A Most Unselfish Act

I had a sudden moment of craziness today and decided to film myself doing a post instead of writing one, thinking it’d be quicker.  In fact, the logistics of doing it were, quite frankly, nightmareish and it took me a total of four and a half hours to get this video up, but now that I’ve worked out the procedure, I should be able to do it quicker next time. 

This video is a response to all those IDIOTS who say that there is no such thing as an ‘unselfish act.’  

IN YOUR METAPHORICAL FACES:

Am I better on film, or did I ruin the magic? Please be brutal.

Girls who hate girls

This post is not about how I don’t like girls, it is about how I don’t understand why most girls I know don’t seem to like other girls, or how they think that other girls don’t like them which leads them to not like girls, so for this post to be about me not liking girls would be grossly hypocritical.  I hope I’m making myself clear.

This is not something I come across rarely; in fact, most of my good female friends seem to be of this opinion:

My reaction is almost universal:

It seems to me that if you are a girl who, secretly or openly, believes that other girls have some kind of vendetta against you, the reason for this vendetta is because you, secretly or openly, believe that other girls have some kind of vendetta against you.  The worst part is that guys have got hold of this as well and use it against girls, saying that male friendships are SO MUCH BETTER because they’re free of bitchiness and back-stabbing, and that they pity girls for being so dreadful to each other.  For some girls, this is the very reason they choose not to associate themselves with other girls, as they do not wish to be tarred with that brush.  I’ve got news for them, though; YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!!!! If you are so great, why don’t you put your efforts into giving girls a good name rather than forsaking 51% of the world? Here’s another piece of news: boys can be just as bitchy as girls, and, generally speaking, there are an equal number of teasers, idiots, good souls and arseholes in both sexes. 

I would actually go the other way.  While I love men and spend a lot of time with them, I actually PREFER female friendships.  This is why:

1.   Girls have boobs

To be fair, I am a little bit of a lesbian, but boobs are objectively just great.

2.   Affection

Okay, the first one was kind of a joke; I’m certainly not implying that I’m friends with people ONLY if they have boobs. (Not in every case at least.)  Anyway… most boys seem to have a big fly in their ointment about physical affection, and seem determined to resist it with every fibre of their being.  I LIKE hugs.  I enjoy snuggles, but if I try and snuggle with a boy they look at me like I’m an absolute nutcase.  Unless, of course, they fancy me, then it’s okay, but then I CAN’T snuggle as I’d be putting them in the “friendzone” or leading them on or something.  Boys, of course, cannot snuggle with each other either, as it’s ‘gay’ apparently, but the great thing about girls is that you can have as many snuggles as you want, and these snuggles have BOOBS in them. 

3.   Weddings and Babies

Girls don’t sprint a million miles in the other direction when you want to talk about this kind of stuff.  You see, girls understand that when we want to plan our weddings, it’s not that we’re crazy desperate psychos that are insistent on entrapping a man in our web of kittens and babies (I almost drew a picture of this but it was too disturbing even for me so I stopped) But are simply excited about what we are brainwashed into believing will be the best day of our lives.  Of course, we know it’ll be a horrendous anti-climax and we’ll probably end up crying and choking on our own vomit, but planning is HALF THE FUN.  

4.   Giggling

I have only known one or two men that giggle as much as girls do, and it is one of life’s greatest pleasures.  The majority of boys don’t seem to understand that something can just be very funny, and for no reason at all, like this postcard that I bought in Hamburg the other day:

It's as if the photographer was attempting to take a picture of the boat and these three swans just loomed into view, popping their heads up and saying- "HELLO" just as he was taking the photo.  Ha!

Perhaps it was a coincidence that the girl I was with found it just as funny as I did (perhaps not quite as funny) and the boys looked curiously at me as if I had just spent €1 on a poo, but looking back on most of my funniest moments in my life, they were almost always shared with girls and not boys.  Having said that, I love toilet humour, and not many girls do, so the boys get a small tick in that respect.

