywhere. I am in a mini West Country apocalypse. I'm just going to have to pray that Mel Gibson doesn't turn up to try and direct me. If he does come, I will have to put him off with the power of the imminent all over body peel that I'm fairly certain can only be days away. I think the trick is to just moisturise enough that the gloop holds the peeled skin off. A bit like papier mache but with skin. If you do try that you have to try not to brush up against people or you'll leave a pink tinged gluey skin paste on the sleeve of those around you and they will not like you any more. Another good reason to be alone in the house.

Ho hum. This blog is now much longer than it really needs to be. I must stop talking/typing to you/myself and go and try and be an adult/loner. I think I will begin by doing activities where one is always alone so that I don't freak out and start phoning people before crisis mode really kicks in. Perhaps a, very careful, shower? If I'm going to be the colour of Cyril Sneer for the rest of the week I may as well have pretty hair while I do it.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

She's Her Lobster

Well, I am back from Cornwall looking like someone strapped a bikini to a chewit and left it to par boil. All of a sudden I am incredibly grateful that I have a severe lack of employment this week and that I only need to show my beetrooty face at gigs because I am going to be mocked. Mocked badly. I'm already nervous about Quiz In My Pants tomorrow as I get mocked a lot on that anyway let alone when I am spangly like now.

So, how was it you say? Camping? It was great - except for the rooks. Rooks? Yes rooks.

Every year we go to this tiny place in Cornwall to surf, we choose the same spot every year at the back of the site near the loos. Every year we get woken up at 5am because there are a million rooks who roost in the tree above and who get up and start going "BART BART" and pooping everywhere. I hate rooks. I would like to shoot every single rook I can find and burn them and then feed them to rook lovers.

I've got to say the nights weren't my favourite part of this weekend; I lost a fight with my brother (Uncle Onion) pretty early on and so I had to have the crappy air bed. The fight basically consisted of me lying on the good airbed and him dragging me off while squeezing my ankles so hard I thought they were going to break. He has incredibly strong thumbs.

So I had the pants airbed which was about 4 inches wide. While I may be 4 inches long, I am at least 9 inches wide and much, much more where my hips are concerned. I spent both the nights we were there rolling off and then back on to an ever decreasing air bed and waiting for the rooks to kick in. On the second night my older sister gave me ear plugs but by the time I woke up I had lost them. It turns out I had taken them out and put them in my pocket while I was asleep - how stupid can you get? Surely even sleepy me should have been dimly aware that without them we were going back to rookville??

I also managed to pick up a fantastic new nickname on this mini-break. I say fantastic with the sort of leaden heart that is certain this nickname will stick. All of my awful nicknames stick. My delightful siblings decided that my new nickname is Poison Dwarf. Or PD for short. They find it too funny to let it drop. My height has been a bit of an issue all weekend. I went to get my wetsuit hire this morning and had this exchange with the incredibly tanned and muscly instructor.

"What dress size are you there little miss?"
"Er, I'm a size #. But I'm pretty short. I won't be offended if you have to give me a child's one."
"Nah, right let's see. How about... no. Let's try... no. Or... no. Well, it's a good job you won't be offended..."

To combat people noticing my height so much I've spent most of my time with my nephew who is frankly getting more and more brilliant. He now refers to himself as Bobber and has picked up some adorabe tricks at his 23 months point. He will now greet you with a beautiful smile and say "Hello treacle" when he sees you, and if this wasn't brillant enough, he'll follow it up with "Tally Ho" if you don't immediately go for a walk with him.

He likes walking and he really likes ducks. He also likes stones. He cried a lot when I was unable to help him get a stone out of the road because it was the road. He juts didn't understand. His nickname for me is Aunty Beastie. Because I, apparently, am a beastie.

I don't think I'm quite ready to go and sit at my email inbox and plough through everything I haven't done... there's one more day til QimP, 7 more days til the festival of previews and only 5 more weeks til Edinburgh... but I'm sure it'll be OK to have just a few more hours of holiday. Let's go PD.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

After A Night Beneath The Stars

Having arrived a little later than expected last night we immediately began setting up camp beneath the starry sky.

Why were we later than expected? You'll never believe it, and if you do believe it you're frankly a fool. We were waylaid by bandits as we ploughed on down the windy roads towards the Cornish coast. Not just any bandits - bandits who were wired and buzzing from the Glastonbury festival and hell bent on feeding their insatiable desire for adrenaline. We had to sell my younger sister to ensure our safe escape.

There we were - a line of pack horses, each with a member of the clan on the top like a jilted figurine on top of a mule shaped wedding cake. The sun was blazing behind the thick, black clouds which covered the sky, causing us to eye our anoraks nervously wondering who would be the first to break and dive for the plastic dryness that they offered.

My father was way out in the lead holding the oil lamp which lit the way through weaving hedges. Once or twice I thought I saw a vole in the scrub and had to swallow nervously and sing to myself to keep the nerves at bay, "Oops upside your head, I said oops upside your head...".

Suddenly there was a burst of activity from the back where my brother was trying to play travel Ludo and stay in his saddle. I heard shouts and smelt the unmistakable stench of dreadlocks in the air.

"Give us all your peanut butter!" Came the gravelly voice through the dusky air, "We've got boom boxes and we're not afraid to bring down the house prices of the surrounding area."

I blanched - Ruffians!

The air was thick with trepidation, we all clutched our pouches of peanut butter nervously - my palms were sweating and I was afraid I would lose my grip on the sticky leather purse. Thank heavens for it being so sticky. Peanut butter; nature's velcro.

I felt a swift movement to my left and my father dashed past towards the ragamuffins who were delaying our trip to the coast.

"We'll never surrender our peanut butter - we are a proud family and we will not be parted with our gooey delights. WIthout peanut butter we shall have nothing crunchy to mix with the Nutella in the morning when we gather in the rain to eat our croissants. NEVER SURRENDER."

I shivered with pride and urged my ride closer in to my older sister who was filming the whole thing on her mobile in the hope of becoming an overnight YouTube sensation.

"Fine," came the drawled response, "We will not part you from you buttery peanut delight. How about we take this skinny blonde girl instead?"

"Done!" said my father.

My youngest sister wailed in surprise and anguish, and because she likes a good wail. Predictably, my father stepped forward with his reasoned response -

"Have no fear little one, for this is all part of the plan. Remember Joseph being sold to the Egyptians? Well, this is your shot to make it big. I believe in you."

And with that she was gone - whisked off into the dwindling light to make tea for spaced out hedge monkeys with an anarchic streak. We laid a wreath in what would have been her tent compartment as soon as the tent was constructed and we'd finished our annual argument over who had not put the coloured stickers on the tent pole the previous year.

Nobody slept well last night - we all wondered where the littlest blonde thing was and whether she was happy, but we only wondered about that briefly and then we just struggled to sleep because we were in a tent and it was remarkably uncomfortable.


The peanut butter for breakfast was delicious. I think it is safe to say that were I Eve in the garden of Eden and God told me to not to lick the peanut butter tree I would have to ignore him. Peanut butter; nature's love juice.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Off To See The Wizard

I slept with shoes on last night. Why? I have literally no idea. At all.

Especially because, when I left the pub I was actually wearing slippers and had my flip flops in my bag. But when I woke up this morning I had put my black court shoes on (and a vest) to go to sleep. I guess maybe I was attempting to be terribly rock and roll? I'm not sure I pulled it off.

This needs to be a pretty short blog as I've got to go and get on a train to Cornwall very soon and I've not packed a thing - this is always worrying because I am a lightweight packer. I hav a mentality when looking at my suitcase where I think - "No, I definitely won't need that." and manage to take very little with me. Then I get to wherever I'm going and wonder why on earth I thought I wouldn't need any trousers where I was going.

My room looks like a bomb's hit it so it might be safest to just scoop everything off my bed and into a bag and hope that it works out nicely. Having just glanced around at my bed I've just noticed that the foot of it is covered in cake decorations? Why? Sweet frigging hell why am I so weird when I'm drunk? I can only imagine I got home last night and decided I was Amy Winehouse in my vest and shoes and had a cake decoration party all by myself. Brilliant. I will probably have to get rid of those before I leave - I don't know where they've come from so now I'm going to have to look for the cake. Unless I just bought cake decorations? Ah what's the point...

It's mornings like these where I actually start to worry about what's going to become of me if I'm left to my own devices for much longer. If I'm already waking up in a vest and high heels with a bed full of cake decorations when I'm 24 and reasonably together, what chance have I got when I'm 86 and a complete spinster? I'll be inviting everybody in the home to come for Swiss Roll parties in my room and then flashing my knees and the gents.

