On non-iversarys

Neither my husband nor I ever remember our anniversary. Is this telling? Does a couple that relies on one of their family members wishing them well on the date of their marriage, to remind them about their big day, pass for Happily Marrieds? Or should we be booking ourselves into counselling, tout suite? Its a tough call; six years on, how far we have walked, side by side. As I look at him, his face illuminated by his laptop while he types like a grumpy ballet accompanist across the table from me, I see the same face I saw the first moment he walked into my life. Give or take a few strands of hair... I'm sure he has changed, but I can't see it. But I see in myself nothing of the flighty, stroppy young thing I was when I blithely waltzed into that candlelit chapel to stand beside him. I feel like an entirely different being. I feel every cold winter shopping trip, every summer picnic, every argument about who does more laundry than whom, every moment he's looked straight through my carefully constructed facade and stared at my naked soul. And I don't wish any of them undone. Sometimes life is a garden, sometimes its a howling wilderness, but whatever the weather, he is the tree beside me. Which is what I've chosen instead of hearts and flowers. And its enough.

On the actress faced with a choice...

Today, Day Four of my course discovering the Meisner technique at the Actor's Centre, started well. I cycled off to the Cromwell Hospital (where tulips bloom on every table in the marble lobby and all the signs are in English and Arabic) to hear good news from my sunny South African physio. With her sharp fingers unraveling tender knots in my thigh, she mused that my knee, currently grumpy after not being rested properly post Dartmoor marathon, may be ready for a gentle run next week. The thought makes me elated, and apprehensive. After two months of not running, will I fall in love with it all over again? Or will memories of ease and speed taunt me from beyond a prison of fleshy pain? Pondering this, I stopped for a soya chai latte at a little cafe in South Kensington. The man in the queue behind me, in the garb of an English academic, was gone almost as soon as he took a seat at the pavement table beside me and only the drying froth on a cup and a smouldering ashtray bore testament to his brief hiatus in a well-practised commute. I took Picadilly, past the Ritz, and skirted the fray of Leicester Square, already open for business and heaving with Those Who Do and Those Who Watch.(An aside: what is the switch that flips in the human brain which says 'I am about to find myself in a foreign city, therefore it is prudent to dress like I shall be climbing an Alp'?) At the Actor's Centre, my fellow neophytes were blowing on the over-roasted filter coffee hawked by the canteen and discussing their weekends. When Scott Williams arrived like summer, we began to play and I rejoiced in the simple act of playing. Its a massive relief to think, and examine, and ask questions again, after too long with my mind frozen on Survive. Then, during lunch break, we tumbled onto the streets of Covent Garden with the rest of London. I headed straight to the library on Charing Cross and seized a David Hare play that I don't know, Amy's View. Then, on the way back for the afternoon session, I was springing gladly up St Martin's Lane to Seven Dials and remembering how I used to tumble into this rabbit hole with my eyes wide and my feet tingling at the famous streets beneath them and get hopelessly lost, when a man stopped me and offered me a free haircut. He was scouting for potential models for his hair cutting training salon. I said no politely and walked on. Then I stopped and reconsidered. I haven't had any attention paid to my hair in several months, besides dyeing it red for an audition and swiftly correcting the mistake with a bottle of Boots bleach. And I have a session booked to take new headshots, a very crucial part of the actor's armoury, next week and was wondering how on earth I would pay for the necessary cut before then. This stranger couldn't have been more timely and I suddenly saw this man as placed before me with an alluring offer. It was a defining moment; Does She Go Back To The Acting Class, Or Allow Vanity To Lead Her Into The Swanky Salon? What do you think? Three hours later, I emerged with a sleek bob and dashed up to the Actors' Centre to collect my bag. I consoled myself that I had read the David Hare play from cover to cover and now want to tackle the role of Amy, who is a beautiful character who brings together her mother, an ageing theatre actress, and her true love, an art critic scathing of the state of theatre, which prompts the debate at the core of the piece: is theatre still relevant? Jack, the filmmaker who is recording our class, told me I had missed the lecture on Preparation and I decided that, rather than wallow in guilt, I would learn with renewed vigour tomorrow. And so I cycled home (with my mind wheeling through the play and its topic of the continuing power of theatre and its relevance in a digital age with audiences conditioned to watching from the other side of a screen) and got out my script (I am performing a piece from the play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay Abaire with my scene partner Carla at an open stage evening in Brick Lane next week) and baked a batch of lebkukhen for Christmas gifts. And it was a good way to end an interesting day.

On browsing the buffet at the library

My idea of luxury now is stopping in at the Charing Cross library after acting class, as the city slides from work into play on a crisp dark evening, and gathering up an armful of books I know I won't have time to read... I have Carol Ann Duffy's anthology, Rapture, for the bathroom and Diana Mosley's essays The Pursuit of Laughter for my night table and Chekov's play Platonov for my handbag. Now all I need is the ability to stop and sit long enough to do more than relish the titles. Perhaps this is like the allure of a whirlwind romance; you never acquaint yourself with more than the cover, thus shielding yourself from the possibility of disillusionment...

On the art of acting

I began studying the Meisner technique in a 6 day course with Scott Williams yesterday. Its the first time since drama school ended eight years (eight years already!) that I've really asked questions about the art of acting. I graduated from the school of The Show Must Go On!, and majored in gritted teeth and sequins. But never have I actually spent any time philosophizing about what it is that I've been compelled to do since I could hold my head up for a camera or jig about in nappies for admiring applause. Anything below the surface of the business I've dismissed as hokum, in an attempt to avoid staring into the whirling depths that lure you into an infamous quagmire filled with tortured, questing people. It is one too many awful auditions, from which I have stumbled thinking all sorts of things beginning with Why? When? How? that has at last made me realise that I must face up to my fear and doubt, and ask the hard questions of myself. What is acting? And how do you do it? Something that has bubbled up from the discussions Scott has led so far is the question Are actors really creative artists? When we 'create' a role, are we not simply putting a shiny surface up in front of our audience and allowing light to bounce off ourselves, leaving them to see what they will in the reflection? When someone says of my performance 'I don't believe you!', are they not just saying 'I don't believe you!'? Or is Uta Hagen, the great theatre actress whose work ethic I am also busy studying through books and dvds, more on the money when she claims emphatically that an actor is the most creative of artists; we bring our whole being to a space and whittle away the entire human experience, distilling essences and concocting dreams and visions until we have a finite creation to offer up to the light?

The only certainty I have arrived at thus far is that talking about acting is harder than getting up and doing it. But I'm no longer afraid of either.

On Double Whoppers and Bikram yoga

As I flew the final mile of my second marathon, through the vale of Dartmoor and into the finishing sprint on the green sward of the Newton Abbot race course, I was singing. I run with my ipod on shuffle; either this is pure laziness, or the alluring idea of chance made audible. The inner ear dj had thrown up All That Jazz, and I had the lightest heart as I soared down the hill through town with the memories of performing the opening number of Chicago, with the spotlight making the world a little blazing bubble around us and the world beyond nothing but inky stillness. It had been a good run for introspection; the field was small, and I was alone on the quiet country roads for most of the time. I thought of my scattered family, now strewn across Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, and the friends I've made in England, and what it is that I want to do with my life. The hours and the road streamed away. My target was to run the race in four hours and take twenty seven minutes off my first time. As I came into the stadium, the clock was taunting me at the end of the straight and as I crossed the line in four hours and forty nine seconds with my lungs in flames, I burst into tears. It was one of the peaks of my life. I felt so proud and fierce and vulnerable and elated.

And the Double Whopper at Burger King never tasted so good...

But now I sit typing with ice on my knee, paying a high price for a simple folly; ignoring good advice. I took two days off before going straight out to run again, and went to Bikram yoga almost daily. And now, nearly a month after the event, I am forced to realise I cannot force this amazing machine through too many hoops at once. Sometimes I must stop and listen, which is a thing I find harder to do than almost anything else.

On seeking refuge in the din of Babel

Friday night found me on Oxford Street, taking a dash down the red tunnel of double deckers and black cabs on my bike. This is what I do for an adrenaline rush; the city spills onto the street and it becomes a neon obstacle course of burka-clad women toting Gucci bags and exquisitely hip fashion students and day-tripping teenagers and suited men shouting plans for the evening into their mobiles. And they all jostle for space with the smell of caramelized nuts roasting outside the Tube stations and the seeping miasma of underground effluvia; the din of a thousand SALE signs and the Babel of every language spoken by humankind. The surge of speed and noise and bright light and colour is a powerful stimulant. I can think of no better way to distract myself from that awful abyss that lately yawns in my life, the one I run all over town from ballet to Bikram yoga to acting class and back again to avoid: Where am I going? And when will I get on stage again? This awful voice at the base of my skull is beginning to deafen me, and not even a marathon can drown it out, which means that it must, finally, be faced. And facing myself in the mirror at Pineapple or in a yoga studio has become easier, but in every other mirror I still see no reflection of the woman I know I can be.

On chiseling with Cleopatra

I have started a weekly Shakespeare class at the Actors' Centre, focusing on Anthony and Cleopatra. What a girl she was! The Madonna of her age, a perfectly stage-managed figure in a gloriously tumultuous age and a skittish, greedy girl with a raging thirst for attention. Playing her in my jeans and scruffy Ugly boots (a grotesque invention that I abhor as a lover of sartorial beauty and embrace as a cyclist with chilly feet) in a dingy room in Covent Garden on a damp Tuesday night requires a colossal assault on the imagination. And after another day spent punching the phone and watching the clock, meeting a circle of like-minded fantasists and attempting to summon the sweaty, voluptuous, volatile world of Cleopatra's court is soul food. I've been a member of the Actors' Centre for over a year, but have only managed to summon the courage to attend a handful of classes. This is due to a ridiculous shyness that overtakes me in front of my peers. I'm completely happy to gambol out on stage in front of two thousand strangers. Shove me up in front of three fellow actors with a script in my hand, and I'm a dribbling mute. Alright, I'm exaggerating a tiny bit. But, somehow, without my being aware, something has finally grown up within me, and I have realised that I am not afraid anymore. I admit that I am an actress, and not nearly the actress I can or want to be. Which is what the Centre is all about; its a hot bed of people at every level of development, there to pursue the better person they sense inside. We are all there to chisel away at the superfluous that surrounds and stifles. And it feels so good, at last, to stand up, pick up the tools, and begin to chip.

