Christmas

Me, Hannah and Sally at Roz's surprise birthday party!

I've not written a blog post for a couple of weeks, the main reason being how busy we all are in the run up to Christmas. Having recently attended a surprise birthday party in fancy dress - which was a first for me, actually, followed by my own birthday which on included watching one of my step-grand-daughters in a dance show and then singing in our Musical Society's Christmas Concert, this week is no less busy! After spending a couple of hours on Sunday morning tidying up, cleaning and putting the chairs out at the theatre between us, Keith and I were running the final rehearsal last night for the Junior Section's performance at our annual "Oscars Night" on Wednesday. Straight after that we rehearsed (rather badly, I have to say) for the adult section's next play. Tonight, I am singing again in our second Christmas Concert with Hull Musical Society, tomorrow night is the aforementioned Oscars Night, Thursday will be spent building the set ready for the January play at BADS, Friday is allocated last minute shopping and wrapping presents - although I've yet to wrap the gifts for the children at drama for tomorrow night, having bought them on Sunday.

I wrote our Christmas cards on Sunday evening/Monday morning - posted yesterday. This year I've only made a few, having had less chance to do any more, so the rest of them, which I bought, are charity based. I may even stop sending them next year - lots of people donate to charity instead or simply do not send them, but I must admit I still like to receive a card through the letterbox!

Last night, Keith took the photo we will be using in the poster for our next play - he is currently manipulating it ready for when I design the poster a bit later on.We are performing "Fringe Benefits" which is a comedy by Peter Yeldham and Donald Churchill. It is the very first play I performed in at BADS nearly 23 years ago - this time round I am playing one of the older wives instead of the scantily clad young female I played back then!. Where did those 23 years go???

On Saturday 22nd I will be at my last craft fair of the year- at the UpMarket in Prospect Centre, Hull. I have not yet made any new stock so my table may be spread out a fair bit! Sunday 23rd we will be looking after my 3 year old niece, and plan to take her to see the Christmas Tree display in our village church in Preston. It's always an excellent display and I'm sure she will really appreciate it this year as she is really, really excited about Christmas!

Christmas Eve may be a relaxing day, although I'm sure I will still have some presents to wrap and we will probably spend some time planning our festive quizzes for when the family are here over Christmas!

I will leave you with the reading I have prepared for the concert tonight, considering it's apt:

The first thing that came to my mind when I was asked for Christmas memories from my childhood was an overwhelming sense of excitement. I think I felt it more than my brothers and sister because my birthday is only ten days before the big event itself.

Specific memories of mine relate to the pleasure of giving gifts and the disappointment of one year in particular – the year I desperately wanted a horse for Christmas. Watching Black Beauty on the television probably influenced my desire, and I couldn’t understand why I didn’t get one. I thought it would be easy to keep a horse in our little back garden (we lived in a terraced house) and had vivid visions of me trotting along down the ten-foot and round the block on my personal steed!  I remember Mum trying her best to explain how impractical (and costly) the idea was, but it took me a while to appreciate that fact.

I particularly loved giving gifts to family members, especially ones I’d made myself. I started a tradition of making sweets to give as gifts, and look back with such happy memories of spending time in the kitchen with my Mum to make them. I would create batches of peppermint creams and coconut ice. I never liked coconut ice, but loved making it – particularly the part where I added the food colouring. Mum encouraged us to think of presents for others that we believed they would appreciate, and for some reason I will never forget being proud of a pair of red, spiral shaped candles that I spent 19pence on for an aunty!

Food and family were a big part of my childhood Christmas – combining the two for Christmas dinner when our Grand-dad, Grandma, Nanna, Great Uncle Fred & Aunt Olive all joined us. I honestly don’t know how we all squeezed round the table in those days, or how my Mum managed to cater for everyone, but she did so without fail and our Christmas days were happy times – until the arrival of the sprouts. I’ve always disliked them; despite trying them in different ways (disguised in a cheese sauce, for example) and my Christmas dinners will probably always be sprout free!

