All hail the unnatural athlete!

There's nothing like a charity sporting event to restore your faith in humanity. Tonight I have  been helping out at NightRider*, and once again I am in awe.

The first event I did for charity was probably a Race For Life - but to be perfectly honest with you I can't remember. Since, I've done 10ks, a half marathon and even a full marathon, and still I never ceased to be amazed.  Not just at the amount of money raised for such wonderful causes, but also at the people who undertake to do such things at all. Much more often than not, these are people to whom concerted physical effort does not come wholly naturally - after all, where's the excitement in sponsoring someone to do a marathon who's already done 10, all sub 3:30? These are people who want to push their own boundaries, to go to the limits (and beyond) of what they feel themselves to be capable of. And, mainly, for someone else.  

Now, I'm not going to pretend that a charity athlete is always, on all occasions, 100% altruistic. Of course, you get a huge sense of achievement from completing a challenge. And sometimes a charity place is the only surefire way to get into a race. But there's so much more to it than that. There is so much more motivation when there's more at stake. 

As anyone who knows me knows, I like a challenge. Hell, I'm 1.5 stone down with 2 still to go, and I'm signed up for the GNR (again) this September. But I'm not sure I would ever have run a half marathon, let alone a marathon, were it not for the charity element. 

I had a 'discussion' with a serious athlete friend of mine about thus only the other day. He posited that the achievement of someone running a 5:30 marathon, for example, is less than that of the sub 3:30 runner, regardless of charity involvement. 

I couldn't disagree more. It's all about context. If you've never run a mara before and your aim is simply to get round, then you've achieved your goal. And actually, when you're raising money for a charity close to your heart it becomes about so much more than the run. it's about reminding yourself how lucky you are to be in a position to be able to serve others. It's about helping those who can't help themselves. Or it's about saying thank you, repaying a debt of gratitude or giving something back to those who give of themselves so freely. 

Tonight, as I watched the riders set off, saw them through their halfway breaks and cheered them over the finish line, it's not the first in, fancy-carbon-fibre-kitted guys who click through the finish area in their expensive shoes that I'm rooting for - although don't get me wrong, 100k is 100k and bloody well done them. No, it's the people at the back, slogging up those hills, determined not to let anyone down, least of all themselves, that I'm cheering for. The people who aren't totally sure that they can do it. The people who get that oh-so-familiar, overwhelming, choking, emotional feeling when they finally do cross the line. When they achieve what they set out to achieve and probably change someone else's life along the way to boot. 

Those are the people I'm cheering for. Those are the people who restore my faith in humanity. We could all learn a lot from them. 

The big three... oh.

Just recently I've been writing on my hand a lot. 30. In big, black biro. Etched into my skin. Why? I'm not 30 yet, and although it's looming large, I'm not particularly panicky about turning 30. I'm fairly happy with my career – I love what I do, I just want to do more of it. I'm ecstatic about my friends and family, and I'm married to a wonderful man and in no rush to have children just yet. So far, so perfect. Life is good. Well, almost.

Because as I stare down the barrel of my 4th decade, my mind starts to dwell on all the things I'm not, that I want to be. Or I am, that I don't. There are some things which are obvious and good – earlier this year, after a particularly stressful time, I fell back into the smoking habit for a couple of months. I've since knocked that on the head again, thank goodness. I didn't want to be a smoker and seeing the 30 on my hand reminded me that I didn't want to get to 30 and not have 'got round' to quitting yet. The 30 reminded me that time marches on and I needed to act now, or face the consequences.

And then it occurred to me that perhaps I could use the threat of turning 30 to spur me into action on other fronts. And like a stuck record, there it was again. Perhaps, I can look at my hand every time I want some chocolate. Or something else fattening or sugary. Perhaps I can use the great big impending 30 to finally, finally get round to losing weight. To be the person that I've always wanted to be. Because there can be nothing I can imagine that'd be worse than turning 30 and not being thin. Right?

Then this week it dawned on me. What am I doing to myself? Why am I giving myself a 2 month deadline to lose weight? What will happen if I get to 30 years old and I'm still averaging a size 17? Will the world end? No. Will my husband leave me? No. Will my friends stop talking to me? I doubt it. What exactly will happen? I won't be thin, no, but I'll still be 30. And I'll still have the amazing job, wonderful friends and family and gorgeous husband.