On the wonders of multi-tasking

Further to my previous post, wondering where the time is to be found to add football to my repertoire of physical exploits, I have been recounting the myriad ways I multi-task. While cycling around town, I practice accents, rehearse monologues and songs, and file my nails and apply lipstick (usually only at traffic lights!); I read while applying make up in the morning or putting my hair in rollers (currently reading short stories by David Foster Wallace, Uta Hagen's Respect For Acting, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra); iron while watching dvds and waiting for my cupcakes to bake, and of course, blog while I'm eating breakfast. The only time I really relax is while I'm in a dance studio lost in the music and the frustrating limitations of my body, or out on the road running, where all I can do is think, and think, and think.

On the beautiful game

I went to a girls' school, where we were only allowed near a ball when we were wearing skirts that preserved the modesty of our knees, and then to a specialist ballet school, which viewed sport with great distaste. Therefore, the magic of the game of football has remained a mystery to me thus far in my life. Until today. Today, at lunchtime, the balding, paunchy, middle-aged men that work in the sales office I have recently joined as a way to fund further drama classes, trooped off to the local football field and very grudgingly allowed me and another girl to make up the numbers of the teams. Carla, a plucky young Australian, at least has the benefit of three older brothers. I have no such advantage and couldn't explain the offside rule with a gun held to my head. But we were both keen. And we outran our puffing bosses without breaking a sweat; it felt as though I'd been playing all my life. Alright, so I tended to misread plays and couldn't trust my feet to send the ball to the right man and not accidentally tip it onto the foot of the danger man (James, the quiet lad from Accounts) of the opposing team. But I understood the idea and I loved the feeling of being one small part of a whole with a common desire. Netball never had quite the same swerve and sway. The strategy and skill involved are fascinating, and a whole new world of challenging possibilities has blossomed before me. The only problem I face now is working out where the hell I'm going to find time to play the game in between ballet classes, marathons, Shakespeare workshops, jazz, tap, running races, singing lessons, ironing my husband's shirts, editing my next audio book and working 9 to 5. And, of course, once in a while sitting down to a a good book and spending a bit of time with my poor neglected husband...

On running and running and running

I haven't posted recently because I'm either running or in a dance class. Mornings and weekends I run, evenings I go to ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary...whatever is available after my new job selling advertising. (I have to ring universities all over Europe, which is working wonders for my mastery of German and Icelandic.) I don't know where the wind came from, but my sails are full, and I simply can't stop. Last Sunday was a perfect example - I planned to do a long training run by myself around London, and I loosely plotted a 21km tour of my favourite London parks. But the Indian summer was sheer heaven and the city was like a pleasure ground. So I ran through Regent's Park, where the Eid celebrations had drawn a crowd of white clad men, and little girls in party dresses. Then I did an extra lap, before heading over to Notting Hill, where the last chocolate halva croissant awaited me on the shelf at Gail's Bakery and I munched as I jogged through the weekenders thronging the stalls of eclectic tat. By the time I got home, three hours and twenty minutes later, I had run 36km. And I felt like doing another 30.

On the lure of a few Loonies

Year after year, Grandma and Grandpa sent me a birthday card, a newsy letter and fifty Canadian dollars. The card is always floral Hallmark, the letter full of love and stories of their busy, ordered lives and the money usually buys me a little treat of some superfluous kind. Not this year, however; in this moment of financial pinch, I have never been so happy to open an envelope because it meant I could afford another week of dance classes. Since my descent into doubt as a dancer sometime in 2006, roughly when I broke my foot on stage, it has taken me too many painful years to piece myself back together. And its the mind that is the most stubborn muscle. But I've just realised that the habit of their faith is a great example that blooms regularly in front of me.

On postponing birthdays

I have a time-honoured birthday tradition, a tradition I uphold despite my valiant attempts to do otherwise year after year; the Birthday Bawl. At some point during my birthday, I know that something, be it a kitten, dead or alive, or the sheer weight of a year's worth of hopes and expectations, will reduce me to weeping rubble. This year was no different, but this year I had good cause (or so I believe). I spent the day cycling around London alone in the rain, going from interviews to auditions with a light purse and boots heavy with endless precipitation. My birthday celebrations were formally held on Sunday, in an overcast Hyde Park, where a circle of the truly interesting, lovely people I have come to know in this wild town gathered around a picnic rug to drink champagne, share their food and indulge in the cupcakes and afghans that Amber and I had baked. This was a dream come true, and I had a wonderful day. Just looking around the circle of bright, animated faces and knowing that I had gathered this unlikely bunch together was enough to make me joyful, and it was a better present than I could have hoped for (although the beautiful vintage Oscar De La Renta scarf from Frances was pretty close!). But the ugly reality of trying to celebrate my birthday on my own on a grim Tuesday was too much for this girl. As I stood with my head under the hand dryer in the Ladies' at the Tate, trying to dry out my hair (at least in this I wasn't alone; a young American tourist was vainly trying to dry her socks at the unit next to me), I decided to give up all pretence of celebration and postpone the act of birthday-ing to another day. That done, I got on with life. I looked at some exquisite British portraits in the sumptuous caverns of the Tate (I lingered over Sarah Siddons, and some glorious society portraits by John Singer Sargeant and the beautifully enigmatic Cholmondeley Ladies, which depicts a set of twins who were born, married and gave birth on the same days). And, having fed my soul, I went off to Pineapple for a jazz class with Linda, who gives a solid, thorough, professional class. And then I went home and indulged in The Birthday Bawl. I felt tired, and entirely lacking in hope. I suppose birthdays can always be postponed until a more fortuitous time. Sadly, though, they can't be foregone altogether.

On the danger of self-made gurus

After four intense weeks of rehearsal, we were so close to getting our musical on the stage I could almost feel the heat of the lights on my skin. I've always loved that artificial sunburn. But Tuesday morning I discovered that my first rehearsal cheque had bounced, and I felt a horrible knot of unease bloom in the pit of my stomach. I cycled over the river to rehearsals that morning, sailing over the wide, untroubled Thames in all its grimy glory, and broached the delicate matter with the director. He hadn't received a cheque at all, and knew nothing about it. Then the stage manager walked in with a face like thunder, and the material we had spent a laborious, frustrating, exhilarating month creating unravelled like a jumper snagged on a runaway train. By the end of Wednesday, we were in a huddle on the floor of the rehearsal room, having just stumbled through a very rough run of the show, and awaiting the arrival of the producer, who had until 5 'o clock to come up with the funds. The piece was his brainchild. He had written a weak script, but assembled a strong, eclectic mix of creative people, and we had taken ownership of the material, and spent a lot of time improvising, devising and reworking. The premise of the show was that we were a rag-tag entourage following a self-made guru from Mumbai to London to produce a Bollywood-style Romeo and Juliet. It was a crazy idea, but it was turning into a strangely tasty dish. I was having a ball creating a Russian gold-digger and Juliet-wannabe, determined to upstage the piece and have my share of the limelight. The choreographer, Ash Mukerjee, was an exceptional classical Indian dancer, as was our Juliet, Khavita, a beautiful girl who originally hails from Malaysia. Khavita was working as an engineer before being cast in the part, and had given up her job for the chance. The two male dancers were jazz and ballet trained, Rain having danced in Matthew Bourne's acclaimed all-male Swan Lake, and Sam is fresh out of college and a wonderful tap dancer and singer. Zoe, the other female dancer and actress, is a bright, talented American. It really was a case of life imitating art; through the process of giving birth to this multi-racial child, we had become the unlikely team we were depicting. We had laughed and sweated and sighed together. But as the producer slowly walked across the floor to face us that afternoon, we knew instantly that it was lost, and our child was stillborn. We had been deceived by a self-made guru and fantasist. He hadn't been able to stump up the cash. Hopes dashed, we discussed the ugly realities of going to the small-claims court to get our contracts honoured, swapped contact details and each slowly left the room. I stopped in the sunny park on Kings road on my way home, and practiced my lines for an audition on Monday. I can't bear to look down or back; I know how dangerous that is. Today, I wake up free as a bird and flat broke. I will need all my wits and chutzpah to get through this, and I choose to have faith that this hiccup is a challenge and a veiled blessing. I hear the words of my character ringing in my ears; "Crisis, what crisis? Let me show you what I can do..."

On the death of the summer lawn

Summer is being hustled out of town as, right on cue, the autumn winds begin to send skirts and leaves swirling. A little squirrel was so absorbed in his urgent foraging that I nearly ran over him on my pre-breakfast tour of Clapham Common this morning; I was so busy marvelling at the overnight transformation in the park to notice him until our brief, startled face-off. With a flick of his tail, he scampered up an oak tree in a huff and I ran off home over lawns that were green yesterday. A lonely pink feather lingered after the party, discarded from someone's feather boa, and found itself in new company as it slowly drowned in browning leaves. I was nearly overtaken by pity for myself and the dying season as I cycled home this evening, after a crazy day of rehearsals and dance class, through a city full of bedraggled people sheltering from a sky full of rain. But then I was home and the hot shower was a glorious gift, and I remembered that I love being alive in the wet cold night, particularly when I get to come home to my wonderful husband and our little nest.

On parkrun.com

There is a wonderful thing called parkrun.com and, once you've registered on their site, you can turn up and run one of their free, timed Saturday morning 5km runs all over the UK whenever you like. Its a wonderful idea, and, unlike communism, I'm pleased to report that it works even better in translation. I turned up at Richmond Gate this morning, locked my bike to a tree and joined the assorted group of runners strewn across the grass accompanied by dogs, kids, families, etc. At an indiscernible signal the group began to flow together and down the hill. The grimly cheerful smile of the organiser had no-nonsense creases of efficiency etched on either side of it, and once thoroughly briefed, we began to run. I started, as I always do, telling myself that I'll run easy and just aim to complete the race. This is my get-out clause, my way of dealing with the fear every runner secretly harbours that you may not be good enough; that you may not measure up to the field or, infinitely worse, your own expectations. But then a slim back up ahead in perky pink Nike shakes the alpha female within awake and I begin to pick up the pace. I start to feel the lactic acid from yesterday's run swirling through grumpy thighs, and then the lungs start to protest. I think I can't go on, and I go a little further. She must be passed, and then a hill appears under my feet and I tell myself I love hills as I ignore the protesting glutes. She is passed, but there is another lithe body slicing the air up ahead, and I must pass her too. Then I see the finish line and cross it with a burst, but my watch informs me that I've taken 28 minutes to run 5 km and I feel defeated. I stood in the queue to register the token, handed to me as I crossed the line, with the people on the laptops. The Labradors were frolicking and the chatter of the middle class Londoners talking about their jobs and their families and the bargain air tickets they'd found online brought me back to a sense of calm; the mundane, the unhurried, the reality of the lives around me. People were congratulating each other for showing up and running, and I remembered I needed to do that too. And then I took myself off down the path to Pembroke Lodge, that gorgeous piece of the past perched above the Thames, with its sweeping view of the river snaking its way into the city. This is where King Henry VIII stood to watch the smoke arise from the Tower, announcing the demise of Anne Boleyn. I sat on the sunny terrace, briefly alone but for the bold rooks, and ate delicious scones with jam and cream. But the real treat came in the mail; when parkrun emailed my actual result I was quite surprised to learn that my watch had lied; my time was 23 minutes, and I was the 10th fastest female of about 70. Which tasted rather sweet, for a little run around my favourite park.