I have two brothers and a sister, so we used to share the opening of the advent calendar – although I always opened it on my birthday, whether it was my turn or not! On Christmas morning, it was usually a race between me and my younger brother, Daniel, to get downstairs first to see if “he’d been”! We continued this up to the time we were adults, and that excitement is still there when I wake up on Christmas morning.

I can clearly remember one or two of my favourite presents from my childhood – in fact I’ve still got one of them now. “Connect 4” was my main present in 1974 and I have played it again recently with my 3 year old niece, Charlotte. This game of strategy and planning is somewhat simplified with her, however – I think her favourite part is letting the counters out at the bottom when the game is finished (or more often than not, whenever she feels like it).  I also remember getting a “Potter’s Wheel” one year, which I was so pleased with, but I think I expected to be creating masterpieces in my first attempt, so was quite disappointed with my misshapen mound of mud! My other memorable gift was a creative game called “Construct o Straws”, which I’m pleased to see you can still get today. This game involved connecting many flexible plastic straws together to make as many different shapes and constructions as you could. As with most of our childhood games, we usually shared them, and I think we all got a lot of pleasure from that game. 

 

We used to put our Christmas tree up and decorate the house with streamers and/or tinsel as close to my birthday as possible – that’s a tradition I’ve maintained to this day. The whole family were involved, I loved arranging the little felt elves on the Christmas tree. These elves were three dimensional, with porcelain faces (I think) and long, spindly legs that could be tucked under their arms at the front.

Christmas seemed to go on forever when we were children, and there would nearly always be some sort of party on New Year’s Eve at our house or a neighbour’s house. If it was held at our house, we got to stay up really late and Daniel and I soon worked out that if we were quiet enough and stayed under the dining table, we could stay up even later – out of sight, out of mind, I think!  I always remember loving it when my Nanna started to play the piano at these parties – most of the songs I didn’t know at all, but the adults did, and used to sing along with her. Over the years I got to know the songs – a lot of war-time classics such as “We’ll meet again”  “The White Cliffs of Dover” and  “White Christmas”. Although I didn’t really like them at the time, when I hear them now, I feel quite emotional.

Christmas in the 1970s wasn’t complete without watching the TV “Specials” as a family. We loved Morecambe & Wise, The Two Ronnies, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and The Generation Game. All firm favourites in our house, and in those days, I actually liked watching Sir Bruce Forsyth on the TV, so much so that I longed to go on “The Generation Game” with my Dad, but it never happened.

If I had to summarise my childhood Christmas memories in one word, it would be “magical”. That’s what Christmas should be for children and I’m glad to say that mine always were.

Well done BADS

It's been a busy week for us this week, having the production at Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society on for 4 nights, preceded by two rehearsal nights. However, as I reflect on the whole process, it's been a great success and I am extremely pleased with the end result. Producing and directing a play at amateur level is much more hands on than a professional director I would imagine, since there are no allocated jobs  for things such as wardrobe, make-up/hair or props, and the director is also the producer, therefore responsible for the whole production, including (in my case, but not everyone is the same) organising cover for Front-of-house (even if it means doing so myself), and having a say in what costumes each person is going to wear. I'm quite fussy about that, as I really believe that what you wear in a play can add so much more to your character, that it's important to pay attention to this.

This play was set in the 1980s, so I was thrilled to re-live my youth by crimping Ellie's hair for her each night - with my own crimpers from the 1980s, I might add! Ellie was less thrilled by it, and couldn't understand why we all had such big hair then, but it just shows how much fashion changes. Every new generation find it hilarious to look at the clothes and hair of their parents or older friends - I remember thinking how weird the beehive hairdo was that my mum used to wear in the 1960s!