5.   Openness

It is impossible to be open with the majority of boys.  If I want to talk about a horrible period or a particularly disappointing poo, boys are not interested, even if it is, in fact, a very interesting story.  Boys seem to be under the impression that girls don’t poo or fart, which is a great shame, as farting can be a big part of any successful relationship.  I actually just did one right now.  (Truly!) I’m not asking boys to find me attractive; I already have one Foofy, thank you, I do not need another one at the moment.  Why is it that all girls, even those who are not potential conquests, need to fulfil the expectations in boys’ eyes of girls as delightful, clean, non-pooing creatures that never have any problems or pain in their lower region? To be fair to boys, I do talk about this kind of stuff A LOT, so I may not be the best judge here.  I do, however, know a girl who went out with a guy for two years, and, in those two years, she never ONCE did a poo in his bathroom, even suffering quite severe pain in order to achieve this.  When I re-told this story to a lot of my girl (and boy) friends, they nodded as if this made sense. 

WHAT?!? I’m sorry, but if you have to LEAVE THE HOUSE to do a poo, LIKE A DOG, that’s not a successful relationship in my opinion.  And any boys that condone this kind of behaviour? SHAME ON YOU.  I’m not saying you should congratulate each other on particularly amazing poos like Foofy and I do, but SERIOUSLY, there must be a comfortable middle ground somewhere.

ANYWAY, my point is that I prefer to be around people that I know I can vent my womanly problems with, and very few boys put up with that.

6.   Chatting

Boys don’t seem to enjoy just ‘chatting.’ Sometimes I want to have a conversation where both people just speak LOADSANDLOADSANDLOADS without really saying anything important.  When I’ve tried to have this kind of conversation with most boys they tend to over-analyse stuff I’ve just said in passing.  This is a great skill to have in an intellectual debate, but sometimes I just want to talk about how fit David Cameron is (Weird taste, right? Ed Milliband is fitter though, so I know who I’m voting for…) without getting into an in-depth discussion about his evil and malicious policies.  Generally, only girls have developed this art of senseless nattering which I often enjoy.  This point, interestingly, is the only one on the list that Foofy still doesn’t quite get, but one can’t have everything.

7.   Boys don’t often let me give them make overs.

8.   Dancing

Generally when I’m on one of my rare nights out, boys are too cool to dance with me, but girls are usually always up for a showcase of my favourite moves:

Or, my personal favourite:

I think the reason a lot of girls don’t tend to like girls is because they feel insecure about themselves as a woman. There is nothing wrong with having these feelings! Here are some of the things that I feel insecure about:

When we’re bogged down in our own insecurities, we tend to look at the pretty, talented, popular girls, and feel this huge wave of hate towards them, and instead of being logical and reasoning that it stems from our own feelings, we start behaving all stand-offish, and when the girl (who probably has her own insecurities that we don’t know about), naturally, appears not to be too crazy about us, we’re all like- “what a fudging BIATCH! What’s her problem?”  So yeah; I get it; I just wish we could all rise above it.  Also, this theory falls apart with me, because I seem to be the girl that girls who don’t like girls actually DO like, and this must mean that I’m either so completely worthless and pointless that they don’t see me as a threat, or that I’m just so super-duper awesome that they can’t help but love me.  I’d like to think it was the second one, but instead I see it as a sign that my theory has some holes in it.  People are WEIRD; let’s just leave it at that.

However, at the risk of sounding like some weird man-hater, I must say that there are also things I don’t like about most girls.

1.   High heels

WHY DO GIRLS WEAR THEM?!? They look fine, I guess, but they hurt and actually physically deform your feet over time.  I have occasionally worn heels myself on a night out, and EVERY TIME I end up at home covered in blisters and bitter regret.  They just ruin the whole evening- what’s the point of them? To make you a bit taller? Why? Unless you’re a very, very small girl, I mean, small enough to cause you to feel uncomfortable, as one might with an extra arm growing out of your face, what is actually the point? Is making your calves look slightly elongated worth several hours of BLINDING PAIN and taking three times as long to walk anywhere? The answer is no.

2.   Toilet time

Ladies, what on earth are you doing in the toilet?!? If I’m doing a wee and it is not my period, which makes up about 75% of my toilet visits, I cannot possibly justify taking longer than about 30-40 seconds in that cubicle.  If you are elderly or otherwise have difficultly sitting and standing, fair enough, but how can you justify being in there for 5 minutes even if it is a poo? Especially when there’s a queue forming outside? What ARE you doing in there? 

