A Good Start

Start as you mean to go on. An apt phrase to run ones life by in these early January days. For me at the moment, that would mean a year of sneezing, snoozing, snot and handkerchief washing. Yes, that long awaited cold which I thought was going to rear its head on many occasions since the late summer finally took hold last Sunday and has laid me low for the past week.

Mercifully it waited till we had returned from our sojourn in The North, as the A1 signposts would have us say, and allowed me to wallow in misery in the cosy environs of our new home.

The good thing is that after a days bed rest and a days sofa rest, it allowed me to use one whole day to finish the first draft of my new book "The Working Actor" which means that I've done something productive during the first week of the New Year. I'm a little superstitious like that. Thinking that the first day of the year will dictate how the rest of the year will follow. I used to be incredibly superstitious about how I spent New Year's Eve. If I didn't spend it at a hugely successful and riotously enjoyable party,  I was absolutely convinced the up-and-coming year would be a disaster. That was until one year in the late 1980s when I decided that a good quality dinner at home in Balham with an actor friend who was in a show at the Young Vic would be a perfectly acceptable way of welcoming the year. I prepared a great dinner for two, opened the wine to breathe and took a long hot soapy bath to await the arrival of my friend around 10 PM after his show had finished.

 I was disturbed from my bubble filled reverie by a phone call at just after eight. An obliging stage manager for the theatre told me that their show had been cancelled that evening and this meant that my friend had been able to catch the last train to Lancaster where his girlfriend was appearing in pantomime.  Two hundred miles to Lancaster just for a sight of Dick. Apologies et cetera but no suggestions as to what to do with my carefully pressed Salmon roulade. I lay in the bath, and soaked away. I then sat down and had a delicious three course dinner on my own, and even when another friend called in around 10 o'clock and invited me to a party down the road, I resisted the temptation. I saw in the New Year alone, rang my mother, and took to my bed, and the curse of  New Year's Eve has never been a problem since.

I'm thrilled now that I've managed to do something so productive during the first week. It's getting me into a good habit, and short of signing up for the next national tour of "The Sound of Music" or "Nunsense", it's the best way I know of doing it. If you haven't been working over Christmas, then the free time can start to be a nuisance. So getting into a good work habit  is an excellent thing to do.

Perhaps that habit is doing your accounts every week, rather than letting them build up until next January's tax return is due. Perhaps it's taking a long walk round the local park while learning a new speech on your headphones. Perhaps it's reading a new play each week. (Shameless Plug - My publishers Nick Hern Books have an absolutely fantastic selection to keep you going for many many more weeks than the next fifty two).  It certainly won't be a gym visit in my case, though it could be in yours, or it could be joining somewhere like The Actors Centre, or The So and So Arts Club to get yourself into the swim of things.

 Whatever it might be, now is a good time to start. And here's hoping that starting out with such good habits  ensures that 2015 brings you all that you would want and more.