It’s Monday morning again and I’m awake earlier than I had planned. Apparently there’s something on the television called the ‘World Cup’, you may have heard of it. Anyway, the television seems to be blasting some sort of noise about it, and the walls aren’t particularly thick in this place.
But it’s so much nicer than last week’s accommodation. After Rob had picked me up on Sunday afternoon/evening, it took over 3 hours to get to our new place near Chard in Somerset. For once, the sat-nav took us to the exact place we needed to be, when I kind of hoped it wouldn’t!
We were on a farm again, and first impressions weren’t the best. Now I know farms are working places and there’s lots going on, but to me it seemed a bit... dirty! It looked like no-one cared much for first appearances, despite them having a ‘holiday home’ for rent. As usual there were the obligatory evil farm cats strutting around the place, this time coupled with several breeds of chicken, which tried to get inside the cottage every time the front door was opened. I was sure they sat in waiting in the bushes waiting for us...!
The cottage itself was another story. We got shown around by the farm lady and of course we told her how lovely it was! And when she left we looked at each other with a look that only meant despair. The whole place smelled damp, everywhere was stone with a couple of rugs thrown over the freezing stone floors, the kitchen was barely big enough for one person to be in it at a time (plus the evil farm cats sat outside the kitchen door begging for food every time you entered the kitchen. I seriously started to feel threatened by these animals!). My heart sank when I looked in the bathroom and saw no shower; just a bath with a shower attachment glued to the taps. Yes, actually glued... therefore, when I wanted a bath later on in the week, I had to fill it up through the shower head! Luckily my bed was the best bit about it! I had quite a large bedroom with a double bed and bunk beds in it. It was just the right type of comfortable squidginess!
I wasn’t sure what type of farm this was until bright and early the next morning, I was rudely awakened by a herd of cows that seemed to be invading my bedroom! Well, they were about 20 feet away, but still, not what I wanted on my morning off!
Monday afternoon took us down to where we were before half-term. Due to a communication cock-up, we had missed a show, so off we trotted back with the words ‘DON’T BE LATE!’ on our schedule. As we got closer, I realised that I had been to the school before on a previous tour, so I thought I might be able to remind them of what I had done before so that they weren’t too mad at us for forgetting them. Or not. It turned out the school was split into two, I had previously been to the infant school, and we were headed to the junior section. Brilliant. As soon as we walked in, the contact teacher had an attitude on her, snapping at us and telling us that this was the second time that this had happened with our company, the same thing had happened the year before. And were we aware that they were only paying a reduced rate because of the inconvenience. After explaining for the millionth time that we didn’t deal with the money, we were shown where we could park the van, and off we went to set up.
Needless to say, it was a brilliant show, every single child enjoyed it and that moody teacher soon swallowed her evil words. So I guess we’ll be invited back to not turn up again next year!
A couple of days later our afternoon show was in a prep school. I don’t usually like doing these because I feel that everyone is looking down their noses at me. And today was no exception. I know there’s only 4 weeks left of the tour but I’m going to make sure I check where we are going every day. I really felt like a tramp in that school! Obviously being a prep school, the kids were all immaculately dressed, and I rocked up in some tatty jeans, an old vest, and a flat cap that I had stolen/received from my last boss (Hi Barry!). After being left waiting in their grand entrance hall for an eternity, we were shown to our performance space. Due to the kids having their own performance that week, we couldn’t use their theatre(!), we were in their dance studio. As soon as we walked in I was almost violently sick on the floor. They were pumping something awful in the air into the room and it made me gag every time I walked in. Rob said it smelled like the stuff he used to rub on his legs when he went outside to play rugby at school. I took his word for it and re-swallowed the contents of my stomach.
The dance studio was tiny. It was incredibly narrow, and as you’ve probably guessed, had mirrors down the walls. This caused me to have a fight with our curtains as I tried to hide the back of the set from the mirrors so that our ‘magic trick’ wouldn’t be revealed to the kids via reflection! The show went well despite the lack of space, and it was nice not to have to stretch my voice as there were only 60 kids.
Before I knew it, it was Wednesday night and I was very excited! We had Thursday morning off! I was still ridiculously tired from my jam-packed half-term so a big night’s sleep is what I needed. And boy I got it! I was awoken briefly around 8am by the cows, but apart from that, I had twelve solid blissful hours of sleep! It was amazing! And to add to my good mood, the afternoon’s school was only a 15-minute drive away! Result! We left the house at 12.15pm, found the school, parked the van and found the route to the hall. It wasn’t too far to drag the set in, but we had to walk past the infant playground, and they were all outside playing.
