Parties! Plays! Places to go!
Honestly, darling, I'm poked!
In my thirties I worked in the Radio NZ newsroom and remember staggering in one New Year’s morning for my 5am shift. I’d been to a late-night eighties-themed disco at what was then the San Francisco Bathhouse; I’d had maybe four hours’ sleep. By mid-shift I was sitting on the toilet half-dazed, each palm pressed against a cubicle wall, trying to keep the world from spinning. I think I might have mooed.
Can you imagine accurately cutting world news in such a condition? I couldn’t tell Asia from the Americas.
I wasn’t the only one. At 6am there was a brief pocket of dead air at our sister station, where a party-mate of mine was due to read the news.
I tell you this because as rough as I felt that day, I was 30 or so and peachy, with as many all-night dances ahead as there were behind me. And that morning still felt a thousand times better than waking up on a Sunday in your fifties, knowing you’re only at the midpoint of your 12-year-old boy’s sleepover party, which began at lunch the day before.
I imagine it’s how Icelanders feel in the summer: in a day that never ends.
George’s party isn’t why I’m three weeks late to this despatch, although it’s one of the reasons. I can’t seem to let nature just take its course when we have sleepovers, mainly because George thinks our house is SO BORING compared to his friends’ houses. He might be right.
One of his mates lives in the countryside, with a stream and actual geese and I think, alpacas. I mean, how cool is that? Another lives near a wild and rocky beach. The boys disappear into the bush for hours with survival kit and do wholesome things like whittling sticks and possibly, throttling pests.
At his other mate’s place, they have blazing Nerf gun fights, and his Dad jams on guitar. Also, you must agree, staggeringly cool. We can’t compare well with these experiences. At our house if George even tries to play harmonica, our poodle mix starts yowling.
With this in mind, I overscheduled the out-of-house party activities. I took a picnic hamper to the trampoline park, so packed things into little tubs, unpacked them and then packed them again. At the Escape Room I watched the kids marching around inside their frosted glass enclosure, trying to crack the codes and get out by the sixty-minute mark. Each detention room has a theme, and theirs was Prison Bus. Occasionally I’d see one of their heads bob past with a police hat on it. They busted out in 90-minutes, posed for a team photo and were ready for the next thing.
That wait wasn’t so bad because it gave me 30 unanticipated minutes to myself, listening to the lovely young man on Reception take incoming bookings. “We’ve got a room free at four o’clock,” he told one caller, pleasantly. “Do you want Meteor Strike or Serial Killer?”
Whoever it was chose Serial Killer. Shortly after that, a blonde girl in clear glasses walked serenely by, carrying a bloody torso.
By 9pm yesterday I was desperate for sleep, knowing I’d be up at sparrow’s crack to fry bacon and eggs for our nation’s next generation of leaders. “Please take over,” I whimpered to my husband. I snapped on my pink rabbit eye-mask - a relic of sleepover parties past - and embraced my own, delicious end.
No, it wasn’t George’s fault I haven’t sat down in weeks to write. It’s because I have a JOB now. And thank goodness, as I have a shirt to pay for.
I last had a regular gig in 2020. It was only fortnightly, but it was something. Then along came Covid. Freelancers all over the country lost their jobs during those dreadful weeks; for me, though, it felt barely a tragedy to lose a newspaper column when so many were doing it way, way tougher. It wasn’t personal, even though it affected me personally. I was now a full-time householder. I didn’t fully comprehend what that would mean. I certainly didn’t expect it to last long.
The aftermath of that tumultuous year of lockdowns and uncertainty coincided with changes in schools for the kids, and my husband being busier than he’d ever been before, which was already seriously busy. We hunkered down and did what had to be done, but what I had to do tended to be unpaid. I was needed at home.
Meanwhile the industry collapsed in a cloud of typeface. Anyone who had ever paid me was either out of a job or onto their third one. I’ve spent many hours looking up courses and researching re-training. I’m still thinking about becoming a companion driver because I love to drive, and I love to talk. I imagine franchisees make the better living, though, and franchises cost money. I dither. I um, and aah.