Naturally this means this blog needs to be even shorter because I've got cleaning, showering and packing to do in the 30 minutes left before I've got to leave the house. If anyone out there has a particular ambition to be some kind of butler/carer please let me know so I can start receiving applications for someone to stop mornings like these happening,

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Bulldog Love Story

No, I'm not writing a spin off from Frasier.

No, I'm not writing "A Handler's Guide To Amorous Pet Nasties"

No, it's not the tale of how schoolchildren everywhere spent their youthful years smashing into lines of their peers and running endlessly back and forward.


What I am doing, is narrating the epic love story of two bulldog clips who found each other and stuck together through thick and thin.

Of course, if you don't follow me on Twitter;
a) You should.
b) This won't make any sense.

There's also good potential that if you do follow me on Twitter this won't make any sense. The person at the desk next to me just noticed what I was doing and said, "What have you done to your desk?". I sort of looked at what I had done to my desk and decided my explanation wouldn't really be too coherent to most people.

"Nothing much, I just got so bored I started seeing all the ways you could make two bulldog clips look like they were lovers. Then I found some snow globes and wondered what would happen if they went on holiday... the whole thing just kind of escalated. I'm so sorry. Stop? No, I can't... then they'll never get home..."

It's my last day at work the booking pen today - I've survived 2 weeks and 2 days, it's take this long for stationery based madness to kick in. Potentially if the film rights to Bulldog Love Story get pounced upon I'll never really have to work again after today. Except to sit in a squishy chair and make decisions about which bulldog clips should have which roles in my epic.

There's every chance that this whole thing is a side effect of a weird headache I've got now in my cheek. I'm not sure whether that should be called a headache, but I think cheeckache sounds like a stereotypical deaf person saying cheesecake so I want to avoid any controversial issues. There's nothing on NHS direct about strokes causing obsessive bulldog clip based behaviour so I think maybe I'm just bored and they were the nearest things to me.

Yesterday we had a bit of a dispute in the booking team as to whether animals are capable of cognitive thought. Today I might escalate my passionate argument of "of course they fucking do" to, "stationery do too!" and just see how many feathers I can ruffle. I can submit my photo diary of the love affair as evidence that what we've actually been doing all these years is enslaving a nation of office products into doing our most loathed jobs. WHSmith will be exposed for the concentration camp that it is and Paperchases everywhere will be stormed by "Rights for Stationery" activists.

Once we've shovelled all the stationery out of the shops we will let it run free (except the paper because that will look like littering and this isn't the Railway Children) and people will remark about what a pointless exercise it was because they are not moving. Because they are stationery. Stationary. GET IT? I would be nothing if I didn't shoe horn in an awful pun somewhere along the line. Is the joke finished? Yes, that was the whole punch line. Hole punch. GET IT? Oh man, somebody stop this comedian... we're going to have to staple her lips together. Stapler. GET IT? That wasn't even so bad it was good... that had the word staple in it? Why not just leave it at staple which is also stationery? Why does it have to be the implement? Get a job. You've got one? Yes. I'm not even clear who's talking to who anymore, where's the punctuation? Where did you guys come from? You came from the earth? Where? Oh, over there? Wait a minute, that's no globe. Snow Globe. GET IT? Yes, I know it's not stationery but for some reason there are two on my desk so it's allowed... It's not allowed. Go home before you hurt somebody.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

I Don't Speak Addiction Very Well

"That", said the passive aggressive young woman in the purple dressing gown, "Was the worst night's sleep I've had in a long time."

If someone was writing a book about me, that might be how they would start it. If they wanted it to begin with me waking up this morning feeling incredibly grumpy. It would also only be historically accurate if the author noted at some point that I was talking to myself - I was too grumpy to speak to real people until about 11am this morning.

I've had about 3 hours sleep I would wager - my eyes feel like they're full of grit, my brain is not working in logical patterns and I've just about had it with the entire natural and human world.

At about 4am this morning a fox decided to start the Olympic preparations early by hurdling through the backgardens on my street. There are a couple of issues with this fox's plans - the fences between all the gardens on my street are about 6 foot high, and the gardens are all postage stamps - in order to get up enough momentum to leap the fence, the fox is required to do a few laps of the garden to get up to speed.

My neighbour has a gravel garden. Do you have any idea how much racket a turbo-charged fox on a mission can make in a gravel garden at 4am? I'm not a pro-hunt kind of country girl but last night I'd have happily skinned the damn thing and then phoned Naomi Campbell to see if we could hang out while I wore my new best friend as a nappy.

When the fox got into my garden the stupid thing failed to take into account the large bush in one corner of the garden that was disrupting his laps - every time he reached the corner there was a flurry of noise and the thing would pull up short, there'd be a pause and then it kicked off again. Sweet mother of pearl... if I'd known the fox was so desperate to find its garden of choice while I was sleeping I'd have dug the frigging bush up and built the foz a disabled ramp to get it from A to B.

At one point I even considered letting him through the house to the front so that he could make his way down the street unrestricted by evil fence panels.

Once the fox had trotted off I managed to fall back to sleep again until roughly 6am when a woman in one of the houses that backs on to ours started having the loudest foreign argument possible for such a time in the morning. Had the argument been in English I might not have minded - who doesn't like a good hour in bed listening to someone washing their dirty laundry in public? Sadly, I didn't undertsand a word of it. I also couldn't work out whether it would be a good idea to call the police either to protect the lady (who sounded in some distress) or to just gag her.

Do we still have breach of the peace or did that shuffle off with Romeo and Juliet?

By the time the alarm went off my nerves were so fraught and my vision so blurry there's a good chance the author of my book might have described me as a less kempt Tracey Emin, or even worse; a feature from one of her installations.

Surely, there could have been some kind of evolutionary development that said the hotter it gets at night, the quieter everything becomes. Because if you must have your window open, you necessarily need the rest of the world to be quiet a little bit and let you get some shut eye. Is that too much to ask?

I've booked approximately half a train as a result of today's fatigue so if you find yourself halfway to Edinburgh and the loco pulls up short you just give me call and see what I can do to fix this mess. SLEEP.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Do The British Thing

I suppose it's about time I mentioned it, I've been avoiding the subject because it's so freaking predictable but last night was ridiculous and so I feel to ignore it any more would be to admit I've given the weather its very own super injunction.

Last night I tried to get on the tube at Oxford Circus in a cloudburst. This is like Ron Jeremy trying to take the virginity of a pygmy gerbil. You would have thought the rain could have only lubricated the people trying to shuffle into the world's worst amusement park - it did nothing to ease the congestion. I lost most of the hair on the right hand side of my head to an over zealous woman with an umbrella who was insisting on using it to funnel water into my ear. Just hold the damn thing higher you pesky miser; from one midget to another, it doesn't matter how high you are - so long as the umbrella is above you it will stop the downward motion of the rain. Arms have hinges, useful buggers called elbows, just extend these and you will find umbrellic elevation the like of which you have never seen.

After losing my temper with his woman and descending into the tube I realised that the problem was only going to get worse when I saw any kind of media and was inundated with reports on how terrible the weather was. Because it might interrupt the tennis. Sweet mother of pearl I just couldn't care less. There are far worse things that excess rain can do than ruin some grunting testeroid's attempt to be champion of the most repetitive sport in existence. Tennis is one hell of an endurance sport - just play it in the rain, it'll keep you cool and we'll all be able to ogle wet breasts/biceps.

Of course, the problem is that it is too slippy. Ah, curses to you slippy!

I have decided that the problem with rain isn't the fact that it falls. No, the act of rain is rarely the plaguing factor of this weather type. The issue is absorption. This is a fact. Actually getting wet because of the skyfall is no issue; it's the lingering wet on the floor which causes all the angst. so really, what we should be mad about is that our country is not more absorbant; not that it rains all the time.

What we need are strategic sponge implants in the floor, or paving slabs that can suck up the water and run it in irrigation channels to areas where it's needed. I'm sure East Anglia is always clamouring for water. Or reasons to live there, one or the other.

If we hadn't covered most of the damned thing in concrete we might not have such an issue. If there was no concrete, we could get away without shoes because we'd be walking on grass. Then, when it rained, there would be absorption and we wouldn't have to worry about ruining our shoes and getting rising damp from the surface water. Rising damp is the bane of every "petite" person's existence. Just because I am short doesn't mean I have a teeny weeny waist, so, thanks for laying out a section of clothes specially for me so that the shop geography points out my special needs like a badge of honour, but I am still going to have to buy regular jeans. Then, when I have bought my regular jeans I'm either going to have to sew them up and pretend I wanted the raggedy "I'm a Textiles Student Look", or I will have to put up with rising damp. Sometimes rising damp can go all the way up to the knees. If I end up with rheumatism there could be many people who'll need a lawyer... starting with whoever never taught me to sew properly...

