Christmas Time

If there is no joyous way to give a festive gift, give love away.

Author Unknown

So, that whole 'writing regularly' plan went really well! It's just like with my diary, I plan to write as often as I can, but I can guarantee that about 80% of my diary entries start with something along the lines of 'it's been a long time!' I'm useless!


To be fair though, not long into Production Week, I discovered that I had no time whatsoever to keep my blog updated if I also wanted to eat/sleep/breath as well. Getting to uni at 5pm, wallpapering and painting flats, moving heavy furniture about (in the snow!) and other such busy things, then leaving at 1am and getting home to find that I was wide awake and hungry meant that I didn't get to bed till gone 4am every night/morning. I ended up dragging myself out of bed at about 2pm, grabbing a shower and something to eat and sitting doing nothing useful for a couple of hours before starting it all again. Don't get me wrong though...it was an amazing week, resulting in three amazing shows, getting even better every night.

(Two of the gorgeous sets, courtesy of the amazing set designer Jamie, and the amazing backstage team!)

My work suffered though, only managing to fit in an E-Publishing blog at about 4am before crashing. Which kinda sucked when I had a sixty page script due two weeks after. Needless to say, the last two weeks have been a complete nightmare! Sixty pages is...a lot. To say the least. My lecturers keep saying that we should be able to handle the workload because we're third years, but if I'm honest, that assignment was just ridiculous. One good thing though...producing 17,000 words of script in pretty much two weeks makes me feel pretty good about producing 10,000 words of dissertation in two months! 

Anyway...CHRISTMAS! I absolutely love Christmas, it's without a doubt my favourite time of year (apart from my Birthday of course...who doesn't love a day when everybody has to be nice to you just because you were born?!) But Christmas is special, it makes me happy. I love spending time with my family and just having fun for a whole week. I always spend New Year with my family as well, because I like to start a new year with the people most important to me.

I actually love Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day, because of the excitement and also because of the tradition my family has on Christmas Eve. One of the best things about the 12 year age gap between me and my brother is that just as I stopped believing in Santa, Cameron came along and I got to join in with making it special for him too, which added to the enjoyment. Every Christmas Eve, we open our first presents... Christmas pyjamas from my mum. Then it's the Christingle  service at church at 3pm, then (usually) my granny and granddad come to our house for a Chinese buffet. This year however, we're doing things in reverse, and instead of them coming to our house, we're going to theirs. (They just sold their big house and moved into a smaller bungalow, so Christmas Day will be at our house instead.)

Then when we're all full up and sleepy, we're going to get in our pjs and watch The Nativity, then Cameron will go to bed and me and my mum will play Santa...probably my favourite part of the night! Being involved makes me wonder how I never managed to hear anything going on as a kid...because me and my mum always end up in fits of giggles when we're making talcum powder footprints across the living room floor! 

(Cameron playing Santa himself!)

On Christmas morning, my mum will probably end up waking us up...she's always too excited and can't sleep! We'll get up and open our presents, have some breakfast and then go to Church. This year is special because as I said, Christmas Dinner is going to be at our house, which means the Christmas Day Roles have been passed down to me and my mum...my mum is gunna do all the cooking and I'm gunna...help. Or more than likely I'll just get in the way! 

So yeah, that's pretty much my Christmas plans! Christmas Day evening will be spent lazing about drinking mulled wine, and then Boxing Day is the usual party at my uncle's house! I can't wait!  I hope everybody else has a great Christmas :) 

Producing Dorian Gray

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter." - 

Oscar Wilde.

Ever since the start of uni, I've been meaning to join a society, but I've always been too lazy to. Silly me. This year I finally forced myself to go along to a taster session (I've not been to one since the women's rugby in first year..it was a traumatizing experience, including me getting jumped on and squashed)...But anyway, this year I decided to do something different, and so I joined BEDS (Bangor English Dramatic Society) to do some backstage work. I've never had any experience with theatre before, other than my drama group when I was about nine, so I thought it'd be quite interesting, and a good way to meet new people.

I was offered the role of Producer of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the first play being performed this year. I was absolutely terrified (refer back to my lack of experience!), but I accepted. It's a challenge, right? Yep! A great one though, and I'm loving every minute of it.

Over the last few weeks, I've been working with the three great directors Sam, Georgina and Jordan, and well as the head of production Robin and the person in charge of costume Rachel, shopping for props and costumes (especially tricky as Dorian is being played by a girl). This week we've been preparing for production week by building the set (spending  hours wallpapering flats to look like Victorian drawing rooms).

