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29 January
Somebody asked me yesterday if I take on so much work
to avoid living my life. Really!? I’m not a violent person but the only
suitable response that came to mind was an act of violence. I refrained.
The joy and pain of freelance is that you take the good projects when
they come up – and hope they don’t all come up at the same time! Do I
deliberately try to run my life at one step away from a coronary level?
Of course not, and people forget the downtime between projects, of which
there can be a lot.
I admit my start to the year has not been the smoothest in terms of time organisation or, more to the point, geographical organisation for that matter. On that note I flew to London the other day – here for a few days. I got off the plane, dumped my bag at the hotel and headed to a lunch meeting with my publisher (ooh that sounds kind of good to be able to say), from there to an info and planning meeting for the workshops that were due to start the next day, followed by a dinner. Then the next day I headed into all day workshops followed by obligatory theatre productions each evening.
Now, while I may be a theatre person, I struggle with the quality and content of most productions I go and see. To be precise I struggle with forcing myself to sit there and if you are going to put in an interval be prepared that you may not see me return. Apparently I drive everyone mad with this as there seems to be some expectation that I should want to see all theatre. Why? Why would anyone want to watch crap which, sorry, is a good description of far too much mainstream theatre and not so mainstream for that matter. Worse is how many productions I am obliged to sit through because friends or ex-students are in them or directing them. Give me a break!
So before leaving the States on this latest jaunt back to the UK I went to see a new musical, ‘Bring it on’, - a cheerleading musical that was apparently about coming of age or some crap like that. Can you see where this is heading? The highlight was waiting to see if they would drop any of the cheerleaders they were throwing in the air, as I sat there contemplating death by musical. I’m not the greatest musical fan – there are two I have seen that I really liked and have gone back to. The rest blur into one great big repetitive mind numbing song and dance.
Can you believe I used to direct musicals? I can’t. For 5 or 6 years too!
Anyway back to London. On the first night we went to see La Soiree – an alternative burlesque style circus. I had a great time – very entertaining, lots of fun and very clever in parts. Of course there was the incident with the red handkerchief and the one act nobody quite expected or was ready for. The magic act with a twist let’s say as the red handkerchief miraculously disappeared into some predictable and one very unpredictable place. You kind of have to go see it. Just remember the word burlesque! I mean where did you honestly think a naked magician was going to pull the red handkerchief from?
The next night was Vernon God Little and I almost did not go because they told us it was 3 hours long. Three hours – be serious. There’s my other point about theatre – say it in one act of no longer than 75 minutes! Nobody needs 3 hours and yes Mr Shakespeare you are included in that.
So we decided to go and leave at the interval. It actually was a very smart production with some very good points and it was 2 hours 30 minutes long which is not at all okay but better than 3 hours. I took a 5 minute nap in the first half which could have been twenty minutes shorter with better staging but I was curious enough to stay, and had woken up sufficiently. Overall it was a good production, some good acting (not all), great ensemble work, very clever stage set and not a bad commentary in general. Also the stage production was much better than the book – unusual.
Now I’m packing up ready to fly back to the States tomorrow and start all over again…
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20 January
Great flight out – the plane was empty and practically all the crew were
not only Scottish but from Glasgow which made me very happy. It was
comforting to hear Scottish accents and they always seem friendlier
(well most anyway). So it was straight into auditions then trying to
work out a schedule of how I am going to run my life for the next few
months trying to do work across three continents and write a book.
How’s that working out you may ask.
Well don’t. I don’t want to talk about it!!!
I think you can get the general idea of how it’s going.
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18 January
Getting ready to fly out to the States and am amazed
at how calmly disorganised I appear to be. All last week was running the
workshop and rehearsals so there was little time to pack or get things
in order yet I strangely feel in control. The hardest thing of late has
been that I have not been swimming as often as normal lately, there’s
just never time. But I need to find ways of making time for that as I
need it both physically and mentally.
