New years eve

I sit resplendent in my illness at the end of 2010 wondering what next year might bring. It would be entirely egotistical of me to try to write about the last 12 months but I'm sure I will over the next few hours. We have some friends coming around this evening to have a few drinks and games which I am looking forward to. However, as has become the tradition for me at this time of year I am looking towards the new year with anticipation. I have realised that since I have become embroiled in an artistic career that I have been by and large a far more optimistic person which is, I suppose, a good thing. I have an awful lot to get through over the next few weeks but I am looking forward to getting on with it. In other news, I have discovered and purchased a new app for the iPhone called nanostudio. It is basically a full functioning recording studio which I can carry with me everywhere. What this means is that I am of course toting with being musical again....a nation trembles in it's headphones! It will not be me mincing around on a stage trying to recapture my dubious youth however, but more recording of my own stuff with theatre in mind. I have already for example written a small incidental piece for the forthcoming premiers of my plays in January. It's only a minute long but I had immense fun writing it.... perhaps I ought to upload it here? Any road up as they say in places I have never visited, I shall leave it at that for the moment and start working on my review of last year from a personal perspective which will probably bore the life out of me and anyone who reads it.

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Christmas in Staffordshire

So here I am at the in laws. They've all gone to bed and I am listening to what should be England winning the ashes on a dodgy stream on mobile web. We are off to see Peter Pan tomorrow at the new vic in Stoke on Trent which is a lovely theatre. I read my friend mr pops blog earlier and it made me a little sad. It must be a difficult situation and I sympathise. I have a feeling that my relationship withy aunt may well end up in a similar situation but we shall see. We have invited some nice people for new years eve as we usually have a quiet one and felt like doing something a little different this year. I haven't had a good party for a while so I look forward to this. The last week has been really nice to switch off to a certain extent but I am always aware of the impending workload, so shall make the most of the next few days. I also have lines to learn for next Thursday so I need to pull my finger out! Off to Market Drayton to shop in the morning.

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Fury at axing of children's free books

More cultural rape from this awful government...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/26/booktrust-funding-cut-pullman-motion

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Arts Cuts - The Facts - Care of Equity

PUBLIC SPENDING CUTS: The key facts on arts cuts

Nationally

• The Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review has proposed cuts of 15% across four years to front line arts organisations and a cut of nearly 30% for Arts Council England.

• The DCMS budget and staff to be cut by 50%

• Arts Council England has announced that all Regularly Funded Organisations will have their funding cut by 6.9% in 2011/12. 100 organisations will lose their ACE funding as a result of the newly adopted funding process.

Locally

• Regional theatres, arts organisations and community projects across the UK’s nations and regions are also very concerned that they will lose support from local councils, which are facing cuts of 7.1% each year for the next four years due to the CSR.

Some have already announced dramatic cuts to their arts budgets:

• Cumbria faces £130,000 cut in arts support

• Darlington Council to cut £1.7m

• Somerset has cut its entire £159,000 budget

• Manchester to review its £38m fund for culture

• The arts budget is usually a comparatively small amount of local government expenditure yet the benefits it brings to people’s lives are immense. Investment in cultural activities can drive regeneration, community cohesion, tourism revenues and employment.

• NALGAO (the body representing local government arts officers) estimates that for every £1 being spent on arts services; a return of £1.67 is realised in additional funding from other organisations and services.

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Another weekend over

So here we are on the last working week of the year as far as sessions are concerned.  I have been productive today, mainly I think due to the fact that we had a restful weekend with family.  Went out in the fresh air and got our boots muddy and spent time with Georgia and Dan which we don't get to do nearly enough.  We've had a stressful end to the year, and there is no doubt that the first half of next year will be the same at least, but I am beginning to realise what it takes to stay sane and to keep on top of things, and I will continue to keep at it.

I have been reading some of Chekhov's short plays.  They filmed some of them on Sky Arts recently, and I was so taken with them I bought the book, and I have rarely been so taken with some plays.  They are exquisite and funny and well obserbed, and would be a dream to direct, and appear in.  Watch this space :-)

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Panic on the Streets of London...

So the vote was passed, the streets were full of anger and the Daily Mail got their photo to become outraged to. All I keep reading is that we have lost the argument if we resort to violence.  The irony of this is delicious.  The Tory press moan about violence towards monuments that are there as a result of violence.  Nothing of course about the Police charging children with horses, or the more than 100 protesters hospitalised, or the violence by the Police towards a protester in a wheelchair.  Why were the horses brought in?  It was because the protesters were throwing things like snooker balls apparently, but where is the logic in that?  You kettle groups of protesters, they get angry, they throw things, and then you charge at them with horses.  This is supposed to be a calming measure!!!  Unbelievable rank hypocrisy.  Still the Mail complain about cruelty to Horses, whilst celebrating hunting and field sports in general.  My MP was, as usual, on the money of course.  Not a word about the issues, she was only concerned about the horses, that the Police CHOSE to employ.  Don't worry about the students being beaten unconscious of course.  Then we have the idiot decision to parade Charles and Camilla past the protests, and the feigned shock that they threw some stuff at them.  There is a student in hospital at the moment undergoing an operation to stop bleeding on the brain, but the pot of paint on a Rolls Royce is more important of course.  I am sick to death of hearing that violence never works when my taxes are going to fund illegal wars and I am supposed to pay again for my children's education.  Violence works when it suits the government and media, and I am afraid to admit, I genuinely believe it might have to continue in this case.

The Education cuts are proportionately bigger than virtually every other cut, they were a choice, and an ideological one at that.  If we continue to be lied to, ignored, kettled, attacked, abused and pilloried, then violence is inevitable, and will soon become absolutely necessary.

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Memory Lane

I took a wander through some streets that I have not stepped on for many years yesterday, and spent the time since then in a kind of melancholic haze of ghostly reminiscence.  I was "brought up" in Borehamwood, living there from the age of three up until I was a grown up (Nearly).  My memory for events and times is not great, but I have always been staggered to find how quickly things can reappear from the briefest of stimulants.  A road sign, a smell, or a line from a  song, and I am there.  Just walking along a road that, to be honest, really doesn't have that many significant memories attached to it, was really quite staggering.  I took the opportunity to wander off the beaten track a little and pop along to my old watering hole to peer through the window, and whilst it has changed a lot, the place still looks remarkably as it did in many ways.  My eventual destination, my Aunts house, was also filled with memories.  The place is not one I associate with my time there, but the ornaments and bric-a-brac certainly are.  Cheap, tacky things that I spent hours of my life with are all there on display.  It is like a mini museum of my childhood memories, but one only I would be interested in seeing really.  Perhaps it was the fact that I do not visit very often that brought it all home to me, but I am finding life a little difficult to concentrate on today.

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Onwards

So the assignments are finished and handed in, and now I can start looking forward to a break at Christmas...well...I SAY break...What I mean is a couple of weeks to plan next year really.  T'will be nice to have some time with the family though, that small unit of people that I love with all my heart and seem to be co-existing at a distance at the moment.  I hope we can spend a bit of quality time together.  Today, I will be chasing my tail around...Firstly, I am off to the Wood for the first time in a long time.  I will be terrorising the roads after that, and then off to pick up eldest.  I was hoping to attend an Equity meeting tonight, but it would seem that is not going to happen...Oh well.

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