Damn magazine!

So I've spent approximately ten hours on a stage over the last week or so. Most of the time it was sitting and observing, doing little bits of "business" - as they would have it in the industry. This does not mean shitting on the stage, as I found out the hard way. It's to do with doing minor things, not usually in the script. The purpose of our "business" was to show the audience we were still there, hopefully without detracting from the main action on stage.

As we were playing three street urchins, we had a whole load of women's magazines to flick through whilst the main action was happening. The detail was great - they were given 50s' front covers... but inside it was Cosmo, Elle, Glamour - the usual suspects. I gave up reading women's magazines years and years ago because of the revolting hypocrisy: it doesn't matter what you look like, he should love you anyway vs. buy this hideously expensive wrinkle cream - he won't love you if you look old. Why women don't need men vs. how to get your man to propose. It made me barf. Plus those pages and pages and pages of fashion that a) no-one I know could afford and b) no-one I know would be seen dead in.

But, faced with a stack of magazines and action going on behind us that we weren't supposed to watch (and which we'd seen about seven million times), read the magazines I did. And Jesus, they're awful. I particularly hated the agony aunt page where unfortunate women's neuroses were displayed and dissected for the world to see. Women having boyfriend troubles were usually given a brilliant piece of advice like, "Until you love yourself, how can you expect others to love you? Take up a hobby - how about swimming or a cookery class?"

Fuck that. Toddle off to Ann Summers, buy a rabbit. Bloke problem solved, spare time issue solved.

There was always an article about how anorexia had ruined some model's life... then they talk about how this 5'11" woman is now a "healthy" eight stones. No. No, no, no. Yes, I'm underweight, and at seven stones, I shouldn't be throwing rocks around my greenhouse. But I'm 5'3". I'm no nutritionist, but I'm guessing eight stones is not a healthy weight for someone nearly six foot tall. The article will talk about a balanced diet and the importance of loving yourself. (Perhaps get a hobby - how about swimming or a cookery class?)

Turn the page and there are bony waifs wearing ridiculous unaffordable, ugly clothes.

To quote the great Steven Moffat in Coupling: "Magazines! A hundred pages of 'men are useless bastards,' and an article about why you should wake him up with a blowjob."

Rant over. You may now go back to your day job. Today's title is an inside joke. I apologise for the cliqueyness. Cliqueism. Fuck it, you know what I mean.

Top ten

I have been the world's worst Plogger. In my defence, I've had quite a ridiculously busy time of it, with about three "major life events" happening in the same day.

I'm far too tired to consider Plogging in detail at the moment, but in the last week, the following things have happened. I may tell you more about them in some detail at a later date. If you ask me nicely.

1. Tech rehearsal, dress rehearsal, four performances of Little Shop of Horrors plus cast party
2. Quit my job. Didn't I tell you that? Well I have. My last day was Friday.
3. Didn't quite have a contract from the new job. Until Friday. The same day that the sector I work in announced more large-scale redundancies. Fun times and small amounts of panicking, whilst pretending to the parents I wasn't bothered. Because they were panicking too.
4. Had a new sofa delivered. Oh the glamour.
5. Had a lovely succession of overnight guests: Kath, Nice Kate and the Nunn clan.
6. Received a cornucopia of flowers - from work, from Nice Kate (who might get upgraded to Lovely Kate) and from TheBloke (TM). I am a lucky girl.
7. Spent most of the week tracking glitter through the flat. TheBloke (TM) found some in his underwear yesterday. He now worries he might be gay.
8. Got to play with the inflatable bed.
9. Cleared stuff out of the Corsa. Company car. It has to go. I'm not ready to talk about this yet.
10. Saw Tropic Thunder at the 02 Arena.

I will Plog properly soon. In the meantime, apologies to all friends I've been ignoring for ages!

Dressed up

I have glitter in my hair. I have eye make-up that won't come off. I have long, blonde curly hairs all down my back.

And I am tired, tired, tired.

And tonight was only the dress rehearsal. I have another four days of late nights, eye make-up and more glitter than any self-respecting girl needs.

Too tired to finish this sentence properl

Drama queen

This weekend represents the calm before the storm. Next week looks something like this:

• Full time job. Extra stressful at the moment for reasons which will (hopefully) be revealed shortly.
• Monday = technical rehearsal, followed by first dress rehearsal.
• Tuesday = dress rehearsal
• Wednesday = performance and overnight guest
• Thursday = performance and overnight guest
• Friday = performance and the Nunn clan as overnight guests
• Saturday = entertaining the Nunns, performance, plus cast party.