I was quite an intense director, I think - and I must have irritated the cast at times with my insistence on attention to detail, yet I was pleased to hear from the NODA representative who came on Thursday, that he appreciated the fact that everything was "real" as he put it - we try to make everything as credible as possible in our society, otherwise you may as well not bother, I think. He recognised also that a lot of work had gone into the production. General comments throughout the week were all complimentary - Ellie was, quite rightly, highly praised for her faultless American accent; Nikki on her superb characterisation; Mike on his fine acting skills; Charlotte on her gentle interpretation of the young wife and Andy on his sterling performance of his character. There were no "weak links" in the words of my step-daughter, and she is very critical of amateur productions, so that was praise indeed!

I was particularly pleased with the way everyone developed throughout the week - adapting their delivery of certain lines in order to get the most out of them, and for the best audience reaction. I even gave notes prior to the Thursday night performance, having been in the audience for the previous two nights, and I'm happy to say that the cast listened and acted on my notes, which I believe made for a perfect final performance on Friday.

Charlotte, our newest member, very kindly baked us a cake which was delicious, and I was presented with a gift of some beautiful flowers and a bottle of my favourite red wine, McGuigans Black Label - couldn't have been better!

Next on the horizon is the Junior and Youth production at the end of July - casting is changing week by week as members drop out, so we may have to have a recruitment drive in order to ensure we can put the plays on, but I'm sure it will all pan out in the end.

Shop Local

On Friday last week, our microwave oven finally packed up. We've had it for just over 20 years and a few weeks ago the light stopped working, but we thought it would be OK to continue using it rather than call out an engineer to replace the bulb - you can't do it yourself with a microwave oven light fitting, apparently. I have always been a firm believer of only replacing things when absolutely necessary, as I think we live in a very disposable society these days. I've even known friends to replace large items (such as washing machines) in their house because the colour doesn't match everything else. Each to his own and all that, but there has to be a limit, doesn't there?

Anyway, the microwave oven stopped working altogether on Friday, so after a quick internet search for a replacement Panasonic model (our old one was Panasonic and we were very happy with it), we rang Comet to check if they had it in stock for collection. No - they could order one in for us but it would take 5 or 6 days to arrive. When you need a new microwave oven, it has to be there and then or not at all, doesn't it? How else can you cook Oatso Simple, or baked beans - two of life's everyday essentials (I actually cooked my Oatso Simple in a pan, and to be fair, it worked just as well, but I then had a pan to wash as well as the bowl my oats were in!).

Instead, we rang Hansons Electrical, a local company who we've used before on the odd occasion. A very helpful salesman advised us of the models they had in stock (the one we wanted wasn't in the Holderness Road branch, nearest us, but at the other side of town). Off we popped, managed to get parked right outside the place, we saw a different model which was more expensive than we'd wanted, but as it was the display model, we got £35 knocked off the price, and the salesman even carried it out to our car for us- which I was relieved about, as I try to stop Keith from carrying heavy items these days, and I sometimes struggle to carry heavy stuff due to my back problem. The whole shopping experience reminded us of what it used to be like when you visited shops, rather than how it tends to be in some of the larger stores these days. More often than not these days, you get unhelpful, unknowledgable or just downright rude sales assistants, and that is one of the reasons we tend to shop online for most products.

Straight after that, we visited another local shop to try and get some wallpaper border to finish off the set for the play this week. I'd already tried to source some from the B&M Home Stores, where we usually get our discounted wallpaper from - but the cheapest rolls of border they had were at £3.99 a roll (although the sales assistant had told me the cheapest was £5.99 so obviously didn't know her stock) , and as we'd need 3 rolls, I wasn't going to spend that much. Not expecting to find much in Home Decor, on Holderness Road, we chatted to the owner, Denise Noble, and she was extremely helpful in our search. They had a whole range of borders for £1.99 - and when I'd chosen the design, I was even more surprised to learn that we would only need two rolls, as they were 10mtr rolls instead of the usual 5mtrs! Fuelled by this run of good luck, we also bought some more border adhesive and masking tape!

