Trials and Tiles

So, I just turned the handle of my saucepan around on heating up the spaghetti for our supper, and a whole bank of wall tiles fell off the kitchen wall. Marvellous. Another example of the delights of renting...

Still, I would have no play at all if I had never experienced such things. Imagine transforming it from 'Utility Room', where the boiler has broken down and we're gearing up to a power cut later, to 'Drawing Room', in which a sensuous log fire crackles and pops satisfyingly whilst the main characters sit reading Jane Eyre and sipping champagne.

No, it's all good practice for writing plays that speak to people. Or at least, speak to those who have ever lived in less-than-ideal conditions. Or at least those who have experienced breaking boilers, tumbling tiles and blankety blank (you fill in the gaps. Let's play: Guess what the next mishap will be). No, it's best I go through all this, along with my long-suffering husband and bemused child, so that I have plenty more fodder for the next play. Though I do feel sorry for my characters. It would be nice to think of them as moving forward in their lives, rather than facing another Christmas feeling freezing cold, wrapped up in duvets around their clothes, waggling their phones out of icicle-covered windows to gain a ounce of signal, eating budget vol-au-vents that taste of rubber... Where do I get my inspiration from??!

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Casting Doubt?

Good morning!

So, last night was the casting rehearsal. Having been beside myself with excitement about this stage last week, I turned up at the adult education centre feeling nervous, stressed, and terribly serious. I couldn't shake off this mood all evening, even after a glass of house red at the Slug and Lettuce across the road.

But I now have a great Andrea, and a brilliant Mum/Suzi, Dad/Barry. I was less sure about my Adam, only because I wanted to hear more from the actor, and it's probably my fault for making the part quite hard to gauge and get right. But said actor got into the swing of it well, and sparked off my Andrea swimmingly, so I'm sure it'll all be fantastic.

Crumbs - the responsibility! I had no idea that playwrights, directors and the like had such a hard job. I thought they just sat on their fold-up chairs, shoulders back, pen in mouth, enjoying the sun.

Certain actors really shone out, and we scrapped over them in the pub, each of us wanting a particular person for our lead female or male, each of us convincing the others that ONLY that particular actor could possibly do... Logistics (e.g. ages, sexes etc) made it harder still, as certain roles were just not suitable for for youngsters or for women etc. So we've done some doubling up, and had to tell some actors that they don't have parts - which is totally horrid. Luckily, that's not my job, but on the to-do list of our extremely dedicated tutor/director, Bev. We also have another director, called Nathan, who came down from Nottingham Hatch to direct two out of the four plays. I got to work with him, and he seemed good, and very committed to the project. Interestingly, he got the actors to swap around male and female roles, which threw me more than a little at the time, but I understood his logic afterwards. It gave a very good indication of how well each actor could get into the swing of the script and run with it, regardless of the particular part they were reading. And it also showed us who read well with whom and how they got on together in the roles.

So next week we're rehearsing at the Curve, in the room we'll be doing the performances in! We'll have our actors in place, and the directors will start directing, and hopefully us playwrights can join in - saying 'Noo, noo, nooooo!' and 'Yes, yes, yeeeees!' at appropriate moments. And I have to ask my long-suffering husband if he can be home even earlier than normal to look after our naughty child while I dash off to be at the theatre early for our extended rehearsal time. Oh crumbs. I feel a day off coming up for Husband, so he can 'chill' (i.e. lie across the sofa watching back-to-back old-fashioned versions of Sherlock Holmes. With the curtains drawn. And on such gorgeous days outside. How can he??!).

The new house is... well... Possibly the less said about it the better. The move went well. I can thoroughly recommend the removal men. And the lovely lady who cleaned our old house for us. I know - VERY lazy of us not to do it ourselves... But the lack of curtains in this new rental house (I should always include the word 'temporary' in that description. It'll make me feel better...), not to mention the massive flood in the kitchen yesterday after my mum had a bath, the dodgy fixtures and fittings and ... well, pretty much everything about this house is ... interesting. We feel totally like students all over again, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, with boxes and bags surrounding us (no point in unpacking much stuff when we're moving again in two-three months), and shower curtains pinned up with washing pegs etc. And there's a nasty drains smell that wafts through the kitchen every now and then, making us gag. Thank heavens it's Spring/Summer and we can open doors and windows and usher the little ones out into the totally concrete but actually quite inviting back garden for a spot of mud-cake making in the sandpit, or saving princesses from mortal danger in the police car thing...

So, I had my doubts after the casting session last night, but actually, I'm very happy with my actors. And with the ones chosen for the roles in the other plays. I think it'll be a smashing night, and one to remember for the rest of our days.