So I am trying to use this weekend to gather my thoughts, recharge my batteries and chill out. This isn't really working. I am currently worrying about forty-seven different things (I did actually list them out a day or so ago), most of which I have absolutely no control over, and in many cases, worrying about them will probably just make things worse.

Like the fact that I might catch a cold in the next few days. So I'm overloading my system with echinacea, Vicks First Defence and Vitamin C. Every slight throat tickle is the heralder of doom.

If I live through to opening night, wish me luck - or tell me to break a leg!

Getting personal

Off to the well-known department store I went. I was greeted by my personal shopper. (Before the piss-taking commences, please be aware of the following facts: a) I hate shopping and so try to wrap up an entire year's worth in one appointment a year, b) I missed the girls' lesson at school when they explained how to accessorise and c) the service is free).

Now, I'm no stranger to personal shoppers, who have ranged from the tardy (Lakeside) to the extremely old and deaf (Macy's). I wanted work clothes. Not suits necessarily, but corporate wear. I think it would be fair to say I was a bit taken aback by my personal shopper's appearance. Again, before you judge me, I genuinely don't normally evaluate people based on their looks... but when that person's going to be picking out your clothes, well, I suppose it's fairly natural to hope for a similar style.

Ploggers, her head was shaved. She wore a tweed jacket with a denim skirt and bright orange tights and patent leather sandals. She greeted me with the words, "Hi Laura. Well, you're my first ever client."

Oh good.

The appointments usually take about two hours. This one took four and a half hours. Four and a half hours! An entire hour of this was devoted to shoes. Shoes! A whole hour on shoes! That's just madness. I will not be shopping again for a very, very long time. Apologies to anyone with a birthday in the meantime.

Sick

I had a day off work ill today. I never take time off ill. But ill I was, and so time off I took.

And felt slightly guilty all day. And worked all afternoon.

But I feel better, thank you for asking.

Sheepish

So I live practically next door to a knitting shop. This isn't something of particular interest to me, as I've only ever once tried to knit anything. I was six years old and my grandma decided to help me knit some white woollen mittens for my brand new baby brother.

By the time he was eleven, and I was seventeen, we decided perhaps it was best to abandon the project. Textiles lessons at school usually involved the teacher shouting at me that, "When I said 'tack it', Laura, I did not mean with Pritt Stick!". When I finally fessed up that I hated textiles, she looked shocked and said to me, "What are you going to do when your husband needs a button sewing on his trousers?" This was 1993, by the way, not 1883. I got into a reasonable amount of trouble for looking her dead in the eye and saying, "Mrs Firth, I'm not going to marry a man."

Anyway, you get the picture. Me and handicraft, not a match made in heaven. So the knitting shop nearby, Prick Your Finger http://www.prickyourfinger.com/, has drawn nothing more than the occasional glance from me. It does however, get an occasional glance because they do knit some weird and funky stuff and put it in the window. In the last few months there has been a life-size knitted toilet and basin, a knitted jar of Marmite and a woolly tin of Heinz Baked Beans.

Often I'll come home at about seven or eight o'clock, and there'll be a group of women sitting on stools around the shop, knitting. Inoffensive, I suppose, if you need a hobby. But the other day, when I came home, there was a woman in the shop signing autographs on a book which appeared to be about knitting. Autographs. On a knitting book? And the shop was absolutely full of people. A tiny little shop on a back street in Bethnal Green hosting an autograph signing event? It has to be a cover-up for something. I suspect Mafia involvement.

Still, I think I've finally found somewhere that might knit me a vagina, as they appear to have the male genitalia quite literally all sewn up.

Fruitless

It's been a rubbish summer, weather-wise. Barely three days of warm sunshine at a stretch, and it seems someone has already pushed the Autumn button. Whilst it's sunny today, there's that smell of a new school term in the air and the leaves seem somehow crisper.

Whilst I've been lucky enough to take a couple of holidays this year, neither New York nor Toronto were particularly warm (in fact I almost got hypothermia in New York.) so I feel I've kind of missed out on sunshine due to me this year. But last night I had a dream where I was snoozing on a Greek beach. The heat and radiant warmth were almost overpowering, as I lay back and relaxed. Then - in my dream - I suddenly sat bolt upright as I thought, "Fuck! I'm supposed to be on stage!"

Yes, Ploggers. The stress dreams for the latest play have started. Partly this is my own fault. The production is less than two weeks away and I haven't yet totally entirely learned my lines. I'm confident experience as a stand-up will help me to ad-lib. Maybe. Even if the other character's don't appreciate it. Yes. It's the fourth play-related stress dream I've had in as many nights.

