Two Posts!?!

Hello world! Here she is; blinking and emerging into the light after a sustained period of hibernation. Good.God. Two posts in the whole of 2011. What is that about? I would have to blame it on a general lack of inclination to write about myself. I've only written about 20 or so statuses on facebook. My phone broke two months ago and I've only just got round to replacing it. Don't physically have it yet though...

It's been a bit tricky to dredge up any enthusiasm for my formerly favourite subject (i.e. ME). I don't really know why that is.

It's been a funny old year. I really found it difficult to have or maintain any sort of emotional equilibrium. I've been up and down like a yo-yo, feeling much and understanding very little. Which is quite unpleasant when you're a bit of a control freak like me.

I mainly kept busy. And other people helpfully gave me a lot of opportunities to do so. This year I have done an awful lot of acting with more groups of people than I would normally do. After a fairly full seven months (on average, a show a month, not including Instant SOOP or the fact that we did several flits around the South of England touring), I took August off.

I sort of wish I hadn't as it was the time of year that I found hardest in terms of the aforementioned equilibrium. I spent several days where I just became a panicky weepy mess. Exhausted and too scared to ask for help. And, in all honesty, unsure of whom to ask. I realised a lot of things about myself. That I am unbendingly stiff and proud in ways that are really detrimental to my general wellbeing. That I am scared to let people in but that when I do I become altogether far too dependent on them. That I am too quick to make judgements or to be negative, and that I really need to question why I do this when I do. In all honesty, it was quite a brutal learning curve.

I've been trying to adjust my own behaviour. It's really tough. It's also not very nice admitting that things are your fault and that, in some ways, you are kind of a shitty person. I mean, it's not like I'm evil or anything but some of the things I do are a bit shit. I think that can be said of anyone and I doubt I will ever be perfect, and how boring it would be if I was, but it is just hard to admit fault with stuff. It is also hard to realise that some of that stuff is unfixable. I say sorry almost compulsively but sometimes it's just a plaster over a seismic crack, isn't it?

Anyway, this particularly fun episode also taught me that I really needed to take it a bit easier for the rest of the year, which I have. Far fewer Sundays spent all day at rehearsal, for a start. It was mentioned at my actual job that I seemed to come in to have a rest, which was a comment that I balked at on first hearing it but with hindsight realised was fairly accurate. I've managed to get much better at balance since and I am hugely grateful for how lenient people at work have been.

I am still single. Shocker, right? I mean, it's all gone so well for me so far, how am I still single? It's a mystery for the ages. Well, I've got better at knowing what I'm doing wrong and I have at least "put myself out there" as a phrase that I promise to not use again goes. Again, introspection has helped me realise that I do have some unwieldy baggage. Oh, do I. Someone that I went on a date with at the beginning of June is now engaged (we're friends on facebook - he's a very nice man) and it is quite sobering to realise that this does happen. People meet, fall in love, make a life together. In another universe that could be me. So I guess I need to find a way to not predict the end of something before it's begun. And not start things that I know won't go anywhere.

New years are funny things. They're the time when we take stock, try to work out who we are and what we need to do to become more like the person we want to be. This may not last very long but I do think it's necessary. Therefore:

1) Lose weight. I've done so well in that I lost two stone two years ago and have not gained any of it back. That said, I've also been planning to lose more since. I need to get that done. And I'm looking forward to it in a funny sort of way. It's a mark of getting older that I actually enjoy not eating junk food and exercising regularly.

2) Be better. Never stop being myself but just try and reinforce those things that I've learnt. I'm allowed to be imperfect but I should try and stop sabotaging myself. That's just idiotic.

3) Do exciting things. I need to get better at organising things for myself. I've been given a bit of financial freedom and I should take advantage of that. I need to see a bit more of the world, take some risks. Learn how to ride a horse. Oh no! I've been specific. Now I have to do it.

4) Tidy up after myself. I've had a few days to sort things out and the worst thing is that everything I do seems to lead me to a huge pile of things to tidy and an almost unending supply of new things to sort. I need to try to keep on top of things a bit better.