I finished up the last session with the osteopath and we spoke of my aftercare and what I need to do. He spoke to me again about how I need to learn to live without the pain now. When he told me this previously it seemed like such a ridiculous statement, living with pain was hell, how could it possibly be difficult to live without it? But I am learning that it really is true. My body is constantly on the defence ready for the pain to return, as a result I sit, stand, even lie certain ways trying to protect myself from a pain that is no longer there. Of course it returns occasionally, rarely though and never lasts.
It’s just funny to think you could ever have to train yourself to live without pain. Ironic in so many ways.
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8 January
‘…he couldnt separate what
he had chosen from what had chosen him..’
(from Odysseus's Secret by Stephen Dunn)
That quote sums up my life
at the moment. I never really thought about it before and then I came
across this quote today and suddenly something in my head clicked,
something suddenly made sense.
So it’s a week into the New Year and I’m just getting round to writing a
blog now. Clearly more regular blog writing was NOT one of my New Year
resolutions. The New Year came and so did the hectic lifestyle I thought
I was amending. The New Year began with rehearsals being squashed into
any available time possible (domestic abuse play so hardly a laugh a
minute). As I write I am in Orlando – I arrived three days ago and I
leave tomorrow so in case you are wondering no I am not here to have a
great time in Disneyland but for a work meeting. I secretly hoped to
make it to Harry Potter’s world at Universal studios though I have no
idea why – I think other people are guilty of planting that seed of
desire in my head. I get back for a week during which I am running a
course all day every day, with rehearsals at night for the domestic
abuse play.
Thing is that after that week in which I have a zillion things to do I am in the States for 3 months which is full of positives but scary for all the things I need to have done before I go. On top of that I have a book (academic book) to write in the next four months! Should I be panicking? Yes!
I am going to be in the States for three months to direct a play – a strange choice of play in many ways and a blast from the past with ‘Flowers for Algernon’ and I will also be doing a project. I will be one week into the three months when I need to fly back to London to give a workshop on Applied Theatre and then in the duration of the three months I will also be travelling to Canada and probably Ghana. I don’t know what I was thinking when I planned all of this – actually that is the problem, I don’t think any planning came into it!
Anyway here’s my first super/crap list of the year:
Super
- Meeting up with the film team in Orlando – the dream team are back for
one last project! Didn’t we say that the last time???
- So many exciting possibilities for the year and the fact that they are
not what I was planning holds a certain excitement, right now the path
is leading me
- The writing and where it is heading
- The support for the charity especially after the problems with the
right to learn programme (check the newsletter to understand at
www.theatreversusoppression.com/newsletter.htm)
- The ‘Inception’ discussions: brilliant ideas I hadn’t ever thought of
before – this is one of my favourite movies, of course it s due to the
subject matter, a subject that makes complete sense in my head
- Supportive friends
Crap
- Too little time and far too much to do within set deadlines
- Long haul flights, being stuck in time and watching seriously crap
movies on the plane – Sylvester Stallone you stole two hours of my life
with the crap that The Expendables was. I will never get that time back
you thief! You should be prohibited both from making and starring in
movies for the rest of your life.
- Long meetings with people not keeping to the topic and talking too
much and stealing my will to live in the process
- How hard it has been to find vegetarian food in Orlando! Seriously
what is going on there?
- Wasting time and being lazy
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28 December
Do not fear (I'm sure you weren't) I did indeed make it up north in the
snow – actually it was ice not snow. A few neighbours pushed my car out
onto the road – it seems my car’s traction warning system is so advanced
it simply refuses to drive onto ice! And after leaving Cardiff the roads
were absolutely fine and I made it up in record time (no I was not
breaking speed limits). Christmas was cosy and quiet although the wise
ones have been outdoing themselves as usual. Interestingly one of their
neighbours sent them a Christmas card addressed to my father and ‘Joy’.
Joy is their dog (not my mother’s state of being honest) but it turns
out their neighbour thinks it is my mother’s name which amused me no end
as all the neighbours can possibly be hearing is my dad shouting things
like ‘Sit down Joy’, ‘That’s enough Joy’, Get to bed Joy’, ‘Walk Joy’,
‘Calm down Joy’, ‘Stop barking Joy…..’ What can I say?