I don't think it's just me who's feeling the stress either. I had to miss Thursday's rehearsal as I was up in Manchester for work, but apparently I missed a corker of a row between our (very good) musical director and the guy who plays the lead. It's been brewing for a while, and I guess the stress and the reality of the situation have suddenly all come to a head. Glad I was out of there anyway. I don't like conflict, unless it's over the phone with a fuckwit company and I'm getting some sort of refund.

So, if you would like to come and see Little Shop of Horrors, please let me know. I will be wearing a blonde wig and a hideous dress. I will be singing and - horror of horrors - dancing. Until I fall over in my pointy shoes and show my knickers to everyone. Front row seats not advised.

We're running from Wednesday 24 September through to the Saturday, and tickets are £15. It's on in a central London theatre. So if you'd like to come along, drop me an email to laura.nunn@gmail.com and I'll reserve you some tickets. Please bring your own rotten fruit. Everywhere near me is already sold out in anticipation.

Reality sucks

So we didn't all get sucked into a black hole and transported to an alternate reality. Or maybe we did. But the alternate reality seems pretty similar so far - mostly Top Gear repeats and reheated pasta for dinner. Unless, of course, that's what they want us to think. And in fact, neither Top Gear nor pasta actually existed until they switched on their magic machine, but our reality has been reprogrammed to believe that such things have always been.

TheBloke (TM) explained to me that we could all be sucked into the black hole. I told him I wouldn't because I'd hold onto the door frame really, really hard. He tried to explain that the door frame would also get sucked into the vortex. I reasoned that they couldn't just do that because I'm a leaseholder, so I have certain rights. He wasn't sure vortexes respected leaseholder rights. But what does he know?

So anyway we're not in a black hole. Probably.

I'll be honest, philosophy pisses me off.

Whilst school and university friends would happily ponder the meaning of life, whether each atom was a miniature universe in itself and whether we all saw colours the same way, I had to bite my lip very, very hard to resist the temptation to shout, "It doesn't fucking matter. You will never, never know. This is a totally pointless conversation. Shut up and bring me cake!"

It's a bit like modern art. You either love it and find it endlessly fascinating and provocative, or, like me, wander round the Tate Modern saying, "That's shit. That's shit. An autistic two year old could have done that. That's shit and pretentious. Where's the cafe? I need cake."

Unless of course, cake didn't actually exist until they turned on the black hole machine. My head hurts. I'm going to get some cake. Existential or otherwise.

Pockets of time

The weather is bad. The weather is so bad that on Sunday I deployed my winter coat for a walk in the park with a friend. I may have overestimated the bad-ness a little, as the winter coat was perhaps a bit too heavy for a gentle stroll through the parkland of Bethnal Green, but I digress. This Plog is not about the weather.

I haven't worn my winter coat since - well - the winter. Which this year ended round about May. So the pockets of the coat (I'm not a proper girl - I insist on a coat with useful pockets at all times) contain a veritable treasure trove of forgotten keepsakes which are - quite literally - at least four months old. Thrilling eh? I feel like an archaeologist.

I shouldn't keep you hanging further. A summary of That Which Was Found In My Coat Pockets:

- One of my old business cards with "Jennifer Gosbery" scrawled across it, in my own handwriting. No idea who she is.
- A NatWest receipt for withdrawing £500 in cash. Worryingly I have absolutely no memory of this
- A NatWest receipt for depositing over £1000 by cheque. Again, no recollection of this. Still, it seems I'm winning in the transactional process so far
- A British Airways boarding pass from City Airport to Edinburgh
- One squashed heart-shaped chocolate
- Two tissues (used)
- A receipt from the hairdressers. Presumably in case I wanted to return my hairstyle.
- A British Airways boarding pass from Edinburgh to City Airport
- A Sainsbury's shopping list comprising: potatoes, bacon, butter, cheese, kitchen roll, Mr Muscle Kitchen and Bathroom, eggs, bread and squash. Healthy.
- The tear-off part of a doctor's prescription.
- 7p. In cash, no less.
- A "Refreshing Towel" from BA. My spring / autumn jacket has four of these in the pocket from Air France. See how my loyalties have changed?

Blow it

I barely left the inflatable bed yesterday. I played Xbox on the bed. I ate pizza on the bed. I drank coke on the bed. I ate Jaffa Cake bars on the bed. Then, when it was dinner time - as it was my turn to cook - I ordered Chinese takeaway. And ate it on the bed.

At the end of the night, I decided it was time to deflate the bed. It does, after all, take up about half the floor space in the living room. But it was so sad. I just wanted the bed back up.

I now suspect the deflating of the inflatable bed may signal the end of every weekend from now on. Roll on Friday!