More urgent things keep getting in the way of my career, or career switch. Mainly, me. Life just keeps coming, doesn’t it? You swerve the potholes and bump over the judder bars and before you know it, you’re at the next turn in the road, having to make a quick decision involving all your senses and the full motor cortex of your brain. Large decisions, like career moves, seem too daunting to make when you don’t have time to think about them properly. So, you just stick to the smaller ones.
But small ones can be life-changing, too. And thank goodness for that. Recently I agreed JOYFULLY to a stint as a theatre publicist - promoting an upcoming production at Wellington’s Circa. It was so nice on a recent Sunday to drive to the theatre, instead of to the usual boring places (supermarket; dog park; tip) and arrive at the double red doors (I couldn’t get in, I didn’t know how, but thankfully an actor rescued me and we went around the back).
The THEATRE! Aside from the two theatres, bar and restaurant downstairs, there’s a warren of rooms up above. You have to turn sharply beside what looks excitingly like side-of-stage rigging, even to get up the stairs; there’s a fridge and kitchen up above the theatres, because actors, too, need packet soups and Sistema tubs full of pasta salad, just like the rest of us.
There’s a Green Room and a large workshop space up there too, with views of the waterfront pier where young ones jump into the glassy harbour each summer doing cannonballs, to mild applause. This latter room has mirrors along one wall, and gauzy curtains to draw along a long rail, and stacked chairs along the side, and you can imagine warm-ups and dance practice in here, and angry scenes being read, love scenes being paced, and places being marked on the floor in, I don’t know, chalk. You can imagine a director losing their shit here, or someone writhing on the floor in pretend pain. I bet many, many creatives have shouted ‘FUCK!’ here.
I took a chair and meekly sat down for the Sunday workshop. For the next few hours, I listened as five actors ran lines and sang parts, accompanied by somewhat of a musical genius on keyboard. It made my scalp tickle, and my neck go hot. Wouldn’t it yours, if someone sitting across a table from you suddenly hits a beautiful high note, and the person next to them leans in to add a warm, rich harmony, and the notes wash across the table and thrum inside the warm cartilage of YOUR ears, because YOURS are the closest ears to the sound?
Their talent was all so casual for them. I don’t even sing in the shower. I could have cried with how lovely it was and special it felt, and I’m surprised I didn’t.
“Can we try another key?” one of them would ask. And so they would. And then sometimes the director would take a liberal pen to the score or script, or cut a phrase from one actor and give it to another, or would accept, after discussion, an actor’s suggestion that their character would be more likely to do this rather than that, and the playwright might agree and scribble a note; and these exchanges were like watching a team fluidly pass a ball between players, silkily and with confidence, with everyone moving across the pitch to the goal-line, which of course is opening night.
Anyway, the upcoming show is called Give Way - The Musical and will premiere on April 26 at Circa. In my next despatch I’ll report on my own performance as a returning-from-the-dead publicist (“Nobody reads anymore,” I was told this week, to my actual face. It feels true. But at that moment, I felt the way of a 19th century carrier pigeon when it first heard the telephone was invented).
Now, if you FANCY a night at the theatre with me in April or early May, with a little mock-or-cocktail before the show or at interval, I can make this happen for us! (Groups of ten or more get a decent discount at Circa.) Don’t feel obliged over this, but I have to tell you, meeting Substackers in reality is really lovely and affirming. Like a steaming towel dropped into your hands with tongs at the start of a flight, or something. Or when someone lets you go ahead of them in the queue at the supermarket, because you only have one thing. I’ve met two Wellington Substackers in person after getting to know them first by blog, and I enjoyed these encounters immensely. It’s charming. Like PEN PALS meeting up.
I’ll offer some dates shortly, but please don’t feel hustled. I mean, some of you live in the English countryside and couldn’t come even if you wanted to.
IT’S GOING TO BE A TERRIFIC SHOW, THOUGH.
Those houses sound amazing but an escape room is also very cool and I’m sure the children think your house is just as cool. 🥰
🫶🏻