Theatrical tradition dictates that once your show is done, you should have some kind of massive emotional slump to tide you over the next few weeks. That, or another job to start straight away, which you can rub in the rest of the casts' faces to help them be all the slumpier.
Not me! I had neither. Hot on the heels of the almighty last night, I had a hideous early start and a fifteen-hour travel day, with my family reunion at the far end. Not much of a respecter of theatrical tradition in that regard. More of an edgy rebel with my own dramatic agenda, I like to think. Like Stringfellow Hawke in tights.
Not that I don't have my own traditions. I'd been on tenterhooks all week, dreading the travel day. Mostly dreading the inevitable bit that happens every time I arrange my own transport, the bit where I have to call V and explain which country I'm calling from and how late I'll be. On the way over to the UK, for example, I merrily went to the wrong Gothenburg airport (City not Landvetter, neither my ticket nor the website specified which was correct and I guessed wrong) and had to get a very expensive, very fast taxi at the last minute.
This time, I lose my passport.
After lots of goodbyes at the aftershow do, I went back to my digs to finish packing and make sure I had everything ready to go. For most of the next hour, instead of getting as much sleep as possible, I instead ran round Keswick in the rain. I rummaged in the glove compartment of my hire car. I alarmed everyone at the theatre by going through the bins in the dressing room and hunting under the party tables. I went back and forth over a midnight back alley, searching the muddy floor with the only light to hand - the dim red LED on my doorkeys - like a crap one-man forensics unit.
All to no avail, because my passport is inside my laptop bag, safely tucked inside an inner pocket. Where I stashed it earlier after picking up the hire car, so that I wouldn't lose it. Top work, Hogg.
After this, I can't sleep properly, I'm far too adrenalised. So the fifteen hour travel day begins with two hours of sleep, then a rainy, three-hour drive to Edinburgh. Then there's a blur of travel lounges and parched, air-conditioning on a pair of airbuses down to first Heathrow, then Landvetter. Sweaty and unshowered, I feel almost like I'm melting into the overheated malls I have to wait in. My skin is the same temperature as the chairs, I don't want to be here, it's expensive and aggravating. But there's nothing to do but wait out the transition, floating rootlessly between countries.
Then Gothenburg, at last. It's much colder here, snowy even. I like the cold. I know where I am in the cold. Indoors in a jumper, if possible. Dragging my now-broken suitcase (the pulling handle refuses to emerge from its sheath) through the frozen slush and cobbles of Haga seems to take about a hundred years.
But at the end of it is V and F, standing in the open door of home, warm light behind them.
I've been longing for and slightly dreading this moment, seeing F again. I know where I am with V, generally speaking, but I don't really know how F is going to react or how I'll react to her reaction. Tears? Hiding from the stranger? Ignoring to punish me for being away?
I needn't have worried. A quick double-take, then she smiles just as much as V, and laughs and laughs and laughs as I tuck her up in bed and sing her Litte Katt.
Good to be back. Very good.
No comments:
Post a Comment