Thank You Note

Dear Belfast,

Thank you so much for having me again. I have enjoyed my time here immensely. I'm sorry I didn't get to see all you have to offer, particularly the Lisburn Road vintage shopping and the markets but judging from how hard it has been to pack everything I have acquired maybe it was for the best!

I particularly enjoyed spending my birthday here and with such lovely friends and eating such lovely food! It was one I will treasure and smile at the memory of for a long time to come.

I love your new theatre, I think it is something to be treasured and cherished and I will be eternally proud that I played there in it's opening season. I am only sorry that I will miss the immensely talented HawkandFallow perform there as I know she will be incredible. Look after her for me then send her home safe back to London because I know it misses her while she's away.

The weather was on the whole pretty nice and it was great to see you all sunny and happy as opposed to last time when you were quite frosty.

Anyway, time to go. Going to stay with Scotland for a bit then head home. Thanks again for having me, it's always special and never taken for granted.

Hope to return one day!

Lot's of Love,

Paper-Rock-Scissors xxx

Birthday List

It's my birthday on Saturday, it's funny cos I didn't feel particularly bothered about it even a week ago but now I am officially EXCITED! I get all bubbly and full of jumping beans when I think about it. I don't think it's any coincidence that my excitement coincides with The Big One, who I haven't seen for weeks, is coming over to celebrate it with me.

He arrives on Friday, we are out for dinner with HawkandFallow and Spaghetti Arms after the show on my birthday - what a treat to have 3 of my favourite people in the world to mark this new number with me!

Then on Sunday he has booked us into a lovely hotel, we have a table booked for dinner at Made in Belfast and then on Monday, he tells me we are going on a shopping trip!

What a very lucky and very spoilt gal I am!

So now I am embracing my impending birthday my thoughts have wandered to my ultimate birthday list, thought it'd be fun to make a visual list...who knows maybe I'll strike gold!

Knitter's Necklace - All the Fun of the Fair 

Lambswool Tweed Jacket - Vivienne Westwood

Winter Tartan - Vivienne Westwood

Coloured Skinnies - Kooples

Poem cushion - mybeardedpigeon (Etsy)

Alice in Wonderland Teapot - zinniapea (Etsy)

Feather Print Notebook - Liberty, London

Sterling Silver Anchor Necklace - Love Your Silver

Detachable Peter Pan Collar - luminia (Etsy)

Podengo Pequeno...well you never know!

Lola's cupcakes 

In all honesty though I will have all I could want by being on stage in a play I love and then getting to share my birthday with some very special people.

"Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more."

- Tony Robbins 

Hello Old Friend

Yesterday we started and finished the tech for the show I am here to do in Belfast. Tech's are traditionally a long, arduous, stressful and, did I mention long, experience. This tech lasted for a smooth 4 hours!! Mainly due to the fact we've done the show before, and it's style is not overly technical but still, it was the stuff of legend!

Teching the show also means that we have now officially left the rehearsal room we have been in for the last month and have relocated to our new dressing rooms and of course the theatre.

I am the only original cast member in this production and it was a lovely homecoming to step back into my costume and to be back on the set I love so much.

It was also lovely to be back in a dressing room, the show I just finished in Manchester took place in a large but old Victorian Cotton Mill. It was very 'on location'.

The theatre here is state of the art and brand-spanking new, it opened in May having been being designed and built over the last 3 years. So my dressing room is pretty swish, but then again I'm just delighted to have a room, lights, a shower and a show relay!

It will be my new home til early September when we transfer to Scotland and then to London where we will run til October.

Wish us luck!!

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being."

- Oscar Wilde 

A Bel-Feast with HawkandFallow

Last Sunday to celebrate both HawkandFallow and I being here in a full-working-actor capacity we went out for dinner to one of our favourite restaurants, Made in Belfast.

The food is delicious, the decor beautiful and anarchic and the company, well, you couldn't beat the company!

Drinks anyone?

Make mine a French Martini - delish!

Toast Skagen - swedish style prawns

Crayfish and Hazelnut Risotto

We were so StUfFeD we had no room for pud despite the menu being enticing to say the least!

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." 

- Donna Roberts

A Drip of A Day

That's exactly what it is, a drip. The day here in Belfast is wet but not raining, just drizzling. Like the rain can't even be bothered. The sky is that kind of solid white cloud which makes you wonder if you exist anymore.