On the red and the white

On a wild whim, I nagged my hair dresser into transforming me from a pale blonde into a raving redhead just before I emigrated to England. At first, I enjoyed comparing the weird differences that I noticed between the way men treat blondes and redheads (they were a little warier, possibly even a bit afraid...) But going back to blonde a year later was a relief. I felt like I had come home, like I had stopped wearing someone else's clothes. And now my agent has gone and got me an audition for a role in a new HBO series, requiring me to be a redhead again. And such is the nature of my crazy business that I am actually going to dye my hair red for one audition and then go back to blonde for my upcoming show! I have visions of myself as an octogenarian begging her hairdresser for a lavender rinse.

On finding Jerusalem in Sloane Square

I had managed to forget how utterly draining it is to be part of a creative process. This is the end of our first week of rehearsals for Popo Gigi, the new musical that opens at the Ashcroft Theatre on September 14th, and I'm all wrung out. As an early birthday treat, Amber got tickets for us to see the new Jez Butterworth triumph at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, but I was truly worried that I would be the girl snoring and drooling in the front row. How I've giggled inwardly when, from the other side of the footlights, I've seen elderly gentlemen in the audience blissfully snoring through Chicago, or King Lear, and even, impressively, Popcorn, which features live gunfire. We raided Partridges on the Kings Road for salmon quiche, juicy peaches and baked goodies and ate al fresco in Duke Of York Square in the waning sunshine. The girls tripped by in things I only usually see behind glass on Sloane Street, and one ambitious lady was wearing the kinky inverted wedge heels that made me turn the pages of Vogue 90 degrees the first time I saw them. I love the fact that people dress with such care in that part of town. The denizens of Sloane Street do not throw on people-shaped bits of cloth and go shuffling down the street; everyone is trying to beautiful, to say something striking with their look, and the grooming elevates the act of dressing to an art form. We fought our way through the scrum of hipsters and shakers in the theatre foyer as the bell was clanging. From our front row seats we could hear the excitement rising to boiling point on both sides of the safety curtain. Its the same moment I adore as the one in which the plane's thrusters shove you, breathless, into the back of your seat. Then began three hours in which I was never in any danger of falling asleep. Such productions are rare, and life-changing. This is what people go to the theatre for. From the opening, a montage of three gleefully contrasted scenes culminating in the charismatic central character drinking a hangover cure of raw egg, milk, cocaine and vodka that he had mixed by sticking the glass in his waistband, to the moment when he was struggling not to be seduced by the fifteen-year old girl dressed as a fairy and counting down the final minutes of her reign as the May Queen, and the closing moments when, blood-streaked and freshly branded by the town thugs for daring to humiliate their leader, he cuts his five-year old son's hand to show him the precious blood that flows through his veins too; I was with it every breath of the way. Jez Butterworth is a great writer. And the cast was magnificent. But in particular the actor Tom Brooke; he played a sweet, sensitive and rather lost boy off to Australia to find himself. His entrance from out of a sofa where he had ostensibly been asleep while the other characters were unaware of his presence is one the funniest entrances I've ever seen. Then he stopped the show with his character's mental stumble over the phrase "And then, right..." which reduced the audience to helpless laughter for a couple of minutes. As an ensemble member, he was impeccable. His utter absorption in the world he was playing in was perfect and while he never pulled focus from where it needed to be, he was fascinating to watch. I hope to see a lot more of him, and to work with him would be thrilling. Afterwards, we walked through Sloane Square to where we had parked our bikes and Amber lent me her cardigan to get home through the suddenly chilly night. I'm still reeling from the things I saw and felt, and can't stop returning to that evocative world. The bar is so much higher than I thought it was, but I want to be able to broaden a girl's view of the world and people in it as this play was able to broaden mine. That's why I can live without Prada shoes and a new sofa.

On the South Bank

There have been concentrated efforts to bump up the playground atmosphere around the South Bank. The tree trunks are garlanded in red and white polka dot fabric (each white dot now featuring the sentiments of any member of the passing populace with a pen). On the skimpy lawn in front of the concrete megalithic dinosaur that is the National Theatre (why are theatres of our era determinedly drab, and more akin to prisons than places of creative release, could someone please explain?), I am amused by the oversize sofa, armchair and lamp that have been covered in astroturf and left to the imaginations of Londoners and tourists. This being Friday afternoon, the city was shedding office and they flocked to the riverside to partake of the movable feast they made. The air was ice creams and high heels slipped on on the tube and I took a seat on the turf with a cup of wine and the script of the musical I start rehearsing on Monday. I was distracted by a young German father rolling around on the fake green like a puppy with his tiny smiling son, who was greatly intrigued by my wine cup. It is another dream fulfilled to be a real part of this city; to be a working actress in this billowing patchwork of need and creativity and survival. I feel so strong and full of light; I can scarcely believe that I am the same girl who, a few months ago, could barely lift her gaze beyond her toes. Of faith, hope and love, it is hope that is the vital ingredient to me. And I have hope again.

On bumping into Bill

There I was, awaiting the producer of the musical I am about to start rehearsing for, on the steps of the Comedy Theatre in Panton Street on Saturday afternoon. He had invited me to use a spare ticket he had for the matinee of a musical about Hemingway's final days called Too Close To The Sun (but renamed To Close On Sunday by one of many scathing critics.) I went along game to learn what I could, which is easier to do from bad art than good; when art is good, its impossible to see the seams. My producer was late. Idly, I watched the bustling throng and my eyes met those of a well-dressed man who was reading the poster on the theatre wall. It was an awkward glance; we had both crossed the lines of looking a little too hard, and we couldn't back away from it without flouting the unwritten social code. He put his glasses in his blazer pocket, extended his hand and said "Hello, I'm Bill". The penny dropped; I was shaking hands with Bill Nighy. Bill "Let's get pissed and watch porn" Nighy. Wonderful actor. See Love, Actually, Pirates Of The Carribean (Davy Jones), Notes On A Scandal... I shouted down my inner schoolgirl, and we had a lovely chat. He's quiet and passionate about Hemingway and generous. He's also an actor biding his time until he becomes a writer... He said he would love to come and see my show, and ambled off into the crowd to see an exhibition of landscape paintings at the National Gallery. I went inside and subjected myself to an hour of a cringe-worthy show. They weren't far wrong when they said that its not even bad enough to be good. At least I know what not to do when I start rehearsing my musical next week. And I've invited Bill Nighy, so I better be good!

On sunsets

The sun here sets in buttercup and pearl behind Westminster, and Big Ben sings to me as I float home on my bike down the Albert embankment. I've been to a tap class, which is a new challenge and I like it, but it makes me so angry with myself. The pretty sunset cheers me up, but I remember the rampant flames over the Johannesburg skyline, and it is a memory I can never shake. Those sunsets are scorched onto the souls of those that breathe them. Africa never lets you go.

On boys in cars

I've always had a weakness for shiny metal capable of thrusting me forward at silly speeds. Its one of the things that my husband and I share. I grew up in Johannesburg, a city where your car is your second skin, your armour, your designer gear, and I drove a procession of flash little numbers; the nimble Renault Sport 2l Clio, the sexy MX5 convertible and even, though expressly forbidden not to, the modified BMW M3... But now we live in a world where it is possible to cycle everywhere (provided you stay away from lorries and those fatal blind spots). Gradually the car has turned from a refuge and a friend into a confinement and a slightly awkward acquaintance. I still love to scorch along country lanes, and there's nothing like the bubble of a car for shouting raucously along to the radio. But I see them differently now. My world can turn without them. I marvel at their engineering, but at times even that is overbearing, and we're building machines that cosset us, and try to soften reality. And I laughed yesterday when, from the saddle of my bicycle, I whizzed past a gold-plated Ferrari, burbling angrily in traffic on Brompton Road. It had Saudi number plates. The amount of glint it generated was damaging to the retinas of the ogling bystanders. Pity it was going nowhere slowly. Although today, on my way to a very thorough ballet class which the heavenly Amber introduced me to in Fulham, I passed two impossibly handsome Mediterraneans on the back of a flatbed. I was on the verge of smirking at the thought that their shiny Jag had broken down, when I realised they were being filmed, and, mid-take, they were smirking at me.

On loneliness

Loneliness is an awful beast. I'm not shy of being alone; give me a long, empty road to run or a cosy corner and a massive book - these are some of the greatest things life can offer me. But being alone and being lonely are two different countries. Since moving to England, I've lived longer in the latter than I care to remember. And this despite being happily married to a wonderful, supportive man. No, loneliness is an odd disease that strikes anyone, anywhere and without warning. It forces you so deep into your own skin that no-one can penetrate and though you might rail and try to tear yourself out, you are simply standing in a crowded room, screaming at the top of your lungs in mute. As if you have relinquished your own power to some unseen hand that stops your mouth and presses on your chest. And so, cycling home from Soho after a dance class and an evening at the theatre last night, I was amazed to realise that the weight is gone. I don't know why it went, or when, but its no longer there. I can breathe again, and speak myself to the world. I only wish I knew how I threw it off, because I know that this malaise is far more common than is given credence in our society. All I know is that it feels wonderful to be so light again.

On the power of Mum

I am amazed at the power a mother can wield. Mummy has made me wildly happy by promising to come over from South Africa in September to see me create the role of a histrionic Russian dominatrix (typecasting again...) in a new musical. It will be two years since we've seen each other. Two years that have been the most challenging, awful, exhilarating times of my life. I have new clothes, new opinions and an entirely different outlook on the world. My face has changed, in reflection of this. My hands are older, hardened by the fact that I am no longer a pampered Johannesburg princess with her own maid. And I can't wait to see her. I have so much to tell her, so many great places to take her to and so many things to share. She has changed too, no doubt, and I can't wait for the moment she steps out of Heathrow and we can get to know each other again. She is the loveliest, sweetest, kindest, gentlest, most humble, beautiful, sensitive woman I know. So why is it that the prospect of having her in my house sees me scrubbing the bathroom tiles on a Sunday evening...two months before she arrives?

