I love that advice. It gives me hope that I can just witter at you all for a few paragraphs and call it a legit blog post and get on with this evening.
So here are the things that are going on in my life.
In 2 weeks and 2 days time we'll be on our merry way to France, where it seems we may be performing here.
The most recent practise being this past Sunday. At which, during our first set, I somehow managed to trip up my Mum, who hurt a foot and wound up sitting out the rest of the day. Well, turns out it's a broken toe! I am in the family bad books. Two weeks before she was to go and perform at a dance festival, I broke her toe! "Woops" doesn't quite cover it.
So then I get to thinking about costumes, and how I actually really quite like our set of costumes. Costumes can be a divisive thing. Someone likes an idea and someone else doesn't. Someone's got stuff already and someone else is starting from scratch. What counts and what doesn't? What will the Costume Police allow and disallow? I remember going to a festival in North Carolina in 2006 (which was absolutely awesome, it should be said), but before we went out there, I wound up crying at my Mum because not a single item of costume I had actually fitted. I had landed a skirt that I could only just fasten and made me feel sick, to be paired with a bodice that was noticeably far too big. I had a t-shirt that I couldn't wear on its own without showing a few inches of middle, and a dress that was held together with safety pins. I was an ungrateful and incredibly lucky sod, because we'd been able to round up all the necessary bits of kit for me to have a costume, and I was off to America to dance in it. But at the time, I was down on my luck because here was huge chance to go and dance in a cool place, and I was going to look crap doing it. I was also 16 and somewhat self-conscious, which was probably the real cause of the waterworks. Either way, Mum told me to shut up and get over it, and I got hold of a needle and thread and did my best with what little 3-D spacial awareness I had.
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| Excuse the poor quality. This is a photograph of another poor quality photograph. Of 17-year-old me in a dress that's held on with some very frankenstein safety pinning, but only I needed to know that. But there we are, in America, doing our thing. Covering very nicely as well even if I do say so. |
And then I left home, and started to dance with other people. And this beauty came in to my life.
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| Can't say I entirely know how to use it, but I'm figuring it out. |
There's nothing like having to make a thing yourself, with no prior experience and not so much as a pattern to follow, to make you let go of any perfectionism you may once have had. You'll settle for any old crap if you've made it yourself. I have a tartan skirt that I made 4 or 5 years ago, that still requires 2 safety-pins every time it's worn. One because I'd never put a zip in before and sort-of missed a bit, and the other because I was too cheap and lazy to put in a popper or a button on the waistband. I hope to remedy these two things before it's next outing. Heck, I hope to make a whole damn spare skirt before we head off. Ain't I getting full of my self.
Costumes, they're scary and stressful, and I get it.
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| But the trick is to hold on really really tightly to the thought that no-one else needs to know that this skirt isn't actually hemmed, and that that bodice isn't lined, and is barely interfaced and it's all held together with pins and tit tape. Repeat after me - "it's just a costume". |
And then I have to do the actual dancing. This last practise was our first real attempt at stringing things together in to a full coherent set. We're getting there. We even did some of it in costume. This is the point where I start to feel tested in terms of how in shape I am or am not, and where I start to get an idea of how tough doing all of that properly, in a costume, in likely high temperatures will be. The Broadswords, by way of example, takes 3 minutes. Of hopping on one foot with your arms in the air. It's great fun, but dear Lord it wipes me out. Wish me luck.
So today my stream of consciousness is quite cluttered. Rather like my flat, which is one of the things cluttering up my thoughts. My desk too. Probably my inbox as well. Instead of a single coherent and unbroken stream of logical and entertaining musings, we have the mental equivalent of a broken sprinkler.
Today has been a day in which the office I work in has been rather more populated than normal, and tomorrow will be busier, if anything. I saw a meme on Monday that said "the first five days after the weekend are always the hardest". Boy, do I agree. There's a lot to be said for the 9-5, and I wouldn't want to go back to the 3 job juggle of a few years ago, but that week where I didn't have to go to work, that was pretty nice. It's got to be said. I'm working on being one of those people who wakes up and looks forward to going to work. It's a work in progress.
Also in this week's news. I am now a person who owns chinos. I'm not sure whether to be sorry or not. Is this another one of those "grown-up" things? I don't know if this is me discovering new things or being unfaithful to my baggy jeans allegiance. All things must change, it seems. Next I'll wind up wearing those slippers that look like Finnish pasties and driving a car that unlocks when you press a button.
Seriously, you can't tell me there's not a resemblance here?
Ahem. Apologies for the incoherence. Next week I may even have an idea, a topic, something interesting to tell you about. It could happen.
For now, I'm off out to the gym to see if I can't take a fractionally less leaky balloon to France.
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