Having the time of my life...

I went to the Dirty Dancing auditions today! it's been a crazy day, and I had moments of doubt, but I did it and I'm so proud! (of course I didn't get through to the next round, I'm not that good of a dancer!) Anyhoo, here is my wee diary of thoughts throughout the day...

6.08am: ooh my god, what am I doing? I'm so excited! woke up at 3.45 couldn't sleep, kept wondering why I'm doing this and if it makes me a loser, after all when I told one of my friends he said he thought that turning 30 was making me go a little bit crazy, and it's an early start and a train journey and seems like a lot of effort and morning off work for something that's just for fun. Then I thought no, it will be something I'll be pleased to have done, just once, and I worked the weekend to justify it, and it's a fun thing to do - it just happens that for a day of holiday some people like things like theme parks, my idea of fun is to go to an audition for the national tour of Dirty Dancing! And now I'm excited, I'm on the train, full hair and makeup, having scoffed my breakfast as was running late, got things to read (just Vogue - nothing too intellectual at this time of day!), and chose my green shoes to wear for the audition, and I feel alive so this is what it's about - seizing the day. That's why I changed my mind this morning, or at least what convinced me to come - I don't want to feel I'm missing out on life by being too lazy to get out of bed and do something. Plus, surely the early start will have kicked my body clock into touch after all the bank holidays we've just had.

7am: strangely crapping myself! I think I'm nervous not because I want it but because of the thought of walking into a room of casting people who may laugh in my face, and other dancers who will be ace and me trying to keep up and feeling like an idiot, but I think I need to challenge myself and go out of my comfort zone, it will be scary but exhilarating.

My one wee souvenir of the day: my number :)

10.45: So, it's over, and it was so hard but so fun! I haven't done a pirouette in a seriously long time, and totally couldn't manage a double pirouette, but I learnt the routine and kept up and I definitely wasn't the worst dancer there! And I ache already haha and I have ballet tonight for the first time in 10 years...ouch. Ah my face is glowing with the fun of it! We danced on 'Stay' from the film soundtrack, a lovely wee chacha, and we learnt the routine in bits, all 40 of us on stage in the Patrick Centre at the Hippodrome, then split into two groups to practise again, then back together for a bit more style on top of the steps, then into 4 groups, then the actual audition in front of the associate choreographer. Groups of 8, two rows, dance it twice rotating rows between goes, so no hiding at the back and copying anyone!! It was a crazy experience though, I was outside at 7.20 this morning queuing, they finally let us in at 8.30 because they decided to do the process of taking CVs and giving us numbers outside (madness!) then we were just sat waiting and kept being told 'soon' or '15 minutes' so we didn't really know when to warm up, and then eventually went in around 9.30 and spent about an hour with learning the routine and auditioning. There were some really sweet girls there, and some were really good, and it was weird being back sat with a group of dancers all warming up etc. I can't believe I just did that actually!

Cinder toffee, honeycomb, hokey pokey. Whatever you call it, I just made it!

Today I learnt that something that I expected to be difficult, scary and messy was actually simple, exciting and not all that messy. Valuable life lesson.

I wanted to make cinder toffee because I saw Nigella Lawson make it on TV a couple of years back - she said it was the perfect gift to take when you are a guest in someone's house since flowers have to have a vase found and chocolates often just get put to one side, but according to her nobody can resist hokeypokey (classic Nigella innuendo!). Now, I'm thinking that wine is a pretty good thing to take to somebody's house, but I suppose it can be a minefield and it's not appropriate for all times of day. So cinder toffee seemed like a good thing to be able to make. The only trouble was that it looked quite scary - the bubbling up process looked like the kind of thing I could come away from with third-degree burns. And I'd been told to use a pan that I never wanted to use again because it would be forever scarred by toffee remains. As it turns out, it's easy to make, exciting like making proper popcorn, and easy to clean (the potential for burning myself silly still remains, but I think I can manage to be careful long enough to make it again).

So, step one, assemble the recipe and ingredients:

Credit here goes to Nigella Lawson's "Nigella Express" for the recipe.
Step 2: weigh out the sugar and syrup

Step 3: mix the sugar and syrup. This is the only time you are allowed to stir, Nigella says that once it's on the heat there is to be no stirring. This stage made me nervous because it doesn't have so much of a stirring consistency as a big lump of stickiness consistency...

Step 4: turn on the heat and let it start to melt, turn to goo, then start to bubble away...

Step 5: turn off the heat and whisk in the bicarb of soda. This is where it should be a 'whooshing cloud of aerated pale gold'...

Finally: pour straight out onto baking parchment and leave to cool (and stick the pan in a bowl of soapy water!)

That was the first go. That cooled and remained a sticky, stretchy, gooey kind of toffee. It was bubbly, but it was just one big slab that didn't break but just stretched. So second time around I let the sugar and syrup bubble much more before pouring in the bicarb of soda and it was a lot more whooshy and has puffed up on the tray...

So now I am waiting to see if this one sets hard and then bring on the chocolate!

Now, in the interests of honesty, I should admit that I started writing this post while the first lot of toffee was setting, or rather, not setting. Ah, I was feeling so smug and 'oh life lessons' and it was all soooo premature! But the second set does appear to have set, so let's reconsider the life lessons - I shouldn't have given in to fear the first time around: I didn't let the sugar bubble up enough because I was afraid of it either burning or bubbling over and burning me. Now, I'm thinking that this was a rational fear, so the lesson is not necessarily to resist fear, but that we can always learn from our mistakes.