On the common sneeze

I sneezed myself awake last night and spent the rest of a dark hour worrying that I have come down with the dreaded lurgie. I spent two hours on London double deckers getting across town yesterday, shuddering at every hard surface I had to touch and glancing in horror at each fellow passenger that happened to cough. But I refuse to add to the situation by worrying about it, although perhaps it may be a good thing to have swine flu while it is still a relatively mild strain... Ah, the power of fear!

On the Alpine climb

The Zen master says, at the beginning of the journey, you know that mountains are mountains. But then you look closer, and begin to doubt. And you doubt harder when you start to climb them, and the ground under your feet is no longer flat and you cannot see the sky for trees. Once you've crossed them, and you have achieved Zen, says the master, mountains are mountains again. And I know its true, for I used to be certain that I could open my mouth and sing something worth listening to. But then I looked closer at my voice. The perfectionist inside didn't like what she heard. Since then, singing has been like walking the highwire. And I'm unable to resist the temptation to look down. No wonder I keep falling off; too many auditions now have seen me sail through the acting and dancing rounds, only to plummet from the dizzy heights of my own fear in the singing audition. And being keenly aware that I am the ringleader of this little circus, and have the power to unleash my own voice at any time I choose helps me not at all. Why does a person choose the stonier path inside herself and make life harder than it needs to be? All I know is that I needed to, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. And I long for the moment I see clear sky again.

On coming up short

Don't you hate that thing that happens when you're sailing along, flowing and moving and feeling at one with the winds of the universe. . .and then you just hit a lull? Come up against a stagnant pocket of air, for no reason at all? Its so dull. I feel like a gray Tuesday afternoon, and I am not especially fond of Tuesdays. I prefer Saturday nights, when the city is a shiny blur, or Sunday mornings that radiate lazily like circles on a still pond. And it all comes down to the cold realisation that next week my happy little tour is a memory and I am a 'resting' actress again, with no idea of how to put food on the table between now and the start of my next job, a month away. I choose this life over any other; doubt may be an unpleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one. But that doesn't stop me waking in the night with knitted brow and having to remind myself to have faith.

On kickstarting Saturday

Sloane Square, Battersea Park, Albert Bridge over the Thames, Chelsea Physic Gardens. These are all places I know from postcards, but they look best under a Saturday sky already ablaze at seven in the morning, with not a tourist or a taxi to mar the picture. The majesty of London's monuments soar into an untroubled sky and her manicured gardens lie replete with hot flowers. My ipod was on shuffle and God put his finger on Springsteen's Born in the USA, an excellent choice which served to remind me that it was indeed the 4th July, and that even when running through the streets of London, you are never alone. It looked like being another beautiful day. I paused in Duke of York Square, just off the Kings road, and beside the Saatchi Gallery, where a solitary Polish waitress was laying out cutlery at Patisserie Valerie in the square beneath the trees. The coffee she brought me was strong enough to strip the paint from my nails, and I lingered over it, watching the shopgirls, groomed like champion racehorses, throwing back lattes and girding their loins before unlocking the doors of their glass cages, preparing for another day of sweet-talk and sneer. I used to be one of them. As I ran back along the glinting Thames, I was thinking of a girl I saw in a dance class at Pineapple this week. Its a difficult class; unlike the nurturing, gentle encouragement of other classes, this teacher fosters an atmosphere of competition and adrenalin. Its a class you need attitude to survive, and girls wear bikinis and hot pants and more make up than on an average Saturday night. But this girl stood out from the crowd not because she was beautiful or scantily clad, but because she danced like it was the last day on earth. Every movement was a word, and her dance became a language that any other human being could understand. I saw the floor on fire. I saw her soul pouring into the air. It was a defining moment in my understanding of what it is that I'm striving for. And I felt burned by the shame of knowing that I have wasted so much time being doubtful, half-hearted, afraid. This was a very powerful lesson, and I'm still reeling from it. I know I have no more time to waste. As the early risers of Chelsea and Battersea began to emerge, they may have noticed a girl who kept breaking off from her run to dance snatches of a routine to an invisible audience. Luckily, I didn't notice them! And then I went home and pulled my husband out of bed for a breakfast picnic on Clapham Common...

On getting the part

At last, I have a real reason to celebrate...I have landed a fabulous part in a new musical, which is going to be on at the Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon in September. The producers are hoping to be able to turn it into a longer run, with the possibility of taking it to India. This makes sense when you read the script; the premise is that a Bollywood actor and his entourage arrive in England to perform Romeo and Juliet. I play a member of the entourage, a Russian wannabe actress with a chequered history named Yogi. The potential for silliness looms large. But its a funny thing about getting what you want- so it may be a small step, but its a step in the right direction nonetheless - it can overwhelm a girl, and make it all seem remote and surreal. So I celebrated by getting a nasty head cold, and going for a run around Richmond Park with a packet of tissues in one hand.

On dashing through Oswestry

I love mornings. I have fond memories of my seven-year old self tearing gleefully around our garden in the Singaporean jungle at five 'o clock on Sunday mornings. By the time Mummy roused herself and laid on brunch, I was ravenous and her gingerbread pancakes were ambrosial. How I miss those gorgeous, leisurely Sunday feasts with Daddy buried in the papers and the four of us around a table groaning with food... But my enthusiasm for the dawn is still with me. Yesterday I threw up the sash window of my hotel room in Oswestry, in Shropshire, and breathed in a fine new day. I could have done with an extra hour of sleep but my trainers were calling to me, so I pulled on the usual gear and stood on the hushed pavement outside the hotel for a moment, wondering where the good running was at. Everywhere, as it turned out. Oswestry is a little town in pretty farmland, but the quiet cobbled streets of the town centre boasted elegant shop fronts, curry houses, a few larger grocery stores and a sweet town square presided over by a bronze statue of a farmer with his sheep. Every street seemed to end in a park, or a graveyard dreaming quietly beside an ancient stone church. (Or ancient to me; I still see English history through South African eyes, where old means three hundred years.) Rising out of a well-manicured bed of geraniums was a stone monument to the men of the town who died in the South African war. How different the red earth heaped on their graves must be to the dark loamy soil their families lie in. The town seemed to shake itself as the church bells tolled eight and ladies in tracksuits began to collect outside Greggs, the baked goods chain, awaiting the key holder. Back at the hotel, I hit the shower before grazing my way through the muesli selection of the buffet. Nothing tastes as good as food you've earned with your trainers on! I was sorry to leave the place. Perhaps its a good area to go for a quick cycle tour some summer weekend...

On crossing the Severn

At last, I see why the Welsh are a proud race. As we crossed over the river on the Severn bridge, I felt my spirit soaring up to join the free-wheeling seagulls. The bridge is geometric steel confectionery, and delicious to behold. It made me quite goosepimply. Then the man at the toll booth was friendly and the vegetation got ever more lush and verdant. We stopped for lunch in a pub built like a ship overlooking Cardiff Bay and watched the rain prick the choppy water. Even Welsh rain is tolerable, particularly after Birmingham, which not even the sunshine could paint pretty! Then we ventured up north, along rolling green lanes made into tunnels by ancient hedgerows and broken by gates that boasted views of happy cows. I was hugely entertained by the road signs, which proclaimed destinations I couldn't pronounce without spitting on anyone in a two mile radius. Every village we passed looked like it had recently been buffed and polished. And everyone was calm and sunny, despite the sky regularly emptying its contents on their heads. Whatever their secret is, I plan to go back and find out...

On Saturday activities

I had an audition this afternoon, for a family-oriented show called Bink And The Hairy Fairy (Chekov it sure ain't). Auditions are strange beasts. Like first dates with stage fright thrown in. The more you do, the better you get, or so the adage goes. But I've been auditioning since I was 13 and I'm still wondering when I'll be able to pass myself as a rational, cognizant human being when faced with an audition panel. I become a bundle of stress and fluff for hours beforehand, and manage to convince myself that ironing the contents of the washing basket is a task of vital importance over, say, running through my monologues, or warming up my voice. I could turn procrastination into an Olympic sport. But once there, the audition went better than I feared. The top notes came out clear, and the monologue I've recently added to my repertoire went alright, even if it still needs a lot of polishing. (A piece from a lovely play called My Mother Said I Never Should by Charlotte Keatley, incidentally; well worth a read.) Then I jumped on the train for London again and went to a dance class at Pineapple. I had missed my favourite class, a high energy jazz class by Andrew, but I was in time for body-conditioning with the biddy brigade. This is a class of ladies of advanced years who gather for their weekly tune up. I took my place at the barre behind a stern matron who was kind enough to holler the routines at me. Such devotion to the precise swing of a head or curve of a finger, and I had to suppress a smile more than once... But the best part is the leaps. Before I broke my foot (onstage in a pantomime in 2006), I was a reluctant jumper on a good day. And when I returned to dancing, the bare floor terrified me. I simply couldn't face the grand allegro. But recently that's begun to change. Perhaps it was realising that the worst that can happen is you might break something-which will heal in time. Or perhaps its all the running and cycling, which have given me formidable thigh muscles... Whatever the cause, I am beginning to love flinging myself into empty space, and I'm trying to leap longer and further and higher than ever before. Gelsey Kirkland's phrase The Shape of Love comes to mind. Sweaty and happy, I cycled home along the teeming South Bank, which was thronged with Londoners and tourists in Saturday war paint. I marvel at how humanity in great numbers ebbs and flows like water, each individual pulled by an invisible force spun by need. And then I arrived home to a grumpy husband, who had disappointed himself in his cycle race and was on the sofa in a funk. Luckily, we live within range of a great Italian place and a grocery store that stocks the complete range of Green and Black's chocolate!

On the price of hope

I, with gardening gloves on, was pottering happily before breakfast this morning. I may have managed to effectively exterminate almost every plant that has passed through my hands thus far in my life, but I hope to be a better gardener. And that, I'm realising, is the point of gardening. You hope. Hope that it will rain, or shine, or that the tiny seedling will find life and get bigger, or that the straggly-looking plant will somehow look healthier and greener in the morning. But then Radio Four intruded on my happy philosophising. They were interviewing a boy in northern Zimbabwe named Patrick. He is in his early teens, and his mother is dying of AIDS, which he is too afraid to admit to for fear of the stigma that would befall his family. He watches his friends walk off to school in the morning, and then returns to the task of being both mother and father to his younger siblings and nursing his mother, whom he needs to carry to the toilet. He'll never know what a hero he is, because he will never leave his village, except if he is forced to migrate to a city in search of food or work. And I, while I may be a struggling actress, at least can afford hope. But it really shouldn't be a commodity.