3.   GIRLS MUST STICK TOGETHER

Having gushed about girls throughout this post, I resent the fact that just because a fellow human being is a girl, I am obligated to like her because of what people think ‘feminism’ is.  Sometimes, girls, like boys, are just not very nice, or they may be really boring or stupid, but magazines encourage me to look upon the entire female species as some kind of incredible super-group of goddesses while men are just our helpful, loyal companions.  I have often heard comments (usually from girls, and a LOT of girls at that) like- “I hate it when a girl calls another girl a slut; it’s just disgusting.” I find this grossly unfair.  Not only do I think it’s awful for anyone to call anyone a slut (unless they actually are a slut, which they probably aren’t,) but why is it worse for a girl to use the word? It is, of course, absolutely fine for a man to use it, because they don’t matter, but us girls must stick together, right? BS.

There being many exceptions, I imagine, to all of these rules, the only thing really consistently different about men and women lies in their genitals, which I suppose renders this entire post moot. I do, however, hope that it provided some entertainment.

My date with a nest of fire ants

Foofy and I began our relationship in March, but because he flew to Austria for a bit afterwards, I didn’t get to see him for about 10 days! This was pretty horrid, and, weirdly, that 10 day separation was far more traumatic than our three month separation at the moment due to a stupid ocean and a theatre company that insisted on hiring me.  (How BLOODY selfish!!!!) We are currently only 17 days, 18 hours, 3 minutes and 37 seconds away from seeing each other again, but anyway, I digress.

Foofy and I went on our first date on the day he came back from Vienna.  We went to my house and sorted out all of his things, after which we went for a little walk in the park.  We then made the mistake of trying to be romantic and sit in the shade of a tree.  For a couple of minutes we happily exchanged thoughts and shnoogles, until I was interrupted by an uncomfortable sensation in my right buttock.  Apologising to Foofy, I gave myself a scratch and sat back down, and we continued talking.  Then it happened again.  Because I’m a little bit slow and absent-minded sometimes, it probably happened about 8 more times before I decided to stand up.  On rising from my position on the ground, I looked down at where I had been sat to be met with THIS:

I don’t know if it was because I was suddenly able to put my discomfort into some kind of context, but that’s when it started to hurt VERY badly.  I was desperate to rip off my clothes and have a look at what had happened to me but modesty prevented me.  This was, looking back on it, one of the worst things to happen on a first date.  Although I am a woman with IBS and periods so can quite happily deal with extraordinary amounts of pain, this was no ordinary pain- it was like someone was holding up a red hot poker to my buttocks (something that Edward II is unfortunately familiar with, but that’s another story,) but for some reason it also made me laugh, as it was very tickly, and I found that the pain was slightly reduced by walking in a very awkward, wiggly way and by making a lot of noise.  Here I was, trying to impress my man on our first proper date together, and through no fault of my own, I was forced to behave like this:

So the rest of mine and Foofy’s date involved going to Boots and buying antihistamine tablets and various un-pronounceable creams with pictures of bees on them, and me applying the creams in a John Lewis toilet cubicle while he waited outside in what OF COURSE had to be the knickers section. The lady in Boots was actually very helpful, telling us that fire ants like to run around on someone’s skin, biting in a circular pattern.  I don’t know why they do this but in my head it has something to do with OCD.

She asked if she could see the injury, but I told her it was in an ‘inconvenient’ place, and she seemed to understand.  As we were walking home, I noticed a sudden, sharp pain in my arm, and I ripped off my jumper only to find that there were MORE FIRE ANTS IN MY JUMPER and I had to hold it at arms’ length for the 20 minute walk home.  I’m not sure what we did for the rest of the day, but I would have hoped that we bought some wine and watched the Apprentice (it being a Wednesday night) and forgotten about the incident.  Whatever happened that day, I must have been pretty good company, as Foofy is still sticking around. 

Weirdo.

Anyway, though this date was pretty disastrous in light of the ants, it certainly made for a very ‘ant’-ertaining blog post!

"I'm sorry, professor; rats ate my homework."

