Bad dancing, and a Christmas to be forgotten...

So, when I last left you I had just arrived back in Kettering and was back where I belonged at Starlight HQ! I was feeling quite tired after another long day, and I wasn’t really up for rehearsing much so I had a little sit down and watched as rehearsals for the next big production show took place. I realised I was pretty hungry too so I dragged an extremely squashed and unidentifiable sandwich out of my bag and munched on that for a while. I was very pleased to note that a Steps song and routine would be part of the show, and that most of the choreography was quite similar to the original, so it looked like it would be an easy show to pick up! I was happy!
I had been back for about an hour when it was time to pack up and leave and head to the neighbouring town of Corby. Starlight were to be performing over a number of nights- dancing to a medley of songs whilst two men sang them. We did the same last year with a ‘Dirty Dancing’ theme, but this year was a random mix from the early 90’s to present day. It got given the name of ‘Pop Party’, but I’m not sure if that’s just something we made up ourselves! I had learned half of the routine before I left for my tour as I knew that I would be able to perform in at least a couple of the Corby shows on my return. However, I wasn’t expecting to be performing that night!!!! As much as I fought, I couldn’t wriggle my way out of it, a white vest was thrust upon me, and thankfully a dance position at the back(!), a seat was found for me in a car and then we were off!
I’m not going to lie, I had forgotten most of the choreography, at one point I just stood and span in a circle hoping no-one was looking at me! But the dance floor was filled with drunk people trying to join in so I tried to incorporate them into my moves! As a bonus, we were given two festive hats to walk around the tables with for donations from the crowds and didn’t do too badly as it happened!


As it was Friday night, I found myself going back to Jacc’s house for our usual junk food and rubbish TV sessions, taking in a little detour on the way. StarlightKids and Juniors were performing their Christmas review show the next day, so after the Corby debacle we made our way to Asda for some late night food, then had to go to the studio to set out 80 chairs for the show, set up the raffle before we could even think of relaxing. So after leaving the house in Norfolk at around 7am, I finally made it ‘home’ for the night at 1am. We had bought a hot dog pizza which was as awful as it sounds, and after trying my hardest to stay awake and help Jacc with the music for the morning, my eyes finally gave way and closed around 2.30am.
I was rudely awoken at 8am by the man of the house bursting in, swiftly followed by the dog, who proceeded to lick my face until I made any sort of movement, and was subjected to Christmas songs blaring from the laptop while Jacc was editing music for the show. Now I’m not a happy chap on a normal day until I’ve had breakfast, but considering my lack of sleep the night before, I was livid! But, there was a show to be done, and at 8.45 we were off again. The review shows went really well and the kids were the cutest things ever! Of course during final rehearsals there was the obligatory shouting from his nibs, but it worked and all the parents loved it. I seemed to morph into my mother and took charge of the raffle- I don’t know what it is about the women in our family, we all love a good raffle! And after the second show (attended by the Lady Mayor nonetheless!), the kids were treated to a visit from Santa! I got to be one of Santa’s elves! But all that meant was that I got to put a broken Santa hat on with my Starlight uniform and stand outside the makeshift grotto letting the children in!
I had never been more glad to see the end of the day, and to see Kettering at night! Myself, Jacc and Claire ventured out into the great unknown for a night of drinking and had a fabulous time! We found a new bar, I found myself a beautiful barman to flirt with, and a wondrous time was had by all! I even managed a cheeky bit of Karaoke to a crowd of six! (The six including Jacc, Claire and the beautiful barman!)


Of course we drank far too much but the next day I was feeling very perky indeed! I was doing housework and singing around the house all day! Lovely! I had stayed at Jacc’s that evening but hadn’t seen him in the morning out of sheer laziness at not wanting to climb any stairs. But I was shocked to receive a phone call at 4.30pm saying he’d just woken up! He sounded ridiculously rough but I just put it down to the alcohol. After all, I’d lost count of the number of cocktails! Oops!
Monday arrived with insignificance and rolled by in a cloud of nothingness until my phone rang at 3.40pm. It was Jacc: “I’m really poorly, can you teach my classes tonight?” “Of course, what time do they start?” “4pm”
Aaagh! Typically with the freezing temperatures, my car decided that it wasn’t going to play, my dad was visiting his own father in hospital so my only other option was a taxi. A frantic phone call and a dash around the house later, I was on my way and only ended up being 15 minutes late. Thankfully Audrey was there, and as she knew all the kids names, I let her do most of it and I did the rehearsal music for her! I knew Jacc must have been properly ill as he would never not take a class. I just hoped I hadn’t caught it!
The week rolled by, more Corby shows were performed (to a much higher standard as I knew what I was doing!) and before I knew it, it was Saturday and the final Ballet and Tap classes of 2010! I was really looking forward to tap, I’d really missed it, and had been practising wherever I could, despite the absence of my tap shoes! I felt a bit out of the loop as I had missed so many weeks but I kept up, and we started to put together a cute little routine to Hollywood by Michael Buble. And then came ballet! There I was, looking forward to a nice hour of doing pirouettes or whatever was thrown my way, but no, Claire made us do awful stretching for an hour, with my legs practically over my head! I wasn’t amused! That night I headed back to Jacc’s for a game of the always challenging Trivial Pursuit! We had played with Craig earlier in the week and I’m proud to say that I was the ultimate champion! But that was not to be repeated! I was absolutely thrashed! In my defence it was a new edition of the game where you can buy your answers and in my opinion, that’s cheating! I tried to come back with a vengeance when we cracked open the Monopoly Revolution. That’s right, Monopoly on a round board with an electronic centre with credit cards instead of money! I was doing quite well at the start but yet again was trounced and ended up bankrupt! It’s just as well, Jacc throws a paddy if he loses at Monopoly!


A couple of days later I made my way to one of the craft shops in Kettering to but some materials to finish Jacc’s birthday present, and found myself embarking on one of my new year’s resolutions. While touring, on many an evening I have sat down with Eden and we have crafted together; me cross stitching, and he knitting. I had given knitting a go a few years back but got in an awful mess and had given up, but now I had decided to give it another go! So in the craft shop, I told the man that I wanted to knit, he set me up with what I needed and to be honest, my first project is going very well indeed! Admittedly, it is just a scarf, and I had to re-start it about ten times, but it’s looking beautiful, and I might even be finished with it at the end of the week! New year’s resolution number one- learn how to knit, done!
A couple of days later I received an unexpected email from Greg, a man who became one of my regular customers at Asda while in my final year at university, after I helped him figure out the new self-service machines! I loved chatting to them while I was working and had intended to keep regular contact with them after we all left Bournemouth- I was going back home and they were moving to Italy. Sadly, as with everybody I intend to keep up with, it never happened, but due to the joys of Facebook, we were back in contact and the email was sent! It was so nice to hear from him and see what they were up to, and I even shed a little tear reading the end of his letter when he congratulated me on the work that I have done. To me, I seem to be going nowhere in what I am doing; I never expected to be performing in Theatre-In-Education shows three years down the line, if at all, and it’s never what I intended to do. I feel angry that I’ve let myself get into a pattern that I can’t seem to get out of, and my confidence has taken a battering. I don’t feel that I can get out of the cycle and get myself out into ‘proper’ theatres which is all I’ve ever wanted to do. I know I should be grateful that I have almost constantly been in work since graduating, so surely I’m doing something right, but I just want more than what I’ve got. I felt really touched at what he wrote, and the fact that he’d remembered me, got back in touch and complimented me made me think that maybe I can do it. No more TIE tours for me, I’m going out there! Thank you Greg! :)
All of a sudden it was Monday again, and the final Monday before crimbo break. We were treated to a lovely routine to Poison by Nicole Sherzinger in Dancercise, and then came the big one, Principal Dance lesson. The torture began. The first half of the class was spent doing Flexercise, attempting to get down into the splits for minutes on end, not fun! Then it was routine time! Of course Jacc had a mad idea of tying us together with ropes! We were split into pairs and had scarves tied around our waists, and I can honestly admit I have never felt pain like it! He tied the thing so tight around me I thought I’d never breathe properly again! It was the smallest my waist had ever been I can tell you! Needless to say, we all got tangled up in a ridiculous mess and the whole thing has been re-thought! But hey, it was a different way to spend your Monday!
I had a phone call asking if I could work a few hours doing a couple of cleaning jobs that week too. I was glad of the money, but the thought of cleaning for 3 hours solid didn’t seem like the best way to be spending my afternoons on my ‘time off’! Thankfully the time flew by, and in the spirit of Christmas I even got a couple of thank-you treats! Why can’t people be that nice the whole year round?!?!
And so, Christmas was upon us! I made my way round to see Jacc and Craig on Christmas Eve to exchange and open presents, which is fast becoming a ritual if I have my way! I was treated to a lovely bottle of Issey Miyake perfume (thank you boys!), and they were chuffed with my gifts to them, although Craig seemed to be the most enthusiastic about a box of chalk I got them for their blackboard rather than the fun calendar and personalised magic collage mugs that I had created! But the Sesame Street T-shirts I bought them went down a treat! My presents to their animals were of course instantly destroyed but I didn’t mind, it was Christmas and I was with the people always guaranteed to make me smile!