We both felt that we had been dealt with in such a way that we were certain to go back - that is so rare these days, which is a real shame. I wonder if customer care will ever be great in the UK - certainly in the service industry it seems to be lacking - is it just the way the world is heading or have we always been so crap at serving customers in this country? Maybe I'm doing a lot of people a disservice, but I do know that if I was sure to get customer service as good as last Friday, we would spend less of our money online, and do much more shopping locally, which surely would be a great thing.

Home Decor are on the East Yorkshire Web site here, and Hanson Electrical have their own web-site as well as a FB Page. I can heartily recommend either to anyone in the Hull & East Yorkshire area.

Don't Misunderstand Me - Bilton Theatre

The next production from Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society, "Don't Misunderstand Me" by Patrick Cargill, takes place next week, from Tuesday 22nd May to Friday 25th May inclusive. The play is a comedy based on the complications and misunderstandings that arise when Charles and Margery prepare to entertain Charles's younger brother, Robert, and his new wife, Jane - whom they have never met. Robert arrives whilst Margery is out, without his new wife, and it transpires that Charles has had a brief fling with a young girl, Jaynie, in America during a short working vacation.  Much to Charles's surprise, Jaynie turns up at the house unexpectedly - Charles panics and tries to pass her off as Robert's new wife to Margery, whilst pretending to Jaynie that Robert is married to Margery. Matters get even more complicated when Robert's real wife, Jane, arrives and everyone is desperately trying to cover up for someone or pretend they are someone else!

At times fast and furious, the play is character-driven and, as director of this particular production, I am very pleased with the way in which the cast have all taken on their relative roles. We have a very competent team on stage and off - with Steve Haughey doing Sound & Lighting, and Keith Davison (my husband) doing Stage Management. We had our final "normal" rehearsal last night, which went remarkably well - only a couple of errors here and there. I hope Ellie has recovered from walking into the door that Nikki was using to go off-stage!

I will be proud to watch the play every night next week, as we will be having a couple of dress/technical rehearsals before the opening night - I will probably still take notes and ask the cast to slightly alter the way in which they do odd things, but that is my way - I always believe you can improve the whole production, even during the run.

If you are in the area, please book your seats now - or you could try turning up on the night if you are not sure which night you would like to go. The play commences at 7.45pm, doors open at 7. There is a car park right outside the theatre. Seats are £6, with all concessionary seats at £5. To book your seat, please ring Steve Dale on 01482 812750.

Plays cast!

After a bit of a struggle to find something, I'm pleased to say that I have now managed to find and successfully cast a play to direct for our next production in May. Plus, on Monday this week we also read and cast a play for the Junior Section. So, just the Youth section to sort out now!

The Juniors are to be performing a version of "The Emperor's New Clothes", which will go on in July. Fortunately they all enjoyed it and are happy to play the parts we cast them in (with perhaps just one minor gruntle, that is!)

The adults are going to be performing "Don't Misunderstand Me" which is described as a frothy comedy by Patrick Cargill. I reckon a lot of the play is more like farce than comedy, but the main thing is that the reading went very well. It was a very hard decision I had to make over the final casting of the young girl "Jaynie", however. It needed to be read with an American accent, and there were two young girls up for the part, both of which had an excellent accent, despite both saying beforehand that they didn't think they could do one! I was debating in my head as we read the play as to which one I would select, but I had to be quick in making my decision in the end as I didn't want to drag it on. I opted for the actress who "sounded" like Jaynie, in my mind. I see her as a naive girl, and Ellie's voice came across as slightly more innocent than Kay's - I hated to disappoint Kay, as I have known her since she was 8 when we first began the Junior section (she's now 23) but I'm sure she's OK and is still involved as she will be prompting.

I've got the first rehearsal tonight, which will take place on the floor rather than the stage, since we haven't yet dismantled the set from the previous production. I've been blocking the moves out in anticipation - I've used the model of our stage that Keith made, and the little fimo people, moving them into position as I plot all the moves out and write in the script.

Directing a play allows me to use another side of my creativity, and it can be very rewarding when you see the play develop exactly as you imagined it to in your mind's eye.