The wise ones have also been challenged by the snow and ice. On the way back from church it was, to be fair, an ice rink. My mother was gripping onto my arm in an attempt to embed her nails in the skin permanently, my father was wittering on for the 100th time that morning about how bad the ice was that he’d almost done the splits I don’t know how many times that morning. Oh and it was raining so my mother had put her hood up – which was too large – and completely covered her eyes. So I tell her to walk on the grassy bit as there was more grip in the snow there and what does she do? She walks into the bush and starts flailing around as if she’s been attacked by a triffid, still with the hood over here eyes (obviously that wasn’t helping). My father comes skidding down behind us commenting – yet again – how he’d nearly just done the splits and then stops to ask why my mother is stuck in a bush. At this point I could do nothing but laugh which wasn’t helping anyone but honestly it was like some special needs outing of the aged. Anyway I removed my mother from the bush, and removed the hood from her eyes before she started thinking she was going blind, the splits man tells me to grab one of her arms while he takes the other forgetting that the idea is that her feet can still reach the ground and basically she was swung all the way home whimpering every now and again Even as an ironic title calling these two ‘wise ones’ is a far stretch for anybody’s imagination these days.
Then of course there was the trip to the sales which almost ended me as wise one (mother) went missing in action for twenty minutes and as usual did not think to turn her cell phone on (she doesn’t like turning it on because it uses up the battery AAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!). This was followed by a trip to the supermarket – why oh why did I ever offer to go along? How many times must we keep going up and down the same aisle? How often can we forget something that we have walked passed ten times? And to top it I was told I was lucky because that day the wise one had made a list of what she needed to get.
Rather worryingly I did something that I fear is the wise ones rubbing off one me. Lately in dimmed light I have had problems reading small print so I had made an appointment with the opticians to get my eyes checked. Thing is I do have glasses, mainly to help a muscle in one eye that was apparently responsible for giving me migraines. Well I never needed them to see and the migraines are rare now so I never wore the glasses. Anyway optician said I had 20-20 visions still and that the problem was a muscle one so he gave me a line of tiny print that I could read with some effort and suggested I put on the glasses and try. Amazingly I could read it with no problems so I felt like a total idiot realising if I had actually worn the glasses I would have been fine. In my defence I do not need the glasses to see with which makes it hard to remember to carry them around or put them on. That’s my excuse anyway.
A few people have lately asked me why I never do the super crap lists anymore and requested they be revived so they will be temporarily at least.
Super
- Made it up to Scotland after all
- Lots of lovely Christmas presents especially my Kindle
- A white Christmas
- Hearing from lots of people I had lost contact with
- Wise ones attempting to walk on the ice
- Wise one in a bush with hood over her eyes while other one slides
around ‘doing the splits’
- Soya lattes in Starbucks and actually, shock horror, Costas too.
Though I have had to move to decaffeinated since the main problem with
my soya latte addiction is that I don’t actually like coffee.
- The two-book deal - very happy about that
- Not needing to buy glasses
- Improvement in my back/pelvis situation
Crap
- Having a geriatric insinuate I was a sexual predator
- Too much ice especially on the roads
- Driving up to Scotland with frozen windscreen wash
- Trying to watch TV with the wise ones who believe only in asking
questions about what is happening in the middle of a programme and
sitting in silence during the adverts!!!!!
- Losing one of the wise ones in a shop for twenty minutes and losing my
will to live in the process
- Wise one’s inability to 1.turn on cell phone and 2.hear it even when
it is turned on. Give me patience, please God, give me patience.