And then came Christmas day! I was shocked not to receive any of the obligatory Christmas socks, or even a selection box, but instead was snowed under with enough bathroom products to open my own shop! I think I’m literally set until next Christmas for shower gels! Christmas was quite a sombre affair. We’d just lost my nan a couple of weeks before, my granddad had just come out of hospital and needed looking after, and my brother was ill and barely moved all day! We had Christmas dinner (beef, not turkey, yes I know!) at the very early (for us) time of 12 noon, before my parents had to dash off to do their shift of looking after my granddad while another relative could eat their dinner! Of course with my brother ill, that left me with the washing up to do while he sat and fell asleep in front of his Inbetweeners DVD that I had so kindly bought him. I retired to my bedroom and settled down with one of my DVD gifts (Beauty and the Beast), and did a spot of knitting before the parents arrived back just in time for Doctor Who, Strictly and whatever else they put on the screens that night!
Boxing day brought much of the same moroseness as the day before, germs flying about, leftover food being stuffed in, sitting around and looking at each other. I had a couple of hours of relief when I was invited to my lovely friend Catherine’s house. I hadn’t been there before as I’d been away when she moved in, and we were both touring, but we had a lovely catch-up session, I got to nosy at her house, and her boyfriend and his brother made me a Don Pedro, an alcoholic milkshake concoction! Oh, it was beautiful! Google it, you have to have one!
I was looking forward to a nice relaxing week this week. I’d planned to spring clean my bedroom, getting rid of anything unnecessary and getting some new furniture in. But of course this is my life we’re talking about and things got put on hold rather abruptly on Tuesday morning when we received a phone call saying that my granddad had passed away. The four of us just sat down not knowing what to say to each other again. December had well and truly shat on us from an enormous height. We must have done something really bad to upset someone up there with the amount of bad luck we’ve had over the past few weeks. I couldn’t stay in the house last night, I went to Jacc’s for cuddles and sweets just because there was nothing I could say to anyone in my house. Everything just seems to have happened at once to us and there’s nothing we can do about it. I kept my brave face on in the house because that’s all I could do, but I’m absolutely crushed. For once I’m looking forward to going back on my tour!
But now it’s the final couple of days of 2010! I can’t believe this year has gone by so quickly! Tomorrow is Thursday, and I shall be making fairy cakes with glitter icing and going shopping with Jacc to find him some new clothes. And Friday is the big one! New year’s eve and Jacc’s birthday! The presents are wrapped, my outfit is sorted, my grooming has begun! I’ll be raising a glass to the grandparents and partying like it’s 1920!
I apologise for the bits of gloominess in this post but it’s the best outlet for my emotions! I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas, enjoy your new years celebrations, and I wish you all the best for 2011! Who knows where it’s going to take me...
Nx

And so it begins…

And so it was with a heavy heart and an even heavier suitcase, I made my way to Crewe on that cold November morning. I spent most of my journey on my first train trying to hold my emotions together and not break down in a million tears in front of complete strangers. I didn’t do too badly! The journey was pretty uneventful, and before I knew it, I had changed trains, met Marcus (my Romeo/Macbeth/George/Mr Birling) and had (probably) bored his ears off with tales of my month away from him, and arrived at Crewe station. Eden had been very nice and came to pick us up in his car to transport us to the rehearsal venue. Thanks to my inability to pack lightly, I was crammed into the back seat surrounded by bags with around 10% visibility!

Rehearsal week was a mixed bag of emotions. I arrived on the Monday not really wanting to be there, but my mood was slightly raised as we were beginning the week with ‘Of Mice and Men’, the one play that I had actually read and bothered to do any work on! The week was going to be incredibly intense, with five days to rehearse and learn four different workshops. I quickly found out that I hadn’t done nearly enough work on anything, and the first day and a half was excruciatingly awful as my workshop leader skills were exposed as a complete pile of awfulness! But that was nothing compared to later in the week! The second workshop to be rehearsed was Romeo and Juliet, which went by like a dream, I know that one!! Next up was Macbeth, which seemed to take an absolute age to get through, mainly because of my sheer awfulness at portraying Lady Macbeth! It didn’t help that it had been a million years since we did a tiny bit of work on it at school and that I didn’t understand a word of what was being said! I wanted to cry because it was that awful, and I was terrified of the ladder which was to be used as part of our set for the witches. By the time Friday rolled around, we had about half a day to rehearse the final workshop, ‘An Inspector Calls’. Thankfully it was incredibly straightforward due to the cuts made to the script, and as we wouldn’t be performing it in the first week, we brushed it to one side and forgot about it.

Outside of rehearsals, I was getting on very well with my new boys. My cooking skills are diabolical, and we all ate together so I had lots of nice meals made for me. We didn’t have too much time to get to know each other that well as our evenings were spent around a laptop with our heads in our scripts, trying to get a definitive script together for each workshop, and inserting our own words for the workshop-leader sections. But we seemed to be a nice little happy group, if slightly poorly, which made us avoid the kissing scenes during rehearsals. I think I remember Marcus even kissing my chin to avoid catching whatever germs were flying around inside me! We were very lucky when Saturday arrived, we had a day off! Huzzah! The boys headed towards Stoke to go and buy things like pants and socks (why didn’t they bring enough?!?), but I stayed at home, pottered about and attempted to learn a few lines. I wouldn’t have minded going with them and seeing my lovely ex-boss Barry, but he was off in Italy in his new house, the swine! I enjoyed being by myself though, and the day felt quite productive, after I’d eventually woken up at lunchtime! Then came Sunday, and we made our way back to the rehearsal rooms for a final run of all four workshops, loading up the van and heading to our first destination. The run wasn’t too bad, but I felt there was only so much we could do without an audience.

We then had our van brought round to us, and I did a little squeal of delight! It was a beautiful Transit van with six seats. Yes, six! It was like a limousine of the van world! Chuffed! We packed everything in and took a couple of photos of where everything was to make sure it would fit in again, and we were off! Eden did the first drive, which was to Cannock chase. The drive was a pleasant affair, and the first accommodation didn’t disappoint. It was a nice bungalow, with a gorgeous bathroom, two beautiful bedrooms, a cute kitchen and a cosy living room. Unfortunately, we had a lot of travelling to do that week and we would be finding ourselves in two Travelodges during the week, leaving the pretty house behind.

Monday brought our first two shows, a Romeo and Juliet, and an Of Mice and Men, the latter being attended by our bosses! The morning show went really well, the kids seemed to be above GCSE age, and had all made masks to bring along with them for some unknown reason! But we got through it, and they seemed to enjoy it! We found ourselves in a school that I had previously visited with Black Cat in the afternoon. About a minute after we pulled up in the car park, our bosses arrived and my heart started racing. The pressure was immense; the workshop was mostly me as workshop leader, and I just knew it was going to be awful! It went by in a flash though, and as it wasn’t quite long enough, Yvonne had to step in and put some extra bits onto the end but again, people seemed to enjoy it so I relaxed a little bit! The rest of the week went by in a bit of a blur as we were trying to find our rhythms in each workshop, and trying to adapt them to each audience to fit their abilities. On our second evening, we treated ourselves with a trip to the theatre. It had been a while since I’d been to the theatre to see a straight play, without people jumping up and breaking out in song every ten minutes so I was very excited. The boys had told me that it was about boxing, which didn’t really appeal to me, but I was willing to give it a go, and I was so glad that I did. It was also my first trip to the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and I was suitably impressed! The play, Beautiful Burnout, was amazing. I won’t ruin it in case any of you want to see it, but the whole cast were amazing, and I didn’t see the end coming at all. I was completely transfixed and absolutely heartbroken! Yet again, I found myself weeping uncontrollably in front of hundreds of strangers!

The first week came to its end, and Saturday arrived, promising us a trip to Northern Ireland on a ferry! The last time I did that crossing, I slept the whole way because the sea was so choppy no-one could stay standing upright on the boat! Of course with touring, nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and half an hour into our journey, we found ourselves at a standstill on the always glamorous motorway, the m6. It seemed like our journey would take forever, but thanks to some empty roads in Wales, we made it to the ferry with half an hour to spare and were able to buy some hideously overpriced snacks and beverages to accompany ourselves across the water. The ferry itself was nothing to shout about. I settled myself down in a quiet corner to go to sleep while the boys excitedly ran off to explore the boat. They were back in five minutes. There was nothing to see! While they bought some on-board food, I snuggled down under my coat to avoid the biting cold of my surroundings, only to see a man walk past me whose appearance startled and amused me! There was not a single hair on the top of his head but he had the most majestic of beards I have ever seen! It came half way down his chest! Funny how these things happen!

We arrived in Dublin in the dark, and were still faced with an epic 3-hour drive to our accommodation. It was my turn to take the wheel, and typically it started to rain- rain and darkness, the two conditions I hate driving in (if you can call the dark a condition!). But with the help of my trusty sat-nav Sean, we made it, and it was beautiful! It was a gorgeous stone house, with everything we needed. The only downside was that it was in the middle of nowhere, the nearest bit of civilisation was a twenty minute drive away. I demanded the downstairs bedroom, purely for the fact that I was too tired to drag my suitcase upstairs, collapsed into bed and woke up the next day to beautiful sunshine. I was going to like it there!

