Archives

I’m in the process of importing my 20six archives across to here, but it’s quite a slow process. For the moment, they’re all still over there as well: 20six blog

Catching Up

Let’s start at the very beginning; a very good place to start.

The weekend before I started rehearsals for Whiff, the show with which I was going to Edinburgh, I went for a few days of drunken debachery in the Suffolk countryside to celebrate my friend Susie’s birthday.  This involved sleeping in a tent, drinking a lot of alcohol and staying up late.  Somewhat unsurprisingly, I started to feel a little – unusual – on the Sunday night.  By Monday morning it was abundantly clear that I had tonsillitis, so I phoned the doctor and made an appointment to get drugs, then phoned my director to say that I wouldnt’ be going in the car with her to Portsmouth after all, but would catch the train later that day.  She asked whether I needed her to find me a replacement.  I said no, of course not – I would be right as rain in 48 hours.  Looking back on it now, I should have said yes; nothing like a bit of hindsight to make you feel stupid.  Anyway, I made it down to Portsmouth later that day and shivered in bed for a while before beginning to feel a bit more human and starting rehearsals.

Rehearsals were all going pretty well and we were having lots of fun.  It came to the day of the dress rehearsal and we had planned to perform for a select audience of 2.  Scene 1 went very well and the audience were enjoying it greatly, which was very heartening.  I came on stage for scene 2, the scene in which I play a magic monkey, skipped gaily across the stage, turned to come back the other way – and collapsed in a heap, clutching my ankle.  Treacherously, it had turned underneath me and was swelling and turning blue before our very eyes.  Luckily, our audience members were both members of the medical profession, so ice and drugs were administered and I was rushed off to casualty for an x-ray.  After a couple of hours and a few x-rays it was proven that there was nothing broken, which was a relief, but the fact still remained that I was due on stage in Belfast two days hence.  The nurse looked at me slightly askance when I told her this, but then told me how to strap it up and sent me off with plenty of good wishes.

When we got back home, I phoned my mum.  She usually has great quantities of strapping, due to dodgy knees, so I wanted to beg some from her to get me through the Belfast show and subsequent weeks in Edinburgh.  She then told me that she was with my granny, who had suddenly developed pneumonia.

By the next day pneumonia had turned to renal failure.  Knowing that it would probably be the last chance I would have, I spent the day with Granny.  Despite being very weak, she retained her sense of humour; on finding out about my ankle, she laughed and told me that I should ‘take more water with it next time, darling.’

I travelled up to Edinburgh on July 30th, Granny’s 90th birthday.  She had always said that she didn’t want to make it past 90, and she kept her word.  She died that afternoon.  One thing we always knew about Granny was that it was best not to argue with her as she would generally get her own way in the end.

‘Today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday and all is well.’
MMG 30 July 1917 – 30 July 2007

The Other

Sorry I’ve not been around much recently – busy busy busy (and maybe just a little bit lazy).  Anyway, to keep you entertained, here is a story I wrote to order for a writer’s group I’ve joined recently.  Sleep well, my pretties…

He told me that it’s over between us.  He says he can’t cope with the lies any more and he is choosing her.  I smiled and told him I understood.  Not for me the histrionics of other women.   There are better ways to deal with a situation like this.

It’s all about research and knowing your enemy.  I enjoy this part of it.  I know quite a lot already: who her friends are, where she goes on a Thursday afternoon, what her favourite drink is.  The challenging bit is working out how to get close enough to her to use this information.  It’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  Finding some common ground.  If you find the right ‘in’ then it’s easy.  In this case, it was as simple as joining her gym and going to the same swim class as she does.  I’m the only other woman there under the age of 65, so it was natural that I should strike up a conversation with her.  She thought nothing of it – why would she?  It was a short step from there to going for a quick coffee and before long she was confiding all her secrets to me.

There are ways and means of getting rid of somebody.  There’s a certain excitement in the up-close-and-personal nature of a bullet to the brain, but it’s far from subtle.  Poison is infinitely more attractive.  The classical connotations of it appeal to me.  Finding a hemlock plant in her garden was a stroke of luck.  She had no idea what it was.  I harvested the roots carefully and waited for my moment.

In the event, it was easy enough to administer; she is both hypochondriac and untrusting of conventional medicine.  All I had to do was tell her the drink I was offering her was a restorative herbal tisane and she gulped it down like an obedient child.  Watching the process was fascinating.  The one worry that I had was that she would vomit the poison back up before it had been absorbed. I therefore mixed an anti-emetic into the solution and so the first sign of the poison working was the convulsions, which were spectacular.  Who would have thought the woman had so much energy in her?

