New Brew

A little story: Last year, just before the start of proper winter, an enterprising young Londoner named Gavin opened a little coffee stall on Primrose Hill bridge. As I was often passing on my way to train clients in Primrose Hill in the freezing early mornings, stopping at Gavin became a little moment of warm caffeinated heaven. He's one of those people who gets very excited about coffee, and nothing ever tasted as good as his lattes. Except, perhaps, his hot chocolate. But then, after shivering on his pitch all through winter, and building up a regular clientele of devoted junkies, the landlady realised she was missing a trick, and doubled the rent. Gavin simply couldn't afford it and was forced out. I never knew where he had gone, but I would occasionally bump into another member of his fan club around Primrose and we would spend a moment mourning his departure. 

And then, this weekend, a man waved from a cafe at me as I cycled past, and there he was. He's finally got his very own cafe, The Fields Beneath, with sandwiches and tables, and even heating, right outside Kentish Town West station. If you're in the area, please support  him!http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/the-fields-beneath

Hello Calgary...I'll be here all week!

A month ago, I had no plans to be in Canada for my Grandpa's 80th birthday. Having just landed the lead role in a feature film due to start filming in a few days, my thoughts have been elsewhere. But determined mothers make the world go round, and thus I am freshly jet-lagged and still marvelling at the fact that I have just spent a week in Calgary with a family I haven't seen in 14 years. Sitting on a plane in a dark sky somewhere over Greenland, I scribbled down the new buffet of memories I have to savour...

Certainly, the breakfasts I shared with Grandma and Grandpa top the list. I loved the routine; Grandma sets the table the night before, and in the morning slices each ruby grapefruit with practised perfection while still in her flowery

robe. Then we reconvene when more suitably attired (although less so in my case as I tend to favour sweaty running gear) and select a bible reading from the tiny, well-thumbed stack of cards that has sat in a little pottery loaf of bread since as long as I've sat at that breakfast table, and each read a verse aloud, before saying grace. Grandpa's face barely visible over the tremendous tower of pancakes (each one an 'I love you' from Grandma) radiates disapproval of all things sugar and gluten. I put on ten pounds in a week, I swear. And that was despite going for long runs in Fish Creek Park!

The running in Fish Creek was heaven. The plane touched down onto a runway freshly cleared of snow to loud groans from fellow passengers, but I was thrilled. Calgary was a wintry

wonderland, just the way I left it 14 years ago. I couldn't wait to get into Fish Creek Park, which skirts the Bow river behind Grandma and Grandpa's house. But it was a startling moment to realise that the park, which as a girl I believed was Narnia and went on forever, is barely good enough for a 20km run...that is, until I discovered it goes for miles in the opposite direction, too. I ran for happy hours through the snowy forest, with an eye out for hungry bears, eating snow when I got thirsty an

d thanking God for everything... Certainly, running in Calgary has improved my knowledge of icy precipitation in all its forms, and I can now list black ice-detection among my talents.

Getting to know my family again was incredible. These are truly wonderful people, and sitting among them as one of them was a great feeling. Jessie and Maigan and Steph and Kayla and Larissa were all little blonde sprites when I was last around and suddenly my cousins are all beautiful blonde women with careers and distinct personalities and busy lives.

What I was most struck by was how much we have in common, despite such different upbringings. I treasure the memories of our drives into the mountains on mini girly roadtrips, and the conversations that were warm while the weather outside was distinctly less so. Jessie and I went to Banff (named after the founder's birthplace in Banffshire, Scotland) where Bruce the Moose used to have the run of the town's streets. The hot springs still draw people into their olfactorily-insulting waters under the impassive gaze

of the Rockies, and Jessie suggested we rent the 'Heritage' suits... as in, the suits they have been renting since the 1920's, complete with fetching flap for extra modesty. Very Gatsby, even if the petite Chinese ladies taking the waters next to us in their Burberry bikinis didn't think so.

