11 more achievements of 2011..

Eh hem. This year other than the epic cakes I have posted, the pointless earrings(I have no piercings) I have made and the other longer post topics I have shared I have also done some other little things that I now aim to round up like a cowgirl, because as we all know "Stetsons are cool".

So here goes. In 2011 I...

1. Learned to use chopsticks. 

Ok, so this might not sound mightily impressive but I have always been one of those people who embarrasses her friends by ordering chips at foreign restaurants and picks the fruit out of fruit cake. This year I've branched out a lot and tried things that I used to wrinkle my nose up at. So when I went to a posh Chinese restaurant for a friend's birthday I refused the fork and learned to do it properly.


    2. Gone to scary London 3 times.

When opportunities arise I have been doing my best to take them, no matter how scary they are. This has resulted in going 'where the scary opportunities are' - London. While I'd ideally move there to be with my boyfriend and set up a social enterprise and take writing classes and direct West End musicals and take the BBC by storm I'm not there yet but these trips are a start. I can use the underground by myself and have even managed to navigate around in a hurry without getting lost.


   3. Won a pub quiz (twice)

Or perhaps more times but I don't remember. Pub quizzes always seemed to me to be the type of everyday success that I could not do. I have always found trivia somewhat trivial unless it is of the amusing sort. The pub quiz I go to with my panto crowd has a creative round which is essentially a grown up Blue Peter make so I can actually contribute even though I thought Jimmy Hendrix was a snooker player!


   4. Became a volunteer co-ordinator

I've been promoted as a volunteer at Sophie's Wish (a brain tumour research charity I volunteer for) from being a general committee and ideas person to their volunteer co-ordintor. This essentially means lots of being pinickity about making databases and meeting new people for tea and cake!


  5. 2 long courses.

I went down to London for a really exciting leadership course with Common Purpose. Loads of disabled students were there and I made an amazing network of inspiring friends and got to go to some fancy London buildings. It was like a friendly, disabled version of 'The Apprentice'. I also did a 4 day business course with the Prince's Trust - pity I don't have a decent business idea.


   6. Bulk catering

My Mum and Dad retired this summer and Dad organised a surprise party for my Mum with her child-minded children and their families from the last 30 years. Somehow I got left doing the catering - for 110 people, for £120, with 3 hours preparation time. Sometimes it turns out I am actually superwoman, the rest of the time I manage to burn pasta.


   7. Moved to a nicer (though more expensive) house

I've moved house 8 times in 7 years now. It's really unsettling. This time, despite finding somewhere with only 48 hours to spare and paying a little more than I intended I have found a house where I feel at home. Those extra few hundred pounds are definitely worthwhile when I consider the effect feeling safe, being warm and having my best friend/carer close at hand have on my life.


   8. Worked in a shop

More volunteering. This time in a shop/community centre. I learned how to use the till and deal with difficult customers. Also, it turns out I'm quite good at window displays. It's an odd achievement to put down as I didn't achieve much really but it allowed me to get out of the house and learn about the people in my city. Different cultures, different perspectives and different needs - a good learning experience.


   9. Finished my MA

With hindsight I would not do this course again. I'd find one that was more recognised and led to a vocational qualification. At the same time over half of my class dropped out so I'm glad I stuck at it and finished. Perhaps 2012 will be the year of the PhD applications.


   10. Started going to a writing group

I have always written but now I'm making a formal weekly slot for it, complete with trusted and talented friends to edit my work and people for me to teach my ideas. I actually sent my Nano to a friend to be edited - poor sod.


    11. Kept a blog

And it is an achievement I intend to continue.

Au revoir pour 2011.


 

Gingerbread Epic!

This is it - my gingerbread church! This year my boyfriend in the big London
qualified as an architect after a gruelling seven and a half years. He's 
also started work on restoring the Saxon church he bought. So that's what 
I've made a model of St. Margaret's, Keddington.

Last year my gingerbread nativity came out a bit wonky as the gingerbread went soft
in our damp kitchen it soon started to sag. My Dad tried to restore it with wire and sticks, which kind of negates the point.  


This year, with that in mind, the construction had RSJs in the form of...
candy canes melted together with a blow torch. That's not to say that there weren't
some major cock ups though. Like why do recipes measure golden syrup in tablespoons? 

I also burnt myself considerably on making the stained glass windows. I couldn't get any boiled sweets in my village so I melted gummy bears in the microwave, which looked good but really burnt my fingers. 


While making this gingerbread church I got to thinking about why so many people are sad at Christmas. I don't just mean people who spend the time alone. It is the busiest day of the year on the website for students with mental illness that I write. I think it is to do with pressure and expectation. There is an expectation on the day itself to be a success - this is why Dawn French
had to eat everyone's sprouts in The Vicar of Dibley. There is an expectation on us all to be happy and at peace with the world, which is not always possible, especially when you are fighting an evil disease that is working against this expectation. Plus you are with your family. Even if they are great, everyone wants to round up there year. It's competitive in so many ways, the food gets elaborate, the gifts might be expensive or homemade. When I was little I made all my decorations and cards and baked for hours and everyone was always impressed because
I was a child. Now it seems childish and the pressure on things like this gingerbread church
becomes overwhelming. I actually sat in the kitchen for an hour being too intimidated by these over-sized pieces of biscuit to assemble them. But I'm glad I did, if any SMILe readers have made there way here as they try to get through Christmas let me give you a tip - be childish, make the trimmings of previous years. It's far better to be childish than miserable.

