Burnley girl's blog

Turning 30...

2011-06-11T05:11:00.001-07:00

A funny thing happens when you turn 30. Aside from suddenly being ineligible to be a new writer (according to many organisations whose business it is to find and develop new writers) you also start to deal with things you never even had to think about in your 20’s.
My 20’s passed by in a blur of DJ’s, destinations and daydreams and I wouldn’t change a second of it but in your 30’s you find you have to start making decisions, hard ones and sometimes irreversible ones and you can’t help but long for the carefree life you'd got used to living. Saying goodbye to your 20’s is hard but it's because, deep down, you know that from this point on things will only get harder.
You suddenly have to make choices about the kind of person you want to be and who you will spend your life with. About whether you get married, have children, change career, move to another city, buy a home etc etc etc In your 20’s you think these decisions will be made in beautiful moments of clarity, perhaps mid conversation with your closest friend or a moment alone watching a sunset over a beautiful vista.
As far as I can tell they’re not. You don’t get that movie-montage moment where you realise who you love and run to the airport to tell them or walk off into the distance to realise your dream. What you get is crap flying at you from all angles and the decisions you make are usually just ways to make sure the crap doesn’t completely drown you and result in you winding up on some internet list of humiliating ways to die. Hannah Rodger – deceased due to accidentally drowning in the crap that she didn’t want to deal with.

I recently coined a phrase for all this (sometimes I make up weird phrases for things so that they seem less scary) and that phrase is ‘crap attack’. It’s perhaps not the most mature use of the English language but it is one of the most honest. I was barely 6 months into my 30’s when my first crap attack started and this is the story of how it went...

Friday 11th March 2011 is, for many reasons, a date I will never forget. I had two things to do that day. I had to go for a routine medical test at the hospital which I was told would take about an hour or so and then I had to drop a script in at Soho Theatre. It looked like a relatively easy day ahead.
At the hospital they looked at my symptoms and my family history and they suggested I should have a more thorough test than the one I was scheduled to have. The registrar advised me that although I hadn’t had the 24 hours preparation or the sedation for this other test I should go ahead with it. I was in agreement. I mean, if you are going to get naked and have an embarrassing test done then you might as well go the whole hog. The last thing I wanted to do was to have to come back to the hospital...oh the irony.

So we went ahead and had the more thorough test (which was a colonoscopy). Though I’d really rather not, I feel I should explain what it was like. I was awake, lying on my side, looking at a TV screen which showed the images the fibre optic camera was seeing as it travelled along my colon. In the first part of it they found some abnormal tissue growths (about 8 polyps) and removed them. I wasn’t exactly happy to see them there but I was relieved. It made sense of the symptoms I had been having and they were easy to remove. Well, I say easy but I watched this doctor in awe. He would move the camera near the growth, open an electric loop, capture it then burn it off and extract it. Imagine the hardest computer game you’ve ever played, then imagine it taking place inside someone’s body, then imagine them watching you as you do it.
If we had been doing the test I was scheduled to have we would have stopped there and we all might have thought we’d got what we came for. But he kept going. At this point they kept telling me to pass wind, that it was natural due to the procedure and probably the only time anyone would be happy for me to lie there and repeatedly fart. I was still laughing at this when the doctor asked his colleague to go get a surgeon. Even though they were running over by half an hour and the visibility was getting poorer the further they went, they had found something else and needed the senior surgeon to take a look.
He came in and told me that I had a nasty tumour and would need surgery to remove it. I nodded at him desperately trying to pay attention to everything he was saying but actually wondering how on earth I could have a tumour.
They kept asking if I was in pain and although it wasn’t exactly comfortable it wasn’t painful and I somehow managed to joke that if they thought this was painful they’d obviously never had a bikini wax. Afterwards they took me straight up to get a CT scan. If it was cancerous they wanted to see if it had spread to other parts of my body. If. Such a small word, such a big meaning. The technician at the scan came out and told me I had to drink a jug of a sweet, pink contrast drink and that I could take all the time I needed to drink it. I sat there and made the 1st decision – not to let the crap overwhelm me. I pretended it was my mates laying down a drinking challenge and I drank it as quickly as I could. What else is a misspent northern youth learning how to down pints useful for if not things like this?
The scan itself was over rather quickly and easily and they said I could go home. I walked out the hospital across Westminster Bridge and even though I was stood in a massive crowd of people I felt incredibly alone. Sure there were people I could call - and my family and friends have been nothing short of amazing throughout all of this - but I wanted someone to make it all better and the truth is no one could.
So I made my 2nd decision. Having spent years as a Production Manager I was trained to think of the worst case scenarios for a shoot and come up with ways to cope if they happen. I decided that this was not going to be like that, that it was all still to play for and that I just wouldn’t worry till I had something to worry about. I walked over to Soho Theatre and handed my script in, then I went home, had a late lunch, told my family the news and got ready to go see a friend of mine in a play.

As I was getting ready to go to the theatre I got a phone call telling me I had been accepted on to the Old Vic New Voices TS Eliot US UK Exchange. I was extremely delighted but I’m sure I didn’t sound it to the lovely lady giving me the good news. I wanted to sound excited that I would be one of 7 writers selected to have a brand new short play on at a theatre in New York but I had no idea if I would even be well enough to go. Though I didn’t say anything to them at the time I was worried that I might end up letting them down and was taking the spot from someone perhaps more deserving of it simply because they were healthy. But I also felt like I had earned it and I experienced a very calm determination to take part in it, no matter what. In the morning I discovered the biggest battle I would ever face and in the afternoon the Old Vic New Voices gave me a reason to fight it.

A couple of weeks later I saw my surgeon to assess my condition and schedule the operation. At this point the biopsies and CT from that day had not shown any cancer but he told me in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t be sure that I didn’t have cancer and would not need chemo until they completely cut it out of me so they wanted to do it as soon as possible. He also told me a more conservative surgeon might also perform a colostomy so all in all I felt like I was in good hands. I asked him if we could at least schedule the surgery around my trip to New York. Luckily for me he only did this surgery on Mondays and due to Easter and the bank holiday weekend the first Monday after my trip to New York was also his first available slot. There was a bizarre divinity to the whole thing. Oh, how the universe likes to give with one hand but take away with two.

So I went to New York and I had an amazing, mind-blowing, life-altering time. Then the following week I went in to hospital and had about 15 inches of my colon removed with a laproscopic right hemicolectomy and appendectomy. The night before I went into hospital I joked that I would soon be as good as qualified to script my very own episode of Holby City or Greys Anatomy and I was rather blasé about the whole thing. I kept telling concerned friends that I would be fine, I was just going to spend a few days doped up on Morphine and then I’d have a few weeks of watching movies to recover. Oh, how I was wrong.

It was painful. It was hard. It was frustrating not to be able to do anything. It was humiliating to have to ask a nurse to help put your slippers on. It was horrific just going to the bathroom. Overall it was just terribly humbling.
In the first few hours after the operation the nurses would ask me to take a deep breath and assess how much pain I was in. They did it to make sure I was getting the right amount of pain relief. They would also remind me to do this when the pain was too much. Like the first time I got out of bed they said I had to keep breathing through it. I made my 3rd decision to never forget this and I still do it now. It’s a great way to be aware of what’s going on but not let it take over. To breathe in, be aware of the pain but to then breathe out and carry on regardless.

The funny thing about recovering from this type of operation is that there is very little movement you can achieve without moving the middle of your body. That’s why they call it the core. So to sit up and take a drink, to reach for something, to change position, to walk, laugh, cough, sneeze or cry it all involves using your core. Coughing was the worst. You spend so much time lying down that you have to cough to clear your chest but at one point it hurt so much to cough that I was in tears. And of course I couldn't give in to the tears because it hurt just as much to cry. So my 4th decision was that every time I wanted to move – no matter how little the movement was – I had to go for it. I realised that if you think about how much it might hurt you’ll spend ages trying to find a way to do it so that it doesn’t hurt and you just end up in a dull but more destructive kind of pain. So I went for it. Sat up, got up, coughed, went to the toilet, showered and went for a walk. Whatever they said I needed to be able to do before I could go home I did it, despite the pain. And the more I did it the more the pain started to go away. The metaphor of finding a way to live your life whilst the people around you save your life was not wasted on me.

After 4 days I was allowed to go home to recover but after a week at home I got an infection in my wound. Though it might sound strange this was the worst part of the whole thing. It was like going back to square one, like falling down the biggest snake on the board in snakes and ladders. I could barely move again, I was on 2 different types of antibiotics as well as 5 different types of painkillers and I was miserable. For the first time in a long time I felt like my body had betrayed me. I didn’t mind that it had grown a tumour without telling me and had done so about 30 years too early. I didn’t mind I had to go through a painful operation to get rid of it. But I badly wanted it to heal and it wouldn’t, at least not as quickly as I wanted it to. So my 5th and final decision of all of this was something I wish I had decided years ago. I decided that I would stop focusing on the outcome and instead look at the progress. I stopped asking myself if I was fully healed but if I was more healed than yesterday and consequently things got better every day. Instead of trying to be somewhere I couldn’t be I was perfectly happy about where I was instead. Eventually the infection went away and with it went the pointlessness of the anger and frustration that it had brought.

A few days ago I got my full test results. I don’t have cancer. I have a syndrome that creates these polyps and if left untouched can turn into cancer so I will be monitored by specialists and by geneticists for the rest of my life to make sure my body and my family stay healthy and risk free.
I had waited quite a while to hear this outcome and obviously I was really pleased with the results. But it’s a strange feeling. It’s like getting a gift that as soon as you get you want to give to other people too. I want to give the same gift to my family who are also at risk from this syndrome. I want to give it to the girl opposite me on the ward who had a similar operation as me but, even as I was leaving the hospital, had still not been able to get up out of bed due to the pain. I want to give it to the woman next to me on the recovery unit who was told that despite coming through a painful operation to remove a blockage in her bowels would still die in a few months because her cancer was so advanced. I am totally and utterly relieved that this painful episode of my life is almost behind me. But I am acutely aware that for many others it has only just begun.

In the last 3 months I have made 5 decisions that have helped keep this crap attack at bay. The 1st was to not let it overwhelm me. The 2nd was not to worry until I had something to worry about. The 3rd was to remember to breathe. The 4th was to commit wholeheartedly to whatever I was doing and the 5th was to focus on the progress, not just the outcome. They weren’t made in moments of clarity during beautiful sunsets (although the picture above, taken from my hospital bed, was not exactly a terrible vista) they were usually made in moments of sheer panic and if they were hard to make, they were even harder to stick to. But they got me through and they stopped me from drowning in the crap...in this case both metaphorically and literally.

So why am I writing all this embarrassing detail on a publicly visible blog? Because cancer is a silent, deadly disease, it invades and attacks, it is stealthy and scary and perhaps if we all talk about it a bit more, about our losses, our battles and our near-misses then we might just beat it at its own game.
Since this happened to me lots of friends and family have told me about similar experiences, symptoms, worries and I keep saying let’s not wait till things get like this for us to share. Let’s not hide, let’s not be embarrassed and maybe we can all be more aware of what’s going on in our own bodies and with each other.
I was lucky, really lucky with early detection and prevention. I was lucky because I recognised that the symptoms (often diagnosed as IBS) might be serious, I asked my GP for a referral, not once but twice, and I was treated by some of the best doctors and nurses in the country. Whilst I wouldn’t wish any of what I’ve been through on my worst enemy I hope that we all might be so lucky because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
And if I start to go there in my head then I go back to those 5 decisions to help keep that crap attack at bay too.
The truth is I still have a lot of those hard, grown-up, life-defining decisions to make but you know what? I’m not as scared of them now as I used to be.
In a way nothing has changed yet everything has changed.
Maybe that’s what your 30’s are about. Yes, things get harder to deal with, but once you deal with them, really deal with them that is, then they get a hell of a lot easier to live with after that...

Hadrian's Wall

2010-10-03T04:07:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I did a charity walk along Hadrian’s Wall with my Dad and his wife.
It was hard work going up and down the Northumberland hills for 8 to 10 hours a day sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the sun.
And then dinner in a marquee with plastic chairs and camping on cold, hard floors were not exactly the best way to get ready to go back for more. But me, my dad and his wife were always there for each other with a hug and mug of hot chocolate too!
And you know what it, it felt good to do something.
It felt good to be outside.
It felt good to be a tourist in my own country.
It felt good to share something other than phone calls with members of my immediate family.
It felt good to do more in 48 hours than I would normally do in weeks.
(You never know how much you can push yourself until you have to).
But most of all it felt good to – no matter how much it hurt – to just keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

When I got back a couple of friends – completely separately but simultaneously – mentioned that they might go live abroad. One to Canada, another to Mexico, another might move to Hong Kong for work and a couple might go to Australia.
It all sounded so amazing so like rats on a sinking ship I started to wonder if there was something wrong with living in London.
One of my mates said I should come with her and I said I didn't want to leave London. For a long time afterwards I wasn’t as convinced as I had sounded!
London is tough, polluted and expensive and it’s nowhere near the countryside or the coast. Other places might be cleaner, safer, warmer have better economies and be more picturesque too.
Why don't I want to leave if everyone else does?
Why don't I want a new adventure?
Where has my adventurous travelling mindset gone?
I said I would only live in London 5 years and that was 6 and half years ago maybe it is time to think about moving on?
I started thinking maybe it's about more than just the location...

When you are writing they say your location should be like another character.
So my play about the Burnley race riots is not just about Burnley it’s about a place that exists where tolerance and integration totally failed a whole community.
I’m also writing a short film set in a prison and it’s not just about being in a prison it’s about a place inside you where good and evil aren't as easily defined.
So if it’s not just geography but more like psychology I started to think about not just where home might be but what home means to me.

And I think home is living in your own skin and bones and feeling comfortable with that.
All of my mates who are totally comfortable in themselves have that reflected back by the place they live.
The ones who feel like a square peg in a round hole are always thinking about where to go next.
It's weird, I think you only feel comfortable in your own skin by growing up.
You only grow up by moving further along the road that you have put yourself on.
And I think it's only when you move along the road your on do you find the place you call home.

