"Du disturbest mein Life!"

At the end of her blog post today, the lovely Harriet instructed us all, "If you are seeing your best friends this week make sure you tell them how awesome they are!"  Well, I must confess, I have been missing my own pain in the backside best pal of late, so I thought I would give it a go.

But being nice to Simon doesn't come easily to me (don't scoff, readers, if you met him you'd understand.), and I simply can't condone feeding his gigantic ego any further, so instead I'm going to say:

Du bist ein Tvat. 

I miss you disturbing my life. 

"Oh, July!" day on the 21st?

Späters!

Frau

x

Queen for a Day

"Why Hamlet, dear, you've written us a play..."

"Nothing lasts forever in the theatre.  Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot - and then it's gone."


Another production has been and gone.  Or rather, has chugged along unassumingly for months, has sputtered and fizzled a bit, has exploded into glory, and has suddenly, unbelievably, ceased to exist.

I've said it before, I know, but putting on a show is an emotional bloody rollercoaster.  Nowhere else do you experience such completely consuming glee and glumness within such a short space of time.  No flippin' wonder we're all tired, cast-mates!

Truthfully, the Post-Show Bereavement isn't too strong right now.  (There's a lot to be said for a full-time job - I get the after-show blues far less devastatingly now than I did in my student days!)  Everyone is a little sad it's over, and Facebook is comfortingly flooded with photos and reminiscences.  I think the saddest thing is actually the knowledge that the glumness will quickly fade, because with it goes the excitement, too.  I'll always have my memories of this brilliant week, but how much will they mean to me, three weeks, three months, or a year from now? 

In February, you remember, I was in two big-scale shows within two weeks.  I had two scores, two librettos, two costumes, two casts, two opening nights and two final ever nights, and two consecutive Sunday mornings brought fresh show-hangovers.  It was a double whammy, a rollover, of everything I love and hate about performing, and how many times a week does that crazy, exhilerating, exhausting fortnight cross my mind now, four months later?  Hardly ever.  Two months from now I shall be home from Buxton and bitterly mourning Iolanthe, while A Tale of Two Hamlets will be a dusty old has-been of a memory.  Every show is the best one there ever was; every, every time.  Each new one pushes the previous ones further back and knocks off a bit more of their ancient sparkle.  Show-business, my friends, is fickle and heartless! 

In the grand scheme of all the shows in my past, and all the shows I hope will be in my future, it was small fry.  But while it was here it was a cracker, and worth celebrating.  Commemorating, if you like, since we're on a royal theme.  The best one there ever was, for now at least.  Queen for a Day.

Hmm.  Introspective eloquence an unexpected side-effect of post-show blues?  This lengthy blog post has been maudlin and self-indulgent, but I quite like it!  Makes a change from the wittering you get when I talk about dresses and lipstick, at any rate!

Dress rehearsal photographs of A Tale of Two Hamlets taken by my candy-floss-haired chum Liffy Wood.

Cool Brittania

Hello viewers, here is the one thousandth Jubilee-themed blog post you will have seen this week.

We kicked off the jubilations on Friday with a red, white and blue non-uniform day at school.  I'm usually wearing some patriotic combination of those colours on any given day, so I tried to think of something to give my outfit a little extra something to bring it from everyday clothes to dressing-up-at-work funtimes.  My accessory of choice turned out to be...

...white tights!

I swear, each time I have to grudgingly pay good money for a show-costume accessory, adamant that I will never wear said item again, it always ends up coming in useful at the most surprising of moments!

All day I was compared to either Snow White or Alice in Wonderland, which was rather flattering!

Red shoes: Charity frock swap

Red belt: Christmas present a hundred million years ago

Red lipstick:  Jemma Kidd

White tights: Can't 'member.

White blousey thing: Jumble sale

White pearls: Market stall in Bulgaria

White hair flower: No idea.

Blue dress:  Dorothy Perkins.

Blue eyes: model's own!

I think I looked swell, but all day I had dress jealousy.  Imagine being surrounded by hundreds of small girls, all in full-skirted, polka-dotted, striped or Union-Jack-ed red, white and blue dresses, cardis, socks and shoes!  We have some very well-turned-out children at our place!  I must say though, it made me very sad that almost all the little boys' contribution to the theme was an England football kit.  Words can not describe how much I hate, loathe and despise football.

Anyway, after one of those brilliant work days where by morning playtime you're already able to say that the amount of cake eaten has far surpassed the amount of work done, I turned my back on school for a whole week. (Which is almost over already!)

On Saturday I journeyed down to the capital to see Alexa's new house, celebrate her birthday and, of course, to see the Queen!

There she is!

It was chilly and drizzly down at the Thames river pageant, but we had a jolly good time.  We saw all of the action on a big screen, and when the flotilla finally reached our bit of the river the crowd got really excited.  It was all very infectious.  When her Majesty's barge went by, everybody got the giggles!  Here are a couple more snaps:

And then I came home and dressed up like the Queen.

(disclaimer: there was an actual good reason behind this!)