Our first week of shows in Northern Ireland was a good one! I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to understand a word of what anyone would say to me, and apart from having to ask kids to repeat themselves a few times, we did well! Apart from Tuesday. We drove to our afternoon school in plenty of time; we had a 1.30pm start time on our sheet. I made my way to reception and my phone started to ring, it was the lady from our booking office wondering where we were. The school had been on to them as we hadn’t arrived. I assured her that I was walking through the front door and breathed a sigh of relief. I spoke to the receptionist who just pointed her finger in the general direction of the hall, so I stuck my nose in and went to get the boys. As we were bringing things in, our contact teacher arrived and gave us some unexpected news. He wasn’t aware that it was a workshop, he thought he was getting a full performance, and that there would be 445 in the audience. I literally felt my heart shrivelling up and just wanted to go home! It was the toughest crowd we had to face, they went back for miles and we were just fighting a losing battle from the start! I was looking forward to Thursday, we had a Macbeth in the morning, and the afternoon off! The show went well, and we found a nice designer outlet shopping centre on the way home to stop at. I left the boys and went to do some girly shopping when the booking office phoned me again- a school had phoned them to check that we were coming; the booking office were under the impression that the show had been cancelled (as it had been 3 times before), and so I was phoned to see if we could make it. (I’m pretty sure the booking office phone me first because I’m a girl and a pushover!) So I ran around the shopping centre, found the boys, shoved them into the van and put my foot down to get us there in time. As annoyed as we were, the show was amazing, probably the best Romeo and Juliet we’ve done! Yay for us!

That weekend brought something rare, something precious, something that the touring actor longs for but hardly gets... a full weekend with no travelling! We were staying in the same house for two weeks so we got to do whatever we wanted! I was looking forward to chilling out, relaxing and having a lovely non-eventful day. And then I woke up ill. I wasn’t happy. The boys dragged me out of the house for some air, and we found a town that we thought might have something fun in it. We were wrong. We managed to find a library and caught up on some internetting, but that was about all we managed to do. We had a drink in a pub before coming home but I don’t remember much about it because my head was spinning and I felt dazed and confused! I woke up around lunchtime on Sunday to find Marcus missing. He likes to go walking so we weren’t worried, but I thought he might get lost by himself in a strange country! Eden decided that he was going to drag me out of the house whether I liked it or not, so we found Marcus and went for a nice walk. We followed signs for Beaghmore stone circles. Now, when I picture stone circles in my head, I think of something like Stonehenge, big old stones that look a bit creepy. Did I get Stonehenge? Of course I didn’t! I got a load of circles, around ankle height! I’ve never been let down by anything as much in my life! We moved on to a country park-style walking area in Creggan forest, and kept ourselves entertained by reading the story of the Creggan White Hare. He had some little rhyme in the story that reminded me of the gingerbread man. We were walking for a while when we realised that we weren’t getting any further in the story. We’d taken the wrong fork in the path and walked onto another route around the forest! I made Eden make up the rest of the story in case we couldn’t find it again! After about another hour and a half, we made it back onto our original trail and got to finish the story, which didn’t turn out too differently from Eden’s version!

Week two in Ireland was a full ten-show week, and was a good one! We were receiving good feedback from our bosses, it seemed that people were absolutely loving us! I had a lovely unexpected phone call from Barry which brightened up my evening, and a teacher even hugged me as we were leaving one school because she was so glad that we came in to help her kids! We had had such a lovely time over there, we had been given amazing food, been treated amazingly by everybody, sat in a staffroom watching a teachers husband dance on YouTube, and had a lovely sprinkling of snow that turned the countryside even more beautiful than it had been. I really didn’t want to leave. But our time was up, and on the Friday (after the teacher-hugging), we dropped Marcus off at Belfast airport for him to fly to Manchester for wedding-usher duties, drove home and started packing up the house ready for another full day of travel up to Scotland.

I woke up in a funny mood on Saturday, I didn’t know whether I was just sad to be leaving Northern Ireland, or whether I just felt that it wasn’t going to be a good day. We packed up the van, I filled my hot water bottle, and nominated Eden to do the first part of the drive while I warmed myself up. It was going to be a long day; we had a two-hour drive to the ferry, three hours ferry time, and at least another two hours driving up through Scotland. We programmed the sat-nav to take us to the ferry port, I took some last-minute photos of the view and off we went. Eden was chirpy, I was still in my strange mood but we were on our way. And then it happened. Less than five minutes into our journey we hit an ice patch on the road. We skidded and span around for about 100 metres before ending up going backwards and ending up in a ditch and half in someone’s field. Thankfully no-one was coming the other way up the road, and neither of us were hurt, but we weren’t going anywhere. We got out of the van to find that the window behind the driver was completely smashed, and further up the road I found our front bumper. Apart from that, it didn’t look too bad, but we were lodged on the roots of a bush and no amount of trying could get us out. We immediately phoned our bosses, but had no answer on any of the three numbers that we tried. We found the number for the breakdown assistance and tried to sort things out on our own. When Eden managed to talk to someone, they couldn’t find our location on their computer system and said that they would phone us back. When they eventually did, we were told that they knew roughly where we were, but their van wouldn’t be able to pull us out of the ditch, so could we go for a walk and try to find a farmer with a tractor to help us. If I hadn’t been in shock I would have started shouting at them! What’s the point in a breakdown company if you have to sort things out yourself!? I wasn’t happy about leaving our stuff in the van with a broken window so I stayed with the van while Eden tried to find help. While all this was going on, I realised how selfish and rude people can be. Eden was on the phone to people and I was standing by the van, clearly having had an accident, and people were just driving past and staring. A few people did stop to ask if we were ok, but I couldn’t believe the amount of people who would just drive past a young woman at the side of the road and just stare.

After about ten minutes Eden returned and said that he had found the farmer who owned the field we were in. The farmers wife had insisted that we go inside to keep warm while we waited for her husband to return from the shop and rescue us. But as soon as we were about to go, the farmer arrived. He took a look at the van and said that his tractor wouldn’t be able to get us out, but he would try with his car. I stayed further up the road to stop traffic coming down and watched as our van and the farmers car seemed to be ice dancing around each other, threatening to push each other off the road, but eventually we were freed from the torments of the bushes, and back on the road. Then came the phone calls. We had to phone the breakdown people again to say that we were moving but we didn’t have a window, change our ferry, and let our landlord in Scotland know that we would be late. The breakdown man said that he would meet us in the nearest town, so we picked up the debris from our van that was littering the countryside and very slowly drove to meet him. There wasn’t much he could do apart from checking the van over to see if we could drive it, and put something that looked like sticky backed plastic over the gaping hole where our window used to be. It was at this point (about two hours after the crash) that the boss phoned us back, in an absolute panic because we’d left her three messages telling her what had happened. She was in a state because she thought we’d been hurt and she felt awful that she hadn’t been there to answer the phone. I assured her that we were fine and that we had sorted things out, and we carried on our journey to Belfast. I made more phone calls again, trying to find somewhere to fix our window, but the glass couldn’t be got for another week. We were quicker than we thought in our progress, so I managed to get our ferry changed again to an earlier crossing, so we dragged our extremely sad-looking vehicle with its cling-film and gaffa-tape window onto the ferry and made our way to Scotland.

The crossing was once again pleasant. I kept myself entertained with a couple of glossy magazines and a huge bag of pick and mix (after all, I’d had a traumatic experience!), and in under three hours, we were back on dry land, ready for the next leg of the journey. It was I again who began the driving off the ferry, and I wasn’t particularly happy about driving it. But there was no snow or ice so after a while I relaxed, and actually enjoyed the journey up. The radio was playing songs that reminded me of home, and a smile crept on my face for the first time that day. We swapped drivers just over half way, and we started to notice the snow that had fallen that week, which was getting deeper the further north we went. The battery on the sat-nav started flashing, indicating that it needed to be plugged in but neither of us could remove Eden’s phone charger from the socket. It was time for maps, and the occasional turning on and off of the sat-nav to make sure we were going in the right direction. We had the sat-nav on and were about half a mile from the house we were staying in when the road we were meant to take was closed due to the snow. We carried on, knowing that the computer would find an alternative route. Which it didn’t! I pulled out the local map and Eden pulled the van over to find out where we were. We found the road to take and began to pull away again when we got stuck. The snow wasn’t too deep but the van wouldn’t move forwards. It went backwards, but nothing would make it move in the direction we needed. We managed to get it parked at the side of the road and Eden set off in the pitch black armed with a map, to walk to the house belonging to the landlord.

By this time, it had reached around 10.30pm, and I had had enough. I’d been trying to keep my emotions under wrap all day but it had got too much for me. I hadn’t realised at the time of the crash but I had really hurt my neck, I was freezing cold, in the middle of nowhere in a country I didn’t know very well and all I wanted to do was get into bed and forget about the whole day. And then I just sat and cried in the front of the van. I cried for about half an hour until Eden’s return. Thankfully he had found the landlords house, and he had been kind enough to drive him back to me, put our belongings in his car and drive us to our home for the week. He was the sweetest old man I have ever met, and he couldn’t do enough for us. He showed us every inch of the house, despite it being 11pm, and made sure we had everything we needed before he left. I felt bad in wanting him to leave the house so that I could just sleep but I had had enough! And so, twelve hours after leaving the house in Northern Ireland, I was ‘home’.

I woke up on the Sunday in a much better mood, after all, it couldn’t be any worse than Saturday! We sat down in front of the television for a while before realising we didn’t have any food in the house other than the complimentary fun-size cereal boxes and loaf of bread. That could only mean one thing... we were going on a food-retrieving mission in the snow! We wrapped up a million layers of clothes, and made our way round the streets and relieved, we found our van, still in one piece. There were kids everywhere on sleds and throwing snowballs at each other, and the children two doors along from us had made a three-tiered snowman in their front garden. I was slightly jealous that they were having so much fun when we were stuck with nowhere to go and hardly enough snow in our tiny garden to make a snowball bigger than my head. I resigned myself to the sofa and happily munched on pick and mix and Doritos, courtesy of yesterdays comfort-food buying! Marcus was supposed to be rejoining us later that day but all the trains from Glasgow to Paisley had been cancelled, and with no transport of our own to collect him, he found himself in a Travelodge for the night. Shame!