With some people I know it isn't where they live that is the problem it's the road to where they're going that is.
They don't know where that is so they are going all around the country or even the globe to find it. They are dating everyone and no-one at the same time, they are changing hobbies or jobs more often than sheets on their bed, they are essentially running away because they don't know where they want to go.
We seem to be a generation completely unafraid of globe-trotting but totally petrified to say where we really want to go.

If my friends do move away then I will completely support their decision to do so as long as it’s what they want in their heart of hearts.
Maybe home will be on the other side of the world for them; I'm not saying that it won't be or that they shouldn't go. I'm just saying sometimes the easiest way to find home is not to look outward across the horizon; it's to look inwards at your soul.
Look at who you are, what you want and what you are willing to do to make it happen.

Pick a road and start walking.
It might be the wrong road, but it’s not a life sentence.
It might go in the opposite direction to where you thought it might go but it’ll probably be better than standing still.
I don’t want to leave London because I can see where I am going.
I get annoyed when I don’t think I am going to get there, or am not getting there fast enough. But I am on my way somewhere. And that somewhere is right here.
It’s hard work, it takes sacrifices, dedication and discipline but, no matter how hard it gets, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
If I did it on those hills in Northumberland hills I am pretty sure I can do it here!

I would be nothing without my friends so if I could say anything to help them I’d say walk far, walk tall and walk to places you have never been to before or ever dreamed you would go to.
But if you do nothing else just keep walking...hopefully you will find you’ve walked all the way home. And wherever you end up I will try my very best to be there for you...with a big hug and mug of hot chocolate too!

My date with Me

2010-07-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did something I've never done before.
I took myself out.
I quite often tell friends when it's needed I will take myself out and have a word to calm myself down or shut myself up - or usually both - but this was different...
After yet another bad cold I had decided to clear a whole week in my diary to do nothing but rest, recuperate and relax.
But by Tuesday I was better and I was bored...
I stayed late at work and tried to find some friends to play with - thinking I could walk into town and into an adventure of some kind - but last minute availability is not always a strong point for many Londoners so by 7 o clock I turned off my work PC and gave up.
But by then something in me just didn't want to go home.
It's not that I don't like my home (I love my house and my housemates) but I realised I just didn't want to do the same thing twice in 2 nights.
Friends often ask me how I can spend 2, 3, 4 nights a week writing - doesn't It getvboring doing the same thing every night? But here's the thing, you never do the same thing when you are writing...in Thailand they say same same but different, maybe that's what I missed...

So, anyway, I took myself out.

I got some Thai food (which was amazing), I had a glass of Rose wine (which was lovely) and I bought myself the last seat for the next film screening at the cinema.
It was fun and I felt strangely empowered.
I didn't feel lonely, I didn't feel I had to pretend to be on the phone / waiting for someone.
I was taking myself out for a nice night and I didn't care who knew.
Today though I felt the need to reflect and I couldn't help but wonder if it was because my life was lacking spontaniety or independence and this had been an act of rebellion in some way.

More to the point would I feel inclined to do it again?
The truth? No.
I did enjoy it and I have no shame in admitting I did it but deep down it's just nicer to have someone to share things with, a loved one, a friend, a colleague even.
After years of not having time to hang out with the friends I love because of my writing I found myself in an evening with neither my writing nor my freinds so I treated myself. But I would rather have someone to treat, someone to take out, someone to have an adventure with than do it again on my own.
After nearly 3 years of rushing to class, rushing to the theatre and rushing home to work on projects with looming deadlines I had always looked longingly at restaurants, bars and cinemas and said one day I will have the time to just unexpectedly walk in to one of you places and enjoy myself.
Now I do.
And I think I had to prove that to myself.
I remember once seeing a doctor say in a movie (so it might not technically be true) that if someone is suffocating you need to give them air but if you give them too much it will kill them just as quickly.
I felt liberated last night but almost too much so.
And today I feel a bit like the movie protagonist who after getting what they have wanted the whole movie realises it's not what they want anymore.
Sometimes if you give yourself the very thing you have been longing for you remind yourself that what you already have is better.
Taking care of my health is important and taking as much time to relax as I do to rush around is important too.
But I don't want to have lots of free time I want to write.
And when I do have free time I don't want to spend it on my own I want to see my firends that I don't get to see when I'm writing.
And I guess I want a little bit of spontaniety every now and again too.
When I walk past a busy restaurant, bar and cinema I don't have a longing to go in. But I know I could if I wanted to.
And that...for now...suits me just fine.

Graduation

2010-07-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

I graduated from my MA a fair few weeks ago and much like everything else in life the event itself wasn't nearly as much fun as the pre-event hype or the post-event celebrations - I took a few days off work and we all went to the pub, some of us went to the theatre and a couple of us even went to a castle.
All in all it was pretty momentous, the MA has taken over more than 2 years of my life, it is certainly the end of an era but the start of... well, I'm not sure what.
Was I pleased about what we'd all achieved? Sure.
Was I relieved to be out of the debt and stress of studying? Definately!
Do I feel like it's made a difference to my life? Sort of...
On one hand it has been amazing, I think differently about writing, about drama, about language and character, about life, love and everything in between.
I talk about it differently too, it's not a faraway dream or a dirty secret it's what I spend my time doing and inevitably talking about.
Friends and family are really supportive too - they ask about my work even when they don't understand anything about it and it means so much when they do; when they care about it for no other reason than simply because I do.
Yet on the other hand there's a nagging doubt that I am - much like when I graduated from my BA - overqualified and under experienced and it's getting harder to fight my way out from under this blanket of inexperience.
Much like the state of the current economy there are more of us under here struggling than there were before. And there are, as you get older, fewer opportunities to take risks, to be brave and to throw caution to the wind...
Yet I feel like that is exactly what I need to do.
Clearly I didn't miss the lecture on dramatic irony!
I explained my situation to a friend the other day and in a rather more rambling version than this I said that being a new writer is like trying to get into the hippest party in town.
I feel like this MA has given me the key that opens the back stage door to the party, but I can fling the key into the lock as much as I want - I still can't get access to the party till someone invites me in.
Maybe I will get in one day, maybe I won't.
But for now I have the key and that's good enough.
It might not be an open invitation to my future but it's sure as hell better than nothing. And that's certainly worth celebrating...
So...anyone for the pub?

Heading Home...

2010-04-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Day 10...The last day of the trip.
I was leaving early evening on an Easyjet flight so I spent the day just hanging out wih some of the group who were leaving the next day.
We went to the Medina and had ice cream then wandered round picking up a few last minute souvenirs. Then we had some gorgeous fresh squeezed orange juice before heading down to explore the Saadian Tombs.
They took us a while to find - the streets were very narrow and the Moroccans seemed to have an aversion to signposts - but they were worth it when we did.
They were really grand but really subtle and we all had fun taking some arty shots and wandering round the labyrinth of streets again afterwards.

Soon after that I headed back to the hotel and set off to the airport in a cab.
It felt weird going back past all the sights that I saw on the way into Marrakech. I took some shots on my camera to try and capture the famous Marrakech sight of Palm trees in the foreground and snow-capped mountains in the background. But it only seemed to capture how I was feeling in the black and white setting.

At the airport my bag was over the weight limit but they let me off (when does that ever happen?!?) and I got through airport security really quickly which left me plenty of time to get a drink and a snack and catch up on my journal.
After a quick lap of the waiting area I decided to treat myself to a sandwich and a beer when I realised I had used the last of my Moroccan Dirham on the cab.
I looked around for a cash point, I asked where the cash point was and there wasn't one. I went to pay with my card and they wouldn't accept cards so I had over an hour to sit and try to quench my thirst merely with mind over matter...
It didn't really work so as soon as the Easyjet drinks tolley was wheeled out I ordered enough for about 4 people and then nodded off.

Arriving back at my house felt really strange as I'd only lived in the house about 3 months so it was like coming home to a place that didn't quite feel like home.
I was glad to be back but - like always - I was gutted that it was the end of the holiday.
I honestly don't know when I'll be able to afford to go away next, especially not somewhere like that.
But then again two months ago I didn't know I would even be going on this trip.
As I tried to lug my ridiculously jam-packed bag into the house without waking my housemates I couldn't help but think that perhaps the purpose of the holiday was to remind me that you never know what's going to happen and that it's ok to not know.
I didn't know how things would turn out with my mum and I didn't know what the rest of 2010 would bring but that was ok.
And maybe, just maybe, if you want something badly enough you'll get it.
I certainly wanted a holiday this year and was lucky enough to win one.
And I won it from a company called Intrepid Travel, if 'Intrepid' means fearless and brave then I think the real bravery is just admitting what you want and having the balls to go after it.
Whether that's entering a holiday competition or going after your dream job or telling someone how you feel about them.
Saying it out loud is the first step but doing something about it after that are sort of the most important steps. Though I didn't know they would, my steps took me all the way to Morocco where I met brilliant people, saw amazing things and laughed and shared and discovered so much.
So, if you haven't already done so take the first step somewhere new right now...you just never know where you might end up.

Happy travels!

Back the way we came

2010-04-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Day 9...It seemed strange that it was our last day in Essaouira, our last day of being on the road and our last day together as a group.
We had seen and done so much together and had got to know each other really well it felt a bit like the we were ending just at the beginning.
That's not to say we didn't make the most of our time left.
The weather was nice so I decided to wear a dress that was summery but not revealing armed with that and my aviators I finally felt like I was on holiday.
We spent the morning shopping and we bought clothes and shoes and bags and jewellery and as well as drums and artwork and sooooo many scarves that I feared they might actually run out!

After lunch we went back to the Riad to collect our belongings and - typically - now that I had finally learned to navigate my way through the alleyways of Essaouira we were now walking down them for the last time to meet the coach to Marrakech.
The last leg of our trip was simply to head back to the place where it all started.
As I sat on the coach I wondered how often we do that in life.
This blog is named after the town I did most of my growing up in and I think that a lot of time I seek to understand myself not just by looking at the path ahead that I am trying to take in life but by looking back at the path I took to get here too.
It got me thinking about the play I am writing at the moment where one of the characters puts her future in jeopardy when someone from her past lands uninvited on her doorstep. It's my attempt at dramatising a crossroads - the path that lead you here and the one that will lead you away.
I didn't really think much more about it till we walked back through the Medina in Marrakech. Everyone seemed to hassle me more than I remembered, they were grabbing at my hands and bag. Plus after everything we'd seen the things that once seemed exotic to me now just seemed to be cheap rip offs of the real thing that undoubtedly originates from further afield.
My mum believes that you can never really go back anywhere but I think you can, but only if you have already let go of the past.
In terms of this holiday - Marrakech hadn't changed, but maybe I had.

That evening we went for our last meal together and sat outside even though it wasn't that warm (that might have been the fault of the Brits - 'oh it's not absolutely freezing course we can brave it outside...') and we went round the table saying what our best bit of the trip was. Unsurpisingly the desert was pretty high on everyone's lists and whilst the 4WD was my highlight a very close second was the second night when we slept in the Atlas mountains.
Sure the Gite we stayed in was freezing cold and the showers weren't hot but the scenery was stunning, the food was divine and we sat round the fire and chatted free from TV and news and in fact any agenda.
It was great and something I have made a conscious effort to do more of since I got back.

After dinner (my last tagine...) one of the Americans read out a story that she had written earlier that day about us all. It was set in 2020 and we were all meeting up in Paris. She had a little bit about everyone - what they were up to and how they had travelled to Paris. In it people had started their own company, adopted babies, travelled the world, won awards. She had remembered something that all of us had mentioned even if we didn't remember it.
It made me realise that you don't need to be a writer to tell a story and also the best skill you can acquire when you're dealing with people all the time is to listen to them. Really listen to them. And if you can identify with what they're saying then you might just be a better storyteller because of it perhaps.
I already thought she was an amazing person as she was a doctor and was really reassuring and helpful when I talked about my Mum. But this was really touching and a fun way to remember everyone and the fun we had together.
In case you're interested in the story we were meeting in Paris because a new play of mine was opening there and everyone was coming to the opening night (sounds good to me...) One of the Canadians had come to meet me as I - get this - arrived by swimming across the channel. When I got out the water I was asked how the temperature of the water was and I replied 'refreshing'.

Maybe Morocco hadn't been the perfect holiday, maybe it hadn't even been something I'd planned on doing but it had been amazing and I believe it was what I needed to do - to get outside of my comfort zone and experience something new - and sometimes, when you least expect it, you find yourself right in the middle of an experience that turns out an unexpectedly good story...

Keep your eyes open if you want to see where you're going...

2010-04-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Day 8...Our first day in Essaouira started with a walking tour of the town with a really amazing local guide.
After spending a week with a male guide who was lots of fun but not very informative about the country we were in our guide today was as refreshing as the sea breeze itself.
She spoke in great length about not just her town but her life as a single muslim woman. She spoke about her community, her faith and her friends as well as politics, geography and lifestyle.
It was fascinating and all too brief even though she stayed with us as long as she could on a public holiday (it was the Prophet's Birthday).
Of all the things I had seen and done in this country this short walking tour had been more enlightening about the people at the heart of this country than anything else.
The town itself is beautiful, a vehicle-free maze of tiny streets and alleyways bursting with different colours and cultures all leading down to the harbour.
Lots of whites and blues like the Greek Isles, lots of mosiac tiles, lots of different fabrics and textures; It's a photographers dream and I had a great time trying to understand the town and their people whilst capturing it through my camera lens.

Afterwards we went for lunch down at the harbour and had a feast of fresh fish - straight off the BBQ which was amazing.
Then as the rain started we headed indoors - most if us choosing to use this time to have a Hammam (a public scrub and steam bath experience).
We were washed clean, scrubbed of our dead skin, covered in a mud wrap, washed and massaged which was fabulous, to say my skin was baby soft would be a huge understatement.