This is a layout of the set as I'd like it to be built.

Two of the model figures on the model set.

My notes on the moves - written in pencil ready for any changes!

I've nearly finished Act 1, must dash off to do it before we set off for the Youth session - leaving the house in half an hour!

Reflecting and planning....

As most of you probably know by now, my main hobby is drama. That, for me, encompasses every aspect associated with an amateur dramatic society. I enjoy and have done in the past: acting, directing, set building, set painting/decorating, finding props, prompting, stage managing, Front-of-house duties, car park duties, secretarial duties, publicity officer duties, cleaning. As my husband and I also run the two separate Junior & Youth sections of our particular society, we are never short of something to do related to our theatre. Particularly as the theatre we use is purpose built and held in trust for us as a society, we are also responsible for the maintenance and general upkeep of the building itself. Having recently had a great run for our last production in January ("A Night On The Tiles" by Frank Vickery - the title is a link to Frank Vickery's production page) and everyone thoroughly enjoying the show (cast and audience members), it is now that I start to reflect on past plays - particularly when I am directing the May one and am now in the process of reading many plays in order to find a suitable one. In case you are wondering, "suitable" in this case means a number of factors need to be taken into account. Based on past experience, we always give new members relatively small parts. The play I choose has to be one that I love, not just like, but also one that the cast love as well. Having people perform in something they are not 100% happy with is such a hard task for a director, with little reward. A comedy would be preferred, since our audience almost demand it, and love to leave the theatre with a smile on their faces - it also helps during the rehearsal process, too, if we can laugh at the jokes in the play. Cast-wise I am limited to 2 men (ages approximately 30 and 45, though slight alteration either way can be achieved if the play is good) and 3 or 4 women. I say 3 or 4 because, although I have 4 women available and keen to act in a play, if I cast them all, then I will have no-one left to prompt. Despite the fact that not one prompt was given during the last production and we try to aim for that every time, we still like to have the "safety net" there should we require! The women are all young - late teens to early 30s, and any of them could play those ages, but nothing over the age of 35 without being heavily made up and suitably "wigged" !

I have bought 6 plays (two of which were 2-in-one), read a further 6 and plan to read at least 2 more from a short-list I made based on the cast available. I've also held a play-reading recently just for fun, and to initially assess the ability of our newest member. Sometimes, new members turn up and simply cannot read, so we can never assume. Fortunately, we had no problems at all with the latest one. The play we read this week was "Black Comedy" by Peter Schaffer. This is the first play I directed at BADS, and I remember the time very fondly. It is a shame we can't perform it again, but we simply do not have enough people to do all the parts and take on back-stage roles as well.

I will need to make a trip to the library in Hull for 2 more from my list, then it's back to the drawing board, I'm afraid. I don't want to do a play that is just OK, it has to really grab my attention. At the same time, Keith and I are currently scouting for plays that the Junior and Youth sections can perform in July - this seems a long time off, but past experience has shown that we need plenty of time to organise this, as no doubt changes will occur along the way as children drop out/ become ill/change their minds about being in a play etc etc.  We've so far read or are about to read 5 plays for the Juniors. In some ways, they are easier to cast, since there are lots of plays for younger children with large casts that we can easily cut down. The Youth are a bit more fussy about what they like, however, or have great ideas about doing plays by "devising". Perhaps they can do this at school or college, since they obviously spend more time in their lessons than the one and a half hour we can give them each week. Devising a play takes a lot of dedication and attendance from everyone at all times, which is never going to happen with a group of teenagers who would sometimes rather just be hanging out with their mates or playing computer games! I know they're not all like that, and in the main we do have a great group of children, it's just that their priorities lie elsewhere - they can't be expected to be as committed as we are to the production of a play, yet we still try to instil that attitude in them from a young age.

Until my search ends, and we have found plays for all three sections of our society, here are some photos of the set from our last production (which got a round of applause all of its own each night as the curtains opened) and a few taken at the after-play party which Nikki and Mike hosted!

