China in your hand!
The positive side about doing this blog is that even when one has had a week as dull and work free as I have, one has to sit down on a Sunday afternoon and sum it up in terms of something interesting to other people.
So let's start in simple terms as to what I have actually been up to this week. Monday saw a meeting inTthe Century club in town to plan a puppet-based entertainment for a charity dinner at the end of March. As with all corporate events a great deal of planning goes into something before you actually have the final yes from the client. With this one I think we are 75% of the way there and it could be quite fun. But there are still several opportunities where the client may decide “oh no it's not all little bit too avant-garde and brave for us and we'd better have a a silks act!"
Tuesday evening saw me attend the second of my Tai Chi classes. This was part of my New Years resolution to do things for myself. I went on the Internet and found a class which takes place in Dulwich Village on Tuesday evenings. It's a beginners class and as such is remarkably undemanding. I did Tai Chi for three years at drama school with a wonderful woman called Lea Bartal. At the time I think we all thought it was pretentious and a waste of time, and not something we would ever use in our working lives. How wrong could we be?
Within two years of leaving drama school, Kate Bush had hit the top of the charts with "Wuthering Heights' and her strange exotic dance routine was much admired on Top of the Pops. On the dance floor of the Old World night club in York, on Tuesday nights after the show, Tai Chi provided just the right moves and inspiration for the Kate Bush track and gyrating my way through "passing clouds" grasping the tiger behind the ears' and "holding the world in both hands" gained me much admiration from my fellow equity night disco goers!
Nor was that the end of Tai Chi's usefulness in my career. A couple of years ago I was directing a corporate play for a drug company. It was about group of people suffering from myeloma. And yes -where did they meet? A Tai chi class!
We did get somebody in to help us who knew what they were doing and took the cast and myself for an afternoon's Tai Chi, but it was my basic memories of tai chi performed in a movement studio in Manchester in the late 1970s that helped us choreograph the five routines we needed for the play.
The most painful thing about my new class in Dulwich is the pace at which we proceed. It takes place in a church hall in the centre of Dulwich village and there are about nine or 10 others. There are three new people who joined the same week as me and we stand at the back of the class learning the basic moves. I say moves, although perhaps more accurately I should be saying move per week! If we were towork at this pace in the theatre then my heavily choreographed production of “The Comedy of Errors" which in my mind starts rehearsal next Monday will be ready sometime around 2028! To learn two moves, or pushing the boundaries, last week, one, seems to be as much as most people can take. Perhaps it's because that over the years unknowingly, I have developed a physical memory as well as mental one. (Actually I'm questioning the existence of a mental one after this weeks lamentable results on quiz night when a round of questions on “China" sank our team, the redoubtable www.cotton into an unheard-of fourth-place! Yes we knew the answer to question one was T'Pau, but when it got to the real China we were lost!)
Anyway back to the tai chi class. No need to worry about having been away, I won't have missed anything! This week is my third class and I'm hoping we might go for broke so that by the end of the class I actually have a sequence of moves that I have to work on over the coming week. I'll be away the following week is going up to Scarborough to film a tiny part in a new BBC comedy drama called “Sugar town" though catching up on my Tai Chi will now be the least of my worries.!
I had a quick trip down to Yorkshire to see Mum who continues to be in one of her thriving phases. So much so that on Wednesday night while I was there she went out to bowls regardless of my visit, leaving me to fend for myself by going to the local fish and chip shop.
Just as in my early days as an actor when unemployment loomed, the weekends are the worst.
A week of doing nothing much and then come two days when everybody is supposed to be busy relaxing and enjoying themselves. You've had a week “relaxing"! The last thing you need are two days when the whole world are doing it alongside you. Rich works really hard during the week, long hours and a demanding schedule. Most weekends he's happy to flop down and take it easy. Watch some sky sports (grrrrrrrrrrr!) and generally chill out. and so he should - he's earned it. But I haven't. I haven't earned any money either but thats a whole other ball game.
So often managing your career as a successful freelancer is managing your down time as well as the busy times. It's the ability to do that that helps you play the long game!