We all met back up at our Riad and sat round listening to the rain on the roof while we had snacks and wine. When the rain eased off we went out for more food and more wine in a gorgeous little restaurant that - after some of the places we had eaten in and even though we were just sat at the bar - felt like a real treat and even though we were eating tapas style felt like a real Moroccan meal too.
After we polished off our plates and drained our glasses my roommate for the trip wanted to go and sample the crepes that we had spied almost as soon as we arrived so we headed towards the harbour in search of our sugarhigh.
At the crepe stall we met some French guys who were in Essaouira to do some Kite Surfing and we teamed up with them to go find a bar to have a drink.
Unfortunately none of the bars would serve alcohol to our guide who was a muslim so we spent more time walking along the beach than we did drinking and not suprisingly lost of our new French friends along the way.
We stopped at a random bar that agreed to serve all of us and had a drink before heading back to the Riad. However on the way back a Moroccan guy put his hand on one of the girls shoulders and what was probably not something with malicious intent blew out of proportion and ended up with a group of guys surrounding our guide who was trying to defend her honour.

Luckily the whole thing seemed to blow over and we were back in the Riad, chatting on the roof in no time...we had a lot to chat about it because it had been such an eye-opening day and it made me realise that there's a big difference to holidaying in a country and really seeing it.

Anything is possible...

2010-04-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Day 7 and I went for a quick dip in the pool this morning.
It was much warmer than the last pool, but it wasn't exactly warm either.
One of the Americans in the group saw me from her balcony and asked what the temperature was like and I said it was refreshing and it actually was.
After holding the group up at dinner last night while I phoned home I was determined not to be the last one on the bus today so went down early and was actually the first to load my stuff on the bus.
Our first stop was a tannery where I treated myself to a leather satchel.
I had wanted one since I started my MA and had always said I would have to wait till I had earned it. Here, where they were made and only 3 months away from graduating from the course I felt like I could finally buy one.
Regardless of the fact that I felt like my play still wasn't complete and regardless of the fact that I had no idea what my future held I was chuffed to bits with it.
It was a writer's satchel and it was mine.

We stopped at a supermarket to grab stuff for a picnic on the beach and a few of us grabbed some cold beers out the fridge too - it might be a muslim country but we were on holiday so if they were selling we were buying - so a few of us enjoyed a quick beer in Agadir!
I said to my roommate for the trip that I couldn't concentrate on my food when the water looked so inviting so we rolled up our trousers and went paddling. Unfortunately after about 10 minutes a wave came out of nowhere and soaked us. I was wearing combat shorts so they dried really quickly but she was wearing jeans so wasn't as lucky.

After lunch we hadn't been long on the bus when a little boy flagged the bus down on the other side of the road. He wanted to show us the goats in the trees.
I thought these goats were a myth and that we wouldn't actually see them but then again here I was on a holiday that I had won as a prize which is unheard of.
It just goes to show that anything is possible!

After a few photos were taken we jumped back on board and drove on to Essaouira where we would be staying for the next couple of days.
As we approached the town the sky above the sea was moody and it made the town look really dramatic and I was soon to discover that it was.

Dawn in the Desert

2010-04-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

Day 6 and if I didn't want to miss a second of it yesterday it seems I got what I wished for. The alarm went off at 4am and after only a couple of hours in our sleeping bags we were heading back up the dunes to watch the sunrise.
It was hard work on the legs first thing in the morning but it was worth it.
When I reached the top of one of the larger dunes that some of the group had already gone up I had the urge to talk to the others - to moan about how hard it was walking up the dune perhaps or how much sand had gone in my shoes - but it wasn't a moment for that, it was a moment for quietness and calmness.
We each watched the sunrise, again in our own way but all together.
It made me realise just how much of life we go through where we all might think we experience the same things but no two people experience something in the same way.
Also, how often do we get the chance to just sit together and think, to reflect - to not fill every moment with chat or TV or noise of some kind?
It was lovely...
The view was breathtaking and the scale of what we were looking at - the enormity of the landscape before us - was just profound.
As someone trying to be a writer there are very few moments in my world where words don't take me over it was nice to embrace the... stillness.

Again the sky changed colours before us and as the day sprang to life I couldn't help but think of how scary it must be for people to try and navigate their way across this terrain and my thoughts turned to the people back home that I loved dearly who I knew would be facing their own challenge today, perhaps the biggest they ever would.
I really believe that if you dig deep down within yourself it's not just you that you feel. I hoped my mum would feel that I was thinking about her and I wished I could show her this sunrise because - for me - it belonged to her.
Because that sunrise with all it's beauty, strength, resilience, power, hope and magnificence was just like her.
It made me realise there might be a million ways to say you love someone but sometimes you don't need to say it out loud.
I wandered down the dune and found a little spot for myself and sat down.
After a few moments and a few tears I let out a whisper, like a little secret between me and the sand.
It was everything I needed to say for everything that I couldn't do.
All I could do then was sit here and hope for the best. So I did.

After breakfast the girls - bless them - let me sit in the front of the car so I could take photos, which I did but if I was honest my head was elsewhere.
When the 4x4s stopped so we could look at fossils in the rocks I wandered off to be by myself and our driver Hussein - though he hardly spoke any english - just came and stood next to me and smiled.

When we arrived back in civilisation most of the group was relieved that the bumpy terrain was over and we had access to cold drinks and normal toilets but I was gutted. It was the end of of this particular adventure for me which was perhaps one of the biggest adevtnures I might ever go on. And I don't just mean the desert.

We headed back onto the bus and stopped in a tiny little town for lunch where we had to wait over an hour for our food. It's not the worst thing in the world to sit in the sun and chat to people while you wait for fresh cooked food but we had just come from one of the most exciting landscapes on the earth and had been ushered into a tiny back garden of a restaurant that had an empty swimming pool to look at and not much else.
I was getting impatient and sunburnt so I took myself off for a walk round the little village we were in. There wasn't much to it but there was a lot going on - people going about their business, selling their wares and sipping mint tea; just getting on with their lives.
I rounded back towards the restaurant and just as I did 2 dust devils whipped up in front of nowhere, flew past me and went zipping down the road - right down the middle of it - as if they had sat nav which was sending them on their way and then they disappeared, just as quickly as they had appeared.
For some reason this made me feel better. Perhaps my impatience at the restaurant was frustration at the lack of control I had over circumstances both here and back home and those dust devils made me realise that control is useless; as soon as you have it, it can disappear again.
It doesn't make you stronger, but maybe not needing it might.
Knowing that you have the strength to face something without knowing quite what it is you are facing is surely a much greater skill than having control.
I sat back down and (finally) ate my food and I realised that on this trip, despite being run by a company called Intrepid Travel, you are really looked after. And I'm not used to being looked after. And maybe travelling to countries where it's much safer to be shepherded around isn't my kind of travelling. If I like to have the freedom to change my route or restaurant as I please does that contradict my last statement about not needing to be in control?
All this echoed lots of things about my life back home and the frustrations I feel about my job and my career and the fact that for me they are still two different things. I have spent time and money equipping myself with the tools to try and be a better writer and I feel like there's a world I know about but I'm just on the outside of it looking in. A strange combination of having a key to open the door to your dreams but also having to wait for someone else to invite you in too.
It seemed this holiday was bringing up lots of questions that I had been trying to avoid in my life especially as I head towards my 30th birthday.
Maybe that's what holidays are supposed to do, because of my MA it had been a while since I've been able to have one and the last time I went on one (Thailand with my wingman) my life was decidedly simpler.
I had just been in one of the most unpopulated places on earth yet I didn't feel like I had gotten away from it all. But maybe that was the point. The more remote the place - the more the only place to go...is within.

After lunch we drove on to Tarradount, a town famed for having large red walls. We didn't see the walls but I didn't mind because the frustration of the day had already left me feeling quite suffocated.
I phoned home and spoke to my mum which was a big relief. It's a universal fact that you can imagine things to be far worse than they are and it had turned out to be true - the not knowing about the thing had been far worse than the thing itself.
We went for a rather strange dinner and then had what was becoming our late night tradition of drinks and card games on the roof but I was shattered.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the extreme temperatures, the overwhelming emotions or all 3 but I had to say goodnight early and this time I couldn't wait to get to bed.

Desert Driving

2010-04-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

Day 5 and I got up and went for a quick dip in the pool this morning.
I say quick dip and I'm not exaggerating - it was much colder than I thought it would be so after about 3 laps I was ready to get out.
We had breakfast and boarded the bus, everyone seemed quite excited as we were off to the desert.
For a lot of people I think this was the main reason they booked this trip, for me it was another day of amazing stuff that I didn't know I would have in my life.
As I took my seat at the back of the bus I couldn't help but think wouldn't it be nice if I could start every day feeling this way.

First stop was a local library famed for holding ancient texts of the Koran and copies of old Berber poetry. I had no idea what any of it said but it looked more beautiful than anything else I had ever seen written down - it seems in Morocco even the literature is Art.
We then went to a pottery place and we were given a tour and a demonstration before a chance to buy some of the handiwork. I loved the stuff there and could have bought loads if we weren't enroute to a desert campsite so I settled for a couple of small bowls - perfect for olives and dips back home.
We then had a picnic in the sun before heading out for a rather bizarre camel ride.
It was fun but it was weird because it was obligatory, the hottest part of the day and we were only just in the desert. I'm not saying I'd like to have been on a camel in the middle of nowhere at night time either... so I just came to the conclusion that perhaps there isn't a perfect time/place to ride a camel!
(They are supposed to be functional not fun after all)
I'm not sure why we feel that riding native animals in foreign countries should be part of the tourist experience, but I just tried to enjoy it.

We then stocked up on our water supplies and boarded 4x4s to head to our camp.
This was hands down one of the most fun things I have done in the last few years.
I was sat at the back - feeling every single turn of the wheel and bump in the road and I loved it! I felt like a kid again, I know there's a thrill to getting on any mode of transport when you're abroad but this was on a whole other level...
The terrain was awesome - unimaginable to be driving along it - no roads, no traffic, no warning of dangers. Our driver was excellent and the 4 of us had such a laugh with him, it made me so giddy to be using such man-made technology to cross the uncrossable. There we were speeding headlong into something desolate and uninhabited and it was oddly liberating.

When we got to camp we dumped our bags and headed up the dunes to watch the sunset and compared to the drive and there was an unexpected calmness to looking out and seeing sand as far as the eye could see.
We wandered around in a little group, laughing, taking photos... I felt like we were together but all experiencing this in our own way too.
I thought the Sahara would be rough and hard and uninviting but it wasn't, it was just quiet and unassuming and almost spiritual.
The sky slowly started changing colours above us and the temperature and consistency of the sand seemed to change beneath us too.
We just sat and took it all in and no matter how long we sat there it never looked the same as the last time we looked at it.

We went back down to camp and had dinner and then all sat round the fire and then about 5 of us decided to sleep out by the fire under the stars.
It took me ages to get to sleep because even though it was pitch black and I couldn't see the stars without my glasses I didn't want to miss a single second of all this.

Trials and Tourism

2010-04-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

Day 4 and we headed off to quite a few tourist stops today.
We went past the local movie studios - with props from The Mummy still displayed outside - then onto a charity called Project Horizon and a spices and herbs shop.

We had a picnic lunch in a palmerie and later visited a Jewish Kasbah, which I really wanted to enjoy, but couldn't because I had a strong sense that they just didn't want us to be there.

It was a fun day with a slightly strange ending and we were keen to get onto the next day and - what we all hoped would be - the biggest adventure of the trip so far.

Drums and Dancing

2010-04-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

Day 3 - After I woke up and took the quickest shower in the world, I stood outside of our gite and tried to call my mum.
It was Monday morning and she had some medical tests happening this week, but I couldn't get hold of her so I just left a message.
We walked back down to where we'd left the bus yesterday and I was chatting with two of the girls.
We ended up chatting about racism and I happened to tell them about a play I had read that covered it in a really intelligent way.
As we walked down from this tiny Moroccan village in the mountains, I realised that since leaving London 48 hours ago I had talked about writing a LOT.
I wondered if that made me self obsessed but I think, and I'm still not sure, that if you love something that you don't do all day every day you talk about it every other minute of every other day until it does become the thing you do.

The drive to our next location was along some of the most stunning mountain roads I have ever travelled on. They were windy and dramatic and unfortunately a lot of people in the group were suffering from travel sickness. I felt really sorry for them because they couldn't wait for these roads to be over but I couldn't get enough of them.

We arrived at a place called Ait Benhaddou which is a UNESCO world heritage site and the location where scenes from movies like Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy and Gladiator were filmed. We walked up through the Kasbah there and watched the sunset which was beautiful.
Afterwards we went to a cous cous and tagine cooking demonstration by a guy called Action Man - so called because he had been in many of the movies filmed here - and then headed back to our hotel for dinner.
After dinner we sat round and listened to some of the locals play drums and sing songs which was great. They tried to get us to join in and kept asking us to sing an english song and the weird thing was I couldn't think of any.
In the age of IPods and Playlists the one song I couldn't name was a song that gave a sense of my country.
Luckily the Canadians came up with a hockey song and I was glad because aside from our national anthem and football chants I had nothing.
After that the guys had us all up dancing for a while before we sloped off to bed for some much needed rest.

Fresh Air & Fires

2010-04-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Day 2 and we headed up to the Atlas Mountains outside Marrakesh.
We got off the bus and did some hiking before sitting down for an amazing lunch.
We then went for a walk round the local village which included having mint tea with the locals and seeing the school.
The lady sharing the mint tea with us asked if we would refrain from taking pictures, we agreed but wondered why and our guide explained that there was a European tourist who took a picture of a Traditional Berber woman and used her head on an underwear model's body and put it on the internet.
Since then no one has been allowed to take photos of any Berber women.
Isn't that a shame, that one person's idiocy can ruin a whole culture's view of tourism and technology?

After dinner we sat round the fire and chatted and played cards.
It was great to get to know everyone, where they were from and what jobs they do.
At one point one of the women said she had a job with a lot of extra hours and hadn't had many weekends off, I agreed with her about the lack of weekends and said I could count on one hand the number of weekends - whole weekends - I had away from my desk last year.
On hearing this one of the women gave me an article from the guardian paper that she had brought with her about the top ten tips from writers about writing.
One of my friends has written a blog about this article and he didn't have a lot of love for it (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/writersroom/2010/03/writers_10_rules_and_why_i_hat.shtml) but for me it was like a breath of fresh air.