Fortunately, with one cast member down and no vehicle, we had no shows booked in for Monday, so we spent the morning on the internet looking to find garages to fix the van, and rental places for an alternative vehicle for the week. We also made another call to the breakdown company to rescue the van, who seemed very confused by the statement “it won’t move!”. This was after we’d been on hold for an hour! When eventually they understood our plight, they told us that we weren’t a priority because we were inside a building, so we wouldn’t be rescued until 3.30pm, our first call to them being made at 9am! But a phone call at around 12.30 informed us that would in fact be rescued in the next fifteen minutes. We pulled on our warm layers and raced to the van where surprise surprise, the breakdown man drove the van straight out and up the road. We were livid! Maybe the van had just given up like me on Saturday! After they had checked it out, we made our way to a garage and managed to get an appointment to take it to be fixed on the Wednesday. The trains were also on the move so we collected Marcus and made our way back to get food and get a good night’s sleep before the next day’s shows.

I wasn’t sure how I would react being back in the van on icy roads the next day, but I certainly didn’t expect to be sobbing while trying to map read because we were still minus sat-nav, whose battery had now completely ran out. I wasn’t concerned about Eden’s driving at all, it was just the fact that every road was completely covered in ice, and now without a front bumper and still with a window missing, our van wasn’t quite as safe as it used to be. I’m sure the other road users were wary of us too! But we made it in one piece and the boys didn’t pick up on the fact that I was having a major panic attack in the middle seat. Or if they did, they were very sweet not to mention it to me! The show went quite well, it was another ‘An Inspector Calls’ that we didn’t get to the end of but the kids were pretty silent anyway so we didn’t care that they were missing out on the end. They can watch the film instead! We were looking forward to a nice long lunch break as the schools were only 7 minutes apart. I whipped out my map again (I was refusing to drive in the snow, absolutely terrified) and we made our way. We turned around a couple of times because according to my map reading, we had gone past the school. Maybe we weren’t using our eyes properly. A quick phone call to the school told us that we were in the wrong place, the school had moved sited five years ago. We took a left hand turn to turn the van around and promptly got the van stuck. Again. Eden did his best to try and get the van moving, but the tyres were squealing and smoke started coming from the bonnet and I started screaming that I had to get out of the van before I threw up because I was so terrified again. I ran up the street far away from the van and watched as the van slid around the road before Eden gave up and got out. Marcus and I decided that we would go on a shovel-finding mission to try and dig ourselves out, after kicking the snow away and using lids of boxes from the set didn’t work. Of course there were no useful shops around that would provide us with anything useful, so we walked for what seemed to be miles to the school to explain our situation. We managed to borrow two shovels from the school and got our contact teacher to drive us back to the van! Thankfully we freed ourselves within five minutes, and ten minutes later, we were back at the school and only started the show fifteen minutes late! Result! We were so happy when the end of the day rolled around, we got ourselves a nice shiny hire car, took our van to the garage to be fixed, and made our way home with only our sound system and costumes for the rest of the shows that week!

And so came Wednesday. Considering we had no set we did very well adapting to our surroundings! I had been finding it difficult in a few schools finding power sockets that actually worked, and that morning was no different. I set up the sound system but nothing was happening. We spoke to the stage technician in the school who said there was a problem with our extension lead, but he would take it away and fix it for us and provide us with on for the morning. After the show, Eden went to find him and returned with the extension lead with the plug disconnected! Apparently it wasn’t safe to be using in schools so he’d whipped the plug off so we couldn’t use it! Oops!

Due to the heavy snowfall in Scotland (we had about 6 inches), our Thursday morning show was cancelled and I was ready for a sleep! But of course, with this being the most ridiculous week in tour history, I was woken by a call from, you guessed it, the booking office! To ask me if I knew the show was off! If I wasn’t such a nice person I would have sworn at her! Our afternoon school was in Edinburgh, so it was going to take us a while to get there. And with the roads like they were, we had decided to leave even more time. About twenty minutes into our journey again, another call from the booking office told me that the school was sending everyone home so no show, and both Friday schools were cancelled too! I was hideously gutted that the van wasn’t going to be ready until Friday or I could have gone home, but instead we spent the afternoon shopping in Glasgow and spent Friday sat in front of the television all day until it was time to collect the van and return the hire car, sob!

I had decided on the Monday that I was going to go home for the weekend, and nothing was going to stop me. I had had an awful week, and I was going to go out with the best one, get very drunk, and forget all about the tour and all the bad stuff that had happened. And so, after patching up the broken window further with bubble wrap and corrugated cardboard, we made our way out of Scotland and down to Leeds. The further south we were going, the less snow we could see, and by the time we reached England there was no snow at all. I was happy about driving now! No ice, happy Natalie! We stopped a couple of times for calls of nature and all forced a disgusting service station burger down our necks before the final leg into Leeds. Eden, bless him, managed to get me to the train station 12 minutes before my train left, and after buying my ticket and racing through the station to find my platform, I had given myself a small heart attack but I was there! Of course the train was delayed and the platform changed but I got myself on that train like my life depended on it!

Yet again the train journey was insignificant and I found myself passing the time by tweeting random nonsense and watching what people were doing over their shoulders. The first man I sat next to appeared to be doing a business assignment on his Macbook, and smelled strongly of garlic. When he left the train I moved into his window seat, and my previous location was filled by a much nicer smelling lady, I think it was Ariel washing powder. She was reading Reveal magazine, so I read it over her shoulder. I was counting down the minutes til I got home, and persuaded my brother to pick me up from the station. And so, just after 6pm, I was back! I sent Jacc a text message informing him that I was home and ready for some drinking action! My brother was going out that evening too, to a wedding reception. He won the battle for the first shower so I went along to the cashpoint to extract the evenings funds. I got back to the house just as Rob had finished in the bathroom and he noticed that he had three missed calls on his phone. He called back only to be told that our nan had died in the care home she had been in. Well, they say that bad luck comes in threes; Rob and I had both been in crashed that week, our Grandad was in hospital and now this. We just stood and looked at each other in utter disbelief. It felt like we’d really upset someone up there and we were being punished relentlessly that week. To top it all off, our parents were stuck out in Tenerife due to the airport strikes so it was left to us to try and sort everything out. Naturally we didn’t go out that evening, we just wondered what else could happen. Did anyone else want to kick us while we were down? I phoned Jacc, and he and Craig came round with hugs aplenty and whisked me away to their house where they cheered me up with pizza, and watched the DVD of ‘Leave That Wizard Alone’. It was nice just to be back in my second home, surrounded by amazing friends and their gorgeous animals snuggling up to me that night, and I really didn’t want to go back on tour the next day, I just wanted to stay there forever.

But Sunday did arrive, and after a few phone calls regarding my nan, I spent the day pottering around the house, putting up a few Christmas decorations and trying to tidy up for whenever my parents could get back. The boys came to collect me at about 5pm, but as soon as I’d locked up the house and put my stuff in the van I burst into tears again. I told them what had happened and we stood in the street for a couple of minutes, with them hugging me before we set off again. We were off to Norfolk, and staying in a house that I’d been to before, so I knew that it was a nice one. The journey wasn’t too long, the house was cosy, and I collapsed into my lovely double bed with ease, hoping not to wake up until the next Saturday!

Norfolk was a lovely surprise. We had originally thought that we had ten shows, but we only had seven, and spent a lovely afternoon in Norwich, taking in the sights! I even found a signed by John Barrowman Torchwood DVD, but refrained from buying it, foolishly! I think I wasn’t convinced it was genuine! The shows went well, my parents finally got home, and the week flew by, bringing us to Friday. The pupils on Friday were very intelligent, making the shows easy and a great success, and the journey home was fairly straightforward too. It seemed like the bad luck was over. I dropped my stuff at home, got the boys to drop me off in town, and I ran to Starlight Studios for rehearsals! Who says I’m not dedicated....!

N x

Roller skates, Wizards and Gerbils, Oh my!

I know it’s been a while, and I sincerely apologise to the two people that I know who actually read this but I’ve been extremely busy, and I hope you can forgive me!

Just to let you know where I am at the moment, it’s a Saturday evening and I’m sat at the kitchen table in a house just outside Crewe, trying to avoid the X-Factor. It’s the end of rehearsal week for my new tour. But more about that later.

So let’s continue from where we left off, sometime in August. Jacc had just got the keys to his new (old nightclub studio) and I was donning my rubber gloves ready for operation clean-up. And what a clean-up it was! We let ourselves into the building in the Wednesday(?) afternoon to find that there was no electricity on. Luckily with it being August it was still daylight, although slightly miserable because of our crappy English weather. We fumbled around in the dark and managed to start finding jobs to do. It was left to myself and Caroline to start getting rid of all of the alcohol that was behind the bar. I don’t know how many hours it took but it felt like days. There was a small sink in the corner of the bar that I was hunched over pouring hundreds of pounds worth of alcopops, beers and spirits down, and I have honestly never felt more sick in my life! It felt like the worst hangover in the world, and we weren’t even consuming any of it! A good deal of it also went over ourselves in the opening of all of the pressurised bottles. Needless to say, as willing as we were to help get everything ready for the launch party (3 days later), we weren’t impressed with the state we went home in that evening.

