The Day Before The Day

I am sitting, tea precariously close to my furiously typing fingers, hair wet and butterflies clamouring in my stomach.

In an hour a van is coming to pick up my set and drive it to Contact, where we will start the day of technical rehearsals for the "industry sharing" of my solo show, Bright Lights. (I've put "industry sharing" in inverted commas because it sounds pretentious and I am operating under the delusion that the punctuation removes me from that slightly.) (I know it doesn't really.) It is perhaps worth pointing out that it is meant to be a theatre industry sharing, not just any industry. I'm not going to be performing to an audience full of steel workers, although I am sure they would LOVE IT (marketing).

I am very nervous. I have been pawing at my script, begging the words to go into my addled brain so that they can come out again at the correct moment.

Yesterday we filmed the trailer (marketing), which involved me photocopying my face. The resulting photocopy looked like one of those adverts about skin damage where they show previously healthy-looking faces and then turn on UV lights and everyone suddenly looks like a disconcerted Orc. I do not recommend it for self-esteem reasons, but heartily recommend it for general fun-based ones.

This week I have been rehearsing all day everyday. My director, Montserrat, has been putting me through my paces, beating me into submission when I am not working hard enough*. Producer Rachel has been diligently trying not to look at me too askance when I don't know simple answers to simple questions like "what's the hashtag for the show?" (marketing). Then the three of us have done little trips to Asda for high-carb, low-vitamin lunches to see us through the afternoon and into the evening. After rehearsals sometimes I have been allowed wine.

*This is not true, she has not raised a hand to me thus far. Tech rehearsals can be very stressful, though, so I will keep you posted.

This is Rachel and Montse with some well-deserved Pimms:

And me pretending to drink wine through a straw! Ha, ha, ha. I am so whimsical. Come to my show! (marketing)

Well, I had better go and eat some breakfast. Perhaps Nutella out of the jar and eight gallons of coffee. I am nervous.

Here I am about to go to a rehearsal! Looking coy like it's my first day of big school, not like a thirty-one year old professional woman about to go to work. Never mind. I felt more like the former, anyway.

Good luck to you all for my show! Now, can you all come and learn my words for me.

(Here I am with some Technology, which also features.)

Big Cities

Oh hey, yeah. Guess what?

I got funding for my show! All I had to do was write a really long and complicated application, weep over an Excel spreadsheet and try and work out how to say "please please give me money please" so that it didn't look like "please please give me money please" which, quite frankly, is comma-deficient and Arts Council Inappropriate (ACI).

(Side question: am I still supposed to be trying to be Arts Council Appropriate (ACA)? Might the mere inclusion of the sentence "please please give me money please" in this otherwise roundly insignificant blog post have a negative impact on my future career? Please advise.)

I wanted to write a mature and totally ACA blog post about all of this. I wanted to include thoughtful rehearsal room musings. Maybe a couple of selfies in a dance studio, holding in my stomach in a pair RADA-regulation warm up pants. I hoped I would suddenly get all serious about everything, and start saying things like "it's really more about process than product" in between mouthfuls of quinoa and acai berry salad.

Unfortunately I couldn't quite work out how to do that.

I did, however, want to write something about it here. I wouldn't be doing this show at all if it wasn't for this blog. This hangover-strewn, template-from-2005, hey-have-you-heard-of-this-new-thing-called-MySpace place where I've tracked failures (e.g. being dumped) and successes (e.g. being dumped, as it turned out), moving cities and jobs and haircuts*, where I have been comforted, amused and moved by online people living in far away places. If it wasn't for this blog I wouldn't know what I sounded like when I wrote words.

(As it turns out I sound like the previous sentence. Move aside, Shakespeare.)

*this is not true. I have had pretty much the same "haircut" since 1996.

So now I'm doing a show called Bright Lights, for which this blog formed the basis. These are the words about the show:


It's Léonie's last day. Tomorrow she escapes office drudgery to fulfill her ambition of becoming a wildly-successful, internationally-renowned vocal artist. As philosopher R. Kelly once said: "if you can dream it, then you can do it". Well, she's dreamt it, and now she's ready to do it.