As we sat round the fire I would read a bit of the article and make notes from it and then play a round of cards and I kept alternating like this depending on what game was being played and how many players they needed.
I couldn't help but wish it was this easy to alternate work with play back home but for now - just like the day we'd had - it was really nice.

Outskirts and Olive Groves

2010-04-03T12:09:00.001-07:00

Day 1 of my adventure and I was shattered.
An early start after a late night was not a good combination.
But I was excited, the holiday that I had been worrying about and waiting and wanting for ages was finally here...
On the easyjet flight, amongst the screaming babies and foriegners, was a posh couple sat behind me who annoyed me all through the flight but none more so than when we were coming into land in Marrakesh.
As we saw the first few buildings the woman - going for the gold award in pointing out the obvious - said oh that must be the outskirts.
A part of me wanted to block out the noise of her but a few moments later she pointed out that we were flying over olive groves which I - with my short sight - wouldn't have noticed and I realised that this was not a holiday where quick judgements and assumptions were going to help me.
I needed to leave my London cynicism behind and open my eyes to a new experience and a new culture otherwise I would ruin this for myself.

As I made my way from the airport the taxi driver - who spoke no english whatsoever - kept pointing out tourist attractions. I think he felt sorry for me being on my own bless him.
I got to the hotel and met my roommate and we went to the Medina for lunch before our group briefing where we met the rest of the gang.
It was an ace, friendly and gentle start to the holiday and we all couldn't wait to find out what lay ahead.

Preparing for a Prize

2010-03-28T04:46:00.000-07:00

I won a holiday.
That's not a sentence I ever thought I'd say but it's true.
I entered a competition that I saw on an email newsletter and a few weeks later, thanks to the lovely people at Intrepid Travel (www.intrepidtravel.com) I was getting ready to go to an exotic place that I had wanted to travel to for a long time; Morocco.
At this point, after finishing my MA last year and feeling pretty exhausted, I really needed a holiday.
I was making plans with friends on how we could sneak away for 3 or 4 days, sharing airmiles, borrowing accomodation, even collecting holiday vouchers.
I was determined to get away even though I had no money to do so and then low and behold I won one.
Believe what you will about cosmic ordering, but mine certainly worked.

As I started to get ready for the trip by doing the usual things like buying a travel guide, insurance and a first aid kit I realised there was of wealth of things I didn't know about the place I was travelling to.
It's their winter but how hot is that?
I was going to the desert but do you need insect repellent for there?
I wanted to be excited, and don't get me wrong winning a holiday is pretty damn exciting, I felt grateful and relieved but if I'm totally honest I was nervous too.
I felt some trepidation about going somewhere that I hadn't actually decided to go.
Also the cynic in me couldn't quite believe that I would actually just turn up and get the holiday without being tapped for some 'additional costs' (which I wasn't).
I discovered that the biggest reasons for not doing something are ones you come up with yourself.
I wasn't sure what the trip would be but I had a feeling I would give me a chance to discover a whole lot more...

2010-02-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

I've recently been ill.
Not just a-little-bit-sniffly ill but all out, cripplingly, repeatedly ill.
In that time I haven't felt much like blogging, or like writing, or working, or flirting or dating or talking or socialising in anyway...
The one time I threw caution to the wind because I was feeling a bit better and went to a friend's house for Sunday Roast I ended up even more ill than I had been before.
My GP now recognises me immediately and doesn't even listen to my chest, look in my mouth or ears or any of that, he justs takes one look at me and writes out a prescription...
Either he's not a good doctor or I have just spent the last 4 weeks looking like a corpse that has been warmed up and wheeled in to his office just in time to die again.
It all started at the doctors actually.
I went for a flu jab; as I have a congenital heart condition I recieved a letter urging me to get the vaccination which I did on xmas eve just before travelling along the snowy roads to home.
The side effects of the flu jab are symptons of flu - which I thought I had.
Xmas was a wash out for many reasons but not least because I was unable to eat my xmas dinner and not able to take even a sip of alcohol.
Two days later when I went to get the train back to London but was too weak to even pack my bag I realised it wasn't just flu like symptons.
What developed was a horrid sickness bug which I think I caught from my housemate and narrowly avoided passing on to all my family.
Thanks to my mum and some super strength Pepto-Bismal I got better and got back to London literally the day before New Years Eve.
I was pleased that I could still go out with my friends, I looked forward to starting the new year healthy and was also just happy to be away from a toilet bowl.
I realised at this point that New Year's Eve is not a lucky time of year for me; I had spent quite a few recent New Year's Eves ill.
Last year I left a perfectly entertaining party early as I wasn't feeling too good and was ill for the first 3 days of 2009.
The year before I had only just recovered from a bad cold when New Year's came round. On a quick trip to the supermarket only 6 hours before I was going to see my friends DJ I picked up my bag of shopping and put my back out. Thanks to some amazing heat patches and super strength painkillers I was able to still go out.
But I couldn't drink or move much...
When you look back at the photos you can't tell I was sober and in pain and I still managed to get a new year's kiss so for the dawn of 2008 all was not lost.
The year before that I had arranged to fly to Belfast with my wingman but I was ill.
My mum, my boss - everyone I knew in fact - told me not to go.
I was determined not to be beaten so full of flu and stubborness I boarded the plane armed with enough Vicks and Lemsip for a small army.
Though I was quite miserable and exhausted from the journey the evening was good fun and on New Year's Day as we headed back to the airport in a taxi we witnessed one of the most amazing sunrises I have ever seen.
Despite everything it felt like I was supposed to be there to see it, snot and all...

So this year I had just recovered and managed to go out, it seemed like I had broken my New Year's curse.
Then I woke up on New Year's Day and the right side of my nose would not stop running and my right eye would not stop watering.
This lasted a few days and when it finally went it was replaced with a god awful head cold which every time I turned too fast or bent down made me feel like all my sinuses would explode then and there.
This went on a couple of weeks and then I got a cold, by this time I had settled into a routine of getting through the week at work and then feeling rubbish all weekend and I was sick of it.
All that energy and enthusiasm you tackle a new year with was wilting.
Worse than wilting it had vanished and replaced with was a bitter frustration.
I felt like a kid that couldn't go play outside.
I said to a friend of mine that I felt defeated.
Maybe it was some small insight into how it must feel to suffer from depression or other mental health illnesses.
I wanted to feel good about myself, to go out and live my life and stop being ill but I had no control over it whatsoever.
And it was the lack of control that was getting to me.
I was trapped into feeling emotionally whatever I was feeling physically.
It wasn't mind over matter it was matter taking over my mind.
Then my head cold developed into a full blown cold and cough.
I had 2 days off work and a weekend to recover but when I went back to work on the Monday by 5pm I was shaking and sneezing again.
The cold and cough returned ten fold and despite ridiculously strong antibiotics from my doctor I was off work for the best part of a week again.
Last week I went back to work and I was feeling much better but was still coughing so I went and got a repeat prescription of the antibitoics which I finish in 3 days. Though I am almost 100 % better - breathing through both nostrils now and only coughing for about an hour in the mornings I feel completely wiped out.
I guess that's what antibiotics do to you and after what will be 14 days on them and over 6 weeks of various illnesses I'm not surprised I feel this way.
I know there are many worse ways to feel and luckily I have an amazing holiday coming up which - as long as I don't catch anything else - will, I'm sure be just the tonic I need to finally feel healthy again.
All this definately hasn't been fun but it has got me thinking.
Health is so important.
Not just big health stuff against big diseases but little health stuff against little illnesses.
I've practically just slept through xmas, New Year and the first 6 weeks of this year.
Why?
Because I must not have been taking care of myself?
Because perhaps I needed a holiday more than I realised?
Or was it because I went to get a flu jab?
I can't help but think that the very thing I thought would prevent this caused it to rain down on me.
It just seems too ironic that by trying to stay healthy I had ended up more ill.
Maybe if I hadn't tried to strengthen my body I wouldn't now be so weak.
As it valentines day I can't help think that it's a bit like tyring to protect yourself from getting your heart broken by never falling in love...your heart still breaks, just in a different way.
Maybe I shouldn't try so hard to protect myself from being ill or for that matter from being hurt.
Perhaps if you worry about something maybe you are just writing an invitation for it to happen.
One thing is for certain after this - I am never going to take my health for granted.
I'm quite fortunate that I never really did before because I was born 2 months premature with a heart condition and the doctors thought I wasn't going to make it.
I don't have to dig very deep to appreciate just that I have made it this far but I'm going to make an extra effort to be grateful for what I have when I have it and not to worry about what will happen next or how I might stop it.

I didn't make a new year's resolution because I was ill and in fact I haven't for the last few years for the same reason but I am going to make one now.
Carpe Diem.
Seize the day.
Not just because one small flu jab means you can't enjoy the day but because one small twist of fate and you might not have even got this day to begin with.
Seems a tall order to remember to be grateful every day but I'm going to try.
After all it can't be any harder than remembering to take your antibiotics every day and I seem to have been doing that just fine...
Stay healthy everyone - in every sense of the word.
x

Four times a bridesmaid...

2009-12-14T13:44:00.000-08:00

In my opinion there are certain things you believe in when you are a little person that you don't when you grow up;
Santa, The Tooth Fairy, The Easter Bunny etc
And for me, on that list, was the idea of weddings as a symbol of love.
Sure, I thought it was true when I was little, in fact I thought they were amazing because I got given a new dress to wear to my 1st wedding which was my cousin Ian's wedding!
It was purple with black spots and had matching socks.
Oh yes, back in the days/age when wearing socks with dresses wasn't retro it was normal!
I loved this dress, I loved the big celebration, I loved seeing my cousin's wife look like an angel, I loved being spun round the dancefloor by my uncle and I loved my first sip of babycham too!
I had a fabulous time and I wanted one of these weddings one day.
Then about a week later Ian left his new bride for another woman.
It was worse than realising the sound of Santa coming down your chimney is actually your dad retrieving presents from the loft.
Ok, maybe it was a one off, I wasn't about to give up on the idea totally just because I had one dumb cousin...I didn't know then but it would turn out I would have quite a few more...
The first time I was asked to be bridesmaid was another cousin's wedding.
She had 8 bridesmaids and put 4 of them in Lemon and 4 in Navy Blue.
You can guess what colour I was in can't you?
Yep...Lemon.
The dress was particularly puffy (as was my hair in those days) so I basically looked a cupcake all day.
I did enjoy the champagne this time - a privelege I was not legally old enough to have which added even more so to the joy of the day.
I found out later that my cousin had walked in on her groom in bed with her mother the night before the wedding and had married him anyway.
I guess my aunt was the only person who actually had a dilemma when asked what side she was on - the bride's or groom's!
I didn't feel quite so bad about looking like a cupcake...
Turns out there are worse things in life!

A couple of years later two of my cousins chose to get married in the same summer.
Until this point in my life I didn't know what true bitchiness was.
The first wedding was a cousin who is beautiful and kind spirited and had for many years been in love with a guy in the army who she hardly ever saw.
She had decided to get married rather suddenly whereas my other cousin had been planning hers for ages.
So the claws came out...
And this was not just Bride wars this was Mother-of-the-Bride Outfit wars, Father-of-the-Bride Speech wars, Cake Making wars, Seating plan wars, First Dance wars...
It was actually the loveliest wedding I had attended but was overshadowed by family members of all shapes and sizes bringing out the worst in each other.
To her credit the bride seemed not to care about the wars breaking out all around her one little bit.
I just thought it was a shame that a day full of love could be ruined by jealousy.
A while later I found out that the wedding was rushed because my cousin had gotten pregnant.
When I say her fella was away a lot, I mean he was away a lot and was to be away a whole lot more after this.
To this day my cousin has never said who the real father of her child is but it certainly explained why she could care less about the bridal bitching that day!

The wedding that was later that same summer, is actually my favourite bad wedding story so far.
It was the 2nd time I was asked to be a bridesmaid and I couldn't think of a good enough excuse to get out of it.
This time I was dressed in emerald green it wasn't quite as humiliating as the lemon coloured dress till my cousin's hairdresser decided I would wear a hairband.
This was the wrong side of the 1990's for hairbands but no one had told her!
Around the same time I had decided to stay on to college and university at the end of school and, as I was the only one of all my cousins to do this, I was literally the black sheep of the family.
A few of my cousins congratulated me and were genuinely chuffed for me but most of them decided not to talk to me.
So I literally had my hair and make up done for the wedding in silence.
Turns out the only thing worse than wearing a hair band is having it literally pushed onto your head while your cousins give you the silent treatment...

And so to the wedding...

The way these guys had bitched about the wedding earlier that same summer meant I was expecting a lot and to be fair nothing was left untouched with this one.
We drove to the wedding in a limo, I helped myself to the champagne in the back while everyone fussed over the bride.
The reception area was stunning, I helped myself to the champagne while everyone chatted.
The photographer was exceptionally talented, I helped myself to the champagne whilst waiting to be called for photos.
The wedding was ultra-traditional, they even had chimney sweeps at the church. And they did the traditional line up where you go along and shake everyone's hands.
My mum said she couldn't shake the groom's hand and I was quite drunk at this point and just wanted to sit down so we slipped into the main room without going along the line.
I asked my mum why she didn't want to shake his hand and she told me to ask one of my cousin's.
I was quite merry at this point so it took a while for the penny to drop but when it did it was a clanger...
That same cousin had confided to me on the hen party that she was sleeping with a man who was engaged.
Well, turns out she was now sleeping with a man who was married - to her own cousin no less!

All of a sudden I wasn't nearly drunk enough for this so I sloped off to the bar unnoticed. In the brief interlude between the line up and being announced into the room the groom had gone to the bar too.
He didn't notice me stand behind him at the bar.
He certainly didn't notice me see him take down the phone number of the woman behind the bar.
I'm not surprised my mum didn't want to shake his hand, she had no idea where it had been!
I got my drink and sat back down.
But I wasn't sat with my mum and my brother.
I was sat with all the other bridesmaids so I made sure I drank plenty more to cope with the silent treatment again.