Amy as "Mary" in the game....

Andy as "Abraham".....

Josh as "Joshua".....

Mike as "Jesus" - a name he rather likes the sound of!

Nikki as "Noah"

Scott as "Samson".

The game we were playing involved remembering your "name" (it had to be a biblical one) and that of everyone else in the room. If you failed to ask the question correctly (even if you got one word wrong) you then received a black mark on your face. As I was driving and therefore not in the slightest bit drunk that evening, I went home without a mark on my face! A very funny game!

Audience feedback

Just thought I'd quickly share some of the amusing snippets of conversation overheard from our audience members during this week. More often than not, our typical audience members seem to think that when we are acting on stage, we can't hear them - or perhaps they think they are watching telly - whichever it is, it certainly makes for some entertaining dialogue.


Since the play is set in a garden, we've obviously had to decorate the set to look at least something like one - but that still doesn't stop the astonishment from some of them when the curtains open to reveal "Ooooh, there's grass! It's grass on stage. Grass!". 

The character I play is not at all pleasant, which makes it a real joy to play as I can get as vile as I like without worrying about what people may think of me. Thankfully, I must be doing the job properly, as one woman in the audience commented on the first night with "She's the Mother-in-law from Hell"

The funniest so far is one from last night. In one scene, Amy (who plays the part of my daughter-in-law in the play) starts the scene sitting on the garden bench. It is the first time the audience have seen her. When she stood up, however, one lady was obviously shocked at how deceptive the stage can be as she blurted out "Ooooh, she's a lot taller than I thought she'd be".

Over the years we've had many comments either spoken in a loud voice or even shouted from the audience as they work out the plot or whenever a new actor joins the society - they never cease to amaze and amuse us all. The one I will never forget is when we were doing a play set in  the 1940s and I had my hair styled accordingly. When I walked on, someone at the back of the auditorium "whispered" to her companion "I don't like her hair in this one". Priceless!

If there are any more gems tonight I will report back!

Ferens Open Exhibition

I managed to enter the Ferens Open Exhibition today - on the last day of entry submissions! This is partly because I did not receive notification as usual (in previous years I'm sure I've had email notifications to tell me about this) and therefore only found out on Sunday when I popped in to see the last day of the Children's Exhibition! Also, I've not been at all well since Sunday - both Keith and I have suffered with a sickness/gastric bug that seems to be doing the rounds. For the first time ever, we had to miss the final dress rehearsal for our play, which opened last night. Fortunately, we managed to perform and hope to stay well enough for the rest of the week.

Anyhow, this year I've opted for hand-bag sized paintings and took along 3 of my smaller paintings which I did actually transport in my handbag. I'm hoping for success this year, but you never know what the curators will like so it's pot luck really.

I've entered the following paintings:

"Grand Canyon Impression"

"Life's Little Ups & Downs"

"Undersea Adventure"

If any of my paintings get selected, you can view or purchase them from the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, between 11th February and 15th April. The Preview evening is Friday 10th February.

A Night On The Tiles

One week to go for the opening night of our next production at the Bilton Theatre. This is part of the reason I've not blogged since before Christmas! I have several ideas for blog posts to come, but for now, I just wanted to share the countdown to our production week!

Birthday, Christmas and Concerts.

I just had to share this lovely gift my sister got me for my birthday, since it is a hand-made item which I value! Using hand-made lampwork beads and swarovski crystals, the bracelet is so pretty! My favourite colour is red, and I am a big fan of spots and dots, so the two combined are perfect for me. Thanks to Rachel for buying it, and also to Nichola Foster for designing it in the first place. Nichola sells her jewellery at local craft fairs and online - you can take a look on her Facebook page here, or have a browse in her Folksy shop online here.

I had a lovely Birthday at home, my sis came to visit along with my 2 year old niece, who had bought me a pair of purple stripey socks that are extremely comfy and warm to wear (purple is her favourite colour so she has to get all her family purple items as gifts!) along with a purple diary and pens.