With looped vocals and percussive stationery, Léonie creates music live on stage as she tells a comic, irreverent and touching story of disappointment, triumph, and things never quite working out the way you might expect.

Bright Lights is an antidote to the ever-looming spectre of Simon Cowell. Told with warmth and wit, this is a story of stepping away from familiar comforts into the horrifying potential of the unknown.

A few weeks ago I went down to London to work with word master Inua Ellams (note: he does not call himself Word Master Inua Ellams) (he probably should, though) who is working with me as dramaturg,

On the first morning I walked to the rehearsal room and felt terribly nervous. I knew I was nervous because I couldn't take a full breath and I kept stopping to take "arty" photos on my phone, such as the following:



(I call this "Hackney: Sprung".)

As it turned out, I was silly to be nervous, and even sillier to waste time taking crap photos as a delaying tactic. Over the next few days we picked through the threads of the story, creating conflicts, tension, character and locations, and generally magicking it all about a bit (technical term).

At lunchtimes we ate curry and strolled up and down a deliriously sunny Brick Lane, chasing hipsters and pigeons. My 2005, office-bound self would have been delirious with joy. (My 2013 self played it cool, obv.)

By the end of the three days we had filled reams of notecards with conflicts, responses, story goals, triggers and all sorts of exciting things. I took another arty picture:



(I call this "Word Master Inua Ellams Poses With Some Stationery")

Ben and I stayed at my sister Sophie's flat while in London. Ben, it soon transpired, had only really made the trip down south to hang with his BFF.



(I call this "IloveyounoIloveyounoIloveyou")

We hung out in Sophie's trendy flat, and everyday I got to rifle through Sophie's trendy clothes to pick an outfit ("I don't know why you even bother packing to come down here"). Ben and I went to the theatre twice (to see the Low Road at the Royal Court and Little Bulb's stupendous Orpheus at the BAC) and generally had an excellent, Londony time.

Since then I have been doing admin and edmin*, and working with producer Rachel, sound designer Dan and set designer Ro. I have been loitering about at Contact (who are commissioning me for this endeavour): writing, practicing, planning. Next week I get to go back down to London and work with brilliant, fierce and inspiring director Montserrat Gili for three days in a prelude to the long rehearsal process in a few weeks.

*edmin = admin for the Edinburgh Festival. I invented this term last year. If you know that someone else invented it first then, please, do not tell me. I don't want to know.

It is all desperately exciting (for me). What with this, and all the Eggs Collective joy shimmering on the horizon, as well as my solo music stuff and the Geddes Loom plans, well. I don't know where I get the time to sit around wondering how many oatcakes is too many. Luckily I am excellent at time management and I know that once you hit ten you are probably pushing it.

(Oh, are you in Edinburgh this summer? Come and find me, we'll hang out!)

Slice Skating (or: The Perils of Being Extremely Sporty)

On my run this morning* I was going through plans. Working out what my next steps were, who to email, what to practice and where to perform. Striding along, face like a baked bean, concocting and scheming in the spring sunshine. I heard a male voice shouting from a car just behind me. Oh, wonderful, I thought, already internally penning the letter to Everyday Sexism. A woman can't even go for a run any more without...

As the car passed a smiling man leaned out of his window.

"Keep on going, girl! Keep on going!"

I smiled back, sweatily. Right, I thought. Thanks. I will.

*I enjoy saying that nonchalantly, like I go every morning after a conference call with the Paris office and an invigorating colonic.

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I went ice skating on Saturday for my friend Ro's birthday. As Nicki, Sara, Ro and I pulled up to the glamourous haven that is Silver Blades Ice Rink (Altrincham) I began to feel nervous and started pining for a long afternoon in a pub with ale, Scrabble and endless dry roasted peanuts. Inside it smelt horrible.

"It smells horrible" I said, petulantly, too near the face of a man who was almost certainly not responsible for the smell.

We were, without any shadow of a doubt, the oldest people there without children. There were clutches of teenagers, all knees, braces and unnerving hormonal activity. There were parents looking on anxiously as their blade-footed progeny teetered around the rink. There were some confident older boys, slicing up the ice in great clouds of Lynx and acne.

The four of us clutched onto the sides as we ventured, extremely tentatively, onto the ice.

"Oh, God. What are we doing?"