In Berlin zoo the other day, we saw these incredible creatures that looked just like massively oversized rats. (I would compare them in size to a large sausage dog, though you can get a pretty good idea of their size by looking at the apples in relation to them.) 

I was desperate to break into their enclosure and give them a hug, but, for obvious reasons I didn’t.  Seeing them, though, reminded me of a story from several years ago:

A long time ago I lived in a shared house at university.  It was a charming wee house that I spent three happy years in, although it had a slight downside in that 4 people were required to share a bathroom.  I’d lived in this house with three boys initially, and it was a complete disaster area in terms of mess the entire time.  As I said a few posts ago, I am not the tidiest of people, but when it comes to cleanliness I am very much on a par with other people, and thrusting my hand into my favourite mug to fish out a crisp packet only to find a used condom lurking at the bottom was not something I was thrilled about experiencing.

Anyway, it was not until the following year, when I was living in the same house with 2 girls and 1 boy, all impeccably clean people, when we got the rats.  My housemate, let’s call her Goose, thought that she’d seen a mouse one day in her room.  She didn’t leave any food in her room and she was the cleanest of us all, so it was very surprising.  We had all, also, heard a lot of scratching during the night, as if something was in the walls.  Reasoning that it couldn't have been anything too big or scary, we didn’t think too much more of it, until we woke up one morning to find that a box of mince pies had been eaten into, and one of the pies, foil case and all, had been utterly devoured.  The others remained largely intact, apart from having been nibbled around the edges.

At this point, we decided to call a pest man, who informed us that we didn’t have mice, but actually baby rats.  They had somehow crawled up through the pipes into the roof, and down to our ground level flat through a couple of holes in our wooden floor.  The rats had also managed to chew their way through Goose’s floor one night and eat all of her biology notes for the semester, and half of her yoga mat.  After this incident she erected a rat-guard in her room, consisting of an upturned plastic box with several heavy books piled on top.  Now I love rats, and think they make wonderful pets, but unfortunately the wild ones carry diseases and it would have been impossible for us to share our house with them:

When the exterminator came, he brought with him a huge tub of rat poison, telling us that it would not only kill the rats, but make them thirsty first, so that they would leave the house to find water before they died.  This was good in that we wouldn’t be living just above dozens of rat carcasses.  He found the hole that the creatures were coming through, and approached it with the tub of poison.  It was very funny when he poured it down the hole, because we kept thinking that he’d stopped, only to pause and pour a bit more in.  He ended up pouring almost the entire tub down the hole.  They'd never have survived that, but I'd often imagined that they had somehow got wise to the poison, escaped and are now living freely out in the countryside somewhere.

R.I.P. rats! :(

The Pizza Express Incident

What I am about to tell you is a tale of misery, desperation and woe that could probably rival War and Peace, or at the very least, The Hunger Games, which is one of my favourite books as of late and is very relevant here.

This happened to me many months ago now, but I remember it all too vividly.  I was with a large group of people (around 35-40) all dining at Pizza Express; so large, in fact, that they had insisted on us ordering our food in advance so that they could close up and clean the kitchen as soon as possible.  I didn’t even need to think about what I was going to order, as I always have the ‘Padana’, which is a mixture of goats cheese and red onions.  I was very excited about the food- I had not eaten since lunchtime and it had been an extremely busy day, including being on the stage with my fellow restaurant companions.

After about ten minutes of us sitting, the pizzas began to arrive.  Every time I saw a pizza I sat up in hope, but I never heard anyone say ‘Padana’, so I waited, and I waited.  Five minutes later, looking around the table I saw that I was the only one without a pizza.  I mentioned it to the waiters and they were very confused because they’d only had one Padana on their list and they had already given it away.  I was FUMING.  Someone had stolen my pizza!!!!

This is pretty much the epitome of a first world problem, but the next 30 minutes waiting for my pizza was one of the worst 30 minutes of my life.  (Because they’d switched all the ovens off it took them that amount of time to make a new pizza for me.)  People were eating happily, standing up and giving speeches and getting increasingly drunk, while I sat there, seething with rage and bitterness.  Right after my pizza finally arrived I was forced to eat it very quickly so that I could catch my train home, still mad as Hell at the person who ruined my evening; being extremely hungry is bad enough, without watching 35 other people around you stuffing their faces.  A couple of people offered me a bit of theirs until mine came, but, alas, they all contained the flesh of either mammals or birds, which I do not eat. 