Whatever the lesson, I've made cinder toffee!!

Here's looking at you, kid...

It's Casablanca night! Wow! I am in love with this film! I can't believe I've never seen it before. I especially can't believe that I've never seen it given how many famous lines come from it, plus the main song - As Time Goes By. "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." "Here's looking at you, kid." "Play it, Sam." "We'll always have Paris." "Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" Oh my goodness! And Humphrey Bogart. And Ingrid Bergman. Seriously, such beautiful people! And that moment, when Ilsa knows that Rick of Rick's Cafe Americain is Rick from Paris, and his reaction to the song and then his face when he realises she's there, and her face when she sees his...wow. I LOVE this film! It seemed unusual as well to have the character who is a victim to love be the man, I'm sure it's usually the woman who is left abandoned by her man, hurt and crying, but here it's Rick who has been left without an explanation, deeply in love. And despite how much his love has affected him and he won't have Sam play the song, and he loves Ilsa, he still believes in something more than his love - be it Laszlo's love, Ilsa's marriage, the greater cause: the resistance and the fight against the Nazis - there is something more important than the thing that has consumed him and made him him. "The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." And according to the little documentary on the dvd the studio released 50 films a year, one a week, and they obviously knew this could be something special given how much they paid for the script, but it was still just one of their 50 films a year. I want to watch it again already! But there will be nothing just the same as my first time, I'll know the characters a bit before discovering them - I thought that Rick was a bit cold, a bit of a manly man with something to hide but not hiding so much love, now I'll know that love, or lost love, has made him this way, I doubted Ilsa thinking that she had no intention of leaving Paris with Rick, that she didn't love him like he loved her, I doubted Rick thinking that maybe, just maybe, he really would leave for Lisbon with Ilsa, I knew the French police officer was contemptible but I didn't quite believe that he would betray Laszlo and Rick, after all it was part of Free France not Occupied France, and now I'll know these things when I watch it again and I'll be looking for signs, but then that's the joy of the first watch and the later watches. Ah, Casablanca, we'll always have Paris.

Nobody puts Gemma in the corner

I'm soooo doing the Dirty Dancing audition! seize the day and all that jazz! so I'll be getting up bright and early one morning in a few weeks, heading over to Birmingham in my non-baggy clothing, with my heels for dancing in, CV and photo (what does one put on a CV for dancing?) ready to dance and if all else fails do Joey-style jazz hands!!!

Friends: Joey teaches the audition dance

No. 26: my first and last visit to a strip club

So this one was on my list because friends have been recently and I was feeling inquisitive - I don't like to have not done things. And now I've done it. Well, it was a few weeks ago now but I've been busy.

And...I'm glad we went because it's crossed off the list, but seriously, I'm never going again! There's not much to say - I don't want to get into a whole palaver about the objectification of women etc, it's all been said before much more eloquently than I will ever say it - but despite feeling uncomfortable and weird (apparently I shrunk about a foot haha!!) I am happy to have done it, it's out of my system, I've experienced it, and I'm living - one step closer to turning 30!

Open auditions???

I just had an email through from Birmingham Hippodrome that they are holding open auditions for Dirty Dancing in a couple of weeks and, in the spirit of doing my 30 list, it is soooo tempting to do this!!! Let's be clear, I am fully aware that I am such a god-awful singer that they will laugh in my face, but it would be an experience....

Alive and tango-ing!

I'm just on the train home from Birmingham after doing our tango performance last night and I'm tired but elated. I feel amazing, on a total high - tango makes me feel good anyway, but combine it with the feeling of being alive that comes from crossing something off my 30 list and it's the most exhilarating feeling. I went through cycles of stress and calm - while I was at the milonga waiting for Peter to arrive I was a bit stressed, then I relaxed a bit, especially once we'd danced a tanda of Di Sarli to warm up. Then seconds before we performed I had the same 'bollocks, why in the name of crap are we doing this' feeling (eloquent!), calmed down a little, then the music started up, we took the embrace, I was momentarily thrown when we started on a back step instead of a side step because we always start on a nice big side step, and then finally relaxed into it. It was the most connected tango I've ever danced, I was concentrated so hard on Peter and on the music that it's the most inside the dance that I've ever felt. I had a couple of moments of thinking my legs would turn to jelly, and I discovered that my body's reaction to stress is to get a watery runny nose (classy!) but overall I enjoyed it immensely. I'm not sure it's the best we ever danced, but it looks nice, and by the time we did the second dance on D'Arienzo I was much more comfortable.

Wow I've just realised my ability to waffle, especially when it comes to tango, but I wanted to write this while I'm on my way home before I lose the feeling because I want to be able to read it later and feel it again. I think this feeling will stay with me for a while though, it's a kind of crazy energy right in the centre of me that feels alive and feels like the world is an amazing place with so much to experience and so mug to give if you just take it. Which sounds really wanky and self-help booky but it's a feeling I want to keep and keep on creating. Right, I'm going to chill and read On The Road and marvel at how great a writer Kerouac was (it says in the introduction that he spent 7 years on the road and 3 weeks to write the book - phenomenal). And I'll sort out photos/video when I'm home.