Tune in next time.

Kirstyx

A Game of Drafts

Just sent off my finalised draft to our tutor, Bev. Plus my blurb for the programme. Oh, how I enjoyed that! I want the job of blurb-writer. Full-time. At a theatre. Or tv station. Or anywhere, in fact. So much fun! And I've said what ages I want my actors to be. Suzi is now definitely in her late teens. It's going to be a really cringeworthy relationship with Roger, in his fifties. The more shocking, the better. We've got some DMU drama students in the mix as well as professional actors, so one of them would suit the role very well...

Should really be packing those boxes...

Went to States of Independence earlier - a writers' fair held at De Montfort Uni. Great event. A pity I only made it for the last half hour (garden party earlier that day, preceded by, of course, packing). But I got to meet the editor at Pewter Rose whom I worked with on my story and poem. And picked up some interesting leaflets. There seems to be an arts association who are interested in plays... Must read the literature properly. And I finally showed my face to the Leicester Writers' Club members there, who might otherwise have decided I was a fictional character seeing as I NEVER make it to club meetings at the moment.

Supper tonight is the contents of our now-turned-off fridge, all cooked up together to make a delightful, unsavoury mash. Sausages, fish fingers, peas and the odd carrot. Lovely. I shall tuck into that with vigour just as soon as I've cleared out that over-spilling drawer across the room...

Over and Out for now. Catch up soon.
Kirstyx

From Page to Stage

I am an over-excited child.I stumbled into bed on Wednesday night 1.30am after celebrating The News, only to snore like a volcano (when on earth did that start happening?), toss and turn, and then wake up like a wide-eyed baby and go bouncing down the stairs BEFORE the alarm went off. Freddie made it to pre-school on time for the first time since... well, since pre-school started back in September.

And The News is? That my play 'Futility Room' has made it through to a rehearsed reading at Leicester's Curve Theatre (the main theatre here). 'Beside myself' does not do an ounce of justice to how I currently feel.

The actors are booked in (twenty of them!), the director having meetings with our playwriting tutor, Bev, tomorrow, the finalalised scripts due to Bev at 9pm tomorrow evening.

Today, pre-school is off all day because of the parish show, which means I have a bouncing four-year-old currently plonked in front of Bob the Builder: Can You Fix It? - the Cbeebies computer game. An extremely useful learning too, I find. Tomorrow we are going for a birthday lunch for a lovely friend down the road, then leaving His Princeliness at her house so we can pack our possessions into boxes, so that we can move house on Monday morning. We have clutter everywhere, half-filled containers littering every room, piles of recycling to take to Oadby recycling centre, and a layer of dust so thick that Freddie's been practising his writing skills in it. Of course, I should, technically speaking, be applying my mind to all of this, given that this House Move is something I can't ignore and that if I don't do something, come Monday morning we shall be homeless, and covered in dust.

But - the play!! The futility of my efforts to pack boxes. Especially with a four-year-old in the house. The futility looms in the utility room... ha, ha.

We get to cast the actors next week. SO exciting. On Wednesday night we meet them all and decide who will best suit each part. We have a great range of ages and sexes (like, male and female. Stupid sentence.). And almost all of the actors are professionals, which is fantastic. Can't quite believe it.

So here we are, Friday morning, script lying on the floor, child whooping every time he gets a plank successfully lowered into Bob's yard, someone coming later to relieve us of our giant, space-devouring double buggy (from when I looked after our nephew Rafe), and one very over-excited, jittery and utterly distracted little girl. Namely me.

Tune in next time.

Kirstyx

Dirty t-shirts

Hello!

Does the term micro-blogging exist?

It's Day Four of Freddie's new life at Pre-School. And his Pre-School t-shirt, of which he is immensely proud, has been eaten in, slept in, had ice lollies dripped down it, and been used as a handkerchief. We had to prize it off him on Sunday afternoon for a brief period so my mum could wash and dry it, ready for re-wearing by 6pm that night.

This morning, however, saw the arrival of two, new, bluer-than-blue school shirts, clearly visible in Freddie's (also new) see-through school bag. The manager had put them in there for our collection, and mightily glad we were to collect them too!

It is also Day Two of ... wait for it... Me Working. As in, for money. Yes, money - that thing that comes out of machines when you put your plastic card in them! So I feel like a proper person now. I can afford my own copy of 'Grazia' now. Well, almost. I've only just started, and won't be paid for some time. But the 'Grazia' is on the shopping list, waiting eagerly for the trip to the newsagent.

