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!

Nihil illegitimi carborundum...

or 'Don't let the bastards grind you down'. Yes, I had to go to London last week. No offense to you Southerners, I'm sure there are good eggs among you but I only seem to meet the privileged and ignorant sort who seem to think my illness is not a problem because I don't loudly lament about it and are not aware of the poverty that exists down the street.
I had a particularly awful conversation ending in valium when a woman tried to convince me that it was OK to discriminate against poor and disabled people because at least they were only discriminated against and not being subject to female circumcision. Well, I did not know how to react.

Finally, back in Shefland my friend put it eloquently for me...
"That's bollocks, if everytime a problem arose people did nothing on the premise that something worse was happening somewhere else then no problem would ever be addressed." What takes precedence for action, the immediate devastation of a tsunami or the on going politics behind an horrific genocide?

Yes indeed, it is 'bollocks'. And I shall continue to fight for the 'small stuff' that the rich don't deem worth the time they charge out at £50 per hour to the even richer. Luckily, being unemployed and unwell, my time is only worth what I can achieve with it. Where there is misery, pain, fear or shame on whatever scale I want to be able to help. You have to fight for your ideals, for everyone. I refuse to be one of those people who looks at another's suffering and say 'others have it worse than you'.

Never let anyone belittle your emotions. You have a right to own your feelings, to express yourself and to roll your eyes at those who would have you believe that your pain is worth less than someone else's.