Our skin is (miraculously) very waterproof generally, unless you have bucket pores and are in danger of waterlogging. What we're actually worried about in the rain is either slipping, or our clothes getting wet because then they will need washing and drying. So, the solution to making rain an unproblem is simple; get naked and go to a field.

Does anyone have a spare Glastonbury ticket?

Monday, June 20, 2011

Cher and Cher Alike

Well shoot my socks off with a whippety pistol if yesterday wasn't a pretty good day. I mean, obviously, yes I did a 10 hour round trip to perform for 10 minutes and had a seriously dodgy Chinese meal which has left me feeling decidedly delicate, but overall I really enjoyed myself.

Today I am super tired. I feel like all the skin on my face is trying to have a quick lie down on the floor. There's a definite downward motion to my features today. I think the person who sits opposite me in the office booking pen might be trying to check with NHS Direct if I'm OK. She keeps whispering things down the phone and leaning round the monitor a bit to try and get a better look. I'm helping her out by dribbling a bit, scratching furiously and complaining that the air tastes like blue.

However, today is also shaping up to be a good day - I've just eaten a very under ripe banana (long may the stomach cramps continue) and I am actually able to listen to the radio at work for the first time since I started this whole process. What a difference it makes to remind yourself that the outside world exists when you're staring down the wrong end of Richard Branson's wallet all day.

I've just got that feeling today like everybody knows I'm a bit grubby and a lot tired. The soles of my feet look like I gigged in a coal mine last night - what on earth do they clean the lino with in North North Wales? Weirdly, everybody in the audience last night was fiercely proud of their Welshness and declared so with their thick Scouse accents. What? That's like me sitting on a fence singing "I've got a brand new combine harvester" in my best South African clipped tones.

I couldn't even be arsed to put eye liner on this morning - I knew it would have been frustratedly rubbed, toddler style, all round my face by about midday. I'd prefer my eyes to have no perceived boundaries than to give off that vague heroin addict aura by smearing my make up all over the place. Without eye liner I tend to look a bit frayed round the edges - it's much harder to pinpoint where the damn things are if you don't draw round them. I maintain my fervently held belief that women started drawing round their eyes to help out hapless men whose own eyes were cleavage dwellers.

Tonight I'm going to apply a bit of the dark stuff and head over to Hammersmith to give my new material its second outing and see if I can say the punchlines after the set up this time... fingers crossed.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Careering Into Nowhere

If my mother is reading this... well, I'll be very shocked, but, nevertheless I would like to make an announcement:

I have just cooked 3 meals simultaneously. Yep. Domestic goddess? I think I have taken the crown today for the most domestic person ever to live on the Old Kent Road.

Why am I cooking three meals simultaneously? Because, once I leave the house at 1pm today I have absolutely no more time to do anything useful (like cooking) until next Tuesday. How is this possible?

Today I'm off to seriously North Wales. I don't mean just a little bit above the centre of Wales... I mean, the top of Wales which is so high that if you go any further you are not only wet but you are also emigrating. I'm going all the way to the top of Wales to tell some jokes for 10 minutes and then I will be home at about 3am ready to sleep a little bit and then go book stuff tomorrow.

After booking stuff I am gigging and then booking stuff and then gigging all round in a fun little cycle until Friday where I strap myself into a wet suit and go and bother some fish. This is the sort of week that will be about Chapter 4 in my autobiography. Laura's autobiography will go something like this -

Chapter 1 - An explanation of how, had I been a piglet I would have died young, being the runtiest of my litter. People will chuckle at my weekly weigh in always being 2 stone 13 up until the age of about 10 and about my desperate desire to be a boy. There will be several photographs of me with my brilliant boy hair cut and probably wearing some terrible patterned leggings and dresses that would have been a gift from my Godmother in South Africa.

Chapter 2 - The teenage years of being quite moody to the point of eye dampness nearly everyday. What I'll do here (to make it look like I was a little cooler) is dress up these years of being a pain in the ass so that it looks like it was all just a bi-product of being so confused over wanting to be a performer so much. In the foreword (by whichever one of my sisters wants to do it the most) it will be explained that I was genuinely just annoying and melodramatic.

Chapter 3 - This will be the University years where I was introduced to the concept of performing live comedy by some incredible guys who taught me a shiteload and went on to have pretty cool careers themselves. Then we'll cover the whirlwind first year where everything seemed like it was going to fit into place without any much difficulty.

Chapter 4 - This little bit I'm in now. I might start it with some gritty realism about getting my heart smashed to pieces and not really concentrating on anything other than getting very drunk for a few months, but then I will be forced to warn all comedians pursuing this path that if you want to get anywhere you've got about 4 years of doing very similar gigs over and over again and wondering if anyone is ever going to notice that you're super. Even if you do very well at all of these gigs, you're still going to have to do billions of them. And some of them will be in North, North Wales.


I really hope Chapter 5 will be where I get a phone call telling me I'm going to be an event host for some really aces things and I will get to travel the country hosting live events and being a personality. I will also get given lots of free shampoo and suddenly people will cotton on to the fact that lifeless hair is nice too.

Chapter 6 will document Gerard Butler's ruthless pursuit for my hand in marriage. It will begin with him sidling up to me at a charity fundraiser I'm hosting. He'll tell me that he has seen some of my early videos on YouTube and he thinks I'm funny. I'll laugh a little (because I have no idea what to say) and then have to rush off because I'm so busy - he'll probably be a little confused by my seeming lack of interest but it will only ignite his passion further. The next week I'll receive a beautiful bouquet of flowers, he'll have read somewhere that I adore fresh flowers, and the note will say - "I weighed 2 stone 14 until I was 8. From one late bloomer to another. Gx". At this point I will decide I have to call him, within the first 3 minute I'll have mentioned my IBS twice and have admitted that sometimes I watch 300 whilst holding a can of Lynx Africa. He will think this is sweet rather than insane and we'll arrange a quiet dinner. We get a helicopter to Cornwall for our quiet dinner and the rest is history...

Chapter 7 will chart my rise to fame as an honourary member of the Harlem Globetrotters (it's a long time dream of mine and I refuse to give it up just because I'm not technically qualified in any way).

Chapter 8 will be all about how comedy has slowly changed the world etc etc and then the book will finish because I won't write the bits about being a crazy old woman for a few more decades.


Just for now though I'm going to go to Northern North Wales and continue on with Chapter 4. Safe in the knowledge that however poor and tired I am, if I end up becoming 2 stone 13 again it'll just be a lovely call back for a joke somewhere along the line.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Beach Break Lexx Style (ie Smaller)

This time next week I'll be on a beach in Cornwall.

However, don't for one moment think that this means I will be basking in glorious sunshine in a bikini. I will be wallowing like a rubbery seal in a wetsuit in the rain trying to learn to surf properly for the 900th summer in a row while the rest of my family sit in the tent arguing over who has to help my brother do the washing up. The only thing we won't argue over is that somehow my brother will be involved in the washing up.

I actually can't wait.

I'm very excited about this weekend away and have been looking forward to it for a month or so now. It's sort of become a bit of a traditional annual weekend trip for the clan from the West Country now. It was on this very holiday the first year we went that I realised I could fit 42 Maltesers in my mouth at a time - if you're not impressed by that kind of reckless bravery and cheek stretchiness then we're probably not going to remain friends for long.

This is the kind of holiday that appeals to me - there's a big difference between a holiday with friends where you're expected to be preened, tanned before you go (weird concept), skinnier than you've ever been in your life (when the whole idea of a holiday is meant to relax you), and you can't get nearly as drunk as you can if you're out with my Dad.

It's not that my Dad will encourage you to get drunk - I mean, he will (It was my Dad who helped my best friend discover her allergy to most alcoholic drinks didn't extend to cider - he refused to accept she couldn't at least have a half after a match at Twickenham and she's now a regular fan of the cider and black. Good effort.) but there's also the safety of knowing that if you're drunk around your Dad -

a) he won't let you die in a ditch
b) he's never going to find out through someone else how drunk you were, because he was there.

I have decided that, for this weekend I won't be taking any kind of internet or phone with me - or any kind of internet connection. This means that I'm going to have to do some kind of pre-emptive blogging for Saturday and Sunday and try and predict what will happen. I realise this is a novel concept to blogging but I've tried very hard to make sure I blog every day and this is not the time to lose momentum of things.

