Bright lights... new city?

When I started this little old blog back in the day (2006 I think) the title and my name were all very apt. I was starting life in a big city for the first time ever, trying to get used to working my first proper job in an office, brand new to and not a little apprehensive about writing the blog and trying to enjoy my new life.

This was not that difficult. I had changed my job a while back - ten months previously - to make the transition easier than the last one; where I had just upped and left to go to University and spent a year bloody miserable, missing my friends trying to get over the bastard love of my life (and failing) and making some rather questionable life choices. This time I had changed things one at a time, very s-l-o-w-l-y.

First things first - new job. Begin commuting to London from Northampton, an hour and a half each way - ouch. Getting up bloody early every day for the first time since I was at school was a bit of a shock to the system especially as I had been working in a bar whilst a student for the past three years. I kept up with the bar job every weekend, two nights a week, for over three months, even though it almost killed me.

Once I had started to settle with the new company I quit my bar job, but stayed put, still spending time with my friends but moving to a new place which was slightly nicer. I started to get used to having a bit more cash but spent most of it on the commute. After a few months I started doing a bit of research about where would be nice to live in London - started looking at a few places, decided how much rent I wanted to pay and whether I could live without a living room. The first couple of places were absolute dives in Clapham Junction but I got around to looking in the nice BITS of the nice places. I found my big old house share in Balham after about a month of searching.



And so I moved. And I was looking at the bright lights in a new city - frequently wandering down the South Bank around dusk taking pictures on my phone, marvelling at the sights in what was now my home and just revelling in the fact that I'd finally made it to being a citizen of this beautiful, fascinating and baffling city having wanted to do so since I was five years old.



The next step was finding my niche in the social side of London and there were a few false starts. A few internet dates were pretty uninspiring, I found my workmates to be nice but vaguely frightening, so I needed to look elsewhere. Even though there had been a gap of five years I decided to try and meet people through joining a drama group, so I went along to the first group I found... which was my idea of hell. A village hall full of middle-aged, menopausal women who brought their dogs with them screeching along to show tunes, being directed by a couple of waspish, overtly gay and thoroughly unpleasant men (one of whom had a horrific sweating problem).



The second group I went to seemed rather surprised that I wanted to have a look at their premises and possibly see a rehearsal before shelling out £50 to be a member so with a heavy heart I tried to find the place. It was in the depths underneath Waterloo station, past the MacDonalds bins. But on closer inspection the theatre itself was actually quite sweet and the rehearsal looked to be run in a pretty professional way so I decided to have a go and audition. I got a part in Abigail's Party and rediscovered that I bloody loved acting. But I didn't really love the cast - they were all nice but all a lot older than me and I knew that once the play was over it would be unlikely that I'd see them again.

The next big idea was to help out a group in trouble, after trawling the internet for other drama groups. This one had lost a couple of women from the selection of scenes they were supposed to be performing so I offered my services - at the first meeting the guy directing it seemed to know what he was talking about - although maybe the fact that he told me I could pick and chose which parts I wanted should have given me a hint that he wasn't as knowledgeable as he first appeared. This tit insisted on working in bare feet as "you couldn't be another character in your OWN shoes" (and his feet were fucking disgusting). His idea of direction was to stare intently at the script and bollock you for every comma or word you put in the wrong place. That was the extent of it. No looking at the acting whatsoever. It was crap.

Finally came the audition for this very smart, funny play at a company that actually had a theatre. It's a converted church on a main road and is a really lovely space. It has it's own youth theatre and a professional way of handling auditions - it even did rehearsed readings which impressed me a great deal. I wanted to get a part in this play so much that at the time I uttered the fateful words "I want it so much my teeth hurt!" This appears to have been a fairly good omen for me over time and it was for this audition. I got a part... well, six actually (a bald texan woman, a female helicopter pilot, three different waitresses and a mad psychotherapist dressed as a clown), and met with the group of people who have become some of my closest friends in the world.

My love life had been completely floundering since I moved - hang on, that's a lie... my love life had been floundering since I started University... actually probably before that too but never mind...
I had had very little luck when it came to meeting nice people, men, to date for a good while. When I joined this company I was involved with The Boy (as featured in earlier posts on this very place!) who I had known since sixth form - a good person but not in a good place who arsed me about considerably - we'd go out, we'd have a great time, then he would insist he was too busy to see me for the next three or four weeks. It was driving me INSANE.

The play - an American comedy called Wonder of the World - not only meant that I rediscovered my comedy timing (of which I am immensely proud - off topic a sec, I was whining at Mr B the other morning that I was too sleepy to go to work and do a tour - could he wear my clothes and go for me? And he told me he couldn't because he wouldn't be as funny as me. Yay! But I digress...) and met great friends but I also met the Kiwi and that was the end of the lovely man drought. Hurrah!

The point of all this nostalgic navel gazing was that I typed in the first two letters of my little Newbie website and I got to thinking how I was no longer much of a newbie when it came to blogging, London or even my fantastic job*. I made me wonder maybe I should start another blog which is more relevant to who I am now, rather than who I was when I started this little adventure. So maybe I will.

This blog has started to undergo some quite large changes of late. I've recently included a photo of me, and started to be a bit less anonymous due to the fact my readership has remained at a pretty modest size and my writing isn't the type to get lots of people reading. I've made some new friends through the internets and lots of friends I don't see that much keep up with me over this blog so the anonymity seems to matter less now than it did at the start when I was reading blogs like Petite Anglaise and the Girl with a One Track Mind who had been outed and their lives changed dramatically. I will never be a Petite or a Girl but I might one day soon end up being something other than a Newbie.

Maybe a Ballerina...



* Latest celebrity spot: Cameron Diaz and her fitty boyfriend were in this evening.