We went past a couple of times and one child starting shouting something at Rob which we could only decipher as ’You’re a loaf’. We weren’t quite sure if this was a Somerset expression, or a new derogatory term used by the youth of today that we didn’t know about. It then became apparent that he was saying ‘You’re in love’, he began to chant it to the both of us, and soon enough, nearly all the children in the playground had gathered by the fence mob-stylee shouting at us. My good mood instantly evaporated. I didn’t know small children could make that much noise. But the show went well, and off we disappeared, thankfully at home time without shouting.
Dear reader. Please note that this blog now continues at a much later time in the day, due to having to go to work!
So, Friday rolled around and we ended up in a school that seemed to be slap bang in the middle of the countryside with no surrounding buildings. It was quite nice, I’m not judging it by its location! We were spotted by a teacher and led to the hall and began to set up. Some children were having music lessons before classes started and I was extremely jealous of a small girl who was playing Kelly Clarkson’s ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’. I find myself being extremely jealous of piano players. If there’s one thing I wish that I could do, it would be to be able to play the piano. I remember being told off at university because I kept looking at my teacher’s hands playing the piano during singing lessons! I got over my jealousy of the girl, carried on bringing the set in, and then did my good deed of the day by giving a small boy a packet of stickers of footballers for his sticker album! I’m nice like that! Plus, they were free in my bag of apples and I had nothing to do with them!
The rest of Friday rolled around in a blur, and I realised that I hadn’t written down any of the stories that the kids had made up during the shows this week. They obviously weren’t very inspiring/imaginative worthwhile stories so I didn’t really care too much. Besides, I was very excited... I was off to Bournemouth the next day!
So Saturday arrived and we hurriedly packed our belongings into the van to move on from the farm. We managed to be ready almost an hour before we were expected to move out, but didn’t leave as I was meeting my lovely ex-flatmate Nicki in town, and didn’t want to be waiting in a car park for several hours. After a mind-numbing hour of cookery programmes, we hauled ourselves into the van. As Rob was doing a final check of the house to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind, the farm lady poked her nose into the van at me and asked if we were off. She showed an interest and asked us where we were headed to next. I told her we were just off to Wells, not far. “It’s a shame, I’ve got a couple coming down from Yorkshire this afternoon, or you could have stayed here for a fortnight.” I did some of my best acting at this point, and I wasn’t even getting paid, nor was anyone watching... “Oh that’s such a shame. We’ve had a really nice week here. Thank you so much, it’s been lovely!” God, I’m good!
We turned our backs on the farm (Huzzah!) and made our way to the town. After several phone calls, and nearly two hours later, I managed to direct Nicki into Tesco car park, Rob went off on his jolly way to the new accommodation, and I was off to Bournemouth! For readers who do not know me, I trained at what was The Arts Institute at Bournemouth, and every now and then, an assortment of ex-housemates of mine gather back for a reunion and general drinking session! This time round, it was myself and the girls from my second and third year, Mat, who I lived with for one year with the girls, and Sam, a girl form my course who came out with us quite a lot, and who I bonded with on the first day of our degree course when she forced me into a bush to feel a bike. Yes, you read that right! (I had my eyes closed at the time... It’s one of those bonding trust exercises you’re always forced to do on first days/auditions!)
So we skip a few hours and we’re all in Bournemouth and have successfully found ourselves clothes to wear and alcohol to sip, so we head to Boscombe to find the hostel we will be staying in. I’ve only had one experience of a hostel before, and this was last year in Ireland. It wasn’t the best to be honest! But after a week on the farm, I really didn’t care what I was sleeping on, as long as I wasn’t woken up the next day by a cow in my ear.
We spotted the hostel on the main road but couldn’t seem to find anywhere to park. We drove around for about ten minutes before we pulled over at the side of the road to phone the hostel to find out where the parking was. Big mistake! Literally five seconds after pulling over, a woman came up to the car clutching what I thought was a can of beer, which turned out to be a cup of coffee (shows how much I drink either of these!), and started talking absolute nonsense at us. Apparently she was Jesus Christ, she had been walking the Earth for 2000 years, had been repeatedly raped by her husband who had killed all of her good children and kept the evil ones, she had been living in an absolute dive, and told us to be careful because people are trying to turn us all into robots!
