Doers

Are you a doer?  Or a ponderer? 

Some might reply ‘a bit of both’, ‘depends on the context’, ‘don’t really ponder or do’… but if we’re talking about natural tendencies, I think most people can be broadly defined as instinctively one or the other.

Declaring my bias upfront, I admit to being a doer.  I acknowledge too that doers should sometimes ponder more, and ponderers should stop procrastinating and take decisive action.  When taken to the extreme we each get into trouble as much for our strength as our weakness, and there’s bound to be conflict between opposing dispositions.

Nevertheless unless writing fiction, fleshing out the character in a play, or empathizing with a friend, I can only speak knowledgeably from the point of view of a doer.  It’s how I came out of the womb and there’s not a thing I or anyone else can do about it.

I fondly recall my Dad picking me up from the train on Friday nights during the period I was a weekly boarder at a convent school in the Hunter Valley – a school appropriately named Lochinvar given we felt resolutely ‘locked up’.  Or so they thought…

Dad would often say to me “you jump off that train after a five hour journey like you’ve just jumped out of the shower.  You are a born doer”.   As this was accompanied by a warm smile and hug… and loving and admiring my father as immensely as I did… I naturally came to associate ‘doing’ as a virtue.  

So if you bat for the other team you might have to indulge me here…

Examples of situations where doers ‘do’, abound.  The other day I changed a toilet roll in a restaurant toilet.  The roll on the wall was empty, the other sitting on the ground.  Why didn’t the person before just attach the full one, I wondered?  Strange.

Recently I emailed the local Council to say the recycling hadn’t been picked up for weeks, the last time the men had only taken half of it, and it was creating an unsightly mess outside my block of flats.  Yesterday the Council came and took it all away.  Fabulous.  Good job.  Some hours later I left the house for an appointment and saw lots of litter had been scattered across the freshly laid turf and courtyard.   It looked awful, taking away from the relief of the recycling being moved.  So I put down my handbag and proceeded to pick up the rubbish and deposit it into a plastic bag.  Close to the end of this five minute chore I had a disgusting eeeeeeeeewwwwwwww moment when I discovered, a split-second too late, that I had picked up a used-condom.  How GROSS is that?!  So after screeching with horror and dropping it, I eventually composed myself sufficiently to find something to pick it up with and quickly finished the job.  I continued meanwhile to cringe at the thought someone had seemingly used, and then disgarded, this condom near the bushes on the front lawn over which my lounge-room windows have full view. 

In Wandsworth?  Seriously, there is none so queer as folk…

My point is that I finished the job despite the unexpected and shocking grossness.  Only then did I return to the house to scrub my hands half a dozen times before continuing about my business.  It just isn’t in me to leave something half done.  And it seems churlish to ignore such things, as if magic fairies will resolve the problem.

The props girl on Neighbours used to tease me that when I was playing Julie Martin and the scene was being filmed in the kitchen where I was busy doing ‘mother acting’… if the director said CUT and I was wiping the kitchen bench I would finish wiping that section before I put the cloth down.  It makes me laugh to remember her teasing.  For though I’m generally a fairly tidy person, I’m far from a ‘clean freak’, it is simply that I do what I’m doing until it’s done. 

That’s why, I guess, I am also comfortable with the lifestyle of a writer.  I daren’t just stare at the blank page or procrastinate around the house, I get stuck in and write – whether or not the early drafts are any good. That is why I spent an average of six to eight hours a day writing and researching two books for the best part of three years in Italy.  I’d made a decision to write and that’s all there was to it.

Similarly, once the tenants in my house on the south coast of NSW did a runner, leaving the place in a pig-sty.  I was only recently out of hospital and not at all well, but at the time couldn’t afford to hire people to fix it for me.  So I got down on my hands and knees and slowly but surely did all the scrubbing myself.  I hired a painter then to do the big stuff and after two hard weeks the house looked brand spanking new and I was able to lease it again on an increased rent.  (I got back some $ too from the departing tenants after taking them to the Tenancy Tribunal.)  I probably shouldn’t have put myself under such physical strain at the time, but that’s what doers do. 

When I’m working in management roles, I’ve noticed that the staff who are real doers and I get on famously.  I don’t micro-manage and leave them to innovate and run with the ball as appropriate.  The ponderers, if they err toward slackness, and I emphasis if, tend to drive me crazy.  They simply don’t move or think fast enough for my liking. (Or perhaps they don’t sufficiently communicate why they need to ponder so extensively prior to acting.) 