I looked round the table.
I was sat opposite the cousin who's groom had slept with her mother and next to the cousin who was sleeping with today's groom.
When the best man got up to make his speech he said he didn't know of a happier couple than the bride and groom and I am ashamed to say that I burst out laughing.
The champagne had helped me decide that I couldn't take much more hypocrisy.
But even if I didn't like the way my cousin bitched about the earlier wedding and even though I didn't like the groom I had no right to ruin that moment for all the other family and friends who were none the wiser.
I think my brother took me home very shortly after the speeches and I'm pretty sure we had a great night getting drunk at home.
But the next day my aunt said she would never speak to my mum again because she didn't shake hands in the line up.
My mum was ostracised from her own family for having standards.
Needless to say most of my cousins didn't speak to me after the laughing incident either but they weren't exactly speaking to me before it anyway so I didn't feel a sense of great loss.

I have been to other weddings since and most of them have been much more joyous.
My dad's was, I'm not going to lie, quite a difficult occasion.
Not one I feel I can speak about much on here but one where I learned a very important lesson that, as a writer, you have to be able to stand by your words as much as you would stand by the members of your family.

My brother's was particularly fun, even though it was the day after my university leaver's ball I loved every minute of it!
I was bridesmaid again and for once the dress was gorgeous and I had a great time.
My mum's was ace too, she got married the day before I went travelling around the world just so I wouldn't be away when she did it.
I was bridesmaid again, it was a gorgeous dress again and instead of having a table plan my mum had one big table that everyone sat around.
And this huge table had more wine on it than I had ever seen before and, yes I drank a lot and yes, I laughed a lot, but this time in the right places and for the right reasons.
I set off round the world with a huge hangover and very aware that having been a bridesmaid 4 times that I was very unlikely to ever be a bride.
But that kind of suited me.

At this point I could concede that maybe weddings weren't all bad, but only if other people could concede that they weren't all good either.
That they don't paper over the cracks in a relationship, that they don't stop the truth being found out, that they don't make up for something else that is missing in your life and certainly the more you spend on them doesn't mean the more succesful your marriage will be.

It's been 7 years, almost to the day, since I set off travelling and in all that time I have happily held the view that weddings are great, they're just not for me...until now.

I recently went to a wedding that I knew would be the exact opposite of all my horror stories.
I knew it would be a room full of fabulous, wonderful people who were genuinely filled with love and excitement for the happy couple.
The reason being that the couple are two of the nicest, kindest, most wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
You can't choose your family but you can choose your friends and I don't know how I was lucky enough to get the chance to choose these guys.
I knew their wedding would be all of these genuinely amazing things, but I just didn't know it would affect me so much.
It was only the 2nd time in my life that I thought 'I want one of these'.

Don't worry, I think the feeling will wear off...
I still have too many objections but it definately chinked the armour.

When I told one of the many very nice men I happened to chat to at this wedding that I didn't want a wedding myself he told me that it was as selfish to not want one as it was to want one.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with him but it certainly makes life interesting to look at things a different way...

I grew up believing in weddings until I found out they weren't real.
But I spent so long after that not believing in them that it feels strange to find out now that maybe they might be more real than I was ever able to give them credit for.
It's strange, it's a little bit like someone telling you they still stay up on christmas eve to see Santa or that they still find money when leave their tooth under their pillow.
You're not sure you would do the same but you can't help admire their conviction either...

According to the saying being a bridesmaid 3 times means I will automatically be ruled out of ever being a bride.
A week ago I was perfectly happy to be living proof of an age old cliche.
And maybe I never will be anyone's bride.
But right now, I'm not sure I'm going to let someone else's cliche decide for me.
Why should nice weddings automatically mean a girl should want one?
Why should bad weddings automatically mean a girl shouldn't?

Anyway...sod the cliche I've actually been a bridesmaid four times, what does that mean?
Maybe it means I get a bit longer than most people to work out what I believe in.
It's much easier to believe in that which you can see than that which you can't.
Maybe that's why my cousins wanted weddings so badly, perhaps they wanted to prove something existed that actually didn't.
In my opinion weddings are for couples that are truly in love but they are overused by couples that aren't.
And so a word to the wise; when true love exists you don't need to prove it (and that perhaps is when you enjoy it most).
And you certainly don't need dresses that make people look like cupcakes.

One more for the road...

2009-11-03T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've noticed since I finished my MA that the 2 years of studying, struggling, staying in, non-socialising, watching, analysing, questioning, creating and generally tearing my hair out has, if nothing else, given me 2 wonderful things...

1) is the confidence to say - out loud and to other people - that I write.
Ok so I'm not a writer yet and I certainly am not a paid writer but I spend my time writing and I am not ashamed to admit that's what I do, in fact I am proud that it's what I am incredibly passionate about and not only shapes the way I look at the world, it shapes who I am and what I want in this world.

2) is a fairly decent drinking habit.
I am not denying that I used to drink a lot pre MA, I just didn't need it quite as much as I do now.
I love to come home and have a drink while I soak in a brilliant piece of TV writing or go to the theatre and have a drink, or to go out with friends and drink...it's become less about binge drinking my way through my weekends which my former self used to do and more about having a drink with most things I do...I'm not sure which is healthier to be honest!

There's no doubt that writers have a reputation for being the first one to suggest going for a drink and the last ones to prop up the bar too and that got me thinking about why writers drink so much, what's in that last mouthful/last glass/last bottle that we crave?

Maybe it's because no matter how eccentric we are we are also social creatures who love to tell stories and it's in our social DNA that alcohol and stories mix well, why else does most of the population have a night in front of the TV or DVD with a bottle of wine, or do they bear to hold the obligatory plastic glasses at theatres?

Maybe it's about gaining access to the unconscious certainly the only time I cry these days is when i'm either a) drunk or b) writing an emotionally charged scene.

Maybe it's because we're constantly stressed, not stressed like I've experienced before in management jobs but stressed because we're trying to birth our creative babies a lot of times without the equivalent of a creative midwife.
Maybe like an epidural alcohol eases this difficult and painful process?

Maybe it's an insecurity that even after we've said out loud that we write and cried our way through our difficult scenes that it will all mean nothing.
And maybe what we really crave more than anything else is meaning.
We want to find the meaning in things that's why we write and we want our stories to mean something to others that's why we work so hard at it.
What if they don't?
That's more than an insecurity for me.
That's a paralysing fear.
But surely the more successful a writer is the less insecure they would be and the less they would drink...I know for a fact that this aint true.

I get the sense that I could discuss the topic of alcohol till the cows come home but I can't make much sense of it (and it might not be terribly exciting) unless I really investigate my own relationship with it.
So instead of why do writers drink, I'll ask why do I drink?
And I think all of the reasons above are valid, but there could be one other possibility too.
To me I used to binge drink at the weekend - not excessively, just the same amount as any other young Londoner would - and then I would work my ass off all week to pay for the lifestyle.
There would be times I would be 'on' meaning nights I would be up for drinking and partying then nights when I would be 'off' meaning nights I wouldn't drink.
Since doing this MA these 'on' and 'off' periods are a lot less distinct, I can have just as many (or as few) drinks on a Saturday as I can on a Tuesday.
In fact if I do fancy a drink on a Sunday or a Monday I struggle to find a friend to drink with me because most are giving their poor livers a break from the excess of the weekend whereas for me the weekends are my writing time and not my drinking time.
I'd rather be hungover at work than be hungover when I sit down to write.
Also, I am never really 'off' because I never really stop writing.
I can be thinking of ideas sat at my desk, or on the bus, in the bath, in the supermarket, in the gym, chatting to mates etc
Perhaps a side effect of this is that the more often my brain is 'switched on' then the more often I will crave a drink to help switch it off.

I don't think I have a conclusion to why writers drink or why I like to drink maybe I'll think about it some more...
Maybe I'll write about it and see where the story takes me...
If I'm going to write about it maybe I'll have to do some more in-depth research...

Now, where did I put that corkscrew...?

It's been a while...

2009-10-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't written much on here recently...I like to delude myself that there are fans out there eagerly awaiting my next post but there aren't, yet it still feels important to me for some reason to explain my absence:

I finished my MA.

I was so busy doing that I didn't have time to do anything else.
And then I celebrated finishing which took up all my time and even though I finished the course a month ago I have only just finished the copious amounts of celebrating!
And now...?
Back to business as usual.
Except, I have no idea what that is anymore.
Don't get me wrong, I couldn't wait to finish the course, to get to the end of the stress of delivering that final script, the end of the pressure knowing it would be used as our calling card and the end of the intensity of not having room for anything else in your life.
But I miss it.
I miss the structure, the deadlines, the constant challenges and surprises, the great tutors and mentors and of course my fellow writers.
I miss having someone to blame, for two years I have been saying - I can't go out/stay out/spend the day/night/watch this/read that/stay up/sleep in/drink this/eat that/buy those or generally afford to do anything...because of the MA.
There is no way I would want to carry on studying but there's also no way I would want to carry on living the life I had before the MA either.
And that's the scary part.
A lot of my friends have said they are glad to have me back on the social scene, glad I can actually say yes to their invites again, glad I can have dinner or a few drinks on random week nights again etc
And I have been doing a lot of all of that in order to make up for lost time!
I'm touched that they have welcomed me back with open arms but I am also terrified of actually embracing them back.
Because if I go out half as much as I used to I will never have time to write...
If I drink a quarter of the amount I used to put away I will never write anything of quality if I am doing it whilst suffering through a hangover...
If I travel across London on the sprawling nightbus network for just a tenth of the time I used to I will be so sleep deprived I will never even be motivated to write...
So it's clear that I can't go back to my old life and I can't carry on the one I've got used to whilst on the MA.
I need to forge a new path.
New rules, new discipline, new goals, new deadlines, the lot.
It's a bit like breaking up with someone, suddenly there's an MA-sized hole in my life and I don't quite know what to fill that hole with yet.
This last month I've been to the theatre 6 times, celebrated my birthday on 5 different occasions, had 4 friends come to stay, been to 3 friend's birthdays, had 2 weekends away and 1 massive 'end of MA' blowout has been liberating, rewarding, exhilirating, depressing, terrifying, inspiring, surprising, tiring and expensive!
But it's been exactly what I needed to get over the 'break-up'.
I think now my life will naturally be divided into 3 parts; my crazy TV life pre-MA, the none existent life I had during the MA and post-MA.
And this 'life post MA' is the one story that has not yet been written.
I suppose the only thing I can do is get writing...

Diversion Ahead

2009-07-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

I have made a countdown calendar.
The no# of days left till my final deadline for my MA.
Today it sits on 43.
My fingers shake slightly as I type that. I think I'm in shock because, first of all, I am now counting my deadline down in days (how scary is that) and second of all I feel like I have so much work to do I should still be counting down in months (where did all the time go)
Such is life...right?
Writers - far more experienced and talented than me - deal with much more stressful deadlines than this on a more regular basis, in fact they deal with multiple deadlines at once.
But this one, for me, is as big as it gets. I really hope it will be the first big writing deadline of many big writing deadlines. As well as hoping it will be the first, I also hope it will be the last. The last one where I am labelled a 'student of writing', or a 'wannabe writer'.
Despite my hopes and my state of shock...I am feeling blocked.
BLOCKED!
I'm not even a proper writer yet but I get writer's block?
What is that about?
It got me thinking about that fact that a few years ago I had a man pal who I loved dearly and it turned out he loved me dearly too. In fact too much so - he wanted us to get together and I just didn't feel strongly enough about him to get into a serious relationship with him.
So for a while we just stayed friends. Not for long though. In true When Harry Met Sally style it was not possible to 'just be friends' - we would go out on nights out, have fun and then one of us would get emotional, we'd argue and then we'd talk for hours on the phone and meet up the next day and make up. I realised I was having a relationship with this man without actually having a relationship with him.
I talked to him about this and he said we needed to move forward or move apart.
We decided not to be friends anymore and - true to his word - I haven't seen him for about 3 years. Whilst there is no doubt in my mind that we had to stop our pseudo relationship somehow I'm not sure going cold turkey was the best option and I'm almost 100% sure that if I could do it over I would do anything but that.
Why am I thinking about all this?
Well, it seems the parrallel is I was having all the problems of a relationship without having an actual relationship and now I am having all the problem's of writer's block without actually being a writer.
I need to move forward or move apart from this story.
Seen as I am 43 days away from deadline it is too late to move away so I can only go forward.
If this block is a wall I am going to have to smash it down.
Ok maybe not smash it, but perhaps take it down one brick at a time.
Why am I blocked?
1) I feel like I don't really know what my play is about.
I mean, I know what it's about - I know what happens, who to and when. But I feel like I am still struggling to know why. Has this play evolved too far past what I originally wanted to say? Can I still say that? Should I be trying to say something else if the story has taken me somewhere else? Why have I come up with a story that doesn't say what I wanted to say in the first place? And how did I do that? I feel like I've been painting a sunset using green paint. Do I still say it is a sunset or is it actually just a green picture now?
2) Until I 'know' what it's about I feel like I won't know what the right form is.
And I have David Edgar to blame for this (no, not the new Burnley player)
His incredibly insightful article in the Guardian last weekend pretty much ruined my life.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/11/drama-edgar-plays-theatre
Until then I thought I was telling a nice, little, interesting and dramatic story about Burnley. Then he made me see that the story is one thing, the plot is quite another.
And the plot, well the way the plot is shaped shows you what the meaning of the play is. That's great, so clever and true, I'm really glad he pointed that out while I am still in the process of writing my play. See point 1.
Oh...Crap.
3) Points 1 & 2 have - over the recent two weeks - combined forces and like some looming transformer-type monster have dwarfed every creative decision I've made till I have got to the point where I can't type a word without deleting it again.
Writing is putting words down in a shape that gives them meaning. Not putting them down, being unsure about the shape and then taking them away again. That's just typing.

I don't want to be a typist.
I want to be a writer.
I want to write this story.
I want to give it the best form it can have.
I want the meaning to resonate through each and every word.
I want to smash this wall.

If anyone out there has a sledgehammer...or a chisel...even a fork sized amount of wisdom to help me do this I would be most grateful to hear from you.

Well, gonna go and score another day off my calendar.
42 days to go now.

Gulp.

Long Time No See

2009-07-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't written anything on here for nearly 3 months...