Sam absolutely fell to bits with laughter which made me laugh too, I tried to get Nicki to drive away but she didn’t want to be rude in case the woman got violent! I thought to myself, if she’s Jesus Christ, surely she wouldn’t harm us! But eventually we mumbled something to her about having to find a house and made our escape.
The hostel was nicer than I expected, we had a lovely pub meal courtesy of the local Wetherspoons, occasionally having our conversation interrupted by a Vuvuzela(!) from the England fans who were busy preparing for our opening match. Then it was dressing up time and we hit the bars of Bournemouth! A lovely night was had by all, made all the more better with pizza at the end of the night! We woke up to beautiful sunshine on Sunday morning, and took a nice stroll down to Boscombe beach where we partook in some more lovely food, had a quick walk up and down the new pier, consumed delicious ice cream and headed back to sadly say our goodbyes and leave the beautiful town.
I had managed to persuade my housemate Gayle to drop me off at my next location, it didn’t seem like it was too far from her home town on my map, so I bribed her with a bit of petrol money and we hit the road. We were both ridiculously tired, Gayle was feeling more hungover every mile we went, but after what seemed like the longest journey ever, we made it to my home for the week. I waved goodbye to Gayle and began to explore my new surroundings! Rob had been a gentleman and had left me the double room, he’s good like that! I made my way up the stairs thinking I was still drunk from the night before but it turned out it wasn’t me! The house is wonky! The floors are all at different angles, and if you’re not careful on the stairs you will find yourself falling into the wall! All very bizarre, but it’s actually a lovely cottage... with carpets! Bonus! It had been a lovely weekend, I really felt the need to get away to somewhere different and try to forget everything that was going on, and it was so nice to meet up with old friends again. Even if we did feel a bit old now! But despite the loveliness, it was good to just sink into a nice comfy bed with a Johnny Depp DVD and a mug of hot chocolate to relax and unwind before the next lot of shows were thrust upon us.
I managed to find some internet signal and set about looking for any jobs I could find for something to do to fill my free summer time. I found a couple of jobs, sent off my applications with no real hope of hearing anything, as is the usual, and tucked myself into bed with the hope of having another twelve-hour sleep. Which brings us nicely back to the start of this blog!
The show today was the sort that I like. The children were really intelligent and knew stuff about every topic we asked them, plus there was an incredibly cute male teacher sitting at the back for me to admire! Annoyingly, he seemed to be looking at Rob for most of the time, typical! As we were loading the van back up after the show, I received a text message from my dad which ruined my good mood. He’d seen the finalists of the Neighbours Be a Star competition. I knew that I probably didn’t stand much of a chance with over 1500 entrants, but I was more annoyed that I hadn’t received a rejection email... I hate that! Surely you should respond to everyone even if they don’t make it! But I brushed it aside, there are still 6 more days to find out if I’ve made it with Starlight onto ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, so my fingers are still crossed!
Before I forced myself outside to go for a training session for my Race for Life (in 4 weeks time, eek!), I checked my emails and Facebook, and then I checked one of the casting websites that I use. It turns out, one of the companies that I applied for yesterday has offered me an audition in a couple of weeks time! Every cloud!
And now it’s 11pm and I’m back in bed, in a rather serene mood. I’ve just watched the season finale of ‘Glee’, and I don’t know whether it’s because I’m just very tired or a combination of things, but I ended up sobbing my eyes out over it! Watching the cast performing all their musical numbers made the tears well up in my eyes and spill uncontrollably down my cheeks. It made me realise how much more I want from my career. I know I enjoy touring but after this next tour, I want to get out of Theatre-in-Education. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, I just know that there’s something inside me that wants it so badly, that I’ll try anything to try and get to where I want to be.
OK, so I might have ‘failed’ in my attempts to meet Dr Karl in Australia, but as my friend Lucy said, it probably means there’s something bigger and better round the corner. Who knows what this audition may bring, but if I don’t try I’ll never know. I feel like I’ve been lazy in getting work so far, but now I really know how much I want to make a success out of myself, I’m not going to let anything get in my way. Watch out world, 2010 is my year! x
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