Once I was picking up rubbish around the periphery of a large performing arts centre where I was General Manager.  It didn’t occur to me to leave it on the ground.  I then cleared glasses off the bar and stacked them at the end so the incoming shift could more easily collect them.  It was standard stuff during regular venue inspections – a break, actually, from meetings, emails, grant applications and budgets.  A little while later I met an usher in the foyer toilets and asked “would you please be kind enough to pick up these hand-towels… the cleaner isn’t back until tonight and we have a matinee audience coming in shortly for the small theatre”.  Well, if she didn’t just brazenly look at me and say “Why, that’s not my job”.  I still remember a) my shock, b) my dilemma as what to do next, and c) the strong desire I felt to grab her around the shoulders and shake her.

Not quite so extreme, but a colleague I worked with on the Olympics and Paralympics said to me on the way to the pub after shift: “Can you believe how slowly some of the team walk?  I mean, are they incapable of feeling any sense of urgency”.  I laughed heartily as I had been feeling the exact same way about many of the more junior staff (never the volunteers who were awesome) but had been reluctant to voice it -  knowing, as I do, that quite often in a work environment slower, or more reluctant, members of the team have trouble keeping up with me.  

I should be careful not to infer that ‘doers’ as opposed to ‘ponderers’ are necessarily the productive ones.  It depends, no doubt, on the quality of the output.  Some things take a little brewing before they mature. Sometimes it is best to step back and do absolutely nothing; though by and large that goes against the grain for a doer. 

However I have had some success with that approach on occasion - for the expectation has been that I will ‘do’, and so when I didn’t ‘do’, or didn’t react, the lack of ‘doing’ was all the more powerful.  Recently some colleagues even congratulated me for ‘not doing’ when the temptation to ‘do’ was quite immense but would have inevitably ended up in a negative environment.  So I was quite chuffed actually to have successfully acted the part of a ‘ponderer’.  

I think Eastern thinkers would say that was something about Ying and Yang? Or using opposite force?  Not sure.  I've got too much Ying.  Or is that Yang?

Anyway, sometimes doers are thought to be impetuous or are accused of failing to think/plan.  But, generally speaking, that is no more true than the reverse: that ponderers think to the exclusion of action.  I am talking about tendencies, instinctive drivers.

And it’s perfectly clear that if the dilemma had been “...to do or not to do, that is the question...” after a reasonable time spent ruminating I’d have told Hamlet to GET ON WITH IT!

Ok, blog done.  What’s next on my ‘to do’ list?

 

Recommendation:

As this happens to be timely, you might like to check out:
http://perfectblend.net/features/interview-mullins.htm

 

 
 

The Ugly Duckling

Despite fancy printing presses, digital media and the internet, story-telling is fundamentally an oral tradition.  It’s the way people connect.

Story-telling is also generational.  For as you get older you fondly remember the stories grandparents, parents, aunties and uncles used to tell you… whenever possible passing them on to the next generation of little ones. 

Generally speaking my sister, Rebecca, and her partner Michelle, let me take care of their children’s musical theatre education (they don’t do musicals, unless I’m in them).  So I had to introduce little Harry and Frankie Jean to The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins.  They were easy converts, quickly singing the songs and dancing with me around the lounge-room.  FJ likes me to sing-along with Somewhere over the rainbow, but Harry says “be quiet please Aunty Julie, I can’t hear the girl”.   Everybody’s a critic.  But I let him get away with it – it is Judy after all. 

There must be something special about Danny Kaye though, for Rebecca has often sung classics like Thumbelina and The Ugly Duckling to her kids - having heard them from our Dad at not infrequent intervals - and in my experience there isn’t a child alive who doesn’t lap up such stories.  Hans Christian Anderson was a national Danish treasure and a genius children’s author, so if you haven’t read the full text of The Ugly Duckling, before the story was turned into song in Hollywood, then google it now or, better still, buy the book.  You’ll love it. 

The reason this comes back to me is because yesterday the BBC presented The Ugly Duckling in their slot with Mr Bloom on CBeebies.  Designed with Northern Ballet with the intention of engaging children’s interest in story-telling through dance, I thought it a highly successful and valuable venture. Imaginative without being complicated, polished without losing innocence, simple, organic, attractive and engaging, it ticked all an audience’s boxes (child or adult) while contributing to the arts in a legitimate way.  Well done BBC.

As a bonus it left me pondering (on the train as I made my way back from Shropshire to London) the essence of The Ugly Duckling journey we all make.

What are we, really?  Who are we, really?  And where, or with whom, is our niche?  

