I'll Give You "Lumpy."

Inspired by Sarah and Taz I have decided that I shall resurrect this blog for the purposes of archiving my pointless drivel once again. Hooray! It's been over a month!

I think there's just too much to summarise, to be honest. Bought a bike, shot one an event with over 950 cadets on parade, had a major diplomatic incident, finally got a new phone, had a couple of parties, took my GCSE exams and escaped death no fewer than eight times.

But, summer has begun. And I'm loving it, especially as the others are back at school this week. I'm enjoying lie-ins until 11 ish even more. Then breakfast, a pleasant cycle and the rest of the afternoon to do with what I please. Exxxxcelent, Monty Burns-style.

Wimbledon was good this year, and The World Cup also happened in the time I've been off line. Not much to say, I think! Useless donkeys. In contrast, DI had a successful couple of months, being hard pushed to get a team out a couple of times. And we had our Annual General Meeting, which [rather predictably] quickly became an Annual General Chat. Point is, we're not disbanding. For now.

We've worked so much in the past few weeks that Kenneth has been locked away in his flightcase in the hope that I won't take any more pictures for a little while - let's see how long that lasts! Joseph was so tired at a cricket match we covered, yesterday. Bless him, dead on his feet!

I had a lovely weekend with Dearest Taran. I helped with tech for his annual gymnastics display - which I pointed out was basically glorified dancing and was therefore lured there under false pretences. I spent the rehearsal complaining that I didn't have a desk on which to put our various bits of watered-down sound kit. He was a good girl and found me a desk, and after a quick bit of rewiring we got some Owl City on and had a sandwich.

The show went okay - there was the inevitable cock-up, but that wasn't our fault. If we'd been told the right song, I'd have loaded the right CD. The eyes of every gymnast, every coach and every single member of the audience fell upon me. IT WASN'T MY FAULT OKAY?

Afterwards we de-rigged in record time, bought a new inner-tube for my bike and boarded the lovely 84 back to Broughton. I walked home, fitted the inner-tube, had a swift jam sandwich and headed back to Lutterworth, to Taz's. We'd been invited to the afterparty, and willingly obliged. Change of shirt and we had a lovely evening with Katie and Nick...well I dad, Taz just got abused.

I've pretty much slept since.

Although I did rather enjoy a trip to Leire today, to see Sarah. I murdered the back of my leg on my crank, I may never walk properly again, but it was a very pleasant evening with a well-loved friend who I very nearly lost through my own stupidity. Very nearly spoiled, although I think we're beyond that.

And I've returned to Channel Four showing soft/medium porn in the interest in boosting ratings with the excuse of "Education."

So yeah - I'm back, bitches. Now, to add some more pertinent labels...

"You know you love me"

Bidz x

Not A Busy Week

As I said on Monday night, there was nothing really to make this week particularly stressful. Last week saw the most of it - French exams, Tom's sellout show and the dreaded VT assemblies. I actually got a round of applause from students in Tuesday's assembly, which I thought was uber kind of them...

My Tuesday cycle to Lutterworth plans evaporated in favour of sitting on my arse, although I did have to make a special outing to Leire to comfort one certain young lady who's not having the best of times at the moment. Sadly, Captain decided to call, in search of a phone connection point, and inform me that we're re-designing our command room in the summer. Yet again.

Wednesday I was supposed to go to the dentist, but decided I'd rather do some chemistry as apparently I've got an exam coming up, I don't know if you've heard? Photography course after school was cheered up by Rupert, who thinks that three times of camera supports are a tripod, a monopod...and a rock. Spent an hour or more out with Coddy that evening, who seems to think that cows can talk to each other have accents and maybe cannot understand cows from other parts of the world. Northern idiot.

Thursday I cycled over to South Wigston to meet with the PR people behind the June parade that we're photographing. Katie and Emilia, our guest photographers for the event came with me and we had a short half an hour chatting to a lovely Irish man and a lady who shouted at her phone. Followed by the worst Croft Players singing group meeting in...well, the three weeks of it's existence.

I did stay up till half 2 and watch the general election results. I figured the election is like a cross between Eurovision and Conclave. It's a big song and dance and goes on for so long people lose interest...