After that initial afternoon, we went back the next day feeling refreshed and ready for another day’s hard slog. We walked into the main room and immediately, the smell of stale alcohol hit us. We weren’t too worried at the time, the floor was covered in black bin liners full of empty alcohol bottles, and to be honest, I was pretty sure I was adding to the stench from having it all over me the previous day!

I set to work getting rid of the empties, and moved on to the favourite task of many a cleaner (!), toilet cleaning. And what a job is was. I used to be a cleaner at my old secondary school, and toilet cleaning was part of the job, but nothing could have prepared me for what was in store. As many a drunk will know, nightclub toilets are not the most pleasant things in the world, and as this one had been abandoned with everything left inside, it had been left in a state for over a year. The stench was awful, especially as one of the toilets was broken and had no water inside it. But, the gloves were on, I took a deep breath and began winding my arms down the various u-bends. Pleasant!

Later on in the day, the lovely men from Eon came round, and after a few more hours of them running around various towns to find parts that they needed, we had electricity! Jacc walked around the back of the bar to the spot that had been my home the previous day and said the immortal words, “Oh no.”

I didn’t want to know what he had found, but I was pretty convinced that it was something to do with the awful smell that had greeted us that morning. And I wasn’t wrong. It appeared that a considerable amount of the alcohol poured away had made a waste box overflow and the alcohol had gathered on the concrete floor underneath the raised wooden flooring of the bar. Yet again I found myself trying desperately to get rid of alcohol, this time with a mop and bucket and a torch!

We managed to get all of it up, and by the end of the second day, the place was looking a lot better. But there was still a long way to go. Parents of Starlight kids came in to help, and within no time at all, the place was ready for partying the night away!

I was so proud of Jacc when he was finally able to get up and give his speech to celebrate the opening, and he even gave me a special mention as a thank you. I had worked so hard (as had everybody else) to try and make sure that everything was ready for him for his big moment that I was ridiculously tired, and as soon as he got up onto the stage to begin his speech, I fell to pieces and sobbed into my Starlight t-shirt! I had to pull it together sharpish as we had to perform 2 dances before we were allowed to put our party frocks on and dance into the night!

By the time all the parents and friends had gone and left us to shake our bits, I was so exhausted that I just collapsed onto a sofa and nursed an alcopop for most of the night!

A few nights later, myself and Caroline found ourselves at Jacc and Craig’s house, around a home-made Ouija board! I can’t remember the reason now, but I’m sure it must have had something to do with one of the ridiculous television shows that we find ourselves watching! I don’t really believe in Ouija boards myself but it seemed like a fun idea at the time so we went for it! There were five of us to start with but Mari got too scared as soon as the glass started moving so she ran away! I don’t know who was pushing the glass, everyone denied it, but it moved, and Craig was voted in as the person who would talk to the ‘spirit’!

We ‘found’ a girl called Heidi who had been killed about twenty years ago and her body had never been found. She told us that she didn’t know who had killed her, but whoever it was, they had killed many more people. We assumed that Heidi had been a local girl, so naturally as soon as I got home, I Googled missing girls called Heidi, but nothing came up. Between you and me, I think Jacc pushed it!! 

I went to sleep that night ready for a mammoth sleep, only to be rudely awakened by our burglar alarm going off just after 3am. I’ve been burgled before, but never when I’ve been in the house so I started to panic slightly! For someone who has so much crap in their bedroom, I had nothing to hit the burglar with so I thought I’d stay where I was, snuggled in my bed! I couldn’t hear any movement downstairs so part of me thought that it was safe to go down, as the alarm was still going off and at least I could have turned it off. I’d chosen that night not to wear anything in bed so I had to scramble around in the dark trying to find something to wear in case I came face to face with the possible thief! I opened my bedroom door and I could see some light downstairs so my heart started racing more quickly than I thought was possible. There was so much adrenaline pumping through me that I didn’t know what to do with myself. Part of me wanted to stay where I was frozen on the landing, but another part wanted to run downstairs and beat the crap out of whoever was in my house! I went for the middle option and slowly crept down the stairs, avoiding the creaky steps, and wondering why the hell my mum and brother weren’t bothering to help me in my brave voyage! I made it to the bottom of the stairs and slowly pushed open the slightly ajar door to the living room and poked my head around the opening to find my dad standing in the corner of the room with the burglar alarm in his hands manically trying to turn the thing off! He’d just come in from work, could see that the remote for the alarm wasn’t in its usual place, assumed that it wasn’t set and just barged into the living room, only for the alarm to start its incessant beeping! We stood and argued for about 30 seconds before realising that the alarm was still going, and I made a mad dash around the house to find the off switch! My mum and brother were completely oblivious the next day, I was livid!

The end of the week brought a lovely meeting at my favourite place for the unemployed, the job centre. I had an extra meeting to attend, for the staff to try and help me in my search for work, as they clearly think people aren’t capable of doing these things on their own. Usually at these meetings, there are about twelve unemployed, or ‘undesirables’ as we like to call them, but on this occasion there were only 4 of us, two of which had jobs coming up and were just sponging free money, and two who were really struggling due to the career that they had chosen. Basically, it was pointless for all of us being there, and there was nowhere to hide. The man in charge had shoulder-length brown greasy hair, and his sidekick was a woman whose bleached blonde hair had been sprayed with so much product, that there was no chance of it moving, even in the toughest of winds! We had to sit in this room for an hour while they preached at us, and tried to tell us how to persue our careers. The only advice I was given was that the Castle Theatre in Wellingborough were looking for volunteers, and that I should email them. So not only was the job unpaid, I would have to spend money on either a bus or petrol getting there! I think not! Their reasoning was that it’s who you know, not what you can do. I almost told them what they could do!! I left in an angry mood, and stormed to the shops for some retail therapy!

It was also around this time that I started to learn some new routines for the show, which was rapidly approaching and an increased speed. I had just started tap and ballet lessons with the new Starlight teacher, Claire, who was also choreographing a routine for a select few people. And I was one of the chosen ones!

The dance was to Annie Lennox’s ‘Love Song For a Vampire’, which meant, yes, I got to be a vampire! I was chuffed! It was a contemporary/ballet routine so I was very concerned that I would look a fool, as I hadn’t done any ballet for approximately 14 years! But Claire was full of encouragement and I was well on my way! There was also a fall-out between Jacc and one of the Principal dancers around the same time, so I found myself thrust into the principals routine, that they had been rehearsing for months! I was relieved to find that I picked it up quite quickly, but I suppose it helped that I had seen it a thousand times before. But with having to learn the routines, make more costumes and start learning lines for my tour, I was getting more and more stressed by the day!

But as if that wasn’t enough, I decided to earn myself some money and took on a part-time cleaning job! The lovely Craig’s sister, Nadine, runs her own cleaning company, so for several hours a week, I found myself in strangers houses cleaning their personal spaces. I didn’t enjoy the first job that I did, the woman whose house it was, was constantly snooping around, looking to see if I was cleaning properly! The cheek! But as more work came in, I found myself enjoying it more and more!

With Starlight going from strength to strength, Jacc was obviously having less time on his hands, only having two free week day evenings free a week. But we decided to make the most of one Wednesday evening by taking a trip out to Northampton. Well, I say ‘we’, it was his spur-of-the-moment idea and I just went along with it! We got back to his house and I had to frantically raid Mari’s wardrobe to try and find something appropriate to wear and we were off! I can’t for the life of me think of the name of the bar that we went to, but he assured me that it was a friendly gay bar and that we would have a lovely time! After all, he’d been there before! So we arrive, and he decides to tell me that it sways more towards being a lesbian bar! As we walked in I got the last laugh, there was a big poster next to the door saying that it was Karaoke night- Jacc hates Karaoke! So we went to the bar and settled down in a cosy dark corner to try and avoid the staring looks of people who didn’t seem to want us to be there. About half an hour into our adventure, Jacc decided that he needed to go to the toilet, leaving me exposed! He arrived back a couple of minutes later with a big grin on his face, I wondered what on earth he’d been up to in there! It turned out that it was a unisex toilet, we definitely weren’t expecting that! Needless to say, I dragged him in there with me when I needed to go later on!

I had a bit of a shock later on in the evening when Jacc announced that he wanted to do karaoke! This is the man who doesn’t like going to the cinema because he thinks people will look at him! But there he was, demanding that we did it, because it was time for us to try new things! We were going to do separate songs, but then we found “I’ll Cover You” from Rent in the book, so we knew we were set! We’d sung it about 4 years previously in a show, so we dusted off our vocal cords and got up on the stage. After a little wobble from me right at the start, we belted it out to the stares of the usual crowds who I don’t think were expecting that from us! And about 5 minutes after duetting, we left the bar! We’d made our mark, it was time to leave! Those are the kinds of nights that I love, new places, new faces and new experiences!

The next day, I spent the day at the studio with Claire, helping her go over routines for the show, and going over her routine until it was cemented into my brain! And then I spent the evening with the always lovely Corinne in Milton Keynes watching the musical ‘Hairspray’ which was our Christmas present to each other last year! I loved the film when it came out a few years ago, and couldn’t wait to see the show, and I wasn’t disappointed. Although I was led to believe that Michael Ball was in it, Tracy’s parents were played by Brian Conley and Les Dennis, and they were fab! I have never laughed so much at the theatre! And I was equally as chuffed at noticing and being able to name some tap moves that they did in one routine thanks to my new lessons!