Sock it to 'em

I'm trying to be sensible with money at the moment. I figure I ought to do my bit to tighten my belt because of the credit crunch. Not that it's actually affecting me in any way at all. Yet. But, you know, a bit of sensibility never hurt anyone.

On Saturday, off to Lakeside I toddled. I needed socks. Even with a credit crunch you can be excused buying socks, can't you?

Actually, not really. There's nothing wrong with my old socks. About two years ago, I got fed up of all my black socks not actually matching, so I threw all of them away and bought a shitload of plain black socks from Next. Or so I thought. My genius plan was that having loads of identical socks, it wouldn't matter when they all got mixed up in the washing machine, and I could wear any two socks that popped up in my drawer. Good plan, poorly executed. After a few weeks of ignorant sock-wearing bliss, I noticed that actually the Next socks had a little tag designed to sit on the outside of the foot. This essentially marked a left and a right sock. Well, who would notice that? No-one. So it surely wouldn't matter if I wore two "left" socks. Would it? Would it?

That's when I began to get a little bit OCD about the whole thing. Over a period of a couple of months, I went from "preferring" to have a left and a right sock to "needing" to make sure the socks were a proper pair.

And this is where the madness must stop. So I decided to buy some Marks and Spencers' socks, which ostensibly do not have left and right foot markers.

Long story short. Credit crunch = Laura spending over £200 at Lakeside on lunch, shower gel, books, a Wii dance mat and an inflatable bed. And socks. Don't ask.

Jealous Jessica

TheBloke (TM) is convinced Jessica, my sat nav system, is trying to kill him. Many a Saturday evening he's returned from cricket, swearing at "that stupid bitch" who either tried to take him a tortuously long route round, or else - he claims - told him to turn left verbally whilst showing an arrow pointing right on screen.

Now Jessica has her foibles, I'm the first to admit. And I've not yet totally forgiven her for the time she took me across Tower Bridge, then back across London Bridge at two in the morning - presumably just for kicks. But I will say, on the whole, though she might not always plot the most accurate route, she does usually get me where I need to be. Which is not bad for a sat nav which is over three years old.

I dismissed TheBloke (TM)'s witterings as incessant blokey whingeing. Until last Sunday. When I have to say, he was partly vindicated. It appears Jessica may have entered the Terrible Threes. She was certainly acting out.

After driving to Havant, near Portsmouth, and it taking rather longer than I expected, on the journey home, I asked TheBloke (TM) if he'd mind taking over, as I was really sleepy. We switched at a service station, and trusted Jessica to guide us on the final stretch home into London.

Through the Blackwall Tunnel, Jessica guided us - and - understandably lost reception whilst we were underwater. So we missed a turn straight after coming out of the tunnel. No worries. Jessica would recalculate. And she did.

"Turn right," instructed Jessica, a little bossily. TheBloke (TM) indicated right, looked, then realised... she was trying to guide him into the fast lane of oncoming traffic of a dual carriageway.

He was right. Jessica is indeed trying to kill him. I am not sure of her motivation - perhaps jealousy. In the meantime, there's definitely an atmosphere between them. I can sense them throwing evil looks at each other whilst I'm driving. It's awkward. I just hope I don't have to choose between them. Because I don't think I could give up my sat nav. Even if she is slightly on the homicidal side.

Sucks to be me.

Bean there, done that

The bathroom smells like dead goat.

I blame the bean burger I had for lunch. My digestive system is more suited to Sainsbury's bacon-loaded ready meals, deep-fried brie and chocolate. Sometimes all on the same plate. The bean burger with carrot chutney, rocket salad and sauteed potatoes was clearly enough to send my lower intestine into shock.

A whole hour of sustained pooing surely can't be normal. The really creepy thing? When I weighed myself post-poo, expecting weight loss on an astronomical and possibly record-breaking scale, I'd put on three pounds since this morning.

Bean burgers. Don't. Just don't.

The younger woman

"I know what happens to people when they get fat," proclaimed Lois, aged four years and two months.

"What's that?" I asked.

"They go on TV. They have to go on Rikki Lake."

"Oh," I said. "Do you think I will get fat and go on TV?" I weigh very slightly over seven stone. I was fairly confident of the answer.

With absolute certainty and gravity, Lois proclaimed, "Yes. You will. Definitely."

Within a four hour visit, Lois spent far more time holding TheBloke (TM)'s hand than I did, and smiled secretly when I asked her if she was trying to steal my boyfriend. And as a final coup de grace, took away the drawings she'd done for me and presented them to TheBloke (TM). "But those are my drawings, Lois - you gave them to me," I protested, feebly.

"I like him better," said Lois. The poor girl clearly has no taste in men. I worry.