"Your friends are God's apology for your relations."

I have just read this. Friendship is on my mind a lot at the moment. In moving away from la grand smoke, I am moving away from almost all of my friends, and while I am sure that in choosing to move right next to the very big and blue and lovely sea, not to mention a writhing mass of groovy Bohemians, I will be inundated with weekendular visits to the point that hub and I will be exhausted and twicthing with fear every time the phone rings, I am also beginning to look the possibility of a friendless future in the face.

It makes me feel a bit wibbly.

It is not as if I see my friends every day, or even every week. But the knowing they are there, that is a Big Good. Being able to just meet up for a drink, or have a cup and tea and some cake, just off the cuff and by the seat of your pants and other metaphors.

Now I am going to have to be all planny.

The fact of my theatrically-generated poverty does not help either.

I am not someone who has one of those circles of friends, the ones who do everything together, who go on holiday together and take photos of each other and put them on the wall and point at them when having barbecues with each other. I know lots of individuals who I have discovered like a clever explorer along the way, some of whom also happen to be connected with each other. Friends seem to either stick or fade, and I can never tell which it will be. But once they have stuck, I love them dearly. And buy them gifts. (This is not a bribe to get more friends. That would be utterly transparent. Offering gifts for friendship? Pah! Never. Ever. Not even once. Nope.) It is good to be cautious though; I have, as I'm sure have most people, those worth their salt anyway, been badly burned once or twice (or actually maybe three times. Not that I'm counting. Or bitter. Or anything.)

I am going to have to make new friends. This is a bit scary. How does one go about it? Join a book club? Linger in supermarket queues? Get drunk and accost people?

I just do not know.

(I was going to do a little homage to one of my friends. I don't know how now it comes to it. I don't know what I'd do without him though. He is one of the best people I have ever met. A pain in the bum and totally wonderful. I will miss him a lot: less of an homage and more of a sort of sideways glance through squinty eyes at something vaguely complimentary. Sorry.)

Gosh. New beginnings. Gosh.

Woo-hoo! And things.

It is me! Itismeitismeitismeitismeitisme.

Hello.

I have been away. I wish I could say that it was because of Important Business, but it is not. It is mostly because. Well, I have been eating a lot of toast.

So. News. We have found a flat! In Brighton! And paid them money so they cannot take it away from us! I am pleased. It has its very own patio which is big enough for a table and chairs and a lavender bush and for a weird cat to frolic freely in. And the kitchen has room for a table and chairs by the window at which to sit and eat breakfast and observe the free-frolicking of the weird cat in the lavender patio.

Brill.

And hub has found a job. With a man. Making woody things. The man used to be a drummer in a band. I do not know which one. Hub says he has got beautiful eyes. (This is, incidentally, a very un-hub thing to say. So they must be truly beautiful. I hope he and hub do not fall in love and elope woodily.)

So hoorah! Things, and indeed Stuff!

I am now much more groovy and relaxed knowing that all is settled. We will be moving at the beginning of September.

That is all my news. But I think it is good so I hope you are not disappointed.

Also, Harry Potter was good. Although I would like to know how Neville got the sword. This will not make sense to some of you. For this I am sorry. To those of you for whom (for whom!) it does make sense, do feel free to explain and enlighten.

ALSO, Caroline's book (In Search Of Adam. By Caroline Smailes. Available at any bookshop worth their salt. And that I won. I never win anything.) is BEAUTIFUL. I wish I could write intelligent things, but it will take me some time. But it is definitely BEAUTIFUL and also tender and a bit hurty in a good way.

I will be back soon.

Honest.

Be free! Create!

So I'm beginning to think about my new job.

The theatre company I'll be working for told me about this talk by Sir Ken Robinson. It twanged very strongly with my heart strings. And made me smile. And made me very glad that I'm going to be working with yoof.

Innit.

PS. I got a phone call about the Peter Brook job today. He has decided not to have an assistant after all. Which means I didn't not get it. I feel pleased.

Disappointment

What is it about boys?

And particularly, boys when they say (on the bringing up of the subject of buying jewellery):

"I was going to buy you some jewellery earlier today.

But I didn't."

*sigh*

Secret pleasures.

So.

All of which has got me thinking.

About people I fancy and really shouldn't.

(By shouldn't, read, if you thought about it, it is actually wrong.)

1). Aforementioned. Rupert Grint.













2.) Hairy. Justin Lee Collins. (Much preferred with multi-coloured hair. But Google yielded NOTHING.)













3). It's bad. It's icky. It's horribly scientologically wrong.












Is there any hope for me?

Oh please tell me I'm not a perv.

I am a grown woman.

(Despite being five foot one. I am grown. I used to be smaller and so this is proof if proof is needed.)

So. I am an adult. I am rushing up faster than I would like towards 30. I am grown up.

So can someone please tell me why I fancy the boy who plays Ron Weasley?

Plus, he has ginger hair (this does not actually matter to me, but I know some of you out there are ginger-ist. You big conventionally-attractive fascists.)

More importantly, he has a face that looks a bit like it was hastily assembled by someone with exceptionally large hands.

Harry Potter was ace.

But then I would say that.

I fancy the boy who plays Ron Weasley.

Dear me.

In which Miss Tickle tries not to cry.

I am sad.

It is no good.

I have been pottering on the interweb for some time, and still, I am sad.