MMMMM. Time for a three hour bath I think!
So let's start in simple terms as to what I have actually been up to this week. Monday saw a meeting inTthe Century club in town to plan a puppet-based entertainment for a charity dinner at the end of March. As with all corporate events a great deal of planning goes into something before you actually have the final yes from the client. With this one I think we are 75% of the way there and it could be quite fun. But there are still several opportunities where the client may decide “oh no it's not all little bit too avant-garde and brave for us and we'd better have a a silks act!"
Tuesday evening saw me attend the second of my Tai Chi classes. This was part of my New Years resolution to do things for myself. I went on the Internet and found a class which takes place in Dulwich Village on Tuesday evenings. It's a beginners class and as such is remarkably undemanding. I did Tai Chi for three years at drama school with a wonderful woman called Lea Bartal. At the time I think we all thought it was pretentious and a waste of time, and not something we would ever use in our working lives. How wrong could we be?
Within two years of leaving drama school, Kate Bush had hit the top of the charts with "Wuthering Heights' and her strange exotic dance routine was much admired on Top of the Pops. On the dance floor of the Old World night club in York, on Tuesday nights after the show, Tai Chi provided just the right moves and inspiration for the Kate Bush track and gyrating my way through "passing clouds" grasping the tiger behind the ears' and "holding the world in both hands" gained me much admiration from my fellow equity night disco goers!
Nor was that the end of Tai Chi's usefulness in my career. A couple of years ago I was directing a corporate play for a drug company. It was about group of people suffering from myeloma. And yes -where did they meet? A Tai chi class!
We did get somebody in to help us who knew what they were doing and took the cast and myself for an afternoon's Tai Chi, but it was my basic memories of tai chi performed in a movement studio in Manchester in the late 1970s that helped us choreograph the five routines we needed for the play.
The most painful thing about my new class in Dulwich is the pace at which we proceed. It takes place in a church hall in the centre of Dulwich village and there are about nine or 10 others. There are three new people who joined the same week as me and we stand at the back of the class learning the basic moves. I say moves, although perhaps more accurately I should be saying move per week! If we were towork at this pace in the theatre then my heavily choreographed production of “The Comedy of Errors" which in my mind starts rehearsal next Monday will be ready sometime around 2028! To learn two moves, or pushing the boundaries, last week, one, seems to be as much as most people can take. Perhaps it's because that over the years unknowingly, I have developed a physical memory as well as mental one. (Actually I'm questioning the existence of a mental one after this weeks lamentable results on quiz night when a round of questions on “China" sank our team, the redoubtable www.cotton into an unheard-of fourth-place! Yes we knew the answer to question one was T'Pau, but when it got to the real China we were lost!)
Anyway back to the tai chi class. No need to worry about having been away, I won't have missed anything! This week is my third class and I'm hoping we might go for broke so that by the end of the class I actually have a sequence of moves that I have to work on over the coming week. I'll be away the following week is going up to Scarborough to film a tiny part in a new BBC comedy drama called “Sugar town" though catching up on my Tai Chi will now be the least of my worries.!
I had a quick trip down to Yorkshire to see Mum who continues to be in one of her thriving phases. So much so that on Wednesday night while I was there she went out to bowls regardless of my visit, leaving me to fend for myself by going to the local fish and chip shop.
Just as in my early days as an actor when unemployment loomed, the weekends are the worst.
A week of doing nothing much and then come two days when everybody is supposed to be busy relaxing and enjoying themselves. You've had a week “relaxing"! The last thing you need are two days when the whole world are doing it alongside you. Rich works really hard during the week, long hours and a demanding schedule. Most weekends he's happy to flop down and take it easy. Watch some sky sports (grrrrrrrrrrr!) and generally chill out. and so he should - he's earned it. But I haven't. I haven't earned any money either but thats a whole other ball game.
So often managing your career as a successful freelancer is managing your down time as well as the busy times. It's the ability to do that that helps you play the long game!
MMMMM. Time for a three hour bath I think!
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