I was in rehearsals this morning and now have a few hours off...or maybe more. We may be doing a run later, we may not. You see what I mean, everything is - 'muh'.

So I have come back determined to turn this day around. After going over some lines, I shall knit, watch a lovely old movie, make myself all snuggly and eat popcorn.

That looks better already doesn't it!

Hope you're having a better, brighter day!

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."

- Alfred Hitchcock 

T.G.I.F!

I walk past this pretty row of houses every day.

The weather today here in Belfast was gorgeous, right from the get go the sun was shining and there was  barely a cloud in the sky. We started rehearsals this morning with a run through, the first run aka a stagger through of the play and it went....ok.

I skipped back home afterwards as I'm going home to London for the weekend! See The Big One, Gary and Cooper and my garden and just be, at home, being me.

Hope you all have FaBuLoUs weekends whatever you end up doing!

"Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them."

~John Shirley

How Predictable

So the first week of rehearsals is over. We had drinks - we all got drunk.

The next day I went into town for a wander and to refresh my memory of Belfast city. I was hungover and stupid so I found myself in Urban Outfitters on the sale floor. Now I am a proper broke actor and I have no regular job to go to after this job so I need to save my dosh. 

Knowing this, I bought a skirt. A very pretty skirt...in the sale.

£20 reduced from £48

So there we go that was stupid....and predictable. One of these days, after the first week of rehearsals I am going to blow my mind and not drink and not shop.

Next time...

"Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation."

- Gail Sheehy

Guerrilla Knitting

On my way back from rehearsals today I spotted this

It's commonly known as yarn bombing and it means that there's a knitting community here in Belfast which means....wool shop! Last time I was here there was a teeny tiny little yarn shop which doubled as a souvenir shop too and was closing down.

I shall start the hunt tomorrow after rehearsals...


Yarn bombing, yarnbombing, yarnstorming, guerrilla knitting, or graffiti knitting is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted cloth rather than paint or chalk.

Back in Belfast

Well Belfast, I have arrived, and you are looking gorgeous!

I am back in Belfast to do a beautiful play, I was in the original production here in early 2010.  It was snowing then and freezing cold. I had a great time, made some fantastic friends and so I was delighted to be asked back.

This time it's summer and it's roasting. Belfast looks so lush and green! 

My view as I reach rehearsals

I arrived yesterday morning and went straight to the meet and greet. It was lovely to see so many familiar faces and I'm so excited to be a part of this great production once again.

Last night after unpacking I met up with a great chum of mine, Spaghetti Arms. He was also in the original production but is waaaay busy doing telly and all sorts now. It was so brilliant to see him, we've kept in touch since 2010 and he's now a member of my extended family.

We had a delicious dinner in one of my favourite restaurants here, Barking Dog. It was divine, the company, the food, the vino. Awesome-ness!

So I'm in rehearsals for the next few weeks, hanging out with Spaghetti Arms when he's about and HawkandFallow is coming over in a couple of weeks to rehearse and perform in the same theatre I'm at. 

Big grins all round - best Belfast return ever!

"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way." 

- Henry David Thoreau 

Two Parks: Same Time of Year

Yesterday I spent much of the day wandering in and out of The Botanical Gardens here in Sydney. Rich was at work so after a blogging/email session I headed off with my streetmap to be a tourist.

The Botanical Gardens are so beautiful, no matter where I am, I love the juxtaposition of lush green against a modern city backdrop. The skyscrapers peek out at you in gaps but turn a corner and you forget you're in a city at all. Particularly here, as ahead of you, as you leave the clearings you see: The Sea!

A-mazior!

It struck me yesterday that for the second time in a row I was wandering a large city park on my own in January. Last January I was doing a show in Belfast and so relocated there for 4 months. My digs were opposite the main park and so I took to wandering in and out when I wasn't in rehearsals. It's another beautiful space where you can get lost in the trees but January in Belfast is c-o-l-d.

This January I am in Sydney and c-o-o-k-i-n-g and am surrounded by bats screeching, tropical birds calling and the sea.

A public drinking fountain with Diana dancing on the top.

The sea!

I am mesmerised by these sleeping Bats or Flying Foxes as they're called.

P.S Just so you see what I mean about contrast, here's last year in Belfast's main park:

Walking the world's parks and loving it!

"All I need to make comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl"

-Charlie Chaplin