On thunder in an English dawn

There was a strange shivering in the air in the witching hour just before dawn today. A curious, familiar rumbling was shaking me from sleep and I lay still for a moment, trying to frame the word. It was thunder. Real tummy-rumbling thunder, in a sky fizzing with lightning. I was amazed. Since leaving South Africa two years ago, I haven't met real thunder. I was beginning to believe that English skies were incapable of producing such. Rain they have in every permutation, bar the monsoon-kind, but thunder, it never does. Until this morning. I slipped out of bed and knelt on the windowsill overlooking my little garden, watching the fat drops pelt my roses and pool in the geranium leaves, and marvelled at the electric sky. Glorious. I surged a million miles back to that place I used to call home, that incredible land of Highveld skies, where the lightning shows are spectacular and free and can constitute a happy evening's entertainment from the stoep of a farmhouse. Wild and magical and powerful are those storms. In Johannesburg, the cumulonimbus would bubble and rise like dough on a sweltering afternoon and, come four o' clock, the resultant shower would bathe the city clean of its heat and dust and she'd become a woman decking herself in a sunset-tinted dress for a balmy evening under starry skies. So much have I gained by moving to this little island (see previous post) but so much have I lost. The irrepressible rhythm of African drums that would erupt into full cry in the feet of the man selling newspapers at a city traffic light, dancing to music only he could hear but everyone could see. The retina-searing indigo of the jacaranda trees that make Pretoria in October into a hazy purple heaven. The absurd, childlike cry of the hadida bird, mocking from an Camel's foot tree. The smell of the veld grass after the autumn fires have roared through and left the land scorched and barren. But I crept back to bed smiling, because at least the thunder has found me again.

On making my mark

I voted yesterday, for the first time in my life! Oh wondrous elation! I got home from work, went for a run (to stretch the legs prior to a 10k race around Richmond Park tomorrow) and then, when David arrived home, we took a stroll over to our local polling station and did our civic duty in the local council and European parliamentary elections. It was so simple, and civilised. The only elections I have to compare the experience to are the South African kind, which I viewed with the dispassionate interest of the uninvolved. As a permanent resident, I wasn't invited to the polling party, so I drove past long queues of would-be voters burning in the sun and wondered idly what it was that compelled people to endure such inconvenience. Now I know. As I walked back out into the pretty evening, past the well-suited Conservative member sporting his standard issue blue rosette and enquiring of us what our address was for their records, I felt like I had finally become British. And that is a very good feeling indeed.

Sunday Chores

The sirens
wailing on the wind
in the summer city
sing of death
while Sunday's sheets
set sail
and my clothes dance like dervishes
to barbeques
and babies trying on new lungs for size.

On showing up for class

There is a fine line and an entire universe between going to a dance class, and showing up for class. The latter involves dressing the part, particularly at Pineapple, and using the cycle to the studio to decide to own one's patch of floor. Once through the crowd of hip young things that buzz around the steps in their sloppy tartan shirts and Converse and gravity-defying jeans, the miasma of 12 hours worth of sweat-soaked floors and third-hand breath welcomes the faithful. I am comfortable with this stench; fifteen years of dancing conditioned me well. And I love the hive, every floor heaving and pounding with an aural cocktail of drum n bass and Britney, each studio offering a different pack in a carefully evolved dress code. The hip hoppers are still the wildest, where girls in hot pants and striped socks attempt to out-'fro each other. I delight to watch them collide with the bunheads fresh from their plies and the collective tussle for supremacy over London's steepest narrowest staircase that ensues. Once into studio 11 tonight, I was in the hands (decorated with fetching black nail polish) of Andrew, my new favourite teacher. This man is so infectiously enthusiastic about the act of sweating to music (Britney again!) and I am swept up by his fanatic attention to detail and his passion for dance. He makes me want to look at the girl in the mirror and like her more. I remember that its so much about training the muscle to create the action flawlessly again and again, until it happens without thought and you are free to speak yourself fluently without hesitation or lack of vocabulary. For too long, I've been hovering on Lake Me, and finally I've plunged. And the water's fine.

Spring Park

Alone on Memory Bench
he devours the lady joggers feasting on green
While barking personal trainers
exhort their clients to greater fat burn
And keening puppies sing of sensory overload.
Amateur archivist, he opens a fresh file for
the budding princess
dreaming of ponies
whose curls bounce sunlight
while Daddy wheels her by.
A peacock screams to the hot blue sky.
And he leaves the wood to cool and forget him,
returning home to the silence left by someone he loved enough
to watch wither and die.

On carrying on

Sometimes its the wanting that is most exhausting. Or it is when you're busy telling yourself that its impossible, out of reach, been done by others before you, out of your league and other stupid things. Attempting to better yourself is hard enough when you're nearly alone in an impatient, demanding city. But nigh on impossible when its you holding you back. What then? Give up? If only I could! But that's the one thing I don't know how to do.

The magical healing powers of comfort food

After a great dance class at Pineapple on Saturday afternoon, given by a very enthusiastic and therefore motivating teacher, I discovered that what I thought was merely a stiff hip flexor is actually a weird swollen lump at the top of my right leg. Something in my subconscious has gone '!!!...' and is now demanding comfort food, like my sister's uber-gooey brownies or my dad's cheese straws. And I feel dazed and worried and queasy. All because of some random lump. Amazing how, in times of mental distraction and unease, I find myself grimly scrubbing the kitchen sink and aimlessly browsing the fluffiest whitest towels in the homeware section at Debenhams. I also managed to all but set fire to my brother-in-law, James, in my abstracted state. I was attempting to help him clear a blocked ear, imagining myself as Florence Nightingale, when a piece of burning wick from the Chinese ear candle went astray. And he was too polite to complain; instead he meekly submitted to my ministrations until the candle was finished before asking for a block of ice! This is a brave man indeed. And let it not be said that English manners are moribund!

The weekend winds to its lingering conclusion. Tomorrow I'm on the phone to the doctor first thing, to hopefully have my grisly fears dashed. But until then, I think I'll go plant something in the garden.

On second thoughts, maybe the Great British Rain-Off has nixed that idea. But I have procured myself a block of vintage cheddar from Sainsburys, poured myself a glass of cheap French white and I've just remembered that everything is going to be alright.

On self trimming

Mummy was alarmed to hear that I've been chopping my own hair off again. But even though this is a budget-driven decision, I do maintain that its great entertainment and not nearly as difficult or perilous as it sounds. Why more women don't have a go baffles me. At least you don't have to attempt to explain what you're after to someone else, or endure the usual banal pleasantries. Just stand in front of the mirror over the sink, study your face and snip. Think of the techniques you've seen your hairdresser using when you've been in her chair. You can do the back by pulling the strands up over your head after marking the desired length with your fingers. But be warned: this is an addictive past-time! The trick, as with eyebrow tweezing, is knowing when to stop.

On the Northern Conquests

This week our show was on a tour of schools in places like Shropshire and Warwickshire, and Chris, our red van and I pushed further north into Upper England than I've ever been. (Which, hitherto, was Oxford.) Monday was a bank holiday, and I set off in the little red postal van with our set rattling in the back to collect Chris from his family home in a village outside Cheltenham. I was wise enough to comment on his mother's beautifully tended garden before lunch was served, which prompted the dear lady to roll up her sleeves and whip around, taking cuttings of everything for my fledgling garden at home. After lunch of burgers and potato salad and homemade apple pie, we nestled my new green treasures into a snug spot beside our lights and drove up to Shifnal, near Telford in Shropshire. I had found an online bargain for our evening accommodation, at a place intriguingly named Naughty Nell's, which we found on a busy road opposite a tea room. The place was a 16th century coaching inn now featuring Mongolian cuisine, so-called after a tenuous association with King Charles' paramour, Nell Gwynne. It hadn't been dusted since her time, apparently, and we had the place to ourselves that drizzly evening. Except for Harold, the resident ghost, according to the publican, ex of the Paras and with many a gruesome tale to tell. I left Chris in his thrall and retreated to the eerie Teddy Bear Room, where I attempted to wash myself in the world's smallest shower and not brain myself on the the lowest beamed ceilings outside of Lilliput. Chris, who is 6'4", thought I had chosen the place as a practical joke.

Our show, early but sadly not bright the next morning, was at a newly built school, appropriately named The Old Hall School. Our get-in is a well oiled machine by now, and I rig the lights and sound while Chris does the set. Its a wonderful thing to be completely reliant on each other and I find the ritual of laying out props together very soothing; each member of the partnership wordlessly doing the tasks that need doing. I used to believe that I was lucky as a performer to have a stage management team to worry about this 'stuff' for me. But stuff is only that if you don't care about it. And perhaps the more you care, the luckier you get.

After our second show, for the older classes at Old Hall, we were free with half a day to ourselves so we went to Ironbridge, which is a tiny town built around the world's first iron bridge. The place is postcard pretty; the eponymous bridge is triumphant over a gentle river meandering through a lush gorge and presided over by the kind of town to do a Stepford wife proud. The day was that perfect marriage of a little too chilly and nearly hot that England has down to a fine art, and we found a Thai restaurant overlooking the gorge that offered lunch for a humble £6. Very exciting stuff to lowly paid actors! We walked off our Eastern indulgences along the river, down a shaded lane bounded by lingering bluebells (still an exotic species to me) and ended up nowhere exciting, whereupon we turned around and wandered back to our little postal van and set off in search of our next stop.

Oldham is not a place that will end up on a travel agent's wish list anytime soon. It made me feel like I was in someone else's basement. Someone like an axe murderer, say, or a misanthropic taxidermist. I just got the heebies from the place. I felt conspicuous and unwelcome, a situation compounded by the lingering musty smell in our hotel room, the officious hotel manager brightly informing us that we were late for check in, and the man with the bloodstained hand in the entrance hall who leered at me. I locked myself in the room and passed the evening listening to Chris willing his team, Man U, to take their place in the Cup Final (which they did, thanks in no small part to his lusty vocal urgings). Luckily I had remembered to pack a pair of scissors, and amused myself in the bathroom reshaping my coiffure. Good entertainment never came so cheap.

