Tired Film Waitress Hen Complaint

So it's Monday afternoon, so of course I am doing my customary, weekly on a Monday-afternoon thing, where I sit and think 'I am so tired that I cannot possibly go on. How is it that I yearn, week after week, for a week when I look in my diary and find that I have not much on, but then look in my diary in real life, and find that every night this week is busy, and then I complain about it to myself, but then spend my working life making plans for future engagements, ensuring that my future is then filled up with engagements? Why would I be so silly?' but then I remember that I do enjoy the engagements. It's a hard knock life although I don't get kisses *or* kicks which I suppose makes my life a smidgen better than Miss Hannigan's orphans but fractionally worse than the average girl's.

So on Friday, I met up with Sara and we went to see In Our Name, a film showing as part of the London Film Festival. I'd read up about it in advance and thought it sounded interesting - the psychological impact of being on the front line for a woman who, after 18 months in Iraq, returns to her family in Middlesbrough. Annoyingly, though, the plot went a lot further - her husband was a horrible, violent, racist fuck-up, and what could have been an enlightening insight into the PTSD suffered by thousands of ex-servicemen was instead a very bleak, unpleasant look at one extreme, and extremely unpleasant, situation. I didn't like it. Superb acting though. The husband and wife came on for a Q&A at the end and I just couldn't imagine how his real-life girlfriend/wife, if he has one, would be able to separate the real him from what she'd seen on screen.

Then we went to Pizza Express in Soho, where we encountered the world's oddest waitress. She was tiny, around five foot tall, with thin, black, chin-length hair parted on the side and held back with a hairgrip. Her eyes were terrified, and on the corner of her alabaster forehead was a dark, shining bruise that looked both recent and painful. As we gave her our order, she gave a series of approx. 1000 tiny nods of her head, as though being charged with the most important mission of her life to date. There was an issue with one of our requests and she said she had to ask her manager. Several billion years later, she returned saying she was so sorry but she hadn't managed to find out the answer to our question because her manager had been talking to someone and she'd felt it would have been very tactless to interrupt. We said we understood, and asked if, while we were waiting, she would mind if we gave her the five branded Pizza Express advertisements that had been on our table - pizza of the month, special wines, another notice around the flower vase etc. etc. Her eyes became even wider, giving her the impression of one of the girls in Soundgarden's video for Black Hole Sun, and she nodded sympathetically, before explaining at some length (and we're talking several minutes here) that she was from Slovenia and felt like the amount of corporate branding and advertising in the west was a real problem and that she thought there should be strict controls on what, where, and how much. You can take the girl out of the former Communist bloc...

Saturday was another big day - my friend Emily's hen, where I and a few others were entrusted to spend the hard-earned cash of Emily's 14 closest friends on their behalf, an endeavour that I found challenging and enjoyable. I think that, in the end, we struck a good balance between boat rides, ritual humiliation, drunkenness, new skills, old photos, gifts and bad music. Or, at least, the balance was there. I did not strike the balance quite so well on a personal level, as I awoke on Sunday morning feeling as though I possibly had food poisoning and remain nauseous and exhausted to this moment. I managed to go to a three hour singing rehearsal, which showed a level of dedication I wasn't aware I possessed. And I watched a lot of The X Factor. And I ate. Good lord, did I eat.

As a public service, however, I do feel that I should mention the hen activity we did on Saturday afternoon: a cookery class with a company I'd found online called The Urban Kitchen. I wouldn't suggest you use them, should you be in the market for a relaxing, fun group activity. To save me typing it all out again, below is the email that I sent the boss this morning. On the upside, in comparison to her, I seemed carefree and even laissez-faire, which was excellent for my ego.

I've now transferred the £11.00 to you for the extra wine on Saturday night. Everyone agreed the food was delicious.

Having received a few questionable emails from you prior to the event, including one where you seemed to accuse Joanna of deliberately ignoring or losing the forms you'd sent through, and being more than terse that all 12 hens had not filled in the dietary requirements form only a couple of days after you'd provided us with the link - oh, and the one where you asked us to start late and then said actually no, let's start on time, but it might be difficult as there's another group directly before us (not the best way to make us feel special) - we were hoping that our issues were only in print, and that in person it would be a more pleasant experience.

However, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that we won't be recommending The Urban Kitchen - several people overheard you making sarcastic remarks about us to your team, and the way you publically reprimanded people for accidental cooking errors was a long way from good client management. I had many comments from the group saying that they were terrified of you and that they'd been"told off" - it should surely go without saying that people don't pay nearly £70 to feel uncomfortable.

I wasn't sure whether or not to say anything, but I know repeat business is important for a small enterprise such as yours, and I felt it was important that you should hear that, at times, we found your manner very aggressive and unfriendly.

I am sure you can catalogue ways in which you didn't like me/us, but I'm afraid in this scenario, the customer should always be right!

I hope you can use this feedback to your advantage.

