BakerRooney on the West End

What excuse can I give for being such a slack blogger? Absolutely none. My new thespian life has led to large swathes of unstructured time disappearing into some black hole. These days, just getting the washing up done counts as a major accomplishment. Strange to think that a couple of months back, I was busy dealing with banking issues, stressed-out analysts and monitoring reviews. It hasn't helped that I put Radio 4 on the minute I wake up - it is pretty hard to listen and write at the same time! There's almost always some excellent programme on that I get passively absorbed in.

But I really must blog more, in fact I need blogging even more now that I've lost the daily human interactions the office brings, no matter how trite the office talk was it still meant you were communicating regularly with people other than your partner.

Aside from intermittently sedate moments this month, I had quite possibly THE most exciting week of my life. You see, when I was growing up in the far east, my sister and I along with our circle of friends were obsessed with musicals. Cats, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera... we lapped them all up with a passion that only pre-pubescents can demonstrate. Our favourite musical though, the one we dreamed about staging was Les Miserables, we got our sweaty, tropical hands on the full libretto, practised playing them (very badly I might add) on our piano and sang the songs with vigor tearing round the garden. Yes, I know - we were SO uncool! And we had just discovered pop music too.

Last week though, my dormant, inner musical-geek finally got the chance to step out of the shadows when I got an audition for a musical and got to sing one of my favourite Les Mis songs on an actual West End stage. I was so excited to just be there that I belted out my song to the last row of the balcony and promptly got a croakey voice for quite some days after. It turned out to be a crazy week as I had 3 other auditions which meant that I was running around town like a headless chicken. Given that it's been such a looooooong time since i've sung properly, I had to go for singing boot camp which meant missing the iknit day. But my little return to singing has made me want to put in more practise and work as I would bloody love to be in a West End musical some day. My poor long-suffering neighbour and Gruff have tolerated hours of my singing exercises with unconditional grace so I may have to thank them with cake.

Yes, I have been baking on a weekly basis and scoffing the results so quickly that there have not been any photo opportunities. No evidence therefore remains of the 2 carrot cakes I made for various birthdays, the walnut sandwich cake for our spinning afternoon at Lucy's, the lemon drizzle for Helen's sewing workshop, the ginger treacle or Gruff's birthday banana cake. I have only just learnt to keep my gluttony in check and can proudly show you the last of the mascarpone mango cake I made for Tuesday's sewing day with Pauline and Gail.



My next post will be a knitting update I promise! I have also been sewing, oh yes!