And then I realised – I've spent 20 years (20 YEARS!!) assuming that everything I do is somehow less valuable because of my size. That every act, every relationship, every achievement is somehow tainted, lessened, overshadowed by a dress size. People don't love me as much as they would do if I were thinner. I'm not as good at my job as I would be if I were thinner. I'm not as attractive a person as I would be if I were thinner. You get the picture.

But actually, why? Why have I spent an entire 2 decades (!) telling myself that I'm not good enough because I weigh more? I don't know why. And that's a subject for another blog. But what I do know is that suddenly it seems ridiculous. Not laughable, cryable. So sad. Wasted time. And I realised that if I really want to change something, before I hit 30, the best thing I can do - the thing which will have the biggest, most positive impact on my life - is to accept who I am and give myself a break. Because, if I can do that, then someone will love me more.

Me.

X

Alcohol, my permanent accessory...

I like a drink. Hey, let's not be coy. I like a few. A lot. Too many. I'm not an alcoholic, I should make that clear, but I do drink too much. Way too much.

I should quantify that I suppose. It's not that I drink vast amounts; although it has been known. It's not even that I drink all the time; although days with alcohol in any given week will generally outweigh those without. But I drink too much for me.

I don't mean “I exceed the government guidelines of 14-15 units per week”. Although, clearly, I do. I mean: I'm starting to recognise my own personal limits, and there's no doubt that I'm exceeding those. And I don't like what it does to me.

I'm sure if I were to have my liver sliced up and analysed, it wouldn't be pretty. I know my skin isn't at its best. I'm dehydrated, generally, and I struggle to lose weight. All of these things are true. But they're not what's really bothering me. No picnic, granted, but not my major bugbear. No; what I don't like about drinking is who it makes me.

Generally, I'm a pretty genial drunk. Funny, relaxed, witty, honest, friendly and a little risque. (Or at least that's how it seems from the bottom of the bottle). I'm not often morose, or aggressive, or obstreperous. But I lose part of me too when I drink. I lose the ambitious, focussed, sensible part of me. I know that sounds rather boring and middle aged, but there's part of me now that doesn't mind that so much. Presumably the same part that now refuses to lie about her profession to insurance companies. I lose perspective. Not all sense of decorum, but certainly a smidgin, or more, of what my sober self knows to be “the right thing to do”. If a fool decides his scruples in a time of crisis (Aristotle?), it's an absolute moron who does so in a time of inebriation.

Take smoking. I don't like smoking. It tastes horrible, it smells horrible, it looks horrible. It's expensive. And deadly. All in all, it's bloody stupid. But, when I've had a few drinks, and all the cool kids are doing it, it suddenly becomes A Really Good Idea™. It is not. The same goes for the One Last Drink. Sober, I find it perfectly simple to say “I'm only going to have a glass or two”. Drunk, that becomes “Oh, yeah, I'd love another one, and hey, why not throw in a Jager chaser?!”. No good can come of this. Similarly, food – a sober resolution to eat more healthily and shift a few pounds too quickly becomes “I'm starving, and I can't be arsed to cook. Let's get some chips”. And let's not even mention the early morning run or career-enhancing dance class.

So, here's the thing. I'm coming off the sauce for a bit. I'm not going to pretend it's going to be easy – it certainly won't. I like drinking. And not because I like being drunk – I've never been one to drink to get drunk. But I enjoy drink. Good wine, chewy beer, prosecco, Hendricks gin – I love it all. And there's only so much lime soda a girl can take in an evening.

But I'm acutely aware that recently I've been drinking for quite the wrong reasons. I'm not quite 'drinking to forget', but I would go so far as to say I'm certainly drinking not to think. Which isn't healthy, to say the least.

I don't expect to become saintly, miraculously cured of all my failings, universally loved and without fault. But I do expect to be fitter, healthier, more productive and – in the long run – happier.

song credit to the fab BNL

xx

You Drop Dead.

We've long known that Hollywood has an obsession with 'thin'. The thinner the better. Where, as they say in The Devil Wears Prada, 0 is the new 2, and 2 is the new 4. And 6 is the new 14. But Hollywood is also the land of the saccharine sentiment, where they try EVER so hard to convince you that the important thing about these exceptionally beautiful size 0 people is that they're beautiful on the INSIDE.