Tim Horton's is another thing Calgary wouldn't be Calgary without. Special mention to the chocolate glazed Tim Bits. Over coffee and bagels on the morning of his 80th, Grandpa and I talked love and marriage and longevity and other light topics. Grandpa told me how he fell in love with Grandma when he was 16 and hasn't fallen out of it in 57 years of marriage. And it shows. They are a wonderful example of what love looks like. And Grandpa, being Grandpa, couldn't resist telling me with his customary twinkle that they are still great in bed. I remarked on the delicious coffee in an attempt to steer the conversation in another direction. Glad as I am to know it, there are some things one is never old enough to get one's head around.

Speaking of love, watching my Uncle Shaun and Aunt Ruth laugh together was another highlight of the trip. And getting to know my Uncle Rod's boys, Rodney and Zach, was delightful too. They invited me over for supper and the boys displayed budding culinary skills (Rodney on bbq duty and Zach dealing with potatoes). Rod, you are a true hero for making such a great home and being the father you are to your boys.

Grandma took me to the local Co-op, which was another unique cultural experience. London may be well-served in its grocery stores, but in North America there is a completely different kind of choice. I spent a mind-boggling twenty minutes in the bakery section alone. They have angel food cake. I'd forgotten about how ridiculously white it is. And then Cheezwiz... Grandma waxed nostalgic about it, remembering how her mother let her have it as an occasional treat. You see, the feeder gene is ingrained in us Driediger girls. We love, therefore we feed. But the ease with which the men in my family say I love you and express pride and appreciation was a revelation to me. I just about had to hold my father at knife point (I exaggerate, of course....slightly) to get him to say those three words but my uncles do it easily and often. I wouldn't trade my dad for anyone, but its still lovely to see.

Leaving was hard. It always is, but this time I made it slightly easier on myself by promising to return for Christmas. After all, I didn't get to eat gingerbread in Heritage Park, which no trip to Calgary is complete without.

And then England threw open her arms and welcomed me home to her newly-green bosom this morning; well, perhaps not quite, but to arrive in the British countryside on a sunny April morning could almost make a girl feel the island is her own special playground. My life waits for me here, and there are people whom I love here too. And a little Blue cat, but whether or not she loves me is subject for speculation.

P.S. Note to Self; do not attempt to write names and particulars of people to contact in an emergency into new passport while jet-lagged and on a lurching train. Disaster.

On food

The male mind is said to be occupied for the majority of its time with thoughts of sex. I am not male and thus have no idea what that must be like. (Thank goodness.) But I do know that many female brains I have some knowledge of are predominantly filled with thoughts of FOOD. Making it, buying it, presenting it, eating it, watching others eat it... And as a cyclist, I am grateful that I don't need to give a penny to the cumbersome and maddening thing that is Transport For London, but I do give over half of my salary to Sainsbury's. I barely land at my desk every morning, after a bowl of muesli and a 45-minute ride to work, and my mind starts to riff on the beauty of bananas and how much fun you can have stuffing vast quantities of sunflower seeds into your face. Then my friend and colleague Bita (remind me to explain to you how cool she is at some point...) will reach for her box of sultana bran, or I'll see someone dip furtively into the biscuit jar and I'm off; I simply can't think for the drum beating in my head about how yummy porridge tastes when its raining outside on a Saturday morning, or how heavenly it is to plunge into the crust of freshly-baked bread and scoop out the fragrant soft insides. And a friend, whom I DO NOT thank, has recently introduced me to Amarino's, which is where you can select four flavours of ice cream from the colourful array and watch them mould the lucky winners into a petal-shaped concoction of oozing yumminess. And then you sit in sugary silence and watch Old Compton street roll by in all its trippy splendour. But stuck in an office in the East End, I have no option but to while away the hours with pumpkin seeds and yoghurt until its time to go for a run through the packed City streets at lunch hour and then dash into Tesco's to plunder the shelves of humous and oatcakes. My day is measured by snacks and meals and grazing and thinking about what I'm going to eat next. And on a rainy day, such as today, the inner call for carbs - preferably steaming hot - becomes too much to think above. If any more precipitation rolls down the window, I'll wish I were male, and preoccupied with anything other than thoughts of biscuits...or pizza...or chocolate...

