I've been so busy this year, it's not true! My mother-in-law had two heart attacks in August. She is back home now and seems to be OK (she was 91 in September - nothing keeps her down!), but it was a worrying time. It was also a one and a half hour trip each way to the hospital, which was quite wearing on top of the stress.
I didn't like the result I got for my Open University degree so I had to make a snap decision to study for another year. Fortunately I was able to do this at the old level of fees and it is a course I would have liked to have done. However, I know it's going to be hellish trying to fit it in around everything else, at least until the end of January.
I volunteered to direct next January's panto as no one else had volunteered. Well, I volunteered before I was pushed! I directed one before that was a lot of fun and I've always intended to direct another, but just not this year
We've just started rehearsals for that. I've had some problems getting technical crew for it and I've ended up doing the costumes as well (although not entirely on my own this year).I've just finished a run of playing Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities. It was great to play the villain for a change - I don't usually get those parts and to be honest wasn't sure I could do it. Actually I was third choice - the other two dropped out - but I'm not fussy
That should have been really enjoyable, except the lady doing the costumes dropped out at the last minute and I had to hand-hold my friend who took them on without having ever done them before. It was a big job.And of course there was the domestic crisis of the Amazon that sprung up in our garden. Our gardener noticed a lot of surface water in an area he cleared of weeds. We got men in to dig a hole, to find there was an old Victorian water mains pipe that had burst that had nothing to do with our house. They tried to stop the leak, but the pipe just burst further down. We found out from our neighbour, who used to own the land our house is built on, that it was the supply to the builder's yard that was here before our house. Well, it took six weeks, including suggestions of cross-contamination of the mains water supply and intervention by another neighbour (Vice Chair of the Parish Council!) whose garden was also being flooded by this to get Thames Water to sort it out. It turned out that the water main was a spur off the water supply of the first-mentioned neighbour, so they had to get permission to go and dig his garden up before anything could be done. It was still amazing to see how many times a crew who couldn't deal with the problem were sent out, understood what was required, said they would report back in detail, only to have yet another crew who couldn't deal with the problem come out! Anyway, it's finally stopped. We are now closely monitoring the wall of our garage and garden wall near to the leak for any damage
Oh and did I mention the auditions next weekend for our big outdoor show in 2013? I'm doing costumes for that (mostly Roman togas and not needed until July so I'm not panicking!) and was going to audition for a chorus part. I've now been told to audition for one of the main parts. Very flattering but problem is, I have under a week to prepare and need to sing a particularly tricky Sondheim song. *big sigh emoticon*
Anyway, I do find the odd second in all of this to think of you all and hope that you have had a better 2012 than I have!
. Good luck with the audition!
I've no idea who else is going for it - there's an obvious choice who tends to appear when we're doing these musicals, and she'd be perfect. I wish I knew if she was auditioning and whether I needed to bother or not 