5) Don't freak out about change. There is the potential for a great deal of things to change, welcome and unwelcome. I need to embrace it all equally and roll with it. Given that I am actually fairly good at rolling with the punches, if I do just calm down a bit it would make the whole process far easier.

6) Blog more often. I'm aiming for once a week. I don't know what it'll be like. Hopefully honest. Possibly funny, although I think that it's a bit embarrassing if I try too hard. And it doesn't really matter, I suppose. It is entirely up to you if you choose to read this. But writing it seems, for me, like a really good idea.

Go on then, 2012. Bring it on.

In the Land of Ingary...

Sitting at my desk this morning at work, I found myself with the rather overwhelming need to sob. Not really sure how to handle it other than bursting into tears in the office, I went to my boss and confessed all: How this was incredibly silly and stemmed mainly from the fact that I'd been naughtily looking at facebook, sorry, and all that had happened was I'd found out my favourite author had died.

I have a history of over-attachment to authors. I went through an extended and unfortunate Enid Blyton phase as a pre-teen and remember crying when Roald Dahl (deservedly) won a best-loved children's author award instead of her. But unlike Blyton, whose books I long ago shipped off to a charity shop, Diana Wynne Jones has been a part of my life since I picked Witch Week up for the first time aged about 10.

As a young girl with an old-fashioned perspective and a lack of understanding about what many of my contemporaries were even talking about, as well as a fairly insistent belief that there had to be a more magical world on offer than the one I could see (I had a tendency to double-check wardrobes and I was forever picking up keys in the hope that I would find the door and it would lead somewhere exciting), there was a real identification with the fantasies that she offered. Rooted in a peculiarly English sensibility and with a surprising lack of sentimentality, I fell in love with her flawed heroes and heroines and their way of looking quite practically at the incredibly unlikely and difficult, generally magically-influenced, situations they found themselves in. Her plots were fun and convoluted, and the resolutions were these breathless whirlwinds of strangeness where everything would be tied up but often in a way where you felt like you'd been dreaming and woken up thinking that everything was in order but not in a way that you could ever explain to someone else. Often, re-reading her books, I'd get so excited about reaching the resolution that I would make sure to stop reading several chapters beforehand if I didn't have time to finish, in order to be able to revel in it.

It's difficult to pinpoint the book that I love the most as there are so many of them. Aunt Maria remains the most accurate depiction of the matriarchal control that I experienced from my maternal grandmother growing up. The real love of English that informs her books with multiple references to Shakespeare (such as the feuding families in The Magicians of Caprona), folk ballads (Fire and Hemlock makes reference to and updates The Tale of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer) and brilliant names like Market Chipping (I had no idea until a recent episode of University Challenge that the name Chipping comes from a word meaning market. I love how darned silly yet clever this is) show her playfulness and knowledge of the roots of the language. Witch Week is a precursor to Harry Potter; a boarding school for witch-children set in an England where witches are regularly burned in bone-fires mean that the setting is much darker than Rowling's even though the tone is lighter.

Then there are the characters. I've already mentioned that they are flawed and in some ways they remind me of Jane Austen's characters where they tend to obfuscate their true intentions due to shame or embarrassment or pride. There are some agonising moments as they realise their own feelings or that they've trapped themselves in something that they have no control over, often as a result of their own cleverness. The phrase "bleached with misery" is one of my favourites from Fire and Hemlock and the subsequent depiction of the protagonist Polly trying to suppress this misery with feigned jollity and feeling all the time as if she were trying to hold down a jet of sadness with her hands is one of the most visually and emotionally vivid sections of the book. Jones' men, who become even more interesting as the books grow more adult and they become love interests instead of father figures, are powerful men who, often as a result of their responsibilities, are interestingly imperfect. The most fun is Christopher Chant, most often seen as the vain Chrestomanci who becomes more distant and apparently distracted as he gets more stressed, and the most heart-rending is Mordion of Hexwood.