(Usually this works for cheering up.)

Please, tell me some wise things about boys and girls and arguing.

Please.

I have to stop now or I will cry. And I am working on reception at a mining company and it really would not do.

Miss Tickle goes forth.

I have been on an adventure! To Sheffield. A place I have never been before (and which, despite being in The North, was surprisingly warm.)

To begin with, my adventure involved getting up at an hour I have never seen on a Saturday morning. Hub stirred and muttered (actually it wasn't muttering. When he is half-asleep he has a vaguely unsettling ability to speak loudly and clearly, as if to a deaf aunt. But for the sake of setting an early morning atmosphere and all, he muttered) "The seals! They were angry with me, I played their guitar."

I kissed his barmy dreamfulness on the head and crept away, like a ticklish sort of a mouse.

The thing about London is that it is absolutely beautiful as long as it is a) sunny and b) silly o'clock in the morning so there are no people to ruin it. I sat on the top deck of the bus (at the front, no less!) and considered all the Things hub and I should do before leaving our fair capital for the balmy shores of Brighton. Like going to Spitalfields market. And London Zoo. And seeing Art.

Then I arrived at Kings Cross.

There were policemen! Everywhere! And television crews!

It was exciting!

But then I realised (I am a bit dim sometimes) the reason for their presence was a Sad one (although it was still a bit exciting).

Then

THEN!

I bought chai!

It was wonderful. And now I am sitting on a train with a small child opposite me who calls his father "Doodah", and who is playing with small felt-type figures and sticking them in a book.

It is a good adventure so far.

I am the champion, la la la-la laaaa.

I've only gone and won a thing.







This is very unusual. I never win anything. (Apart from a maths cup when I was about 8. And if you knew my current mathematic ability this would make you fall off your very chair.)

I cannot tell you how excited I am!

I wanted this book SOOOOOOOO much, but being entirely impoverished, was unable to afford it.

And now I get it anyway!

Life is ace sometimes.

PS. I will tell you all about it. And make you get it too. Although I do not know if there are anymore competitions. Ones you could win. Like I did.
PPS. It is signed by the Author.
PPPS. That is so cool.

Miss Tickle is responsible!

Hello.

I have been offered a job.

It is not a momentous-changing-British-theatre job. But it is a very nice job. In Brighton. For the next year. Working for a theatre company in a school with yoofs innit. For a year. Did I mention that?

It is strange how despite thinking that I wanted security and stability an' all, and wittering on about it in a way that I admit is tedious for all concerned, when faced with said security and whatnot, I feel a little scared.

Like, but what if I am called by the National asking me to direct Othello or some such?

Which is really likely actually.

REALLY likely.

Any moment.

Could happen.

I am basically being an arse. And am pretty sure I will take it, not least because it gives hub and I a joyous bounce in our moving house step. Also, it is part time, which means that potentially I can still work on my own projects.

I am a bit amazed that anyone considers me resonsible enough to work with the yoof.

Oh, and did I mention that with the job comes a Macbook?

(This is in no way affecting my decision. Nope. Definitely not at all.)

Hub said it felt a bit like this.

Hear me roar.

I am unsure of the wisdom of publishing An Idea of mine on here (steal it, and I shall know, oh yes I shall you little monkeys!) but here is the lion book from which I might eventually make a lion play.

Read it. It's ace.

But don't make a play of it.

Please.

Thanks.

So I didn't get a second interview. Pas de surprise. I wept, like a maiden in distress. I tore my hair and bit my pillow and dribbled. A bit. Mostly for effect.

I considered throwing the towel in. (Again. Boring isn't it.)

I considered whether I should ever have stopped acting.

I wondered whether I am actually any good at directing.

Then somewhere in between leaving the house this morning and arriving at silly temping (and possibly linked with Jimi Hendrix on ear-music) I felt better.

*smiles*

(A bit timidly.)

Hub is back from the mountains and he had an Experience. He said it was the sort of thing that makes people religious, and it was to do with him and his climbing partner putting themselves in a very dangerous situation with weather, and being saved by a shaft of sunlight which followed them for about two hours while storms raged just outside it.

These are fractious times my lovelies, fraught with the peaks and troughs of life-based turbulence.

I am clinging. Or assuming crash position. Or snatching the oxygen mask. Or just looking out the window wondering whether the clouds will take my weight.

One of these things.

In other, vaguely topical news, we were told by the Arts Council that had it been three or four months ago, we would have received funding for our show. Before the cuts. The ones where theatre money goes to people running about and throwing things in distances that are measured. All that. Heartening and yet not.

Cock.

I just had an interview.

(Another one.)

I am rubbish at interviews.

I am trying to work out whether this is because I am rubbish at interviews, or whether it is because in theatre the language most commonly spoken is Cock.

A language I do not speak.

"What is the nature of your responsibility to the audience?"
"What is your opinion of assisting?"
"If you don't get this position, what will you do?"
"What is a good director?"

I always come out of interviews feeling that all the words that fell from my mouth totalled precisely nothing. That there is a secret, hidden (to me) way of making yourself sound brilliant and inspiring and like you are the acest thing in the world.

I just don't know what it is.

And I prepared for this one. A lot.

It didn't make any difference.

I still ended up saying I wanted to do a play about lions.

And sounded about 5.

Or so.

*sigh*

(wanders off to find some biscuits)