And Tom is continuing to work, ploughing through MSC student scripts and poking himself awake with his marker pens. Or missing himself and splodging his t-shirt. The very same t-shirt that will join that other garment of Pre-School fame sitting atop my teetering pile of washing waiting to be done...

Who is She?

Who is she, walking down the street, buggy ahead of her, arms outstretched?
Who is she, passing the semis and the front lawns, here a burst of Spring yellow, there a smart sports car, sunning itself?
Do you see her go, glancing at the trees laden with blossom? She likes the contrast of pink petals with the lush green grass below.
There is the local shop, complete with affable owner.
There is the bus stop. It's not far to town, really.
Here are the little cafes and a couple of delis. She smiles hello at a familiar mother and child. Gym group, she thinks.
They find a spot, and order their usual: a pot of tea for her, an 'apple' juice for him, though really it's orange but he insists on calling it by the wrong name. A tantrum might ensue if she corrects him, so she lets it go.
He wants the Spider Man magazine they bought at the newsagent. She gets it out and shushes the high-pitched excitement issuing from his small mouth.
She reaches for a newspaper on the next table. There's that pain again. In the stomach. Like a knot, tightening.
A jangling buzzing sound breaks through the cafe hum. 'Mummy!' he shrieks. His eyes are huge. She fumbles in her bag and pulls out the shiny black offender. 'It's a text,' she says.
'Who is it, who is it?' he says. He reminds her of the irritating man from Big Cook, Little Cook.
'It's from Sarah,' she says. 'The one we met at the Monday group. She's inviting us for a play date. That's nice of her.' She wants to feel pleased. It's a step forward. She stares into space a bit.
'Mummy! Mummy!'
'Sorry – what?'
'Why are you crying?'
'I don't know. I'm just sad.'
'Don't be sad, Mummy. Be happy.' He does the 'cheese' grin that she asks him to do when she takes snaps of him.
This woman, panini in hand, small child slurping from a straw on her lap, she has taken a pin and pricked it on the central-most point of her map of Britain. And here she is.
Who is she?

Leicester Life

So here I am in Leicester, feeling so rusty at writing I'm going to need a bucket of oil to fix me.

Where to start? Crumbs, it's late. Can I delete this thing or do I have to post it now even though I'm numb from the efforts of moving city and introducing myself again and again with a false grin on my face, wanting to wail inside about missing my home in Cambridge with it's terrible carpet and mould up the walls.

The new house is great. Big, grown-up, and full of vocabulary I'm simply not used to, like 'utility room', 'conservatory', 'cupboard under the stairs'. The garden is equally daunting. It's actually long enough that I could do my running right here, at number 23, without fear of passers-by staring at me, dogs nipping my feet etc. Although we are in view of the church we now go to, so plenty of potential for midweek teenage groups to have a good old laugh at the red-faced slummy mummy trying to get fit in her back garden.

The man two doors down is very chatty and has lent me his book on cycling, with diagrams to help you negotiate roundabouts and scary traffic etc. So far I haven't had the nerve all the same to get on my bike. The cars go so much faster here, it's a job just staying alive as a pedestrian. Or so it can feel.

In the absence of friends to share my Freddie-filled days with, I have become acquainted with the odd cafe in and out of town just to break up the hikes up and down hills pushing a yabbering three-year-old to swimming, gym group, Nippers etc. We like Fingerprints Cafe, Dominoes (complete with giant toy shop next door featuring a wooden train tickety-ticking round the ceiling), the posh deli on Queen's Road, the Loros bookshop and cafe, John Lewis, the Cradock pub... Freddie now cannot scoot past on his Mini Micro without shouting 'I wanna go in THERE!' to all of the above venues. Gone are the days of whooshing by, leg cocked up like an ice-skater, a jubilant 'Wheeee!' emitting from his chocolate-stained lips. Sweeties and crisps are the foodstuff of choice these days, in my efforts to entice the small but mighty Ridge out on escapades across the streets of Leicester in search of The Library, The Leisure Centre, A Cashpoint that Actually Works...

And I am muddling through it all, getting a lot of fresh air, making a lot of mistakes, uttering many a bad-tempered gripe and just trying to remember that I'm not on planet Mars but just in Leicester, a mere hour and twenty minutes from Cambridge and not much further from London. I have the internet now (after three weeks of living in a weird phone-less, internet-less, friend-less bubble) and can at least start to write about how it's all going - the good and the bad. And God still loves me, despite my grumblings.

So Leicester life is not so bad really. It'll just take time to feel like home.

Good night, all.
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