The wonderful thing about hemlock poisoning is that the brain remains functioning throughout.  This is one of the reasons given for its popularity as an execution method in Ancient Greece.  The victim had plenty of opportunity to think on, and potentially repent, their sins as they died.  After the initial stimulation, the poison begins to work its way through the system, slowly paralysing as it goes, before eventually the respiratory system fails and the subject dies of suffocation.  It took a few hours; hours in which I let her know exactly what was happening to her, and why.  She had no idea of what she had done. The stupid fool had believed him when he said he was divorced.  I laughed in her face when she told me that.  She’s not the first to fall for his lies.

Once she was safely dead I forged the suicide note.  Years of practice have made me very good at this bit of the process.  Simple and to the point, I was pleased with the final result.  Now that she is out of the way he will come back to me.

He always does.

Mix Tape

At the weekend I bought a tape player. I haven’t had a working tape deck in a very long time, so I have been going through my old mix tapes, playing them systematically and being both hugely excited and mortally embarrassed by the music that I used to like.

I have a series of tapes, made between the ages of about 14 and 17, titled ‘Various Excellence …’. Yep. There are a few tunes on there which have stood the test of time, but there are some real howlers as well. Anyone remember Lena Fiagbe? Genesis’s chart revival? Red Dragon? They’re all there. These tapes are like mini time-capsules. Each one has a beautifully made cover – cut from Cosmo in the early days, Vogue later on – and say far too much about my teenage self. The earlier tapes are mainly made up of songs recorded from the charts on a Sunday night. I used to listen religiously, recording the whole chart from beginning to end. I would then transfer the songs that I liked over to a mix tape, spending hours trying to cut the recording off in just the right place so that I didn’t get Bruno Brookes’s voice over the end of the song. I haven’t always managed it. Nor have I always managed to get the levels right. This was in the days before I had Dolby NR or graphic equalisers on my stereo, and the volume goes from barely audible to eardrum-shatteringly loud in the space of a few seconds.

Then there are the tapes that have been made for me by other people. The ones made by school friends are full of James Taylor and Neil Young. The ones from old boyfriends are full of coded song titles and secret notes in the spine of the cover. I got into trouble over that one, in fact. I missed the hidden message and he was mortally offended. I once made a tape for an ex, thinking that I was being everso subtle with my choice of music, but he saw right through me. I’ve never been any good at game-playing.

6 Degrees of Separation, the Actor’s Way

I spent my first gap year studying for a 4th A-level (in drama) at Stratford-Upon-Avon college. Yes, I’m a geek. However, it was so much more than just an extra A-level. It meant that I could spend a year living in Stratford, seeing endless shows and generally having a great time. It was a fabulous year, and having friends that worked behind the bar at the Duck meant that I could often get in on the lock-ins that used to happen, when the actors came out of the theatres. This was in the days when Pam was still in charge and the actors ruled the roost there. I think it’s changed now – when I went back last summer it seemed far less exciting than it did then, but that may just be me being ten years older and more jaded.

I’m not quite sure how it’s taken me 11 years to realise this (or, rather, to make the link), but 1996 was one of the years that David Tennant was in the RSC. I could have drunk out of the same pint glass as he did! *swoons*  I think I was probably more enamoured with Joseph Fiennes (who was also in the Company) at the time, but looking back on the notes that I made in the programmes for As You Like It and The Herbal Bed, it seems that I was rather impressed by DT as well. The words ‘fab’ and ‘brill’ crop up more than once. He he.

On looking through the programmes I see quite a few names that are now very familiar, including two people that taught me at drama school. As my friend B is constantly saying, it’s a small world (but I wouldn’t want to stick it up my arse). In fact, she worked as a dresser for the RSC for that same season, up in Newcastle. Not that we knew each other back then. The acting world keeps getting smaller, the longer I manage to stick at it. It’s a war of attrition – I’m aiming for grand-dame stardom, by virtue of being the only one of my contemporaries who has been stupid enough to stay in the game that long.

Angel

An exercise in brevity, inspired by Dan Rhodes’ Anthropology and a story about Jason Orange in last night’s Metro.

He’d known it as soon as he saw her. Long, dark hair, piercing green eyes, and a heartbreaking smile, along with one of the dirtiest laughs he’d ever heard. She was his perfect woman.

Now she was pressed close to him, and every other man there was casting jealous glances and muttering, “How the hell did he manage that?” “Lucky bastard.” He smiled the smug smile of a man who knows his guardian angel is working hard and turned to whisper to the beautiful girl laughing next to him.

The tube doors opened and she was gone. He’d missed his chance.