Perhaps it could be some kind of a collaborative effort? In that, you tell me what you would ideally like to happen over the weekend while I'm learning to surf, and I'll make sure it makes it into the pre-emptive blog somehow...?

Friday, June 17, 2011

Gallery Shuffle

She's early to the event and this immediately sets off the blush that will rest on her cheek for the remainder of the evening. She pushes the glass door hesitantly and it doesn't move, the receptionist motions to her to try pulling. The receptionist smiles slightly. Laura doesn't return the smile. It's the sort of smile that says, "You look like a grown woman - how have you not figured out push and pull signs yet?".

Stepping through the conquered glass door, Laura looks around her. She doesn't like Shoreditch; it's the sort of place where all the insecurity inducing people go to congregate and compare chequed shirts and slim ankles. Laura only has one chequed chirt and it's a soft felt material not crisp cotton. She also does not have slim ankles. It's not that she's fussed about not having slim ankles; she suspects she'd look like an upside down weeble if she did. Her figure is much more a top-to-toe "healthy" kind of a format - it'll be back in fashion the second Kate Winslet has a daughter who can convince the media they like curves for another 6 months.

This is an art gallery in Shoreditch - Laura's palms are already sweating. It's white, with paintings adorning the walls in neat rows. She collects a free drink, refusing the champagne for fear it'll make her schmoozing a torrent of verbal diarrhea, and heads off to look at the paintings. In her mind the concept of an experiment to trace the steps different people would take around the same gallery flickers into place. How do 50 individuals trace a path through exactly the same set up? Why would they be drawn to different paintings? How many people would take the same path? Would there be any similarities in character and tracks?

Briefly, she considers the idea of trying to run this experiment; perhaps every week the owners of the gallery could lay out a chosen set of footsteps on the floor and allow people to walk it and feel how alien another person's pull through the art felt. She dismisses the idea and returns to looking at the pictures and sipping the elderflower water.

The pictures look like lino. Quite simply. They remind Laura of the colouring books she used to have as a child to keep her entertained on camping trips - blank geometric patterns all ready to be painted and filled in with whatever colour pattern she chose. She stares hard at the paintings trying to make them mean something; they don't. Art like this has always overwhelmed her. She doesn't understand it. She needs a neat summation by the side to make it clear what the intention was. Then it might click into place; but quite frankly she prefers to look at something pretty.

The lino paintings all have celebrities' names next to them. Laura decides her favourite one is Albert Einstein. Then she finds the plaque explaining what the art is all about. IT begins to click into place; the artist, using the 8 pointed star symbol (in a nod to the Islamic tendency to use this symbol), has created a seres of portraits of celebrities. Replacing their photoworn faces with symbolic representations.

Laura takes another tour of the gallery... the pictures seem to make more sense now. But they're still not quite Laura's cup of tea. Laura's cup of tea is tea. And she wishes she were at home drinking some. Although the elderflower water is nice.

Other people have shuffled in now; in pairs and groups. Laura is the only person who is alone. Except for another girl. As Laura turns to look at the scattered black stars of Richard Pryor, the girl introduces herself.

"I noticed you're here by yourself too so I thought I would come and say hello."

She's pretty - with long brown hair and a floral dress. This girl manages to fit in Shoreditch without being Shoreditch. Laura is instantly very jealous and makes a mental note to buy a floral dress when she has some money. The conversation flows and the tension in her palms dissipates. The girl is fascinating and there is a passion burning in every word she says. All too quickly the conversation has reached it's end and Laura is released back into the fish bowl.

She wanders upstairs to where the projects for that month are laid out for people to look at. Her precious Ink sits in the middle. Pride. It's like having a child that has done something; and there it is, sitting, waiting for approval. It looks as real a piece of theatre and art as anything else in the project stall. People are looking at it.

The crowds are all clutching their green stickers. Each green sticker is a vote. A vote for the project you want to receive funding the most. The guests can all go and put their stickers on the projects that capture their hearts. Laura's heart flutters slightly as she sees a woman in a blue dress tentatively reach out towards Ink. The sticker flickers on the edge of her finger - the glue barely holding it on. The hand retreats slightly...

"I'm not sure about these Edinburgh ones...they seem a bit..."
"Go on..."
"But I like this one..."

And the sticker is there. It's stuck. To Ink. It's a vote.

By the end of the evening the green stickers are all dished out - Ink sits somewhere in the middle of the tally; not the forerunner, but not bringing up the rear. Laura stands staring at the stickers, not caring how many other people's projects have got; every sticker on there is a separate person who was touched by this project. Who saw something in it. Incredible.

Come Edinburgh, there will be many more eyes on the project; eyes on the whole project, not just a poster board in a gallery in Shoreditch. If every clapping pair of hands feels as good as those flimsy green stickers, Laura's heart might just break.


- This is a retelling of last night's events in short story form with a nice, honest, gushy ending. I'm in a bad mood today and so there was no humour to be found anywhere even in the deepest recesses of my soul (my midriff). If you didn't like it, normal service will resume tomorrow when I am not working booking stuff and so there isn't a desperate need to exercise at least a small portion of my brain with something challenging. -

Lx

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Hearty Headache and a Heady Heartache

I have a collosal headache today - I can only assume it's my brain trying to drill its way out through my forehead as a protest - "Use me or lose me mini-bitch, I'm going elsewhere."

I've tried negotiating with him but he's insisting we've been booking trains for a week now and his ass is starting to rot. I'd love to beg him to stay but I know he's right - he needs to go. I'm just going to ask him to serve a week's notice and then I can go with him. One more week of train booking and we are released to await with anticipation the next assignment... I am excited to fill in my "Placement Feedback Form". It may involve a lot of copying and pasting from this here trusty blog.

Tonight I'm off to a launch thingy for the fundraising thingy we're doing to get 'Ink' some pennies. I'm equal measures petrified and thrilled at this prospect - I hate, hate being all pushy about trying to get people to go and see things or to pay for things I've done. However, I'm starting to realise it just has to be done and it's all about trying to get enough people talking about it in the vague hope that a handful of those will have the cash to drop a bit in the box. For this reason I've made the decision to go along tonight and try to "Schmooz". Expect tomorrow's blog to be a tale of massive faux pas and funding actually being removed from the show. Where is the line between schmoozing and sexual harrasment? Just so I know?

But actually the thing I'm nervous about is going to this fundraiser thingy alone. I am a single lady in a big city and usually this is exactly how I love my life - I like not being bothered, I like having all my time to myself (that 20 minutes a day is precious to me) and I hate waking up with someone else. Largely because I am a mean sleeper and prone to punching. This often means I have to make the first cup of tea in the morning as an apology and then I get grumpy because I don't think I should have to apologise for things I did when I'm unconscious.

Note - If my best friend from University is reading this, I do unreservedly apologise for that time I punched you while unconscious - I was drunk not asleep and you certainly didn't deserve a flying fist in your face for trying to help me stand up. I blame it on the concussion from the toilet cubicle... I know you still blame the Snakebite and that's fine. I am sorry.

Just for tonight though I kind of wish I had someone on my arm to come with me and tell me everything is going to be OK. Naturally, he'd get ignored all evening while I go off and do my mingling and trying to make people think giving us £20 is going to help the world in some way (it will, it definitely will - probably). And I'd probably be too nervous to be pleasant to him at all so he'd have to be OK with me being borderline rude when we did speak. Also, I have a busy day tomorrow and a lot of event promotion to do when I get home tonight so he can't come home with me, but other than that I'm a catch right? Oh, and if anything mildly interesting happens he'll become a caricature addition to tomorrow's blog. Brilliant.

I'm starting to understand why most stand-up sets start with "I'm so single I've had to dredge up two obscure celebrities who might feasibly given birth to me, just in order to get some attention..."

Perhaps it's time I delved into the concept of escort hiring. Despite the fact that I would need to go to a fundraiser to raise the funds for my escort to escort me to the fundraiser... I think I might be on to a winner with this scheme. Maybe there are cheaper ways to do it?

Perhaps it's a trick charities are seriously missing out on when they come up with jobs for the homeless? Teach people who struggle to get meals to always say "Your bum is tiny and you're funny" on cue and surely people would be lining up to feed them? Foolproof. Or, what about people having a bit of trouble at Uni? I'll happily write you an essay if you brush your teeth and stand still in a suit?

If the internet wasn't so savagely restricted in the office booking pen I would be Googling "Cheap Quiet Escorts" as we speak and pulling up a shortlist for your delectation...

Until tomorrow folks ;)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

In One Nostril...