I looked back at Sara, whose mute expression of fear and despair summed up my own.

(Being good children of the eighties we had our gloves on, familiar as we are with the horror stories of sliced, gloveless hands, rivalled only by those of the gory fate of PJ in Byker Grove when he took off his mask in paintball.)

Nicki and Ro detached themselves from the side. "It's just about confidence, really!" one of them sang from the middle of the rink. "I've been round once already!"

As I pulled myself wretchedly along the edge, I became aware of the music that was being played by the forty-something DJ in a booth at the side of the ice. Whoosh, I was taken back to listening to Chiltern Radio in the mid-nineties ("70s, 80s and today!") and I began to relax a bit.

Ro was guiding Sara carefully by the hand, making forays away from the sides in front of me. Right, I thought. Come on.

I unpeeled my be-gloved fingers from the rails. Terrified, I had to concentrate on the music, and sing along, loudly and completely out of tune.

"MAMA. JUST KILLED A MAN. PUT A GUN AGAINST HIS HEAD (I'm doing it, shit shit shit, I'm doing it) PULLED MY TRIGGER NOW HE'S DEAD..."

Soon we were all gliding (this is total exaggeration, I was not gliding) around the rink, singing along and trying not to be put off by the horrifyingly dangerous game of British Bulldog* played by the big kids on the other side of the ice.

*A game banned in all major UK primary schools since 1988.

After a brief break for some Slush Puppies (during which both Nicki and I got crippling Brain Freeze - agony for a bit but then fine, probably a bit like childbirth) we were back on the ice.

I hobbled round, watching the beautiful teenage girls with their insouciance and leg warmers, gazing into the middle distance while they slid effortlessly around, one white skate in front of the other, languid and delicate as hothouse flowers.

I spent a bit of time wishing I was a teenage girl again, before remembering that I wasn't like that when I was a teenage girl, and in fact was pretty much like I am now, struggling to stay upright whilst singing along to Bobby Brown's Two Can Play At That Game.

Then we went to the pub and had a pint and some dry roasted peanuts, and I realized how much nicer it is to be a nearly-thirty-one-year-old surrounded by good friends, good pubs and good beer than to be a teenage girl surrounded by insecurity, Sugar Magazine and frosted lipstick.

******************************************************

I turn thirty-one next week.

Hurray!

******************************************************

The sun is out.

Hurray!

******************************************************

I have to go and do some practice, now, as my cello is sitting forlornly in the corner, probably gathering warrens of dust bunnies. I have been a bit neglectful of practice recently, what with all the London adventures and teaching and majesty on the ice. I am glad I wore gloves to ice skate, as losing all my fingers in a freak skating accident would almost certainly have a negative effect on my playing. However, I could write an excellent autobiography called Slice Skating, which would no doubt render the whole experience totally worth it.

Total Babe Magnets

Tuesday

I am currently sitting in a trendy East London café, sipping from a trendy East London cup, surrounded by trendy East London people with neat beards and asymmetrical clothing. From where I am sitting I can see a woman in dungarees and a man in a cape.

As glamourous as it admittedly does feel to be tip tapping on an Apple product with the other wacky thirtysomethings, I feel it's important to keep my feet on the ground by reminding myself that I woke up this morning on a living room floor face down in a pile of Hula Hoops packets.

Last time Eggs Collective did London I was awoken by a sausage dog leaping on my face shortly after she'd been carefully carting her own excrement around between her teeth. This time Gertie the sausage dog was away, but we all still crowded into our friend Amy's tiny flat and draped ourselves on every available patch of floor, using all the hot water and generally behaving in a giddy, irresponsible manner.


Friday night

We had rehearsed every day that week, making new material for our weekend of performances.

"This is the hard bit" one of us said at some point on Monday evening. "The bit where not only do we not know if what we're doing is any good, but where we begin to seriously question our validity as human beings."

"Yes" the others agreed, weakly. "This is what it's always like. This is definitely, totally normal."

We all nodded.

"But what if it's all just... crap?"

By Friday we'd pushed through. We were pretty sure we'd worked out the point. We felt almost completely sure that we knew what we were saying and why we wanted to say it. Of course you can never properly know whether what you're doing works until you do it in front of an audience, so it's safe to say we all felt pretty on edge.