It is far from just a children’s story.  For we must all forge through the winters when the answers are not clear… when we’re in transition… or waiting for some project or goal to blossom.  We all ask, in our own way, what the Northern Ballet suggested… am I a duck?  Am I a frog?  Am I a cat?  Am I a fox?  We are all at risk when the fox manipulates our confusion or takes advantage of our vulnerability.  And seasons pass, as they did so beautifully in this little ballet, with Autumn leaves falling… before we journey to a place where we find the answers we’re looking for… where we get a fuller sense of the person (or professional) we are best equipped to be… where we find new support, new and satisfying roles to play… where our changing needs are assessed, met and (hopefully) comforted.  So the sigh of pleasure we share as The Ugly Duckling turns up in the final scene in a glowing white tutu and delicate wings, to be welcomed by the Queen of Swans into a new world with friendship and security, is actually a primal and ageless sigh of satisfaction.  Children express it the loudest, with unadulterated freedom and joy, for it’s the happy ending they are geared to expect.  That’s one of the reasons we adore children – for their safe and enthusiastic expectation of a happy ending.  It’s what we should, actually, remember to cherish in them and foster in ourselves. 

For wouldn’t everything be so much better if we trusted, like children, that after waddling and quacking and enduring “winter in his lonely clump of weed” that the rescue party would arrive?  Wouldn’t it be better if we trusted after passing through a crucible, or emerging from a chrysalis, that we’d all be butterflies? 

It would certainly be good if, on days like today, when I’m struggling to get off the starting blocks because I’ve returned from the pretty countryside to find, for not the first time, I have no hot water or heating in my expensive London apartment… if I trusted after some hours (please God, not days) in this frigging freezing flat… (there are those f's again)... that there will be a reliable HAPPY ENDING?!

With that thought, I am going to stop grumbling and swearing under my breath, I am going to stop waiting for the plumber and feeling frozen, and I am going to hum the following tune and go around the corner to a warm café and order a huge brunch.  And by the time I’m finished, maybe, just maybe my happy ending to today’s challenge will be a little closer…

I’m not such an ugly duckling
No feathers all stubby and brown
For in fact these birds in so many words said
‘Xchk’ the best in town,

‘Xchk’ the best,

‘Xchk Xchk’ the best
‘Xchk Xchk’ the best in town.

 

Not a quack, not a quack, not a waddle or a quack
But a glide and a whistle and a snowy white back
And a head so noble and high
Say who’s an ugly duckling?
Not I!
Not I! 

 

Recommended:

1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rp5h1/CBeebies_Ugly_Duckling/

2) http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/shows/ugly-duckling

3) http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/hcanderson/bl-hcanderson-ugly.htm

4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMKxnYRhk6I

 

The F word

More than one f word is obnoxious. 

There’s the infamous f which ends in k… originally an offensive expletive of great emphasis and passion.  Now, depending on the social circle, not so much...

There’s the pejorative use of fat… foolish… funky… feeble… fickle… flaky… even funny can be high-jacked on occasion as an insult.  There’s a forlorn feeling in other f words too, like: forgetful, frail, frosty, frigid, foppish, frantic, fake, frustrated, furious, fumbling, furry and fragmented.  Even failure starts with an f.  And freak, well, that’s just awful.

Is there a connection between troublesome f words and the negative connotations of feminism?  After all women’s problem – whatever name you give it – is that, the world over, they simply do not have the same power or freedom as men.  The revolution, that was, is far from won, and the need for greater equality and participation very real.  The theoretical thinkers who have analysed language at great length (I won’t call them French Feminists as it’s proved to be a contentious label) did much to illustrate the patriarchal bias in the way we speak and therefore the way we think.  Even the word female is a mere prefix stuck to a male.  

Nevertheless, the f word most preoccupying me at the moment, is faith: faith in others and faith in oneself.  Five little letters which together are greater than the sum of their parts.  An important f word…  On which we can all get wobbly, sometimes for good reason, but life is always better when we find a way to get past the hurt of disappointed faith and reboot.  This is particularly important when it comes to self-faith – the quiet trust in one’s own value and potential. 

Reminding ourselves of our intrinsic worth - and, by inference, the value of every human being, every life - is not just a good way to keep up morale or kick-start a challenging day, it’s also the link to the other f word, the big-brother Faith. 

It’s not surprising I should be thinking about God.  We are approaching Easter, the season when Christians are supposed to think about Jesus Christ, about what we believe in, and the Hope our Faith affords.  We are called in this season to rediscover and renew our relationship with God, our awareness of, and faith in, His presence. 

The period of Lent, leading up to Easter, is about mental and spiritual preparation, about creating space in our busy lives to focus.  I didn’t give up anything for Lent this year, but I have kept up my New Year resolution to read something reflective most days and it has actually helped me to feel more peaceful and centred.   Recently I read: “do you believe God loves you?”  Or more to the point, “do you believe He loves you enough?”  

 

Good question really.  Because if brutally honest I’m inclined to think, however subconsciously, that He’s often slacking – answering other people’s prayers and not paying me enough attention. 