Frankenstein - a tragedy, a comedy, a love story

How could I possibly have forgotten to tell you about 'Frankenstein'? Well, there is something so all consuming about directing a play, especially with a cast of light entertainers, that is so exhausting that after it is over I tend to take to bed for a fortnight.

'Frankenstein' was written for us by Arkady, my darling carer/housemate/pseudo-brother and Matt Voice, the adorable chap pretending to be middle-aged in the middle of the photo below. NB. I do realise Mary Shelley wrote the 'Frankenstein' but this 'Frankenstein' was written by my lovely boys.

So yes after a heavy editing in which I tore out the proposal to end a tragi-comedy with a parody song I took the role of director alongside Matt, for whom it was his first time directing(he's not half as bossy as me). Our first major challenge came due to our company performing a double bill. When an American walked into our casting session Matt and I fell in love. We never knew Victor Frankenstein would be American but this man was our Victor Frankenstein, unfortunately he was being coveted as a pantomime dame for the other show.
I don't think I've ever had to be so stubborn as when I was fighting for my (leading) man but in the end we got our cast and set about sculpting our characters into 3D.

The two either side of Matt in the photo are our main characters Victor and Elizabeth Frankenstein. The story is an examination of human frailty. Victor's reason for bringing a dead colleague back to life is seemingly to help his department who cannot afford a new lecturer but an untold story is hinted at throughout in the absence of a child to continue the Frankenstein family line. These two are the most wonderful pair I have ever directed. Initially Matt and I were concerned about a lack of chemistry between them but after an hour shut in a room doing trust exercises involving a blindfold and Matt's shoe they started to become the married couple we were trying to convey - so comfortable with each other, wanting the best for one another. They finally got together on the night of the final show. They were the love story we never expected to come out of a tragi-comedy.

So this is a double achievement, introducing Elizabeth and Victor and pulling off a tragi-comedy, which I still think is a challenging genre. I wanted to make people laugh and make people cry in one sitting and this is something we achieved.

A bittersweet achievement.

This term, after 3 years of applications, I have finally had some job interviews. Like I say, it's a bittersweet achievement as I haven't got any of the jobs!

But it's a step forward I guess. I know that my health prohibits anything more than about 2 days a week and restricts things further as I can't drive in the city or do a lot of mundane jobs where my mind would not be occupied and turn in on itself. I also refuse to work for unethical companies.

So you see there is not a lot of choice left. All jobs want experience and you can't get experience without having a job. But I know I should be proud of myself because with youth employment hitting one million there is a LOT of competition out there and some people are considering me - until they meet me at least.

Interviews are horrible but I think I'm getting less terrified of them as I go along. It gives me a little speck of hope that I might get there one day.

XKCD cake

For those of you unfamiliar with XKCD let me just say 'Why are you wasting time reading my blog when you could be reading the XKCD back catalogue?' Go, now, read it. Go on.

XKCD is a webcomic of geekery and romance and philosophical musings. 'That's not your achievement' I hear you say, and no, indeed I am not the genius that is its writer and illustrator Randall Monroe. My housemate is a major fan and so for his birthday I illustrated his cake painstakingly using black food colouring and a cocktail stick with his favourite comics. A strip around the side and one frame on the top. It didn't transport very well but here are the pictures anyway:

 The top is the end frame of a comic strip about a woman who fills her flat to make it a giant ball pool, because she can. The text reads 'because we're grown ups now and it's our turn to decide what that means.' Yes, I was secretly hoping he'd agree to do this with our living room but apparently it might stop the signal getting from his controller to his PS3.

The sides, now a little worse for wear after walk and bus to the pub are a shortened comic strip featuring the stick man in a beret character, who is very philosophical. He has seen a woodpecker that he saw last year and bought it a birthday present. The final frame shows the woodpecker flying off with a power drill.

After all that inking with a cocktail stick, which is incidentally how I use glass pens as well, I am considering investing in an edible felt tip as they're only about £1.50 and would have saved me a few hours.

The cake tasted good too, which is always a bonus!

A few more sophisticated pieces of jewellery. And no I still con't have my ears pierced - but I do have a shoebox full of pretty earrings. Never pretended to be sane.

Why I've been quiet for a month...

For the last month I have not written on this blog, which let's face it does not matter as nobody actually reads it.
I have achieved a few things though mainly this month has been bed ridden with illness so my second biggest achievement was the record breaking amount of biscuit crumbs in my bed. I also learnt to eat with chopsticks, albeit slowly.

No, the biggest achievement of the month has been NaNoWriMo (or to the layman national novel writing month). I had a hankering to get involved with the wonderful 'Movember' moustache growing campaign, but alas my bosom gave me away every time I tried to fake it, so I just sponsored a friend with the appropriate hormonal equipment instead.

For NaNoWriMo the rules are simple - write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. This was actually my second NaNo and I was very nervous to try again in case I failed and ruined my unblemished success record of one. Again illness rendered me unconscious for 3 days during a few days of the final weeks (which is a rather odd repeat of last year) and I woke up going a) what day is it? and b) oh bollocks, that means I am 5001 words behind. The helpful graph to track my progress suddenly didn't seem so helpful.

My story is about a war time love triangle that made a few friends contort with empathy and agony (and these guys play Warhammer - if you know what I mean). Death, love, war and a victimful crime with no one to blame - I guess that is all I can say without spoiling the twist. What I will say is that it is definitely still pants but this time more comfy M&S black cotton knickers than the big granny pants I churned out last year.

Anyway, although I struggled, I completed with a few hours to spare and can now proudly put up my blog badge for Nano 2011. Will I be a glutton for punishment in 2012? Not even if you paid me - then again, I said that last year!