Sickness city

Last week was horrid - I came down with a fever Tues night, somehow managed to get through most of Wed/Thurs, but then Thurs night the headache that had been slightly frustrating me became like a sledgehammer, my body was burning with fever and I came out in a rash. My Mum was demanding over the phone that I go to hospital, but instead I called a nurses hotline they have here and a nice nurse told me how to check that the rash wasn't serious (ie: not meningitis - what you do is push down on the skin and if the red rash turns white under the pressure then it's viral, if it stays red then it's bad!) and to take more painkillers and go to the dr in the morning. I started to feel a bit better again on Fri before - SURPRISE! A new symptom. Vomiting. All Sat and Sun.

It's been beautiful weather here but I haven't had a chance to see it until today!

Possibly the worst virus I've ever had, and a rather lonely experience too - being sick all on my own! My housemates were busy with their lives and weekends and Fliss was away from Thurs - Mon (how convenient!)

AND I had to cancel my meeting with the agent again! I think pigs will fly when we finally meet.

Anyway, feeling better now and starting to pack up my room to move into the new flat on Fri, the same day Ben arrives.

Have added some new Amsterdam pics.

xx

Monday madness

The agent has postponed our meeting again! But he has an excellent excuse this time - he's going to see the Queen! His dad is receiving an award at Buckingham Palace.

Some Amsterdam photos are up now. I'll change and update them over the week.

I can't believe it's almost July...!

Last night I had a bizarre cinematic experience working at the Barbican. In the afternoon I saw "Persona", a 1960s Ingmar Bergman film about a relationship between two women, a nurse and her actress patient, that becomes a bit crazy and they start to get confused about who is who. Then, in the evening, I watched "The Hangover". Nuff said! (American Pie 15 years later...!)

Got our Asylum Dialogues show in London tonight, I think I have about 10 friends coming so I'm really looking forward to it. And Fliss and I will have dinner in the evening.

Oh, and I just realised I haven't mentioned the big news. Ben and I might be getting our own place! When he comes over in July he was going to come for 3 weeks but now it will be more like 2 months and so we're going to get a flat together. A 2-bed, that way when Ben goes back to Aus for work (he has 2 TV jobs later this year) then I can rent the second room out - hopefully to a friend or to Fliss, someone who will understand the situation and be easy to live with. Next year Ben will either make the move over here or will be coming and going, depending on Sucker (I'm so sick of that movie - I used to love it now it's the bane of my life!)

Last week I looked at a few flats. The good news is that it's a buyers market over here at the moment, which means that there are a lot of decent places around in my price range. The bad news is that it's a buyers market over here... so it's hard to find someone who can take my room! I don't want to put an offer on a flat until I know that someone will take my room, I don't want to pay double rent for an indefinite period of time!

So that's exciting, although looking for flats is time consuming. And with Refugee Week last week I was busy at work, so it made for a hectic week! My meeting with the agent got postponed, it's now on Wednesday. So I'm sorry if you wasted good vibes on me last week! Try to send them again on Wed if you can (although I think it will be 1am for anyone in Aus, so they'll have to be dream vibes!)

26C here on Thursday. Londoners will go crazy!

Amsterdam update

Fliss and I had a wonderful time in Amsterdam. Thanks especially to Chelsea who gave us a list of suggestions! We got through a few of them as well.

When we arrived late on Friday nowhere near our hotel was open for food! It was only 9:30pm on a Fri night, but we were a bit outside the main city and even the hotel stopped serving after 9:30pm. So we ordered a pizza online... which never arrived! Thankfully we hadn't paid for it. But we waited up, both falling asleep but jumping whenever there was a noise in the hallway in case it was the pizza man! The next morning we both slept in a bit more than we had intended, and by the time we got into the city for breakfast everywhere had stopped serving it... but it was too early for lunch! We saved a lot of money on food in the first 15 hours, because we were unable to buy anything. We eventually found a bakery and then hired bikes.

We rode up to a big square, parked our bikes and walked around. We walked through the Red Light District, which was weird. Prostitutes on display in shop windows. I didn't know where to look! Part of me wanted to take a photo, because the concept is so bizarre to me, but they are people behind that glass so it felt exploitative and wrong to take photos.

Then we had lunch in the park, felafals and beer. Very pleasant in the sunshine (we both got sunburnt!) Rode around a bit, then went to see Anne Frank's house, which was great. I've never quite been able to comprehend the geography of the house, despite having read the book and seen a recent BBC adaptation. Walking through the space made it a lot clearer. And the photos of movie stars that she had stuck on the wall, cut out of old fan magazines, was a reminder of just how young she was when she died.

We had nibbles and wine at a wonderful little restaurant, it was called something like Mama's Cafe (but I don't think that's it). The walls were covered in photos of mothers and the menu was based on the traditional recipes of the owners' mums! Very cute.