 

But sounds awful put like that, doesn’t it?  For as soon as the complaint is out of my mouth the flipside is immediately obvious: that it’s probably me not paying Him enough attention.  I mean, if I phoned a friend dozens, let alone hundreds, of times and they didn’t return my calls, you’d give up on them right (stalker types and neurotics aside)?  Yet He hangs around and patiently waits for us to tune in.  And then when we do pick up the phone, metaphorically, He is all ready to listen and love, without resentment or judgement.  If you do have Faith, in a God, in the God, in a Higher Being or perhaps a less defined Higher Purpose, it’s pretty cool to feel the love, the interest, is unconditional.  It is a true Blessing… when we trust it, when we have faith in our Faith.

[Have you noticed there are lots of brilliant b words too?  Maybe another time…]

Anyway, feeling sluggish yesterday after a late night at a party, unusually I went to Mass for Palm Sunday in the evening.  When coming home on the bus I was carrying a palm tied in the shape of a cross.  It wasn’t until a girl asked “have you just been to Mass, may I ask where?” that I realised what a potent symbol I was carrying.  I don’t think I ‘hide my light under a bushel’ if engaged in conversation about God or spirituality.  In fact I’ve been told I’m in the habit of switching my conversation (and writing) from the sacred to the profane with some regularity.  Yet I don’t automatically presume people share my spiritual beliefs or wish to talk about God.  This girl’s question, however, made me think I should perhaps be more conscious of occasions when I can ‘bear witness’.

So that got me thinking: bear witness to what exactly?  How does my knowledge and faith in Jesus affect my life or the way I conduct myself?

The short answer is “probably not enough”.  By which I mean, it is too easy to compartmentalise one’s life such that Faith exists in one realm, and most other activities in another.  I suspect that is a common phenomena, so no wonder we sometimes feel schizophrenic.  For surely, to be most healthy or helpful, our spiritual life should be integrated with other dimensions – like good food and exercise, not just a Sunday add on.  So maybe that’s the feature of Faith I’ll try to concentrate on this Easter, as I head north to visit friends who are currently surrounded by blankets of snow. 

(BTW if God is responsible for the change of seasons then I’m afraid his UK satellite is off.  Or he’s had a fierce argument with Mother Nature who’s walked off the job.  For Spring is currently AWOL!  Sorry, that’s just my profane streak.)

The other f word which is prescient in the Easter season is of course forgiveness.  Forgiveness and Faith are tied inexorably together.  Yet the key message in Christ’s death and resurrection is the one we all struggle to comprehend and action.  Forgiveness is tricky.  It is tested in our relationship of faith in others, our faith in ourselves, and our Faith in God.  And that’s why Jesus came to give us the ultimate example – the standard we’ll never reach but which we’ll be all the better for trying to emulate.  

It’s a big call.  It’s a life long mission.  So when those f words get too heavy enjoy these… for God gave them all: feisty, fit, fair, fine, finest, fortune, faithful, favourite, fancy, familiar, fertile, fervent, flexible, flirtatious, flamboyant, floral, fluorescent, fond, forthcoming, fragrant, fruity, friendly, fresh, full, frank, fun, free and fantastic.   

Happy Easter!  Find family and friends and fabulous fare and have a festive and fruitful time!

 

 

 

The Mulberry Bush

 

Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush.
Here we go round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning.

Brings back memories of childhood, doesn’t it?  It’s a misnomer though, as mulberries don’t grow on a bush.  They grow on a tree.

This was brought to mind recently when I was sitting in a waiting room at Moorfields Eye Hospital.  I was chatting with a nice man and woman I’d never met before, about an idea I’ve been canvassing: which five fruits or vegetables would they bring with them onto a desert island if they were the only food to be had for many years; other than fish or animals caught in the wild.  A spin on the desert-island-discs theme, this gentleman was the first person to add avocado to the list.  Very sensible idea.  (In case you’re wondering, everyone wants grapes, olives or tomatoes so it’s after that things get interesting.)

In the course of this conversation I was surprised to discover neither the lady or the man, coming from different parts of England, had ever tasted a mulberry.  The lady had once seen a white one, which did not compute at all with my senses, for I know too well the deep purple, almost black, richness of a corrugated and plump mulberry as if it were an extension to my hand.

In an instant, vivid images of my childhood flooded back.  Eight Mullins kids running around the back-yard under a sprinkler, variously wrestling and throwing rocks at the black magpies which didn’t hesitate to swoop on us if they felt we were getting too close to the gum trees where their young were nesting. 

Clearly it’s hot in Australia. There were less water-shortages then so sprinklers were allowed, and it was a few years before we were to enjoy the advantages of an in-ground swimming pool and, much to our friend’s delight, a tennis court.  In these early years, the days of innocence and chaos, when our determined mother would leave oranges and cordial on the back verandah and then lock the back door so we couldn’t get in… the only way, I now understand, she had any hope of making dinner so it’d be ready for her hungry brood and our father when he came home from the hospital after rounds… we played for hours in the waning sunlight without a care in the world. 

