To warm the cockles of your heart...

 ... made for you, by me, from paper. Mon dieu, how I love paper. xo Happy Valentine's Day

Awe... (can I have) ...some.

My mind was blown this week. Absolutely, no words for it, inspired beyond compare.

In September (or maybe May ;-) my high school bff, Bhavna. is getting married. We've been talking about wedding plans and ideas and she'd mentioned taking a course and learning to make her own wedding cake. I said, 'I can help!' and something was born.

I told Bhav I'd send her some pictures to help with ideas and in looking, I stumbled over... The Caketress.

The. most. amazing. cakes. I. have. ever. seen. Full stop.

(I found it difficult to work after I found this website/blog. My life needs more awe, more inspiration. I seriously considered quitting my job and offering to open Lori Hutchinson's mail just so she'd have more time to create awe-inspiring cakes. And she's a Canuck - ah but, of course.)

And if that wasn't enough - edible lace! It exists! My life is complete!

Inspired, I decided I would make a cake this weekend to practice some techniques and try out some ideas. It's no Caketress cake, but it's a start.

Happy THE Year!

2012 is going to be THE year. It seems this year, I'm aware of new year's beginnings more than ever before. Get out there, try new things, make this year OUR year. I like the Chinese New Year (such good celebrations!) and celebrating it after the 'calendar' new year means that January gives me the chance to take stock and make some decisions - what is going to be a priority this year? What's on that list of resolutions, or in my case, what am I asking for this year - from myself and from the universe?

2012 is the Year of the Dragon. Chinese dragons are a symbol of power, strength and good luck. The perfect emblem for what promises to be a year full of big and exciting changes. The fireworks Steven and I watched last weekend at the Lakeside Arts Centre were amazing - a goosebumpy sign of things to come. I'm a bit scared of 2012 too if I'm honest (power, strength and good luck can be scary!), but as my friend Sonja says 'leap and the net shall appear.' Heck yes.

Sprouts

I went to Jamie Oliver's The Big Feastival in June and one of the restaurants featured, Wahaca, was giving away what I thought were colourful matchbooks (sorry, no pics of how cool they were, but their website gives a bit of an indication). I don't smoke, but I took one anyway (who's not a sucker for free kit!). It turns out they were little packs of seeds with instructions on how to grow chilli peppers. For 0.98p, I got these little pots full of compost from Wilko’s (and basil seeds to boot – why not?) and have been watering twice a day. The basil came out in about 3 minutes (makes me wonder what weird genetically modified seeds they are, but oh well) but the peppers (10 seeds in total) had been stubbornly avoiding my advances. Until a few weeks ago. The absolute glee on my face when I came down one morning to see one teeny little green sprout in one of the chilli pots. To start, only one sprout graced me with its presence, but I decided I was going to be patient. To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I was killing them with too much water (my thinking: that soil looks so dry and the pots are in the sun so they need a bit of a spritz… but chilli peppers equal dry climates, oh damn, I'm going about this the wrong way) but I think they like it.

Since that first little green sprout, I've had 4 more come up. My partner saw some chilli plants in someone's house recently and they were about 4 feet high after only a year. AND they were producing green chillis about 5 inches long! I haven't thought about what I'm going to do with these sprouts when they get to that point (i.e. where will they live?), but I love the idea of being able to cook with something I've grown. And chillis boost your metabolism ;-)

The basil (pic above) has its ups and downs - literally. Some days the sprouts are leaning horizontally to the point where I'm pretty sure they're dead and other days they are perky and looking promising. I think I need to thin them out as maybe they're competing for space (I'll get another pot from Wilko's and try to transplant - my partner got a kick out of that appropriateness of that word) but they are perplexing me. I saw pots of herbs in Sainsbury's the other day - a more mature properly recognisable basil plant for about £1.50 and I sighed and thought 'I could just buy that...' but I'll stick with them. Patience is a virtue. Which I lack.