Though the incident itself wasn’t especially horrifying, and would be the kind of thing I might laugh about nowadays, at the time I was going through a terribly rough patch and the one thing that might have made my miserable existence even slightly better would have been getting my pizza on time.  Just a few days later I was doing a survey online, which asked me if I felt positive about my health, my friendships, my love life, my career or my financial situation, and I broke down and cried to Giraffe when I realised that I couldn’t tick ‘yes’ in a single column.  It’s always darkest before the dawn, however, and my life completely turned around in the next month, acquiring, in this order, Foofy, new students (therefore more money), many new friends, and a job lined up for the Autumn (which I am currently on.) Although the pain gradually faded from my life, I would occasionally think of my pizza thief: “I wonder what he/she is doing now?” I would muse, grinding my teeth and staring rigidly ahead.  Often I would be doing my normal, every day activities like brushing my teeth, or performing to a large audience, and I would think of this vile human being, and get a huge bubble of rage inside me.

The story doesn’t end there, however.  A couple of months after this horrific incident, I told Foofy the story, wanting to describe the state of depression that he'd helped bring me out of, and I saw that he had a strange expression on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“You did say a ‘Padana?’”

“That’s right.”

“…Oh dear.”

I looked at Foofy in horror, remembering that he’d been at the dinner as well, but on the other side of the room.  I'd only met him once at that point and we'd never been formally introduced.

“Did you steal my pizza?” I said ominously.

“I MIGHT have done.” Foofy replied.

As it turns out, Foofy, unlike the others at the dinner, had not pre-ordered his food, and when he’d ordered his own ‘Padana’, the waiters misunderstood and thought that the one on the list was his, but going by Foofy’s history of this kind of thing happening to him, I still blame him rather than the waiters.  NAUGHTY FOOFY!!!! It was very funny to finally uncover the identity of the person who I’d been wishing death upon for the last two months as the same person that I’d been shnoogling with.

I love you, Foofy; though several oceans separate us, I would pluck out all my fingernails and toenails one by one if that would make you happy, but NEVER GET BETWEEN ME AND MY PIZZA AGAIN!!!!

I need the Toilet! (WARNING- TMI!)

Sometimes I really resent the fact that I have a bladder- don’t get me wrong; I’m very grateful that I have one as opposed to having some kind of awful condition, but I wish humans had been invented not to have to wee at all.  Many day to day activities are completely governed by the fact that I have to be near a toilet.  If I am going on a trip, I can only have either orange juice OR hot chocolate for breakfast, which, as you can imagine, is pretty much as serious a problem as is possible to have.  There are even some drinks, like tea, that seem to go literally straight through me.  The other problem I have is that I can go from not needing the toilet at all to OHMYGODI’MGOINGTOWEEMYSELF in the space of just a few minutes.  On tour, we have very long trips in our van, and I have taken to going to the toilet every time we stop, whether I need it or not.

This has worked for the most part, but the other day I had an almost-disaster.  Coming up to a town in Italy, I knew that I needed the toilet, but we could actually see the town, so I knew it wouldn’t be long.  Besides, we were stuck in traffic, so even if I'd said I couldn’t have gone anyway.  Because there was nothing to be done about it, I didn’t mention my desperation until it was too late.  Thankfully this story does not end in me weeing myself in a van, but the fact that I didn't mention my complaint for a long time reminded me distinctly of this incident when I was very small:

I went through a period of being car sick when I was young where even the mere prospect of a long journey or simply smelling the inside of the car would put me on the edge of vomiting.  I seem to remember that both my sister and I would complain of feeling 'car sick' before we'd even left the house.  Anyway, moving back to a different kind of bodily fluid, I was desperate for the toilet, and the traffic was moving about a metre a minute, if that.  45 minutes later, we had only just arrived into the town and I was the most desperate I have ever been.

