20.01.13- Small Hours, Poetic Progress & the Woman In Black

It's been a week since my last entry, which is both due to being busy and being a lazy good-for-nothing worm who has an unhealthy fetish with her onesie and being asleep.
In all fairness, I didn't get home from work until 11 last night and had to be in again today at a ridiculous hour of the morning so I'm allowed to be writing this with a hot water bottle in bed before 6pm. If I smoked, I would also be languidly dragging on a Silk Cut because that might make me look arty but I don't smoke, so I'm not.
And I'm far too tight to start wasting my money on something that tastes like sucking a robot's bowel.
So...what has the 22-year-old cat lady with no cats done with her week?
I did receive a card on Valentine's Day which wasn't from my mother or the goldfish, so that was a surprise but I did not get the reams and reams of them whooshing through the chimney like Hogwarts letters as I anticipated, so I do not feel any more irresistible.

Sadly this did not happen on Valentine's Day

I'm going to blame this on our lack of chimney.

To summarise my week (because I know dem bitchez likes a good summary):

Laura's (2 month late) birthday cake. Better
late than never. Unless it's the onset of flu.

• I am starting my job on a different department in work next Tuesday. It means getting to work at 6am, which means I am going to develop the temperament of an ogre on the Pill. It means not spending hours talking to my favourite old people. I feel glad to be doing something different after nearly 4 years of making small talk over frozen chicken and asparagus spears, but at the same time my soul has broken a bit at the thought of not spending all day discussing cats and irrational dislike of Katherine Jenkins with my regulars.
• I actually had a whole weekend off work last week which was beautiful and I spent it baking cakes. I love creating pretty things out of icing and sugary fondant. Which is ironic, being diabetic.
• I had the last of my January exam marks back. A full set of Firsts. This feels very nice, like getting out of jail. 
• My presentation skills are about as sophisticated and eloquent as Maggie Simpson's. (Yes, I did that presentation on sex for the Dylan Thomas module. Yes, talking about what castration, penises and what I drew from the word "stiff" made me feel like a massive pervert. But then Thomas was the one writing about having a tug into the lavatory).
• Had a phonecall today to tell me I've come 2nd in a poetry competition but I'm apparently not allowed to say which one yet until they've told all the winners. But I'm excited to be getting another poem published and doing a reading at the Dylan Thomas Centre in June (NOBODY say anything if I smuggle in a hipflask).
• Woman In Black on Monday was the worst thing I have seen in the theatre. Ever.

Another one of my creations:
Pontypandy's own shagmobile

I'm really happy to have made a bit of progress with my writing with the competition results. I've been becoming increasingly disheartened with all the work I've been putting in to write and I'd lost a bit of faith in my writing, especially when it's difficult enough now to find a job with enough hours to support me after I graduate. But making little achievements like this makes me realise that it's worth it to keep going with the hard work and to have faith with creative pursuits after rejection letters.
On Monday I went to see The Woman In Black at the Grand Theatre. I was lucky enough to get free tickets, as my lovely best friend/pet Will works there and often gets us concession tickets (thank you, Will). At over £20 I'd have expected them to live up what was advertised as "THE SCARIEST THEATRE EXPERIENCE OF YOUR LIFE."
I've had scarier letters from the library.

Plot: man meets a boring old man, meets another boring few people played by same boring old man, borrows an invisible dog, a smoke machine goes off, lights go off, screaming sound effect every now and then and some twat wandering around in a black bedsheet in the background. Genius. Raw, powerful, moving stuff.
Length: 2 hours, or time you could have spent doing something more entertaining, like mowing your lawn over and over. It doesn't matter if you only have a patio.
Value for Money: I was lucky about getting in for free, but I would rather have had a free leaflet about flu vaccinations.
Professional verdict: Pants.

Costume design for 'The Woman In Black'.
Though in black.

I saw Stephen King's Misery being performed there by a much smaller company during the summer and THAT on the other hand, was excellent. That was even better than the film. Even now, my hand edges towards turning the light back on if I so much as imagine the actress playing Annie Wilkes coming in, mad-eyed and cardiganed, screeching "YOU WANT YOUR NOVRIL? HUH? YOU WANT EXTRA PILLS FOR CHRISTMAS?"

Annie Wilkes: the ultimate Undateable

And don't even get me started on the foot-chopping-and-cauterizing scene. I wanted to hide in the toilets and cry and have my Mammy find me and take me out for a Panda Pop.
Woman In Black however was terrible. Stay in and watch Noddy instead. You can experience the same level of fear, but without the irritation of the general public.
I'm not just being an intolerant arse when I say that about people. Actually, I am, but there were some real tools sat near us during the show. I know at things like that you'll always get the inevitable talker who doesn't know when to still their jaw, or the noisy eater who appears to be trying to play the national anthem out of rustling a packet of sherbet lemons, but the people sat within our proximity just took this to a whole other level. And I've dealt with some irritating members of the public in my time.
For future reference, women sat in front of us, please take note:

1. I don't want to know about your personal life when the plot is about as coherent as a Korean microwave manual.
2. If your friend does not want a Malteser, do not keep forcing said bag of Maltesers on your friend. She does not want one and you are being irritating.
3. You do not need to pass your entire shed-sized handbag along to offer said Malteser.
4. If you know you have the bladder strength of a moth doing deadlifts, do not sit in the middle so that you have to stand up and yell "EXCUSE ME" and shuffle about blocking everybody's view several hundred times. Sit on the end.
5. Okay, so the sound effect made you scream. I understand this is hilarious to you, but please stop snorting and laughing after 15 minutes, we're over it.

"HOLD ON, I DEFINITELY HAVE
JELLY TOTS IN HERE SOMEWHERE,
BY THE WAY DID YOU SEE EASTENDERS?"

I should probably stop writing now as I need to put some clothes on (oo-er....actually I'm in my pyjamas, I'm not an exhibitionist cat lady yet. That comes with the confidence of age or when I can truly horrify people for fun when I look like a pile of Dove soap sagging in a burlap sack and I can be dead certain only my cats want me). I am off to meet the sibling for a drink (the 19-year-old one, not the 4-year-old one. The NSPCC would come at me with pitchforks).

Until next time, kitty-lovers.