Friday panned out like any other Friday, although I don't usually fall asleep at 8pm. It worked out well, though, because the new people that are moving in next door decided to start banging at half nine this morning, annoying gits. Better be decent neighbours, or I'm wacking up the Dolly Parton...

"The day we're born we start to die, don't waste one minute of your life...get to livin'..."

T -17 Days and Counting

With just a few weeks left of lovely Lutterworth College, let's reflect on the past two years.

What a load of bollocks.

Okay, now that's over, here's a bit of wisdom I spouted this week:

Why spend every day playing the dress rehearsal of a show that'll never take to the boards? Wipe the makeup from your face, open the curtains and step forward into the lights of real life. Break free of the chains of some other director. Let morals be your script, and chance be your choreographer...

Who doesn't love theatre saying? Non-theatre types, I suppose. Rupert, for example. It was written for someone in particular, but it has a wider meaning than shaking free of the shackles of directed performing arts.

Life is like that. Look at all the abuse I get on Formspring - people trying to direct me to how they want me to be, and causing trouble when I refuse. Why bend and break to what other people expect?

And why expect people to bend and break for you? I'm proud to say that I'm very much for Vertical Tutoring. But people who haven't seen it work on this level don't - won't - understand it, and kick up a fuss. I don't suppose any of you will know how hard it was to stand in front of Yr11 and do that assembly. Yr10 was easy they don't know a thing about me. But to stand in front of close peers, and even friends who value my opinion, and say something that was very much against the stroke was a difficult thing to do.

And the clever people pulled the "You're not going to be here" card. So? So bleedin' what?

VT is something that you have to see working to understand it. Until you do, how on Earth can you not be open minded?

Rant over. I had a very cold day at Mallory Park yesterday, attempting to improve - or rather, gain - some motorsport photography skills with Kenneth. The Kingsmill team were lovely and didn't mind having me pottering about for a little while taking photographs of their sidecar and eating their rolls. Which were blatantly cobs, this is Lestah. Tchh.

(Photographs to follow - I took over 800)

You could see the smoke from the Enderby fire from the circuit. I was listening to the Leicester City match on my iPod inbetween races, they mentioned it a couple of times. So much smoke, poor ozone layer. Poor polar bears...

Busy week ahead. Bank Holiday Monday. Off Wednesday as I'm having teeth removed. Not overly sure if there's much point going in for the rest of the week....

Gone revisin' xx

Don't Stop - Never Give Up

Busy, busy, busy. This is only to be expected with GCSEs so close - well, over a month away. Some of the examinations have started already...Drama, Lighting, PE and other such shit. Oh yeah, French.

It's the most important few months of our lives - apparently. You'd better believe it. I've been working so hard with my IT work, getting all four problems in on time this week that everything else has slipped, a little.

We've had some interesting Digital Impulse stuff recently. Firstly, we've been chosen to take the photographs for the 2010 Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland Army Cadet Force's big parade in June this year. Very pleased, but it's the Sunday before a mad week of exams, so we're having to draft in a few BYPA photographers as not all the DI team are happy to do it.

In other news, we had a really lovely evening shooting a very nice lady's birthday party in Thurlaston on Saturday. Joseph and his camera went with Kenneth and had a great night of magic, music and mutual flashing. Not in that sense, though.

Also, my Leicester College interview went really well. I walked into the control box - which to be honest, is not a lot bigger than that at Thomas Estley - saw the Frog and about died. A beauty of a lx desk, and I'm looking forward to learning how to use it. I met a nice guy called Aiden, who's the lx tech at the Concordia, got a feeling he'll be creeping into lots of blogs from September onwards.

Leicester now has links with the old Phoenix theatre, now called Upper Brown Street. We'll be supporting professional productions there as well as working on student stuff at Abbey Park.

A chapter of my life that I'm now penning, and am looking forward to flicking through every page...

Behind The Curtain, In The Pantomime...

It's opening night. Well, it's still the morning but that's not the point...

And in true form, let's have a complaint. I'M ILL!! Woke up with a blocked nose, a horrid cough and the return of my ear problem. My feet are sore from my trek with Daisy the other day. I'm tired, as me and Taz stayed as late as possible to plot LX.

