Oh my goodness gracious, it has been a loooong time since I last blogged! Real life and it's boring practicalities have taken over for a while and I've been a busy little bee during these bleak winter months (it's still winter right?!).
So January and February are always depressing, Christmas is over, New Year passed and all that stretches out ahead are cold months with no money through Xmas overspending and no bank holidays until Easter. I broke the monotony by attending the Bath Literature Festivalwith Rach which was good fun. We went to some good talks, had a cute young guy read us his poetry in a taxi, visited the gorgeous spa and stayed in a lovely hotel. We're planning to go back to Bath sometime soon to complete a course in cupcake decoration! At the festival I saw a talk by Susie Boyt, who was promoting her book 'My Judy Garland Life' which I just adore. It is all about how the author's life was impacted by her obsession with Judy Garland and it is full of wonderful passages:
''I have been half or more in love with Judy Garland all my life....and although she died five months after I was born, this has always seemed to me a two-sided affair that has suited us both. I've felt Judy Garland's acute need of me and this prolonged fantasy - you might call it - of intimacy has been both sustaining and exhilarating. It has been a central part of my development as a person. I know for certain that something in the heart of Judy Garland connects directly to something at the heart of me. I feel implicated in her myriad struggles and triumphant in the face of her success....What does it say about this extraordinary performer that I've felt linked to her so powerfully all my life? What does it say about me? Whatever strange alchemy has been at work between us, the facts are these: I wasn't there at the moments of her greatest triumphs and cruellest despair. But she has been at mine.'
I have to say the author herself was not hugely impressive, she was very introverted and solemn. Rach expected her to be that way because of her book, but I hoped she might disprove the theory that people who fan-worship are quiet, socially inept people! Guess not! Maybe I'll have to make it my mission to personally disprove that....though I think I need to change a few character traits first!
Anyway March arrived and with it my birthday. A group of us went to lunch in London and then to see Sadie Frost's one woman play 'Touched for the Very First Time'...again this was about a woman being obsessed with a celebrity - Madonna this time (are you sensing a theme here?!). It was really enjoyable, but the theatre was so tiny oftentimes it felt like Sadie was staring right at me!
With March came the installation date for our new kitchen. This has been long approaching and postponed for ages, but finally we could hold off the chaos no longer and the kitchen man arrived. I ran off the first night to see Sugarland (awesome live btw) and stayed at Pete & Emma's place so by the time I got home on the second day the full nightmare was in swing! The kitchen looked like a bomb site, the living room was piled high with kitchen stuff and obviously there was no cooker! It was only for a few days and I love the new kitchen (though it still needs to be painted and the floor re-tiled), but I'm glad the installation process is over. The week after we got double glazing fitted as well, which I'm really glad of for security reasons. It's quite strange though, the house and my room are eerily silent, like I live in a bubble protected from the elements outside!
Apart from all the home improvements I''ve been to see a few things. My friend Victoria (a fellow Gillian fan) and I went to see a bizarro version of 'What the Night is For' (a play Gillian was previously in). It was in a room over a pub, there were about 10 people in the audience and the budget appeared to be little more than the cost of a pint! It was extremely strange to see a play I knew so well acted by other people. The strangest thing of all was that the woman in it made all the same gestures and movements as Gillian did in the original. There were several moments when Victoria and I just looked at each other like 'WTF?! She is directly copying Gillian's performance'!! Stranger than that was when we grabbed the director afterwards and he claimed never to have seen the original! I won't go into his interpretation of the play, but believe me when I say it was outlandish, chauvinistic and just plain odd! It was an interesting evening, enough said!!
I've also been to see a couple of films at the Human Rights film festival, which I highly recommend: 'Pray the Devil Back to Hell' which was about how the women of Liberia forced the men to make peace after years of war and 'My Neighbour, My Killer' a documentary about Rwanda and how people are coping with sharing their communities with the people who committed genocide against them. Both were very moving and important films.
I'm not quite sure how I have manged to get to this point in my blog without mentioning it, I think I was just saving the best til last, but on Mother's Day, in H Samuel I got to meet Jane Seymour! Yes, my beloved Dr Quinn was in town!!
She was very late arriving, but when she did the staff introduced me to her because I'd been waiting so long and she was dead sweet and tiny, so so tiny and fragile looking! There wasn't anyone else waiting (they had done zero advertising, I only knew myself because a friend who works for H Samuel's head office told me she was going to be there) so the shop assistants pulled out a chair and told me to sit and talk with Jane!! OMG that freaked me out, what do you say other than 'oh my god, I love you, you're amazing, Dr Quinn is wonderful, do you want to be my best friend forever?'!!! LOL! As it happens I didn't have to say much because Jane started talking to me about her book (she was supposed to be there signing free copies of her new book for those that bought a piece of her jewelery) and showing me her favorite quotes. I think something went a bit wrong because the shop assistants start giving away her book to everyone that came in the store (which she didn't seem overly happy about!), but she said I should get a free one because I already had her necklace! hehe!
So that's it really, I have pictures with Gillian and Jane now, only Dolly to go....now that will be a challenge! I hope everyone is well and that life is being good to you....bring on the good weather, I've seen a new pair of Birkenstocks I *must* have!!
xxx
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