I’ve never SOLD OUT before it a new experience which means phew I can just get on with the show and stop pestering people …are you coming ..are you coming…enough . Thank you for booking is all I can say .

I’m in the middle of my tour and I have to say I like this way of life . I like all the stuff that comes with, the driving vans the loading up my props that just look like a pile of junk, I like getting to venues and making new friends with the crew and staff, I like pretending I’m meditating when really I’m having a sneaky nap, I like pretending I’m doing a full vocal warm up when all I can remember from training in acting at Manchester Poly, is diaphragm flapping and trying to  resonate vowel sounds through my body …

i like doing the work, the tech the runs been able to focus even though we were up against a brass band rehearsal and the local Morris dancers rehearsal at the Trades, god I love you Hebden Bridge, keeping it real.

I like taking the breath and telling myself I can do this and asking the Universe to protect me before I go on stage, even though I have an on off relationship with the Universe, these are my habits my rituals, so that I can get on stage and be honest and share this story and hope that I connect with you, that’s all .so this is where I am, I’m doing and re doing and practising and Someone said 10,000 hours is about right, so I better crack on, and you could book my show and that would add more hours to my practise, for now I will do it in the lounge. Till Hull on Thursday .

Anxiety Festival time is upon me, in 5 days, and 3 hours. So if you are free do come to the show. The Albany Saturday 28th June at 9pm 

Thank you to Ouch for having me on their podcast programme, and I just listening back to it and I do seem to laugh a lot. I often think I’m quite flat, but maybe I’m not as flat- as in low, as  I think I am, self awareness not one of my strong points turns out!! Had to resort to getting out on my bike this morning to cycle 5 miles to sit in aCafe with a frothy coffee and had to read Eckhart Tolle’s  book on being in the now, and that  acceptance of who you are and where you are the only  way to feel the joy of life. So to all those fellow people who find mornings hard or even any part of the day or night hard or just find life a bit  hard right now read this.  ” The joy of Being ,which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form,possession,achievement,person,or event- through anything that happens.  That joy cannot come to you- EVER.  It emanates from the formless dimensions within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.”

Thank you Eckhart …It just makes sense, well to me it did….So put that on your salad plate and  drown it in Salad Cream !!!

My home town gig at York St Johns, went down really well, tears, laughter, tick tick. Its so great to have chance to build something to have space the develop a performance stride, to find a flow, and be able to tweek and play.  But I was a bit thrown by how was emotional I felt on stage to be  performing  my show in York where it all happened,  and so close to where my Mum lives, and spooky to be so close, one street away from where she worked at York District Hospital,  where she walked into town on her lunch even when she had a bout of Agraphobia, she made herself walk into town, to face it . It was also spooky that a man on the front row, right there in the centre was a lecturer in Theatre and Mental Health – it couldn’t be more coincidental , Theatre and Mental Health, and he specializes in this, and that’s wonderful, and even more wonderful he asked me would I come back and do the show again for the students and some NHS people, so I said YES of course, so thank you Dr Nick Rowe,( a safe pair of feet).

So here are a couple of lovely pics thank you to my bezzie Ruby Porter for taking these on I might say a tricky camera, thank you Roo for coming out of retirement to take them !!

And thank you Ashley for being the best director and  keeping me calm and focused and having the best Kate Bush album The Dreaming on CD in your bag for the journey there and back!!!

Well it was a great start to my tour at Slung Low in Holbeck, Leeds. It started with the most lovely welcome by Porl and Allan and Lucy and Billy the dog, a cafetiere a coffee and home made brownies on a bench in a yard full of plants growing in baths and feeling like you’ve just met up with old friends is not the usual welcome you get at a Theatre !! The philosophy of HUB and Slung Low is also so unexpected and liberating, its a space that theatre makers like myself can use for free, to make to rehearse or just show, and the audience are also free to pay what they feel on the night, and I think they felt alright after seeing my show because the Jar was pretty full, they don’t do massive marketing and spend 1000’s on that, instead they use the web and good old fashioned talking to people, and most people come to one thing then see whats on next via a good old fashioned poster and come again and tell others. So thank you for hosting me, its my kind of place, refreshing, alternative almost from another era, it reminded me of the 80’s of arts centres of people making theatre to say something, of politics of passion and of creating beautiful things on stage…oh AND for those of us in our 40’s who’d loved telly as a kid it reminded my of the Double Deckers, the TV children’s show from the early 80’s, the yard and space is so Double Deckers ! Come aboard we’re the double deckers !!

This is what started everything off!

I was asked to do a TedX talk at Bradford last December and it was the start of what has become my one woman show, ‘Hi, Anxiety’. Many thanks to Emma for asking me and Imran for chasing the students up to edit the footage! I’m really happy with the finished result and hope you like it too: