29/07/14 - Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

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You absolutely can't beat a typical British seaside holiday.  I'm talking paddling in the freezing cold sea, eating chips in the car while rain lashes the windows, and wasting a small fortune in two pence coins at the arcades.  You come away with sand in your shoes, a touch of unexpected sunburn, a stomach full of too much candyfloss and ice cream...but with a big smile on your face.



15/07/14 - 'The Boss Of It All' at the Soho Theatre

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A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be contacted with the opportunity to attend the press night of a new play at the Soho Theatre down in London and of course I jumped at the chance!  It wasn't just the draw of free tickets that tempted me (although obviously that never hurts), but the chance to get to see something totally different and something I probably wouldn't have even known about otherwise.  I was particularly interested in the idea of seeing a new adaptation of such an unusual work, and this is something that New Perspectives as a theatre company are known for.

Lars von Trier is a name that, despite not being much of a movie buff, I was aware of when I read it in the first email.  I knew that he is generally known for making pretty controversial and challenging films, and the press release told me that The Boss of it All is considered to be the most accessible of his works and certainly his only comedy.  This was really all I had to go on.  I did buy the DVD of von Trier's 2006 film previously to seeing the stage production but didn't get around to watching it until afterwards.  While normally I'm a fan of accessing the original source material before diving into the adaptations, I don't think my experience was at all diminished by having very little prior knowledge before sitting down in the theatre.

08/07/14 - Some Ramblings on Inspiration

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Inspiration is an odd thing.  It can appear at the most unexpected of moments and be gone again just as quickly.  Sometimes it's fleeting and barely lasts long enough for you to scribble down whatever idea has popped into your head, and sometimes it sticks around for a few days.  The latter can be even more frustrating than the former, especially if - like me - you have a fairly full-on job.  I have days where all I want to do is hole away with one of my hundreds of notebooks and a vat of coffee, but unfortunately real life beckons and when I finally find that I have some time to myself, the moment has passed and inspiration's skipped off into the ether again with no indication of when it might return.  It's a sneaky devil, that inspiration.

A lack of inspiration is just one of the many excuses I make for not blogging as frequently as I intend to.  Others include the fact that I work a lot, I don't have the Internet at home, my laptop is really slow, my camera isn't great...the list goes on and on.  But I've decided that I'm done making excuses.  I look on blogging as sort of an unpaid second job and, like any job, I need to work at it but apparently I'm not as good at self-motivation as I thought. I have always worked best with deadlines.  Even though I'm a terrible procrastinator and always push myself right up until the very end of the deadline period before actually doing anything, having a time limit on things means I'm more inclined to actually do them.  But if I'm setting my own deadlines, I have the ability to change and extend them for as long as I want without actually achieving anything.  All I really need is someone to challenge me.  Someone to give me a kick up the bum, someone who won't let me get away with the same old lame excuses and instead will stand over me and say, "But why haven't you done a blog post for nearly a month?"  And it's looking like I've found that person.  It can be difficult to force myself to write when I'm not really feeling it, especially since it's a very solitary occupation.  It's nice to have someone there who inspires me to work that little bit harder.  


My current blogging headquarters, complete with coffee and carbs
to keep me on track.  Such a cliche.
I have a very distinct memory of reading a quote in which a writer (in my head, it was Sylvia Plath) said they write much better when they're unhappy, but that of course they'd rather be happy than a great writer.  However, the Internet seems to have utterly no record of any such quote so I can't put it in here and I certainly can't correctly credit it.  In terms of creative writing, I would agree with that.  I've written reams of angsty poems and short stories when I've been in the depths of despair (none of them any good, I hasten to add), but I struggle to get my fiction head on when I'm contented.  However, blogging is a different matter.  When I'm not happy, I have no motivation to go out and do things worth writing about.  And when I'm happy and I actually do things, it can be tough to find time to write up all my adventures.  This is the quandry I've been in recently; I've hardly written anything at all for a really long time because I'm happy.  Really really happy.  Everything in my life seems to have fallen perfectly into place and it's been a bit of whirlwind but one that I'm more than okay with being swept along in.  Of course, no one's life is perfect but even the rubbish bits don't seem so bad when everything else is going so well.  I refuse to let one or two little niggles overwhelm the good stuff, and not writing has been one of those niggles.  So this is my vow to solve that problem.  More frequent blog posts, possibly even on some kind of fixed schedule, even when I don't feel like it.  I will make time.  I will fight through the blogger's block and the slow creativity days.

I've always written this blog because I wanted to and not because I ever expected anyone else to read it.  Yet I sometimes second-guess myself and worry that no one will be interested in the things I'm posting.  I need to get out of that habit.  Sylvia Plath said that "the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt" (I definitely stumbled across that quote whilst desperately trying to find the other one I mentioned) and she was absolutely right.  If I actually am writing for myself, as I say I am, then what does it matter if no one else cares?  Hence this blog post.  This could just as easily gone into a private diary entry and never seen the light of day, but I am confident that at least one person out there in the world will feel exactly the same way I do.  And even if they don't, this blog is my corner of the Internet and sometimes, I don't want to write a book review or a food post.  Sometimes, I just want to write.

I have been Hannah.  This has been a very rambly post.  The next one will be much more cohesive, I promise.