It’s funny, needing to go to the toilet- it’s painful, absolutely, but it's worse than mere pain as it consumes your entire body and mind and sends you utterly potty.  (If you’ll pardon the pun!) I was told by my van-mate later that he was really worried about me because I looked to be in severe distress- whether he was sympathetic about my pain or merely worried that I'd soak all his worldly possessions in urine is neither here nor there, but I don’t remember much from the agonising 20 minutes that we spent driving through the town at 5mph dodging various people on bicycles and pedestrians that obviously were not used to cars being on these roads.  I recall that I tried to comfort myself with some Leonard Cohen, but his soothing, husky tones only made things worse.  After a while, I realised that if I didn’t do something in 20 seconds, I was going to wet myself. 

I asked for the van to be stopped, whereupon I said- “don’t worry, I’ll find the hotel!” Not even knowing what it was called.  Thankfully, somebody reminded me to take my phone with me.  Staggering deliriously into an ITALIAN restaurant in ITALY, I ran, wide-eyed, up to the first waiter I saw, and almost yelled:

He said he didn’t, but I asked: “Kanne ich seine toiletten habe bitte?” Which I think means “Can I please have your toilet?” But thankfully he understood me and I ran for the door.  My wee lasted for over a minute.

Coming out of the restaurant, I was faced with the glorious sights and sounds of Italy, and thought to myself- “life feels GOOD right now.” Like I was on some kind of drug (they should market a drug that always makes you feel like you’ve just done a wee- I think it’d be a top seller!) I happily noticed that the van had only moved 8 metres in the time that I was in the restaurant.  I got back into the van, realised what a fool I had made of myself and remained almost silent for the rest of the journey.  The smile didn’t go off my face for hours, however.  

On Tour

Now that I am devoted to travelling around Europe for the next 7 months, these seem to be the main recurring motifs in the symphony of my life:

1.   Never knowing where my toothpaste is

EVERY SINGLE TIME I get to a new hotel, which is almost every night, all I want to do is brush my teeth and go to bed, but my toothpaste is always ALWAYS at the very bottom of my bag.  Because of this I have to unpack and repack my entire suitcase every time I want to brush my teeth.  While I’m brushing my teeth, all I am thinking about is how I simply MUST put my toothpaste somewhere accessible this time, but every time thus far I have forgotten my own advice when the time comes to actually put my toothpaste away, and it goes back to the bottom again.  (It is worth noting that a similar thing happens with my pyjama bottoms as well.)  Yesterday I thought I had been clever by putting my toothpaste and toothbrush in my handbag instead of my suitcase, but, of course, by the evening I’d forgotten all about this and emptied out my suitcase to look for it before I remembered where it was.  You win again, past me.

2.   Stealing stuff

I’d never considered the little toiletries and knick knacks that you get in hotel rooms to be useful before, but at the moment I’m stealing everything I can get my hands on…pens, paper, plastic cups, teabags, sugar sachets, shampoos, body lotions, and soaps.  This may seem crazy but it all adds up; I’ve not had to buy a single bottle of shampoo since the beginning of August.  I’ve also got into the habit of putting breakfast food into my bag to eat later; sometimes I merely slip a banana in while nobody’s looking (that’s what she said) and other times I brazenly butter bread and construct magnificent sandwiches right under the noses of the people running the hotel.  I’m such a rebel!

3.   My food bag

I need to have somewhere to put all the food I have stolen, and in this case it is a medium-sized cloth bag that Foofy bought for me in Munich.  Despite being washed several times, the inside of this bag tends to resemble some kind of biological disaster; you never know what you might find when you delve into it; will it be a piece of stale bread? Some sweaty 3-day-old cheese? Or perhaps even a rotten peach?  At the moment I have 3 bars of ‘Ritter Sport’ Chocolate which each have one square missing because I couldn’t decide which one to open first.  Other people would have been crippled by indecision but I simply opened all three at once.  Also taking up a large amount of space in my food bag is a huge packet of Leberkuchen, or, soft ginger biscuits, which doesn’t seem to be decreasing in volume despite me eating several of the biscuits a day.