Of course we often ran to the back door pleading for sympathy and to complain about one or other sibbling for “hitting me”, “teasing me” or some other exaggerated complaint.  But the stoic mother of eight, despite her mild exterior, was no push-over.  She needed that kid free hour for her own sanity, so she did not open that door until Mrs Gillies arrived to help bath us.  That’s right, how do you bath eight grubby kids in a reasonable time-frame and be sure not to miss one out?  You need help.  And Mrs Gillies, like the big magpies that hung over our large yard, didn’t hesitate to pick us up by the ears and drag us into the bath kicking and screaming if necessary.  Once in there the water-splashing was lots of fun of course, but I suspect we’d never have got clean if Mum or Mrs Gillies hadn’t been there to apply soap. 

One of my earliest memories is sitting in that deep yellow bath, my little knees up near my chest, with two sisters and one brother.  That’s right, four of us at once, for we were still small enough to sit facing across the bath.  We were each covered head to toe with purple mulberry juice.  It was our favourite pass-time, in fact, climbing that big old mulberry tree.  Positioned in the back left corner of the yard, adjacent to the fence delineating our yard from our neighbours, ‘the Desnicks’, a family with even more kids and infamously naughty… the mulberry tree’s branches were strong and kid friendly.  Some beams hung low to the ground, so it was easy to get right inside and climb up through the middle to reach the stash of juicy goodies at the top when lower stocks ran out.  Endlessly we munched on those mulberries, the rich purple juice running down our faces as we grabbed the next lot to throw at each other as if it were the most normal thing in the world.  

I loved that mulberry tree.  And as the lady and man at Moorfields Hospital mentioned the fruit I haven’t now eaten for decades, the smell, texture and richly-coloured stains on freckly Celtic skin came back to me like it was yesterday.   Our mulberry tree was a magical stash of entertainment and nourishment, particularly comforting when despite repeated efforts Mum still wouldn’t open that damn back door so I could complain about my brothers.  (Well, usually Damian, the sibbling who remains the biggest stirrer in the family... and, I’m happy to say, also very loving and full of life.)

Mum did open the sacred back door prematurely when Alison got bitten by an ugly red-back spider… and Sean (still in nappies) got stuck two metres in the air on barbed-wire as we tried (unsuccessfully) to pass him over the fence in an attempt to make The Great Escape… for I guess Mum sensed in our chorus of yells something more serious.  Indeed, looking back, I imagine our dear Mum developed a good ‘scream radar detector’ for how else could she have navigated the chaos to identify the genuinely needy from the melodramatic?  And of course she relied often, as you would, upon the threat of “wait ‘til your father gets home…” which usually sent us scurrying off the verandah and back into the depths of our huge yard in hopes of not being discovered.  Ever.  Or until depths of hunger banished fears of punishment.

Innocent days.  Innocent mad days.  As they should be. 

As we hope children still get to enjoy… despite the lure of more insular and lethargic options such as computer games and TV. 

It’s funny though, for remembering that mulberry tree now, I don’t ever recall opening the gate in subsequent years to pop behind the fence to pick mulberries to eat while lounging around the pool with our teenage friends.  The tree was still there.  Wasn’t it?  So why had it lost its amazing allure?

I feel sad to think we grew up that quickly.  So soon too worried about how we looked in our bikinis to risk being smothered in purple juice. 

There was no malice in it, of course, just dismissal… the way a doll or a football is suddenly left alone in the corner… not so much unloved as ignored or forgotten. 

As I sit now in London, hungering for the arrival of spring, I feel a mad urge to taste mulberries again.  To remind myself what all the fuss was about.  I know it won’t be the same.  But for a moment I want to feel again that total abandonment to the senses.  I want to climb up into the middle of a tall tree without a fear in the world – as if the tree, the yard, the air, the fruit, the birds, are a private and rich domain, the beginning and end of the universe as I know it. 

In the meantime I’m going to close my eyes and sing… here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush…

 

 

Recommendation:

http://leeds.enquira.co.uk/home-garden/bulb-growers/mulberry-farms-l14885.html

 

 

Here's The Thing

You may not know it, but I’ve been holding back.

Since I started writing my blog last May I have been wanting to tell you about the two books I wrote while living in my beloved Italy from 2008 to 2011.   Yet it seemed premature, like I hadn’t yet earned the right to harness your interest.

However I’m putting it out there now.  The reason I’m writing a blog is threefold:

1)     I love to write.

2)     The discipline of writing and posting quickly is akin to writing aerobics.

3)      I want to build a potential audience for my books so when I finally get face-to-face with a literary agent or publisher I can say “I have had xxxxxxx readers visit my blog”. 