The office booking pen is a series of fouler and fouler smells this afternoon. It started out smelling like feet and it's now progressed to smelling like a conceptual art piece entitled "If Feet Could Fart". It's really unpleasant. I have no idea what part of the human brain encourages you to sniff harder once you think you've detected an awful smell to see if it's definitely there. Why not just not sniff the second time and live in blissful ignorance? Why is it so vital that we're aware of the definite presence of the smell. Let it lie.

It must be the same section of the brain that makes you taste something, say "That is disgusting," and then add, "Try it" to the nearest person. This kind of behaviour can mean only two things, either:

a) You hate your friends.
b) You like your friends but suspect they are stupid enough to try the disgusting food you've got.

Either way - perhaps you need to stop doing it or get new friends.

I took a night off last night - no laptop, no gig, no planning or booking or promoting... I went out for a few drinks and thoroughly felt relaxed for the first time in quite a while. When I got home I meant to sort out the 40+ emails I'd got through the day... I watched a section of Geordie Shore, ate a bagel and went straight to bed.

Actaully, I didn't go straight to bed... I first checked the We Did This funding page that we recently set up for Ink. I was just curious. I didn't expect to see what I saw. The funding is basically quite cool - we set up a pitch, we ask for donations from anyone interested in the project and then we offer different sized rewards from the theatre company depending on the size of the donation.

Our pitch went live yesterday and we had 30 days to receive the £500 funding we had pitched for (quite a modest sum it turns out after seeing other pitches!).

When I checked last night we had already received £140... in a day. I was pretty close to tears seeing it. I have no idea who's donated or how much, but to know that people believed in something I'd written and created enough to actually want to support it and see it happen was frankly fucking awesome. I am so excited about this project and the idea that there might actually be a solution to the huge funding gap (thank you booking trains for paying utterly zilch) is amazing.

After I'd finished being blown away I went to bed. I dreamt about gutting people from various banks because (prior to totally relaxing) I'd had several ridiculous phone calls with my own bank. First I phoned my credit card to pay off my balance (as I do every month on the same day) and my payment was declined. Then my other bank phoned me to ask if everything was ok.

"Everything was fine, but you guys just declined my payment."
"Yes we did, can you just confirm who you are...for security reasons."
"You phoned me."
"Yes that's right, can you answer security questions... it's very noisy where you are - is there any way you could go somewhere quieter?"
"No, you phoned me. Can you please tell me why my payment just got declined?"
"Yes, we were worried it might be a fraudulent payment."
"Why? I do it every month?"
"Yes. Please can you confirm that you tried to make the payment?"
"Yes. I definitely did. Can you please just maybe only worry about fraudulent payments that I don't make every month?"
"So, you're saying it wasn't a fraudulent payment?"
"Well, unless I'm not me and you're verifying the payment with the person who tried to make it who isn't me."
"What?"
"Exactly. This is ridiculous. Please can you release my money?"
"Can I just double check you withdrew £40 today?"
"Yes."
"And a standing order came out for £3.99?"
"Probably." What on earth do I buy monthly that's £3.99? Is there a magaznie I'm not getting...?
"And you spent £42 in the Isle of Dogs on Friday?"
"And the rest..."
"And Tesco in London Bridge..."
"I have absolutely no idea. Probably."
"Excuse me?" She soudns baffled.
"I can't remember what I spent yesterday. I'm really not your prime market for this whole questioning thing. My account seems fine, I am fine, we're all fine. Please will you leave me alone to pay my bills? Thanks though, for trying to help. But this is quite annoying. But thanks for making sure no one steals my money. Keep doing that, but maybe annoy me about it less? Thanks."
"Good bye Miss Lexx."

It's fairly likely that the bank probably now have me on a list of people whose accounts can go to hell in a handbasket should they be frauded. I think it might be time to start treatng my account like an adult... crap.



If you're interested in the show (Ink) please have a quick look at the funding page -
http://www.wedidthis.org.uk/projects/ink-life-desperate-man I really don't expect you to donate, but if you could maybe just share it and help spread the word I would be so grateful.

To keep up with the project, you can follow http://spunglasstheatre.blogspot.com/ where I'm keeping a rehearsal diary blog (it's less funny more Dawson's Creeky).

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Killer Cleavage

During my 45 minute lunch break I was responsible for the death of a person. More specifically, my breasts were responsible for the death of a person. More specifically, by person I mean a lady bug. It has been a truly harrowing last hour and to be honest, I'm struggling to cope with what we have done. By we, I mean of course myself, Sharky & George (my front luggage).

This is how it happened... I was strolling back from the park towards the office trying to work out which character in Oliver I would most like to play. As I've mentioned before, my walk to the park takes me round the semi-circular buildings that (I assume) are the ones from Oliver! where the Old Gentleman lives. If they are not; they look exactly the same and they certainly should be. This often leads to me singing (mostly in my head) as I walk round there, but today I was trying to work out whether I'd rather be The Artful Dodger or Mr Bumble and generally not paying a lot of attention to the world around me.

Then a lady bug flew straight down my top. I was immediately uncomfortable - usually I am only afraid of small things when I am approaching sleep. This phobia only concerns things that could feasibly get in me while I'm snoozing; really I don't think it's wrong to be afraid of that at all. It's perfectly logical. Who wants to become spider pregnant via the bum whilst they're napping?

But obviously a lady bug nestling in my chest is not an ideal situation. My immediate response was to try and fish it out immediately, but the scope of my chestical region compared to a lady bug is quite large and it wasn't an easy assignment. Also, there are an awful lot of builders working in the area at the moment and a couple of them had started to look at me like I migth be a park nut. I couldn't very well mouth "Lady Bug" at them, because then they'd know I was definitely off my rocker. If I'm going to get labelled psycho, it's going to eb for something I've legitimately done which is crazy - of which there are many options.

I decided the best thing to do would be to try and act as a safety vessel for the little blighter until I could get safely back to the office toilets and set him free. Have you ever tried to walk with a lady bug incubator attached to your torso? It is not easy. At first I tried to just walk very carefully but I realised I was clenching my bum cheeks and the builder nearest me had cocked his head to one side: I looked like a park nut with toilet trouble. So I had to do something about keeping the chest as still as possible; curses to not being able to move the damn funbags. If only we had a little bit of muscular control over them the entire event would never have happened. And also I could hold drinks. Or do semophore.

Trying to casually keep my boobs still with a hand just made it look like I was giving myself a post sandwich perk up and that plan was quickly abandoned. I thought back to my lady training (watching Miss Congeniality and laughing at Michael Caine) and tried to glide back to the office. It turns out I'm not a natural glider. Well, technically I would be a natural glider if the pavement was flat but it isn't. And, as much as I wanted to keep my lady bug safe; I was in grave danger of doing a stupid toe stub trip flat onto my face and losing my teeth. There is only so much you can glare at inanimate paving slabs before you realise you should just start picking up your feet.

By the time I got back to the office and tried to evacuate my bra it was too late for my cargo. He had perished.

I wasn't entirely sure what to do with him. Flushing only really seems appropriate for fish, I couldn't get the window open, and the sanitary bins make it very clear that they only have one purpose or the world will end. So my victim is wrapped in some tissue in my bag until I can get home tonight and give him a proper burial.

I think I may have entirely lost my grip. I might go and tell the builders they were right all along... at least they might help me dig a grave.

Monday, June 13, 2011

The Game: Not Jason & Howard

When I was younger, one of the biggest injustices of my life was that I was never allowed to marry Robbie Williams when my older sister and I played The Take That Game. I don't remember how or when we invented The Take That Game, it was probably a matter of minutes after Take That released their first single and my sister became infatuated with them; in particular Robbie.

My sister is 3 years older than me and has always been someone I've considered copying, tried copying, and then realised we are such utterly different people that I've stopped. Instead, I choose to amuse her with my total lack of rational thinking, and she calms me down and promises me that everything will be OK.

When we were younger there are a few things I remember most about my sister:

1. The only things she would and could learn for any length of time were song lyrics and she would learn absolutely all of them. She probably still knows the entire Bread back catalogue now.
2. She liked to read and be left alone. If she could not read and be left alone, she liked to frown.
3. She wore hats.

The hat I remember most was a black and red floppy crushed velvet affair with a hat pin in it to keep the brim off the family eyebrows. The family eyebrows are a bit of an institution - in our natural state we all look like a clan of neanderthal caterpillars are migrating in close formation across our foreheads. Even the blonde sister. It's a curse. We are now a family of fringes and tweezers. My sister's hat was not the sort of hat anyone over 14 would wear; and even under 14s would not have worn it had it not been the '90s. I still maintain her hat obsession was largely a certain R Williams' fault anyway. If you had a copy of Take that and Party video, you would notice he wears a series of weirder and weirder hats that should never have been given license to exist.