I never promised myself I would write everyday or even every week but this gap has been a bit excessive even for a commitment-phobe like me!
I did promise myself that I would write when anything inspired me - whether it was good, bad or ugly inspiration and yet I find myself typing away again when I feel momentously uninspired.
And less than two months away from my final MA deadline is not when I can afford to be uninspired.
So, I'm trying to work out why this is so in the hope that I can overcome it.
Perhaps I should do a recap of what has been happening for the last 3 months in case it offers me a whirlwind view of my life which inspires me into action...ok it's a tall order but worth a try and at least I'll feel slightly less guilty about my absence.

Well...Burnley won at Wembley and I am not ashamed to admit that I cried - mostly tears of joy but also slightly of exhaustion too - and shortly after I went to see Oasis in Manchester something I have wanted to do for ages and I am not ashamed to say that I cried - mostly tears of joy but also slightly of exhaustion - (hhhhmmmm is there a pattern emerging here?)
Then we had a showcase as part of our MA (part of the reason for the exhaustion I think) and it was amazing (don't worry I didn't cry) and erm then I went off on holiday to Stonehenge, Cornwall and Scotland.

Thinking about it, it really was a big relief to get out of London and away from everything I'd been worrying about and working towards...in fact that may be the problem, that once I got away I didn't really want to come back.

No, that's not true, I did want to come back - I just wanted something to be different when I returned, some sign that all the things I had been struggling with were worth it...someone to say "well done", "it was all worth it", "keep going", "almost there"...
Truth is there was no sign that things had changed...there still is no sign that they will.

Well, I need to do something about it. I'm going to do what I do when I'm lost and there's no signs...I need to stop looking for that sign, choose a direction and head in it and then stop and work out a little later on if it was right or not.

It might not inspire me...but it's worth a try!

All's well that ends well...

2009-05-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the good guys finish last - we are all used to that, but sometimes, just sometimes the good guys get to finish...at Wembley.
I didn't intend to write this blog about football but I did promise myself I would write it whenever I felt inspired and frankly there are certain nights when those eleven men in claret and blue make me feel like anything is possible. Tonight is one of those nights.
After having victory snatched from us in the semi final of the Carling Cup and being defeated in the FA Cup we could have easily thought that our chances at Wembley had come and gone but we didn't. Beating Reading by 3 goals over 2 games means Burnley will now face Sheffield at the mighty Wembley for a promotion place to the premier league.
In less than two weeks our 61st game of the season will come to define our season for the rest of time.
We want it. We deserve it, but will it go our way on Bank Holiday Monday? Who knows...
What I have learned since I started this blog is that it's not the outcome that's important, it's the journey.
That may sound bizarre from a football fan who's team is only 90 minutes away from promotion but it's true.
Like the Burnley players I have put so much pressure on myself to do this, achieve that, be there by then and have this to show for it. Unlike the Burnley players I am still waiting for my day out at Wembley, but, like the Burnley players, I now believe I deserve it.
I have worked hard, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. I have faced my fears and weaknesses and stared them down. Most importantly of all, I have dared to dream. If I achieve any success now there is no doubt in my mind of the price I have paid for it. Sometimes you aim for the prize and you decide that it's worth giving everything you have to get it. At that point you realise that getting it is not important, the giving everything to it is.
The price of success is knowing that the struggle was the success.
Owen Coyle, the majestic, much loved manager of Burnley said on Sky TV of the Burnley players that "each and every one of them gives me everything they can on a daily basis" - how many people can honestly say that?
If you can say that then I shall raise my glass to you, you may have to wait awhile though because the next time I will be raising a glass will be 13 days from now, amongst 30 thousand other Burnley fans, on the inside of Wembley stadium.

A friend in need...is the one with the broken laptop

2009-04-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

2 days ago my laptop died.
I got home from a long day at work, grabbed a snack and sat down to my evening of re-writing but it wouldn't turn on. Then it came on for about 3 seconds then went away again, it did that again once more, flashed an error message at me then refused to ever come on again.
I was heartbroken, mortified, inconsolable...
I know that may sound dramatic but I am less than 11 days away from the deadline for the second draft of my full length play for my MA. This period, between the first and second draft, is one I can only describe as hell.
I thought things were bad over the Easter weekend when I was fretting over the structure of the second act and wrestling with my awkward female characters...I had no idea.
Not only could I not do that evening's work on my play, I didn't know if it was ever going to come back on and let me do my work on it again.
Luckily, I back up my work every Sunday so I hadn't lost huge amounts of material but time - and with it hope - was rapidly slipping away.
I rushed it to PC hospital the next day and a very lovely man did a few tests and told me the board was gone.
I don't know much about computer healthcare but I knew that was not good.
The very lovely man told me it would be cheaper to buy a new laptop than to save this one.
I ranted at him that I was less than 2 weeks away from a big deadline, flat broke and unable to buy a new one and that only two weeks ago I had paid another nice, but not as lovely, man to restore it because it had been poorly then.
He said there was nothing he could do but that he would give me my money back that I paid for the restore which I could use towards buying a new one.
This is what earned him his nickname.
I had to go back the next day with the receipt and get the refund.
In the meantime I phoned a few friends for advice, advice on ingenious ways to get a laptop without paying any money for it or advice on ways to raise enough money to buy a laptop without breaking the law.
All the while, I was still trying to keep up with my work using good old-fashioned pen and paper which was romantic for about 10 minutes before it became gloriously frustrating.
What struck me in those few, painful hours was how wonderfully helpful my friends were. I had offers of laptop loans and money loans from people I knew couldn't really afford either and I was sincerely touched. I also had offers of help finding and choosing a replacement and one to sit and type as I dictated my play to them to help make up the lost time which was ludicrously kind...or maybe just ludicrous, I'm not sure.
Anyway the point is...I felt lucky.
In a difficult time, when disaster struck, I felt lucky to have really wonderful people around me and it made me even more determined to get through it all and to get through it all without bitching and moaning about it.
Today I went back to the very lovely man and when he gave me my money back he offered to 'dispose' of my laptop. I wasn't ready to let it go yet I knew there was no point keeping it.
I tried to work out why I was being reluctant and it hit me.
It's not just that I loved it, it's not just that I used it every day for 5 years and it's not just that it went everywhere with me.
It's that it represented everything I have recently achieved.
The plays that audiences have laughed at were written on there, the casting briefs and call sheets for the theatre nights I've produced were emailed from there, the essays and script reports for my course were created on there. We had built this world I now live in together and we'd never get to do any of it together again.
Even now, as I type this on my housemate's PC, I wish I still had it, even though I know it would never light up at my touch again I miss it and I can't help wonder where it is right now.
I have been telling my friends that it has gone to laptop heaven.
They laugh, as if a child has said something cute and naive but that's what I need to believe.
Right now I just need to believe that all the years of hard work and sweat and tears and stress and fears and worry and frustration and doubt and hope that has poured out of me and into that laptop has gone on to a happy resting place and not an empty techie-graveyard.
There will soon be a new laptop, and probably many more, but there will always be the memories of my first laptop that was with me through so many inspirations and discoveries.
And no matter what there will always be my wonderful friends if one ever breaks on me again.

The dating game

2009-03-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

Going to the theatre is like dating...
That's my new theory.
You pay out money, there's usually alcohol consumed and then you sit back and hope for magic...
But you never know what you're gonna get.
That's why millions of pounds is poured into the West End Tourist-friendly theatre trade because people like to know what to expect. It's the same with internet dating sites, why talk to someone in a bar when you can read their profile? Because that way you think you know what you're going to get. But the thing is you can't...not really.
Even if you think you know because it has X writer or Y director involved, because you have the same hobbies or interests, the evening can still take you completely by suprise.
Sometimes in a really good way that you'll remember for a long time and sometimes in a way that makes you wish you could get a friend to phone you and pretend you your gran fell down the stairs.
Lately a lot of the shows I've seen have left me feeling like this, wishing for an excuse to escape. Not because they were bad (though some were) but because I don't think I really wanted to be there.
Me.
The person who is forever trying to drag her friends to the theatre?
The person who pre-books tickets months in advance?
It didn't make any sense at first so I ignored, brushed it off as tiredness yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I just didn't care and that...well, I just didn't have enough patience to wait and see which way it would surprise me.
I was half thinking about this when I heard someone (in a movie ironically enough) say they had fallen out of love and frankly that terrified me.
I had to pause the movie.
I had to go get a drink, pace up and down for a while and think this through.
Was this what had happened to me and theatre?
What about my theatre-is-like-dating theory?
Sure, you can fall out of love with someone, you can even fall out of love with quite a lot of people, but you can't fall out of love with everyone in one go and surely you can't fall out of love with the very notion of trying to find love, can you?
And if you can - what does that say about me?
Was I giving up? Was I becoming a bitter cynic? Was I losing faith?
I couldn't work it out so I decided to press play on the rest of the movie.
The person had recently met someone who, though they weren't romantically involved with, they had more in common with than their partner and it had made them realise who they were and what they wanted and it had just changed everything.
That's how I feel about theatre.
I will always love it but recently I've met something else and it has changed everything.
The something else I've met is my own writing.
I have written lots of stuff before now, some of it has even reached performance, but what I'm writing now is different.
I don't know why it is...I just know that this movie had a point.
Sometimes things don't change, you do.
I'm not giving up on dating, I'm just ready for something more.
Having a one night surprise with a pre-prepared play is not enough, I want a relationship, I want to see it grow and develop and be part of that process.
The irony is I doubt I would feel this way if I hadn't been to see so much theatre.
So I guess I was right, it really is like dating.
When you're really ready for more the novelty wears off having anything less.

Running On Empty...

2009-03-02T12:44:00.000-08:00

Last time I was on here I wrote about running on the treadmill but now all I feel I can write about with any expertise is running on empty.
I am exhausted, I've never felt so tired, not in a I can't get enough sleep way and not in a I'm tired of life and want to give up way but somewehere yo-yoing between the two.
I feel chronic guilt if I'm not doing as much as I can/should/need to and sheer exasperation when I do as much as I can/should/need to and feel like I fail at it.
I know what you're thinking - take a break, chill out etc etc but I'm in the last 7 months of a 24 month MA course, taking a rest now would be like the hare that has a nap and gets overtaken by the tortoise.
The dilemma is not whether or not to work hard, it is simply what to work hard on.
I joked with my housemate that if I had put as much time and effort into my lovelife as I have changing careers I'd be turning them away in their droves at the door (which would be nice)!
But I haven't because all I have wanted to do for the last two years is open doors to a different future for myself and now I feel like all I ever do is run between the doors that might open frantically trying the handle instead of choosing one and preparing to step through it with both feet.
For anyone who's hesitated when choosing which carriage to get on in the tube and watched the train pull away might know what I mean.

I have got into a terrible habit recently of quizzing friends about certain aspects of their lives - travels, purchases, jobs, affairs - if I think it might make an interesting aspect of a future play and I keep saying "it's all material".
Most of them are supportive and quite flattered but a few of them seem to wonder when these stories are going to materialise.
They're not the only one, I feel like I need to stop collecting material and start telling the story.
And if I could just figure out which story that is that would be a good start...

Keep on keeping on

2009-02-17T14:47:00.000-08:00

I've recently joined a gym.
It's not unheard of and in fact it's pretty common around this time of year.
The gym is very nice, spacious, not too expensive, is quite near my house and some of my friends are members too.
Despite this - on my first visit there something about it unsettled me.
It's not the fact that they have a 'young person's gym' though I find that quite disconcerting (why aren't they getting fit playing team sports like we used to). It's not even the fact that I have discovered that I am not nearly as fit as I thought I was. What has struck me as peculiar about this is how it seems to reflect my life at the moment.

The fact that I can barely decide what machine to get on seems to expose how indecisive I have become recently, constantly changing my mind, procrastinating and rearranging things, I seem to spend more time wondering what to do than doing it.

Then there's the fact that once I get on the chosen machine I seem to spend a large part of my time on it justifying the decision I've just made in my head. This is something I do in real life too. At an age where promotions, proposals and pregnancies are defining the life choices my peers have made I, in the absence of these things, have become used to defending my current position in life as the exact position that I always intended to be, regardless of whether it's true.

Finally, when I manage to get going on the chosen machine and I actually get to the point where I am too exhausted to care about whether it was the right decision or not I flip into 'Countdown' mode. This can be how long on the next machine, how long till the next gym visit, how long till my next deadline, how long till my next lie in...

And it hits me.

I am literally running on the treadmill of time.

Everything I do has become a series of 'I just need to get to X point in time then I can fulfill X ambition/desire' statements.
I am constantly sticking markers down in the road ahead as if when I arrive there the marker will turn into a welcome party with a balloons and a brass band. "You made it here in one piece - let's celebrate". Which would be nice, if it weren't entirely fictional.
Don't get me wrong, there are definitely occasions which don't pass by without some sort of ceremonial rites of passage (usually alcoholic) but it just seems these days I am back on that road to the next three markers before I've had chance to let the last one pass.

I don't mind life being busy, I don't mind the relentless, exhausting pace of London life but my recent adventures in fitness have reminded me that sometimes being too wrapped in getting somewhere means you don't ever really get anywhere.

Getting back on the treadmill made me realise that I want to get off the treadmill. I want to learn how to enjoy and celebrate where I am right now and who I am here with.
They do say it's about the journey not the destination after all.
I'm pretty sure whoever said that wasn't trying to get back into their favourite skinny jeans at the time, but you never know, if my trip to the gym brought a metaphorical revelation for me...just maybe it did for them too.

Mirror mirror on the wall...

