I Have Aged Well
I had an entirely delightful week off for my birthday (thank you, you’re too kind – I do look ten years younger than I did before). I really didn’t do a lot. I find that difficult to accept – my brain only slowly grasps that “relaxation” is achieved mainly when not rushing around doing things. I am not very bright. I’m really struggling to recall what we did do… there was much Legoing, we cinema’d a bit (not a great week for new films) and did a lot of reading and spent much time with a Marmalade Badger on my lap. Oh yes, I ate pastries for breakfast every day. I was also presented with much love, cakes and happiness.
For the main event I got a huge heap of books (only further troubling our book storage problems), pretty jewellery, a loom bands loom (!), Lego (massive shock), more toys and and a delightful array of odds and ends. I have embraced my new age of 36 because I seem to have received more playthings for my birthday than I did when I was 9. This is only getting better. The Lego itself is now stacked to a terrifying height and I’ll have no choice but to tug out the lower boxes first and enjoy the subsequent carnage.
I accidentally erased my entire tablet which is pretty fucking devastating and discovered that since it doesn’t support the right kind of Mass Storage mode you can’t restore the deleted files. Oh how I laughed. Motherfucker. Sigh… Reckon I’ve only really lost a handful of irreplaceable documents and in-game data. Also discovered it wasn’t backing up to Google Drive. Grr. Hilariously I’ve also just this minute discovered that my external HP harddrive has fucked itself up and now believes it needs to be formatted again. Bye bye world… I’m now looking into full cloud back up of everything (BackBlaze, Copy or Jottacloud right now).
Stress-Pacing
Of course, I did have to return to work and it was a devastating change of pace. Working in an organisation while it is being privatised and the managers work in a range of exciting silos is just great. Unhelpfully stressful. By the end of Monday I could only drown my sorrows and regret ever having gotten out of bed. Just achieving that was tough for the rest of the week.
That’s not entirely fair – I went to an improv workshop with our pal Klaus Peter Schreiner from lovely Germany. It was a very welcome evening, and served to not only distract me from the day but went some way to re-delighting me with improv. He is an excellent fellow in all respects
It was a great shame that I then crashed massively while on the train home and failed to go to bed until after 2am. That kinda set the week’s precedent. Fortunately/unfortunately I then wasn’t really back in the office until Thursday afternoon due to various meetings, briefings, shitstorms and a team conference… Sigh. I really want this next week to go better.
Knickerbocker Glorious
My week was rescued by stopping being at work on Friday, followed by further indulgence in Warehouse 13 on Netflix- happiness. Then the splendid humans of Furthest From The Sea. Sure, I missed my train to get there (which really fit the week’s theme nicely), but then I got to cycle at high speed past pedestrians and still get to the venue on time. I was pleased with my self-correction.
Compering the show in the middle of Derby is immense fun. We had Streetlight Theatre Arts banging out showtunes (a lovely bunch), Alice Macy with her lovely honeyed voice, Black Cats & Magpies , for their first ever gig, Andrea from Cabaret Theatre School dancing with classics like Michael Jackson (!) , Matt McGuinness and our own Josh Beardsley to play us out, and round off his year on placement as an all round excellent human being.
This time Jamie and Josh gave me a wireless mic – with a Britney Spears headset and everything! I wasn’t sure if I’d like it at first, but if I’m close enough to the speakers I sound like Megatron. It proved entirely natural to wander around, and pursue our missing musical theatre act into Walkabout. I’m looking forwards to playing with it more.
Events and Excitement
Saturday 23rd August
Knickerbocker Glorious – Northampton
I’ll be compering again – in a new place dead centre in Northampton (I have never been there), plus me and Martin will be springing MissImp improv action on the crowd as well!
https://www.facebook.com/events/1435074376776434/
