#58: It seems we’re human after all

The panto has been and gone, and you can see me hoofing about a bit here if you have me added on Facebook and have the “Video” application. I’m the guy who comes on stage after the dog and then dances at the very left-hand side of the video. If you don’t have me added on Facebook, search for “Gus Luxton” in the London network. My picture is of me posing in a mirror in a stripey shirt and pinstripe trousers.

My birthday (last Wednesday, December 12th) was brilliant - many thanks to anyone who sent me birthday wishes by any medium at all! Being 23 is a little scary though. I logged into last.fm a couple of days ago to look at my recommendations and it came up “Male, 23, Hertfordshire” at the side… I actually had to do a double take as I realised that I was old.

I am seriously looking forward to Christmas and having some time off work. I enjoy my job and it’s been very rewarding of late, but I am shattered and just need a week or so off to actually draw breath and get back to feeling human again.

Sorry for the short sentences and the formal style - I’ve just updated Livejournal for the first time in about two months with an absolutely massive post, and I don’t have much wordiness left in me.

It’s the Secret Santa at work tomorrow, and I have to say that some of the people upstairs are absolutely ruining it. They watch the present box like hawks, and as soon as anyone brings a present up, they’ll run over and check who it’s for so that they can make a note of who bought what for who, and hold them accountable at a later date. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of Secret Santa, it’s where you put everyone in an office/club/group’s name in a hat and randomly draw one each, so you get someone to buy a Christmas present for. There’s a budget of £5 in our office, and the (unofficial) idea is usually to get embarassing or amusing gifts. The main point of the whole thing is that you don’t tell anyone else who you have, though - that’s why it’s a “secret” Santa and you can get away with buying some very amusing things indeed. I am currently devising a scheme where I will be able to get my gift into the present box without them noticing.

I met up with Xsara this evening for the first time in a while. She’s doing alright and looking well. I thought she’d disappeared off the face of the earth but no, I was wrong. It’s a good job I didn’t eBay the DVDs she left at my house like I was planning to…

#56: “Oh no it isn’t”

There is one week to go until the first night of the pantomime. This fact is a little bit scary, but also rather exciting.

It’s not coming together too badly. I’m still a bit hazy on a few of my cues, and the actual content of my lines is not always the same, but we’ve got most of it right. The dancing was the part that scared me the most, but I think I’m actually going to be OK with it all now. We’re certainly a lot more together than I ever thought we would be!

The only issue with this is that we’ve rehearsed every day since Sunday, and I’m pretty tired at the moment. What with having been to Bulgaria last Friday, having my work Christmas party on Saturday night and then rehearsal for most of the day on Sunday, I am shattered. Definitely looking forward to Saturday when I can finally get myself a nice lie-in and catch up on my rest.

#48: Lift on three - 1, 2, 3… heurgh!

This weekend has been very relaxing - I am sitting at my desk at work at the moment, and despite being very hungry and wanting the bacon man to show up and provide me with a sandwich and a bottle of Coke, I feel rather good. Considering I only got five hours’ sleep last night, that isn’t too bad. I just need to make sure that I kill myself off at the gym after work and then go to bed at about midnight tonight, otherwise I’ll be a total zombie tomorrow morning.

I find that usually, the weekends where you don’t do a lot are the most relaxing of all. A few weeks ago, my best mate moved out of the flat he was sharing with his girlfriend, after some relationship trouble. It’s a long story, and everything between them is fine again now (they’ve been together nearly five years, it would have been a major thing to lose) but the side effect is that we no longer have anywhere to go to chill out, drink and play games of a Friday or Saturday night. This is a shame on some levels because I really quite liked his flat, and it was great to have somewhere we could stay up late and make a bit of noise, then crash out at 4am and sleep until halfway through the next day. It’s also quite a good thing, because it means that my weekends have become a lot more about sleep and sitting around in my boxers and a dressing gown. This is a geeky comment but it’s certainly one I believe in!

Rehearsals for the pantomime are well underway, and after rehearsal on Thursday night, I went into town to meet Matt, Craig, Larman and Jo for a drink. After one pint, it became another, and soon enough I was being badgered into leaving my car in town and going to the Ivory for a load more drinks with them. I hadn’t planned on it, but the best evenings out I’ve had (both at home and university) have been spontaneous ones, and this didn’t disappoint. The only bad part was going to bed at 3am, and then having to get up at 7:45 on Friday morning for Matt to give me a lift to town to collect my car.

Having said that my weekend was relaxing, I did actually go to work on Saturday night. It’s a longish story, but I recently went to watch some kickboxing at the Stevenage leisure centre, which is attached to the Gordon Craig theatre. My old school friend Dave is a full-time deputy chief technician at the theatre and organises lightning, sound and stage management for all the productions they put on - he happened to be doing the lightning and sound for the kickboxing, and when I saw him we both had a chat about things as we hadn’t seen each other in a while.

He mentioned that they had vacancies for casual work - basically doing similar things to him but on a part-time basis - a bit of lighting and sound, rigging lights, follow spotting and the like, and said that there was a job for me if I was interested. I’ve always loved that side of theatre, and despite having got back onto the stage recently, part of me has always preferred being one of the unsung heroes behind the scenes who actually make everything work together. After thinking about it momentarily, I accepted his offer and agreed to get in contact to sort it out.

Saturday night was my first shift, doing what’s known as the “get-out” for Tap Dogs, a loud, high-energy show featuring six tap-dancing Australians, which had been running for the whole of the previous week. The get-out is basically disassembling the entire set, lighting and sound rigs and packing the whole lot back up into a lorry to send it to its next venue. The set is constructed primarily of box-section steel and, as such, is rather heavy. The majority of the sections involved six-man lifts to actually get it to move - to say it was hard work is a bit of an understatement! It was good fun though, and although I didn’t get home until 3am, I earnt a lot of money for it :-)

#47: Well

19:01 <@TuB> Your blogs are becoming shit, webvictim

He’s actually right - I haven’t written anything really decent in here for a while. So what’s new?

Life is good at the moment, actually. I went to the gym again for the first time in a while yesterday (what with being busy at work and having plays/rehearsals, I just haven’t had time) and it wasn’t as hard to get back into as I thought it would be. Endorphins are truly an amazing thing - I walked out of there feeling absolutely wasted, but on top of the world and like I’d really done something positive. Awesome.

I’ve got rehearsal again for the new show tonight, and I’m not sure whether I’m looking forward to it or not. There’s much more singing and dancing involved than in my previous one, and while I expected a certain amount of that, I didn’t realise that it would actually be quite hard for me to accomplish. I’m surrounded largely by ex-child actors and people who’ve been doing this sort of thing for years (so they’re rather good at it, really) whereas I’m overweight, unfit and altogether out of practice. I can sing without too much of a problem, but dancing is pretty much where I came unstuck.

A while ago, I took salsa dancing classes (about a month) but gave that up because I found it too tricky, and I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to be reminded of his shortcomings. This is very much the same thing - I know that if I work hard and really try my best, it will come together and I’ll be fine with it, but I’d much rather it just came easily and that I was good at it without having to try (as the other people there seem to be).

Is that laziness, or general faggotry, or what?