So now Production Week is here. Day off tomorrow (although I'm spending the day working on my 60 page script, so it doesn't really count as 'off') and then from Sunday it's full steam ahead. I am also being trained up by the lovely Kathryn, head of BEDS, to become a Stage Manager. Daunting. But still fun. This means that basically, I will be in charge whilst the play is being performed. I have to be super organised and know exactly where everything is, and where everybody should be at all times. Organised, me?! Hmm...only time will tell I suppose!

So basically, BEDS is really fun, and I just wish that I had had the sense to join in my first year instead of leaving it so late! I think I'm gunna try and blog about Production Week as it goes along, but that depends if I have time! Wish me luck. Or, well, to break a leg :)

Graduation Bucket List

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” 

Theodore Roosevelt

I've been living in Bangor for nearly two and a half years now, and it occurred to me recently that I haven't made the most of my time here. The fact that I'm (hopefully) going to graduate in July has made me panic a little bit and think 'must.have.fun' before we all leave.


So during dinner the other night, Amie, Tasha and I decided to come up with a 'Graduation Bucket List', full of fun and interesting things to do (if that's possible in Bangor?!) before we graduate. I 'borrowed' the idea from my mum, who's in the process of making a '40 things to do before 40' list. Whilst writing it, we decided that along with the group list of things to do together, we should also have a set of personal goals that we have to achieve too. We've set up a group blog so that we can keep track of the main list, which can be found here...
 http://canwedoitall.wordpress.com/
and we've also set up our own personal blogs to keep track of our own personal ones (I thought I might as well just use this one!)

So over the next few days, I'm going to be thinking of personal goals to add to my list. So far, I have one thing on my list, haha!

• Be an extra in a BEDS play. 

Clearly, I am yet to be inspired! If anyone has any good ideas, feel free to comment and let me know! :)

*Takes a deep breath*

"Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen." - Conan O'Brien

So, I've never blogged before. Well actually, that's a lie. I've done a couple for uni, but I don't see them as proper blogs. They're just stuff I did for work. What I mean is, I've never written a personal blog before. I guess I've just never thought that I'm interesting enough to write one. Not that all blogs and the people that write them are interesting, and not that I think that I'm suddenly suddenly super interesting...I just wanted to. See? Rambling already!

I've kept a diary for years, but that's all whiny, personal stuff that nobody else needs to read. I guess I thought a blog was just a place for people who want to whine publicly. Since doing a bit of research though, I've realised they're actually pretty cool things. Of course, there are still those that do use them to just whine and moan about life, but there are others who actually have something rather interesting to say....Hopefully I'll fall into the second category. If I ever stop rambling!


So, a bit about me...

• I'm from Manchester and I have the most amazing family in the world. (I know everybody says that, but mine wins.) It's really big and complicated and I love it. My mum and my little brother are the two most important people in my life.

• I came to Bangor University (it's great, you should come too!) to do a Creative Writing and Communications degree. I changed my degree to Creative Studies so that I could also dabble in a bit of film and media. 

• I started university thinking I wanted to be a writer for a living. Now I know that, although I love to write for fun in my spare time, that's how I want to keep it. I want to go more into the business side of books, and get as involved in the publishing business as I can.

• I'd love to know how many books I've actually read throughout my life. I can imagine it's reached the late hundreds by now. I will read any book, just to see what it's like. I adore losing myself in the world the author has created. Recently I've been reading a lot of books about psychology and religion and generally about people figuring out themselves and the world.  Nicholas Sparks is probably my all time favourite author, even though saying that makes me feel like I'm somehow cheating on J.K. Rowling! A few recent favourites include... Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert), It's Kind of A Funny Story (Ned Vizzini) and When I Was Five I Killed Myself (Howard Buten).

• Not many people know this about me, (although I suppose they will if they read this!) but I'm a big believer in God. In college I was offered the chance to complete the Religious Studies A-Level in a year, and it was one of the most enjoyable and life changing experiences of my life. I think religion is an extremely personal thing though, and I completely respect other peoples beliefs and the reasons behind them, and this is why I don't really talk about it to many people...I guess I don't want to shove my beliefs down their throats, and I don't want them to do it to me either. 

• I constantly listen to music. I think I just need a backing track to life. I really hope that when we die, we get one of those 'best moments' montages, with a really cool tune over it. 

• I have a dream of moving to the USA. I think it's due to the amount of American TV that I watch. I just love the idea of living in a small beach town in North Carolina (have I mention my love for Nicholas Sparks?!), being married to a lovely, handsome, kind and funny man and bringing up a bunch of beach babies.

• Before that though, if I had one wish, it would be to tour the States in a VW Camper Van... preferably as bright and colourful as possible. Then I'd like to stop off in Chicago for a while, visiting my amazing friend Keeley, and working in a publishing house. 

Anyway, I think that's enough from me for now! :)