Between you and me, the above isn't the whole story. We did actually have a lot of fun - but it was no thanks to her. I've always agreed with Napoleon that it is important for group morale to have a common enemy (or was it Nelson? Isn't that where scapegoat came from...? OK... That was fascinating. Scapegoat comes from a mistranslation in the Septuagint, the early Greek version of the Bible. And I can't find anything on Google re. what I was talking about with common enemies. I remember reading somewhere that there was a captain at sea who, as a management tactic, deliberately made himself unpopular so that his crew would unite and work well together. Anyone know who or what I'm talking about? I clearly will never remember). Anyway, we all giggled a lot. It was a bit like being back at school: the more stressed the boss got, the more naughty and careless we became. We also ate extremely well (having cooked the food ourselves), so in many respects the event was excellent, but basically the woman in charge needs to sort her management skills out. That's all. I am now preparing myself for some sort of defamation case (which is not in any sense to imply that the above is inaccurate), so enjoy this blog entry while you can, I suspect it may not be here for long.

New choice

Last night I was at home on my sofa, all geared up to sit there all night and mope and feel sorry for myself, and then somehow I managed to shake myself out of it, and I stood up, changed my clothes, put on my make-up, left the house, walked down the road, got on a bus and a train and then walked to a strange bar, walked purposefully down the stairs into the dank basement room and joined a circle of a group of total strangers who were all pointing at each other and shouting loudly. It was a warm-up game for an improvisation comedy workshop, and I went along because I went on an improv beginners' weekend course a month ago, and it was absolutely excellent.

It's excellent for me in particular, because I am a control freak and I like boundaries and rules and clarity and I hate surprises and unplanned events. I particularly hate the thought of failing, especially when I have been seen to be trying hard at something, and most of all what I hate is the thought of making a fool of myself in front of other people. And improv is all about doing all of those things for fun. And after a while, the threat of not being 'good enough' or 'funny enough' starts to evaporate, and you just laugh and find yourself rolling on the floor with people you've never met, pretending to be a cup of tea for the amusement of others. Last night, two men were in a zoo scenario, talking about shooting one of the animals with a tranquilizer gun, and so a few of us started being the animals, and crawled on stage on our hands and knees, and then I got quite close to the zookeeper, who felt threatened and shot me, and I reared up and then died on my back, and lay there while the two humans decided what to do, but meanwhile the rest of my pack of animals started dragging my carcass across the floor back to our lair. I ended up covered in basement pub dust and giggling like mad.

One of the best exercises I've had to do is called 'New Choice'. You're working with a partner and improvising a story, but at any point, after any one of your suggestions, if they don't think it's good enough or it jars for some reason, they can say 'New choice' and you have to try again. So it might go:

J: I was walking along the street last night...
P: New choice
J: ...along the seafront last night, and I saw a dolphin...
P: New choice
J: ...a walrus...
P: New choice
J: ...a man drowning. I stripped off my clothes...
P: New choice
J: ...without stripping off my clothes, I ran straight into the sea and swam towards him. I could hear him screaming, 'Help!'
P: New choice
J: ...I could hear him screaming, 'Sandwiches!'
P: New choice
J: ...'Fuck off! I want to die!' but I didn't believe him. I reached him and started trying to drag him ashore, but he was lashing out...
P: New choice
J: ...he started trying to drown me
P: New choice
J: ...trying to kiss me. And his breath was terrible.

You get the idea. What was wonderful for me was that, the first time I was 'New choiced' I thought I'd feel like the person was saying, 'FAIL, that was a STUPID SUGGESTION you MORON', but in fact, because everyone gets 'New choiced', it feels way more like 'Hey, c'mon, you can do better than that, sexypants' and instead of shrinking in confidence, you actually start to enjoy it. The less you think about it, the more free your choices feel and the more funny they often are. It is all amazingly liberating and, for £5, I challenge people to have a more fun night out in the smoke. I'll be going again.

And then, of course, because I'd finally forgotten about vanishing guy for a whole two hour period, when I then checked my emails on arriving back at home, I found he'd messaged me. A lame message, an 'urgh, thank god I dodged your bullet' message of 'I need to sort my head out and I don't want to hurt someone who I like and respect.' Like and respect so much that you leave them hanging for FOUR DAYS while you piss about being selfish. Wow, I'm flattered. Anyway, I sent him a blinder of a reply this morning, three paragraphs of unadulterated pleasure that should, if I'm any good at this writing lark at all, make him feel like a total twunt. Case dismissed. Let the weekend begin.

Just FYI

Last week I sent an email to an author who I absolutely love. He replied. I replied again. He replied again. Then it could go no further without me offering to stalk him, so it ended.

21 September 2009 23:52
Subject line: Fanmail
I think you are so clever and funny that I don't quite know what to do with myself.
Yours,
Jane

22 September 2009 10:52
Subject line: Fanmail
You should try being me sometime. It's no picnic, I can tell you.
Regards
AM

22 September 2009 11:24
Subject line: Fanmail
Oh, I don't want to *be* you. I just want to bask in your brilliance.
Being anyone is tricky at times. And picnics are seriously overrated.
Keep up the good work. And if you ever need an ego boost, drop me a line: I'm clever and cool and I think you're the dog's.
Jane

23 September 2009 10:18
Subject line: Fanmail
My ego, as any number of people would doubtless wearily attest, requires no further enlarging. But thanks for the encouragement - always nice to think that someone is paying any attention at all.
AM

THE END

I don't really know why I'm posting that exchange here. It makes me smile, I suppose. I like his mixture of arrogance and insecurity. And if I don't post it on my blog, then I might forget all about it.