I also received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Keith, as well as a box of Black Magic chocolates and a Charcoal grey dress from Joe Browns (my favourite clothes supplier!). Later in the day, my parents came to see me and they gave me a lovely blue cowl necked jumper (again from Joe Browns). I feel very privileged! The evening was topped off with a delicious meal cooked by Keith, which was chateaubriand accompanied with tender-stem broccoli, roast potatoes and carrots - superb.

Our annual Oscars' Night at the theatre went down well with everyone - it's always such a great atmosphere and the combined members of the junior and youth sections always perform well for their relatives and friends. Father Christmas arrived at the end of the awards ceremony, giving the children a gift each (I particularly like that part - it feels like we are rewarding every one of them for their involvement throughout the year).

I've now finished writing and posting the Christmas cards, have been doing a bit more Christmas shopping online today and tonight is the first of two Christmas Carol concerts I will be taking part in with Hull Musical Society. I will be doing one of the readings at the concert, too.

Over the weekend we will be making a start on the set for the January play - which goes on from Tue 24th Jan to Fri 27th and Keith and I are both in it this time.

We have got our Christmas tree up, along with some other bits and bobs, and I'm now actually starting to feel quite festive.

I hope to post again before Christmas, but if I don't get chance, hope you all have a lovely time.

My studio - before and after!

I spent some time recently having a good tidy up, sort out, throw out etc of my studio. I say studio, when it is really a small conservatory-cum-cat room, that I just took over!

I had taken a few photos of the mess it had got into which I'd forgotten about, so I can show you a sort of before and after style selection. There's something quite satisfying about re-organising your work space, especially when you have brand spanking new units in which to store things! The excitement was full on once we'd assembled the new units - I even enjoyed throwing things away to make more room.

I'm ashamed to say that this is the state my worktop was in before I began my big clean up - somehow I just kept on working amongst all the items I'd used and the longer I carried on like that, the harder it was to stop myself from doing so! Here it is before:

See how small my actual work area had become?

Above my worktop area and to the left are some bookshelves, which were again beginning to look cluttered:

The difference between the above images and the same areas now is vast, as you can see:

I have kept the plastic drawer units under the worktop, just re-organised the contents.

I have since re-located these units and the contents are safely stored in my shiny new units!

I made use of large cardboard boxes and kept everything on the floor previously...

The shelf you see in the photo above has now been relocated to the far end of the conservatory, and only my CD player and CDs are on it now. All "dust gathering" items are hidden away from view.

IKEA, I love you!

I was particularly pleased with my two new purchases from IKEA - the large, square cupboard unit and the A2 sized drawer unit (which is on castors, even better!). You can get an idea of how much they both hold by looking at the stuff I've stored away:

There are two shelves in each quarter of the big white unit, with the option of adding more if necessary. I found the drawer unit useful for my stock of wallpaper, brown paper and shiny blue textured paper on a roll! I am a huge stationery geek and just love anything to do with paper, card, pens, folders, notepads etc! I recently got given a pile of blank notebooks that were going to be thrown away and I actually got quite emotional when I saw them! I think it's the prospect of filling them up that I've always liked so much.

I've also started to label just about every container and drawer (thought not the new ones) I've got so that I can instantly tell what I've got stored away. I've accumulated so many card-making bits and pieces that my original grey A4 sized drawer unit is still in use with those items alone - I have only hand-written the labels at the moment, but I will be making smart new ones on the PC soon!

The smaller plastic drawer unit is home to all the paints I need for creating my hard-backed notebooks. Very handy. I was actually quite miffed when I recently bought the 3 new paints you can see to the side of that unit and discovered when they arrived that they would not fit in the drawers!

The window-shelf above my worktop. Note the labels everywhere!

View of my easel from my worktop.

Even more room to store things temporarily on top of the new unit!

My companion when I'm working - well, one of them!

You would usually find one or more cat here!