On each of those fronts the blog is on track.  I’m a little behind however in that:

1)     I need to get my manuscript out to more agents…

2)     …and I want the blog readership to peak by the anniversary of starting.

That’s where I need you.  If you like reading my little stories then please introduce your favourite posts to someone new so that I can be sure to reach 10,000 visitors by May. 

You can give out the long link: http://theresalwaysastoryjulieemullins.blogspot.co.uk/   Or the quick snappy one which my great friend, Felice Arena, a successful children’s author and performer in his own right, kindly set up for me: blogjulie.com 

The figure is random… one day I’d like to be able to say 100,000… but as a kick-start 10,000 just sounds better than 7,000, doesn’t it?

And as I’m gearing up now to get my first manuscript onto more desks… it buoys me to know I have my blog project in the background, keeping my wheels turning as a writer and my potential audience growing.

My books, by the way, are travel stories – the story and sequel of my first year landing and living on my own in the paradise we know as Tuscany and Umbria without friends or language.  Like many memoires they contain a healing journey, adventure and romance.  Mine also contain a spiritual journey and a thread of my favourite hobby, Renaissance Art. 

And that’s the challenge, to find an agent and publisher who will allow me to express my own voice in its truest form – who believes there are readers out there for stories which flip back and forward between humorous Bridget Jones episodes and more thoughtful, intellectual considerations.  I think it’s more true to life.  It’s certainly true to me.  And I know lots of women with the capacity for both.  So if you agree, watch this space…

The first book’s (working) title is Wild Woman Don’t Get the Blues, referencing an old jazz song I love and suggesting the pursuit of personal fulfilment, liberty and maybe a little wildness is the best way to avoid staying down after life has put you through the wringer.

So, thankyou for visiting There’s Always A Story! 

I don’t know how I found readers in countries as diverse as the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, China, Philippines, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, Sweden, and sometimes even Africa or Borneo… but, with future help from a social media advisor, and possibly some blogging partnerships, I hope soon to bring you more…

xxx

 

 

 

 

A Special Birthday

Some birthdays are special.  The number itself need not be all defining, what’s important is that some occasions mark a turning point, a ‘coming of age’, a reminder that it isn’t the “years in your life” but the “life in your years” that count.

I’ve recently had such a birthday.  And I’m happy to say I felt content to reflect that, with respect to my life, that’s very much been the case.

I may not have achieved (yet) everything I would like.   But if I had wouldn’t I be dead?

I may not always feel I’m where I most want to be (even should be).  But doesn’t it keep you young to hunger after the next goal?

Whatever I may be lacking… my life has been rich with curiosity, learning, adventure, travel, friendship, love, talent, challenges, accomplishment, entertainment and self-development... and there seems little sign of that changing.  So my special birthday was a day to feel satisfied, to feel good to be alive.

Of course I’d like to take ten years off; while still knowing what I know now.  Most of the time I think, speak and behave as if I really am ten years younger than my damned birth-certificate attests.  And most of the time people believe it to be true.  But actually that’s how I felt at the last significant birthday, so no doubt I’ll still feel that way when I’m 100.  

The point is that age means very different things to different people, and I have never been defined or limited by it and I have no intention of letting that change.  I only need think about my mother who is more healthy, independent and vibrant than most of the people in her decade.   I know it’s her attitude to life, as well as good health and personal strength, which allow her to thrive as she does, despite the endurance of difficulties and heartaches, and I thank God for her example (and genes).   

In the end it comes down to being open and happy.  If you wake up every morning with a default to be happy and interested, to thank God, Fate or Mother Nature (or whomever or whatever you believe in) then even after unhappy or horrible chapters, challenges and disappointments, you will find your way back to that place.  Life is a gift - too brutally torn from many too early - so ultimately it’s churlish not to take the time to remind ourselves of this fact and to re-appraise, re-focus and re-celebrate all there is in our lives to celebrate. 

I’ve decided the whole of 2013 is a year to re-affirm my love of life, and happily I have the excuse/plan to meet friends in different places around the world this year to celebrate my special birthday on an ongoing basis.  It’s a good way, I figure, to avoid getting hung up on the ‘number’ going up…

As I said to my little sister on the eve of my birthday, having just had my hair done so waves of red were sparkling in the light, “I may not have a lot of money at the moment… I may be (essentially) single… but I’m talented and hot.  So all good really.”  

Well, seriously, if you can’t have everything… which one does have to remind oneself sometimes… then, seriously, would you rather be rich and not hot?! 

Riches, or preferably an artistic comeback, could come in time…

But if you date, and hang out with, the wide range of people I do, then keeping yourself fit and well-tuned is important.  And anyway, an essential part of being an artist or performer is about striving to be your best.