2008-12-14T09:14:00.001-08:00

A very wise lady once told me that it is easier to hold up a magnifying glass than a mirror and recently I have been thinking a lot about this.
Why is it easier to look through a magnifying glass at other people than it is to hold a mirror up to ourselves?
Why is it easier to criticise other people's behaviour than it is to understand your own feelings?
Why is it easier to see problems in other people's scripts than it is your own?
What is it about human nature that makes us this way?
Is it because our eyes look straight out ahead of us and so our points of view follow suit?
Or is it something more complex?
A friend of mine recently asked why he could give qualified advice to others but not follow his own and I replied that if we knew what was best for us there'd be no need to seek professional help from people like him in the first place.
Similarly, if we all had the ability to follow our own advice we wouldn't feel the need to drink wine with our friends, laugh at comedians, sing along to songs at the top of our voices, cry at movies and do a whole bunch of other stuff that helps us make sense of the world.
I don't think it's good to feel confused or sad but if we didn't feel these things there'd be no need to talk to each other, to enjoy a little light relief or seek out a hug from a friend.
Wouldn't we be lonely if this was the case?
We might be able to achieve a zen like state of mind but wouldn't we become a little numb?
Sometimes we do this - we get caught up in the fact that we know how not to get hurt and we forget to take risks that might not hurt us at all.
I wrote a script a few months ago about this and I still don't have an answer for it but when I think about it I think about the magnifying glass and the mirror.
I think the biggest part of the learning process is making mistakes, then seeing them for what they are and then not making them again.
So I've come to my own conclusion that they are not two separate things, it's a two-sided object.
Most of the time we face the magnifying glass side out but we should remember to turn it round and use the mirror every now and again.
If, as a writer, I can keep it turning then I might just survive out there.
If I manage to hold the magnifying glass up I will learn what works but then I need to just keep writing and do it knowing that I will make mistakes. If I then manage to use the mirror then I can try to learn what mistakes I made and not make them next time.
If you hold the wrong one at the wrong time you might never be able to write another word.
So if you're struggling with something, maybe try the mirror out.
Just ask yourself what you'd see through the magnifying glass if you held it up to yourself.
And answer with what you'd tell a friend to do about it if it was them.
It's good to follow your own advice once in a while...because who knows where it will lead?

Have a little...patience

2008-12-13T02:57:00.000-08:00

To me patience is a virtue that saints have and if you are a patient person in this life you will be looked after in every life after this.
I am not a patient person.
I am certainly a lot more laidback than I was a few years ago but I've still not quite reached the saintly heights of having patience.
I wish I had, if my desire to be patient was enough I'm sure I would be granted the virtue tomorrow, but (as anyone wanting to be a writer knows) just wanting something isn't enough to make it happen.
I'm impatient about my work - I always want to be further on than I am and I always want to start the next project and make the next contact which, according to the Palumbo book I'm reading, is a common thing for writers everywhere.
He says writers are always in a rush to get somewhere and what they should do is be true to where they are at that moment because that, more than anything, will inform their writing and that honesty to the moment will one day give you patience.
It seems ironic but true that if you stop rushing towards the future and enjoy the present you'll get where you need to be quicker and in better shape.
Pretty soon it will be 2009 and, typically, I've been thinking about what I hope 2009 will bring and what my new year's resolution should be.
I think now that my resolution should be to enjoy the moment.
I have plenty of deadlines in the diary already - I don't want to focus on the future any more than I already have without really enjoying the moments that might otherwise just pass me by on the way there.
It might not make me a patient person but then again it just might, but at least this way I won't be in such a hurry to find out...

Age aint nothin' but a number...or is it?

2008-12-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about an anecdote I have grown a little too fond of telling.
In order to explain the craziness of the last 18 months of my life I tell people the story of my premature mid life crisis at 26 years of age.
I was born 2 months premature so I have resigned myself to the fact that I am likely to pass through most life stages earlier than most but even if 26 is too early for a mid life crisis it was a crisis none the less.
At age 26 I was suddenly quite ill and was off work for a few weeks and trapped in my bedroom for far longer than is normal. I looked round the photos on my wall and the stuff I had accumulated and had a sudden desire to change everything.
At first I thought it was a kneejerk reaction to being ill, but it wasn't.
Then I thought it was because I had moved a lot as a child and I was scared of being settled, but it wasn't.
Before I could figure it out I had the urge to start making a list.
I made a list of things I wanted but didn't have, things I had but didn't want and all the things I thought I would have done before I hit 30 years of age.
It was quite extensive so when I recovered I got to work on it straight away.
A year later I had gone travelling to Thailand, done a 6 week playwriting course and moved house. Another year later and I had set up my own business, raised £3,000 to do a trek along the Great Wall of China for charity, got on a Creative Writing MA course and changed jobs twice.
Looking back now I think it was silly of me to do everything in such a short (and very intense) period of time but ultimately my self imposed deadline helped to kickstart my life, not my life as it was but my life as I'd always dreamed it would be.
And here's the thing, if you ask yourself if you are happy with where you are now you might say one thing but if you ask yourself if your ten year old self would be happy with where you are now you might say something completely different.
I think at 26 years old I found myself spending some time with my younger self and I didn't like the way I looked through her eyes.
Not that there was anything terrible about my life, there just wasn't anything inspiring about it either. There wasn't anything that made me jump out of bed in the morning or that kept me up late at night.
Nowadays I have more lists of things that do both these things than I have hours in the day.
It's pretty exhausting but it can be exhilirating too.
Sure, there's lots I still haven't done yet (my latest joke is it's easier to get an MA than it is to get a date in this city) but there's also something I've never felt before which is...a sort of connection.
I don't know how to describe what it is I feel I'm connected to, nature, karma, fate etc but when I look around my room now I don't feel like I need to change everything and when I don't know what the hell is going on deep down I know it's ok because the struggle means I'm getting somewhere - that I'm taking a step on a path that's heading in the direction I need to go.
At 26 I had a mid life crisis, by 27 I had disconnected from my life as I knew it then and now, at 28, I feel connected to a completely different way of life.
I don't know what my ten year old self would say about me now (though I think she'd wonder why I don't own horses by now) but I'm pretty sure if I were to spend some time with her again it wouldn't result in any sort of crisis this time.
My life now isn't the one she dreamed about living but it is more likely that it might become it.
I'm still 2 years off my deadline and I hope in that time life continues to evade, challenge and completely surprise me.
If nothing else it'll give me a better anecdote to tell.

Good things come to those who...try, try and try again.

2008-12-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

Tonight was another reminder of why I chose to call this blog Burnley girl's blog. As most writers will agree titles are incredibly important for what you write. I guess I am made up of parts of many different things, part Scottish girl, part London girl, part Media girl, part Traveller girl, part Student girl...but I am, and always will be, for the most part a Burnley girl.

Burnley just beat Arsenal 2 v 0 in the quarter finals of the Carling Cup and already the headlines are celebrating the Burnley Big Mac or the Burnley Beast and rightfully so!
This is the first time in 25 years that they are in the semi finals of the Cup, the third time in a row they've beaten a London Premiership team to get here and the fourteenth goal (including penalties) they have scored to prove they deserve it.
Watching the game on my TV made me feel both incredibly close to Burnley and yet so far away from it at the same time.
I longed to be amongst the crowd, my voice coarse, my hands raw and my toes frozen cold.
I realised that me wanting to be there wasn't just excitement at how amazing the game was it was actually me wanting to remember who I am.

Recently, a couple of people have told me how they have left me to figure things out myself because they thought I was tough enough to cope without their help.
I had started to feel that they'd let me down or neglected me in some way.
I know that although on the one hand, everyone needs help and I am only human, on the other, they are completely right.
The tougher things are the deeper you have to dig down into the true nature of who you are and some, if not most, of that is determined by where you're from.
The characters in my latest play are from Burnley and I'm from Burnley and tonight I was reminded what that meant.
People from Burnley are not afraid to be the underdogs and relish the opportunities they are given where they get to work hard at what they love to achieve their goals.
I should not be afraid of the odds being stacked against me, of being left to struggle on my own every now and again or of the huge amount of hard work I have ahead of me to achieve my golas and neither should the characters in my play.
If I can't remember that then I will be nothing more than an exile who is letting the boys back home down.
But if I can live up to the challenges I face like the Burnley team keeps doing these days then I know I will have earned the right, regardless of where I live, to call myself a Burnley girl.

I think I love you...So what am I so afraid of?

2008-11-30T14:07:00.000-08:00

Everyone looks forward to the weekend and every weekend usually brings along an exciting event or time to enjoy yourself.
This weekend for me will go down as one of the weekends to remember not because it was the most action packed or fun-filled but because it was turning point of all the things that have recently come to pass and made me believe that anything is possible.

Nothing conformed to convention but it all exceeded expectations and the relief of things not going the way they should have left me feeling lighter than air.
Someone who's honesty had upset me greatly in the past actually gave me inspiration, a person who thought they'd let me down gave me a great gift by challenging me to do something I never would have done and a person who's talent I admired turned out to admire me too.

Most of all I completely and utterly fell in love with writing for performance all over again.
I have been struggling with one of my projects so much recently I had forgotten all of the reasons I became so committed to creating it in the first place.
Through a complete accident I was forced into writing a small piece of theatre in a very short space of time and it made me realise that the most important thing is an idea, that the possibilities are endless and that discipline is half the battle. I found myself in position which gave me a kickstart to all those things and whilst I wouldn't exactly describe it as a walk in the park I would say it felt like a refreshing sea breeze - neither of which are easy metaphors to summon when you live in the middle of a city like London.
I re-discovered that what you write is like the start of a relay race and it must be passed on to the cast and crew who then pass it on to the audience.
If you have written something just pass it on, the worst thing that could happen might not be as difficult as creating it was and the best thing that could happen is that it could turn out better than you ever imagined it.

For me this weekend writing for theatre felt like kissing someone for the first time.
The desire can completely take over you but the fear can be crippling and whilst the experience can sometimes be disappointing it can also totally blow your mind.
You know how to do it, you've done it before yet you have no idea what might happen so you might think about it for ages, you worry, maybe even talk about it too much, perhaps you procrastinate but then you do it - this intimate thing that comes from your soul - and whether it is good bad or ugly; it makes you feel alive.

Once you kiss someone once there's usually a lingering question about whether you'll kiss again.
You want to do it, but you want it to be right and you're scared of what it might lead to, or worse that it might not lead to anything.
I don't know if the things that happened this weekend will ever happen again or if they do if they'll be as good but there's one thing I do know.
There's lots of reasons to love whatever it is you love but there's always more reasons to be scared of loving it.
The only way to make sure one doesn't overtake the other is just to keep doing it.
If you're doing someting big, take a break and do something small.
If things aren't going to plan, then plan something different.
But if you don't keep doing it then you might forget why you wanted to do it - and that is definately scarier than anything else that could possibly happen.

Evolution Underground

2008-11-25T14:48:00.000-08:00

After a night out last week for a friend's birthday I found myself on the tube heading home, admittedly quite tipsy at this point, discussing evolution.
Not monkey-into-man type discussions, more along the lines of how as a single seasoned londoner you evolve, sometimes without even knowing it.
Take my man pal for example - I have known him 8 years and in that time I have seen him evolve into a kind, wise man full of passion and patience.
Not that he wasn't any of those things to begin with and not that he isn't still as much fun after two bottles of Sauvignon Blanc as he ever was...but it just seems like both his head and heart have a greater capacity to be true to himself than they did before.
The passing of almost a decade since I met him has brought about many things that I never would have dared to predict, a few things I wish I could change but also more good times than I can even begin to remember - and a fair chunk of them involve him, or at least countless messages to his voicemail shouting "I'm by the speaker on the left - where are you?".
I know at times he's taken flak for being my mate and I'm grateful that he never let it alter our friendship, so that no matter what we were always able to talk a lot, laugh a lot and usually do those things whilst drinking a lot too.
The one thing we've never been able to do is be anything other than completely honest with each other.
That's why on a recent random Monday evening I found myself attempting to dispense relationship advice to him and trying to explain all this to him in a far less articulate way.
It sort of came out as "you're the same person but also you're a different person, you know?".
I don't think it made much sense to him at the time or to me actually until I heard someone say that as a writer, you have to make growth your ultimate goal.
At first I thought they meant that perhaps you should aim to grow by shaping your writing into what people want but what they actually meant was the opposite, that to truly evolve with your work you have to stay true to yourself and keep doing your best. If you do you will grow with your work and if you send that out into the marketplace then it will respond eventually.
In other words, keep giving them you until you is what they want.
I run the risk of descending into a 'to thine own self be true' cliche moment but I think the two conversations are linked and when I realised that I felt relieved.
My mate has grown into a stronger person beacause he has asked himself what he wants out of life and has been dedicated and determined to finding the answer.
Writing can be inspiring, frustrating, satisfying, challenging, scary and crazy all at once.
As a wannabe writer I constantly feel like I don't know what I'm doing and I keep expecting it to get easier but it doesn't.
As a single Londoner I feel like things are the same as they have always been but are also completely different too and I sometimes wonder if that'll ever get any easier too.
Growth never stops so neither should you.
Keep writing, dating, talking and laughing.
Keep giving them you until you is what they want.

Astrological Obsessions...

2008-11-23T03:42:00.001-08:00

I have a basket next to my desk which is full of notebooks of all different shapes and sizes.
I have notebooks to do a sort of mini analysis of things I have watched; one for plays I have seen, one for films I have seen and one for TV programmes I have seen so that I can remember who the writer was and what I loved about their structure, setting or characters.
I have one that lists all my favourite writers with a little picture (It is important to be able to recognise your favourite writer if you ever meet them) and a CV of their work.
I have a notebook full of writing exercises from all the different courses I have been on or books I have read about getting started and/or beating writer's block.
I have one notebook for scribbling thoughts from books I have read that have nothing to do with writing - Lance Armstrong's books and Michael J Fox's autobiography being the most inspiring and therefore taking up the most room in there.
I have a little one for writing down the dreams I have, a tiny one that I carry in my bag and scribble down ideas in when I'm on the tube and one with a gorgeous cover that I use for unconscious writing when I'm tucked up in bed.
Finally I have one to store the things that inspire me, move me or make me think. It can be a quote, an article, a phrase, a picture or just an idea...
Some of my favourites include;
"We do not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time"
Unknown
"If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly"
Edward Albee
"Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch the little fish you can stay in the shallow water but if you want the big fish you've got to go deeper."
David Lynch
"Fail. Fail again. Fail better"
Samuel Beckett
"Travelling from the known to the unknown requires crossing an abyss of emptiness, we first experience disorientation and confusion."
Dawna Markova
"In the end 3 things matter most; how well did you love, how fully did you love, how deeply did you learn to let go."
Buddha

As well as quotes and ideas, I stick copies of horoscopes that I have read in the book. Not just anyone's horoscopes, always Jonathan Cainer's.
Wether you do or do not believe in horoscopes this guy's website is worth a read anyway because his horoscopes are just beautifully written little snippets of insight into the feelings and frustrations of life.
I used to check the site maybe once a month and I would keep a copy of what he said maybe once every 6 months or so, but recently I have started checking every day without fail and I seem to be sticking a copy in my book once or twice a week.
I started to worry that I was becoming obsessed and that soon my walls be covered with print outs from this guy's website so I actually emailed him and explained that I had become a regular reader and whilst I loved what he wrote I was worried that I was relying on them too much.
I asked him if he thought this meant I was becoming weak because I needed someone else's opinion. To his credit he replied within an hour and he explained the process he goes through when writing his horoscopes.
I can't reveal his secrets obviously but it is always inspiring as a wannabe writer when you are given a peek into how someone who inspires you does their work.
He also said that my reliance on his horoscopes meant that maybe I was more self aware about my goals than I was before and it was a sign of strength that I was trying to see past my current obstacles of that day or week to the bigger picture of where I wanted to be and that if his website helped do that just a little bit then there was nothing wrong with that.

