CHEESE BOARD

So FerryEgg… it’s been a while. In the age old terminology: 

It’s not you, it’s definitely me. 

Since we last spoke, I have turned the ripe old age of 27; I am now officially in my LATE twenties. I can no longer cling to the youthful ‘mid’ but am now forced to reside in the upper echelons of that limbo decade between your teens and your thirties where society is hinting SUBTLY that it’s time to grow up but your innards are positively screaming for a 2 litre bottle of white lightening, a park and a spotty boy to snog.

I celebrated my birthday, or as one of my cards called it ‘the anniversary of when [I] popped out of a vagina or something’ (my friends know me SO well)...

... albeit not in a raucous fashion as I am wont to do, but laid up in bed, plagued by a chest infection, spouting more green mucous than an episode of ‘Get Your Own Back’ (WHERE THE HELL IS DAVE BENSON-PHILIPS NOW?!?) and with Bridget Jones haranguing me in the background via the dubious medium of channel 5. If only it were just a cliché.

At the end of the day, the grass is always greener and every cloud has a silver lining. These are a few of the clichés I would have preferred to have embodied rather than a snotty 27 year old sobbing away to Bridget Jones. (I wasn’t ACTUALLY sobbing; sobbing is just for girls… Oh wait.)

But hey, in the words of D: Ream (another promoter of the much beloved cliché); things can only get better. Right? RIGHT?!

(This is not my t-shirt...)

Right. I have resided in the Lake District now for nearly seven months, performed a different play every night, climbed many a mountain (HILL) with the assistance of a blue inhaler and an apple at the top, pretended to learn the ukulele, hosted a hen do, swam in the lake, sprained my foot and come up smiling.

I may sound like a stilton based voice over for a bad Richard Curtis movie (About Time was pretty terrible, you have to admit it); however, with two weeks left in this idyllic part of the country I feel that a mild bit of cheddar is allowed.

As long as it is accompanied by a grape. Or two. In my case the grapes are usually embodied as horrifically bad genital jokes but to save your eyes and ears from my nether based wit, my grape, for now, will be embodied as the Future. 

Epic, huh.

And my Future currently is in Pantomime. Yes, I, Laura Darrall will be directing a Pantomime. Cinderella to be more specific. I will be going from the peace and tranquillity of rep theatre in the Lake District to the back end of a horse in a primary school. And I cannot WAIT.

Theatre by the Lake in the words of my grape is, regretfully, almost BEHIIIIIND ME; but I know that, like Arnie albeit slightly less violently, I’ll be back. 

And equally, I cannot WAIT.