Grateful: Day 139 - Goatsong

Fog. The pond was like one of those dream-based fantasy stories I used to write when I was little. One in particular, in fact. When I was 11ish, a student English teacher came. She said my grammar was already good, so instead of doing that, I could spend a term writing a story. Any story. About anything. I was very excited - I loved writing stories - but I didn't know where to start on something longer. I had no discipline. At all. I still struggle with that, and back then my whole existence was even more fluid. I sat in lessons thinking about what I'd be writing if I was writing, writing a sentence and crossing it out. Proper creative turmoil! My teacher had done something brilliant - given a child with a gift for writing stories the chance to do just that and believe in herself. What she hadn't counted for was my lack of structure, lack of self-belief and need for another kind of support. I am still grateful to her, for believing in me, for giving it a try and for sticking her neck out and clearing it with the school. I'm sorry I let her down. 


Eventually she gave me a deadline and I did it, but it wasn't as good as it could have been. All I remember was that the protagonist was a boy (me, of course - I wasn't being clever or post-modern or anything - I just identified so much more with boy things like climbing trees and having adventures and rescuing other people). I can't remember exactly what happened, but I have an image in my head of a moor and some kind of cave/stone things and very thick fog. They were stones that you could be hidden away in. And having snatched conversations with a girl who was my friend, or maybe I was there to rescue her, probably from aliens, but I suppose they could have been just general baddies. And in the end, there was one of those classic 'was it all a dream?' moments, with most things saying 'yes, it was' and one little piece of evidence proving it wasn't. See... Miss Whatever Your Name Was (I remember your face, all long like a horse's, but not your name) - you gave me something I still remember now.

Claire gave me her number, in case I want to come and walk the dog at some point. That's very nice. And then breakfast with Ruth. Very nice indeed, indeed. Always so good to see her and catch up and laugh and talk. We feasted and then I whizzed off down to The Hub and grumpily teased out expenses and prepared an invoice; had a skype chat with Rob - heard some good news on his front - and cheered up a bit. 


These helped: http://rockandrolltedium.tumblr.com/ - entirely non-plussing celebrity experiences. Brilliant. And this: http://youtu.be/6dfLkcTAR80 This is Pulp Fiction done as Shakespeare. Brilliant. Just brilliant. Worth watching the original first if you haven't seen it for a while. It's fabulous. 


And inspired by Tom Salinksy, I'm going to do Couch to 5K.  (check out http://networkedblogs.com/uEZPA). I have been getting slowly (or possibly quite quickly) fatter, especially since that job at the start of February - two weeks of hotels, a newly-broken sugar ban and some winter glumness have not helped me to get any slimmer, despite a really good, happily healthy start up until early Feb. I've also noticed that exercise does wonders for my head, so introducing a bit more of it won't do me any harm.


Good for my head today too was my evening with Michael Brünstrom, Vicki Pipe, Sophie Pumphrey and Roderick Millar. What delightful play we had. I'm really excited about this project - an improvised Greek Tragedy format - which I think will be really meaty and ace. And I really enjoyed the level of ease in the play. AND I was shown some new games, which is fabulous news for my head too, and for Tuesday's impro session. All kneely with gratitude, I am (and thanks for feeding us too, M). Good business all round. 


I'm thinking of squeezing in a quick episode of Nighty Night. It's a bit late, really, but it's sitting there not getting watched. And it's apt, isn't it. It is. Do it!