Before I knew it, September was over, and it was show month!! It kicked off quite nicely when I had an evening out in London with Claire at the Apollo Victoria theatre (where Wicked is currently on), watching a gala show to celebrate the theatre’s 80^th birthday. The first half celebrated musicians and singers who had performed there, and the second half was packed full of bits from the musicals that had been put on there. It was such a fabulous night! My personal highlight was Lee Mead singing ‘Paint It Black’, I squealed in sheer delight! Claire thought I was a bit mental but I love him!! I also loved watching the original cast of Starlight Express doing some routines from the show. As I would be doing a routine on skates in a couple of weeks time, I was looking for tips but they were all amazing, and their routines were far more superior to ours! The only downside to my evening, were the two girls in front of me who kept moving about and talking! There’s nothing worse in the theatre!! Although I did feel awful when I saw that one of them was heavily pregnant as we were leaving, oops! They still blocked my view though! The show ran over time by almost an hour, and so we found ourselves racing through London Underground and St Pancras to try and get me on my train home! I had to rip my shoes off on the Tube so that I could run fast enough! I made it with about 3 minutes to spare, so I jumped on the train with songs in my head and my heart bursting out of my chest!

The days rolled by again, and along came Thursday. Jacc had organised for us in the Starlight Express routine in the show to go roller skating! We were all summoned to Jacc and Craig’s as our meeting point. I walked into the lounge with Craig to find that the gerbil cage was on the floor, with no gerbils left inside. One of the cats had managed to get into the room and pull it down. And so began operation gerbil catch! After scurrying around on the floor for a few minutes, we discovered 3 gerbils under the sofa, and so Craig and I ran around the room trying to catch them and herd them back into their cage! It took about half an hour but we did it. There was still a gerbil missing, but we feared the worst and had to leave without it.

We all piled into 2 cars and made our way to Derby (yes, Derby! I know it’s a long way to go!) and off we went! We had such a good night! Most of us got quite good, despite only being there for an hour, but we were all helpless watching Craig, he was terrible! I don’t think he let go of the sides for more than ten seconds! We attempted to do the routine on the beginners rink, but were awful! But I thought at least there would be one comedy routine in the show!

We came back to Kettering and I popped back into Jacc’s for a little bit. Mari had been in the house all evening and said that she had seen gerbil number 4 in the kitchen! Unfortunately due to her phobia of small rodents, she hadn’t caught it, and it was currently underneath the fridge! Operation gerbil catch was back on! We tried dragging the fridge out but it was too big and heavy for us mere performers to pull out, so we had to think of other tactics! I tried poking it with a stick to make it run out but the stick didn’t reach! Eventually we’d managed to pull out the fridge slightly so Jacc made a device out of an egg sheller, one of Craig’s ties and some gerbil food to temp it out! And it worked! The gerbil hopped right into the device and was hoisted up to safety! Success! 4 gerbils, safe back in their slightly damaged house! It was a good evening!

The next thing I knew, it was show week! It absolutely flew past! It went past in a flurry of shopping for last-minute costumes and props, costume fixing, rehearsal cramming, but strangely no arguing or fighting! Despite the madness, everyone seemed ridiculously calm, and by Friday afternoon, everything was sorted and ready to go! I’ve never known that to happen with a Starlight show!

Sadly, disaster had struck one of StarlightKids, they had been pushed over by a blind boy at school(!) and she had broken her leg. Being the kind soul that he is, Jacc bought her some flowers, and we made our way to her house to wish her well. I was instructed to stay in the car while he went into the house so I sat in the car patiently awaiting his return. What I didn’t notice was that he had locked me in, so about two minutes later, the car alarm went off! I tried to make myself as small as possible as their neighbours started popping their heads out of their front doors one by one. But still no sign of Jacc! He didn’t even notice! About fifteen minutes later he returned, and off we went back to the studio for the final rehearsal!

And then it was show day! I couldn’t believe how quickly the summer had shot past, and today was the day that everyone (well, most people!) had been working their arses off for. I was summoned to the studio at 8.30am for costume and props transportation, and to go over routines with Jacc! Despite choreographing the whole show, he had no idea what he was doing in it! As is the norm on show week, he was also panic-earning the lyrics to his solo! A few of us managed to get 3 cars full of everything that needed to go to the theatre and we were on our way. Yet again I was the first person to arrive at the theatre, and found the place locked up! Typical! It didn’t take long for everyone to arrive and then the madness kicked in! The day flew by, all the routines were spaced and rehearsed if necessary and then came the dress rehearsal. It’s safe to say that it was the worst dress rehearsal that I have ever had in my life! I was in most of the numbers in the show and made at least one mistake in everything I was in! Cell Block Tango from Chicago was the worst by far! I mixed up all of my words, got in the wrong place, absolute disaster! I found comfort in the words that I was told as a child; “Bad dress rehearsal, good show”. Well, we would see!

There wasn’t any time to go home in between the dress run and the show so a few of us had a little picnic in the auditorium, before Jacc dropped me a massive bombshell. He had been watching the dress run with his eagle eyes and had told me that the roller skating routine was appalling and unless we rehearsed and made it amazing in the next half an hour, we wouldn’t be going on! I was fuming! As soon as I had found out that I was in the routine, I had made it my mission to get myself some skates, and now that people had been slack and were rubbish on their skates and threatened to ruin it for me, I was livid! I rounded everyone up, got them all on skates on the stage, and rehearsed them all thoroughly for a good 35 minutes! We made some slight alterations to the routine(!) and prayed that Jacc would let us on the stage later on!

As for the show itself, it couldn’t have gone any better for me! I remembered all my Cell Block lyrics in the right order, managed to be in the right place at the right time for everything, and thanks to my team of dressers in my dressing room, had every item of costume ready and waiting and on in plenty of time! (Big thanks to Claire, Pickle, Florence and Paige! x x x x x)

Yet again, the show received a standing ovation and will go down in Starlight history as being, quite frankly, amazing! The day after the show, Craig whisked Jacc away to a spa for the day (and night), amd they had asked me to look after the house. I leaped at the chance to stay with all their lovely animals, and had a fabulous time cleaning their house from top to bottom! I’m not kidding! It was amazing. But just as I was about to finish the kitchen, there was a loud bang. I raced into the lounge to find the gerbil cage on the floor once more and a gerbil in one of the cats mouths! After a few angry shouts and literally lobbing cats out of the room, operation gerbil catch began again! Having completed the training a week before(!), despite being alone, I managed to catch it in a record three minutes, armed only with a duvet and my bare hands! I’m bloody brilliant!

The following week, a few of us from Starlight headed up to the Masque theatre where Starlight had performed our first 3 shows. We went to see the group that I used to belong to perform the musical ‘Disco Inferno’. I’d never heard of it before, but the musical was amazing, I was singing and dancing all the way through and thoroughly enjoyed my evening! So if anyone finds that it’s being done professionally again, point me in the right direction please!!!!

The next day I was back cleaning a house when I received a text message from Eden, one of the boys I would be touring with the next week. I had met him and Marcus (my other new touring boy) a couple of weeks before as we had trekked up to Crewe to edit scripts and put together the workshops that we would be performing. I can’t remember what his message to me said but all of a sudden I got incredibly nervous about the tour, my throat closed up and I felt like I was having a panic attack in the bathroom of some poor woman who hadn’t even met me! I had gone over the scripts and I had desperately tried to learn lines but nothing had been staying in my head. I was absolutely convinced that I was going to get the sack, and with hardly any money in my bank, I started to freak out! Luckily I managed to pull myself together and finish my job and sort myself out, but I spent the next two days in isolation buried under a mound of scripts and watching DVDs of the plays!

My final Saturday brought with it the Starlight Halloween party at the studio! I was very excited by my costume, I had worked quite hard to create it, and in the end I believe it was a masterpiece! I had decided to go as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, but dead Dorothy to give it that Halloween feel! My reasoning was that the show was over, of course Wizard of Oz themed, and now that the show was over, so was Dorothy! I made my dress myself, and had a couple of props including a headless Toto, a stuffed dog that I bought from a charity shop and decapitated! Everyone made an amazing effort, and a fabulous time was had by all! A few of us stayed over at the studio to watch scary films but I found myself spending that time in the kitchen talking to Georgie about my rubbish career! It was still a great night, and a perfect way to say goodbye.

I was due off on Monday morning so attempted to do some final goodbyes on Sunday evening. Of course, with this being my life, certain things that needn’t be repeated happened and I didn’t get to say goodbye to the people that mean the world to me. I was absolutely devastated, and as I didn’t want to go on tour anyway, it made leaving all the more difficult. Even as I boarded the train on the Monday, I was choking back the tears hoping that the one person I wanted to say goodbye to would be rushing to the platform with a cheeky grin and a big hug but that didn’t happen.

And so with a heavy heart and an even heavier suitcase, I dragged myself onto the train to Crewe ready to begin my next big adventure....

(I would like to point out that the tour is now 4 weeks in, and I have only just finished this blog and found some internet. For this I apologise most profusely. And if you have reached the end of this blog, I also salute you! Congratulations, you win the prize! I shall start my next blog now! See you soon x x x)

Nx

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Nuns, dresses and rubber gloves…

Sorry for the slow-ness of my update, hopefully there’s enough in this to keep you satisfied. If not... well, tough! Haha!