There is something to be learned here which is applicable to the 'something else' in life... I guess this is just about the simplest version of creation, isn't it? Nothing god-complexy about it (I had nothing to do with the sprouts from that perspective and don't claim that genius), but I think it's neat that where there was nothing but a seed, there is now something green and growing. I think that's pretty awe-inspiring and as we're starting small, growing plants is this week's contribution to getting in touch with my creativity.

Something Else (or The Things I Think Make Life Worth Living)

This section of my blog is the wiliest and hardest to capture – the part I have the most trouble defining, but also, the real reason for writing at all.

Once upon a time, I was a dancer then a singer then an actor. Now, I’m none of those things. For the last three and a half years, I haven’t performed and frankly, life seems the better for it. However, I know that for me, being a performer was more than just a job or a hobby, it was both how I defined myself and it formed my view of the world. Theatre – the arts – was something I was passionate about. I thought good theatre should make people aware of the ‘something else’ out there – to instill a sense of awe in them, to make them believe that anything was possible. (This, in my opinion, is why Harry Potter is huge and why Cirque du Soleil draws massive crowds.) Being a performer in a production that created that awe, or that sense of possibility to an audience was just about the best thing I thought anyone could ever do and for awhile, I was happy to be a part of shows that didn’t do this in the hope of landing one that did.

Sadly, there were times when being involved in the arts brought me into contact with horrible people that shook my confidence (sometimes in myself and sometimes in people in general). I’ve always remembered a couple of particularly encouraging things people told me that made me believe that I was talented and worth watching, but forcibly being told the opposite was debilitating. (Therapy has helped, though I still fantasize about what will happen when what goes around comes around.) I’ve told myself since then that maybe I just didn’t want it badly enough, maybe I didn’t have a thick enough skin (something I’m sure of), maybe I just didn’t have enough heart. Ultimately it was the combination of knocks to my confidence and lack of faith in good shows out there that made it easy to just stop performing.

While I enjoy life more without the heartache of being a performer, the passion I previously felt is also missing from my life. I find myself working really hard at admin jobs, trying to get validation from work that doesn’t mean anything more than the black and white on the computer screen and then getting depressed about ‘my purpose in life’ when I realize it.

A few weeks ago, Steven and I watched a documentary on Eddie Izzard (Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story). I vaguely knew of him as a celebrity – mostly because last year for Sport Relief he ran 43 marathons in 51 days (crazy!) – but I didn’t know that he was a comedian and an actor and mostly, I didn’t realize how ridiculously hard he’s worked to become those things.

He says in the documentary that we only get one life so he believes we should live it, which isn’t something new to me, but I’m inspired by how fully he acts on this belief, and how in practice, living life means visibly working through the rough patches and sometimes failing. (Eddie decided he wanted to do comedy in France, so he learns French. At one point, he blanked on the French words for the punchline of a joke and had to ask the audience. He also wants to do comedy in Arabic. He currently knows one word. I don’t think I do his persistence justice – just watch the film and you’ll understand.)

I think what struck me most was his bravery. He wasn’t afraid to put himself out there (as a busker in Covent Garden! Just about the hardest job a performer can have…) and look bad when he wasn’t very good. In being brave, he’s created the career (and life) he wants. I wish I were that brave. My hope is that this blog is going to keep me accountable to examining my creativity and in doing so, I’ll find more passion and have a more fulfilling life.

I do know that I love stories and I think telling them and sharing them (through whatever means reach people) is important. It’s why history and old buildings give me goosebumps, and why there’s pretty much nothing I’d rather do than read a good book or watch a good movie. And then tell people about it afterwards so maybe they do the same.

I’m keen to try working in publishing, not so keen to be a part of an industry that isn’t very profitable because fewer and fewer people read. Screenplays? (I’ve started a list of books I think would convert well to film, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.) Who knows at this point, but let’s start small. Next week you can read all about my basil and chili pepper growing adventure. (I hear you scream ‘Ohmygod!!!’ like middle-aged women at a Take That concert.) Yes, I’m that exciting, but I do get a kick out of seeing little green sprouts come out of the ground.