4.   Endless BREAD

Because I cannot exactly put soup or porridge into my ever increasingly disgusting food bag, I am forced to take bread-related items and graze on them slowly throughout the day.  Even things like yoghurts are out of the question as they might burst, ruining everything in my bag.  Some theatres very nicely put on food for us when we arrive, but, again, it’s always ALWAYS sandwiches.  I’m certainly not complaining about this because they are under no obligation to provide us any food at all, but due to my utter stubbornness surrounding how I spend my money, I cannot possibly go out and buy different food if there is free food available.  Rather than buy something delicious for a few Euros, I despairingly struggle my way through my third sandwich of the day, only marginally happy that I’ve managed to save some money.

5.   Laundry

Although I did visit a laundrette once (while we were in Denmark), at the moment doing my laundry usually consists of washing each item of clothing separately in my sink with a stolen bar of soap, or, if I’m feeling luxurious, some hair conditioner as well.  I am both lucky and unlucky to have a bright pink costume; It looks wonderful, but anything it is washed with will inevitably turn pink.  My clothes then need to be hung out to dry for a number of hours to ensure that they are wearable the next day, and one time I grossly failed at this, meaning that I had to wear a wet costume in one of the performances.  Thankfully the wetness didn’t show, but it felt very strange indeed. 

6.   Mess

I am not the tidiest person in the world but I have significantly improved recently as I’ve grown up and have had my own space to make nice.  In tour we don’t have a space to make our own, so this doesn’t happen.  I also used to be incredibly considerate when it came to hotel rooms, making sure that I cleaned up after myself meticulously so as to not make any extra work for the hotel staff.  However, after a month of travelling my laziness has slowly increased, and I have taken to leaving a trail of pure destruction in my wake: within one minute of entering a hotel room every surface will be covered with screwed up receipts, bread and croissant crumbs and dirty underwear, which I will attempt to tidy up later by randomly stuffing in my suitcase next to all my clean clothes.  I need to develop some kind of a system.

This was my current hotel room on arrival:

And this is it LITERALLY three minutes later, including the apple core which I still haven't moved from my bed:

7.   Bruises

Although I have an (albeit, limited) knowledge of how to fall safely, yet dramatically on stage without hurting myself, the little injuries can build up.  Every day (sometimes twice a day) the same part of my thigh suddenly and sharply comes into contact with a corner of a heavy solid metal structure.  Although each incident in itself is not enough to cause a bruise, the repetitiveness of it has led to a large cluster of bruises on my right inner thigh.  Very appealing! I’ve also hit my head a number of times, but it’s all part of the fun.  There’s something strangely satisfying about going back to my hotel room and showing Foofy all the new 'owies' I have received that day over Skype.

8.   Music

Although I have a Kindle and a computer at my disposal, I find that my primary form of entertainment on long van journeys is listening to music on my iPhone.  Yesterday we had an 8-hour-long journey and I thought I’d listen to every Leonard Cohen song I had in my collection. (But in fact 8 hours wasn’t enough to get through them all!)  I was giddy and delirious from flu and at one point I could have sworn that I’d been listening to ‘Waiting for a Miracle’ for about 20 minutes, and I realised that, despite putting the songs on shuffle, it had played my three different versions of this song one after the other.  Apart from Leonard Cohen I have very little choice; I have the complete works of The Divine Comedy, The Beach Boys and Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as other bits and pieces.  The most shocking moment for me on this journey so far was when I was relaxing to Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ and feeling very artistic, when, very suddenly, ‘Here’s a case unprecedented’ from the Gondoliers screeched through my headphones and made me almost cry out in fear.  I love Gilbert and Sullivan but I HATE that song.  I could go into more detail as to why that is but I trust that only a tiny handful of people would be interested.   

9.   Losing all sense of time and place

This is the first time in my life that I’ve repeatedly woken up not only having no idea what bed I’m in, but also what country I am in.  One time we were on the border between Germany and the Netherlands and I didn’t want to ask which one we were in because we’d already been told and I'd forgotten.  I have also entirely lost the concept of days of the week and have given up trying to refer to the past or the future in conversation.  I feel like I don’t really have a solid location in space and time at the moment and that my situation could more accurately be described as in constant physical and temporal flux.  Before I look at my phone for the date and time, rather than being aware that we will be at some kind of time and I just don’t know what it is, I am positive that time has just stopped existing until I look to see what it is.  What is time, anyway? That’s another story.