On my luxurious commute

I have discovered real luxury, and its not a perfume made in the mountains at midnight, or cashmere plucked from the bellies of baby goats. Its leaving a little early and riding the route to work that takes me past my favourite spots in my favourite city.

Google Maps tells me the quickest route from home to the office is a dreary slog along Nine Elms Lane, where Royal Mail trucks larger than Texas rumble past me on my flimsy bicycle and the site for the new American embassy looks like a tooth cavity drilled and awaiting filling. Then I am directed to progress up into the City from the riverside, past cowed looking people in cheap gray suits sucking on Starbucks as they jostle their way out of Liverpool street station. This route gets me to work in a vile mood, swearing to find a new job, any job, as long as it isn't in the East End.

But I came to a sweet realisation a while ago; that I had the freedom to choose. Ah, democracy and the burden of choice...however, I digress. A little less sleep, a few more trees... Easy decision, really. So now I set out in the morning with a sense of anticipation, and wend my way through Battersea Park, where a man brings fish for the herons that flash around him in the early sun like a gang of gawky teenagers. I cross the river under the rearing arches of Ebury bridge and take the temperature of the day from the Thames; there is nothing that river doesn't know about the city it slices through, I think, as I stare into its greasy gray depths. Then I circuit Sloane Square, where the bronze girl kneels forever in her fountain - filled and frothing now that Spring has at last arrived - and watch the sober-suited man roll up the shutters on Tiffany's for another day of peddling want. The elegant matrons of Belgravia are to be seen getting into their chauffered cars from the marble steps of townhouses I decorate in my dreams...through briefly open doors I catch tantalising snippets of a life where quiet and space reign in gleaming rooms. Little ladies in headscarves shuffle along the pavements to Waitrose past me, and should I stop to pick a tulip from the profusion in Ebury Square, there is an excellent chance of it blowing off and being flattened by a Maybach bearing down behind me. What comes next is a swift heart-in-throat dash through the steely cabbies that swarm around Wellington Arch; I always secretly salute the triumphant laurel-bearing girl, aloft above the fracas in her chariot, as I dash for the light that I usually get caught at, and must wait for the traffic pouring down Park Lane. Then its Piccadilly, past the Royal Academy that I've yet to visit, and into Piccadilly Circus where the ads perpetually keep the tourists goggling and snapping. Up Shaftesbury, past the theatres that will one day bear my name in lights, and the smells leaking out of Chinatown.

As soon as I cross Kingsway, things get quirky and the shops get smaller. People instantly acquire dress sense. One is reminded that plaid shirts with tightly rolled sleeves and jeans so skinny you can give yourself an anatomy lesson have never stoppped being hip. Some days, when there's time (and others, when there isn't) I join the queue at Monmouth for a moment in one of the commmunal wooden booths with the best cofee in London. And then onwards and eastwards. Rapha (cycling clothing Prada) have opened a cafe and store on Clerkenwell road that attracts couriers in their rag tag get-up, always accessorised with a bike lock slung across the body like a belt of ammmo and a crackling walkie-talkie. Further along the road is another new cafe, flaunting uber-cool custom built bikes in its windows, called Look Mum, No Hands.

As I turn down City road, the suits take over and gray becomes pervasive. I become just another of the army of ants that swarm into the blind buildings to switch on their computers and pick up their phones. But I can smile, knowing I have the whole thing to do in reverse, come five thirty...

On Primark bikinis

Today I have a casting. Except when my agent said (with way too much nonchalance) that it was a bikini casting for a beer commercial, I went into frantic panic mode. We have only just arrived at the end of a long dark winter, after all. The moment 5:30 rolled around, I raced from my office in the East End to Oxford street. First stop: Boots, to stock up on Clarins self-tan, which the girl behind the counter swore would not turn me orange. Next, a singing lesson to get my voice up and running for my Dirty Dancing call back this afternoon. And then to Mecca; ie Primark, to plunder the bikini section. I wanted red, but came up with a cute Fifties arrangement bursting with frills and cherries. Presumably all the fripperies are meant to distract from the lingering remnants of mince pies and the damage done by best friend Amber's transformation into Kiwi Baking Goddess... I did an extra 200 sit-ups, but suspected that the effects would be purely psychological. Then I cracked open the bottle and began to lather myself in expensive brown gunk. Its a strange thing, to go to bed smelling of dog biscuits, which no self-tan manufacturer seems able to do anything about.