So, I started my special day chatting to my beloved mother in Australia and listening to my beautiful five year old niece, Frankie Jean, and her brother Harry, giggling and singing Happy Birthday on the telephone.  As FJ and I share our birthday and a wealth of important moments, this was deeply touching.  Next I had coffee and cheeky cake with my agent and friend, Tim, in a Jamie Oliver cafe.  “I feel conscious you’re in a new country and away from your family today” he said, “and I’m sorry we can’t go out to dinner… but you’re on stage tonight, which is where you belong, you were born to perform”.  Lovely.  Very happy with that. 

I then rehearsed most of the day, with only one friend in the cast knowing it was my birthday.  Adam also took me out for tea and presents before we started work which was unexpected and gorgeous.  Then my friend Jane sent a bottle of Moët & Chandon backstage thirty minutes before curtain, so I ‘fessed up’ to the rest of the cast:  “no, I am not a diva, don’t be jealous, it’s my birthday!”    

I then forgot about it until we took our final bows and my friends in the audience started to whistle.  I moved out of the dressing room as quickly as possible and arrived in the bar to find a dozen friends (who’d all somehow found each other in the crowd, irrespective of the fact that some of them had never met) and I was surrounded by hugs, laughter, flowers, presents and champagne.  I felt loved and encouraged – like I was in the right place at the right time, however much I may not have expected that to be a fringe theatre in London.

I was on a high so we partied long and hard that night.  I came home to messages, cards and some delightful surprise deliveries; the flowering lilies and roses have my apartment still smelling like a florist.  I then went away for a weekend with the girls where we laughed and told silly stories and laughed again.  I had the most romantic 'first time' story... and the most envy provoking 'younger lover' story... but not, as it happens, the most scandalous stories.  (But hush, what goes on tour stays on tour!)     

 

I also have quite a few 'birthday dinners' and 'weekends away' still in the diary, to celebrate with different people in the UK, before catching up with other mates in the spring and summer for further adventures.  Just some of those destinations include, Shropshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, France, Ireland, Spain, Italy (of course) and, hopefully, New York or some other mid-globe, exotic location which is neither too far from Australia or London!

The plan is simply to keep the positive momentum going, professionally and personally.  This is the year I will get some projects close to my heart advanced.  It will be the year, I hope, that quite a few threads I’m working on will come together.  It is a chapter to be embraced, for one thing experience and maturity gives you is the right to be liberated from the things which don’t enhance your life. 

Years ago an acting colleague told me Ann-Margret once said to him: "a woman should wear her experience around her neck like a string of pearls”.  Ok, I’m not a twin-set-and-pearls gal in the literal sense, my style is too ebullient, but I like the principal.  I have a most beautiful cousin, inside and out, and if anyone I’ve met exhibits that kind of elegance, it’s her.  She has enough grace to be a Princess or First Lady.  Right now she is fighting a serious battle for her health, and I pray her quiet strength and integrity will carry her through unscathed. 

For none of us know what’s around the corner.  So young or old, single or married, rich or poor, we must use and develop what we have, and be responsive and generous around the opportunities, kindness and love we meet on the way.  

For one thing age has taught me is that life is not a dress rehearsal.  And if you want "life in your years" you cannot tip-toe around the edges.  You have to grab it with both hands and all the passion, honesty and resilience you can muster.

As for my birthday, friends, loved ones, wherever you are in the world, grazie e tanti auguri!

 

A Cast of Characters

When I say a cast of characters do I mean on or off the stage?  Well, in this case I mean both.

I’ve been doing the workshop of a new musical called A Body To Diet For written by Tim Anfilogoff and Alan Whittaker.  The workshop and theatre presentations have been produced by Katy Lipson from Aria Entertainment, with direction by Matthew Gould, musical direction by Ben Holder, and stage management, John Nicoll. 

Sometimes casts and crew gel, sometimes they don’t.  You don’t usually expect an outcome one way or the other quickly, particularly if people haven’t met or worked together before, however with this production it happened remarkably rapidly and we really haven’t stopped laughing or teasing (on or off stage). 

Did the creative team sense this at auditions?  Or did they just get lucky?

Whatever the goal, the characters in this show are funny but the cast are even funnier – to the extent it was sometimes hard to focus.  I nearly missed an onstage cue at the last performance because the back-stage shenanigans were on fire and it was hard to hear.  That’s not to say everyone’s not professional, as well as individually and collectively talented and committed, but the combination of wits – from dry, cheeky, subtle to rude and plain off-the-wall – makes for a unique cocktail.  The personalities are diverse too, yet even the most quiet has willingly gone with the flow and enjoyed the banter.  

Everyone in this cast can sing, act and be dramatically flexible, fast and funny... so why the especially high energy?