Sat night we were totally lame and just had a drink in the hotel. We got the giggles though because I was eating some nuts out of a bowl on a table in the bar, and Fliss pointed out that the other tables didn't have nuts so someone must have paid for them. We sat at that table anyway and continued to eat someone else's nuts, bursting into laughter whenever someone walked past or looked at us because we were convinced they were about to ask why we were stealing their food.

The next day we rode around again trying to find somewhere for breakfast. Where the previous day we had been too late, locals told us on Sunday we were too early - it was 10am! A local woman asked if we needed help and she rode us to a lovely coffee shop on a canal nearby (in the traditional sense, not an Amsterdam "coffee shop"...!) The only food they had was this cold apple pie thing, so we had that for breakfast. Not sure why this was such a weird trip food-wise!

After returning the bikes we went on a very pleasant canal bus ride. I then left my jacket on the boat. And I lost my sunglasses. Why - WHY??

Then our only normal meal, tapas at a lovely restaurant, and then home. The flight is only 45 mins! Shorter than Melb-Adelaide! It seems to ridiculous.

Anyway, that was our trip. I'll try to write more on the weekend about the rest of this week!

xxx

PS: When we got home, Fliss discovered an email from the online pizza company saying they had closed down! Probably should remove their website then...!

Good things come in threes...

iceandfire Theatre are kicking arse!

We just got 3 years worth of core funding, and our show for the Edinburgh Fringe has been singled out in a press release by the Fringe, thus ensuring we have been mentioned in at least half-a-dozen news articles already... and we haven't even started our own publicity!

Here is us mentioned on the BBC.

And here in What's On Stage.

How great is it when awesome things just fall into your lap??

I also have a meeting with that agent I mentioned, on Tuesday. He said on the phone "You know where to find us? We're just in the same building as Working Title and Universal Pictures"... yeah, coz I drop by Working Title all the time!! Anyway, he does sound nice.

Off to Amsterdam with my sis tomorrow, so will have more pics to put up! In the meantime, here's a photo of Felicity with DJ Mark Ronson (and they're wearing matching clothes!)

Quirky London

Just in case any of you are planning to come and visit me, you might find this Guardian article inspiring (it's about some really cool, cheap accommodation options).

Had a lovely dinner and drinks with Pete and Thea last night, as well as the always-entertaining Dave Fraser. Fun night. But I've been out every night this week so I will not be drinking any alcohol on the weekend!

Oh, and apparently the agent I emailed will meet with me, I just need to nag him some more :)

Small successes

Our viral campaign on the homepage of Third Sector magazine. I did register with the website but now it won't let me sign in, so unfortunately I can't give you my login. You'll just have to register yourself (it's free) to read the full article. Or you can just trust me that they say nice things!

Also for iceandfire, I booked us an ad in New Statesman magazine, and got a £300 discount! It helped that the sales exec knew iceandfire and was super enthusiastic. So all I had to do was say what our budget was and he gave us a much bigger ad than we could usually afford plus an event listing.

Got an email from a big ad/music video/film production company, Academy Films, who want to see my showreel (exciting!) They were recommended by Matthew at my meeting on Monday. The agent he suggested, however, has not returned my email or phone call! Grrr.

So quite a good day. Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference!

Results of weekend musings!

Had the meeting with distributor. I didn't really push him on any of my projects in the end, it seemed a bit inappropriate seeing as I was there on the pretense of asking him for advice. His advice was to

1. get an agent (he has given me someone to chase up and drop his name. I've emailed them, will have to call them this arvo methinks. He has offered to call them himself if they won't meet with me)
   
2. make a bigger budget short film, to show I can deal with big budget projects and/or look at making advertisements (easier said than done!)
3. keep writing

Don't know if Al Jazeera aired our piece about Rendition Monologues. However, Christine was interviewed by George Galloway MP (an eccentric and larger-than-life character in British politics! He is my MP, but I'm not sure if I can vote for him. The opening credits of his TV show are hilarious, him smoking a cigar out front of Westminster, even the fact that he HAS his own TV show! He is clearly an ego maniac - he was on Celebrity Big Brother - but he has some good causes)

Also, Third Sector magazine are going to put the rendition viral video on their homepage as their "digital campaign of the week" on Fri. They interviewed moi, so I'll put the link here when it comes up.

Half the cabinet are quitting today. Gordon Brown is screwed. Hopefully the Labour party here have a quick and painless removal and get someone fresh and new in the PMs chair (I'm going for Harriet Harman, Deputy Leader and one of the few Cabinet Ministers not tainted by recent expenses scandals. In fact she's one of the only MPs here that I like.) They are almost certainly going to lose the next election, but they can try to reduce the damage by making changes now.