In At The Deep End

Finally managed to go for a swim yesterday for the first time this year, which considering there's two swimming pools in easy distance, and I've got the English Channel at the bottom of my road, is pretty much unforgivable. I managed to do it in the end simply because I'm very aware that I'm in my last couple of days off from work right now, but also because of the damage I did to my shoulder earlier in the week. I thought, in some vague way, that swimming would do my shoulder some good.

So far, that seems to be the case, as my shoulder hurts significantly less this morning that it has all week. It wasn't always thus, though: while swimming, I was very weak on my right side, and wincing manfully (or something) as it was too painful to do a full stroke on the right hand side. I've never been a strong swimmer in any case, having never really learned to swim properly: as a kid, I just got into the water and largely suceeded at not drowning. Water seemed to be the great leveller, as I seem to remember the tough kids being surprisingly inept in the pool. But, as I say, I never had 'proper' swimming lessons, meaning that even when I have full use of all my limbs, I always end up being convinced that the onlooking lifeguards aren't there to potentially save my life; but more to sneer at my pathetic attempts to look like I can swim. But hopefully, I'll be able to take the start suggested by yesterday, and begin to swim more regularly.

However, next week is where things start really to kick in. On Monday is the first acting class of the new season at the New Venture Theatre, led by myself (I'll chat more about the details of that in the next blog), and for three nights of the next six weeks, I'll be working on a one-woman show, Three Kinds Of Me, which will be produced in early October. Right now, that seems like a reasonably long time away. I'm sure my opinion on how much time I have will drastically alter very soon. I'm still working on a couple of short stories, and expect to have a significant demand on my time in all of November, which I'll tell you about closer to the time.

And tonight, I have an extra Ghostwalk, this one being at the same time as Brighton Pride. I have no idea how that's going to go yet - the streets are likely to be somewhat busy because of everyone being, well, proud, but I'm not convinced that a lot of them will actualy make it out to the Walk. And, anyway, a lot of our core audience - kids - won't be dragged away from the living room tonight. For tonight, Doctor Who starts its 50th anniversary season. I'm very glad I live in the era of the iplayer ..