As I have mentioned on here before, I have been through a rough patch lately and here's some of the things he said which have helped;

24th Sept
"It's as if something within you is ready to make a once in a lifetime bid to escape a stale situation and to find some way to do more of what you have always believed you should be doing with your life"
25th Sept
"You know you must follow the dream. You also know you are not quite fully ready yet"
10th October
"Face the possibility of failure if you want to truly embrace success"
1st November
"You reall may as well trust the plan you have already made. It is no worse than any other plan, and considerable better than many"
3rd November
"This week you are only inches away from a big breakthrough so don't go travelling miles"
6th November
"You may be having an intense experience, but at least you are finally becoming clear about what does and does not need to happen next"

Check him out at www.cainer.com.

Are you proud of where you grew up???

2008-11-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

As is evident from the name of my blog, I am from Burnley.
I call myself a Burnley girl despite the fact that I have lived at different times in my life in different parts of the world (Luton, Glasgow, Huddersfield, Sydney, Lancaster, Peterborough, San Jose and London) and I left my family in Burnley when I moved out of home ten years ago.
Also, given the sorry state of local politics, economic decline, racial relations and football violence that have existed in the town's recent history some people could be forgiven for wondering why I still affiliate myself to the town with such loyalty.
I am currently drawing on my knowledge and experiences of Burnley to write a full length play for my MA in Creative Writing and it is one of the most difficult pieces of writing I have ever attempted and I'm not even half way through it yet. It is very strange to look back through your past using the (hopefully) more mature and analytical eyes of a writer.
When you are creating a story, can you be objective and subjective at the same time?
The wonderful writer and lovely man that is Kwame Kwei-Armah would argue that you can as he calls his plays “the theatre of my front room” because that’s where, for him, everything began. I think I feel the same way.
I am suddenly filled questions about what it means to belong to a place, what it is important to have in a community and what you do if those two things clash against one another...
I am suddenly just as critical of the people who think the town has nothing but a bad reputation as much as I am about the people who give the town nothing but a bad reputation.
As I dig deeper into the complexities of a town that has become the problem child of modern society I am discovering that the true motives of people from or for Burnley are not always what they seem and are certainly not represented in the national press the same way people in Burnley see them.
So, to answer the question am I proud of where I grew up?
Yes I am.
I have no shame about being a girl from Burnley, I have no regrets that I spent a significant chunk of my formative years growing up there and, even if I have lost most of my northern accent now, I would still use the last of my vocal chords defending Burnley and it's people if I had to.
I hope what I write will do the town justice and I hope I can do it soon enough to make it count (it is slightly alarming to discover people like Robin Soans and Anna Clarkson using the same subject matter as you are).
But even if my play surfaces when people are sick of hearing about it, even if people from Burnley hate it and disown me, even if it becomes known as the worst play in the world I will still cherish it.
Would I want to write about Burnley if I wasn't from there? Perhaps.
Would I need to write about Burnley if I wasn't from there? Perhaps not.
Writing it is proving painful, getting it out there will be excruciating I'm sure but I honestly don't think I can move forward as a writer or as a person until I have got through both.
I am hoping I can emerge 7 months from now as a stronger, more successful writer not someone who gave up on both their future and their past all in one go.
Perhaps what is comforting to know is that, either way, I will still be the same girl from Burnley.

How do you thank a memory?

2008-11-16T04:53:00.000-08:00

There is a man who was in my life briefly, fleetingly, about 18 months go and who I rarely see except for chance meetings in theatre foyers every now and again.
Yet he is a man whom I can say in all honesty that I will be indebted to for the rest of my life. And what’s strange is he doesn’t even know this.
He inspired me in a way that no one else ever has because he challenged me to the best I can be, even to be better than I believed I could ever be.
He made me realize that I had no excuse not to have the tools I needed to be successful at what I loved so I went out to learn them.
He didn’t do this because he had a deep affection for me or because he felt I needed or deserved it. He did it just by being himself.
He works in the theatre world and like a lot of theatre practitioners he demands the best of people, sometimes even before they know what that is.
I think that’s why I have such a passion for theatre, why I keep coming back to it no matter how much I rebel, because it’s not afraid to challenge you and go straight to the heart of who you are.
To have the dedication to work with different people on a regular basis, to get through rehearsals, to communicate intimate stories to complete strangers whether you are a writer, director, producer or actor takes guts and a passion that means that losers need not apply.
I love people who love theatre because they are the kind of people who can inspire someone to change their life without even knowing it.
I have recently discovered that in the world of writing being challenged is better than being complimented and I think that’s why the memories of this person have resurfaced.
I don’t know when I’ll see him again but, even if I saw him tomorrow, I don’t think I would tell him that it was him who challenged me, inspired me and helped me.
I will tell him one day…but I want to wait till I can do it in the opening pages of my first published play.

Sudden Death Victory

2008-11-13T14:15:00.000-08:00

So last night Burnley - who are 5th in the championship - beat Chelsea - who are top of the premiership in the 4th round of the Carling Cup. Not only did they beat them, but they did it after holding them to a 1-1 draw for 120 minutes of football and after going down to ten men and after the game went to sudden death penalties.

There just aren't words to express how amazing the evening was.

First of all, I was completely transported out of my London life and back in to my formative years as I stood next to my big brother right in amongst the six thousand Burnley fans that had travelled down to London.
Glorious memories of the many away games I went to growing up came flooding back as I was greeted by old friends and complete strangers with equal regard and warmth.
Within only a few minutes the overtly aristocratic Stamford Bridge - which is only 4 and a half miles from my flat - seemed like a different world with all it's suited fans and it's Marco Pierre White restaurant.
Not that any of this phased the Burnley fans - they still got the beers in, they still had a laugh and they still sang their hearts out from start to finish.
Even before kick off the atmosphere in the Shed End was victorious - Burnley fans were treating the game like their own cup final, a trip to London, a premiership team, it might as well have been at Wembley for they were just here to have a good time...and boy did they!
Burnley were the underdogs and though they were occasionally outplayed by some lovely football from Chelsea they never let Chelsea take complete control of the game - even after Drogba scored in the first half - and they never gave up either, as Akinbiyi proved with his equalizer in the second half.
Extra time felt like the longest 30 minutes of my life - I don't even watch the clock that much when I'm on the treadmill - every second was agonisingly slow and the only thing that eased the pain was to alternate whole heartedly joining in the Burnley chants with screaming 'Come on Burnley' at the players.
You might think it seems silly but I felt like the louder I yelled the more chance we would have of holding on and whether the yelling made any difference or not the fact was that we did manage to hold on till the very end.
Then the thought of stepping up to take penalties alongside some of the world's finest players didn't bother the boys from Burnley one little bit (apart from Elliot perhaps) and it certainly didn't bother Burnley's goalkeeper; the mighty Brian 'Beast' Jensen who saved not one, but two of Chelsea's attempts.
The feelings that coarse through you when you are watching your team take penalties - as any England fan knows - are an indescribably painful mixture of pride, nervousness and sheer hope.

In a way it made me smile to think that so many people - myself included - spend so much of their busy working life 'stressed out'. Next time I'm having a bad day in the office I'm going to try to imagine what Michael Duff felt like stepping up in front of the Chelsea fans to take his penalty.
And if I'm having a really bad day I'm going to try and remember how wonderful it felt watching Jensen save Mikel's penalty and take us through to the next round.

There's no doubt I am excited to see who we get next in the cup (I'm secretly hoping for another London premiership team) and I'm excited to see how the rest of the season pans out for us, but, as a London claret, nothing that comes after today will feel quite as sweet as the sudden death victory of last night because it wasn't just a game, it was much more than that.

As a wannabe playwright I love a good metaphor and the game somehow became a metaphor for my life at the moment.
A metaphor for how important it is to understand where you've come from in order to get to where you need to.
A metaphor for holding dear to your heart not wealth or glory but honesty and friendship.
A metaphor for facing your worst nightmare and not only not letting it defeat you, but actually going on to defeat it.
Christopher Booker, who has written a gloriously informative book called 'The Seven Basic Plots; Why We Tell Stories' would perhaps describe the plot of last night as a typical 'Overcoming the Monster' story where the monster is overcome by the hero.
Booker eloquently states that the bigger the threat of evil the more it matters that it is overcome and the more challenging it is for our hero to be victorious the more we truly experience the story.
Last night's victory was such an experience, and for the first time in nearly 20 years of being a Burnley fan, what the result of the game really means wasn't lost on me.

Achilles Heel

2008-11-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

I have said a couple of times on here already that I have been through a rough couple of weeks.
I don't want to wallow in it but I think I keep talking about it so openly because I am still getting over the shock of it - the shock of how sad I actually got before I admitted I was feeling sad.
My achilles heel has always been actually needing anyone and me being too proud to ask for help was a silly by-product of that.
It took some good friends and some strong drinks to come to terms with it all and for me to get to a place where I could say to people; hey, I'm struggling here, but give me chance and I'll be back on top form soon...
It reminds me of a great quote that our film tutor gave us last year for describing the hero's journey "though greatly weakened he is stronger".
It's only when the odds are stacked against the hero, where it seems too desperate to continue do they find the inner strength they never knew they had to deal with it.
Unlike the Hollywood movies we were studying at the time nothing in my life has changed, no dramatic reversal has occurred, no angel has arrived to solve my problems, no winning lottery ticket has fallen into my lap and it's still bloody raining but somehow it's true.
I was sad, I wanted to quit everything and hide from the world but now I feel like that just because I let myself feel that it's in the past now.
While I know the next 7 months are not going to be easy, it's not going to be that tough either and that - for the time being - is ok with me.

In case of emergency

2008-11-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

I am reading a fabulous book at the moment that I came across by chance in a lovely charity book store in Manhattan http://www.housingworks.org/social-enterprise/bookstore-cafe/
The book was 8 dollars and I nearly didn't buy it because, well that's the price of latte or two and I have SO many books (mostly plays or books about plays) on my to-read list already I didn't really need another one.
Something about the book felt right so I bought it and a couple of other books that were presents for my Brooklyn buddies.
I figured I'd carry it back to London and read it when I had the time (perhaps in 2011), but the other night I was quite stressed and my mind was racing at 1am so I decided to read a few pages of something that I didn't have any vested interest in to try and help me get to sleep...
I picked up this 8 dollar book off my overloaded 'to read' shelf and I haven't put it down since.

The book is called Writing from the Inside Out by Dennis Palumbo and it is a lovely, helpful and insightful book about the problems writers have with writer's block which he describes as a mish mash of doubt and fear and envy. He talks about each feeling and how it can be an obstacle to writing and how it is best to embrace it and channel that energy into your characters and your work. It's got very short passages so it's easy to dip in and out as needed which when you are constantly stealing snatches of time from life to do the thing you love is really helpful.
It has been one of the things that has really helped me through a very tough couple of weeks mostly because it made me realise I'm not alone and also because it has reminded me how much I love to write, which I think I had got myself so stressed I had simply forgotten.

The book has a 3 page section about the buddy system saying that every writer (and indeed creative person) needs a buddy they can call to discuss their work with, even if it's in a panic at 1am.
When I started my MA our tutor said we should find a buddy so that if we missed a lecture we could swap notes etc. So I chose my buddy (based on a shared love of the work of Enda Walsh) and we adopted a 2nd buddy too as she was on exchange for the year.
Since then these guys have changed from just the people I get missed notes off to my theatre buddies, my ideas buddies, my drinking buddies, my holiday buddies and well, my inspiration.
They constantly amaze me with their talent and their kindness and they have helped me out of what has felt like a deep hole of confusion recently.
I guess I just wanted to share how grateful I am that I prescribed to this 'buddy system' because it's the creative version of the 'In case of emergency...' contact. It's not that other friends and family don't help and support you - but those that go through the same hell and back as you are sometimes the only ones that can help you knock down whatever wall is holding you back, because they know who you are and what you are capable of and they are the only people in the world who believe that those two things are enough.
I have 2 great 'In case of emergency' buddies (and a few others too who are amazingly talented and incredibly supportive and always willing to buy me a pint of guinness to help ease the pain) and even if I never make it as a writer then at least I will have been lucky enough to meet these people and call them my buddies along the way.

If you know who your 'In case of emergency' person or people are then call them - call them straight away and tell them and ask them how they are doing.
If you don't yet have a person then get hold of Palumbo's book so that when you do you'll be able to help them out.

Page 28 of the book "Agents come and go. So do assignments, good ideas, flush times, and lean times. But for a writer, the buddy system - the long term, ongoing relationship with that one intellectual, emotional, creative soulmate - is a treasured constant".

Welcome to my world...

2008-11-08T09:30:00.000-08:00

I have had a bizarre few weeks recently and I've come to the conclusion that I would like a little slice of cyberspace to write my wonderings about the world and express my experiences, so here it is.
People seem to be moving away, time seems to be shrinking and nothing seems simple anymore so I hope that this blog will be a place where friends and family all across the globe can stay in touch and where I can learn a bit about myself along the way too...
So welcome to my world; please feel free to read my ramblings and don't be afraid to say hello!