The Take That Game was a game we played at night. It largely consisted of the idea that we were both dating someone from Take That. I don't remember a lot else. My interest in the game waned severely each night after I was told I was not allowed Robbie and would have to make do with someone else. This generally meant I would choose between Mark or Gary; usually Gary. Despite the fact I didn't like Gary and found his lack of dancing distinctly creepy, he was still a better option than Mark who I was convinced was on drugs. When you're 8 and raised in Somerset, drugs are a very serious issue and it's best if your fictional nocturnal boyfriend doesn't do them. It's bad enough that you're coveting your sister's husband from your bunk bed. You don't need to be attending Relate in the small hours too.

Robbie Williams was not my sisters only husband in her pre-teen years. Her first husbnad was a friendly fellow named Pete. He was her loyal companion and husband for a number of years until one fateful day when our babysitter asked her how Pete was...

"He died in a car crash." came the deadpan response from her mouth. My sister was killing off unwanted characters from her life at a very early age. This was a stark warning to everyone around her; especially runty little sisters who were always being encouraged to jump off high things. She once told me if I jumped off the climbing frame holding a carrier bag it would act as a parachute. When this didn't work and I was on the grass in some pain, she told me I had simply held the bag wrong and that it was my fault. It was a sign of my limited intelligence and overblown sense of trust that I tried again. Fool.

The Take That Game was the perfect game for two siblings who shared a room and disliked sleeping. It was a game we reverted to once we had been caught "Sneak Reading". Sneak Reading was something that could only be done once my sister had mastered the sleight of hand required to flick the lamp off very quickly once she heard Dad's clicky knees on the first step. This meant we were often caught if:

a) Mum came up the stairs
b) Anyone went outside the house and saw the light from the window.

Really you'd think that parents would be pleased that their children were so desperate for literature. But I suppose once it gets past 11pm and both your daughters are prone to being tearful stinkers when tired, enough is enough.

But The Take That Game could be played in total darkness. My favourite episodes would be some kind of event we were going to with our respective husbands; this meant being allowed to dress up in finery and get a limousine to the party and then dance the night away; unless I had married Gary that evening in which case I was allowed to get serenaded because he was too fat to dance.

My sister finally got to go and see Take That in concert this weekend - 17 years later than she actually wanted to go, now married with a 2 year old child, but happier than she'd been since the day she was free of Pete. I love my sister.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Lying In - Rut Busting

I'm in bed.

I'd like to be able to say I'm 'still' in bed so that you get the picture that I've had an incredible lie in today, but the truth is I needed a wee so I got up and went and made a cup of tea and did the washing up but now I've come back to my bed. But I did originally stay in bed until at least 10:30am... this, is very impressive for me. I'm not very good at staying in bed for long - I have a slight issue that if my body temperature rises too high I have a panic attack. So unless the window is open or I've eaten my duvet, I pretty much have to be up early to avoid being a nob. What fun.

But this morning I managed to stave off total flip-outery and, although I did start to feel a little bit anxious, I think this might be because the first text message I received this morning said -

"How's your rut today?"

This was not some very early morning kinkyness from a would-be suitor (would-be suitors that are chasing me are either imaginary and therefore don't have means of telecommunication, or they're real but don't have control of opposable thumbs - either way, not so texty). It was from my sister... wanting to just double check that I was OK despite the obvious flaws in my life.

Quite a sweet message in purpose, however, it was characteristically blunt and being reminded you're rut dwelling is far from ideal when you're hoping to lounge around in bed for the first time in months.

How to bust oneself out of a rut? Well, I have several dubiously genius ideas, ahem:

1. Instead of booking trains on Monday I am going to turn up dressed as a train and explain that, given my method actor training, it is impossible for me to work to my best ability without really getting inside the mindset of the trains I am booking. This might not have the best effect, but it will definitely do something... and the rut will be busted.

2. Plan an adventure for 2012 that involves some kind of foreign country and a shocking hair cut. My parents will be so devastated that I still don't appear to be doing anything productive with my life that they'll immediately offer to pay all my rent for me if I'll just settle down and work towards having a future that amounts to something.

3. Get pregnant and raise the child to speak a different language - maybe Mandarin. Also teach it everything wrong: Cows say Woof, blue is pink, you have to continue using a potty until at least University age and it's a normal activity for families to compare potty contents on Friday afternoons. When the child is discovered for being an absolute crack pot, I claim I don't know how it happened and we get our own reality TV series.

4. Stop whining and being a big yellow belly and write my new play. Fuck.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Stained, Tired - Line Them All Up

I woke up this morning feeling like a small piece of poo that had somehow managed to fool the world into letting it live as a human up until this point. A poo that wears pyjamas and has a job (kind of), but that has had her true poo identity revealed on this unassuming Saturday morning. Waking up feeling like a masquerading poo that has been outed is not the sort of way I wanted to wake up this morning.

For one, I'm not going to drink red wine again for a while. It is too tiring to have to wake up and remember why you feel like faecal matter. Rewinding a few hours back to Friday evening, it would appear I left work booking stuff and went straight to the pub without having any dinner in between. This, was a mistake. Last night was the sort of night where you're drunk before you've even realised you have a drink in your hand. Not good.

Fast forward a few hours and you will see a very damp faced version of me bawling my eyes out alone on the DLR going to Bank. Why I went to Bank I do not know - I live nowhere near Bank and it's certainly not convenient. But hey ho, no one was going to argue with me last night. Have you ever tried to reason with a soggy panda faced woman who is melodramatically declaring that she is tired of living her life? Certainly no one tried last night.

Why was I crying? It's difficult to say exactly. I believe at some point in the evening I decided the world sucked and that there was nothing any of us could do about it. While I was drinking in the pub with lovely people, this was not a problem... but apparently the walls of the world caved in when I bumped into TFL. I'm very rarely a dismal drunk but I think perhaps had someone offered me a sandwich board with "The End is Nigh" last night I'd have happily jumped into it and started banging people over the head with my handbag.

To make matters worse I also seem to have left my dress on the train I was washing from the inside using eye juice. I'd like to clarify that I didn't lose the dress I was wearing - there wasn't much chance anyone was going to try and jump my bones whilst I was doing my impression of Liza Minelli on a bad day - it was a dress I had with me in a carrier bag. And it is not anywhere in my room this morning. To be honest, I'm pleased that I even got myself back to my room last night so I suppose we should maybe be grateful for small miracles. I hope whoever has found my dress is going to go on a super mission to get it back to me. I hadn't even worn it yet.

Thankfully the flow of tears and my apparent despair at being so sad had gone by the time I got up this morning. I had an awful lot of text messages asking if I'm OK. It's difficult to know what to reply in all honesty... I'm not sure whether to ask them what I was so upset about or whether that will make me look a little crazy.

"Hello, thanks for being so supportive last night. I was just feeling really down... erm, what was I down about? No, it's not that I was being characteristically melodramatic and predicting the end of the world unnecessarily... it's just that I'm surprised the tears weren't actually red wine..."

I hope nothing awful happened to me that I've now forgotten about. It would be terribly sad if I'd seen a puppy get kicked and have now conveniently forgotten. Although, I will be less annoyed about having lost the dress and ruined my pillow cases (they now resemble a mascara Rorschach test) if I had been very sad about something meaningful. I'm beginning to doubt that this is the case though... I think it might be safest to assume I am just a liability and should never be allowed to combine alcohol, a phone and my mouth.

This is why I drink tea. I have never, ever cried my eyes out all the way home because I've had too much tea. Tea is the way forward...

Friday, June 10, 2011

Gigging in the House of God

Friday afternoon has never felt like such an important thing to be sitting in. Many beverages will be drunk tonight. Small ones, big ones, some as big as your head. I am excited. Before that I still have another hour of booking things to do and it's beginning to get me down now.

This week I started to compile a list of reasons why, on paper, my life is curiously sucky at best and delusionally optimistic at worst -

1. I book trains for a living in an attempt to be a full time comedian.
2. When I do gig they are always weird.
3. I have started wearing men's deoderant in an attempt to convince myself I am not a spinster whenever I gesticulate wildly and cause a waft.

I caught up with my best friend for a coffee last night in between work organising vehicles moving in straight lines, and the gig I had to do (more on that later). She was telling me about the man she was seeing, how her job was going and about the holiday she had booked for the end of the year. She asked me how I was... and I didn't have a single straight answer to give her...