- Going round the supermarket with a wise one
- Eating too much crap
- Wasting time I really need to spend working
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21 December
MY CHRISTMAS IS IN JEOPARDY AND I AM NOT HAPPY. The snow came, and I’m
not talking a light flurry and picture perfect like a Christmas card. Oh
no we’re talking Britain at a standstill – airports, trains, and roads
all in trouble. I haven’t been able to move my car for three days. Ok I
could get out there with a shovel and dig up half the street but that
aint happening (actually I was hoping somebody else would do it). So the
drive up to Scotland is looking almost impossible right now. Worse snow
is forecast for tomorrow then an easing up for the next two days (well
that depends on which forecast you listen to) so there is a very small
glimmer of hope. No offence to Wales but I really don’t want to spend
Christmas here and I do appreciate all the Christmas breakfast, lunch
and dinner offers but I want to be in Scotland (and not because I will
get more presents though of course it does make it all the more
appealing).
Anyway in the last four days I feel like I have walked the length and breadth of Cardiff as I have been forced to use my legs as the only available mode of transport. I have been shocked by the realisation of how lazy I am with the car, I mean nowhere in Cardiff is really that far and it hasn’t been that big a deal having to walk everywhere (though the novelty will rapidly wear off if the snow keeps freezing up into hard packed ice).
Yesterday I was walking into town and en route an elderly (very elderly) man in front of me slipped and fell. I helped him up (he was very grumpy) and offered to walk with him a little as he said his house was nearby and he was quite shaken up. He grumped about how he needed bread and he wanted to go to the shop so I said I would go get it. Now let me just point out that I am no good Samaritan and actually he was one very grumpy old man but I did think if that was one of my grandparents I’d hope someone would help them (well they are all dead so that would be weird but you know what I mean). Thing is I have a conscience that is the plague of my life. It drives me to do all sorts of decent things against my better judgement.
Grumpy old man then said he didn’t believe I’d bring him the bread so he’d stand there (going by the way he was teetering I use the term ‘stand’ very loosely) while I ‘ran’ (his suggestion) up the road to the shop (how I was supposed to run in deep snow with a layer of ice underneath it was beyond me but I decided not to ask) then I’d bring him the bread and escort him to his door. Of course I will put all my plans on hold for grumpy – not like I had a choice at this point though I was starting to think I should have left him when he fell and ran up a side street before he would have seen me.
So I set off to get the bread and I swear he shouts after me ‘faster’. Faster! Faster! Are you kidding me?
I get the bread and head back, did he say thank you – no he said, ‘took you long enough’. Anyway I walk him round the block to his house with him gripping my arm so tight he almost stopped the blood flow. Then at the door he outdid himself. I swear you will not believe what ensued. He turns and says:
‘I’d invite you in for a cuppa but you might be a thief trying to get in my house to steal all my money.’ I start to say I really need to get going anyway choosing to ignore the accusation, but he hadn’t finished. ‘You could be planning to steal my money and kill me. That happens to old people a lot’. Yeh on the telly! So now I’m not only a potential thief, I’m a potential murderer too. But the worst was still to come as he rounded it off with….wait for this…’or you could be a sexual predator’.
Did I hear that right? Surely he did not just say that. With a look of horror (on every imaginable level) I only managed to screech ‘What?’ and he responds, ‘you heard me young lady don’t play the innocent with me.’ I thought of how insulting this was, how ridiculous, how rude, how tempted I was to slap him with his loaf of bread (which would have cemented his belief that I planned to kill him) and then I just couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing and I couldn’t stop. Some 90 year old bloke with a walking stick I had just helped thinks I could be a ‘sexual predator’ – this sums up my life and proves the saying that no good deed goes unpunished!
My laughter did not help his irritation levels so I tried to get a grip of myself and assured him he was safe and that I had to run because I was late for a meeting which was true. Then he said he wanted to give me something for my trouble. I insisted no at which point he pushes a 20p coin into my hand! That made my day!
So for the record to anyone out there with their doubts I can assure you I am not a thief, a murderer or a ‘sexual predator’. I have been called many things in my life but that truly is a first. And I have learned my lesson, next time someone falls help them up then run!
Oh and the good news – the book is happening…actually two books, first one to be released October next year, so I am going to be busy.