Lydia whipped a bottle of white wine from her bag and placed it and five glasses just out of arms reach.

"When we've done it four times, in costume, doing it properly, then we're allowed wine."

Saturday

"We know the train station drill by now. Who's going to M&S to get the cocktails? Who needs to go to Boots for some weird beauty product they've forgotten? Who's going to pick up the tickets?"

Twenty minutes later we were happily ensconced on the train. Lydia sashayed off to first class to flick her hair at someone until they gave us ice. The rest of us began putting together fridge magnets to give out at our gigs and made future plans. The train eased south and we dreamed big with gin.

Lowri nipped off to the toilet to do a quick bikini wax ("I think that's the best thing I've ever done!") and we all got high on crisps and possibilities.

Three hours later and we were standing on stage in the dark. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern was empty apart from us, two stonyfaced DJs, Simon the nicest club owner in the world, and a leg of ham.

"I think I'm turning" whispered Lowri.

"We need food. We'll be alright after we've eaten. Won't we?" said someone else, falteringly.

"Yeah. It'll probably all be alright. We always feel like this in the tech. Don't we?"

Roxy smiled up at us from her chair, sending messages of strength and forbearance with her eyes. We gazed at her, hungrily, wondering whether sacrificing one of her limbs to feed the performers came under her remit as producer.

Another three hours and we were in the dressing room and ready. Gold sequin dresses underneath silk dressing gowns underneath black pencil skirts. The look was completed with sparkly jelly shoes, pink, winged glasses, and lids heavy with lashes.

"Right girls!" barked Amy, somehow channeling an army captain. "You can do this! You're brilliant, you're all brilliant. Go and do it! Good luck!"

"Break a leg!" said Ben, slightly more mildly. "You're all gorgeous and talented. Have fun."

They disappeared from the dressing room. The four of us looked at each other and hugged.

"Right, come on. Let's have it."

One hour, one performance and one meeting later ("Roxy, only you would make us have a meeting at nearly one in the morning") and we were still be-sequinned, dancing passionately to Kate Bush. A man was attempting to lick one of my boots. Every so often a stranger would hug one of us and tell us well done, that was great, and we grinned and laughed and danced and danced and danced.

Sunday

I peeled off my eye mask to see Sara blinking awake. Ben stirred.

"What time is it?"

"Nearly one."

"Wow. What time to we have to be there?"

"Five, for the tech."

An explosion of laughter from the bedroom.

"The others are up."

"You drink coffee I take tea my dear" sang Lydia quietly in the kitchen, clattering about with cups. "I like my toast done on one side..."

Eighteen cups of tea and a year's supply of hot water later and we were speedwalking down Carnaby Street, all bags, heels and keyboard, glassy-eyed with hunger, nerves swilling around, ricocheting between us.

"I'm turning" said everyone, variously.

The dressing room in Madame Jojo's is a red velvet corridor jammed with the complex trappings of the burlesque performer. Feathers have settled in cracks on the faded velvet curtains and chairs, and the way to the stage is caked in dirty, multi-coloured glitter. As we crowded through the door three women in bras arched towards the mirrors doing elaborate manoeuvres with make up and curling tongs. Clouds of hairspray plumed into the air.

Four chairs were set on stage for our sound check, and we draped our feather boas over the back. The sound technician ambled over to set up microphones and the keyboard, asking questions slowly and then ignoring the answers. At one point I went into the sound booth to explain something clearly to the side of his head as he resolutely pretended I wasn't there, a curl of smoke from his cigarette snaking up by his ears.

Another silent tech rehearsal, cue to cue, peering out into the bright club with smatterings of concrete-faced strangers, everything out of context and in the wrong clothes.

Soon we were out again, onto the dusty, heavily-trod streets of Soho. All our costumes and coats dumped in a corner of the dressing room, behind the enormous purple feathered fans of one of the glittering, be-jeweled performers. Let's go, we all whispered to one another. Let's go and find somewhere quiet.

"I think I just want a big cup of tea" said Lowri, forlornly. "And perhaps some cake."