"Well, I jacked in my job last week so I could go off and chase that dream we've always talked about. Yeah, that one. Remember how we think it's so cool that I've never given up? It's feeling less and less cool now... Erm, but yeah, I'm gigging loads at the moment. Actually, got a gig tonight. No, it's not at a comedy club... it's actually at a church. Yeah, they're celebrating Pentecost festival and I'm the entertainment. No, no I don't actually know what Pentecost is... do you think it'll matter? Yes. Yes, you're probably right. No, I don't know why they've booked me either. I guess the worst that can happen is that they'll hate it but have to forgive me. Men? Erm... well, not exactly. I mean, I stare at people sometimes and there was this one guy I quite like but..."

It was at this point her eyes kind of glazed over and you could see her wishing she had a normal friend so that we could both afford to eat when we go out and her friend would be able to stay the entire evening instead of dashing off to attempt to make funny out of the apostles. She hurriedly assured me that we probably wouldn't be friends if I wasn't so weird. I'm not convinced.

The gig actually was a lot of fun; I definitely wasn't expecting it to be. I think in this country it's very easy to treat Christianity with a mocking hand because we're so numbed to its presence in our society. We are certainly a lot looser with our mockery against Christians than Muslims and I think it's very wrong. You can't see one religion as more sacred because we understand it less and it's from further away.

The reason I was nervous about the gig, is that when you're booked for an audience who all have a strong identity you are even more so the outsider than you usually would be. The comedian is always the outsider - they talk over everybody, they hog the limelight and they are alone on stage. So when you're stood up trying to tell jokes on your own and you're faced with 50 people of a religious identity, it's very easy to let that wash over you to the point where you feel there is nothing that will ingratiate you to their group.

But last night I found that when you're booked as a comedian, it doesn't matter what the group's reason for gathering is, they want you to amuse them and talk to them and make them feel happy. I played around with the idea of Pentecost and worked on some site specific jokes - but more for my own calming than for theirs it would seem. My standard material (cleaned up a bit - we were in a chuirch after all!) was just as appreciated as anything tailor made.

I'm so glad I did the gig - it feels like another learning curve successfully negotiated without a tyre spin and flames. Now to just make sure the 17:22 is booked on time and I'm an all round winner... oh, and maybe invest in some Dove and stop thinking of excuses to put my arms above my head.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Park Life

Well I've hit 25 by 3:30 and have had to stop because I have run out of things to book now. Apparently this is a slow week so there isn't a lot to do... I'm told this will pick up. It's amazing how quickly the day goes - for someone who loves staionery and making different coloured marks on pieces of paper, this is is a dream job.

Tonight is my first gig since I gave up the proper job so I'll be taking along a specialy designed meter to see if my levels of funny have gone up now I have so much more brain power to put into my jokes. We shall see... the only trouble is my gig tonight is in a church and this is a scary idea. I can only hope that if my jokes aren't funny I will be swifly forgiven.

On my lunch breaks I've been taking a wander up the road to the very beautiful Regents Park. I do this for 3 main reasons -

1. I dislike the business of Oxford Circus and I'd do anything to be in a green space wherever possible.
2. I get to walk through the semi-circular houses from Oliver Twist and scream at passers by to "Buy a tossing rose you stingy bastard - can't you see what a nice day it is?!"
3. Lots of office people go exercising in Regents Park and lunch time and this is very funny to me.

There seem to be three main types of exercisers in Regents Park when I'm eating my hummus -

1. Serious mo fo exercise freaks - these are the people who have all the right gear, and have the right facial expression. The right exercise face has to be able to simulataneously show you that they are feeling pain, but they're not going to show it, and that the pain is giving them serious smugness. These people tend to jog because everybody knows jogging is the worst kind of exercise.

2. One Timers - these are people who have woken up this morning to notice that their partner hasn't tried to have morning sex with them for some time. They dutifully packed their trainers into their bag and decided to go for a run at lunch time to shed a few pounds. When they arrived at the office they made sure everybody else there noticed the trainers so that their efforts were properly appreciated. It wouldn't do to waste an exercise portion.

3. Drag-a-longers - these are divided in to two sub-sections:
     a) The Draggers - Overly cheery people who have comandeered their harassed work mates in to all going for a power walk together. The Dragger will be in front, smiling and laughing and geeing everybody up whilst saying how much hard work it is so that none of the others feel bad.
     b) The Draggees - These are my favourite lunchtime exercisers quite frankly. If they are being dragged on a power walk then they tend to have awkwardly paired trainers with some kind of pencil skirt and are attempting to pick the underwear out of their bum while they chase Sue from accounts further round the park. These are the lucky ones. Today I saw a particularly interesting specimen who was sweating profusely behind a tree while a loud, bright instructor made sure he was lifting a ball above his head in the correct manner for the best part of half an hour. The man looked hot, confused and angry about having had his lunchtime freedom taken away so cruelly.


I've not quite got to the point where I'm keen to do lunchtime exercise just yet. Instead I've declined the offer of a second Mini Egg (but not the first one or the chocolate brownie) and I'm wearing fit flops so that I'll get magically thin whilst sat down. There is every chance by next week I'll be showcasing my trainers round the office booking room at 8:45am...

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Day 1 - Trains = 17

Right... I started booking stuff at 11:30 this morning, I took a 45 minute break and I went into a meeting for an hour. I booked 17 thingies around this... tomorrow I'm going to work out how to do the same but with pencils inserted into my nose to see what happens.

Enough of the booking stuff. Enough of it, it bores me I tell you... bores me entirely!

So, what shall we talk about?

OK, when you've stopped laughing at the fact that I book a lot of trains to pay the bills, we'll decide what we want to discuss shall we?

Right, well if you're going to difficult then I'm going to choose the subject - it seems fair seeing as I do it most days anyway you very rarely complain. We're so in synch.

I literally cannot stop eating chocolate at the moment... I don't know what is wrong with me. Potentially the excitement dip in my life is trying to solve itself through sheer sugar input. I'm either going to come out of this temp job as the next Richard Branson or diabetic.

Yesterday I managed to pummel my way through several mini creme eggs (yes I still have 3 Easter eggs left that I've not eaten - I'm a hoarder, it's what we do), today I've started off straight away with Cadbury's Eclairs (the toffee kind not the cream kind - I don't like cream) and I'm looking at my tuck box to see what to eat next. Yes, I have a tuck box - I find the quaintness of always having lots of thing in it stops me just ploughing on through all of it (wrappers and all) when I come home from work booking things, with a bit of a craving.

The trouble is, I love my chocolate, but I also have tooth paranoia... I am utterly terrified of losing my teeth. The thought of not having my front teeth makes me very worried. Although I love musical theatre, I'm not quite ready to resign myself to playing crotchety old women for the rest of forever. For this reason I floss and mouth wash and brush and habitually chew gum as much as I possibly can during the day. But then I get paranoia that soon I will not have proper teeth - I will have teeth nubs. Just stumpy little teeth roots that don't chew anything but look like I've borrowed the picket fence of a shrew and pummelled it into my mouth.

What a dilemma.

I suppose the best thing to do would be to just not eat anything. However once death had set in a little bit there wouldn't be much gum that didn't rot and so my teeth would fall out anyway, despite being in perfect condition.

One of my front teeth isn't even real so I don't know what I'm worried about... it didn't fall out through decay and, actually, half of it is real. It's just that the other half of it is in a playground somewhere in Lincoln. Let this be a lesson to all of you - if it's day one of your weeklong school trip, don't try and run up the face of slide.

You will slip. You will fall face first into the slide. You will break your front tooth in half so that you have some weird triangular snaggle poking out from your lips. And then you will forever have to look at a week's worth of photos with you trying not to look ridiculous. People will ask you for many years why the photographic evidence suggests you hate Lincoln so much. In fact you'll want to say that you really enjoyed the Tudor architecture. It's just that you couldn't smile about it.

So, the moral of the story is... when you get home from work booking things and stapling your fingers together, try not to eat too much chocolate in case you get attacked by a slide and end up being inadvertently racist towards a delightful Cathedral city.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Just Call Me Thomas

Today was the literal embodiment of an anti-climax. If it was possible to bleed through the ears and nose through  sheer tedium I think I would have managed it.

I started my first temping assignment today - filling time between the previous job and Edinburgh - and I think it's safe to say it was far from finding my vocation...