So, when recently I saw an advert for the new series Drop Dead Diva, I have no idea why I thought something might be different. Why I thought that maybe this time a show about a woman who's clearly not a size 0 might actually be a sign of the turning tide of size- and image-obsessed television land.

The premise is simple: shallow, vacuous, very beautiful thin person dies, goes to the pearly gates, and through an hilarious administrative bungle is accidentally returned to earth in the body of an extremely successful, intelligent lawyer. Only, she's a US size 16 (a UK 20). Obviously this is the worst thing that could ever have happened to anyone. Ever.

I decided to watch it though. I was interested. What is this series trying to say? Are they going to tell me that beauty doesn't matter (bullshit)? Are they going to gradually makeover the 'fat' girl until she fits some Hollywood stereotype (good grief)? Or, dare I hope, that they might be challenging the notion that attractive has to equal thin (unlikely)?

Because the point, as I see it, is this. It does matter what's on the inside. But what's on the outside matters too. Everyone wants to feel attractive. And life is easier for attractive people, there's not getting away from it. They earn more, get better jobs, and are treated with more respect. So this “it's what's on the inside that counts” is, frankly, bollocks.

But beauty is not an absolute truth. There is no 'right' and 'wrong' of beauty. Beauty is entirely subjective. Because of this there is nothing to say that someone who's a size 16 can't be just as beautiful as someone who's a size 6. To one person, to different people. It depends on the beholder(s).

Drop Dead Diva didn't disappoint. Well, that's not entirely true. The cynical, hard-hearted, blogging side of me that sneers at everything saccharine and contrived was not disappointed, and promptly opened a large hessian sack to gather up all that extra grist to the mill. The soft, romantic, ballet slippers and love-at-first-sight side of me, however, withered up and died just that little bit more.

Because what Drop Dead Diva turned out to be was a glossy, patronising, pity-the-hideous-fat-person, vom-com wolf in a right-on, beautiful-on-the-inside, challenging-the-stereotypes sheep's clothing. While it swears blind it's overturning the Hollywood stereotype of fat=unnattractive, it shoots itself sharply in the Jimmy Choos by requiring the (attractive) larger actress playing Jane (imaginative name choice, people) to well up or wince every time she catches sight of her own reflection. What torment she must be going through. My heart bleeds.

What I don't understand, as an actress of a certain circumference, is how they ever got that past the table read. I can just hear the director now...: “OK, so here's the thing – she's intelligent, she's canny, she's smart. We love Jane. She wins all her cases. She really connects with people. She has empathy and brains. She drives a Porsche. She has an assistant. She's making it in a man's world. All in all, she really is a champion for the modern woman. OK? Great. Oh, just one other thing – she can't catch sight of herself in the rear view mirror or coffee pot without wanting to cry. OK?”

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Perhaps the series gets better with time. But you know what, Hollywood? I don't give a toss. I've had enough of your patronising, condescending 'it doesn't matter if you're overweight, you can still be gorgeous (on the inside)' bullshit, because that bit 'on the inside' is the part of that sentence that gets me spitting bile in the general direction of the Atlantic.

You show me a programme where the lead character is bigger than a UK 14 (that's a 10, to you, Hollywood) and where her weight isn't an issue, isn't even mentioned, and then we might be looking at progress. By which I mean NO jokes about her wardrobe, no makeover scenes, no heartwarming comeuppances for airheaded high school jocks or vacant cheerleader bitches. No 'business' with the platter of donuts. No lines about her 'fuller figure' or her being lovely 'in spite' of her hips. Just take a part you were going to give to Halle Berry or Charlize Theron or Scarlett Johanson, and let someone with a real woman's figure play it, and don't mention a word about it. And then, THEN maybe we can talk.

xx

Corsets and kissing...

So, imagine the scene. You land a new, good job, and you're enjoying it. It's great. The role's a big undertaking, but you're having fun getting your teeth into it, and just hoping you're making a good enough hash of it. You're just getting to know your colleagues, most of whom are completely new to you, but so far you're hitting it off. Then, three weeks in, you're with a close colleague doing something that you haven't done before (perhaps a new side of the role that hasn't come up yet, like the end of month figures, or the stationery order) and your boss says to your colleague "and now, you kiss her".