"Shall we go and find somewhere that will give us tea and cake and do our make up there?" I suggested. "Instead of fighting for an inch of mirror space? Then we can take our time, and there'll be cake."

Down Old Compton Street, into Patisserie Valerie, upstairs, right to the back. Tea ordered, cake ordered, five large glasses of water ordered, and we began to relax. We began to feel better. More than better, we began to feel happy, and excited, buoyed up by cake and the equally sweet feeling of being amongst friends.

After we'd performed we sat at the back and watched the rest of the show. I felt a tap on the shoulder and turned around to see Sara smiling and handing me a delightfully full glass of red wine.

Monday

We walked from Bermondsey to Waterloo, meandering along the Thames. The sun glinted on the water, a man played a cello in a tunnel under a bridge. We passed the Globe and the Tate Modern (stopping in to buy postcards from the shop) and the National Theatre, and stopped, eventually, at the BFI to sip wine in deckchairs.

Later on that evening Lowri and Sara and I were talking about the weekend we'd had.

"I think my favourite thing about it" I said through a mouthful of pizza "was that sometimes we felt horrible, but that nobody snapped at anybody. We just dealt with it and had cake, or wine, or a chat, and it was all alright. We came through the bad times together, and turned them into the amazingly good times."

Sci fi! Crime! Horror! Romance!

I am currently being extremely fashionable in a London juice bar. My fashionability has nothing to do with my dress (stolen from my sister circa 1998) or my shoes (second hand Converse that were battered and horrible when I bought them in 2005) or my bag (rucksack and suitcase "borrowed" from my Dad) or my hair (brown) or my make-up (smudged).

I am only feeling fashionable because I am typing importantly on my Apple Mac Laptop Computer. I am not the only one in this Juice Bar to be engaged in this activity. Just in front of me are two women and a man, perched uncomfortably on some blocky stools, staring and pointing at a similar device in a distinctly business-y way. In another corner a man sits, staring over the rim of his MacBook Pro, clearly wishing he was in a pub or a swimming pool or, in some glorious way, both.

There are other people in the Juice Bar, including the two muscled young men behind the counter who witheringly acquiesced to my request for "just a tea, please". I wanted very much to say, tartly, "well, I'm not paying bloody FOUR POUNDS for a cup of juice, even if you do have baskets of apples on the counter and peppy euro-pop blasting from every pore", but I didn't. Anyway, I think I clawed back some pretension points by asking for soya milk.

I have been on the Megabus since eleven this morning. It was actually kind of OK, which is approximately twelve million times more OK than I was expecting it to be. Apart from being forced to dart some stern looks at the man behind me for playing loud music on his laptop*, I was quite happy to read my book and stare outside at the scenery sliding past, rendered post-apocalyptic by the thick grey grime on the windows.

*this did not work

On my way to the bus station in Manchester I decided I needed a crime thriller to see me through the journey, so I spotted a small yellow shop proclaiming "BOOKS! Sci-fi! Crime! Horror! Romance!" so I rumbled my case across the road and pushed through a small door with smaller, cheerful sign on it: "We are open! Come on in! Open!". As the bell tinkled I looked down to manoeuvre my case through the door. When I looked up again I was staring down the business end of floor-to-ceiling extremely hardcore porn.

"Oh" I said, perceptively.

At the end of the shop three men were hunched furtively at a counter, and I suddenly noticed the sweet sweat stench of alcohol.

"Er" I continued, astutely.

One of the be-anoraked men hurried over, seemingly trying to use his body as a human shield between my eyes and the luscious ladies of the adult world.

"Can I help you, love?"

"Yeah, um, I just wanted a book?"

He awkwardly took on the jovial demeanour of a Dad at a barbeque.

"Oh, yeah, what book were you after?"

"Just... a sort of... reading book."

"Right, yeah, 'course, love. Martina Cole?"

I tried not to immediately wonder whether that might be some kind of niche "men's interest".

"Yeah, that sort of thing. A crime thriller, maybe."

He swept his arm along another wall, which contained shelves full of crime thrillers.

"Sorry about all... that" he then said, gesturing behind us an expression of shared distaste. "It's just, you know, we're having the roof done."

"Oh, right. Of course. No worries."