While I was sitting in the  reception waiting to go in, it occurred to me that temping is a very odd scenario. There aren't many situations that you find yourself going in for a job where you have absolutely no idea who you'll be working for, what you'll be doing or why you're going to do it. Even weirder, the person employing you doesn't really understand who you are or whether you're appropriate. The waiting room did leave me to imagine a few scenarios that, whilst highly unlikely, made me consider shooting out the door fairly frequently...

"Good morning Miss Lexx, I just need you to sign these employment forms and then we'll show you to your desk. I think we'll start you off with a small weasel to begin with so that you can get your eye in. Do you think you'll need small or medium gloves? Might be best to go small to begin with because they can get a little slippery when you apply the tanning solution..."

"Good morning Miss Lexx, I'm so glad you've tied your hair back - you'll be working for Mr Daniels and he does like something to hold on to..."

"Good morning Miss Lexx, did you find our offices easily? Right, OK. On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily would you say you'd found them? Brilliant. Only our last few temps died of boredom within minutes, literally, so we like to make sure your next of kin will be able to get here without a problem..."

"Good morning Miss Lexx, Mr Attenborough won't be long..."

OK so maybe that last scenario was after I'd calmed down and had succumbed to the usual day dream (we won't go into the details).


Once I had been taken up to my desk I was confronted with the awful truth of what I will be doing for the next 3 weeks to keep food on the table and a rehearsal space rented... I will be booking trains. I book trains. I am a train booker. Someone emails me with a train they need booking, I book the train, then I tell them I've booked the train. That is my job.

I mean luckily the people seem brilliant so booking these trains is not going to hurt too much on a daily basis. In fact, booking these trains might be the calmest 3 weeks I've ever spent in my life. When I asked how many trains I'll be expected to book in a day, I was expecting a reasonable number. The number of trains I have to book in a day made my eyes water. It made me stagger backwards and want to question the Universe. If Brian Cox had been around we may have had to have sat down for a serious chat. How many trains am I expected to book in a day to hit target?

15.

15 trains in my day in order to be competent. I am there for 8 hours a day. I must book less than 2 trains per hour in order to be considered a healthy adult worker. Nothing has shaken my world this much since they told me you could have Advent calendars with chocolate in them.

It's not that I'm not thrilled to have the job... it is exactly what I need while I doss about and put every single fibre of my being into making people notice how great I am... it's just that I can't get over the fact that this is a real job. Today I wasn't allowed to book any trains - I watched other people book trains and booked one of my own at the end of the day to see if I knew what I was doing. Tomorrow I will be allowed to book trains... if I succeed, I'll be back to tell you more...

Monday, June 6, 2011

Shopping and Changing

Few things depress me more than going clothes shopping. I'm starting to think I must be getting it wrong somehow, because I never come home feeling elated and buzzing from the thrill of buying new items. I feel rank, depressed and angry with myself for clearly not being able to shop properly.

Today I headed into town to change the size of the dress I got bought as a leaving present. This should have been a simple operation. The one they bought me was a little bit too big so I needed to try the next size down... I tried the next size down. The next size down would only have made its way on to my body had I turned up to the shop pre-greased and missing a few vital limbs. Standing in the fitting room I started to feel like I'd turned up to a Sylvanian Family party and was ransacking the dress up box.

Upon leaving the fitting room (back in my normal clothes made for normal sized people), I headed to the rail where my dress was hanging. So, the size "X" was too big... the size "X-1" was OK for a finger puppet... what on earth size did that make me?! I had to compare the size "X" I had to the other size "X"s on the rail... it was enormous in comparison! Upon questioning the staff further, it turns out it's fairly common for the people making the clothes to accidentally put the wrong size on the item. Er, what??? Of all the useless symbols and bits of crap that they put on each of the 900 labels attached to the dress, surely the size is the most vital one? No one even knows what the triangle even means, let alone would have to return the dress if you put the circle with a cross through it on there instead.

So I found a proper "X" and tried that on. Whilst this appeared to be the dress most suited to my size, it was horrendously unsuited to my actual body shape. To have made the dress fit I'd have had to round up all the boobs in the shop and stuff them down the front while simultaneously sucking in my bum to the point of having concave cheeks. Ridiculous. Who was that dress made for other than balloon animals?

Feel heartily depressed by my clearly deformed body, I headed back out to choose a more suitable item to replace the dress with. The only highlight of my entire afternoon was when I asked a sales assistant to help me find a dress I was looking for and he replied, "Of course, I'll get you one now. What size do you need, a six?". My marriage proposal seemed to come as a bit of a surprise to him.

Armed with 19 items I headed back in to the fitting room to see what I could wear without wanting to cry and immediately start cutting off bits of flesh to make myself a little bit more like the people in the magazines. There just didn't seem to be a single outfit in the shop that suited someone with Bart Simpson's hips and approximately 4 cms between my chest and my shoulders.

What if I need the petite section but I don't want to dress like a children's TV presenter? When did maternity wear become the only items you can wear without having 90% of your body strapped into an awkward piece of sequined denim? And please don't get me started on maxi dresses...

I don't blame the clothes companies, clearly other people are buying this stuff happily and wearing it around without causing any distress... but what are you meant to do when you're 5 foot nothing with a body modelled on old photographs from fun fairs? If there are any Sylvanian families out there who are looking to donate clothes...

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Raining on a Sunday Afternoon

Is it wrong to kind of love rainy afternoons where everyone has to be home together and so there's kind of a bustling feeling about the house? I know we should all love the sunny weather, and I really do, but there's a real pleasantness about it bucketing down outside and everyone being very snug indoors.

I've just done a bit of a housework marathon... you could eat off every surface in the house. Except me. I'm not sure what I get wrong with housework but, rather than getting anything clean, I seem to just go through a gradual process of transferring the dirt on to myself.

To make matters worse, we also had the tennis on in the background which was making me feel like an obsessive clean freak because all I could do was comment on how gross the clay was getting everywhere. What with jabbering away about that, and having a sponge in my hand, I looked like an ever so slightly less glamorous Nora Batty. Thank heavens for having understanding housemates.

In case my life wasn't sounding glamorous enough, I am now going to catch up on the last two episodes of Dr Who that I've missed. I don't know how I've gotten this far behind but it's not a situation I can deal with much longer. The mountain of correspondence that evaded my grasp yesterday is just going to have to get dealt with once I've seen how the good Doctor and the ginger fitty escape the creepy goo people and get the TARDIS back on track.

This Sunday might actually be the best kind of Sunday because, not only have I been supremely productive (cleaning, second Ink rehearsal, blog, emails) I also have tomorrow off so there is no impending feeling of doom and gloom about having to go and sit in a sty office and pretend you give a crap about some mind numbingly dull sector of the world. I will spend tomorrow sitting on my sofa screaming at Catchphrase contestants and telling myself to go to the library. Days off are days where my body and brain are in constant conflict with one another - brain will be insisting we make the most of it, body will have already got the ice cream and the spoon... body inevitably wins because everyone knows as soon as you start the ice cream your brain packs up. It's not called brain freeze for nothing.

Helllooooooo Monday...

Saturday, June 4, 2011

In My Box

Yesterday's lack of blog was dedicated to my final attempt to make it look like I put some effort in to my job. I no longer work there so I can now put my effort wherever I please... well, until Tuesday when I start my new position.

I don't want to talk about my last day at my job. No one warns you that when you chuck your notice in at work you will spend the last day there realising that you are actually pretty fond of most of the people in the building in some way. Or at least that's how it was for me... when you see people everyday it's quite easy to imagine you'll always see them. Once I knew I wasn't going to see these people again (for the most part) I realised how much I wanted to know some of them better. I hope things work out well. Saying goodbye to the faces certainly was the worst thing about leaving the place.

This evening I intended to sit down and wade through the mass of crap that's in my email inbox. I've reached the point now where people are starting to phone me for a response about the emails that they haven't got responses from. I'm not sure whether they're going to start turning up on my doorstep when they realise that I loathe voicemails and rarely listen to them. Perhaps I'll have an army of carrier pigeons knocking on the window with different messages in their mangy beaks. I wouldn't like that - I'm not a fan of birds at the best of times, let alone when they're trying to reach me with poorly worded memos.

I don't know why correspondence bores me to tears so much... my problem is that I read the messages, I think of the answer and then I don't respond. I know this is irresponsible, and I can't understand either why I don't just reply straight away but it's like a mental block. It's like I'm playing some ridiculous school girl game of not replying to a txt messae for at least 2 hours to make it seem like I'm aloof. It's pretty ridiculous to try and be aloof to people you need stuff from.

So, tonight I am going to attempt to burn my pile of correspondence and get straight answers to everyone... obviously the fact that I'm blogging instead of doing anything about it is a good start...