People-watching

She is adenoidal, snuffling like a pug, lumpen with grey skin and violet shadows beneath her eyes. She struggles with technology, unable to work her pretty pink camera, swearing softly under her breath as she fails to get to grips with the unfamiliar buttons.

* * * * *

Swaggering stiff-legged, overtly pursed lips drawing hard on her menthol superking, she is a middle-aged maneater in mediocre sweat-pants.

* * * * *

The schoolgirls sit at the back of the bus, singing in harmony, casting contemptuously hopeful glances at the man in the expensive jeans and trendy haircut, who could just be the record-exec that will give them their big break, spiriting them out of Willesden and into the West End.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Last night was spent in the company of one of the girls that I used to share a house with, back in our student days.  We decided to check out the pub where we used to work, which has just been revamped and tarted up, in line with the rest of Kilburn.  We came out somewhat unnerved.  It’s not right, I tell you!  Dark-stained wooden floors, leather banquettes and chandeliers abound, along with surly, painfully trendy bar staff.  In the old days it was very Irish and rowdy.  I can’t imagine a fight breaking out in there now, which is a good thing, but there’s a part of me that hankers for the beer-stained carpet, karaoke, and regulars that used to beat the door down at opening time, rather than the cool young professionals that sit there now, sipping their mojitos and playing pool.

We decided to leave after one drink and head over to another of our old haunts, The Little Bay.  This is a fabulous little restaurant that we’ve been going to for years, as the food is great and if you get in there early doors then you can get a 3-course meal for just under a tenner.  Perfect.  Even after we’d bought wine, water and coffees, we still didn’t manage to break 20 quid each – that’s my kind of night out.

Last night’s visit was a bit like entering a parallel universe, though.  I’d been in there the night before with another friend (Maisy, for those old-school 20sixers who remember her) and the head waiter had recognised me that night.  When I then went in again last night he greeted me like an old friend and, as the evening wore on, began to call me ‘my sweetheart’ and suggest that we move in together and get married.

In our mature and adult fashion, Alex and I ran away, giggling.  Some things, it would seem, never change.

Stormclouds and Secrets

A mini-story for you today, at the instigation of Cigs .

We mostly talked about the weather. All other subjects seemed off-limits, somehow. Strange, when we’d been so intimate. I guess that’s what a broken heart does to you. So much to say but no way of saying it.

So we sat and discussed the grey stormclouds gathering above us, like perfect strangers. I zoned out after a few minutes, watching his mouth move; that mouth that had once whispered sweet nothings to me. And suddenly I realised that he wasn’t talking about the weather at all.

Sweet Transvestite

Yes, it was marvellous, thanks.  David Bedella, as Frank ‘n’ Furter, was absolutely fantastic, singing up a storm and appearing far sexier than a man in sparkly lip gloss and a basque ever should do.  For some reason, Suzanne Shaw wasn’t on last night and so the part of Janet (SLUT!) was played by Sarah Boulton, who was also excellent.

Last night’s performance was a special fundraiser for Amnesty International and so there were a fair few famous people knocking around the place.  Before the show I had popped in to McDonalds for something to eat (yeah, I know, but I only had 10 minutes and I was starving) and noticed Vanessa Feltz chomping on a burger.  Lovely.  When I arrived at the theatre (rather overdressed – hardly anyone was in costume, the buggers), my friend was all agog at having just seen Richard O’Brien, who actually came on stage later for the final Time Warp.  He hasn’t changed a bit.  Then when we sat down, who should come and sit next to us but Samantha Bond.  She’s teeny-tiny and my friend managed to make her laugh uproariously with one of his responses during the show (when Janet says, ‘I don’t like a man with a lot of muscles’, he shouted, ‘Just one big one!’  Fnar.)

I must say I was disappointed with the lack of dressing up.  There were a couple of girls in gothic basques (not their usual wear, judging by how self-conscious they looked) and one guy who looked like a Bee-Gee dressed in a pencil skirt, tight tee-shirt and well-stuffed bra (he, on the other hand, appeared more than comfortable), but it would seem that most people had given the costumes a miss.  I decided to keep my coat on until we had sat down and then discreetly draped it over my lap to cover the fact that I was wearing a very short skirt teamed with stockings, but I shifted position and dropped the coat accidentally at the interval, causing my friend to come over a bit unnecessary.  Hehehe.

It was really good to see that the musical director had made a conscious decision not to just do a carbon copy of the film.  Each of the characters had made the parts their own, rather than just singing a karaoke version of the original, so it still seemed fresh, despite being over 30 years old.  The staging was also marvellous and just the right side of kitsch to make it hilarious – the car approaching the castle was particularly inspired. All in all, therefore, a top night out and I highly recommend it.