Breakfast was in the sun room - perhaps wistfully named. I had requested the continental breakfast and was rather jealous to compare the box of Tesco muesli that arrived on my side of the table with the Full English that landed in front of Chris. Although my arteries breathed a prayer of thanks. We had a free morning and were at a loss as to how to spend it. The sky was resolutely slate and spitting, and the only perceivable landmark was a jumbo Asda. I asked Chris to drive me out of the town and dump me for half an hour, which he very obligingly did. We drove until I spotted the first remotely pretty field. Picture it: I'm in my pink running jacket and Nikes, hair set in rollers and bound up in a headscarf, and I jump out of our little red van and go running off down a muddy lane. If my mother could see me now! The muddy lane became a bog, and I thought of the fun I had splashing about our garden in Singapore when the monsoon rains arrived. I do recall the mud being slightly warmer back there, but no matter. I followed a signpost that said Public Footpath, which appeared to point through an empty farmyard, and on the other side of the yard was a dazzling view of a Lancashire dale sweeping down to the train line skirting the river at the bottom of the valley. The relentless wind swirled through the knee high grass, painting ephemeral brush strokes. This was more like it. I descended a steep muddy slope into the valley, wondering how I was ever going get back up again and knowing as I did so that I would find a way because I had to. The meadow at the bottom of the hill was a green velvet secret and I skirted it happily, listening to the singing river and the wind rattling through the trees. The slope presented itself again, and I realised its easier to run up than skid down. The trick is momentum, and putting your weight on the balls of your feet. But, with this triumph still glowing in my cheeks, I found myself greeted at the farmyard gate by a bristling pack of dogs and an irate farmer. So much for Public Footpath. The woman enquired of me in broad Lancashire where I had come from and what I was doing. I said something lame like "Down there...it said...I'm running...", and she responded that "We don't like people on our land." I felt foolish and decided the safest thing to do was befriend the barking unwelcome committee. Seeing her attack dogs switch allegiance made the rubicund cheeks of my interrogator flame brighter and I decided now would be an excellent time to make my way, in what I hoped was a soothing but swift manner, back down the lane as fast as I could manage without looking like prey. Chris, when I recounted the incident to him in the van, said that what else did I expect? we were in the North after all. What I want to know is exactly where we crossed the border.

Our show that day was in a working class area in Rochdale, and the dinner ladies (those vast, terrifying wielders of ladles) were clearing the remains of the lunchtime chaos from the hall as we put up our set. I have become quite au fait with school dinner menus in the last few weeks, and I think Jamie Oliver has a long way to go in his attempts to reform the British school dinner. How can little minds learn while little tummies are attempting to digest roast chicken with stuffing and gravy? I was amused and amazed to see one menu offering children toast with a choice of beans or toast. Yum.

Sweaty and satisfied after the show, we packed up yet again and headed south to our evening stop in Warwick. Warwickshire is Shakespeare's county, and I'm amazed he ever managed to leave the place; its the prettiest English county I've seen yet. This is the kind of place I thought they made up for the purposes of washing powder and butter commercials when I was growing up in the jungles, concrete and otherwise, of Singapore. We treated ourselves to pizza and wine at Pizza Express in Warwick, after a walk about the town as dusk fell. Warwick is idyllic. I stood on the wide stone bridge over the rowers and swans conceding each other space on the smooth gray river, and felt joy surge through me. Swallows were zinging through the air around the rearing spires of the magnificent castle downriver and a lively wind was blowing in new ideas. I felt bathed clean and sharpened by its energy.

By the dawning of day four, in the charmless Days Inn at the M40 rest stop, I was quite ready to go home. I put on my new (albeit pre-owned; I am totally converted to Oxfam thanks to Amber's keen eye for a good sartorial scoop) summer dress, bursting with pink roses, which was an antidote to another drizzly sky. Two shows later,the sun had emerged and we were floating homeward down emerald country lanes, the breeze soft and sunshiny on newly bared shoulders. And life was good.

This is turning out to be a better gig than I'd ever dreamed. I'd always flipped past the posts for auditions for children's theatre, dismissing it as too many steps back. But then my own phrase wafted up from my self conscious and asserted itself at the opportune moment: The secret to happiness is often the lowering of your standards...

On English salads

Why do the English feel a salad isn't finished until it is drenched in fat and stuffed with carbs? Its downright cruel. All I want is something fresh, tasty and not weighed down with rice, potatoes or pasta. But even when they've managed to resist any of the above, they break down at the final moment and pepper the poor thing with croûtons, and drench it in mayonnaise. Horrific. No wonder I was privy to a conversation in a staff room today, in which a size sixteen woman complained that its shocking that she should find it so hard to find clothes in her size, which she feels is the average size of the modern British woman. I think I see a link here.

On new friendship

There is a proverb (country of origin currently escapes me) that says your new friends never match the comfort and depth of your old friendships. If I believed this, my world would be a poorer place. I couldn't bear to think that there were no new bonds to be forged in the furnaces of life and that the friendships I have sacrificed to emigration or neglect can never be replaced. I've always been stubbornly independent and selfishly insular, and these are not factors conducive to lasting friendships, which is something I deeply regret. But yesterday Amber came over to help me tame my garden, and as we raked and weeded and snipped (I don't have garden clippers, so the kitchen scissors were pressed into border clipping duty) I realised how lucky I am to have met this girl. Its wonderful to come across a kindred spirit in some unexpected corner of your life. We met when we were working in a shop in Knightsbridge, fresh from South Africa and New Zealand respectively, and found we were both dancers. Since then, we've gone on a weekend to Lille, sweated in dance class together, cycled through country lanes in Berkshire and spent hours yakking over bread and chocolate spread in our favourite coffee shop in South Kensington. But it was while we were gardening in our matching gloves yesterday that I suddenly appreciated how wonderfully lucky I am to have stumbled across her path. Its a joy to discover how a mind works, or what a certain expression means, or to be able to start an inventory of a person's many different smiles. And to realise that yes, old friends can never be replaced. But new friends can be just as wonderful. And someone who is willing to give up her Sunday to help you trim your borders with the kitchen scissors is a great friend!

On self-immolation

There's a word you don't hear every day. Did you know that 59 women (if someone between the ages of 13 and 25 can be called a woman) have committed suicide by setting fire to themselves in Herat in the past year? Before I read Christina Lamb's article in the Sunday Times, I would have been wrong if I'd said I knew what self-immolation really was. I thought it had something to do with harming yourself in the way that I've been doing lately, lifting heavy pieces of set and bruising myself on the furniture in my madcap show. Every new day, a new bruise. But how could I even compare the pain of a scraped shin to a strangled soul, so despairing and hopeless that flames seem a peaceful way out? I can't. It chills to think that as I type this, there are women and girls out there under a foreign sky who could only dream of being able to write away their miseries, or lose themselves in a good book as I am privileged to be able to do. There are somethings I believe a human being should be able to take for granted.

On beauty

This incredibly peripatetic lifestyle I have recently had thrust upon me, while requiring me to set off at silly hours of the morning and postpone my morning runs, has an upside. I get to see new parts of the town and country. Today I discovered the joys of the A3, and Waterlooville, which is close to Portsmouth. The two hour drive from London treated me to the unbridled yellow of the rape fields, to ancient trees and green hills like reclining women. It made me realise, yet again, how necessary beauty is to my sanity. Without something beautiful to look at, a part of me shrivels. My mind is filled by my eyes. I have been known to spend my last tenner on a bunch of flowers. And England in Spring certainly delivers. Even eastern London, occasionally derided as a beauty-free wasteland, has its delights. At a sweet little primary school last week, while we had a moment between setting up for the show and the arrival of our lilliputian audience members, I sat on the steps of the hall beneath a cherry tree, in a blizzard of candy pink petals, and was perfectly and simply happy.

On Sunday

So much for Sunday being a day of rest. As the sun rose, so did we. We headed west through our old haunt, Reading, and on to the cute villages of south Oxfordshire. While I waited for David to complete the Reading Spring Race around a little piece of English postcard-perfection called Woodcote, I treated myself to a light jog through the bluebelled woods. I didn't run too far because I was on Feed Zone duty, and I was the only woman in Woodcote handing her sweaty spouse a water bottle dressed in a pink silk kimono jacket and white linen culottes this morning, a fact that only I seemed to find completely normal. Then we went for lunch at a very charming place called the Woody Nook at Woodcote, where I can highly recommend the Cornish sea bass, filleted with flair at our table by the French waiter. My idea of a perfect Sunday lunch; one that ends with cappucino and the Sunday Times. After which, we went home and I walked the arduous two blocks to our local pub to see a play with my lovely friend Amber. Theatre 503 performs in a little theatre above the pub, and delivers new writing. This was a first play from actor Orlando Wells. We were interested in his dark view of a world run by a massive corporation, but he had stuffed his play with Messiahs, Mary Magdalens, idiot-savants, and People Who Shouted A Lot, which lost me a little. And now I'm home, frantically typing before dashing off to bed for the requisite eight hours. Its bliss to get out of London for the day, but its even better coming home to it to begin another week.

On ugliness

Yesterday I was visited by a moment of clarity. We had arrived slightly early at the South London school we were due to perform at. Our set was up, our costumes were on and we only awaited our tiny audience members to finish their lesson before filing into the hall. It being another miraculously lovely fresh Spring morning, I was sitting on the hall steps beneath a ticker tape shower of cherry blossom petals, and the thought struck me that beauty is one of the most vital things to my state of well-being. I wilt when I'm surrounded by ugliness. I will spend my last pound on a bunch of flowers. I don't think I am alone in this need, but too often it is sacrificed to commerce in modern life. And then we end up with cheap, uninspired buildings, like the 42 storey mall they are proposing to fasten onto Clapham Junction station. But, reason number 101 why I'm so glad to live in England: by joining the ranks of Those Who Complain, I am taking up a time-honoured national past time, and I have hope that my voice will be heard by my local council. Which is a treat for someone raised on the corrupt machinations of the apathetic South African bureaucrats.

