Icecream Sunday

A day off today. I'm not used to days off. I mean, obviously, I've just come off a few weeks holiday, but that's different. It's been a reasonable whack of time since I last had a regular, weekly day off. The two weekend acting classes that I run were combined into one easily manageable Saturday session, freeing up my Sundays. It means I'll take quite a hit on my monthly pay, so I'm going to have to spend less on things like, I don't know, fresh fruit and vegetables, but on balance, it's probably a bearable sacrifice to make for my mental health. And it's not as if I eat a great many fresh fruit and vegetables anyway.

So far, despite my all new work ethic, I haven't done a great deal with my day off, but I'm going to call that a good thing, since it's my, you know, day off. I've had to prepare for tonight's PPM (Pre-Production Meeting) for Three Kinds Of Me, and sort out what I'm doing in tomorrow night's Acting Class, but that's been fairly low impact, all things considered. Actually, all things considered, I probably wouldn't have found them to be such a low impact duo of tasks if today hadn't been a day off. That's the thing with wall to wall, relentless seven day week work .. Your mind (and emotions) aren't given enough breathing space to do anything,

I even found myself on the beach this afternoon. Only the second or third time this year, which is criminal, considering how close I live. I've been physically down there quite often, but normally only as a passage to get from the flat to town, very rarely as a destination. I think my boredom threshold is very low. It always seems like a grand idea, like the sort of thing I should be doing: sitting on the beach, reading a paperback, but quite often I'm getting twitchy after only ten minutes. I did ok today then; I was down there for about two hours. It helped that I went for a bit of a swim in the sea.

Now, I haven't swum in the sea for a couple of years. Again, criminal because the beach is only blah blah blah, but time and circumstance always seems to drive it away from me. Nevertheless, I'd decided quite early this week that I was going to commit to swimming in the sea on my new found day off. Once I'd checked the weather forecast, I knew there was no escape. It would be stupid not to. Once I'd done enough avoidance tactics of reading stuff on my kindle (it's true, you know, it really is easy to read in direct sunlight), I finally managed to get myself into the sea. Now, bear in mind this is the first time in about two years that I've been in the water, so I spent about two minutes doing a sort of paddle thing as I contemplated just how cold the water might be. As I did this, I was aware that was surrounded by loads of kids who clearly had no problem whatsoever with how could it was. So I (literally) took the plunge. And that's another truth often told: it's ok once you get your hair wet.

And it was actually quite lovely. I swam out further than I expected, not quite far enough to experience an Open Water moment, but far enough to almost lose the sounds of the crowd on the beach. The sound of the brass band on the bandstand did manage to float over. Another solitary swimmer splashed by. And suddenly, without warning and unbidden, an idea for a sequence for the novel that I hope to hack out during NaNoWriMo came to mind. Turns out I was working after all.

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 ..