4245/17164
Not quite today, but definitely tomorrow.
But really it is done. I got up early and hacked away at the last section of the show and I've got it down to 82 pages (and still got the canine high jinks back in). We might need to lose a page or two more, but it's pretty much a final draft. I only have to turn a wordy bit into an actiony bit and have another look at the very final scene and then I can pretty much walk away. It's quite a weight off my shoulders and by the standards of previous Edinburgh plays I have completed this with ages to go.
This was another non-stop day though (and hopefully my last one that will be quite so insane). I had to run to the rehearsal from home to get there on time (though it turned out I'd been given the wrong call time and was 55 minutes early, rather than 5 minutes late) and then we worked through the changes, which took longer than expected, meaning I had to run again to get to my personal training session. I was still 15 minutes late, but Ally worked me very hard for the remaining 45 minutes, with possibly the hardest challenge yet, running on the running machine at 11km per hour whilst it was at a very steep incline for two minutes (twice). Time has never moved so slowly, even if my little legs had to go fast. I can usually get through the painful stuff by reassuring myself that it will soon be over and I will be back in a time with no pain, but today, tired and hungry (I hadn't had time for lunch) it seemed like there would never come a time where there was no pain.
I can't see myself having a six pack in two weeks time, but my body shape is definitely subtly changing and after a bit of a weight rise during the mainly sedantary last week of writing (plus a few biscuits to get me through) my mass is heading downwards again.
Then I was back to rehearsals, before heading across town again for another preview at the Udderbelly. I was pleased with the performance, but the audience seemed a little reticent at least to begin with. There is some work to do and I don't feel like I have a killer routine of the standard of "Railways and the Holocaust" or "Ferrero Rocher", but now, at last, I can start working on this show in the daytime too. I had a weird five minutes where I got something trapped in my throat (I think it was a bit of vegetable stalk or something, from the 1Kg a day I am currently eating), which then made it quite difficult to speak. I pushed through the pain and later remarked how brave and amazing I was for getting through that difficult time, claiming my job was harder than being a soldier or a fireman. No one apart from me found it very funny. But I am the important one here, so as long as I was amused then that's OK.
I must be coming to the end of my period of ring freedom soon and still not a single person as hit on me or mistaken me for a fancy free singleton. I mean work and running up slopes have put paid to me having even an ounce of energy to do anything about it, but it would have been nice to have been asked. And I am still soldiering on with my knackered phone. The only real loss is that because I can't use myfitnesspal in landscape mode I can't enter any food with a "p" in it. But all that means is I just have to avoid those foods. It might be a good diet. "The No P diet". Although it means you can't have peas, peppers, or apples or pears which are all quite healthy. Or asparagus. Actually it sounds like it might be the kind of diet that would kill you in weeks.
You can see almost finished versions of my Edinburgh flyers in the downloads section.
My latest Metro article, which rankled with a couple of people for some reason, but which had mostly positive feedback is up here.