On life as a wandering player

Today, St George's Day, was a jolly affair as the sun was on loan from Spain and builders flew red and white flags from their vans. Every park sports little dandelion stars. I have just surfaced after a frantic week of rehearsals for the show I shall be doing for the next three months, The Starry Messenger. I've never rehearsed a show in fourteen days before, and certainly not one that requires me to run the lights and sound in between my nineteen costume changes. What a sheltered life I've led... The past week was a combination of frustration and panic, as I attempted to get my head around a new set of skills but now that I've been doing it for the past two days, and I don't come running off stage in blind panic thinking 'What am I supposed to be now, the Cockney dog or the Cornish pirate...', I realise that I'm enjoying it and its certainly a great challenge. Getting up in front of a hundred kids dressed as a dog is very good for the soul, on so many levels. Not even I can take myself seriously when jumping around in a dog suit, sweating to death. And how they love it! All those gleaming faces, upturned and expectant. They don't want drama. They haven't seen it all before. They just want someone to fall over and leap about dressed as a dog. And the sound of their laughter, the instant united giggle, is pure delight.

My co-actor, Chris, a very likeable boy who is tall and eager like a great dane puppy, is the second half of the cast and crew. We drive to each school, put up the set, do the show, dismantle the set and go on to the next one. After two shows each day, I am dazed and wrung out. I have fantasies that we are a travelling troupe in Elizabeth the First's England, wandering from town to town, living on the whims of our audiences, and dodging fruit. It is a wonderful treat to be able sit in a park and eat an al fresco lunch in between shows. Poor Chris doesn't know how many picnics he's in for! I'm looking forward to the schools that we have to travel to in exotic places like Hampshire and the Midlands (alright, exotic to me).

Luckily all this doesn't leave me much time to question life, the universe and everything, but I feel like I've lost my firm footing and am floating in a little bubble of a world that comprises me , my fellow actor and a little red van. My aim is to get to regular acting and dance classes, and not lose sight of my goals of working on screen and tv and on the stages in the West End. Although, I doubt any audience could ever match these for sheer reward.

Wandering Through The Land Of Stupid

I cannot shake the nagging suspicion that I am going through a very dumb phase in my personal development. In recent years, I do believe I've chosen to unknow so much that I vaguely recall knowing before. This must have something to do with the waning hunger for new knowledge, as I struggle to juggle adult tasks like keeping the flat in a state sanitary enough for habitation and negotiating my way to work on time and making enough money to buy groceries. I never thought being an adult could be so dull. I seem to recall my parents making it look like so much fun as I staggered around in mummy's high heels and helped daddy plant pretty flowers in our garden in Singapore. After this exhausting week, physically and mentally, I have cocooned myself in cashmere and retreated to the sofa to soothe myself with fish fingers (perfect comfort food) and the Sunday Times. I like the Sunday Times because, for a brief hour or so, I feel a tiny bit more informed and a bit less ignorant. But my lack of knowledge about my world is frustrating me. I hate feeling stupid, especially when I know I'm not. I've often dreamed of going to study at Oxford or Cambridge. But I've set myself the task of learning how to negotiate successfully through the world before I closet myself away from it.

On Being Tourists At Home

This weekend, Husband and I celebrated Easter by feasting on the museums in South Kensington. We've lived in London for three months. It's high time we started taking advantage of the reasons we moved here in the first place! The price you pay for living in one of the world's treasure troves is that all too quickly you become jaded. And when you are tired of London you are tired of life, or so it is said. If I am to eventually take these delights for granted, I'd better have sampled them first. So on Saturday I coerced my sceptical love onto a bus, for one of the only moments in his life. This is a man born with a bicycle clamped between his thighs, to whom the bus is a natural enemy. But as my bicycle is undergoing cosmetic attention (more on that next time), and it is lunacy to drive in London, a bus was the obvious alternative. We bought Oyster cards, waited for all of three minutes before the 345 rolled up at the stop outside our front door, and even got the front seats on the upper deck. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have a convert on our hands...

On Saturday we dived into the Science Museum. Incredible that you can wander in off the street and stare at such lovingly crafted machines or fragile relics of man's haphazard climb up the tree of progress. We spent an hour staring at steam engines and I loved watching his face radiate enthusiasm as he explained the process of creating energy from steam. There was a model of a beam engine, originally owned by the engineer James Watt, that was so gloriously animal-like in it's motion. I saw a giraffe bending to drink as the beam was sucked down towards the chamber, and a praying mantis as it lifted free, as though holding it's arms elegantly tucked. There was also a well laid-out display of Formula One's contribution to modern convenience, with it's different components on display with their accompanying developments. Like the excruciatingly expensive Factor 001 bicycle, or the curious health monitoring pod, that looked like a futuristic armchair in a plastic bubble and a very cosy place for an undisturbed nap. A canny PR exercise it is that Formula One remind us of their importance to every day living as cars lose ground in popular opinion as we see the planet start frying... Another treat was the lunar module that brought Apollo astronauts safely home through the Earth's atmosphere.

Today, Easter Monday, we hopped aboard another bus and scratched at the surface of the iceberg that is the V & A. After a fascinating stroll through a lot of ludicrously ornate religious silverware and some exquisite stained glass windows, we found the Performance and Theatre gallery. Some highlights here were incredible videos and stills photographs of past glories. I loved the detailed mock up of Kylie's dressing room from her Showgirl tour, the floor strewn with glittering, tiny shoes. So did a gentleman beside me, whose daughter was rummaging among the rail of crazy costumes for something to try on, but the rail was beyond her reach. Daddy was a little too engrossed to help... There were exquisite set models of previous productions, and a sweet model of the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane, featuring the grisly star traps that used to shoot unlucky performers up through the stage floor from a spring loaded platform by way of a sharp-toothed star shaped platform. I've been on enough rickety stage traps to be incredibly grateful these things are now illegal.

I could have drifted happy and agape through the sumptuous rooms of magnificent paintings, each a tale jostling to be unravelled. But David began to glaze over and take on the look of a man in the dentist's waiting room, so for the sake of marital harmony we escaped into the Spring sunshine, reeling from cultural overdose. We went to Le Pain Quotidien, a Belgian place around the corner from South Ken station, where the bread basket comes with their luscious homemade chocolate spread. It is something that sustained Amber, my favourite Kiwi, and I through a long miserable winter when we were shopgirls working on Brompton road. After the coffee was done and we had had our fill of people watching, we happy two sauntered home through Chelsea and Battersea, ogling the beautiful brick apartments.

It's thrilling to know we could spend every weekend doing this for as long as we pleased, and never run out of something new to discover. It's yet another reason we knew we had to escape Johannesburg and become Londoners.

On Being Alone In Paris

The prize for running my first marathon, from me to me, was a handful of days in Paris to wander as I pleased. I like wandering alone in strange cities. It's my idea of freedom. I tend to dig myself into a trench of daily routine when at home, which I both love and loathe. But in a new town, with no trenches dug, I am a free agent. I can see the horizon. I wake up every morning with the sketchiest of plans and am welcome to break the date with myself and follow the whims that blow in through the window. Such winds were generally blowing in the direction of the Left Bank, where I discovered the delights of the famous Cafe des Flores and Les Deux Magots (overpriced coffee, exquisite sugar packets, disdainful waiters, sensational people-watching) and spent happy hours scribbling and imagining who all the fascinating people around me might be. One of the greatest pleasures of traveling through a culture whose language you don't fully understand is that you are spared the banalities of other people's conversations. How often are you privy to witty banter or illuminating insights on the Tube? Inner city life, tragically, far more regularly serves up a stew of the petty gripes, veiled hypocrisies, and grisly health concerns of my fellow man. The most disturbing part of all this is how often I see my own ignorances paraded before me. In France, all that human noise is on mute and I can watch, enthralled, and allow my imagination free rein.

When I did need some contact with deeper thought, I found it in a poetry reading at Shakespeare & Co. This is a little rabbit hole of an English bookshop on the Seine where the original proprietor, Sylvia Beach, was a friend to Hemingway et al and the shop still allows travellers in need to sleep amongst the books at night in return for their labour as shop-assistants during waking hours. This is my idea of Heaven! Besides Left Bank American intelligentsia, the place attracts a steady stream of tourists, like me, who were milling happily through the book-lined rooms, past the piano available should your fingers feel the itch, and up the stairs where a quote on the wall bids you be kind to strangers lest they be angels in disguise. A closet of a room was readied with rows of tiny folding chairs and the air buzzed with expectant American chat. Sean O'Brien, our poet, read us some juicy pieces about death and water, standing before a window open to cherry blossoms and humming traffic. He is from Hull, and speaks of the austere landscape in that pocket of North East England and its wearing on the soul. He read with weight and gravitas, mopping sweat from his brow, but thinly veiled is a little boy blowing raspberries. Afterwards I fell into conversation with a fascinating English expat who moved to Paris to undergo and study psychoanalysis after giving up a career as a painter. The Spring evening sunshine moulded his face and I read fascinating lines on it, although I am sure I saw a story entirely of my own devising.

On the back of his urging, the next day I went to the Louvre, anticipating happy hours among great paintings. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. So I took advantage of the Velib scheme instead, and roamed through Parisian traffic. This a brilliant idea; you find one of the stations sprinkled liberally about the city, get a code from the console which costs you 5 euros a week, unlock the bike from its docking station and every first half hour is free. Its a cheap sliding scale for every hour thereafter, which is debited from your card. It works well, although I had some initial difficulties releasing my chosen bike from the lock. Once I discovered that a little violent persuasion was all that was required, it was plain sailing. Violent persuasion where appliances are concerned is one of my notable talents, to my husband's despair... I ended up in the Marais, a district to the East of the city, where you will find meandering cobbled streets stuffed with medieval churches, bijoux boutiques and Jewish bakeries. Happily, I am a fan of all three. I didn't brave the queue of American tourists waiting for their falafels from the Falafel King, endorsed by Lenny Kravitz as the best in the world, but I did wind up in a shop that sells ribbons, buttons and bindings in every permutation a girl could dream of, and cursed my meagre budget. I plunged my hand into the jumble basket in a vintage shop instead and came up with the reward of two exquisite silk scarves for 3 euros apiece, which eased the pain somewhat. I bore them home to wash, wondering who made Lenny Kravitz the Michelin judge of all things falafel as I did so, before hanging them out to dry in the soft breeze that wafted sultry jazz through the apartment from the kitchen radio. I have been seduced by the charms of DSF, a station which keeps a girl supplied with a steady stream of good jazz and delicious French. Dominika and I would have it on as we cooked and ate simple, delicious meals of pasta or fish with vegetables in her sweet kitchen while the tuberose candle flickered. These are memories I treasure even more than the nights we ate out at lovely bistros in the spring evenings. It is a sweet surprise to meet a friend again after eleven years apart, and to find her so unchanged from the graceful, brilliant, gentle girl I first met at school. Although she confessed that she finds herself less thirsty for knowledge than she once was, and I deplore the way growing older can deplete curiosity. We had a good laugh about the hideous brown shoes and regulation knickers that Roedean made us sport as twelve year olds. A particularly great evening in was comprised of some tuna steaks fresh from the fishmonger/showman downstairs on rue Montorgeuil, a bottle of white and the three hour epic of the first show of Nouvelle Star, which is the French version of Pop Idol. The French have fairly catastrophic taste in pop music, but their contestants are terribly pretty. Popular culture in someone else's culture is always charming and funny, and nothing like the grating presence it is in my own reality.