However, if I'm honest, although I am fond of many, my favourite is Howl's Moving Castle. More people are probably aware of it than most due to the Miyazaki film of the same name made about five or six years ago as a follow-up to the Oscar-winning Spirited Away (the only other adaptation of her work that I know of is Archer's Goon made by the BBC in the 90s, which should be on Youtube somewhere, have a look. It is pretty faithful to the book and appropriately mental). The film doesn't work for me and that's probably because I don't recognise the world or the people it shows and a lot of that is because it loses all sight of Jones' peculiarities and her characters become perfect versions of themselves. Although Howl still sulks through the medium of green slime, it isn't quite the same. He is noble in the film, which is so weird. Talking about Jones' flawed men doesn't even begin to describe Howl. To paraphrase Sophie, he is vain, shallow, mindblowingly arrogant, manipulative, terrible with money, a coward and those are his good points. He's also Welsh, confusingly, given that the book is set in another world to this one. Then there's Sophie, the book's narrator and the character that I relate to the most. She sounds like me and although she has some quite bizarre things happen to her, especially spending most of the book as a woman in her 70s, she reacts to most things in the same way I feel I would: Mainly by being amused at her own stupidity; talking to herself; adjusting to bad things surprisingly quickly; getting irritable and grouchy; and by having an endearing lack of common sense despite being fairly logical. Howl and Sophie are people that I feel I know. Their world is fantastic and their actions are often over-the-top but they themselves are completely believable human beings.

I think that is key to why I love Diana Wynne Jones so much. It's the ability to make fantasy real and joyous. Her books have made me laugh and cry, populated by characters that feel like friends, and are full of invention, fun and darkness. Although a writer for children, she never shied away from complicated, sad, deep ideas and I think she's been a big influence on the way that I view other people. I have grown up with her characters and I am grateful for the way in which she has touched my life with her wonderful, beautiful stories. "Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a strange, true, fact in it, you know, which you can find if you look". Fire and Hemlock

New Year, New...Something

Ah, well. I'm glad that's over. 2010 officially claimed the title of "Worst Year Of My Life". Well done; 2007 is now relegated to the number 2 spot.

Not that there weren't good things. In amongst the steaming crap heap that constituted the rest of it there were some sparkles of loveliness from new and exciting things that have happened. I have decided to list them in a counting-my-blessings kind of way:




Elowyn. My niece is possibly the most perfect thing I've ever seen. I love her little face, particularly when she is smiling, or sticking her lower lip out (I know it's a precursor to a proper cry but it is still hi-larious), or staring at me as I dance or sing for her amusement. I'm taking her bemused expression as amusement anyway.




Revenger's Tragedy. I took three weeks off work in order to pretend to be a proper actress. The routine of rehearsing during the day; flinging myself about, experimenting and generally being creative was amazing. I got frustrated with myself at times: I'm still not as good physically as I wish I was and got a bit stuck and embarrassed playing about with voices when I didn't get it immediately but the things I enjoy doing the most are the ones that I find difficult. And because of the scale of it (i.e.; small) the performers had to do everything, so props, set and costume were all made by us. Although the amazing puppets and masks are all the creation of the incredibly talented Frankie. The best part was the run in London (including three days when I had to go back to my day job(!)) travelling up on the train, trying to get some sleep and being looked after by the boys before cranking up the energy to perform. By the end of the week I was bruised, exhausted and stupidly happy. I wish it was my life. We've got some performances coming up (check it out at http://www.soop.org.uk/) so it's not yet over and I can't wait to do it again.


My house. I love living in my house. Friends and family turn up, stay over, eat fajitas. Steven miaows endlessly, Meatball snores, Splash Gordon the goldfish has had to be moved to Finchy's room as his life was in danger in the kitchen. But it's strange how much a friendship shifts and moves over time. I've always got on really well with Finchy but he's become one of my closest friends. There have been some really bad times when he's unfailingly been there with cups of tea and big hugs, we have quiet times when we just sit about and get on with sketching (him), reading or writing, and then extremely silly times when we are loud and stupid and I end up scrunched up from giggles. And in the morning, there's a cheery "alright?" that always makes me smile, even if, on some days, it's a smaller smile than on others.