I’ve had quite a fun few weeks! After the telephones were all finished, I was still feeling creative but didn’t know what to do! So I turned my hand to song parody writing! Admittedly I have only written one, but it’s flippin genius even if I do say so myself! I’m not going to give away what it is that I have written, but I’m going to make a music video to go with it so that’s my next project over the next few weeks! I can’t wait!

Last Sunday was an absolute cracker! I forced myself to get up at 8am(!) to go to the local car boot sale in search of props for the show. Thankfully I was off the alcohol last Saturday so I had a clear head and eagle eyes ready for bargain hunting (unlike this morning!). I was after pewter tankards. Thinking that I wouldn’t find any, or maybe just an odd one, I picked up a handful of useless change and strolled up with a purpose with my parents on my treasure hunt.

For those of you who know Kettering, the car boot sale was at Wicksteed Park, and it was the biggest one I’ve seen there in a long time! I’d already made up my mind that I wouldn’t find any tankards, but walking up the first row and stopping so that my dad could talk to someone he knew, I spied one! 50p! Bargain! I snapped it up and turned around to see where my mum was, and directly opposite there were two more! I had those away too!

Usually when I go to car boot sales with Jacc and Craig after a night out, we stride down the aisles with purpose, focused on the tables and not hanging around longer than we have to. This time I was with my parents who LOVE a bargain more than anyone I know. We were at that car boot sale for two hours!! Two hours in one field! But, I was on fire, we all had our peepers peeled and I came home with a bulging carrier bag of 8 pewter tankards! Thank you very much! Needless to say, everyone was super impressed with my efforts at Friday’s rehearsal!

Back when I was on tour, I got very excited that I had money in my bank account and booked tickets to see Hairspray in September, and for the beginning of August, Ricky Gervais and Sister Act the musical!

So on Tuesday 10^th August, myself and my brother made our way to the NIA in Birmingham to see the mighty Gervais. I filled the car with snacks and drinks despite it only taking an hour, we cranked up the music and we were off! The journey there was easy enough, but once we got to Birmingham, we followed signs for the NIA but couldn’t find anywhere to park... all the car park entrances seemed to be blocked off. However, we persevered and finally got a spot. I made my way over to the car park ticket machine and I managed to annoy the people in the queue behind me by putting in £8 in very loose change! Snigger! And then we were in! I bought an overpriced programme and we settled down in our seats. I’d been to the NIA before to see the lovely Travis(!) but couldn’t really remember what it was like. We weren’t too far away, and we were slightly raised up so we had a perfect view. Rob and I had a little debate about the stage- I said he would have a set, and that I was hoping for a laboratory setting as the show was called ‘Science’, but Rob was adamant that it was going to be a relatively empty stage. I won! It was an amazing set- a laboratory with brains in jars and creepy green lights, perfect! And Ricky was amazing! I won’t bore you with it, and you can always buy the DVD when it comes out!

After getting stuck in the car park waiting to get out for about ten minutes, we finally got out but made a wrong turning and ended up going the wrong way on the motorway! Rob was not impressed. He tried to blame me, but it was his fault for not obeying the sat-nav!! I was too busy texting to pay attention to the road!! Oops!

The next day I woke up feeling very excited! We were off to London to see Sister Act the musical! I’d decided with Caroline that we would go and see it sometime over the summer because we both had the soundtrack to it and loved it, and then during the last week of my tour, she sent me a text message saying that Whoopi Goldberg was actually going to be in it! I dived on the internet to find out any information that I could and sure enough, it was true. I immediately phoned Jacc to see if he wanted to come, and an hour and £100 later, 5 tickets were winging their way to me!

My dad dropped me off at the train station and everyone but Jacc was there. Jacc had been very suspicious a couple of weeks before and said that he was busy in the morning. He wouldn’t tell me why for a while but then told me that he was going to the doctors. I said fair enough, we’ll just go a bit later. 2 minutes before the train was due to depart, he strolls into the station and announces that he’d just had his second driving test! He didn’t pass but he was ok. Little sneak, not telling me!!

The train journey wasn’t very eventful, we got to London, hopped on the tube and found the theatre. We got very excited to see Whoopi’s picture outside and scrambled up the stairs to but yet another overpriced programme, and Caroline bought pretty much every souvenir going!

I absolutely loved the show! Everyone went wild the first couple of times that Whoopi came onto the stage. Sadly she was a little bit flat during her solo (sorry Whoopi!), and the lead girl wasn’t as good as people were making her out to be, and Simon Webbe really needs acting lessons(!), but the music and the staging and everything else was spot on! We were right on the back row, so as soon as everyone had taken their bows, we legged it down the stairs and out onto the street to the stage door. I’d been there before as I’d had an audition at the Palladium last year so I was shouting out directions to Kurt who was sprinting quickly out of my eyesight! We turned the corner to the stage door and immediately found a massive queue of people waiting there already that hadn’t seen the show. Some people opposite us had been waiting since 6am! Fools! The crowd seemed to be full of Americans too... which I thought was a bit odd but hey ho.

To cut a long story short, we waited outside for about 45 minutes but Whoopi didn’t come out. We were gutted. Ian Lavender (whose American accent was pretty ropey too) came out and signed a few bits but ignored Kurt when he tried to get his attention! He was Livid!! We hopped back on the train and that was the end of our day!

The following day a few Starlighters were invited to Starlight Jo’s house for some food while her boyfriend was away. Jacc and Craig were invited but had to pull out at the last minute as they had caught a cold that had been going round Starlight for the last couple of weeks. I had been mocked by Jacc a couple of days before for taking multivitamins every day, but sure enough, the next day he was struck down and here I am running around like a spring lamb having avoided it! Karma!

We skip to the weekend now and I found myself at Jacc’s once again on Sunday evening. Part of the night was spent sorting through his Puppy, Kitty and Pony Surprises(!) – he was sorting out his loft! And then he dragged out a DVD of the second show we did together. This was before our university days so our talent was still very raw and un-nurtured and awful!!!!! I seriously don’t know how we managed to get on our university courses! The second act in the show was us dancing together to Hey Mickey- the Lolly version! I was wearing a tight gold dress, he was wearing a gold shirt and ew both had gold glitter hats on. That was the best bit about it! Later on in the show we would be paired up again, me in a nice stripy dress and him dressed as a rat. Needless to say I felt dirty and ashamed and would like to offer a refund to anyone I know who came to see my appalling efforts. I seriously hope I’ve improved. Cringe!

Last week didn’t bring many days of excitement to be honest! Rehearsals for the show were good, I’m sure I sweated off at least a million calories. Oh, of course. I went bowling with the lovely Lydia and Richard! Despite it being my suggestion to go, and my incredible fighting talk, Lydia and I were both thrashed by Richard and mercilessly mocked. But I had fun!

I had a lovely day on Saturday just gone. I managed to drag myself out of bed at a reasonable hour and made my way to Leicester to meet up with the lovely people that I had done a small tour with last year. I met up with one of them earlier than the rest and we went shopping to find me a new dress (more on that later!). When we joined the others (minus one- Adam, where are you?!!?), we all went for lunch together, caught up on what we had been up to in the last 11 months and had a jolly old time! It was like we had never been away from each other which I thought was quite special considering we weren’t together that long for the show. After some hilarity over a piece of battered fish in cling film, we went our separate ways, and off I came back to Kettering for another slice of fun.

Craig kindly picked me up from the train station and we, along with Jacc and Mari, made our way out for my second meal out of the day(!) and to the cinema to see Piranha 3D! Oh what a film! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry most of the time! But in a strange way it was genius!!

And that pretty much brings us up to date. I’ve hopefully got an exciting afternoon ahead of me...

I’m very pleased and proud to say that Jacc gets the keys to his own studio for Starlight this afternoon!!! He’s had to save a lot of money to lease it, but we finally get in this week! Anyone who knows Kettering- it’s what the nightclub Level 3 used to be. Well, still is! The person who had it as the club just left everything so this afternoon we begin getting everything out, putting our stuff in and cleaning everything! I’m actually quite excited about getting it ready!

The official launch party is this Saturday, which is what my lovely new pink dress is for(!), the mayor of Kettering is coming to open it for us, we’re going to do a little dance display for the guests and then party the night away! Classes start in the studio next week I believe too! Very exciting times!

Once again, I’m very proud of you Jacc, you deserve it all! Right, I’m off to find my rubber gloves!!

See ya,

Nxxx

Don’t call me Gaga…

It’s been a quiet couple of weeks but I have been very crafty! Not in the sneaky sense, but crafty as in making crafts!

I’m not ruining anything by saying that in the next Starlight show ‘Leave That Wizard Alone, 23^rd October at The Lighthouse Theatre, Kettering (Plug over, I promise!), we are dancing to the wonderful Lady Gaga song, ‘Telephone’. I found out when I got back that as part of our costumes for this dance, we were to have a telephone stuck to our heads like the good lady herself!

Obviously we aren’t going to have real telephones due to the weight and ridiculous-ness of the idea, so it was down to me to make some papier mache ones! When this was first mentioned to me, I was very excited, I immediately went home and started thinking up ideas of what to use to make a telephone shape, and sure enough, the very next day, the first telephone was born out of a toilet roll inner, 2 plastic cups, newspaper, and a mountain on PVA glue!