I made a fresh attempt on the Louvre the next morning, one made atmospheric by rain, and was brought up short by the snake of tourists slithering around the Pyramid and out the courtyard. In a huff, I took the Metro to Montmartre. I climbed the slippery staircase, still feeling gloomy and hating tourists everywhere, up to Sacre-Coeur, that silly white eruption of ecclesiastic fantasy, and was gratified to see a large sign pointing around the corner to the dome and crypt, which didn't seem to be luring a single tourist. Triumphantly, I bought a ticket and went through a turnstile. Immediately, I was in a spiral staircase circulating ever upwards in a cylinder of stone. I was suddenly aware of being entirely alone, as the tiny windows offered watery light and I heard ghosts cooing and weeping in the walls. Vertigo suggested itself as I climbed higher and higher and I was afraid of not being able to go either up or down. My thighs begged for rest, so I fumbled for a seed bar secreted in my purse for just such an emergency. I am amazed at how quickly my equanimity returns with a bit of sugar, and the ghosts in the walls became just sighing winds. I continued on, to suddenly find I was at an iron door that let on to a spectacular view of the city spread below me. The wind was lashing and the place was deserted. The view was all mine. I walked around the entire circumference of the dome and relished feeling cold and wet and young and alone and alive in the silvery day. Down the whirling staircase again, I went into the church itself and sat, awed and humbled by the staggering display of wealth and time and talent that manifested such fantastic ambition. It is magnificent. I lit a candle, watching it jig and sway in the sea of its fellows, and prayed for a while.

That evening, I raced to the Theatre De L'Atelier to meet Dominika for a production of Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll, translated into French, which is nominated for several French drama awards and features a rising star, Melanie Thierry, in the eponymous role. She plays with an eager, bold freshness that is adorable in any language, and the show was good entertainment, but I confess to finding it a mystery as to why it is such a success. This is not a culture starved of good drama, and why they decide to rave about something so American and hardly topical is beyond my uncertain grasp. Clearly there is much I do not understand about these people. But I want to learn...

I find the male French attitude to the feminine extremely interesting, in particular. I hadn't expected them to be so Latin. I discovered that the wearing of a skirt and/or heels, as I saw many French women doing, was to invite conversations to be initiated and proposals of marriage to be offered. This latter I assumed to be a rather extreme way, on the behalf of the fishmonger kneeling at my feet, to flog his wares, until an amused passer-by translated that the man was offering me a lifetime of all the fish I could eat. I gave up on heels entirely after an incident in one of the pretty alleys in St Germain which nearly required the pressing into service of my handbag as a weapon, and I was glad that I was close enough to seek refuge in a gorgeous flower shop. In flat pumps and long skirts I became invisible, and could wander through the city unmolested. Dominika remarked that she grew tired of the attention long ago and only wears skirts below the knee. Around the reserved British male, skirts are free to retire upwards, it would appear.

Travelling back on the Eurostar, accompanied by French Vogue, I was heartsick to leave such a beautiful place. I have only dipped my toe in its fountain, and I am thirsty for more. But I have memories of my final run, on the day of my departure, that took me around the Louvre and the Paris Opera, through the Tuileries where two girls in traditional kimonos tripped along on their wooden clogs, and down the rue de Rivoli, to sustain me. As I arrived back at Dominika's front door on rue Montorgeuil, another day of commerce was beginning to the tune of a thousand sizzling Gauloises, fresh baked baguettes and the holler of the fishmonger. Its my kind of place. Hemingway hit it when he called it A Moveable Feast.

La Belle Dame Avec Merci

Running a marathon is, from all accounts, similar to the experience of giving birth. I know nothing about the latter, but having spent four hours and twenty seven minutes of my Sunday doing the former, I see striking parallels. You prepare eagerly, if a bit apprehensively, for months. And, as the final act sweeps you inexorably along, you find yourself thinking, with a mind fogged by exhaustion and pain, how you could possibly have believed this was a good idea nine months ago. Then suddenly its over, and they give you something to clutch (in this case a particularly hideous medal) and the sense of triumph swells as the delirium ebbs. And so you start planning the next one.

It was with a light heart that I got up yesterday morning, gingerly testing the cramped calf to discover that the Arnica oil had worked its magic overnight, and armed myself with the essentials (breakfast, sunscreen, running cap, metro tickets, watch, gels, ipod, etc.) Stepping out into the blossoming Parisian morning, there was a sun rising clear into a wide sky and as I joined the ranks of runners all making our way up the Champs Elysees to the inflatable arch that marks the start, I wasn't the only one looking about about with a sense of privilege and wonder. We were awake and alive, now, in this splendid town, the city was putting on her glad rags for us; we were the lucky ones. Naturally, I used the moment to do a spot of window shopping and was passionately grateful to be alone to do it. Men never understand... I fought my way through the milling hordes into the Green pen where the problem, as it always is, is ablutions. This was a particularly bad case. In each pen of a couple thousand runners, there was one, I repeat ONE, portaloo. It beggars belief. I stood in queue more as a testament to hope than anything else, while the announcers peppered us with irrelevant facts and badly read sales blurbs to help us await the inevitable. When the moment was upon us we began rolling forward, not running, but picking our way over the discarded clothing and used bottles and banana skins of those gone before. I'm a little perturbed that my chosen sport needs to be so messy; it seems a contradiction of the ethos of running. But I had the stirring strains of Chariots of Fire to take my mind off the chaos underfoot. The music made me thrilled and sad and I wished my parents were amongst those along the route to see me.

The pace settled into my feet and I ran the first kilometre faster than is my wont, pricked by the enthusiasm around me. Five kilometres was easy; now all I needed to do was exactly that, another seven times I told myself blithely. I amused myself by having a conversation in my head, switching into whichever accent was currently being spoken around me. My favourite was the pneumatically cheerful Canadian. Less amusing was the state of my bladder, and my eyes were peeled for the first bank of portaloos, but I was becoming increasingly disappointed with every passing block. Then, on a corner on the opposite side of the road, I spotted a free public toilet, one of those automat things that I never entirely trust not to lock me inside or suddenly swing open to reveal me to the street. Today, it was a lifebelt. Offering up a silent prayer, I dived into the river of streaming flesh with a volley of Pardonnez-mois but, alas, reaching it safely my hopes were dashed to see that it was overflowing and its door was jammed. As I reeled away in disgust a woman came up to me waving a sarong and gesticulating wildly. It seemed she had got up this morning and taken a pretty beach sarong down to a corner of the rue de Rivoli with the express purpose of assisting lady runners in their hour of need. Truly, saints do walk the earth among us. I wish I could say that I did not squat behind an automat on a street corner in one of the loveliest cities in the world, but... I also wish I knew her name. A thousand blessings upon you, whoever you are.

I was heartily cheered by this unexpected brush with kindness, and flew along to the Bois de
Vincennes, which was filled with families and brass bands. It was so warm and I was happy, if a little disheartened that I was running slower than my target time of four hours. It was moments when I thought of that that the sense of despair threatened to overwhelm me, and I bit down on it and forced myself to think of anything else. Even to count in French! We turned around and headed back through Paris and along the Seine. I didn't like the long eerie tunnels into which we descended for for what seemed like ages, but some were delighted by the acoustics and let rip with schoolboy yells that bounced about our heads and harmonized with the thousands of falling feet. Then we would rise back up into the sun and smile-lined streets and I appreciated the balmy air. The voluptuous statues lazily regarded our damp efforts from their plinths, and we plodded on through feed stations, where the tables groaned with sugar cubes and raisins and the cobbles were littered with oranges skins, past more bands in crazy wigs, and under the chestnut trees decked in new green.

It was in the final ten kilometres that the pain started to bite. My knees and thighs protested with every foot fall and the nagging voice whispered What if you can't? I am a lonely runner; I don't talk it out. Some people around me were beginning to broadcast their internal monologues, and others had running partners to share the pain with. But something stops me, almost as if admitting the pain is to allow it to win, so I lock it down grimly and attempt to look serene, if sweaty. The route had taken us into the Bois de Boulogne, a mythical name I associate with Audrey Hepburn movies, but by now I was past nostalgia and could only scan the road ahead for each mile marker. Inside, I was screaming and bleeding and elated with every mile that I achieved. The pace had slowed, and people were walking stretches, myself included. The only problem with this is that breaking into a run again detonates explosions of protest from the thigh region, and finally I resolved to get it over with tout suite and push on to the end. Which seemed like it was always around the next corner, and when I finally did see it, I wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't a mirage. Because suddenly there you are, another silly inflatable arch and its done. The final five hundred metres are the truest test; some sprint, some grunt and gasp, some limp, some look as if its all been a stroll in the park, some stumble and shove their way across. The point is not the end, but how it is reached, in my little opinion, that shows you what you truly are deep down, and its possibly the real reason we undertake the exotic exercise at all.

I collected the garish medal and donned the fetching plastic poncho to stabilise my body temperature and grazed my way past the final feed tables with the thousands of others. It was agony and bliss. I missed my family and thanked God for my wonderful, wonderful husband who supports and believes and nurtures me. Then I asked a gendarme where the nearest Metro was and hobbled down the stairs with the rest of the crazy crippled people in the silly plastic ponchos. I stopped in at L'Atelier du Chocolat de Bayonne for some dark chocolate turtles before dragging my protesting legs up the five flights of stairs to Dominika's pretty flat, where she had cooked a sumptuous lunch of sweet potato soup, steamed salmon and quinoa. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world!

So now I've done it. My legs today feel like they've been ripped off my body, used to beat carpets with and stitched back onto me with meat hooks. I can't think of a better reason to spend the day sitting in a Parisian cafe reading something by Philip Roth! And I have the memory of the Saintly Lady With The Sarong to cherish forever. I think I'll do the Amsterdam marathon next; its at the end of the year, which gives me time to train to do it in four hours, and to forget how much it hurts... Anyone want to do it with me?