Well, that probably derives from the fact that we each took on the responsibility of learning the larger part of an entire musical in eight days rehearsal.  It was, to say the least, intense.  So perhaps the humour was our release?  That hardly explains the high percentage of flirtation and back-stage sexual innuendo, again not necessarily typical of the average cast, but it certainly added to the social frisson and primed us for dealing with a script that is at times explicit and provocative.

Some examples may help:  at one point during the first performance (when our nerves were inevitably on edge having handled the material for so short a time) one of the more understated members of the troupe scanned his script for his next entrance.  With a pained expression but the razor-sharp-subtly of a well bred Englishman, Simon Turner said: “this really isn’t fun, is it?”   He meant, of course, the actor’s experience of facing an audience unprepared, but that set us off and we all started laughing… at ourselves, at the situation, at the ludicrous risks we all take to make a living and follow artistic dreams.  It seemed reasonable proof that we were individually and collectively a sandwich-short-of-a-picnic.

Leejay Townsend got me into trouble more than once for laughing, but how can you not when he appears in a scene (as Herr Doktor Kafka) with an eye-patch, a furry cat nestled in his left arm, a funny accent, and a disabled walk which, curiously, allows him to limp on different legs depending on which direction he’s moving… and then minutes later he’s changed character into some hip-thrusting, wife-beating, rap punk who threatens to “smack ma bitch up”.

Paul Hutton was so busy changing between the womanizing characters of Fred (the big-time fashion agent) and Reg (the rough, small-time-businessman on the make) that I’m surprised he didn’t get a personality disorder.  Catherine Millsom was on and off stage as a mother, a doctor, a politician, a press officer, an adoring fan and all round wonderful singer, but still had time to joke endlessly with Rosanna Colclough who has to be one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.  I predict we’ll watch her on TV one day like we’ve watched Jennifer Saunders, in some hysterical, off-beat, character-driven sitcom.  As Ute in the show, Rosanna is funny enough, with an OTT German accent, but in each of Rosanna’s segments, as reporter under the duvet or as a member of the Lardy Da Das terrorist group, she steals the scenes.  Whether that’s due to timing, acting, physicality or sheer brazen commitment to squeezing every possible drop of humour out of every situation… it is fresh, unpredictable and compelling.  She’s like that off the stage too, even more so if you can believe it, so not only do we laugh ourselves silly at dinner and coffee-breaks, in the future I’m going to invite her to any party I ever have!

As the show deals with questions around body weight and body image, there are three actresses playing the female lead: Greta 1, Natalie Green; Greta 2, Michelle Lafortune; and Greta 3, Harriet Cox.  Though each physically different, they share not only a dramatic theme but absolutely beautiful voices.  I wait in the wings for their solos and duets, every time deeply moved by their talent and the lovely songs Tim and Alan have written for them.  It’s always great to see young actors ‘on the verge’, bringing back memories of my own experiences ‘in the biz’, and of course they are as drawn into the cast camaraderie and cheekiness as I am.  

(Actually, Natalie likes to say I’m one of the craziest, but I think the jury is still out as Rosanna, Leejay, Catherine and Paul are a wild combination.  And they do a good rendition of Rent too!)

Then there’s the male romantic lead, the character of Tony.  My character, Fay, works opposite him quite a lot so I’ve been lucky to find in our Tony, a delightful actor by the name of Adam Dougal.  Everyone in the cast and creative team love him.  No, really they do.  They fancy him too.  And make no secret of it.  Seriously though, we love his quiet integrity, his Irish humour, his sincerity (on and off stage), his solid preparation and reliability, his flexibility and readiness to ‘muck in’.  Adam is a good and truthful actor with a lovely lilting voice and a bright future.  Tony and ‘the Gretas’ have some very touching moments on stage.  And I enjoy the one where Fay takes off her clothes and throws them at him before straddling Tony on a chair and hanging upside down to sing before taking him off-stage to have her wicked way.  Well, you would enjoy that wouldn’t you?   I’m only human.  And after some years living in Italy I have more than a little ‘cougar experience’.  It’s the bisexual, white-witch, manipulative part of Fay’s character which is new to me. 

[ Ok, Julie Martin (nee Robinson) was manipulative… but in my personal list of faults that isn’t one of them - I am far too open and transparent to achieve it! ]   

I daren’t list or describe the hundreds of jokes and exchanges which have made us laugh hysterically throughout our February collaboration, for there’s sure to be libel issues.  At any rate, you just had to be there!

I will, however, say thankyou to Matthew, Tim, Alan, Katy and Ben for bringing us together. 

When we step up for our final performance tomorrow at the Landor Theatre (part of the ‘From Page to Stage’ series), accompanied with incredible polish, energy, leadership and good humour from Ben Holder on piano, we are sure to have a great time and be sorry to say goodbye. 

Well, until the next party or production…