This morning dawned glorious and I dawned orange. Apparently, the tan 'develops' far darker on my pale skin than I had been told. I look like a Las Vegas stripper, if you stand back and squint.

Happily, in the chaotic waiting room at the casting studio in Covent Garden, I found myself amongst friends, where every shade of orange was represented by the gossiping throng. I got chatting to the boy seated next to me, an actor named Alex, about his first attempt at running a marathon this weekend. I haven't thought seriously about running London thus far, but now I think I will do it next year. It just seems silly not to. I have started training for Chicester in mid-June, and just did a 16km training run around London in the Springy sunshine. I found a wonderful branch that has moulded itself into a swing in St James' Park, and its smooth worn bark bears testament to the many bottoms beside mine that have tested it out.

After the casting was done, I had a few hours to spend in my favourite little Italian place in Mayfair, called The Lucky Spot, where the coffee is delicious and the quiet wooden booths lend themselves to line-learning, before I had to head to Danceworks for my Dirty Dancing audition. Ballet class was in full swing, and the waltzes tinkled up the staircase as I waited for the boy ahead of me to finish butchering I've Had The Time Of My Life, which he did several times. When I went in to meet the panel, I found three people in a sunny studio, and the MD asked me to come over to the piano and sing through the simple songs I'd been asked to prepare from the show. It was very informal, just singing with him at the piano in the warm light while the other two watched. And then they said thank you, and I was done. They didn't ask me to read any of the character's scenes. This I'm taking to mean that I was terrible. But I jumped on my bicycle and soared off into the Spring evening and didn't much care either way. I like the rollercoaster ride that this life is.

Incidentally, I was emailed a link the other day to a dancing blog that I'm featured on. For some reason, I look extremely serious. Apparently I was too danced-out to smile... http://www.dancerstyle.co.uk/

Doing the Dirty

There is a skewed logic I have developed regarding auditions; it seems to be a general rule that the worse I think it went, the higher the chance that the phone will ring in a few days with my agent brimming with good news at the other end. It strikes me as a cruel joke that the light is always to be found at the end of the longest, darkest tunnels. And I've been scampering down a fair few of them in recent weeks. I remember the lonely days when first I washed up on the shores of London; every rare audition shone out like a ray of hope across the wasteland of my diary. But in the past ten days, since my last show of Permanence played on March 20th, I have been hurtling across London with a head full of scripts and a bag bursting with shoes apposite for each character. I've auditioned for student films and low-budget features and West End musicals and I can't even remember what else! And all with chronic toothache, a raging head cold and attempting to placate my boss... The anti-glamour of it all sometimes still makes me laugh, and the thrill I get from living the life I craved as a little girl with crazy dreams hasn't ever gone away. But it was the audition for Dirty Dancing on Friday that finally got me down. I was trying out for the part of Vivian Pressman, and I had had to tell my boss that I was meeting a client in Knightsbridge in order to get to Pineapple studios for my 4:15 slot. I did the usual vocal exercises to warm up the voice while hurtling on my bicycle through Oxford Circus. This caused a raised eyebrow or two from the first flush of tourists arriving from Italy and Japan to taste the joys of Spring shopping. (The H&M girls floating past on double deckers are boasting juicy florals and boho blouses - again -for the new season but I never tire of the sight.) At Pineapple, I was shown into Studio 7, with its expanse of sweat-polished floor, and asked to dance with myself while delivering my lines. This is a bizarre thing to do, and when auditioning for Dirty Dancing it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect them to provide someone to dance with...but there I was, attempting to tango on my own and feeling like a perfect idiot. The panel, led by a diminutive Asian-American girl, watched with poker faces. Next, they wanted me to sing a snippet of the song from the show, and I went over to the piano with a sinking heart. This is always my highest hurdle. But the pianist, unlike the accompanist provided for my previous audition who was still attempting to master Chopsticks, was cheerful and laid back and I found myself soothed into singing the song with escalating confidence. Suddenly, the energy in the room swung round and I realised I was watching them as I sang; I was no longer the specimen on the slab. They were simply four people sitting behind a table on a Friday afternoon. And that was a tiny, lovely breakthrough. Swiftly overtaken by the horrible doubt, sadly, and the tradition of the walk to the door with the awkward silence hovering in the air as they wait for you to be gone so they can discuss the pros and cons of you in forensic detail - if you merit such attention. I went back down Pineapple's staircase (surely a cosmic joke as the most treacherous staircase in London) in black gloom and swearing I would never put myself through the humiliation of a musical audition ever again. But they are words I am forced to eat because my agent has rung with the surprising message that they want to see me for a call back in two weeks. And so the rollercoaster lurches again. In the words of one of my favourite songs: "It goes to show you never can tell."