That's what yesterday was like for me. It was the first kissing rehearsal. Now, I shouldn't really complain - after all, in what other job to you get to go into work and kiss lovely boys (and be able to justify it to your partner!?)? But I always find it so awkward, no matter what I do. It's so unnatural. To kiss someone for the first time in a room full of other relative strangers all watching you, while holding a book and reading lines from it. Plus, you know it's coming, so when you wake up in the morning having had dirty salad from a kebab shop the night before and can still taste the raw onions on your breath your heart sinks. No one wants to kiss a kebab, for real or not...

Although I should count myself lucky, I suppose. Apart from the obvious perks of getting to kiss boys (have I mentioned that I get to kiss boys?) this show is quite staid. There's not a lot of snogging, just one, sentiment filled, romantic, lingering pash between Maggie and Will at the end. One of my friends from school, Tom, was recently in the Secret Diary of a Call Girl - if you read the Daily Mail you'll no doubt have been filled with hatred and vitriol for him a couple of weeks ago. (Although if you read the Daily Mail you probably spend most of your time filled with hatred and vitriol...). But, yes, Tom was the one with the bizarre farmyard fantasies that he made the lovely Miss Piper enact for him. Now, if I feel uncomfortable about locking lips with a boy I hardly know, imagine what it's like to go on set, strip off and have to simulate sex with the nubile young thing who pranced around when we were at school singing "Because we want to, Because we want to!"; not to mention how embarrassing it must be for Tom!

I jest. Tom never sang any Billie. He's more your Smiths kind of boy. But the point stands - I should feel relieved that I only have to kiss the actor playing Will. I'm not sure how I'd cope with anything more than that - my self-consciousness is fairly pronounced as it is... I confessed this to the boy in question in the bar over a couple of hundred pints after rehearsals. I admitted that no matter how comfortable I feel with an actor, no matter how well we get on (and we do), or how many times I tell myself that it's not me, it's a character, really it's just physical blocking, it's only as bad as having to hold someone's hand and just STOP BEING SO BLOODY ENGLISH ABOUT IT!, I still dread that first kissing rehearsal.

Yesterday, I tried desperately hard to play it cool (oxymoron?). Thankfully, in the context of the story, he goes for her, so I could just let him take the initiative and get on with it. But no matter how composed I tried to appear I gave the game away when, after he kissed me for the first time, I opened my mouth to say the next line and choked on it in my throat. I had to close my mouth, swallow hard and try again. All the while going a lovely shade of beetroot right to the roots of my wig. But later, in the pub, to my huge relief, he said he hadn't noticed at all (yeah right), but moreover that he agreed, was surprised I hadn't seen him blushing. And I realised that it's one of those situations, like the swimming pool changing room, where everyone is so worried about themselves that they pay little or no attention to what anyone else is doing.

And really, when it all boils down to it, how can I really moan about a job that allows me to tight lace into a gorgeous corset, ("you could eat your dinner of those" was one of the first comments I got yesterday... "YOU couldn't" I said) lace up some high heeled boots and kiss someone that's not your husband, with no repurcussions...

I love my job.

xx

Mirror mirror on the wall

What, exactly, happens when we look in a mirror? And I don't mean 'how does that magic glass show me my face' I mean why, when faced with my own reflection does every iota of kindness and care that dwells in my heart bury itself in my deepest recesses, resolutely refusing to make itself useful?

Generally, I would describe myself as an optimist. I'm of the 'cheer up, it may never happen' club (feel free to hate me). I cross bridges when I come to them, and chalk embarrassing incidents up to experience (after dwelling on them longer than is strictly healthy and indulging in a bit of emotional self-flagellation, you understand). I always look for the good in a situation, and try my very hardest to look for the best in people.

So, why doesn't this translate to me? When I take stock, or do something wrong, or even just look at myself in the mirror, why does all of that desert me?

I spend a worrying amount of my life feeling like an utter fraud. I am always the first to qualify and apologise for everything I do... "yes, I sing, but I'm not outstanding", "yes, I'm an actor, but I'm not very good", "yes, I swim, but I'm really slow". I'm secretly convinced that one day someone is going to look up in the middle of the rehearsal and say "Sorry Teg, time's up. You've had your fun now go and get a real job and let those of us who can actually do this get on with it". I'm bound to be discovered some day, and not in the "hey, kid, come be in my movie" kind of way. In the "I've just realised you really haven't got a clue what you're doing", found-out, kind of way.