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14 December
Arrived back in the UK and it is bloody cold. I had to wait three hours
for the bus from Heathrow thanks to delays for some reason or another
and then the bus back to Cardiff was freezing. I was glad I had bought
shoes and not risked the journey back in my flip-flops. I was so
reluctant to buy shoes when I realised that I hadn’t exactly left the UK
prepared for my return there but it was a good investment in the end.
Anyway it was late, I hadn’t slept for so long and the bus was
uncomfortable, noisy and damn cold.
I was truly back in the UK. The whole bus journey everyone was moaning about the weather – British people really do just go on about the weather!
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8 December
So my pelvis got moved into the right position and that hurt like hell
(and that is actually an understatement). However the problem now is to
retrain the ligaments and muscles into the right position or they will
keep pulling the pelvis back after a few days. I walked out of the
clinic pain free that day and stayed pain free for 4 days before the
pelvis started being pulled back. Now this may sound dramatic, I know
there are people in infinitely more pain than I ever was, but to have 4
pain free days after 3 years and 3 months was extraordinary. I had no
idea how much it affected my life and so many aspects of it, how it
affected the way I stand, the way I sit, the way I walk. So things are
progressing well, it will take a couple of months but after that I
should be fine. Literally fine! No more problems!
Also been doing lots of
work this last week (about time you may be thinking and you would be
right). Some great groups for the different workshops and a range - a
couple of groups with teenagers and another with adults. All has gone
well and been a reminder to me of why I do this work and what makes me
passionate about the idea of the book (any progress on that is pending
until my return).
Singapore is ok, mixed feelings on that one. I miss Thailand and I am
restless for all the things that I need to be getting on with back in
the UK, yet enjoying this rest and being spoiled by lots of people
around me.
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4 December
Lots happening unexpectedly with a possibility of a publisher picking up
an academic book on applied theatre. It’s weird, I realise I have won
back my calmness and trust that things will work out because I took a
step that was the right one. I have no doubt of that. That doesn’t mean
it will be easy but it certainly will be easier. Anyway working on the
academic book proposal now (fingers crossed and toes and….you get the
idea) which also means the novel will have to take a back seat for a
time.
And, how could I forget, there has also been a major event with regards to my back injury and the coccyx problem which never goes away. To put this in context it has now been 3 years and 3 months since the accident which among other things broke my coccyx and damaged my back. That is 3 years and 3 months of doctors, hospitals, chiropractors, going through steroid injections and all sorts of medications. So basically I had reached a point where the hospital told me the pain which I have had to varying degrees every day of the last 3 years and 3 months, was not going to change.
Well I was convinced to go see a well known osteopath in Singapore – I was reluctant as I didn’t see the point and it wasn’t exactly cheap. And am I glad I went. Turns out the coccyx is fine, my back is actually fine, the problem is that my pelvis got shunted badly out of place in the accident on m right side and this has gone on over time with muscles and ligaments adapting to the new position. The osteopath assured me was great news, it was fixable, whereas had it been the coccyx it probably would not have been. Yes it was great news BUT 3 years and 3 months of being treated for the wrong thing! I was first devastated as I thought of the hospital visits, the chiropractors, and those hellish steroid injections! Really? Couldn’t they have listened the zillion times I insisted the pain was higher up than my coccyx and that nothing they were doing was helping, in fact at times it was making it worse?
Then I stopped being devastated and became very angry. Very very angry. They had all treated me according to my medical notes; nobody had listened or taken the time to just check. The osteopath was amazing not least for his great work but for dealing with my stages of sadness then fury, and he patiently listened to my rants which were extensive at least.
Now I have learned to just be grateful that there is now light at the end of the tunnel.
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30 November
Back in Singapore which feels very strange. I miss the chaos of Thailand
which has been replaced by the efficiency, cleanliness and order which
is Singapore. Of course life is easier here, getting around simple, yet
there is also a sterility. I had planned that my time in Thailand was
restful time to sleep but the truth is that I think I spent most of the
time simply not thinking, or trying not to. Just needed time to give my
brain a rest and prepare myself for so many changes mainly career
related. Not sure what I achieved but I do feel better.
Blogs from October/November 2010
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Jennifer S Hartley 2008
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