The Sunflowers tapestry I started for Keith a long time ago. I really must finish it!

I am currently working on a trinket box and mini painting combination set - "A Bit Of Purple", similar style to my "Geometric Green" series of the same. I will post some pics when I've finished it. You'll have noticed there are a few paintings that need finishing in my work area - I've deliberately left them on display so to speak in order to spur me on to finishing them! The painting on the easel is one that I will be painting over soon. It was painted for the last production at the Bilton Theatre.

Feel free to comment, or ask me any questions about my new-look studio! 

Summer Production - some pics!

OK, so this is slightly later than anticipated, but here are a few photographs that I took of some of the children involved in the Summer Production at B.A.D.S. last month. I have also included a photo of the ark we made for the Noah play, along with the rainbow that appeared at the end of the play and the tree stump that Noah sat on.

All the plays that were performed on the two nights were so well done by all the children and we were really proud of them all. Each time we start rehearsing for a junior or youth section play, we wonder how on earth it will ever be ready to show to their parents, but somehow it always seems to happen. Children who we thought weren't listening to us at the last rehearsals before the night suddenly do everything you asked and more besides - the younger members perhaps impressed us more this year than ever before, simply because there were no prompts required from any of them, which is quite an achievement for them. We did tell them that one of our aims at Bilton is to never have a prompt, but fully expected to give one or two out on the night due to nerves or lack of concentration. However, it would appear that we are actually having some influence on them, which is so rewarding and fuels our passion for passing on our skills even more. I think one of the best things about watching the children (whatever their age) perform is to see the joy on their faces at the end of the night, when everything has worked and they receive the applause they rightfully deserve.Considering the fact that we were several animals short with only a couple of weeks to spare, we are immensely grateful to Mr Jowett from Preston Primary School, since he helped us fill those places by sending along some keen members of his drama club - they all performed really well and we look forward to their return in September.

Mrs Noah with the girls in the family

The three "boys" (even though one of them is a girl in real life!) of Noah's family.

Noah, Mrs Noah, Rebecca, Japheth, Shem, Ruth, Rachel & Ham.

The animals as they walked to their entrance with me.

Waiting to make their entrance via the auditorium!

This animal also made a convincing God - see next pic!

God - complete with obligatory white beard!

The final scene when the rainbow appears as if by magic!

Youth members backstage waiting for their turn in "Panto Question Time"

"A trio of lovely girls" from the Youth Section - backstage ready for "Emporium 2".

Unfortunately, these are the only photos we managed to take - we didn't have time to take any during the performances as we were both tied up backstage.

The first night was a huge success. We invited some of our patrons to support the younger members and was happy to see that a fair few of them came along. To the delight of the audience (with the exception of one or two of the junior members who happened to be sitting on the front row at the time) a chair that is pushed to the floor during the course of the action in "Last Tango in Little Grimley" ended up rolling off the stage and onto the auditorium. This rendered the remaining cast speechless, the audience were screaming with laughter and the cast members were trying desperately to finish the scene without laughing.There then followed a moment of absolute farce when one cast member (during the scene change which was done in blackout) retrieved the chair from the audience, and another cast member came on looking for it without realising that it had been taken into the wings! Thankfully, nobody was hurt and the 4-strong team continued to the end of the play without losing control of their emotions. Credit to them all - it was a difficult play and they certainly did it justice.

I am pleased to report that our N.O.D.A (National Operatic & Dramatic Association) representative managed to watch the plays on the second evening and I spoke to him at the end of the night. He was impressed with them all, even if he wasn't too keen on one of the Youth Section plays (he's at least honest, which I like) and he seemed most impressed with the junior section's production of Noah.

Our next task is to source material for the Hornsea Speech & Drama Festival -this takes place in November each year and all our members take part in various classes to try and win trophies, but mainly for the experience of being adjudicated by a professional drama practitioner. We start rehearsing for this as soon as we meet again in September, so not much time now for us to get enough material prepared - we haven't yet received the syllabus either!!!