But then, occasionally, just occasionally, something happens which makes you think that maybe what you see in yourself isn't - shall we say - entirely objective.

On Friday I am speaking at a youth conference run by a theatre in Chichester on 'how to be an actor'. I was called by a friend who works in their education department, explaining that they wanted an actor to come and talk to the young people about what's involved in getting into my line of work, and what it's like once you're there. You know the drill, dispel a few myths, crush a few dreams, that kind of thing. The thing was, they wanted someone who had, and I quote, "worked hard to get where they were, were on their way, and successful". I nearly fell over.

Last night, (and this is a snippet from a very long and boring story - so take it for granted there is a context, but I shouldn't ask about it if I were you!) I was singing in a bar in London, and I belted out a decent enough rendition of New York New York, which got cheers and applause a-plenty, including - astoundingly - heartfelt plaudits from a jazz pianist who was watching. A Ronnie Scott's regular who'd stopped me in my tracks when he had taken to the keys earlier in the evening. And again, I was stunned.

Me? Really?!

Isn't it funny how we decide what we can do, and then do our level best to stick to those limitations? Perhaps it's time to put aside the preconceptions and find out just exactly what I'm capable of. Because when you reach one rung of excellence, it's only a short leap to the next, and the next, and so on.

I recently heard someone say "if you can dream it, you can do it". An admirable sentiment, but possibly just a little saccharine for what I'm driving at, but how about we settle on "imagine what you could be capable of if only you would let yourself try"

I think I've got a new mantra.

xx

I have always depended upon the validation of strangers...

Why is it that the people least suited to acting always seem to end up as actors?

Acting is an amazing job, don't get me wrong. The roar of the greasepaint and so on and so forth - I firmly believe that it's the best job in the world, and if you can do it as a job and still pay the mortgage then in my humble opinion you are on to a winner. But let's be honest here, it's not the best for the self esteem, is it? Where most of my friends (alright, not my friends, because I seem to know mainly freelancers, but most people in general) will go through a job interview or two every few years, we actors change jobs much more frequently - say every few months. And those are only the jobs we get. For every casting we book we probably lose - oh, I don't know, 4 or 5? Maybe more, 10 or 12?

Rejection is the centrepiece of the profession. And I probably spend as much time chanting to myself "it's not because you're not good enough, it's because you're not right for the part" as I do asking "what's my motivation"? So why (oh, why, oh, why etc ad nauseum) does it seem to attract nut jobs who thrive on adoration and seek to validate themselves by the opinions of peers, superiors or - erm - otherwise?

Just recently, I met a man. He's got an incredible singing voice, and plays jaw dropping piano, BY EAR, and is just generally lovely. And before you go running off to snitch on me to Pierre, it's OK; yes he's lovely, but gay, and this is a purely platonic thing. But, for some reason I can't quite fathom out, I'm desperate for him to approve my singing voice. Now, I know I can sing. I know my voice is fairly decent. Not world stopping, but good enough. And yet I'm embarrassing myself with how much I care about what this guy - who I've known all of about 10 minutes - thinks of it.

It seems that nowadays, in the age of Twitbook, blogs, Bebo and the like, nothing is real until you've broadcast it to the world. Unless you've seen it in someone's tweets, or in a status update, can we be sure that it really happened? I even find myself experiencing something and then shaping it into a pithy one-liner. And because I'm me, it has to be 3rd person, preferably in the present continuous (I will never forgive Facebook for getting rid of the 'is'). "Tegwen is dreaming of snowboarding", "Tegwen is well aware that she should really be tidying the flat", "Tegwen is exhausted after a long day's rehearsals". It's never quite enough to simply 'feel' these things, they have to be validated by the world at large.

But here I am. Logging on to share this with you all. Because you'll validate it and then I'll know it's real. And in a bizarre kind of philosophical recursion, I'm blogging about how odd this is, but I'll check back here periodically through the day and everytime someone comments I'll know that you're reading this and somehow that'll make it all worthwhile...