As I made my selection he made small talk with me ("so, how long does it take to get to London on the coach nowadays, love?") and stood in between me and the DVDs, even moving the heater closer to me and knocking fifty pence off the price of the book I chose.

It was quite sweet, really.

Anyway. What's going on? I don't post for months and then I roll back in with a weird, pointless story about a book shop full of pornography? I think the Juice Bar is sending me slightly mad. Too much vitamin C in the air, probably.

I'm down in (That) London for birthdays and Easter, and because Ben is now back from Australia so the whole of England is clamouring to see him. He was gone for two months! It kind of felt like ages. I only cried at him over Skype once. Maybe twice. Apart from that I was super-cool and independent and only a little bit ragingly jealous when he talked about it being "so hot the suncream melts in your eyes" and how swimming with dolphins is "actually quite hard work".

It is lovely to have him back, in spite of his tan and slew of kangaroo-related anecdotes*. While he was away I did gigs with Eggs Collective (we have subsequently been booked for Latitude!) and on my own. If you want, you can come to see Eggs perform in London (April 6th at DUCKIE! and April 7th at Finger in the Pie, see our website for more details). We are also performing more soon, in very exciting ways, but it is all TOP SECRET and if I told you I would have to kill you, or maim you, or at least delete this post really quickly.

*He does not actually have any kangaroo-related anecdotes. I am suddenly suspicious! Where has he really been?

I did a few solo gigs as well. My favourite was at the Royal Exchange where, in spite of having to quickly adjust my whole set when we realized the cello-through-the-loop-pedal thing wasn't going to work in such an enormous, reverberant space, I totally and utterly enjoyed myself and played for nearly an hour on my own without once getting anything thrown at me.

I will be doing more solo music gigs very soon, during which I hopefully also won't get anything thrown at me! Fingers crossed (not when playing the cello).

The Juice Bar feels like my new, weird home. All the other Fashionable Mac-Users have gone, having been replaced by a man gazing dejectedly at the Metro and another one closely inspecting a lime green jumper, respectively. Perhaps Apple Mac Laptop Computers have suddenly gone out of fashion! Things in London certainly move very fast.

I am hoping that Ben will soon come and find me and take me for a proper drink so I can grill him further about his lack of marsupial-based stories and tell him about a kindly man in a booze-soaked porn emporium.

UPDATE:

Ben just called to tell me he was on his way to find me.

"Where are you?" he shouted over the howling winds of Wimbledon. "Which pub are you in?"

"I'm not in a pub. I'm in a juice bar."

"A juice bar? Why aren't you in a pub? Who are you, and what've you done with my girlfriend?"

I'm going to the pub.

Under

It's half eight on Saturday night. I have my computer on my lap and a gin and tonic sweating appealingly by my elbow. The radio is on and the rain is firmly on the other side of the window.

I can hear Ben upstairs, moving stuff about and occasionally swearing. He is packing to go to Australia for two months. He leaves tomorrow, swapping the rain on the other side of the window for sunshine that seeps through skin.

He and Dan are performing their fabulous show, Anthropoetry, in Perth and Adelaide at their fringe festivals, then popping over to Melbourne for a bit. I'm offering packing advice on request. "Yeah, one t-shirt's enough for two months", that sort of thing.

Every so often I demand a kiss, or a squeeze of the hand.

******************************************************

12.57pm, last Friday. In the staff room.

"Aren't you just really sad that Ben's going to be away for two months?"

"Yeah, yes, of course."

I stare out of the window, over the flat roof where ice slowly envelops abandoned footballs.

"But it'll be an adventure. I've never lived on my own in Manchester before. It might be fun."

1.58am, last Sunday. The Thistle Hotel, Glasgow.

Swathed in darkness, I lie, starkly awake. We had both drifted off during the film and then snapped awake, suddenly, during an infomercial about knives. It had taken us about six minutes to realize that we were no longer watching the film. We eventually did, and turned it off. Ben's breathing has become sleep deep, his back to me.

I'm at the bottom of a vicious, viscous cold. A snot storm is raging in all my facial cavities. My head's thundering, and the garish, clown-like visions of the infomercial are still echoing behind my eyes. Hallucinogenic faces leer out of my imagination, bearing knives and rictus grins. My heart flutters uncontrollably and, as I open my eyes wide into the blackness, colours dance and stab.

