Crazy Lady

Another loopy dorm-mate.

This lady, of unknown origin, is an alcoholic of indeterminate age. I believe she may be middle-aged but it's hard to tell. Way too much sun, booze and cigarettes have shrivelled her face to resemble a talking raisin.As far as we can tell she's been here in Paihia a while, doesn't eat much but drinks a lot, and spends a lot of her time leeching on to people and complaining about how much everything costs.

Yesterday my book went missing. I'd left it lying around the lounge while I cooked Kathy dinner after her sunset horse-ride. Later, it was gone. The brave Canadian who slept in the bunk above Crazy Lady (she shouts in her sleep and talks to herself loudly when drunk) had seen her with my book.
Next day I joined Crazy Lady on the balcony for sunrise, spotted my book in her bag and asked her if she'd seen it. It had a photo of me as a bookmark so couldn't be confused as a reject. No, she'd not seen it.Later, the book showed up on the table. Amazingly, Crazy Lady confessed to having dound it, could I believe it, in her bag of all places! She must have picked up my book (orange and white cover) and confused it for hers (black cover), she said. Sad thing is, she may actually be telling the truth; she could have been that pissed.

Nevertheless, Kathy had to guard our food as we were getting our stuff together to leave - Crazy Lady was eyeing that up too...

Travel health

When my friend, K, went off round the world for a year, I remember following her blog and seeing her take her first diving course and then slowly gear a lot of her travel around further diving courses and diving meccas.
It's one of the hazards of travelling longterm. Not only is it almost unavoidable to be bitten by the highly infectious travel bug, you're also exposed to a whole exotic, fresh, new array of things that may bight you and have time to manifest themselves. Things you have built up no immunity to back home.

In the same way as K soon found diving irresistible, I fear I may have been bitten by sailing. The question now is whether or not to resist...

Life after the Festival (group email)

The New Zealand International Arts Festival 2008 has come to an end and with it I can leave behind a whole heap of madness, incompetence, stress and overwork. But from it I'm also taking a lot of lessons learnt, some great new friends and a big hotch-potch of memories.

It's quite a different beast from the Edinburgh Festival. The NZ Festival is more like a large version of Assembly Theatre in the Edinburgh Fringe, programme and atmosphere-wise. It certainly doesn't transform the city in the same way as you find a different Edinburgh in August. There's a Fringe festival too, much more like I imagine the Edinburgh Fringe used to be. The role of the Festival here is different too: it provides kiwis with one of the few opportunities they have to see what's being produced at the top level around the world. As a result, it also provides a rare chance for NZ performing groups to set themselves against an international benchmark while staying at home. It's a wonderful thing.

I was Deputy Venue Manager for the festival's 'flagship venue', the Pacific Blue Festival Club. I ended up doing most of the Venue Manager's job too, but I won't go into that. What happened, happened. Main thing is that I finally got to try my hand at the next big step up from Front of House Manager, and I don't think I did too badly. We had some really great stuff in the programme (as well as some mediocre, of course) and it was pretty damn exciting to work in such a varied and high profile venue.

The Festival Club is a temporary structure - a cabaret tent (Pacific Crystal Palace), which is a modern NZ-made version of the Spiegeltent, for those in the know; attached to the Crystal Palace structure was a huge marquee fitted out as a bar. Most of the VIP functions are hosted there, so lots of big names and important faces around too.

I didn't get to see a huge amount of Wellington, or really experience Wellington life (apart from battling with the Wellington elements in our great big tent - we became squeedgie queens and fought many a battle of the (tent roof) bulge). I did manage to make it to a few shows though, incl. Black Watch (again) and the amazing Traces.

There were some old faces around too, most of them from my Assembly days. Plus a couple of lads who cropped up from my stint on the door at the QMU. Very random. Another old face that, inevitably, joined the melee was Sean's. We briefly caught up but for the moment the decision is not to stay in touch.

By far the best bit of it all was the discovery of the wonderful Emma. Em was the venue's Production Manager and, with a whole variety of shit flying about, we together found the eye of the storm and pulled together to spend most of our time there. It's so very rare to find someone you work and get on so well with, and it was an absolute treasure every day.

And now I'm back at base camp in South Auckland. My wee sister arrived a few days ago and we've been enjoying the end of summer. We visited Auckland's Royal Easter Show yesterday and had an absolute blast. Tomorrow morning we head north to discover Northland. Cue lots of beaches, islands, snorkelling and kauri trees. Can't wait!

Photos: NZ Festival 08

My latest batch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddballproductions/sets/72157604211520131/

Trouple Therapy

End of the contract. I take the quiet option: dinner with the boys in the hills.
Meal's over, time for a bath.

I let the past 5 weeks wash over me, through me and settle deeper into me.
I stop the next 5 forevers from worrying me.
It's easy. In my bathtub under the stars.

My toes, black against the city lights, ballerina feet long gone, but still mine.
My fingers, already prune-like. A ring the only indication of a new person in my life.
I miss him, the man so much further removed from me than the twelve hour flight. The man I may or may not see again.
But it's ok. In my bathtub under the stars.

I consider the thousands of lessons learnt.
Shoulders tighter but mind looser.
So much more still to discover on this course with no graduation date.
The morepork pipes up and I look at the Southern Cross.
Oh yes, I'm in New Zealand. In my bathtub under the stars.

The water's cold.

Necessary reminder

My role as Deputy Venue Manager of the Pacific Blue Festival Club (the NZ International Arts Festival's flagship venue) is not an easy one. It's been a bit of an unnecessarily stressful experience so far, and one I refuse to bore you with the details of.
More important is that tonight, just past the halfway mark of the festival, we nailed it. The evening music gig (sold out) and the contemporary circus show (also sold out) straight after, all finally ran smooth as anything. Smiley punters, no disasters, no stress, bang bang bang, job done.

Tonight I was finally reminded of why I love this kind of work. This time it's taken a very painful and frustrating journey to get to this point. But we're there. I'm there. And god it feels good.

First steps

A year ago I ended a relationship. Today Sean and I met for the first time in a year and a half and took the first steps towards, well, I'm not sure towards what, but I do feel a certain sense of moving forward.

It was partly an unavoidable meeting: Sean is technical manager for a show performing in the venue I run and we had to find a way of being able to work together. But I wanted to meet up anyway and this provided the impetus.

It's taken the edge off being around each other, which is great. Difficult to pinpoint what else it may have achieved, but it's a good start.