And so, 15 days after my task was set, there are now 35 telephones sat in the corner of my bedroom! For the most part it was quite fun! I looked forward to seeing the toilet roll gradually emptying in the bathroom so that I could steal the inner tube and make another one! And it turned out to be a group effort! I told my mum about it (bad idea!) so off she went around the neighbours to ask them for theirs, I swiped about 5 from Jacc’s house, and my neighbours to the left came around with a bag of twelve on Saturday night! (Come on, you didn’t really think my family could bet through 35 toilet rolls in 15 days did you?!?)

As fun as it was making them, it was then sprung on me that Jacc would like them all to be painted white so that everyone could take one home and decorate them individually! I decided to get the troops in! So on Tuesday this week, myself, Georgie, Kurt and Caroline all sat down in the back garden, munching on Maltesers and M&M’s and getting in an awful state painting newspaper white! But, they are all finished and ready for collection and there’s still 3 months to go before the show, I’m on fire!!

I’ve also managed to get hold of another very important piece of costume, a pair of roller skates! What a mission that was! I’d been looking online to see how much a pair would cost me, but I wasn’t willing to pay £50 for a pair that I’d probably never use again after the show, so I turned to ebay! I’ve never used ebay before, and I’m determined never to use it again! Oh the stress!

I found several pairs of skates in my size that were going quite cheaply, so I was convinced that I would be able to snap up a bargain. Oh no. Every time I bid on a pair, it was a matter of minutes or even seconds that I was cruelly outbid way past the limit I had set for myself. I was convinced that someone was watching me, and if it was a fellow Starlighter, there would be words!

And then last Tuesday, I hit the jackpot! I’d been outbid on every pair of size 8’s that I could find, so then I decided to look for size 9’s. By this point I’d done some research and seen that it was wise to go up a size anyway. And there they were. A beautiful pair of navy blue skates with yellow stripes on the sides, brand new and in the box for £5 plus postage. I had to have them.

This time I decided to wait until the closing minutes before I placed my bid. Annoyingly, someone had put on a higher bid while I was waiting but they were still in my price range. I watched the clock count down from ten minutes to five and then I made my move. At five minutes to go exactly, I tapped in my bid, stuffed my lucky charm down my bra and held my breath. I kept hitting the ‘refresh’ button on my browser to make sure I was still the highest bidder. The seconds kept ticking away, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, 20, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... and then it was over. They were mine!!! I actually whooped out loud! A week of sneaky outbidders could not defeat me that day!

Saturday rolled around and there was a loud knock at the front door waking me from my pleasant sleep. I was going to ignore it but then I remembered the skates, and after getting severely tangled up in my dressing gown cord, I threw myself down the stairs just as the postman was putting the ‘Sorry we missed you’ card through the letterbox and snatched them out of his hands!

I couldn’t wait to get to rehearsal on Tuesday to try them out, there’s absolutely nowhere to practice at home so I had to gaze wistfully at them for a few days! While the kids were doing their class downstairs, I made me way to the upper level to try them out. I hadn’t skated for just over a year when I was in Centre Parcs with the lovely Lydia (hello again!), so I was a bit concerned that I’d fall over in front of everyone, but in fact I turned out to be ok!

When it came to practising the routine, I was the only one in my skates, but everyone was suitably impressed, my stopping technique was amazing, but I need to do some serious work on my fast turns!

There’s 3 months to the show, I need to find somewhere to practice or I’ll end up in the orchestra pit, or even on the front row! Surely that’s worth buying a ticket to see!

Nxxx

I am not a fisherman…

So I’ve been back home for two weeks and 3 weekends now and I’m more exhausted now than when I was touring, and that was hard going most days!

After doing relatively little on the Saturday after my re-entry to the town, I had to muster up all of my energy on Sunday afternoon to run in the Race for Life at Leicester. It was such a hot day, and my training hadn’t really been going well on tour due to our ridiculous locations, there was absolutely nowhere to run around if I didn’t want to be hit by cars, lorries or tractors.

My mum and dad came to watch, and as we didn’t know where we were going, I got out my trusty sat-nav and we were off! Despite several mocking from my dad about said sat-nav, it got us to the exact spot no problem, 1-0 to me! We parked up and of course being over an hour early as we always are to these events, we sat in the sunshine, me slapping on the factor 30 as quickly as I could.

About half an hour before the race, it was time for the group warm-up. This year I was in for a treat! There were male cheerleaders!! Obviously raving gay but still, a couple of them were nice to look at, plus we all did a routine to S Club 7! It was turning into a flippin good day! Then came the ‘proper’ warm up, which consisted of a couple of salsa-type dance style routines led by a lady who called herself a fitness trainer but didn’t really look like she followed her own advice if you know what I mean!

After a brief tour of the tents selling fitness equipment and pork (yes, pork!), and getting myself a temporary tattoo(!), it was time to line up. I managed to get quite close to the front of the line-up, although I wouldn’t be staying there for very long! To cut a long story short, I did well considering my awful training and the horrible heat and finished in about 36 minutes. Not my best but there’s always next year! :)

Monday brought with it the main reason my parents are glad I’m home... I started my cleaning mission! My mum said she’d let me live here without paying them any money if I did stuff around the house and boy have I done stuff! The whole of the first week back was spent getting covered in dust, grime and anything else disgusting you can imagine! Strangely I’ve been finding it quite therapeutic but I’ve also been gagging, and I’m sure my lungs are full of dust and fumes from cleaning products! But, the house has never been cleaner! I ask any one of you to come round and eat your dinner off any surface! Kim and Aggie would be so proud!

Of course I haven’t forgotten my primary function in life, performing! Rehearsals have been flippin intense! My first Friday rehearsal was an absolute killer! 3 solid hours of dancing... people were sweating so much that we were all dripping onto the floor and I skidded on the floor and nearly broke my neck due to puddles on the floor! It was so good to be back though, and seeing all the shiny Starlight faces was brilliant. The show is going to be amazing, just know it! Plus, I’m here for the whole of the rehearsal process! So exciting! I usually just flap around on stage pretending I know what I’m doing because I haven’t been at rehearsals but I’m gonna kick it this time! Bring it on! People have already been asking to buy tickets and they’re not even on sale yet! It’s 3 months away!!

Rehearsals always bring fun times at Jacc’s after rehearsals. Ok, sometimes we might have a cheeky takeaway on a Friday night but our television watching is my highlight. Every time I come back, Jacc has a new series recorded for us to watch. This time it’s been 60 minute makeover with Claire Sweeney. Just watching her poke her nose in and seeing the looks on her face when some family make strange comments is priceless! And some of the designers are right ponces! Brillliant TV, even if it is fake! No-one can decorate 4 rooms in 6 minutes! Absolute lies!

The next Saturday brought with it my first outing in Kettering town at night since Easter. Let’s just say that the last time we were out there was blood, punches and police and a ‘lifetime ban’ from our favourite bar in town! But there we were, with nothing to do so we decided to be brave and attempt it again! And on the whole it was a very good night! We drank far too much, found a new cocktail bar, I met a lovely new man to chat to, AND we got back into the bar we got banned from and we weren’t even recognised! Jacc made me ask the manager if it was ok to be in there and he looked at me as if I was some sort of freak, he had no idea (although out again this past weekend and he looked and pointed at us while talking to another member of staff... we might have been rumbled!)

Last Monday was an interesting one! Being an unemployed now, I phoned the number to claim some JobSeekers Allowance. If there’s free money going of course I’m going to have some! I’ve got a social life to fund! Usually the initial phone call goes on for quite a while but this one was set to beat all records! I’m not meaning to be racist in any way, but I was shocked and pleased that I got through to an English person... it’s not usually the way any more when you phone these numbers. Anyway, my glee was short-lived when she could barely hear me, the line was awful, and apparently I kept dropping out. It took 5 minutes just to take my name down! Half an hour later, when I’d been asked repeatedly if I was a fisherman(?!?), she managed to get me an appointment for later that day at the job centre to finalise my claim.

I hate the job centre, I always feel like I’m looked down upon just because I have no job and scrounging for money! But to be fair, today’s people that I dealt with were happy and friendly and actually willing to help. And after being asked again if I was a fisherman, they sent me on my way with my little book and told me to look for work... Hmmm! ;)

I was looking forward to the evening. Dancercise was beckoning me! I like Jacc’s dancercise classes, I can actually do the routine and it makes me feel like I’m the best in the class rather than the overweight heifer flapping around at commercial dance on a Friday night! Last week’s routine was to ‘The Club is Alive’ by JLS and it was freakin’ brilliant! I really got my groove on(!) and this time there was a lot more sweat than usual but I didn’t even notice because it was so fun! Nice one Jacc!

I went round to his afterwards because we had a new game to play! Despite being hideously hungover the previous day, he had insisted on dragging us round the car boot sales of the county, but we hit the jackpot in the form of The Crystal Maze board game! A few months ago, in the 60 minute makeover spot we had The Crystal Maze to watch so we snatched it away from the stall for a bargain price of £1! It’s an absolutely amazing game, and I’m not just saying that because I won(!), it was brilliant! I can’t wait to play it again! You get to take people’s crystals if they lose a challenge! Genius! Everybody should play!

And that’s pretty much it actually... Rehearsals, makeovers, cleaning, dancing, crystals, free money... it’s been good! Oh, and of course going to see my beautiful friend Lydia! I know you’re reading! :) Love you x

So now I think I’m going to write a bit more of my musical which hasn’t been touched for a while, and clean the bathroom again! Dancercise tonight, can’t wait!

Nxxx