Tears begin to coat my cheeks, mingling with the mucus.

"Please" I whisper hopelessly into the black. "Please don't go. I don't want you to go."

11.40pm, last Sunday. My own bed, Manchester.

I open my notebook to write and a Lockets wrapper drifts out from between the pages. I have Asda own brand vapour rub smeared across the entire lower half of my face and am listening to the sound of my own laboured mouth-breathing. I feel, I reflect, almost the exact opposite of the woman in the Herbal Essences advert.

This time next week it'll just be me.

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Every so often I demand a kiss, or a squeeze of the hand. I am trying to store them up. Two months' worth of tenderness, succour and thereness.

It'll be fine, of course. Two months is a tiny amount, of course.

I hope the rain stays on the right side of the window.

Easing Into 2013 Like a Hippo Into a Pool of Jelly

"You can see my front door from here!" I squealed.

Lydia and Lowri peered into the distance.

"And you can see your flat too, Lowri!"

We were standing on a terraced bit at the top of Lydia's new block of flats, even though the many, many signs all told us very clearly that it was "Private Property" and most definitely "Not A Communal Area".

"Oh yes!" said Lowri. "There are the little white lines around its windows."

She squinted affectionately at the red brick monolith for a moment. "Look at its little eyebrows" she added.

Lydia took a thoughtful drag of her cigarette.

"We definitely have to do the yoghurt pots thing. We could easily get string between our three flats. Easily."

We had been drinking coffee at Lydia's and had come out to scout the location for a filmette* we're making for our next Eggs Collective outing to Mother's Ruin Theatrical Spectacular in February. This, we quickly decided, would be perfect, although from a slightly different position you would get B&M Bargains and Moss Side Leisure Centre in the background, which was unanimously agreed to be a good thing.

*definitely not a word

It was bloody freezing up there, though, so we didn't stay long. As we made our way back down the spiral stairs to Lydia's flat we mused on the really important aspect of the performance: what to wear.

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I came to a sad but definite conclusion this week: I should not be a Zumba teacher. This has little to do with my general lack of co-ordination/fitness/pep and a lot to do with my unfortunate tendency to go startlingly pink-faced at the merest whiff of cardiovascular activity. Every aerobics lesson I have ill-advisedly stumbled into has contained a bouncy, lycra-ridden instructor wearing some kind of bright pink endeavour. When I wore a bright pink top to a Zumba class last week I very quickly began to lose any t-shirt/face distinction. After a quick scan of the room I swiftly realized I was the only one suffering quite so dramatically from this affliction, even though Lydia was going through her own torment after receiving the wrong answer to the question "do you think there'll be a fag break?".

It's a shame in a way, because I think I would enjoy being a Zumba teacher. As a Zumba teacher you can make whole rooms full of people do absolutely anything you like, including something called "The Rocking Horse" and some very dubious pelvic thrusting to MC Hammer's Hammer Time.

I loved Zumba. Unlike normal aerobics where there is some kind of sadistic insistence on "getting it right", in Zumba you can just leap about and do what you want, as long as you don't get in the way of other leapers too much.

We are going again this week. I might wear a different coloured top.


****************************************

Ben is going to Australia in a few weeks, touring festivals for two months with his show. Two months!

Two months.

I have a lot to do, and have made lots of plans. I am sort of excited to live on my own in my exciting city, close to friends, with loads of exciting performance and writing stuff in the pipeline. I am picturing myself as a sort of North-of-England, all-singing all-writing Carrie Bradshaw, only hopefully not as much of an unremitting dick.

I'm excited for Ben. I'm excited for me. But I'm also sad for us both, because we like each other lots and I really sense that he thrives on having someone to cook dinner for.

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I haven't been blogging because I have felt weird about it. I have been trying to be all Business about it and think of this blog as a Promotional Tool but when I try to write about career stuff here I feel like a massive tool myself, so I think I'll save that stuff for my website (HERE IS MY WEBSITE) and write on here about things that wander through my brain, aimless and bemused as a cow in Primark.

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Oh, yeah, and happy new year. May 2013 be your year, you bloody gorgeous winner, you.