On fishnets at noon

After 13 years of auditioning, I still lie awake the night before attempting to quell the butterfly army on the march in my stomach. They had been fluttering since my agent called with the news that Chicago were holding open auditions for their West End company. But my amount of preparedness always tells me exactly where I stand on the scale of How Badly Do I Want This Job?...last Sunday night, I had my carefully chosen outfit all laid out on my dresser. Fishnets, check. Heels, check. Bowler hat, check. I want this job very badly indeed, it seems. So on Monday, I sat down in the front room, where the most light is to be found in our little London flat on a January morning, and began applying the war paint. It feels perverse to be putting on fishnets and three coats of mascara before midday. Arriving at the Cambridge Theatre to join the queue of painted ladies that snaked out of the door and all the way down to the bottom of Mercer Street, I was amused to see that I had been modest in my preparations. I seemed to be the only girl not sporting false eyelashes and a spray-on tan in Tango orange. I put in my earphones (the inane chatter that goes on in audition queues is enough to make the bile rise), opened The Scandal of the Season and began to wait. And wait and wait. The weather at noon had been quite tolerable. By one, the wind had changed and the temperature plummeted like a stone. Girls who had friends to hold their places charged off to Cafe Nero for hot coffee, and H and M for thicker socks and bigger jumpers. Those who didn't have such luxury smoked furiously and tried vainly, as I did, to stop shivering. Four hours and umpteen chapters later, I was almost into the foyer of the Cambridge - ironically, huddled next to the little black side door that I take to climb the stairs to my agent's office, which is squirreled away at the top of the theatre. And then, glory, I made it through the velvet ropes and into the warm bowels of the building, where girls were shedding layers and performing bizarre pre-audition rituals and pinning on the crucial little paper number. The audition brief had said black, and everyone had taken it to heart; I saw black hot pants, and black corsets and black frilly things that looked suspiciously like nighties. I was attempting to recreate the costume I wore as Mona the last time I did the show; a black basque with suspenders. I did a few sit-ups in an attempt to erase the memory of Christmas cookies, and then I heard my number called and my group was taken upstairs to learn the routine from a lovely girl, with the most perfect bottom I've seen outside of Vogue, who is currently in the show and was due to perform Roxie instead of Ruthie Henshall that night. She was sweet and patient with us despite losing her voice and despite the fact that ours was the final group she'd had to coach after what must have been an interminable day with no end in sight. I can go through the motions of All That Jazz with my eyes closed, but I was grateful that she reminded us of Fosse's ethic; nothing overt, no frills, no extras. Dance like you are considering giving away your juiciest secret. And then we were herded downstairs and onto the stage to dance for the panel. The drummer, perched up in the band box, pounded out the opening bars of the number and we all launched ourselves at the one brief chance we had waited for all day. As each group of six girls danced, the rest of us stood to one side and politely applauded the effort that goes into getting yourself up there at all. And I was truly happy to be there. It felt like heaven to take my place on the stage, and gaze into the half-lit, hushed cavern of the auditorium and to be jolted into movement by the drummer. That brief moment was worth the raging cold I now have; that and hearing my number called to return for a second chance. Now I have only to face down my horror of The Singing Audition on Thursday... More, anon