Well, despite getting ever closer to 30 I don’t feel much difference. I’m still working every hour to make rent. I continue to eat quite a bizarre diet of fish fingers and frozen veg (cost effective) and I’m yet to work out what I’m actually meant to do.
Do people really know what they’re ‘meant to do’ or do people just pick something they really like and that they’re kind of good at and just convince themselves that must be their calling? If so, I wish I’d stuck with Gin/Chocolate Taster.
As a child I had many ambitions; Part time nurse/part time vet (all good caring professions so far, contributing to society etc), part time model (there we go – gone to shit), part time actress that looks like Jessica Rabbit and/or Sandy from Grease (all contributions to society out the window). As a youngster performing was definitely part of my arsenal. I was generally awful at anything else I turned my hand to so prancing about was all I had to fall back on. In the early days I took ballet and tap but dancing to music from the Now That’s What I Call Music 26! Compilation was where it was at for me.
I’d spend hours in my room choreographing routines and if they were lucky, the entire school would witness my creations in assembly. Once, in Year five I persuaded my teachers to let me perform my latest routine for the entire school. I got up and jiggled around to Gina G’s Eurovision smash Ooh Ah Just A Little Bit in hot pants from Shirley market.
The audience, largely made up of girls plaiting each other’s hair and boys wiping their snot on each other interspersed with bored and most probably, suicidal teachers, paused whatever they were doing and applauded. I bowed and triumphantly skipped off to the neighbouring P.E bench reserved for performers and Pupil Of The Week Winners. Up next was a girl named Laura who delivered a beautiful (and it really was beautiful) ballet recital. Years later she would go on to star in Downton Abbey. I wonder if she remembers the chubby girl sorting out her hot pant wedgie at the side of the stage as she delicately wooed us all with her performance?
Of course the natural progression was a stint as Baby Spice in the school’s unofficial tribute act and weekends at Stagecoach only to be followed by dropping out of college – despite surprisingly good GCSE results – leaving home and fleeing to London and eventually after years of pissing about, attending drama school.
Since the glory days of my Gina G show stopper I’ve had all manner of jobs, rarely anything to do with acting. I’ve worked in several call centres shooing off customers who dared to bother me regarding all manner of issues: personal finance, utility complaints, magazine subscriptions, candles. Yes, there is customer care for candles. I worked for Cartier and got to try on a tiara once and for like, two seconds. I’ve sold advertising space – pretty cut throat, stood listlessly behind many a beauty counter in Harrods and Selfridges leaving eight hour shifts honking of a thousand different perfumes, I’ve flyered for a Brazilian waxing studio, sold Peppa Pig merchandise during its nationwide tour (oh the glamour) and stood on stage a quite a few times and told jokes.
Some people may read this and think “God she’s nearly 30 and she’s still piss arsing about with no direction” and that’s cool. I’m pretty sure most of family and friends back home would agree with you and sometimes I do too but I quite like not knowing what I’m meant to do just yet. Sometimes I freak out and those freak outs will probably increase over the next few weeks but on the whole, I’m cool.
