Hypatia Avenue

"I was here four nights a week, I'd come straight down for drinks, or my writing workshop and then drinks after, and stay here until they kicked me out. I moved from my parents' place to my flatshare halfway through that time and once forgot where I lived when I got on the Tube..."

Ah. The memories. I always get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I visit the Royal Court theatre, usually because I bump into handfuls of people I've worked with before and it's always good to see them... and they remember me which makes the whole experience nicer than I expect... I'm in desperate need of friends and memories and experiences of my recent past, to see me through a really awful time at work at the moment and cripes, was it a good choice to get out and about this particular week.
 
I went to see the latest play, Shining City by Conor McPherson - he wrote The Weir and on the strength of that play, I had no hesitation booking tickets and my visit turned out to be extremely well-timed. The Box Office staff recognised me and were incredibly nice in our brief chat; there was a Donors and Benefactors evening which meant the Development Team were hanging around to greet and meet and I said hello and was extremely pleased when they remembered me and the time I spent with them on work placement; a friend from my post-grad course was there with his fiancee and we compared engagement rings... then today, I got a heads-up on some vacancies going at the theatre and will, once I've read more carefully what it's going to involve, get cracking on an application.
 
And on top of all that, it was an excellent play. It has an ending that electrified me in the final five seconds more than all that I've seen in the last three months put together.
 
I also ran an event at the Lyric, Hammersmith earlier this week and had a very welcome flashback to the times I spent there on summerschool-type schemes, giving the cafe staff a really tough time and conning the bar staff into letting me get drunk while seriously underage, all the time nursing injuries from falling on the dance floor the wrong way, yet again.
 
It's been a curious time of renewing friendships, some intentionally and some completely unexpectedly  - the Refugee Arts Initiative will be launched next week and I'm gagging to go to the big bash, to catch up with my colleague of the Office of Doom who has been key to pulling together the organisation, and then out of nowhere, a friend from years and years and years ago stopped me while I was slobbing around the local supermarket and we caught up while going around the aisles, gossiping and talking ferociously like a pair of old biddies.
 
I've got the taste for it now: everyone passing by this site, do drop a line in the comments section below and add yourself to the list of folks getting in touch, in this week when I need lots of folk getting in touch!
 
In other news, I've been waking up, without any discernible reason, at first light every fricking night for the last few weeks: even if I've struggled to fall asleep right up until the sky starts to lighten, I'm awake at four or five AM. If I've had good sleep up until then, I can generally resume the same quality of sleep quite easily and it makes no difference to me but if I've had a bad time getting sleep anyway, that first light thing kills dead any hope of sleep and rest, comletely.
 
Does this happen to anyone else? Or do I just seem to have more peasant genes than most people and am biologically programmed to be up at first light to dig up my day's ration of turnips?