Natty nine-lives, the cat that got the cream, and other feline comparisons...

Hello again, readers. Pull up a chair, take off your boots, and settle down for another instalment of my ramblings. Comfortable? Lovely. Let's begin.

So, another chunk of time has rolled past, and naturally I have spent almost every waking hour of it working, but things are progressing nicely. There were a few moments last week in which I thought that things were not going to go my way, but fortunately everything has sorted itself out marvellously, and I feel extremely lucky, hence the nature of the title of this post.

Around ten days ago, I was in turmoil! Cast your minds back to October 2014. I was working my Halloween scare job and having a lot of fun making people scream, cry, throw up and urinate on themselves. I'm not even joking, I really did that! Anyway, I was working with a lovely man called Ian, who one night mentioned a play to me. I expressed an interest in reading it, and promptly thought nothing more of it. Then earlier this year I received a phone call about it, and I was sent a link to read the script. Lovely. Long story short, I was waiting for a call about an audition for it, but hadn't heard anything for ages. I was just about to give up on it when I received a message from him about it. It was still going ahead, and do I want to be involved? The answer was obviously yes! I asked for the dates as I wasn't sure I had been told, and my plans were building up.

I had planned my birthday party for the same month, and had an uneasy feeling that they might clash. The dates came in. My party was safe. Unfortunately it clashed with an upcoming performance of mine. Arse. I sheepishly rang the director of the show and said that I might not be able to do it, and my heart sank. I'm in a choir, and our upcoming show is an Andrew Lloyd Webber showcase. This in itself makes me delirious with joy, but on top of that I had auditioned for a solo and got one! I had been given one of my favourite Lloyd Webber songs, if not one of my favourite songs ever, and now it might be taken away from me. I was devastated. There was still a slight chance that I could do it, but I wasn't holding out much hope. My father had also gone crazy over it and had told all of his friends, who wanted to come and watch! Gutted was not the word.

By some crazy miracle, the next day I received a message from Ian saying that the dates had to change due to the theatre being double booked. Result! A quick flurry of text messages saying that I was still in resulted in a lot of happy people, and thankfully the show could still go on! Smile back on face, solo still mine, day made!

Last Saturday I travelled a little bit across the country to lovely Leicester, to film my role in my awesome chum Peter's web series, 'News Man'. I still don't really know how I ended up getting a part in it to be honest. I watched episode one, told him I liked it, said I wanted to be in it, and a few months later, there I was! I drove into town to catch the train, and thanks to the awkward teen who was standing in the ticket queue and not actually wanting to buy a ticket, I made it onto the train with a spectacular dive, around ten seconds before departure. I was concerned that I would get told off by Peter for not knowing my lines for the day, and spent the twenty minute journey crammed in between sweaty commuters with my script in my hand, in the attempt to not look like a terrible actor once we started filming.

I met Peter at the station, and we walked to a little park to wait for co-creator Chris to arrive. On the walk there, Peter said something to me that put a smile on my face. He said, "I can't believe I got you!". I asked him what he meant by that, and he said he was so happy that I was going to be a part of News Man. It was incredibly sweet, and the nicest thing that anyone has said about me and acting this year!

Chris arrived, and we walked around the town to our first location, a car park! Who said acting wasn't glamorous?!? Shooting began, and we cracked on with the day at speed. I believe we did more than was scheduled for the day which was fabulous, and there was glorious sunshine, which made the day even better. We finished up, had a couple of drinks, before Peter walked me back to the train station, where I managed to catch the train once again with seconds to spare. I got home and collapsed into bed thoroughly exhausted and ridiculously sunburned. Yay.


Sunday brought with it another jam packed day; park working followed by a choir rehearsal followed by a staff meeting followed by a staff meal. I pushed the boat out and bought a hideously overpriced glass of wine, but my god it was worth it! Time to face another week!

The usual stuff happened, working all days, working most nights, plus I had a meeting with Ian about the upcoming play. We selected our ideal dates for it, and things began to slip into place. I arranged my next day of filming on News Man, got more Neverland costumes ordered, and felt very accomplished. My actors are working their socks off, and making me very proud indeed, they even brought tears to my eyes in a totally good way!

I also handed in my notice to my cleaning job(!) and made a big decision that will take place this summer. That's all I'm saying for now, but it seems that everything happens for a reason, and even though things might look as if they might not go in my favour, they seem to sort themselves out nicely.

So, I've got three more weeks of working 7 days a week, 5 performances in rehearsal, 2 plays being written, News Man being filmed, plus another film due to be shot in August. I suppose I'd only moan if I had nothing to do!

Nxxx

Natalie's Nugget: I got to drag Peter around the floor during News Man filming, to get a better performance out of him. I think I broke him. But we all have to suffer for our art! ;)