Our last ten show week finished on Saturday. By the end of that, after a non-stop Christmas, I was walking like a half-cut pensioner, hobbling arthritically round the backstage areas of the theatre. On stage, there was the strange perception that the entire show was happening to someone else. "I can't possibly do this next dance," I'd be thinking. "None of my joints function that way any more. Oh look, it's happening anyway! How funny."
The human knee is a singularly wretched piece of anatomical design. By all accounts, it's manufactured to last you about twenty-five years of hard use, then leave you abandoned in a field as the youth of today bound energetically after whatever their generation are passing off as elk these days. My own pair have clearly reached retirement age. Either that, or someone has lined them with the polystyrene packing beads I hear creaking on every step. In keeping with Cameron's Britain, of course, their pension will always be a few years ahead of them, linked to some impossibly-climbing curve of performance-related pay.
Same with my voice. If my legs are on their last legs, my voice is virtually that of a horse (I told you it was unusual for me not to be setting up lame jokes). At odd moments in the songs, it cuts out, or changes octave unpredictably. We sing a lot of the numbers straight out, so I'm often looking straight at some dimly-seen audience member as this happens. I do my best to brazen through this, but I have to fight the impulse to wince apologetically. No! Never apologise! That's conventional theatre wisdom. Nobody knows you screwed up until you apologise.
This is not true of other actors, of course, who know perfectly well when you've trampled their lines, feet or feelings in the course of the gradual, exhausted collapse you're now turning in for a performance. Always apologise then. Assuming you've even noticed you've made a mistake, I'm not sure I always do.
Two short weeks to go, then home. I am steeled and ready for this, bring it on. Even the eels are silent.
-
Three days off, almost! That's been much needed. All I've done is eat a single copious meal each day and then skype home between burpy naps. F is huge, roaming freely round her poor tired mother, bashing duplo blocks together or performing what look like complex engineering checks on the undercarriage of her electronic rideable Disney jumbo jet. She shouts "hey! ha ha ha ha hey ha hey ha ha" when I come online, and waves cheerfully. V is back to work after a short Christmas break and already having to steel herself against the routine of missed sleep, unavailable babysitters and stroppily rejected food.
My mum visited last month, to help with babysitting, and raised a parental eyebrow at the bottled foods we've been feeding F. Meh - I'm sure I would have raised an eyebrow myself, before being confronted with the practical realities of feeding F. Probably quietly and away from whoever I was raising the eyebrows at, but well, that's not how close family tend to raise their eyebrows at one another. Eyebrows are more usually raised in the manner of close-quarter assault weaponry where I come from - with lethal intent and scant regard for collateral damage.
Since Christmas, F, who was entirely happy eating her mushy lasagnes and slottgryta, has apparently decided Farmor might have had a point. Once you've had pork fillet with creme fraiche, prawn omelette and prinskorv from the the Julbord, fresh broccoli and tiramisu ice cream, suddenly a warm bowl of soggy orange pasta just isn't going to cut it.
This is good news in terms of her growing up and eating healthily, of course. I don't for a second regret having used bottled food - she's big and robust, has gained weight very healthily all through what is now almost her first full year, and aced every test the midwives have thrown at her. So despite the naggings of my middle-class conscience, I think the stuff she's been eating has been healthy and good for her, especially fleshed out with fruit and milk. Still, despite the low inward moanings of my innate laziness, I'm looking forward to getting home and cooking for her so she can try new things. If nothing else, I'm certainly good at flabby pasta and neon stews.
-
F spent this afternoon's skype call kissing the screen and trying to lift the iPad to see if I was actually secretly behind it all along. I need to go home now.
No comments:
Post a Comment