But it's opening night - I'm nervous, anxious, and incredibly excited.

But this also means it's the last Thursday of the Easter break, which has flown by. I've hardly done anything, although I did get some photographs of Hannah that are lovely...

And it's also nice to see I'm getting a bit of interest on Flickr....reeesult!

Made contact with the Emerald Isle this morning, chatting to Greg about various odd Volkswagen events that are kicking off this summer. Hopefully going to Bug Jam, in July, and Greg's chatting about a VW tour around Ireland, called Eireball - looks very amusing.

So, I suppose things aren't so bad, really. I shall of course let you know how the show goes...

"You know you love me"

Oh, a five minute break? Cheers.

It's a busy world, theatre. I'm not complaining much, it's just that I've barely had ten minutes since Thursday to sit down and relax - and it's Wednesday today.

With various raves and rig sessions, all in lovely sunny (not) Croft, it's been a mad couple of days. However the lighting for the show is almost good to go, and rehearsals are coming along nicely - still shoddy, but it's the first time we've done it on the stage and to be honest these things are expected to a degree.

Had a nice few days with Harvey, at varying levels of intoxication but it's been great. And Ryan too, in an odd way. He punched me in the face. Hard. Mehh. I did however get interviewed for Radio Leicester, which will be played next Thursday - listen out for me kids!

Life goes on, and whilst we've got few days before the curtain goes up for the first time, I'm feeling the excitement already. Long, hard rehearsals are paying off and we're getting somewhere...

Get your tickets - www.croftplayers.co.uk!

"You know you love me"

Decisions, Decisions...

The title for this blog is quite possible the most popular ever, especially if you read some of the word vomit that I do. Some people seem to think that their life should be posted upon the Internet every single day, and whilst this gives them some odd sense of self satisfaction, to be honest, nobody's reading. Or watching, if you're completely mentally deficient and record video blogs.

Today has been a long, bust theatrical day. 1:15pm, I hosted the Jaffa Cake eating competition which would have been fine if I'd remembered where I put the Jaffa Cakes. Meera, who was running the event, got a bit miffed at me, and gave me evils as I cheered on some chav to scaff a pack of Jaffas in 2minutes eighteen seconds. This was followed by a quick jaunt to the Library to print of some floorplans for the Croft Show.

Then maybe a lesson? Fourty minutes which the Neeson film Taken in RE, then to the auditorium to help last-minute rigging for the Talent Contest.

Now, school Talent shows often get a lot of stick for, simply, being shite. But you never get that at Lutterworth - because we do actually have talent. And this show ran a lot better than last year, we all enjoyed it more. However it was backbreaking with just Taran and I backstage, and I was hosting it as well. We remembered the old theatre adage that we'd certainly spouted last year...

Never Again.

But all in all, it was a fantastic show. I kept switching ties throughout the show through three colours to see how many people noticed. Not everyone. And my procrastinating skills are ever increasing, after looking at my watch with thirty minutes to go and no acts left to perform. A hasty and hushed conversation between Taz and I backstage was seamlessly interrupted by a by standing guitarist - "Mate, have you got a wireless pickup?" What stood here in a suit and tie? Feck off.

The beautifully talented Becky Orton won, and if you've never heard her music get your ass on YouTube now. The rest of this post - in fact the entire blog - is garbage compared to her.

It comes back to decisions. Those artists made a big decision to get on stage in front of 230+ people. Tomorrow, I have to tell a girl that she bluntly isn't wanted at a party we're throiwng this weekend. Sunday, I have to decide a safe way to rig the auditorium for the Croft Players show.

Every single action we take is a consequence of a decision - and nobody has time to waste in making them. Anybody who watched Married Single Other this week and last will know what I mean. Life is simply too short. Ask anybody who's lost a brother, a sister, a best friend. They'll tell you exactly how short life is. Some people never get the chance to make the decisions you don't even bother worrying about. Some people are taken from us too soon, and it is impossible to predict who is next.

We can't make the right decisions all the time, and in theatre and photography you can learn the most by making the wrong ones. But some are simple. Some are so dead straight and obvious that making the wrong one shout raise huge mental flags. Some wrong decisions could cost lives.

And nobody can play Monopoly with that sort of currency.

Peace.